Balrog Sampler is an 1979 RPG for the TRS-80, originally published under the title “Dungeon”. It was developed by Chameleon Software, a company made up of Richard Bumgarner and two of his coworkers. The name including the word “Sampler” suggests either a demo or a selection of different experiences but it’s a fully finished game. It is considered to be the first entry in the Maces and Magic game series.
The game is mostly a text adventure like Colossal Cave Adventure with a goal to find treasures and earn points. It does not take itself very seriously, there’s little consistency in theme and it aims to be humorous with much of it’s writing. It’s the first attempt to fuse an RPG and text adventure together but in this case the result isn’t much fun.
There’s a simple combat system with both random and set encounters. The combat system appears to be influenced by the tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) Tunnels and Trolls (first released in 1975). The weapons screen has stats including ADDS and HITS both terms used in the Tunnel & Trolls TTRPG.
It has a text adventure style room geography and some rooms have events and simple puzzles, for instance near the end you can release some mice to scare a dragon away.
For a deep-dive into the game refer to CRGAddict’s play-through.
Mr. Bumgarner has only foggy recollections of the events of 34 years ago, but he said that the trio was inspired by tabletop Dungeons & Dragons as well as a computer game whose name he didn't recall but what I suspect, based on the description, was the Dunjonquest series.
Here are a selection of resources used in the article and for further reading.