Swords and Sorcery

Swords and Sorcery is a game based on an earlier Star Trek game written for the PLATO platform in 1978.

It has a fantasy theme and quests or missions but it’s not a traditional RPG (not that such a thing really existed in the late 70s). It takes the controls of steering a spaceship and applies them to a warrior. This means you set a heading and a speed and if you crash into a tree you die. It’s a single player, top-down, realtime game with grid-based movement and was very popular with the PLATO crowd.

you set a heading and a speed and if you crash into a tree you die

You are given missions, and collect experience but there are none of the D&D derived stats. Experience points act as hit points. A king gives you the quests and rewards you with items and experience if you managed to complete them. There are various types of enemies that can attack and kill you.

If you’re curious about the details I recommend checking out one of the playthroughs such as CRPG Addict’s.

Influences

Swords and Sorcery is a fantasy take on a Star Trek game. Star Trek was written by Mike Mayfield on the Sigma 7 mainframe, at the University of California, Irvine. There’s also a version of this game on PLATO called trek.

Star Trek, a 1971 game on mainframes

The game [is] a fantasy version of the original Star Trek game on CRTs Don Gillies commenting on CRPG Adventures

Further Reading

Here are a selection of resources used in the article and for further reading.

• 🌍 A playthrough from CRPGAdventures
• 🌍 CRPG Addicts Swords and Sorcery playthrough
• 🌍 Retrogames Trove Game #7