On the dating of two early CRPGs: pedit5 and dnd

The history of computer roleplaying games is often traced back to two early titles for the PLATO system: pedit5 (also known as The Dungeon) by Rusty Rutherford, and dnd (also known as The Game of Dungeons) originally by Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood, later extended by many others. Both games are often dated to 1974, but I’m claiming a date of Fall 1975 for them in this week’s 50 Years of Text Games installment, and I wanted to show my work for why I think the commonly cited year is too early.

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