fun article about the history of RPG's

Here is an article by Julian Dibbell in Topic magazine (which is pretty good, check it out). Its about the first computer role playing game and the people who were central to its creation. This may sound really geeky, but it is actually a moving article about a slave who mapped a cave system and then a programmer who, years later in the mid-70's, used those writings to develop a game called Adventure which captured the imaginations of some geeks of old and laid the foundation for the RPG's and MMORPG's of today.

Julian Dibbell is the author of some very interesting stories/papers concerning online gaming. Among those publications is the famous "A Rape in Cyberspace," published in 1993 (although I think some of the more recent stuff is more fun).

I heard him speak at the recent 'State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual Worlds' conference at New York Law School, he was very engaging. I should also note that he won the game of "massively multiplayer rock-paper-scissors" that everyone at the conference participated in, so he's quite a lucky fellow as well.