The ’80s Were an Alternate History

Two weeks from now, I’ll be in Atlanta as a guest at DragonCon where they’ve assigned me several panels to appear on, the first of which is Alternative Histories and Speculative fiction in Tabletop Roleplaying Games. I didn’t pick the panel, but this is fortuitous because this is something I’ve been having some thoughts on recently. Alternative history TTRPGs typically consist of a historical element we’re familiar with combined with an element that didn’t naturally belong there. For example, the wild west with either zombies of aliens (the Weird West), or World War II era technology plus art-deco style plus giant robots (Dieselpunk). But there’s one genre that I think gets overlooked, even though it should be fairly obvious, and would be quite a bit of fun, both to design and play in.

I started my roleplaying journey in 1984, which happened to be close to forty years after the end of World War II. At the time, many vets from the war were still alive and for many of us were our grandfathers. And if you lived in that time and your family was anything like mine, you would hear the stories. Stories like the time my grandfather, who was in the Military Police, was assigned to a train that took off on him and he spent three days in the European countryside trying to catch up to it (now that I think about it, that story might have been slightly exaggerated). Not too surprisingly, when I started playing TTRPGs, forty years after the fact, RPGs dealing with World War II were popular, such as FASA’s Behind Enemy Lines, GURPS WWII, and Godlike (which was essentially superheroes in World War II).

Believe it or not, I didn’t come here to advocate for a return to World War II/Noir in roleplaying games though that is always a compelling genre to explore. Rather, I’m more interested in noting that a forty-year difference is enough time for most people to start romanticizing an era and wanting to explore that as a fictional setting. And what was 40 years ago from now? The 1980s.

We can already see the nostalgia engine firing up with TV shows like Stranger Things. It seems to have taken a little longer than usual, because by the 1980s there was definitely nostalgia for the 1960s, but many things ‘80s are starting to come back (for example, my brand new Commodore 64 Ultimate sitting on my desk), not the least of which is the music. And why not, since you can’t find any new rock groups on the radio anymore—at least not here in the United States? And there’s already an established alternate history version of the 1980s that has existed since… well, the 1980s.

Imagine the time (at least in the United States). It’s been about ten years since the end of the Vietnam War and many of the veterans returned to the United States changed by war. Having difficulty fitting back into regular society, many of them take up the most logical profession imaginable: investigating crime. And there’s this vast landscape of interconnected hot spots: In Hawaii, a guy with a prominent mustache runs a PI outfit, drives a hot red Ferrari, and has taken up permanent residence in the guest house of a famous author. Together with two wartime buddies, one with links to the criminal underworld, and the other who flies a rent-a-chopper, they investigate murderers, drug lords, corrupt businesspeople, and more. Meanwhile in the Califronia Marina Town of King Harbor, two Vietnam War vets, a technology geek and his robot, and an ugly helicopter team up for private investigation to bring in the bad guys. In Boston, a former police officer in a vintage 1966 Mustang Fastback who is well read, highly moral, and sharp witted taps a network of key contacts to solve crimes and brings villains to justice. In Miami, two cops in the VICE department have the hottest cars, the coolest threads, not to mention theme music piped in directly from MTV every week as they take down drug lords who are using their city as the pipeline to import drugs from South America into the United States.

And it gets weirder. One man drives an indestructible 1982 black Trans-Am with an artificial intelligence that can drive itself and launch into the air from a level surface; he roams the United States from coast to coast, working for a public service organization that fights crime and is funded by a billionaire. In Los Angeles, a cop and his holographic artificially intelligent friend who could summon a car on command, and their friends take on crime. In New York City, a man who could transform into a panther, an eagle, a snake, or a number of other animals investigates crime and has adventures. And along the Utah-Arizona border, a man and his team keep a stolen, nearly indestructible military test helicopter, which they use to take on groups of organized bad guys.

And there’s more I haven’t even mentioned, but you should see a pattern here. Pick a city or region, add a group of friends who very well might have seen some stuff in Vietnam, add in something unusual (usually some kind of futuristic tech, an indestructible vehicle, an artificial intelligence, flashy clothes, government contacts, or extravagant wealth that doesn’t actually belong to you), and you have the premise for your very own action RPG in the 1980s.

But why the ‘80s and not something more recent? Well, the 1980s had computers but no internet. It had the very first mobile phones, but most people didn’t own them and there were no cell phone towers. It was a time when we saw technology emerging in new and exciting ways, but we didn’t yet have the full picture of what that technology would actually look like or do to society once it got here. The ‘80s is an optimistic time, with a sense of rebirth, renewal, and optimism. The future’s so bright, you’ve got to wear shades!

Welcome to Retrowave, an idealized, hyper-stylized, idealized version of the decade that focuses on palm trees at dusk, glowing neon lights, smooth synthwave music, and a romanticism of pop culture. If you lived through it, it’s a shameless exploration of all the things that made you who you are today. And if you aren’t old enough to have lived through it, there’s a lot of great television out there where you can catch up. It’s the perfect sandbox for RPGs because it uses small groups of friends with heroic tendencies, has larger than life villains, and involves fist fights without consequences, and a little bit of gun play was overlooked by the cops so long as it was used to take out the bad guys. In the ‘80s we dreamed of partying like it was 1999, but now we want to go back to 1984.

This genre is currently grossly under-served by existing tabletop roleplaying games, but you know, I think it’s an alternate history genre whose time has come.

*Art by Florian Renner (cover art for the album Crystal City by Robert Parker)