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Moria (PLATO)

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This article is about the game written for the PLATO computer system; for other uses, see Moria.

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Moria is a dungeon crawl style computer role-playing game developed for the PLATO computer beginning around 1975. Copyright dates listed on the game are 1978 and 1984. One of the authors, Kevet Duncombe, claims to have neither read any J. R. R. Tolkien nor heard of Dungeons & Dragons at the time development started, although he was aware of the PLATO game dnd. After a long period of inactivity, the game was cleaned up in 2004. It was pioneering for the time, allowing parties of up to ten players who could travel as a group and message each other, dynamically generating dungeons (instead of pre-computing them), and featuring a wireframe first-person perspective display.

1 Gameplay
2 See also
3 Sources

Gameplay

Stats

The game contains many of the prototypical elements of a Dungeons and Dragons game; players create characters which have statistics that describe their abilities and which can increase or decrease over time. In Moria, these are called skills, and they are Valor, Piety, Wizardry, and Cunning, which closely correspond to the D&D traits of strength, wisdom, intelligence, and dexterity. The skills range from 0-100 points. Cunning affects a character's life expectancy before death from old age, and the odds of evading an attack, tricking monsters, surprising monsters, and opening boxes and chests. Piety affects the success of prayers and some non-battle spells. Wizardry affects which spells can be used and their odds of of success. Valor affects what weapons can be used, as well as reducing damage received in combat and affecting success rates in attacking monsters. In Moria, character generation is automatic. A player chooses to create a character and is presented with four possible sets of stats each totalling to the same value (29 points). The player then chooses one of the options offered. The game does not entirely have the concept of character classes; all characters may use all weapons and spells if their skill levels allow it. There is also a Vitality statistic, which combines the concepts of character level, hit points, and endurance; vitality is consumed by performing actions such as fighting or spell-casting, by being hurt in combat, or by being out of food or water supplies. Each turn a character rests (while having food and water available) restores vitality. If vitality drops to zero, the character dies. A character's vitality level also determines their chances of success at a given action such as fighting or fleeing a monster. In spellcasting (and perhaps for other skill-based actions) the more vitality a player has, the less that is required to cast a given spell. Initial vitality for a new character is 100 points. Score points are given for defeating monsters.

Equipment

Characters can carry and use weapons and armor. In Moria terms, these are all called weapons, and each weapon has an offensive and defensive ratings. Thus, a battle ax may have a defensive value of 3 and an offensive value of 8, while Light Armor has a defensive value of 10, but an offensive value of 0. There are several types of weapons, and characters have a limited number of slots for each type. The types are sashes, armor for the head, armor for the arms, armor for the torso, and fighting weapon. The player has one slot for each type, except for weapons. All players can use a single two-handed weapon. Players with a valor of 15 or more may use a one-handed weapon, players with a valor of 30 or more may use two one-handed weapons simultaneously. Gold is an important measure of success in the game; the gold piece is the basic monetary unit. 200,000 pieces of gold equal one bag of gold.

Terrain and survival

As with many such games, players start in a town, which has shops where objects can be bought and sold. Adjacent to this are areas which players explore, fighting monsters and getting gold and game objects like weapons and magic items. Dungeons have levels, with staircases used to pass between levels. Some monsters guard chests, which may be difficult to open. While weapons may be bought or sold, magic items can only be sold. Players may attempt to steal from a guild hall, but if caught go to jail. Once in jail, players who are members of a guild may be bailed out, but for players who are not guild members, the game is over. Players require food and water to survive, and these may also be purchased in town. Monster of the "animal" class when killed may be converted to food, and water holes may be found in the dungeons. A player has a limited capacity to carry food and water. Supplies are measured in units of months; a character may carry up to 30 months of food and 15 months of water. Food and water are automatically consumed as time passes in the game. Once food or water is depleted, the character's vitality begins to decrease until the character dies. The overall layout of the game is that the town is adjacent to (on the same level as) the "wilderness" area, an area containing a few less challenging monsters and not much treasure. The wilderness contains the stairs to the four main dungeon areas, "cave", "mountain", "forest", and "desert". Each of these areas is sixty levels deep and they do not interconnect. Stairways transit up to three levels of dungeon. Dungeon areas are composed of "blocks". Each block is a six by six area, thus containing 36 spaces that could be occupied by characters or monsters. Blocks contain walls and doors which partition them into corridors and rooms; most blocks contain dead spaces which are not externally accessible. There can be doors both within blocks and between blocks. The x,y position of a player within the current block is displayed on-screen, along with which of the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) the character is facing. Despite the names of different dungeon areas such as "desert" and "wilderness", all terrain appears identical.

