20 Mar
2026
20 Mar
'26
7:18 p.m.
On Mar 20, 2026, at 2:13 PM, Paul Koning via groups.io
<paulkoning=comcast.net(a)groups.io> wrote:
I can't help them with their errors, but it's amusing to notice that, while PLATO
is not listed as an article, several other articles mention it, including the one on Dnd
-- https://mud.fandom.com/wiki/Dnd -- which credits authors Whisenhunt and Wood.
A lot more PLATO history can be found in The Friendly Orange Glow by Brian Dear.
paul
On Mar 20, 2026, at 2:00 PM, John H. Reinhardt
<johnhreinhardt(a)thereinhardts.org> wrote:
I'm guessing this perhaps was one of the sources.
https://mud.fandom.com/wiki/MUD1
That source is certainly very wrong about history.
paul MUD1 (referred to as MUD1, to distinguish from
its successor, MUD2) is the oldest virtual world in existence. It was created in 1978 by
Roy Trubshaw at Essex University on a DEC PDP-10 in the UK, using the MACRO-10 assembly
language. He named the game Multi-User Dungeon, in tribute to the Dungeon variant of Zork,
which Trubshaw had greatly enjoyed playing.[1][2] Zork in turn was inspired by an older
text-adventure game known as Colossal Cave Adventure or ADVENT.[3]
John H. Reinhardt