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| 2007-04-09 21:50 |
| The Monsters of Suck |
| Public |
| Ballard, USA |
| Tenacious D |
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Way back in 2000 or so I was just a snot-nosed kid hired fresh off the Internet and given one of the least internal-respect-garnering jobs at Wizards of the Coast: Editor of the RPGA's Polyhedron Newszine. At the same time we were launching the Living Greyhawk campaign, putting out a free member module, and converting the Living City campaign from second to a still-not-finished third edition. I knew _no one_ at WotC, had a pretty strong impression that I wasn't well liked by most of them anyway, and was completely obsessed with my job. Naturally, I ended up staying at work until the wee hours of the morning working on the million projects I had assigned myself in order to stay busy.
Happily, I was far from the only such workaholic, and I soon became friends with a handful of graphic designers--night owls all--who I'm still working with today. One of those was Sean Glenn, one of my best friends in the world and the current Senior Art Director of Paizo Publishing. But back then he was the flunkiest of the flunkies in the art department, an assistant marketing graphic designer with a similarly impossible pile of projects to my own. It didn't hurt that one of those responsibilities was art directing and designing the bi-monthly 32-page Polyhedron magazine.
Epic after hours struggles ensued, and much 80s butt-rock was played at extremely loud volumes. In the hours after midnight, things tend to get a little loopy.
On one such occasion, faced with some unanticipated space to fill, we hatched a now legendary (at least to us) plan. I'd already decided to theme the issue around monsters, since we'd just launched a member design contest (the RPGA used to do fun stuff like that all the time back in the day). I wrote an editorial about the loveable losers in the Fiend Folio. We had lots of neat articles, but we still had some annoying blank spots to fill.
So Sean and I flipped through the old Fiend Folio, picked a bunch of the worst offenders, and came up with derogatory slams against each of the pictures. The repulsively stupid gorbel, for example, was depicted grabbing feebly onto a villager's shirt. I think the guy is running away in terror but it's difficult to understand why given the sheer stupidity of the monster concept "menacing" him. The gorbel is truly pathetic. Anyway, under the image we wrote "Schhhhpare some change?" Under the picture of the much-too-puffy Ogremoch bursting through a cavern wall we wrote "Hey, Kool-Aid!" You get the picture.
We had a quarter-page space-filler with the retard-grin lava child and the saying "If you think I suck, check out the losers on page 18". We had a vote for which was the most pathetic Fiend Folio monster, with the finalists being the flumph, the achererai, the carbuncle, or the C.I.F.A.L. (Colonial Insect-Form Artificial Life). Not surprisingly, the C.I.F.A.L. (Colonial Insect-Form Artificial Life) won. That name is awful, and the picture surely was responsible for several votes.
We had a good laugh about it at 4:00 in the morning on a weekday, and the members seemed to get a kick out of it too. It was fun.
Years later, Wesley Schneider is editing "Dragon Presents: Monster Ecologies," and he decides to include an homage to the original "Monsters of Suck" experience.
You're all in for a treat. I hope (but somehow doubt) that you'll find it as amusing as I do.
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I am aquiver with anticipation. I suspect, though,it won't mock them any more than we did around the gaming table.
I just wish my favorite PC hadn't been killed by gorbels back in '82.
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) bbcaddict |
| 2007-04-10 06:30 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
| BBC animated! |
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good thing I find you attractive- otherwise I don't know....
*snicker*
*ducks flying book*
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| bhagwanx |
| 2007-04-10 08:16 (UTC) |
| To be fair |
| grrr |
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One of us night owls got out while the getting was good. But I very nearly came to be working with y'all anyway. go figure.
Sometimes I do miss those heady days of full on geek. I left work today at 5:30, and the office was a ghost town.
You'll note the time.
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I wish the RPGA still did fun stuff like the monster design contest...