Combat and other actions

The game primarily uses single-letter case-sensitive commands some of which are mnemonic. The character motion keys are graphically oriented on a qwerty keyboard; "a" turns left, "d" turns right, "x" turns around, "w" moves forward, "W" moves forward through a door, or until an object is encountered. Many actions, such as using an object, will present lists of choices. Some actions make use of special keys found on PLATO terminals. PLATO keyboards had special keys labeled DATA, STOP, BACK, and LAB, among others. Current (2007) terminal emulators used to connect to PLATO systems usually map these keys to various control, alt, and function keys. NEXT is usually mapped to enter or return. BACK (mapped to F8, ctrl-b, and alt-b) is generally the way to exit a menu and return to the previous step. Players battle various monsters which are divided into eight "classes", humanoids, undead, magical, mythical, magic users, animals, elementals, cleric, and lawful. In combat, a player has several options:

fight; attack the monster ("f" key)
trick the monster ("t" key). If successful, the monster falls for the trick and is instantly killed.
bribe the monster ("b" key). Players offer gold or an item to the monster in exchange for their release. The monster will take the object. If the value is sufficient, the monster will then run away.
run away ("r" key). Chances depend on the Cunning skill. If successful, a player can accidentally re-encounter the monster by replotting the screen.
evade the monster ("e" key). Typically used by a weaker character that is part of a party. This allows a player to dodge the monsters' attacks while other players in the party defeat the monster.
cast a spell ("c" key). There are five "battle spells", Paralyze, Charm, Sleep, Dispell Magic (sic), Magic Missile.
pray ("p" key). There are four prayers: Holy Word, Miracle, Escape, and Unction. Unction restores vitality if a character is seriously wounded (vitality under 50), Escape allows character to escape, Holy Word kills the current opponent, Miracle kills a group of opponents. As is usual in such games, the chances of a prayer working decrease if the player prays for help too often.

Additional actions include:

casting non-combat spells. There are four: Light shows secret doors, Pass Wall moves through walls, Precognition tells the player if a monster has treasure, Protection provides some protection from attack
"U" to use or un-use an item, "I" to get information on an item, "T" to throw an item away
"S" to secure the magic string, "F" to follow the magic string back
"C" to make a camp, or access an existing camp if the character is in the same room as the existing camp.
Communication options "h" (yell for help), "m" message all players in the room, "M" message a specific player in the room, "Y" yells to any one player anywhere in the game
Commands to join ("J") and leave ("L") a party. To join, the character must be in the same room as the party, and the player types the name of the character whom their character is joining up with.
"K" to kick someone of a party. Only the guide/leader may kick out party members.
"R" to run to another party member. This is useful when a party members finds a monster and yells for help.
"G" to give food, water, or a magic item to another player

Parties

When players form parties, one player acts as "Guide". This player is the only one who can move the party between areas of the terrain ("blocks"). There are several rooms within a block which players can independently move around, loot, fight monsters in, and so on. The party cannot leave a block is anyone in the party is fighting. Players in a party may message all players in the room they are currently in, or message privately to one other player in the room.

The magic string

Moria has the rather unusual concept of "the magic string". This is similar to a GPS waypoint. All players have a single magic string to use. The player ties the end of their string to a point in a dungeon, and then at any point while they are on the same level can retrace their steps to that point. Strings cannot cross levels (i.e. transit a staircase), and on more advanced levels, monsters will occasionally chew through the string, preventing return to the origin point. While all members of a party may tie their strings, only the party leader can follow theirs back to the origin point. Possibly a character could follow theirs back by leaving the party.

Camps

A player may establish a camp in the dungeon, which is basically a supply depot where they can store up to sixty bags of gold and sixty months worth of food. The camp can also serve as a teleport point.

Magic objects

The dungeons contain certain magic objects. The most notable is the "Ring of the Reaper" which extends character lifespan. Characters who find this and defeat its guardian are listed on a hall of fame page.

Guilds

The game features guilds which players can join, but these bear only minimal similarity to guilds as used in MMPORPGs. There are four guilds, each one oriented towards a character class: Thieves Guild, Brotherhood (for clerics), Union of Knights, and Circle of Wizards. Once a player has a skill level of 20 in the appropriate skill (Cunning, Piety, Valor, Wizardry respectively), they may pay to join a guild. Joining gives them use of a guild locker, which can be used to store items and which can be used for a new character to inherit the items of an old character when the old one dies. Joining also gives them a special ability. Members of the brotherhood can heal their party's vitality, knights gain the possibility to instantly behead opponents (critical hit in common gaming terms) and take less damage, thieves have better chances of finding magic objects, and wizards gain the ability to teleport their party to their camp or to the location of another player in the dungeons. Guilds have several levels of membership, and moving from one to the next requires increased skill points as well as paying 5 bags of gold. Levels are apprentice (initial), journeyman (skill of 30), counselor (skill of 40), master (skill of 50). The master of the guild is the active character with the highest skill level in guild.