History

Morton's List started as a plain notebook full of ideas of things to do. When Jumpsteady, Violent J, Shaggy, Alex, and other various members of Psychopathic Records would get bored they would pull out this notebook some dice and roll. This kept finding shit to do fun and exciting. Over the years the List started evolving into tables and categories. With the help of Twilight Lords Nathaninja and Tall Jess Morton's List has expanded outside the Juggalo world and is a cult phenomena.
On Friday the 13th in July 2001 at the second Gathering of the Juggalos in Toledo, OH Morton's List was dropped on the Juggalo world like and atom bomb.

Plans already in place to debut Morton's List to the gaming market at GenCon, the country's largest annual gaming convention (then in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) that August were disrupted. Ads and booth space had already been purchased when Wizards of the Coast (then owners of the convention) told Dark Carnival Games it could not demo or sell Morton's List at GenCon. The reason given was that Morton's List contains real life magic spells in violation of an obscure Wizards guideline meant to cater to the religious right.

They also sited concern about an interview earlier that year where the authors discussed possible ways an Inner Circle could interpret a Quest called Neighborhood Patrol. In the interview the authors stated that some players might decide to call the police if they discovered suspicious activity, while others may decide to emulate the vigilante tactics of the Guardian Angels, making citizens arrests.

Wizards refunded the money for booth space, but the ads had already gone to print and were not refunded. With thousands of dollars tied up in GenCon, but no official Morton's List presence, fans of Morton's List decided on the controversial tactic of playing up the situation by creating and disseminating tens of thousands of colorful fliers, blanketing the convention center and all parking facilities within a two block radius. The flyer front sparked interest with a graphic of GenCon with a circle and line through it and the word "BANNED!" The back explained the situation as it happened, and railed against Wizards of the Coast for unnecessarily dealing such a huge blow to an upstart gaming company for no good reason. By the end of the four-day event most GenCon attendees had seen the flyer and staff members were tasked to remove them.

This publicity stunt catapulted Morton's List into infamy, causing it to appear on the national black list of companies banned from conventions. Struggling to find distributors who would touch such a "controversial" game, Dark Carnival Games was facing a crisis.

A new hope appeared in Hot Topic, a national chain of mall stores catering to the perfect target market, and already actively carrying Insane Clown Posse and other Psychopathic Records artists' merchandise. Morton's List was accepted and distributed to Hot Topic nationwide after a highly successful trial period in select stores. In its first two weeks the game flew off the shelves, causing a senior west coast VP to contact Dark Carnival Games and state that he had rarely before seen such sales and never from an unheard of company.

Disaster struck again in early 2002, shortly after 9/11/2001, when a concerned parent complained about the game's content to the store her son purchased the it from. The complaint quickly led Hot Topic to remove Morton's List from sale, listing bomb making and illegal firearm procurement as the two activities in the game making it too controversial to sell. It should be noted that illegal firearm procurement is in no way mentioned or suggested in Morton's List, and although bomb making is covered, the "bombs" are on the magnitude of children's fireworks.

In response to this financial blow, the loan taken out to finance Morton's List was bought off by Psychopathic Records. The following three years were spent growing the fan base. The advanced rules supplement, 360 Degrees of the Inner Circle, was released in 2002. Fan web sites began to appear and a true community of Inner Circles developed. Dark Carnival Games made official appearances at each Gathering of the Juggalos, encouraging, then hosting games, and began appearing at gaming conventions around the Midwest.

The Morton's List renaissance began in 2006 with the anticipated fall 2006 release of the joint Psychopathic Records/Dark Carnival Games board game: The Quest for Shangri-La. Energized by this project, Morton's List authors Jesse Deneaux and Nathan Andren aggressively pursued a campaign to spread word about the game. They returned to Origins, one of the largest and most industry-affiliated gaming conventions, for the first time since 2002, and met with an overwhelming response.

During 2006 all Dark Carnival Games operations were taken over by the SuperiCore Group, LLC, a conglomerate that bought all Morton's List intellectual property and assets. This reorganization was agreed upon by all managing members of Dark Carnival Games and set the stage for further growth.

Morton's List was removed from the convention black list and the first Karmic Gathering all-Morton's List event was held in October 2006, drawing players from as far as Alaska and Florida. In 2007 Morton's List returned to GenCon and has been maintaining a presence there, while expanding into other gaming and anime conventions across the Midwest.

Withdrawal

Physical copies of the book were withdrawn from sale and were only available to purchase at Mortonslist.com until december 17, 2012. The official website now features a freely downloadable version of the game named Morton's Lite: Thirteen Percent.

Influences

The roots of Morton's List, with its Tables and random rolling come from role-playing games, most notably Dungeons and Dragons. The structure of Morton's List also follow the Dungeons and Dragons alignment system:

Another role-playing influence is Marvel Superheroes RPG, contributing the Morton's List term, Karma. In Marvel Superheroes, characters keep track of a pool of Karma points, spending them to succeed in situations where they would normally fail. Thus a character with many Karma points was said to be have "high Karma" or be "high on Karma," while one low or out of Karma points had "low Karma" or was "low on Karma." In Morton's List, the term Karma translates best as "energy," "motivation," "drive" or "excitement," being the opposite of boredom. It is also used to mean synchronicity, being half way between luck and fate, and thus the experience of realizing synchronicities and living on the edge between luck and fate.

Morton's List was in no way inspired by the excellent series of books by Luke Rhinehart (George Cockcroft), the most notable of which is The Dice Man, published in 1969. The authors of Morton's List discovered and read The Dice Man in 2005 and were amazed and shocked to discover such a clear example of convergent evolution and/or the universal unconscious. To date these books are the closest known works to Morton's List.

Morton's List is influenced by countless other people and works, drawing inspiration from hundreds of interviewees, play-testers, books, films, albums, etc.