How Old-School Text Adventures Inspired Our Virtual Spaces

Lilybet Skatilar is a level 9 human bard wearing a shimmering rainbow cloak, fur-lined snow boots, a stylish purple scarf, sunstone earrings, baggy blue polka dot pants, a blue ruby ring, a jeweled engagement ring, and various other accessories accumulated in the town of Wehnimer's Landing in 1997. If you checked her out by typing "LOOK LILYBET," you would get a large descriptive paragraph of text--no images, just words that made the world come to life. I played this character in GemStone III, an early online role-playing game, for a precious six-month period when I was a 13-year-old learning how to relate to friends and strangers in my newfound teenage skin. What I didn't know at the time was that GemStone and similar titles from Simutronics Corporation represented a pivotal moment in the history of gaming. Simutronics' GemStone and its sister game DragonRealms helped build a bridge between the primordial single-player text adventure and what we now call MMORPGs, massively multiplayer online role-playing games.