-
Archives
-
Categories
- Anime (72)
- D&D Campaign (84)
- DM of the Rings (156)
- Escapist (319)
- Game Design (69)
- Game Reviews (314)
- Lets Play (78)
- Links (210)
- Movies (208)
- Nerd Culture (135)
- Notices (82)
- Personal (114)
- Pictures (114)
- Programming (21)
- Projects (88)
- Random Thoughts (123)
- Rants (149)
- Tabletop Games (62)
- Video Games (135)
-
RSS Links
-
Links
DM of the Rings XCIX:
Alliterative Antagonists
Previous in DM of the Rings: DM of the Rings XCVIII: Ooooh! Shiny! | Next in DM of the Rings: DM of the Rings C: Railroad Goes Ever on and on |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Just to have a little fun with your players, try switching the names of two characters which start with the same letter and see if they notice.
And by “fun” I mean, “abruptly realize that all your hard work and etymology research is a comical waste of time”.
|
|
|
|
|
Previous in DM of the Rings: DM of the Rings XCVIII: Ooooh! Shiny! | Next in DM of the Rings: DM of the Rings C: Railroad Goes Ever on and on |
27 comments. Suck it, base ten!
1
2
3
Next »
1
2
3
Next »
127 comments:
One Trackback
-
[...] Mario reference. Related PostsConan spins his ringI really hope the writer’s strike ends soon. In the mean time, I must endure watching Conan spin …War of the RingThe War of the Ring is a fairly popular strategic board game set in the land of Middle Earth. Two pl…Third Party CandidateKeep your eyes peeled for the possibility of a new entrant into the presidential race. It is rumore…Solitaire necklaceFellowship of the Ring: Board Game Share This Popularity: 1% Posted by Admin / Filed under:Board Games and Books and Geekery and Movies and Obscurity and Randomness and Web [...]
Leave a Reply
My only question is why didn’t the DM see that coming? Every player character would appear to have three or more ranks in no attention span.
Steve.
They look so disappointed that it isn’t over:)
They must be using the Director’s cut rather than the Theatrical version :)
Good Mario reference. I like it.
first!
woo!
Another awesome one :D
I too always thought those two names were just too dang similar, what was Tolkien thinking?!?!
Keep up the good work!
Do I win the cookie?
FYI: I think Gimli swallowed his beard in frame three there Shamus.
Steve.
Yeah, this was totally what I was expecting for the next comic. I never realized how many sarcastic looks Gimli gives. Great job Shamus.
I have learned not to have liquids in my mouth when reading this comic. Another classic! “Sorry princess” indeed!
blast!
That’s what I get for not refreshing the page before posting!
LOL I wondered when you were going to have them screw up the names. Nice strip Shamus!
Would a simple “LOL” suffice for this one? ‘Cause I don’t have anything clever to say.
Loved this one, I was wondering what would happen after Saruman (or was it Sauron?) got erased.
So, they’ve had their monthly quota of fighting and xp from Helm’s Deep, now there’s a month of just wandering around the countryside and the GM coming up with ways to convince the players to actually try and recruit the ghoul army before the battle at Minas Tirith. I wonder how long it will take them to switch from complaining about not being able to go up more than one level per session to complaining about the lack of xp again?
Librain
“I’m not arrogant, I really am that good.”
“Not that I’m bitter or anything”
Wow, I can actually feel your idealistic pollyanna attitude leaving for good as a DM: the despair, the disappointment, the bitterness. All while gleeful, greedy, mountain dew guzzling players continue the descent into railroading hell. If you weren’t so powerful, I would feel sorry for you :)
HAHAHAHAHA!!!
Sorry Princess but the Wizard is in another castle. Great stuff, really.
That does remind me of one campaign where the DM had us kill a bugger of a orc wizard for the campaign story. We had been searching for a wizard, so naturally when we killed this one we thought that was it. Nope sorry, the wizard you have to kill is elite lvl and there’s no way you can fight him and win… That’s what rogues and explosive devices are for… No more evil wizard; how can anyone of any lvl survive that much rock falling on their heads after being hit by such a large explosion??
…
…
Take THAT DM!!!!!!
You know, this strip makes me glad Tolkien never finished the story he started about new Shadow threatening Gondor after Aragorn’s death. After all, he’s going to marry Arwen, a half-elf, so his son and heir will combine the qualities of Aragorn and elves… and just about the only exemplar of elves we have so far had is Leggy-Lass.
I feel sorry for the future Gondorians.
