The Making of Wizardry - Robert Woodhead Interview

USGamer has a history of RPG series. This months entry explores the creation of Wizardry with Robert Woodhead.

Why do role-playing video games work the way they do? The answer to that question often boils down to, "Because Wizardry did it." But why did Wizardry do those things in the first place? To hear Wizardry programmer Robert Woodhead tell it, that answer amounts to, "Because of PLATO." 

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord debuted in the fall of 1981, the second wildly influential computer role-playing game to debut that year on Apple II. Richard Garriott's Ultima had shipped a few months earlier with its grab-bag approach to the genre. Ultima combined first-person dungeon exploration with outdoor travel from town to town presented with a god’s-eye viewpoint. Ultima also included all kinds of odd anachronisms, including time travel and an outer space shooting sequence brazenly lifted from the finale of Star Wars, but its biggest influence was undoubtedly Garriott’s time spent shaking dice in Dungeons & Dragons. 

Wizardry took a different approach. Designed and programmed by Robert Woodhead and Andrew Greenberg, it consisted of nothing but dungeon-diving. The game was viewed entirely through the first-person wireframes seen in Ultima’s dungeons (and Akalabeth before that). It had no overworld. A town at the mouth of the dungeon—navigated entirely through menus—allowed players to shop for gear, rest at inns, and save their progress. There was no wandering around to gather clues from random townsfolk. There definitely was no space combat. There was only the dungeon, consisting of 10 floors of monsters, tricks, and traps, each level spread across a labyrinthine 20x20-space grid. 

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