Clown
Superiors: Head of Personnel, The Honkmother
Difficulty: HONK (Easy-Hard)
Guides: Standard Operating Procedure
Access: Clown Office
Duties: Honk. Play pranks. Entertain the crew. Become the Security's exclusive punching bag. Pester the roboticist for a HONK mech.
Departmental Head
Head of Personnel
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The Clown is the funny person aboard the NSS Cyberiad! Their purpose is rather easy to understand but can be hard to achieve in practice. They usually try to tell funny jokes or unique puns to lowly assistants at the bar, or over the radio. Another classic Clown tradition is pranking crewmembers, especially security officers - though this is often paid in kind with repeated, non-consensual hits to the head with a stunbaton, which is funny to everybody but you.
As a Clown, your behavior revolves around the HONK, a philosophy of life that all clowns in the galaxy endeavor to spread. Try to make the Honk Mother proud of you by making the crew laugh until the end of the shift. Your job is easy - although it comes with risks, and you're expected to do at least a little bit of roleplaying in the form of joke-telling and pleading your case in the inevitability that you get arrested for taking it too far.
Your responsibility is to have fun with people and make them enjoy their shift. Sure, you can (and should) be serious during troubles, but keep in mind that you can also try to be funny while being a benefit to the station. Slipping nuclear agents during their assault can turn the tide of the battle by leaving them at the mercy of the crew for a few seconds. Even if you die in the process, your efforts will inspire future generations. Crewmembers will remember you and mourn the loss of a honking good clown.
License to HONK (Required Knowledge)
Being a Clown doesn't give you the right to be a dick when pranking other people. Ruining someone's day as a non-antag violates Rule # 7 OOCly, so there's a chance you might get jobbanned from being a Clown in future, or outright banned entirely.
When in doubt, ask yourself: "Are you irrevocably fucking with someone's round (killing, incapacitating, etc.)?"
If yes: don't do it. You'll probably get robusted, arrested and very likely banned.
If no: you're probably fine, but if you have an elaborate scheme in mind that might need additional approval - talk to the admins.
Pranking and Gear
Pranking others is where the bad clowns are separated from the real ones! Pranks can range from anything from harmless honks to the head to throwing random banana peels all over the hallways and being a general - but most importantly, harmless - nuisance.
If you are really out of ideas and on the verge of being so bored that you'll soon resort to just being a dick, here's a few things a good Clown can do to entertain the crew:
- Tell bad jokes and puns nonstop
- Dual-wield horns (or one horn, one duck) and rapidly switch hands while spamming the use key to dualhonk
- Ride wheelchairs with fire extinguishers - time it to slam into a closing door for additional crew amusement
- Wear cardboard suit and helmet and be a clownborg, beep boop honk
- Dress up in fun costumes! Who says you have to look like a creepy, overweight serial killer the entire shift?
- Order absurd or disturbing things for the crew under the guise of running an errand for them
- Build a Clown-Mart in the Vacant Office
- Create funky bases in the maintenance tunnels
- Insert donuts into people's pockets
- Attack Heads of Staff with the laser tag gun
- Create newsfeed channels and put out outrageous and slightly offensive accusations against people, along with photos
- Get/pretend to be a random new job, and be terrible/amazing at that job (so long as it doesn't get in the way of people actually working)
- Write obscenities right outside the Brig and watch the paperwork monkeys froth at the mouth
- Hide photocopies of your ass around the station
- Decorate the station!
Equipment
As a female clown, you join or start your shift wearing a sexy clown mask and a sexy clown suit.
As a male clown, you join or start your shift wearing the classic mask and suit.
Both genders join or start the shift wearing the clown shoes.
Regardless of gender and whether you start in your office or you hop onto the station as a late joiner, you spawn with your trusty Giggles Von Honkerton; a backpack horrifically designed to match your awful, awful wonderful fashion sense.
By default, Giggles contains:
- File:Box civ.png Your standard emergency supply box
- A banana. A good source of potassium, and weapon of mass destruction
- Your rubber stamp. Use it on paper or people to make your mark
- A box of colored crayons.
- Your jolly jug! Holds 100 units of banana juice
- A gilded bike horn. Works like any other instrument
- A water flower
- A rainbow crayon! Smells like candy!
Unlimited Power
If the stars align, someone may be demented fun-loving enough to build to you a H.O.N.K. Mech. This behemoth even makes squeaky sounds when it moves, in addition to the awful clomping noises of other mechs. Make sure to install the 'HoNkER BlAsT 5000' for EXTREME HONKING!
Just keep in mind that Security will very likely jump the gun and blast your fun to pieces with an ion rifle or EMP grenade if you abuse your gift too much.
Tips
- The clown mask can be used for internals.
- If your PDA cartridge (sends a virus that makes your target's PDA honk) has less than 5 charges left, make somebody slip on it to restore 1 charge per slip. Have fun with that.
- The rainbow crayon never ends. If you're a clown and starving you can just nibble on your crayon, infinitely.
- Required listening for any clown!
- Don't like the look of your clown shoes, or want to subtly mess with someone else? Put them in a washing machine with a crayon - they'll look like normal shoes, but act like yours.
- The clown's flower is basically a small spray bottle. It can be emptied and can carry 10 units of fluids and shoots exactly 1 unit at a time at a surprising range (3 tiles). Make of that what you will.
- If you want to slip people at terminal velocity, Space Lube is your best friend. You can nag a Chemist or Scientist for some, but don't be surprised if you get beaten to death by the entire crew for your actions.
Antagging
We all float down here, Georgie.
Given your status amongst the crew as a nuisance to be avoided or ignored entirely, you have one of the best covers for your nefarious deeds. Nobody will care where you are or what you're doing, so long as you keep out of reach of Security, meaning you can fulfill your objectives without needing to worry about responsibilities on the station.
With that in mind, you also have one very special tool in your arsenal: the Banana Grenade, a non-lethal but absolutely chaotic weapon of choice for any clown that wants to make a slick getaway.