Welcome to #RPGaDAY2022! Now in its ninth year, #RPGaDAY was originally created by RPG author and games designer David Chapman (Conspiracy X, Doctor Who, etc) as a bit of fun and to get people talking about tabletop roleplaying games. August was chosen, I believe, to coincide with tabletop roleplaying’s gaming mecca that is Gen Con – which usually takes place in the States (Inidanapolis these days) every August.

#RPGaDAY is open to everyone so if you want to join in just check out the prompts below to inspire a blog, vlog, or social media post to celebrate everything great about our hobby with the tag #RPGaDAY2022

Day 21 : Setting Sunday: Share an intriguing detail from a game setting you enjoy.

Ok, after some thought I decided to go with a homebrew game I ran for many years (and would love to again one day) using the old TSR Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set (FASERIP) rules.

Whilst being primarily a Marvel fan I also enjoyed some DC and independent comics and wanted to use characters from those – as well as characters from other superhero RPG supplements such as Champions – in my game.

Using the Marvel Universe and DC Who’s Who Guides, which were released back in the 80’s, I listed every character (hero and villian) and assigned them a timeline of when they were active, what affiliations they belonged to, supers type (Mutant/Tech/Alien/Altered Human/Magical/etc), and also where they were born (as so many in the comics were US-born/based and I wanted to share the geographic spread about).

It ended up being a monster of a database – and I still have a version of it on Excel (albeit an older version of Excel). Different groups existed at different points in history, characters from DC and Marvel (and elsewhere) were sometimes teammates and certainly enemies on numerous occasions. The premium hero groups were the Justice League of America (based in LA) and The Avengers (based in New York) who had decades long history and rivalry.

Many of the DC characters ended up being more historic figures (mainly due to some terrible naming DC had that just made them feel more in place in the 50’s through 70’s), and various heroes who died (or vanished) in combat were legends with statues and buildings (such as airports, universities, sports stadiums or libararies) named after them.

I dread to think how many hours I poured into collating the database and working out everything but had an incredibly good time doing it. I started it on one of the school’s computers during lunch and free sessions and kept at it after I left and finally had access to a computer, before eventually owning my own PC in the mid-90’s.