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| jaegamer |
| 2007-04-10 12:38 (UTC) |
| Re: Looks good... |
| Clear Dice |
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I wish the RPGA still did stuff I thought was fun. *le sigh*
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You thought you weren't well liked? Wow.
Well... -I- liked you!
(Insert flumpf, shuffling off to Buffalo)
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Hey, thanks! The feeling is mutual, of course. I'm really talking about the year or so before you were hired. By then I'd sort of found my place in the company and wasn't so concerned about what other people thought of me in any event. The first year or so was pretty brutal, though. You wouldn't believe the egos on display (ok, maybe you would), and I got there within weeks of Planescape, Ravenloft, et al. being cancelled. It was clear to me that a lot of people had their sense of personal identity tied into those settings, and it was also clear to me that TSR must have been a horrible place to work in the closing years, because a lot of the Milwaukee folks were still kind of shell shocked. I was young and a bit brash and I wouldn't shut up about Greyhawk, and I think that rubbed some people the wrong way.
I'll never forget the night I had to stay late and was wandering the halls only to hear three "establishment" TSR people bitching and moaning about how Polyhedron was now in color which was a waste because it was such a worthless, crappy magazine (and one of these bozos was a former Poly editor). I've since become friends with at least one of those people, but I'll never forget that and I'll probably never forgive it, either.
Getting pulled into Ryan Dancey's office and being told that the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer "wasn't a gaming product, but literature," living under constant threat of that book being cancelled, being treated like an idiot by senior management, and Jonathan Tweet starting out one of my first days by saying in a loud voice over the cubicle wall "WHO THE HELL IS ERIK MONA?" were all things that made me feel like I wasn't really wanted there.
A lot of it was me being friendless and overly sensitive, but that's how I felt that first year, and to some extent those feelings still color my approach to my job and to Wizards of the Coast specifically.
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| osito71 |
| 2007-04-10 15:16 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
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My favorite monsters are among those most often ridiculed in these kinds of things. . :(
Ah well, I'll keep using them. I think most monsters are pretty ridiculous - it is all in how you use them.
Signed,
Lava Children Love-Child ;)
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You know, the amazing thing is that no matter how godawful some of those creatures are, you'll always be able to find a vocal group of fans who say, "But I love that monster!"
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{I knew _no one_ at WotC}
Oh, you fibber, you knew me and I knew you, predating your hire and predating the TSR move to WA! Granted, we had only met at cons and you were mostly "Erik the Greyhawk TSRO" but we knew each other. We shoulda bonded more ... you and I had very similar "fish out of water experiences" -- new state, new job, didn't know anyone, crappy work situation (you = RPGA, me = TSR internet guy), nothing to do but work long hours. Plus you had my utter sympathy because my friend Jeff did that job before you and I know how sucky, unnappreciated, and underpaid it was.
Wow, this post is like a total love-fest for younger-Erik, so I'll just say, "I love you, Erik Mona!!!!"
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Point taken. Sean was a friend that first year, and went out of his way to make me feel at home. Other folks like Stan!, Jeff Quick, and the RPGA staff were also very friendly, but they were all part of the "establishment" to one degree or another. It took me at least a year before I felt like something other than an outsider, but like I said, I did a lot of that to myself.
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Sean R. was also a friend to me rather quickly, as were Mark Painter, Rob Lazzaretti, Sam Wood, Jefferson Shelly, and a small handful of other folks.
However, I sincerely believe it was the many late nights putting Poly to bed (always on deadline, of course!) that cemented my friendship with Erik.
Oh, and a mutual distaste for the gorbel.
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| paka |
| 2007-04-10 19:56 (UTC) |
| (no subject) |
It's actually reassuring to hear anyone fess up to that "my god, nobody in this office likes me" feeling.
And... this post sent me diving for my recently-inherited copy of the 1e Fiend Folio. Some of the illustrations are neat, some ride the razor's edge between brilliant and pathetic, and some of them really sabotage the idea that this is a really nasty creature that could seriously mess up the PCs.
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