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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9428919" data-attributes="member: 7044704">There was a similar thread a while back where I postulated an alt universe where RPGs grew out some genius in the Marvel Comics bullpen who had this idea for a weird "role playing game" based on the company's characters, got the rest of the creatives addicted to playing it, and finally convinced Stan Lee to publish the "Marvels & Malefactors" RPG.  It originally came out in comic book format, eventually growing to dozens of "issues" worth of rules, character writeups and adventures before explosive demand led to them shifting to a more familiar hardcover format.  The original OM&M books are worth a small fortune in 2024 despite having been printed if fairly large numbers because they tended to get wrecked during play - old pulp-paper comics were not real durable.  Every few years there are nostalgia reprint runs, although they aren't worth much.The comic industry of the 1970s working the way it did, some of the early playtesters from the bullpen knew folks over at DC.  It was the (possibly false) suggestion that DC was about to do their own RPG that got Stan to pull the trigger, and the 80s saw a bunch of legal wrangling when DC and others did jump on the idea of doing RPGs - even radical ones that did fantasy and scifi rather than superheroes.  Supers RPGs didn't dominate the market long - sf/f are just too strong as genres go for that to last - but they made a solid foundation for an industry that grows ever more popular and diverse.One interesting wrinkle is that their original format led to the early "floppy rules systems" using decks of standard playing cards for randomization, something that led to far more cards (including custom decks) being used in later games than in our world.  Even in 2024 dice (especially polyhedrals) are frequently seen as exotic and inconvenient, but there's a whole subcommunity of people who collect roleplaying randomizer cards as a hobby, carefully sleeving them and storing them in well-organized binders.  The 90s CCG craze still happened largely as it did here, but it was more closely connected to the roleplaying industry from word one, with the universe's Magic equivalent being a crossover game drawing characters from several independent comic companies and later integrating both Marvel and DC when it became clear the game was a gold mine even for the licensors.  Chaosium's "SuperWorlds: the Gathering" brought in enough money for them to buy toy manufacturer Hasbro when they were nearing collapse after a slew of bad business decisions, saving them from bankruptcy and ushering in decades of fantastic comic- and RPG-related toy lines under the new ownership.It's a lovely dream, anyway.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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