DIGITAL HANDS: DIGITAL HANDS: MORIA, ANGBAND AND TOLKIEN'S INFLUENCE ON HACKER CULTURE
Fredrik Ekman: Ryds Allé 3:106, S-582 51 Linköping, Sweden ([email protected])
©1997 Fredrik Ekman; first published in Other Hands 15/16.
In 1983, a game called The Dungeons of Moria (Moria for short) was first released. Its primary influences were Rogue, D&D and Rolemaster. It differs from Rogue by being much larger and more advanced. It was created by Robert Alan Koeneke on a DEC VAX. Koeneke used to sit up all night coding the game and a friend of his, Debra Jean Lee, would sit by his side and test what he did (and when this had been going on for about three years, the two got married). The game was soon ported to Unix and both versions spread rapidly on computer networks all over the world. Today, versions also exist for most popular personal computers, such as PC and Macintosh.
Like Rogue, Moria is a D&D-style game where most of the action involves killing off monsters to gain experience, gold and treasure. The player chooses a race and a profession and then develops a character with the usual abilities and skills.
The goal of the game is to penetrate the depths of Moria and kill the Balrog deep down in the lower levels. While this may at first seem very "Tolkienish," most races, monsters and artifacts in the game are not. Another thing which clearly sets it apart from Tolkien's world is the "town level" which is found above the dungeons. There, Hobbits, Half-elves and others are running shops for adventurers in need of equipment.
Moria, along with a few other games, such as Adventure, Star Trek and Larn became an important part of the hacker culture during the eighties. To have defeated the Balrog without cheating was (and is, to some extent) almost a requirement for a true hacker.
There are several reasons why Moria became popular with hackers. One is that role playing seems to be a frequent activity among hackers, another that the game is very complex, but perhaps the most important reason is that the source code (in C, which is one of the most hacker-friendly programming languages) was freely available. This led to that many people developed the original, which became ever more complex, and also to new, unofficial, versions of the game.
One such version was The Pits of Angband (commonly referred to as Angband). It was first released in 1989 and for a time it and Moria were developed in parallel. Angband, however, was even more advanced than Moria from the outset and it quickly became so much more popular that development of Moria almost ceased completely.
Angband is not only more advanced than its predecessor. Its authors also took a step back to its roots, or as the Version page of some versions somewhat exaggeratingly expresses it, they "wanted to keep, or even strengthen, Moria's firm grounding in Tolkien lore."
Angband is still very close to its origins, and someone who has played Rogue will quickly feel at home with the user interface (which is, it should be pointed out, far from intuitive) and the "graphics," based on ASCII characters. The main difference is that Angband naturally is much more complex. There are hundreds of different monsters and objects, a detailed magic system and literally endless labyrinths to explore. Even a devoted and experienced player will usually have to struggle for months before he can reach the goal of the game: to defeat Morgoth himself.
Another very prominent characteristic of the game is that it is highly addictive. Once a player has overcome the initial difficulties with the user interface and has seen his first few heroes bite the dust, he or she will be very reluctant to leave the computer, even to get some food and sleep.
Today, Angband is further developed by Ben Harrison, who is aided by several other people in testing, debugging and porting the game. New versions are regularly released and the number of devoted fans is as high as was ever that of Moria. Angband is also one of the few games which, week after week, constantly manage to stay on the Internet PC Games Charts.
Any serious computer gamer should have tried these games, and even though their connection to Tolkien's works is not as strong as some people would like to think, I highly recommend the readers of "Digital Hands" to give them a try. And if you plan to become a hacker, a thorough knowledge of them is a must.
Moria on the Internet:
Unofficial Moria page
Official distribution site
Angband on the Internet:
Ben Harrison's Angband page
Official distribution site