First-Hand Witness To The Death of CLOWN
Jul. 26th, 2009 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theronThe title of this post is in my signature over on the Hero Games boards. Outside of that forum, it's probably a meaningless phrase. Even most of the posters over there assume it's some sort of in-game joke. But it isn't.
A while back, I mentioned that Hero Games was one of the first publishers to embrace electronic publishing in the late 90s with their Hero Plus line. It didn't work well because of the available technology of the time, but it was a bold notion and certainly ahead of the curve.
What I didn't mention was that Hero Plus saw my first and rather disastrous foray into the RPG industry.
In 1997, I was a pretty regular contributor in online discussions of Champions and the Hero System. I was a known quantity to most of the regular Hero writers and editors. I'd also accumulated a copy of PageMaker and, in my opinion, enough skills to turn out the sort of low-intensity PDFs that Hero wanted for the Hero Plus line. I sent some samples off to Bruce Harlick, and a few days later, got a call back from him offering me a gig.
There were a couple of caveats, however. First, I wouldn't just be doing the layout and production work, I'd also be editing the book and developing it (in other words, working with the author to get it into publishable shape). The most significant issue however, was the subject matter: CLOWN.
Unless you're an old-school Champions player, a word or two about CLOWN is probably in order. CLOWN (the Criminal Legion Of Wacky Non-Conformists) was a supervillain team dating back to third edition Champions rules. They were a villain group intended for comedy relief. Or, at least to be the sort of pains in the ass that were best combated by means other than fisticuffs.
You know the old actor's maxim that says, "Dying is easy, comedy is hard"? That's CLOWN in a nutshell. The basic notion, a group of zany anarchists who wreak havoc but don't hurt people has plenty of potential. Unfortunately, the execution never really worked. A lot of it was doubtlessly subjective: what I find funny isn't necessarily what you find funny, and what I want in my superhero game is likely going to be quite different from what you want in yours. But even given differences in taste, there was just much about CLOWN that failed to work for me. Most of the characters, for instance. The leader, a guy called Merryandrew, sort of a non-homicidal version of the Joker was actually pretty cool. But so many of the others just smacked of the sort of loser you find filling out the page count of a villains book: Skate Kate, a runaway teenager who rollerskates. Marbles, a character who's really good at shooting marbles (because we all remember the great marble-shooting craze of the 80s right?). Beuford the Bard, whose entire schtick seemed to be looking like Henry VIII. And it went on and on and on.
(In their 4th edition version, it got even worse, when they were joined by Coyote, a (literally) god-like spirit of mischief. Because the one thing a lame one-note joke needs is the power of a god.)
In retrospect, I should have told Bruce, "Thanks but no thanks." But, I was younger then, and convinced this would be my big chance. So, I decided to hold my nose and take the gig. That was my first mistake.
Once I agreed to the gig, I then needed to wait on my contract. I was told I'd have it in a week to ten days. In fact, it took over a month. At the time, the only person who could sign the contract on Hero's end was up in Seattle helping Wizards of the Coast buy TSR. By the time I actually received and signed the contract, I had about a two week deadline to finish a project I had yet to begin. "No worries," Bruce told me. It was just boiler-plate and not set in stone. Just get it whipped into shape and out the door.
First up, I had to take a look at the document. Or documents. A whole lot of documents. On about a dozen floppy disks. For a product I'd been told we needed to sell on a single floppy. It seemed in the intervening years, CLOWN had seen a lot of bloat. Being in possession of the author's contact info, I decided to give him a ring. He was rather surprised to hear from me. In fact, he was rather surprised to be hearing from anyone, as he'd sent this particular manuscript to Hero two years previous. This probably should have told me something. But Stan (the author) and I got on fairly well, so I told him I'd do my best with it and see what we can do to get it into shape.
