Starting in the town, which is represented only as a text-based menu, the player creates a party of up to six characters from an assortment of five possible races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Hobbits), three alignments (Good, Neutral, Evil), and four basic classes (Fighter, Priest, Mage, Thief),[1] with four elite classes[6] (Bishop: priest and mage spells; Samurai: fighter with mage spells; Lord: fighter with priest spells, and Ninja: fighter with thief abilities) unlocked once the characters have progressed sufficiently. Good and evil characters normally cannot be assigned to the same party.
After characters are equipped with basic armor and weaponry, the party descends into the dungeon below Trebor's castle. This consists of a maze of ten levels,[7] each progressively more challenging than the last. Classes have multiple spells, each with seven levels, that characters learn as they advance.[6]
The style of play employed in this game has come to be termed a dungeon crawl. The goal, as in most subsequent role-playing video games, is to find treasure including ever more potent items, gain levels of experience by killing monsters, then face the evil arch-wizard Werdna on the bottom level and retrieve a powerful amulet. The goal of most levels is to find the elevator or stairs going down to the next level without being killed in the process.
