Alan Moore‘s Watchmen is one of the most profound works of literature of the 20th century. The fact that it happens to be a comic book — Moore despises the term “graphic novel” — makes it even more impressive. Almost as famous as the work itself is the rift it created between Moore and publisher DC Comics. When DC went back on their word to relinquish ownership of Watchmen to Moore, the writer broke all ties with the company. In the decades since, Moore has publicly expressed his contempt for any and all Watchmen adaptations, including the 2009 Zack Snyder film and HBO’s 2019 sequel series. There is, however, one Watchmen spin-off that Alan Moore not only approved but even helped to work on: three Watchmen-themed supplements for the Mayfair Games DC Heroes Role-playing Game.
Tabletop role-playing Games (TTRPGs) have existed since the ’70s. While Dungeons & Dragons is far and away the most popular TTRPG, games of all shapes and sizes exist, including ones that allow players to role-play their favorite comic book superheroes. The Mayfair Games DC Heroes Role-Playing Game was released in 1985 and was so popular that by 1986 Mayfair allowed two writers, Daniel Greenberg and Ray Winninger, to put together a trio of Watchmen supplements with Moore’s help.
Who Watches the Watchmen? and Taking Out The Trash are stand-alone adventure modules containing the only Alan Moore-sanctioned Watchmen stories ever written. Meanwhile, the Watchmen Sourcebook contained character statistics and locations for players to use when making up their own Watchmen adventures.
Astonishingly, all three books were written concurrently with Watchmen using direct input from Alan Moore via a series of long-distance phone calls. As Ray Winninger explains in the introduction to the 2019 re-release of the supplements, Moore had the entirety of Watchmen in his head before he ever put pen to paper: “I ask Alan if he can fax me his outline; it would be very helpful. There is no real outline, he tells me. The whole thing — all 388 pages and 3,000-odd panels of it — is in his head.”
During these phone calls, Moore would provide little pieces of lore about the characters and setting of Watchmen that wouldn’t appear in the story itself and were only available through the Mayfair Games Watchmen supplements. The enthusiasm with which Moore collaborated on these supplements — especially considering he was still busy writing the comic it was based on — is entirely at odds with the public perception of Moore as a curmudgeonly misanthrope who wants nothing to do with adaptations of or sequels to his work.
Who Watches the Watchmen? and Taking Out The Trash were released in 1987 with the Watchmen Sourcebook following in 1990. Sadly, by that time Moore had officially severed all ties with DC making the three Mayfair supplements the last time the writer would visit the universe of complex superheroes he created.
By the late ’90s, Mayfair Games would no longer have the license to produce TTRPG products based on the DC Universe. Batman and Co. would first make the leap to West End Games with 1999’s DC Universe Role-Playing Game before settling down with Green Ronin Publishing for DC Adventures in 2010. In 2019, the three supplements would be collected together along with a few other rare Watchmen odds and ends in a hardcover volume titled the Watchmen Companion — though without a similar reprint of the Mayfair DC Heroes Role-Playing Game, the reprint is more of a fun curiosity than a functional role-playing system.
In the years since these supplements were released, DC has published several Watchmen sequels and prequels of varying quality. And while it’s hard to question the legitimacy of these sequels — DC does own Watchmen after all — one can’t help but wonder what kinds of official sequels we may have gotten had DC and Moore had a more amicable relationship.
We can only assume that somewhere in the multiverse is an alternate Earth where Who Watches the Watchmen?, Taking Out The Trash, and the Watchmen Sourcebook are not rare curiosities but rather the first of a long line of Watchmen projects that expand upon Alan Moore’s groundbreaking deconstruction of the superhero genre. It’s a shame we can’t visit.
In 1986 Alan Moore helped to work on three table-top role-playing game supplements based on his magnum opus Watchmen. Read More