So i was talking to a co-worker about tech/skill trees today, and the topic came up: what was the earliest RPG with a dependency node-based skill tree? The earliest thing I could think of is Diablo II, which can't be right.

Can anyone think of an earlier RPG with a skill tree?

~GearSpinner

So i was talking to a co-worker about tech/skill trees today, and the topic came up: what was the earliest RPG with a dependency node-based skill tree? The earliest thing I could think of is Diablo II, which can't be right.

Can anyone think of an earlier RPG with a skill tree?

~GearSpinner

Well, it wasn't a tree, but the old Might and Magic games, for example Clouds of Xeen, required the player to purchase spells for each character. That has roots in the D&D system of purchasing spells and skills, which was sort of a tree in that you had more slots for lower level spells and few slots for higher level spells, and the size of this 'pyramid of slots' was based on your character's level.

Chrono Trigger had triple techs which required each participating character to have learned some prerequisite spell or skill. So that is sort of like a temporary, team-wide skill tree.

Wikipedia's entry on skill tree redirects to tech tree, which says:

The tech tree was originally designed for Civilization (board game) by Francis Tresham (game designer) that was released in 1980 by Avalon Hill.

Tech trees started showing up in turn-based strategy games around 1990, where Mega Lo Mania had a system of research levels/epochs that allowed the deployment of better units and defenses. Civilization (1991) was probably the first game to feature the same basic structure of tech trees seen in games today.^{[<span style=font-weight:bold;><a href='"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed"'>citation needed</a></span>]} 1992's Dune II is another example of an early game featuring tech trees.

I think Diablo II was the first. It's interesting, because the concept existed a long time ago, in the form of technology tree in strategies. Still RPGs have not incorporated this. No pen and paper RPG used it either (acutally, even nowadays I can not think of any P&P RPG system with such skills, except for StarCraft RPG and Diablo RPG of course ). You could also check console RPGs, I recall FinalFantasy 9 having something like that, or maybe it was something else. But for PC RPGs I think no one bothered to do it before the grand success of Diablo II (actually, I think it might be that the skill system became popular because of Diablo, not that Diablo became popular because of the system).

Everything was built of what already was.