While dnd and Orthanc represent the more-or-less complete state of the first computerization of Dungeons and Dragons, Moria, developed in roughly the same year as the latter, represents its first ambitious departures. It uses its own stats and progression systems, and pushes the whole medium forward in ways almost unbelievable.
Moria, and I hope you're sitting for this, is multiplayer. It is one of the first Multi-User Dungeons, if not the ACTUAL first. Within a year of Gary Gygax putting down his pencil on the original edition of Dungeons and Dragons, these freaks had not only adapted it for computers, but had meaningfully deviated in ways so meaningful as to spawn an online procedurally generated MUD. Rogue, by the way, doesn't show up until 1980. Moria is so far ahead of its time that it's toying with genres that won't actually be feasible for another twenty years, and that's the kind of ambition that wins points around here. Of all the PLATO RPGs, with the possible exceptions of Avatar or Camelot, PLATO's later culminating MMO supergames. It is, in a single word, awesome.
Moria, and I hope you're sitting for this, is multiplayer. It is one of the first Multi-User Dungeons, if not the ACTUAL first. Within a year of Gary Gygax putting down his pencil on the original edition of Dungeons and Dragons, these freaks had not only adapted it for computers, but had meaningfully deviated in ways so meaningful as to spawn an online procedurally generated MUD. Rogue, by the way, doesn't show up until 1980. Moria is so far ahead of its time that it's toying with genres that won't actually be feasible for another twenty years, and that's the kind of ambition that wins points around here. Of all the PLATO RPGs, with the possible exceptions of Avatar or Camelot, PLATO's later culminating MMO supergames. It is, in a single word, awesome.