Oubliette

The blueprint for Wizardry

Oubliette, begun by Jim Schwaiger on PLATO in 1977, was the most mechanically ambitious of the early dungeon games. Players met in a tavern beneath Ligne Castle, formed parties, and ventured into a shared first-person dungeon together — a persistent multiplayer world running on a 1970s mainframe.

Its depth was remarkable for the era: roughly fifteen races and fifteen classes, each with its own attribute requirements, plus a rich spell and item economy that rewarded careful party composition. That structure was lifted almost wholesale into Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981), the game that did more than any other to bring the PLATO dungeon to home computers.

Oubliette implemented Dungeons & Dragons directly and unlicensed; a stripped-down single-player commercial version reached home computers in 1983, but the influential original was the PLATO edition catalogued here.