When you get involved with specific games for any length of time and involve yourself with the world surrounding the creation of those games your bound to come across people in the industry at some point. Back in 1999 and 2000 I was quite involved with the WoD-L mailing list whilst at college. I’m not sure if I became that involved because I lived and breathed White Wolf at that point or because i wanted to waste time but either way quite a few of the authors involved with WW were active posters on the mailing list.

One in particular was Clayton Oliver who was just going through the final stages of the Revised Assamites Handbook. One day after Clayton posted one of his usual messages a few of use decided to start up an unofficial fan club. We loved his work that we had read on the Assamites to that point and as he seemed to be a fun guy, all be it a fun guy that had access to lots of guns, we decided to show our appreciation.

Over the course of the next few days we followed Clayton about the mailing list like a group of star struck teen pop fans following their idol about the shopping mall. We created a fake newsletter and came up with designs for a Claytonosaur plushie toy that would be available for members only. It was obviously all intended as a laugh and in good spirits but I get the impression that after a few days of this Clayton was getting a little annoyed with us. One person even created the fan site web page for us although I think that lasted half a day before we took it down.

Of course this is all coming from someone that used to sign off his posts to the mailing list as Ol’ Shuggie the ancient and decrepit keeper of Haqim’s half eaten ham sandwich. I was never someone that found humour easy at the best of times.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!