--- description: Think you've got the stuff to recreate a 1970s-era teletype roleplaying game? title: Ultima Creator Wants You to Remake His First Dungeons & Dragons Game image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Business](/section/business/) ## Business Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Tech](/tag/time-section-tech/) ## Tech Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Richard Garriott Wants You to Remake His First Dungeons & Dragons Game by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Apr 16, 2014 6:03 PM CUT by [Matt Peckham](/author/matt-peckham/) ## Matt Peckham Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Apr 16, 2014 6:03 PM CUT  Portalarium I have no idea how Portalarium creative director Richard Garriott’s [_Shroud of the Avatar_](http://techland.time.com/2013/03/11/before-you-drop-money-on-richard-garriotts-shroud-of-the-avatar/ "undefined") is going to turn out, but I’m all kinds of interested to see how [this clever little promotional retro-competition](https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?page%5Fid=29385 "undefined") he’s sponsoring will. It involves one of the oldest games he designed. No, not _Akalabeth_. I’m talking about D&D#1, a game young master Garriott designed on a teletype machine nearly four decades ago while in high school (he’s 52 today, and a pretty eclectic guy — [he’s also been to space](http://richardinspace.com "undefined")). Back in 1977, Garriott typed the game onto paper tape spools, which he fed into a terminal that ran the D&D-inspired roleplaying scenario in the simplest sense: explore a top-down dungeon (it used ASCII characters to indicate geometry), while doing battle with enemies and excavating treasure along the way. Tele-who? Tele_printer_ technology. You know the Selectric 251 from the TV series _Fringe_ that let people send and receive messages? Kind of like that, only without the interdimensional communications module. They’re electromechanical typewriters older than me, and Garriott used one to craft a slew of D&D-inspired games: 28 in all, paving the way for his first Apple II game, which in turn anticipated his storied _Ultima_ computer roleplaying series. Garriott’s asking anyone intrepid enough to take the source code (in BASIC) for that original teletype game — created at Clear Creek High School in Houston, Texas on a teletype machine connected via an acoustic modem to a PDP 11 type mini-computer — and translate it into something that faithfully recreates the original game (the instructions specify “No fancy graphics, stick with a traditional font on ‘yellow’ paper”). The contest just kicked off yesterday, April 15, and the clock’s ticking — entrants have until May 15. According to the contest overview, the game’s been MIA since 1979, when teletype was retired. The idea here is to come up with a playable version Portalarium can drop into _Shroud of the Avatar_. You can submit using [Unity](https://unity3d.com "undefined") or design “a no-plug-in Browser Version,” and the winners will be announced shortly after the contest closes. Winners (in each category) get a Citizen-level pledge reward (within _Shroud of the Avatar_) that Portalarium values at $550, while two runners-up in both categories will receive a Collector-level pledge reward valued at $165 apiece. The only catch: all submissions become Garriott’s property. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/65299/richard-garriott-wants-you-to-remake-his-first-dungeons-dragons-game/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/65299/richard-garriott-wants-you-to-remake-his-first-dungeons-dragons-game/"},"headline":"Richard Garriott Wants You to Remake His First Dungeons & Dragons Game","datePublished":"2014-04-16T18:03:36.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-11T04:45:55.064Z","description":"Think you've got the stuff to recreate a 1970s-era teletype roleplaying game?","url":"https://time.com/65299/richard-garriott-wants-you-to-remake-his-first-dungeons-dragons-game/","keywords":["Tech","Video Games"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Matt Peckham","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/matt-peckham/"}],"articleSection":"Business","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/business/","name":"Business"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-tech/","name":"Tech"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/65299/richard-garriott-wants-you-to-remake-his-first-dungeons-dragons-game/","name":"Richard Garriott Wants You to Remake His First Dungeons & Dragons Game"}}]}] ```