William Trent

William Trent
Dr. Trent, c. 1964.
Full name	William Harold Trent
Notability	Adventure author Developer
Location	California
Occupation	Dentist
Born	29 July 1920
Died	21 October 2017

William "Bill" Trent (29 July 1920 – 21 October 2017), normally credited as Dr. William H. Trent and sometimes as DOkTOR "T", was the author of the Eamon adventure A Trip to Fort Scott, and the coauthor with his grandson Matthew Grayson of Tomb of the Vampire. He also developed a ProDOS version of the standard Eamon master diskette and created text-based maps of at least 16 adventures.

A native of Fort Scott in Kansas, Trent worked for the Santa Fe Railroad and then served as a Lieutenant Junior Grade in the US Navy during World War II, surviving the attack on Pearl Harbor; he later worked for many years as a DDS at a dental practice in Van Nuys, California. His burial was at Fort Scott National Cemetery. Trent was an avid and award-winning photographer active in local photo clubs and competitions.

Adventures

In correspondence with Huw Williams in 2020, Trent's grandson Matthew Grayson recalls that Trent had copies of a number of Eamon adventures for his Apple II which he and his brother would play when they came to stay with their grandfather in the summer. Grayson found the Eamon Dungeon Designer and asked Trent about creating custom adventures for the system; Trent said he thought it would be too difficult, but was surprised when Grayson told him he'd already created Tomb of the Vampire. Trent was inspired and expanded Grayson's short dungeon into a larger adventure which he submitted to the NEUC. Grayson says Trent was "hooked" on Eamon and proceeded to write a second adventure, A Trip to Fort Scott, which he also submitted to the club.

Trent played many Eamon adventures and considered Donald Brown's The Search for the Key one of his favorites. In a letter published in the March 1991 issue of the club newsletter he estimated that he'd played it 200 times.

Maps

In the late 1980s Trent created a collection of text-based maps for at least 16 Eamon adventures, showing layout and room connections, and sometimes rooms names, artifacts, monsters, or other important features. The collection of maps, compressed into a ShrinkIt file, was posted to macgui.com in 1990 by Tom Zuchowski.

The maps are available in their original text form and as a PDF collection. They're also available as individual images:

• Alternate Beginners Cave
• Assault on the Clone Master
• The Beginners Cave
• Castle of Doom
• The Caverns of Doom
• The Caves of Eamon Bluff
• The Caves of Mondamen
• The Lair of the Minotaur
• The Master's Dungeon
• Modern Problems
• The Quest for the Holy Grail
• The Search for the Key
• The Senator's Chambers
• Tomb of the Vampire
• Treasure Island
• A Trip to Fort Scott

External links

• Find a Grave Memorial