The Clobberin' Times Zine

[AlHazred]

Despite being a long-term Hero turbonerd, I found out today about The Clobberin' Times, a Champions zine put out by a group of players from Sacramento, California from September, 1988, to January, 2000, finishing its run after 67 issues. There was a revival of sorts in the form of The Clobberin' Times Online, an online-only form of zine which lasted from April, 2005, to February, 2010, for a total of 30 "issues." The Online form can still be found (in a form) on the Wayback Machine here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150405000329/http://forteuniverse.com/cto/30main.htm

 

I'd never heard of any of it. And I'm a guy who religiously read every issue of EZ Hero and Digital Hero, and the old Adventurers Club (when it was around), and even has a copy or two of Haymaker around (I was never a prolific-enough writer to contribute before deadlines, so my participation in an APAzine is always intermittent). But I've at least heard of Haymaker -- until today I'd never even heard of The Clobberin' Times. Does anybody know a contact who sells copies of the old physical zine? As both a Hero fan, and a fan of the old zines, this ticks all of my boxes and I'd love to check it out!

[Christopher R Taylor]

This is new to me as well, never heard of it I used to surf Red October!

[AlHazred]

3 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

This is new to me as well, never heard of it I used to surf Red October!

I know, right? If I hadn't read the "About" page on the Wayback Machine, I'd have thought it was an incorrect listing on RPGGeek! These dudes were prolific!

[Sketchpad]

I remember hearing rumblings about it back in the day, but I honestly can't remember who used work on it. 

[AlHazred]

Apparently, @mattingly is the man to ask! I found this post, where he mentions it. There's a list of Hero APAzines in that thread: Haymaker!, Aaron Allston’s Rogue’s Gallery, HeroZine, The Clobberin' Times, Black Hats & White Capes, and Clockwork Hero. I'm sad I wasn't enough of a writer to at least contribute to one or two of these. I had no idea there were this many! This is relevant because I'm working up a list of articles. I can't include any APAzines beyond a few issues of Alarums & Excursions, because I don't have any! A&E you can at least buy direct from Lee Gold.

Edited February 4 by AlHazred

[mattingly]

Here are the old articles of mine I could find -- https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q-1oKphlwDWQe3LWZX2dt1DHB5S-iUq0?usp=sharing

I think the timeframe (for me, at least) was 95-ish to 2000-ish.

I'm pretty sure I lost my physical copies to some basement flooding many years ago.

 

The APA was part articles and part superhero fiction. The fiction eventually split off into a sister APA, The OmniVerse.

There were annual awards, called The Grimmies.

 

From memory, some of the contributors were: Ben Bellott, Will Geiger, Bill Jackson, Martin Maenza, John Moorman, Michael O'Connell (RIP), K.C. Ryan, Tim Watts

 

Edited February 4 by mattingly

[AlHazred]

3 hours ago, mattingly said:

Here are the old articles of mine I could find -- https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Q-1oKphlwDWQe3LWZX2dt1DHB5S-iUq0?usp=sharing

I love these things! I originally picked up a few A&Es a few years ago to see what they were like, and became enthused when I saw the same arguments played out in them that people still argue about on gaming forums today. I've since started picking up some, but it's admittedly hit or miss as the few indexes for APAzines you can find online are all incomplete.

 

3 hours ago, mattingly said:

I'm pretty sure I lost my physical copies to some basement flooding many years ago.

That's sad to hear!

[RavenX99]

OMG, someone remembers Clockwork Hero.  I'm actually looking at scanning the whole collection and making it available, but I'm working through the legal/ethical issues.  Scott Heine wrote stuff for it that he later reworked and sold to a publisher, so I'm talking to him about his contributions, and I probably need to see who I can find from the original authors.

 

The big problem is that technically, I don't have the right to copy anything but my own work... everyone participated with the understanding that the APA was distributed to a limited audience.  There's one author I've searched for off and on for _years_ and have never been able to find.

[AlHazred]

2 hours ago, RavenX99 said:

OMG, someone remembers Clockwork Hero.  I'm actually looking at scanning the whole collection and making it available, but I'm working through the legal/ethical issues.  Scott Heine wrote stuff for it that he later reworked and sold to a publisher, so I'm talking to him about his contributions, and I probably need to see who I can find from the original authors.

 

The big problem is that technically, I don't have the right to copy anything but my own work... everyone participated with the understanding that the APA was distributed to a limited audience.  There's one author I've searched for off and on for _years_ and have never been able to find.

That's the problem for a lot of old fanzines. The rights are the murkiest, and many of the contributors will be difficult if not impossible to reach. I have a feeling the old fanzines will slip into obscurity and inaccessibility far faster than other media. And another piece of the gaming history will be gone forever.

 

EDIT: And it should go without saying, I'd be interested in the progress of this and would like to subscribe to your newsletter!

Edited February 12 by AlHazred

[Duke Bushido]

Ditto, all the way around.

 

 

 

[RavenX99]

16 hours ago, AlHazred said:

That's the problem for a lot of old fanzines. The rights are the murkiest, and many of the contributors will be difficult if not impossible to reach. I have a feeling the old fanzines will slip into obscurity and inaccessibility far faster than other media. And another piece of the gaming history will be gone forever.

And this is my concern... relatively few knew about it, and the material is of varying quality, but it's this little piece of hidden Champions history that I feel would enrich the community to preserve it where everyone can have access.

 

One of the fun things about APAs is that writers often talk about what's going on in their lives, projects they're working on, etc, and I find reading through those in Haymaker! archives to be more compelling than the game material.

[AlHazred]

2 hours ago, RavenX99 said:

One of the fun things about APAs is that writers often talk about what's going on in their lives, projects they're working on, etc, and I find reading through those in Haymaker! archives to be more compelling than the game material.

Agreed. That's my takeaway from reading old Alarums & Excursions. You'll read about the same arguments you see on active gaming forums, along with personal snippets of campaigns, and so forth. One author gave a multi-page writeup of his starter adventure for Traveller. It read familiarly to me, and in checking the planet names I realized he'd later submitted it to Traveller JTAS periodical as a 2-page scenario; it was one of my favorites I'd remembered from reading it years ago. Reading his campaign writeup in A&E shed light on a whole different way it could play out and was pretty rewarding.