The Fashan Phenomenon

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Nov 9, 1998 by Kirby Lee Davis

What should a small-time entrepreneur do when a product -- the laughing stock of its industry -- refuses to die?

My latest journey into The Twilight Zone started last January with a cold phone call, just as I was herding my kids out the door to visit their grandparents. I almost didn't answer the annoying ring, but something spurred me to act.

"Are you Kirby Davis?" the hesitant caller asked. "The Kirby Davis? The one who designed The Spawn of Fashan?" Dead and gone Marley didn't stagger Scrooge as much as that caller did me. Yes, I sluggishly admitted, I had concocted Spawn -- a game where players took on the persona of fantasy characters from the planet Fashan, using multisided dice and a series of tables to recreate and respond to the random events that make up life. Anyone who has played Dungeons & Dragons -- or any other from the sea of role-playing games D&D inspired -- basically understands what the game is like. As for Spawn, which was based on a series of novels I wrote in high school and college, a small menagerie of friends funded the printing of 50 copies of the game during my University of Oklahoma days -- of which we sold a scant 12 for $8.95 apiece at the 1981 world science fiction convention in Denver. But for a couple of copies submitted to magazines to review, that was it. The fat lady sang, or so I had thought. The whole experience I had filed away and forgotten. But others had not. The caller from Florida, for one, was overjoyed. Quickly he asked if I might be interested in reprinting and distributing the 96-page game at his expense. "Why on earth for?" I said (excuse the paraphrase), since that's how I felt. What was going on, that someone halfway across the U.S. would track down the author of a game last sold almost two decades ago to only a handful of people? And so I learned of the debate that has apparently raged ever since the 1982 April (Fools) edition of Dragon magazine unleashed upon the world one of history's most scathingly playful pannings -- with my Spawn its target. In a nutshell, Dragon -- the premier magazine of the D&D universe -- first dismissed Spawn as one of the worst games of all time, only to jokingly turn around and praise it as a role-playing parody. "The Spawn of Fashan is a gold mine of humor for the discerning gaming fan," it closed, "and should be required reading for all prospective roleplaying game designers." As God would have it (and the inner workings of this still remain a mystery to me), those who read with amused disbelief the Dragon's wracking accounting tried to find a copy of Spawn in their favorite game shop, just to see if it was really that bad (or good). That spurred store managers to try to order the game, without success -- since The Games of Fashan (as I had entitled our informal OU company) had long since shut down. When I explained it was indeed serious, this caller -- just like the guy from Florida -- seemed stunned. And that stunned me. Sure, the game had been written somewhat tongue-in-cheek, in a mad succession of lonely all-nighters with a primitive word processor (Spell checker? Are you kidding?) that allowed no time for editing or proofreading. As exhaustion set in, a midproject course change required a large section of the game be rewritten, and that naturally opened the door for my sometimes questionable sense of humor. Indeed, some elements of the package ended up being strictly for laughs. Being unplugged myself, the doubting Thomas in me had fellow Journal Record drone Travis Clark tap the Net to catch a glimpse of the debate. Within a minute he found more than 20 chat board discussions of something I had created and shelved -- and the game itself appeared again and again on the Web as the favorite choice of loonies. The whole thing had me chuckling for days. It was amazing. Ludicrous. Unbelieveable. Call it "The Fashan Phenomenon." As my aching ribs stilled my laughter, the reality of the situation set in. What should a small-time entrepreneur do when a product -- the laughing stock of its industry -- refuses to die? The answer instilled more laughter. Why, try to make a go of it again, of course! A month ago, Travis put a feeler out on the Net to see if anyone else might be interested in getting a $20 copy of The Spawn of Fashan. The responses now number more than 50, with inquiries from all corners of the United States, England, Germany, France and Australia. The actual orders are at nearly a fifth of that and growing. Truly, God works in mysterious ways.