Fifteenth! It’s mine, all mine, deliciously mine!
watch carefully and you can actualy see the threads of this very hard working DM’s story unravel….mewhahahaha!!
personaly i have nothing against DM’s there are needed as much as a story need plot and a PC needs treasure.
but yea the old name cockup bit….argh
wonder what there reaction will be when theyrealise that the whole story relys on 2 ‘hobbits’ that are no longer in the game!!
One of the best compliments I ever got was the DM telling me I really could derail his game.
Possible typo. Should Gimli be saying “Well, I guess that’s it.” rathat than “Whelp, I guess that’s it,” in panel 3?
2.5 cats, try saying “well” and immediately snapping your mouth shut like you’re really annoyed. That curt word you just said is spelled “welp”, or “whelp” if you say it with an accent.
Hahahahah, I started reading the books when I was pretty young, and I had that exact problem. For a few years (I used to read them once a year, it was a thing) I didn’t get at all the difference between Sauron and Saruman.
Also, I love the punchline.
I was waiting for a long time to see this “similarity” used. I have my players confusing even worse things than that so I guess I’m a happy man :)
Not to be overly picky, but isn’t the scene in frame 5 from a COMPLETELY different part of the movie? I mean… where the hell did those helmeted guys come from?!?
Still, great strip. I’ve been reading this comic since before you started updating the older comics to the ‘new style.’ Hilarious stuff!
“Anti-climatic” means you’re against the weather.
Ditto on the ” I got those characters confused the first time through too!”
It has been 40 years since my first reading and I had forgotten about that, so you got a guffaw from me today:)
“Whelp” vs “well” – That was on purpose.
Zack: Yes. It’s from the trip to helm’s deep. This part of the movie is annoying. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas have almost no lines in this part of the movie, and when they do speak it’s usually with a grim expression and looking “up” at Saruman. Those shots don’t work as stills for them speaking to each other.
I gotta use what Pete Jackson gave me.
Heh, I think I learned a long time ago that the role of the DM is to provide the players an opportunity to advance their character’s up the level train and give them cool stuff to parade around with.
Everything else is just atmosphere.
So that’s pretty much how I run a campaign. Lots of encounters to get the XP up and keep the players in fear for their character’s lives, but fairly simple plot lines and an endless supply of NPCs for them to practice their swordplay on.
In one of our recent sessions, I had an opportunity for one of them to describe their recent activities to an agent of the king of the country they live in. It went exactly as Shamus describes:
“Well, we were looking to rescue whatsisname’s brother from something, was it goblins?”
“My name is Belvin, and yes, we were heading to rescue my brother. I think it was goblins.”
“That was in that other town, not the one we started in, hey Belvin, what town are you from?”
“Lemme check my notes…. hang on..”
“No matter, so we were on our way there when this guy here, this ranger dude comes out of nowhere after we were ambushed by kobolds.”
“No it was baboons that ambushed us.”
“No that was first, then it was kobolds.”
“Whatever, anyway this guy here, he asked us to help clear out some kobolds, so we did.”
“Yeah, we killed them all.”
“Oh, and some big nasty bugs too.”
“Right, we killed a bunch of kobolds and some nasty bugs.”
“OK, and did you discover any reason for the kobolds being here?”
“What? I mean they’re kobolds right? They just live here.”
And on and on. By the time I allowed the King’s agent to be satisfied with the explanation of the party’s activities, it was clear that not only did the players not remember a single name of a single NPC, they did not even remember the names of their own party members. In one case the player did not even remember his own character’s name. Forget about the reason for the kobold invasion, the secret letters they found explaining how the uprising was just a portion of a larger campaign against the humans and elves. All that background story was exactly that… background story.
What they wanted to do was kill a bunch of kobolds and get a lot of loot.
Which is what its all about in the long run right? I mean they aren’t going to be running for Mayor or anything. And this is a pretty good group of players we are talking about.
So my expectations are pretty low when it comes to their following of the plotline. I consider it my job to keep them prodded to go in the right directions to advance the plot, and if they decide not to, oh well, it’s a big world out there. I’ll find something for them to do.
But they are having fun, and that’s all that matters.
Yeah, I think we all saw this coming. But that didn’t make it any less funny.
I especially love when Gimli asks if Sauron is in this tower so they can wrap up the campaign tonight.
It confused hell out of me the first time I read the book as well.
About the same point as well.
I figured that “Whelp” was an amalgam of “Well” and “Yup.”
