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If you ever played the original Wizardry, regardless of whether that's the Apple II version or the Digital Eclipse remake, you've likely heard about the enemy Murphy's Ghost at one point or another.
Residing in a hidden alcove on a hidden part of the first floor of the dungeon below Trebor's castle, he is a character summoned from interacting with a strange altar and is often recommended as a tactic for players to quickly level characters to deal with the later floors, due to the high level of experience he grants you.
In fact, some have even suggested he might be "the first enemy in any videogame that players actively sought out for the sole purpose of grinding/farming," with the character becoming famous enough that he was later referenced decades later in an amusing Easter Egg in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.
As you may or may not be aware, in the past, I interviewed Robert Woodhead, one of the co-creators of Wizardry, for a Making Of on the game, and during this chat, he confirmed a long-running fan theory that Murphy was named after some friends of his collaborator Andrew Greenberg: the testers Paul and Helen Murphy.
This got me wondering whether Paul and Helen were still around today and whether they knew about this amazing legacy they had left behind in games. So I set about trying to track them down. Immediately, though, upon hitting up social media, I realised how challenging this would be, as my initial search turned up a ton of potential candidates, with no real way to validate whether they were the right person without going to the effort of sending out messages to hundreds of people. So, I began looking for ways to narrow my search, remembering a few things Woodhead had mentioned about the Murphys that could help disqualify people from it.
"Andy lived at a special dorm at Cornell called Risley. And Risley was basically kind of focused on the performing arts. It was this really old building, and so everybody at Cornell who was into performing arts really wanted to stay at Risley. So he lived at Risley, and all of his roommates and floor friends knew he had a computer. And that was kind of a rare thing, so he was a popular guy. And because people like to play games, when he started writing this game, it was only natural that his friends would test it and play it and tell him how good — or bad — it was. I think the nickname for them was WARG — the Wizardry Advanced Research Group."
As Woodhead stated, both Paul and Helen had not only attended Cornell but also lived at Risley, suggesting they held degrees in a field related to the performing arts. So I set about searching again and eventually came across something I was hoping I wouldn't find: an obituary for someone who matched Helen's description, who passed away in 2005, who was described as "a Cornell graduate" as well as "a painter, sculptor and amateur musician." This made me worry that I might have been too late, but it did also give me another interesting clue: the state and township where the Murphys had lived. With this information in hand, I continued my search and eventually came across an improv performer named Paul Murphy with "For Helen" in his profile, who also seemed to match all the evidence I had found so far. So I shot him a message over email and on the group page he was part of and waited for a reply, eventually receiving one not long after:
"Yes, I am that Paul Murphy, amazingly. What would you like to know?"
Inevitably, upon reading this, I inundated Paul with questions: How did you first meet Andrew Greenberg? Do you have any memories of seeing Wizardry for the first time? Did you have any role in Murphy's Ghost's creation? Did you test any of the other games? And the list went on.
Luckily for me, this flurry of questions didn't put him off from providing some more detail about his history with Wizardry, the birth of Murphy's Ghost, and other cool details I'd never heard of before:
"I met both Andy and my future wife Helen at Risley, a dorm for the fine and performing arts," wrote Murphy, confirming Woodhead's story. "I read some of your Wizardry articles at the magazine's website. It's interesting to see the Siroteks' and Robert Woodheads' memories of that time. I am still in touch with a number of people who also play-tested and had some hand in some of the original programming and the later games. I am also still in touch with Andy's widow.
"As much as I love and miss my wife, she did not play-test, and when Andy was working on the game, her name was not Murphy then (although I suppose it was obvious it would be), so Murphy's Ghost was named after me. There was a monster named Bleeb, named after another friend, and the Tavern, originally Gigamesh's (no L), was named for a third friend, sadly gone from us, but I see his wife, also a Risleyite, all the time."
He continued, "Andy was one of my best friends; we had played Adventure together on the school's computers, and occasionally Oubliette on the Plato, so it seemed natural that he would ask me to test his game.
"The original Wizardry was a one-character version, with magical items like an Oreo Cookie and a hot Ham and Cheese sub. Andy put in the (as you say, very useful) Murphy's Ghost without consulting me, and I was very flattered. I have heard various things over the years about Wizardry resurfacing from time to time, and that it was being redone online, so I am not entirely surprised to hear about it again. I have had a few chance discussions with people who remember the original, but you are the first one to seek me out."
I'm currently trying to arrange a more in-depth chat with Paul to go over his entire history with the series, but for now, I thought it would be interesting to share some of the fascinating details he shared with me about the game, just as a taster, hopefully with more to come.