I Wanna Be a Super(hero): Game stores, comic shops and the Marvel Super Heroes RPG
In my late teens, a game/hobby store, of the sort that sold board games, role-playing-game (RPG) books, and Warhammer figures, functioned for me exactly the same way that comic-book shops function for others: as a clubhouse, a place to meet weekly, have conversations and make friends. So, soon after Gamma Ray Games opened in June of this year (located in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood), I dragged a girlfriend along with me to check it out.[1] In the very back of the store was a small RPG book section. The helpful proprietor sold me the
Marvel Super Heroes Player's Book and
Judge's Book for the neat sum of $10, and explained that, though they didn't buy used RPG books, they have a trading system.
The (good) experience caused me to meditate on the relationship between comic shops and game/hobby stores, how they're often intertwined, the similarities/differences between their customers and how they've both been impacted by the Internet. [2]
Tabletop, or pen-and-paper, RPGs (of the
Dungeons & Dragons ilk) gained prominence just a few years after the Direct Market had developed — however, unlike comics, a former mass medium for which the Direct Market represented something of the circling of the wagons, RPGs broke out of game/hobby shops into the (relative) mainstream, where they gained concerned-citizen-type opponents, even having their own Fredric Wertham of sorts in the '80s when Patricia Pulling formed an organization against
Dungeons & Dragons when her son, a role-player, committed suicide.[3]
Partially inspired by the collectible baseball card market, comic shops had a spectacular rise and fall in the '90s when people realized that not every crappy foil-covered comic would be worth thousands of dollars if it was never read and sealed in a mylar bag (basically, although there were other factors). Meanwhile, games and hobby stores were having a sort of heyday as well, as the popular
Vampire role-playing game, published by White Wolf, brought in an influx of female players, always in short supply, and published a Live Action Role-playing (LARP) version,
Mind's Eye Theater, that managed to be commercially successful.[4] Aesthetically, both comics and RPGs were dealing with more novelistic themes.
However, game stores that catered to role-players faced a problem: simply, how do you make money when you must rent enough space to give people room to game, while RPG books cost very little (witness: I'm going to be running a game with 20-odd-years-old, used books)? There are really only a few tactics: vending machines, selling little figures and painting supplies for games like Warhammer; cards for games like
Magic: The Gathering; updated editions and expansions; and board games.
Though board games and, to a lesser extent, tabletop RPGs are having something of a nostalgia-fueled renaissance, both comic shops and game/hobby stores have been impacted by the Internet, beyond the issues of pirated materials and alternate, online retailers who don't have to maintain a brick-and mortar store, though those are both major factors. Just as comic shops have a hard time gaining children as customers, it's doubtful that many children today will have any interest in tabletop gaming, since they have so many alternatives, meaning that there will be no one to replace the aging players.
Additionally, just as superhero films have contributed to popularizing the genre well beyond its home medium, role-playing games are pervasive in the form of videogames and MMORGs such as World of Warcraft. Though mainstream comics and tabletop RPGs have shared some history, and there are RPG-themed indy comics such as Jolly R. Blackburn's long-running
Knights of the Dinner Table, the influence of tabletop RPGs are just now making themselves felt in the recent crop of avant-garde cartoonists such as Dash Shaw and the Paper Rad collective.
Created by TSR, the company behind
Dungeons & Dragons (which is now owned by
Magic: The Gathering's company, Wizards of the Coast,[5] which in turn is owned by Hasbro[6]), the
Marvel Super Heroes RPG books I bought serve as a bit of nerd catnip. Designed by Jeff Grubb and published in an expanded edition in 1986, the rules are much simpler than
Advanced Dungeon & Dragons'.
The back cover of each book is a convenient, all-purpose power chart.
The Player's Book cover features superheroes while
The Judge's Book features supervillains, drawn by Jeff Butler: both covers show the characters running on a grid, which represents the maps some players utilize. Apparently, the idea was that players would play actual (pregenerated) Marvel characters, although it's possible to create original ones. Illustrated by the '86 Marvel bullpen, it's a fairly standard RPG book, laying out how to create characters and such: it floats only a few intriguing concepts, such as a turn = six seconds, which is likened to one panel; and that supervillains can gain "karma" (basically, experience points that can be recouped for more a favorable outcome in combat and the like) by bragging, while one way superheroes can lose karma is by missing an appointment they made for their secret identity.
Though both books serve as a snapshot of the Marvel Universe circa 1986 (She-Hulk is in the Fantastic 4), if you enjoy the who-is-stronger/smarter/better-liked-than-whom sort of thing, it stats many superheroes out (and somewhere along the line, you learn that Spider-Man can lift a private plane, but not a jet). The moments of unintentional hilarity are few, but choice, such as the "Other Stuff" chart listing roller skates as having the ability to "move as vehicle," and then defending both Dazzler and Iron Man wearing them.
Notes:
[1] This experience, too, was very similar to taking a civilian into a comic shop, with me exclaiming over the merchandise (in the case of Gamma Ray,
mostly German-style board games) , getting the lay of the land (Gamma Ray has an upstairs loft with open-box games) and laughing at how the owner was declaring the store a female-friendly zone (by leaving the door to the tiny, sparkling clean bathroom open) while she said stuff like, "I don't really understand, but I'm glad you're so happy about it!"
[2] My sources for this info are
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_game and the series of essays on the history of the Direct Market by Gary Groth, Dirk Deppey and Michael Dean in TCJ #277.
[3]
http://www.usask.ca/relst/jrpc/art9-roleplaying-print.html[4]
http://www.rpg.net/columns/briefhistory/briefhistory11.phtml[5] Wizards of the Coast had a multilevel game store in Seattle for a few years, but it was replaced by a sort of Internet-gaming café, which is now gone.
[6] Hasbro is the biggest board game producer in the world, as it owns Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers, as well as the Transformers and many other toy lines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HasbroKristy Valenti currently works for The Comics Journal and Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
Uncharted Territory is © Kristy Valenti, 2008
In my late teens, a game/hobby store, of the sort that sold board games, role-playing-game (RPG) books, and Warhammer figures, functioned for me exactly the same way that comic-book shops function for others: as a clubhouse, a place to meet weekly, have conversations and make friends. So, soon after Gamma Ray Games opened in June of this year (located in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood), I dragged a girlfriend along with me to check it out.[1] In the very back of the store was a small RPG book section. The helpful proprietor sold me the Marvel Super Heroes Player's Book and Judge's Book for the neat sum of $10, and explained that, though they didn't buy used RPG books, they have a trading system.
Partially inspired by the collectible baseball card market, comic shops had a spectacular rise and fall in the '90s when people realized that not every crappy foil-covered comic would be worth thousands of dollars if it was never read and sealed in a mylar bag (basically, although there were other factors). Meanwhile, games and hobby stores were having a sort of heyday as well, as the popular Vampire role-playing game, published by White Wolf, brought in an influx of female players, always in short supply, and published a Live Action Role-playing (LARP) version, Mind's Eye Theater, that managed to be commercially successful.[4] Aesthetically, both comics and RPGs were dealing with more novelistic themes.