Over the next six months, I tried. I honestly tried. Stan had added TONS of new material to his original concept. Not only was there a "B Team" (The Sideshow) but a "C-Team" (The CLOWN College). Plus, a fleet of AI vehicles. And new, expanded versions of the original crew. And three detailed scenarios, and a half dozen plot seeds. It was too much, and so overwhelming, I couldn't figure out what to cut. Because, I honestly would have cut virtually all of it, then recast the characters as being a bit more larcenous and mean-spirited (if not actually homicidal). But that was beyond the scope of the work. As it was, I managed to cut down the number of characters a bit, and talk him out of the third group entirely, so I considered that a victory.
Finally, we got to the point where I needed to commission art for the project. Bruce put me in touch with one of their regular artists who was willing to work on the project. We talked a few times and, based on those conversations, I sent him off a list of what we needed, with descriptions etc. After a week or so, I hadn't heard from him, so I called him up again. As it turned out, the descriptions weren't sufficient. As they were the character descriptions from Stan's write-ups and they seemed sufficient to me, I was a bit surprised, but I was game and sent a new list, with about three paragraphs of description for each character, many based on my own notions. Again, this list was met with silence. I called him again, and this time was told he was waiting for his contract and until he received one, he wouldn't be doing anything with the project. This seemed perfectly reasonable. I dropped Bruce at Hero a line and he said he was working on it.
A few weeks passed with no movement. Stan would call me up once in a while and we'd talk about things, but largely we were talking about things other than the project. After a month or so, I called up my artist again and obtained the following information:
1. He still had no contract.
2. His wife was pregnant and expecting any day now.
3. He was already working a full-time job outside of his art and going to school at night, so he didn't have a lot of time to work on art projects at the time.
I'm fairly sure that the last two items were things he could have told me when we'd first approached him about the project.
At that point, I realized I had to give up. The project was doing my happiness no good. I'd gone from guarded optimism for the project to utter contempt for it. I emailed Bruce and told him I'd done all I could, but I wasn't willing to start over with a new artist and I had no faith in the project. I called up Stan and told him where things stood, then packed up all my files and mailed them back to Hero, unfinished.
The next day, Stan left me a message saying he'd called up Hero and asked them to kill the project.
A few years later, Hero got purchased by DOJ, and Steve Long swore that CLOWN would not be part of the new Hero Universe, a promise he's made good on.
So, while I didn't kill CLOWN myself, I was there at the end, when they got taken off life support. In an odd way, I'm kind of pleased about it.
A while back, I mentioned that Hero Games was one of the first publishers to embrace electronic publishing in the late 90s with their Hero Plus line. It didn't work well because of the available technology of the time, but it was a bold notion and certainly ahead of the curve.
What I didn't mention was that Hero Plus saw my first and rather disastrous foray into the RPG industry.
In 1997, I was a pretty regular contributor in online discussions of Champions and the Hero System. I was a known quantity to most of the regular Hero writers and editors. I'd also accumulated a copy of PageMaker and, in my opinion, enough skills to turn out the sort of low-intensity PDFs that Hero wanted for the Hero Plus line. I sent some samples off to Bruce Harlick, and a few days later, got a call back from him offering me a gig.
There were a couple of caveats, however. First, I wouldn't just be doing the layout and production work, I'd also be editing the book and developing it (in other words, working with the author to get it into publishable shape). The most significant issue however, was the subject matter: CLOWN.
Unless you're an old-school Champions player, a word or two about CLOWN is probably in order. CLOWN (the Criminal Legion Of Wacky Non-Conformists) was a supervillain team dating back to third edition Champions rules. They were a villain group intended for comedy relief. Or, at least to be the sort of pains in the ass that were best combated by means other than fisticuffs.
You know the old actor's maxim that says, "Dying is easy, comedy is hard"? That's CLOWN in a nutshell. The basic notion, a group of zany anarchists who wreak havoc but don't hurt people has plenty of potential. Unfortunately, the execution never really worked. A lot of it was doubtlessly subjective: what I find funny isn't necessarily what you find funny, and what I want in my superhero game is likely going to be quite different from what you want in yours. But even given differences in taste, there was just much about CLOWN that failed to work for me. Most of the characters, for instance. The leader, a guy called Merryandrew, sort of a non-homicidal version of the Joker was actually pretty cool. But so many of the others just smacked of the sort of loser you find filling out the page count of a villains book: Skate Kate, a runaway teenager who rollerskates. Marbles, a character who's really good at shooting marbles (because we all remember the great marble-shooting craze of the 80s right?). Beuford the Bard, whose entire schtick seemed to be looking like Henry VIII. And it went on and on and on.
