# Rusty Rutherford - Maker: Programmer - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/rusty-rutherford/ > The University of Illinois programmer who, a few months after discovering Dungeons & Dragons, hid a one-level dungeon in a spare PLATO file slot called pedit5 and made one of the very first computer RPGs. **Why it matters:** Rutherford's pedit5 (1975) is widely considered the first dungeon-crawl video game and one of the first computer role-playing games, translating D&D's hit points, levels and experience onto a computer screen. ## Quick answers **Who is Rusty Rutherford?** The University of Illinois programmer who, a few months after discovering Dungeons & Dragons, hid a one-level dungeon in a spare PLATO file slot called pedit5 and made one of the very first computer RPGs. **What is Rusty Rutherford known for?** Rusty Rutherford is best known for pedit5. **Why does Rusty Rutherford matter to fantasy and games?** Rutherford's pedit5 (1975) is widely considered the first dungeon-crawl video game and one of the first computer role-playing games, translating D&D's hit points, levels and experience onto a computer screen. ## Life Almost everything the historical record holds about Rusty Rutherford concerns a few weeks in late 1975. He was then working with the Population and Energy Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, home of [PLATO](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/plato-system/), the pioneering educational computer network whose graphical terminals, spread across campuses worldwide and linked to shared mainframes, made it an unlikely incubator for games. Like many PLATO users that year, Rutherford had discovered [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/), published by [TSR, Inc.](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/tsr/) only in 1974 and spreading fast through college gaming circles. Beyond his account of building the game, reported in later histories and interviews, little about his wider life and career is documented, and this entry does not guess at it. ## Work Rutherford knew that another D&D-inspired game, [dnd](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/dnd-plato/), was already under development on PLATO. It had promised multiplayer play but had not delivered it (and never would), and it was not yet finished. Impatient, he set out to make his own, single-player version, and he completed it in four to six weeks. The result, [pedit5](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/pedit5/), also known as *The Dungeon*, borrowed as much of D&D as the system would allow. The player's character, a composite of fighter, magic-user and cleric, descended into a single-level dungeon shown in a two-dimensional overhead view built from PLATO's character graphics. The layout was fixed, but monsters and treasure were randomly generated for each new character and saved with it. On meeting a monster the player could fight with a weapon, cast one of several spells, or run; if the monster was not quickly defeated or escaped, the game resolved the fight to the death without further input. Defeating monsters earned [experience](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/experience-points/) and treasure, characters rose in level, and their [Hit points](https://www.lanternhall.org/lexicon/hit-points/) tracked how close they were to death. Crucially, characters could be saved between sessions, so a hero could grow over weeks of play. The game's name was an accident of bureaucracy. Each university group was allotted a few program slots on the mainframe, and the Population and Energy Group's were named pedit1 through pedit5. The first three were in use, so Rutherford put his game in the fifth, and his manual in pedit4. The title *pedit5* never appears on screen, but it stuck. PLATO's constraints shaped the design: the dungeon held only about 40 to 50 rooms, and the game could store just 20 players at a time, which Rutherford later called a real problem once the game became popular. System administrators, who did not consider games a proper use of the machine, deleted it more than once; each time, Rutherford restored it. ## Legacy *pedit5* is generally regarded as the first dungeon-crawl video game and one of the first [computer role-playing games](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/computer-rpg/). It appeared at almost the same moment in 1975 as *dnd* and the PLATO game *Dungeon*, and it may have been preceded by the short-lived *m199h* in 1974, so historians treat it as one of a cluster of simultaneous inventions rather than a single origin. Its random monsters and treasure make it an early ancestor of the [Roguelikes](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/roguelike/), and its structure of descending, fighting and leveling became the template for the [First-Person Dungeon Crawlers ('Blobbers')](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/dungeon-crawler/). Its immediate descendant was *orthanc*, a significantly expanded rewrite by three other programmers, named after the tower in [The Lord of the Rings](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/the-lord-of-the-rings/); Rutherford's original survived on PLATO as *orthanc1*. Copies of the code have since allowed enthusiasts to run it again on emulated PLATO systems over the Internet. The chain of influence runs through PLATO's later games such as [Avatar](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/avatar-plato/) and on to microcomputer RPGs like [Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/wizardry/), whose creators drew on PLATO's dungeon games. Few people who have played a dungeon crawler know Rutherford's name, but the loop he coded in a borrowed file slot, enter the dungeon, fight, loot and level up, is still the heartbeat of the genre. ## Facts - He built *pedit5* in four to six weeks in late 1975, after playing Dungeons & Dragons since earlier that year. - The game took its name from a file slot: his Population and Energy Group owned PLATO lessons pedit1 through pedit5, and the game went in the fifth. - He used the neighboring slot, pedit4, for the game's manual. - System limits held the dungeon to about 40–50 rooms on one level and let the game store only 20 players at a time. - Administrators repeatedly deleted the game as a misuse of resources, and Rutherford kept restoring it. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia: pedit5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedit5) - [Wikipedia: PLATO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLATO_(computer_system)) - [Cyber1 (PLATO emulation community)](http://www.cyber1.org/) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.