In August 1997, during the Ultima Online beta test, a random player assassinated Lord British, the supposedly invincible in-game alter ego of creator Richard Garriott, in front of a crowd. This episode uses that moment, and the Lord British Postulate it inspired, to trace Garriott's evolution from a teenage dungeon master with a stiff way of saying hello to a philosophical pioneer of morality in digital spaces. Starting with Akalabeth in 1979, Garriott rejected the Ziploc-bag software model and demanded that Ultima II ship in a sturdy box with a glossy manual and a cloth map, a physical workaround for the 48 kilobytes of RAM in an Apple II.

When Ultima III let players steal and murder townsfolk freely, angry letters from parents during the satanic panic made Garriott realize his system was training sociopaths. His answer was Ultima IV: Ques ...