(In their 4th edition version, it got even worse, when they were joined by Coyote, a (literally) god-like spirit of mischief. Because the one thing a lame one-note joke needs is the power of a god.)
In retrospect, I should have told Bruce, "Thanks but no thanks." But, I was younger then, and convinced this would be my big chance. So, I decided to hold my nose and take the gig. That was my first mistake.
Once I agreed to the gig, I then needed to wait on my contract. I was told I'd have it in a week to ten days. In fact, it took over a month. At the time, the only person who could sign the contract on Hero's end was up in Seattle helping Wizards of the Coast buy TSR. By the time I actually received and signed the contract, I had about a two week deadline to finish a project I had yet to begin. "No worries," Bruce told me. It was just boiler-plate and not set in stone. Just get it whipped into shape and out the door.
First up, I had to take a look at the document. Or documents. A whole lot of documents. On about a dozen floppy disks. For a product I'd been told we needed to sell on a single floppy. It seemed in the intervening years, CLOWN had seen a lot of bloat. Being in possession of the author's contact info, I decided to give him a ring. He was rather surprised to hear from me. In fact, he was rather surprised to be hearing from anyone, as he'd sent this particular manuscript to Hero two years previous. This probably should have told me something. But Stan (the author) and I got on fairly well, so I told him I'd do my best with it and see what we can do to get it into shape.
Over the next six months, I tried. I honestly tried. Stan had added TONS of new material to his original concept. Not only was there a "B Team" (The Sideshow) but a "C-Team" (The CLOWN College). Plus, a fleet of AI vehicles. And new, expanded versions of the original crew. And three detailed scenarios, and a half dozen plot seeds. It was too much, and so overwhelming, I couldn't figure out what to cut. Because, I honestly would have cut virtually all of it, then recast the characters as being a bit more larcenous and mean-spirited (if not actually homicidal). But that was beyond the scope of the work. As it was, I managed to cut down the number of characters a bit, and talk him out of the third group entirely, so I considered that a victory.
Finally, we got to the point where I needed to commission art for the project. Bruce put me in touch with one of their regular artists who was willing to work on the project. We talked a few times and, based on those conversations, I sent him off a list of what we needed, with descriptions etc. After a week or so, I hadn't heard from him, so I called him up again. As it turned out, the descriptions weren't sufficient. As they were the character descriptions from Stan's write-ups and they seemed sufficient to me, I was a bit surprised, but I was game and sent a new list, with about three paragraphs of description for each character, many based on my own notions. Again, this list was met with silence. I called him again, and this time was told he was waiting for his contract and until he received one, he wouldn't be doing anything with the project. This seemed perfectly reasonable. I dropped Bruce at Hero a line and he said he was working on it.
A few weeks passed with no movement. Stan would call me up once in a while and we'd talk about things, but largely we were talking about things other than the project. After a month or so, I called up my artist again and obtained the following information:
1. He still had no contract.
2. His wife was pregnant and expecting any day now.
3. He was already working a full-time job outside of his art and going to school at night, so he didn't have a lot of time to work on art projects at the time.
I'm fairly sure that the last two items were things he could have told me when we'd first approached him about the project.
At that point, I realized I had to give up. The project was doing my happiness no good. I'd gone from guarded optimism for the project to utter contempt for it. I emailed Bruce and told him I'd done all I could, but I wasn't willing to start over with a new artist and I had no faith in the project. I called up Stan and told him where things stood, then packed up all my files and mailed them back to Hero, unfinished.
The next day, Stan left me a message saying he'd called up Hero and asked them to kill the project.
A few years later, Hero got purchased by DOJ, and Steve Long swore that CLOWN would not be part of the new Hero Universe, a promise he's made good on.
So, while I didn't kill CLOWN myself, I was there at the end, when they got taken off life support. In an odd way, I'm kind of pleased about it.