A gamemaster is a person who acts as an organizer, officiant for regarding rules, arbitrator, and moderator for a multiplayer role-playing game. They are more common in co-operative games in which players work together than in competitive games in which players oppose each other. The act performed by a gamemaster is sometimes referred to as "Gamemastering" or simply "GM-ing".
Tunnels & Trolls is a fantasy role-playing game designed by Ken St. Andre and first published in 1975 by Flying Buffalo. The second modern role-playing game published, it was written by Ken St. Andre to be a more accessible alternative to Dungeons & Dragons and is suitable for solitaire, group, and play-by-mail gameplay.
Rogue is a dungeon crawling video game by Michael Toy and Glenn Wichman with later contributions by Ken Arnold. Rogue was originally developed around 1980 for Unix-based minicomputer systems as a freely distributed executable. It was later included in the Berkeley Software Distribution 4.2 operating system (4.2BSD). Commercial ports of the game for a range of personal computers were made by Toy, Wichman, and Jon Lane under the company A.I. Design and financially supported by the Epyx software publishers. Additional ports to modern systems have been made since by other parties using the game's now-open source code.
Eye of the Beholder is a role-playing video game for personal computers and video game consoles developed by Westwood Associates. It was published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. in 1991, for the MS-DOS operating system and later ported to the Amiga, the Sega CD and the SNES. The Sega CD version features a soundtrack composed by Yuzo Koshiro and Motohiro Kawashima. A port to the Atari Lynx handheld was developed by NuFX in 1993, but was not released. In 2002, an adaptation of the same name was developed by Pronto Games for the Game Boy Advance.
In tabletop games and video games, a character class is an occupation, profession, or role assigned to a game character to highlight and differentiate their abilities and specializations.
The druid is a playable character class in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Druids wield nature-themed magic. Druids cast spells like clerics, but unlike them do not have special powers against undead and, in some editions, cannot use metal armor. Druids have a unique ability that allows them to change into various animal forms, and various other qualities that assist them in natural settings.
Temple of Apshai is a dungeon crawl role-playing video game developed and published by Automated Simulations in 1979. Originating on the TRS-80 and Commodore PET, it was followed by several updated versions for other computers between 1980 and 1986.
Dungeon Hack is a 1993 role-playing video game developed by DreamForge Intertainment and published by Strategic Simulations for DOS and NEC PC-9801.
Dungeons & Dragons: Tower of Doom, published in 1994, is the first of two arcade games created by Capcom based on the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game and set in the Mystara campaign setting. It is a side scrolling beat 'em up with some role-playing video game elements for one to four players. The game was also released on the Sega Saturn, packaged with its sequel, Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, under the title Dungeons & Dragons Collection, although the Saturn version limited the gameplay to only two players. In 2013, both games were re-released for modern platforms as Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara.
An action role-playing game is a subgenre of video games that combines core elements from both the action game and role-playing genre.
The Forest of Doom is a single-player adventure gamebook written by Ian Livingstone, and illustrated by Malcolm Barter. Originally published by Puffin Books in 1983, the title is the third gamebook in the Fighting Fantasy series, and the first of several to feature the character Yaztromo. It was later republished by Wizard Books in 2002. The gamebook was also adapted into a video game.
Lufia & the Fortress of Doom, known as Estpolis Denki in Japan, is a role-playing video game developed by Neverland and published by Taito in 1993, for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the first title in the Lufia series of video games and the only game from the series released under the Taito label in North America.
The fighter is one of the standard playable character classes in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. A fighter is a versatile, weapons-oriented warrior who fights using skill, strategy and tactics.
A character class is a fundamental part of the identity and nature of characters in the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. A character's capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses are largely defined by their class; choosing a class is one of the first steps a player takes to create a Dungeons & Dragons player character. A character's class affects a character's available skills and abilities. A well-rounded party of characters requires a variety of abilities offered by the classes found within the game.
The barbarian is a playable character class in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. The class was introduced in 1985 and went through a number of variations in subsequent editions of the game.
The monk is a playable character class in most editions of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. A D&D monk is a fantasy martial artist, specializing in unarmed combat.
Health is a video game or tabletop game quality that determines the maximum amount of damage or fatigue something takes before leaving the main game. In role-playing games, this typically takes the form of hit points (HP), a numerical attribute representing the health of a character or object. The game character can be a player character, a boss, or a mob. Health can also be attributed to destructible elements of the game environment or inanimate objects such as vehicles and their individual parts. In video games, health is often represented by visual elements such as a numerical fraction, a health bar or a series of small icons, though it may also be represented acoustically, such as through a character's heartbeat.
Telengard is a 1982 role-playing dungeon crawler video game developed by Daniel Lawrence and published by Avalon Hill. The player explores a dungeon, fights monsters with magic, and avoids traps in real-time without any set mission other than surviving. Lawrence first wrote the game as DND, a 1976 version of Dungeons & Dragons for the DECsystem-10 mainframe computer. He continued to develop DND at Purdue University as a hobby, rewrote the game for the Commodore PET 2001 after 1978, and ported it to Apple II+, TRS-80, and Atari 800 platforms before Avalon Hill found the game at a convention and licensed it for distribution. Its Commodore 64 release was the most popular. Reviewers noted Telengard's similarity to Dungeons and Dragons. RPG historian Shannon Appelcline noted the game as one of the first professionally produced computer role-playing games, and Gamasutra's Barton considered Telengard consequential in what he deemed "The Silver Age" of computer role-playing games preceding the golden age of the late 1980s. Some of the game's dungeon features, such as altars, fountains, teleportation cubes, and thrones, were adopted by later games such as Tunnels of Doom (1982).
Book of Lost Dreams is a tabletop role-playing game supplement published by White Wolf Publishing in September 1997 for use with the horror game Changeling: The Dreaming, and is part of the World of Darkness series. It introduces expanded rules for cantrips and combat, describes creatures from other World of Darkness games to aid cross-over play, and contains the adventure "Capture the Flag". The book was released together with a storyteller screen, which contains rules information and tables for storytellers to reference while running a campaign. The book was well received by critics, who considered "Capture the Flag" a good way to introduce players to the Changeling: The Dreaming setting.
