Video games - Scepter of Goth

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	Video games - Scepter of Goth

Scepter of Goth, also spelled Sceptre of Goth, was an early multi-user text-based adventure game, a genre now typically called a "multi-user dungeon" or MUD. Originally written by Alan E. Klietz, Scepter of Goth was one of the first commercial MUDs and the first commercial MUD in the United States. Although other settings were implemented with the software, it usually implemented a fantasy setting in the fictional city of "Boldhome". Scepter of Goth influenced many multiplayer games that came after it, particularly the "Swords of Chaos" and "Mordor" series of MUDs, and can be seen as one of the ancestors of today's massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs).

Commercial History

In 1978 Alan E. Klietz wrote a game called Milieu using Multi-Pascal on a CDC Cyber, which was used by high school students in Minnesota for educational purposes. The CDC had only "120K bytes of memory and 110 baud teletypes." Mileau was inspired by the single-player computer games Colossal Cave Adventure (ADVENT) and later by Zork, as well as non-computer multiplayer games such as Dungeons & Dragons.

Klietz ported Milieu to an IBM XT in 1983, naming the new port "Scepter of Goth". Richard Bartle's MUD was already running at Essex, but Klietz was unaware of this at the time. Scepter supported 10 to 16 simultaneous users, typically connecting in by modem, and ran on the QNX operating system (a Unix-like operating system). It was programmed in the C programming language, with nonportable QNX extensions for 8086/80286 memory segmentation.

Scepter (as well as an unfinished advanced MUD by Klietz called Screenplay) was first owned and run by GamBit (of Minneapolis, Minnesota), founded by at least Klietz, Bob Alberti (Senior), and Bob Alberti (Junior). Scepter of Goth was handled as a franchising business: franchisees paid for the right to run the system in a certain area, and a system was provided to them. Franchisees then administered the system and collected fees from users. Users would then dial in to play; while a franchisee could accept calls from outside their local phone call area, the extra charges this imposed on users meant that users tended to use the franchisee that was local or at least closest to them. Each franchisee would set their rates; most charged a certain fee per hour (typically $2-$4 per hour), since only a limited number of users could play simultaneously.

GamBit's assets, including Scepter and Screenplay, were sold to InterPlay (of Fairfax, Virginia). InterPlay continued to sell franchises as well as maintaining its own nationwide chat system (ProtoCall). InterPlay's lead Scepter developer David A. Wheeler modified and maintained Scepter, adding a number of capabilities and fixing various bugs to improve its stability.

As a result of this franchising business model, several Scepter of Goth systems ended up running in various locations, including at least ones in the following locations: Minneapolis, Minnesota; Austin, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; Ottawa, Canada; Fairfax, Virginia; and Buoy, Maryland. The system also included electronic mail, bulletin boards, a separate chat system, and some other facilities, but the game itself was the primary draw for its users. At a time when most Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) only allowed one person to log in at a time, larger dial-in services had few interactive services, and Internet access was rare, Scepter was a startling new development to many. It was also accessible to anyone, not just those at one or two universities, so it was seen and used by a variety of people.

Unfortunately, Interplay president Denny Flanders was charged and eventually convicted for tax evasion (for actions unrelated to the company), and was sentenced to jail. Although InterPlay could show that its revenue was increasing and when it would start turning a profit, the venture capitalists who had funded InterPlay were not willing to wait, and pulled their remaining funds. Once the funds were pulled, InterPlay immediately went bankrupt, and Scepter was no longer widely available.

Scepter influenced other work that followed after it. In particular:

Mark Peterson was "hooked on Scepter of Goth" in 1984, and after running out of money playing Scepter he wrote his own. His first MUD, "The Realm of Angmar", was written in Pascal and began as a clone of Scepter of Goth, though soon he added his own ideas. This was ported to Unix, then to an Apple ][ in assembly language (renamed Angbar), rewritten in C on Xenix as "Angmar". It was then rewritten to run on DOS to be compatible with the MajorBBS (and other BBSs of the time) and renamed "Swords of Chaos
", which for many years was a successful commercial MUD sold to various BBS operators until widespread Internet access eclipsed local BBS systems.
Brett Vickers developed the noncommercial MUD "Quest for Mordor", and specifically noted Scepter of Goth as his inspiration. Keegan states that "the authors of Mordor adapted ideas from Scepter of Goth for their publicly distributed (in 1993) mud server software." That MUD in turn spawned other MUDs such as Chalacyn Nights and Isengard. Brett Vickers eventually joined Arenanet, developers of the MMORPG Guild Wars
.

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