 An important element in the creation of the multiple author series was a campaign of Chaosium's role-playing game "Superworld" (1983) that Martin ran in Albuquerque.Admitting he became completely obsessed with the game, he stopped writing literature for most of 1983, which he refers to as his "lost year", but his shrinking bank accounts made him realize he had to come up with something, and got the idea that perhaps the stories and characters created in "Superworld" could somehow become profitable.Martin's own contributions to "Wild Cards" have included Thomas Tudbury, "The Great and Powerful Turtle", a powerful psychokinetic whose flying "shell" consisted of an armored VW Beetle.