Damn funny one today… the Shadowrun line really got me.
Panel 7, isn’t the bad guy’s name “Sauron”, not “Saruon”? :-)
Hah! When I first read the Lord of the Ring series as a kid, I confused Saruman and Sauron as well.
And I still can’t remember which one is Merry and which one is Pippin.
Lol! Ironically in my games the players tend to remember the names better that I do!
“…countryside and the GM coming up with ways to convince the players to actually try and recruit the ghoul army before the battle at Minas Tirith.”
~Librain
I’m wondering how the DM is going to convince them not to kill the ghouls for extra XP!
Right now, I’m looking ahead to Monday and thinking, “What could he do at this point in the story with something shaped like a giant letter ‘C’?”
Either there are 2 people named Sarah or i managed to send a post telepathically from the bakery where i work…hmmm….nope, i was thinking about chicken at 12 o clock, couldn’t have been me, no. oh well.
Let’s see, Arwen is 3/4 elf, Aragorn is human so their son is …hmmm,carry the one….5/4 human , uh, , can’t be right…forgot to divide…
Don’t feel bad, Sarah. If we can have a Saruman AND a Sauron, we can certainly have more than one Sarah as well. The more S names, the merrier!
I’ve been following this series for a bit, and I just have to add my own good job here.
Of course, it may just be that is it game’s night and I’ve just heard that half my players can’t come and the other half want the game to go on and I needed to see someone elses game getting derailed in much the same way…
Luke:
Pippin is the blonde one.
John: It sucks when half the crew can’t come. When I had a regular game going I usually had my full compliment. It made my life soo much easier as a GM for various games.
Sarah: Have you been playing with the “Shiney Treasure” in the last strip? ;)
Yup… another episode shockingly familiar to a real campaign.
DM: “OK, you found the mystic armor.”
Us: “Good. We go home.”
DM: “Wh– why?”
Us: “We found the armor. Don’t we hand it over to the Emperor and get a reward or something?”
DM: “NO! You’ll need that to stop the Succubus!”
Us: “Succubus?”
DM: “Don’t you remember why you began your quest for that armor? It was only three sessions ago!”
Us: “Right. And we meet once a month, so that was three months ago. We’ve had finals since then!”
DM: “Mmmrph!”
Aragorns face is perfect in number 5.
Lol. i remember when i was young reading the books i was confused for the longest time that there was a difference beteween saruman and sauron
For the record, in tolkien’s universe when an elf and a human have children, the children themselves choose whether they will be elves or humans (not that that makes very much sense, genetically) Although even if they choose to be humans they live a lot longer than normal humans.
“I don’t suppose he’s in this tower?”
Brilliant.
That was pretty much my reaction to the books when I read them. I’m terrible with names.
Elrond is half-elven, but he obviously chose to be an elf when he married Celebrian and had cute little elf-babies with her. Arwen chose to be human when she married Aragorn, so even though she’s going to live longer than humans, she’s no longer immortal like an elf. Their kids should technically be able to choose to be elves, but I don’t know if it works that far down the line.
Also, the time of the elves is fading. I know ’cause my Minstrel’s fate is crap (LOTRO reference). Silly elves.
Been lurking here a while, my GURPS DM linked me, ’cause we play LOTRO together (we also play D&D and Shadowrun together, but that’s not really the point). And yeah, hilarious.. I show each new page to my boyfriend ’cause it makes him laugh :)
I’ve been watching the movies with my daughter, and I’ve pretty much had to explain the difference between Sauron and Saruman every twenty minutes or so while we’re watching them. Oy.
Well, I admit, I never had a problem keeping Saruman and Sauron straight. Then again, I didn’t read the books until my early 20′s. Love the bit about the is the wizard in the tower so we can rap this up?! You know, my players don’t even remember each other’s real names sometimes, nevermind the characters’. :/
“I don’t suppose he’s in this tower?”
Fantastic! I love how pragmatic Gimli is. XD
@Scarlet Knight-34: Arwen is, I believe, closer to 5/6ths elven (Elrond is not (as his title suggests) Half-Elven, but 3/4 (check the genealogies- the both his mother and paternal grandmother were elves, meaning that his father was truly half-elven, so he is 3/4 elven, Arwen 5/6 elven and any of her children would be what, 6/7ths? 7/8ths?)
Trivia I Learned Today:
When Ralph Bakshi was creating hi version of Lord of the Rings, the studio execs found Sauron and Saruman to be too confusing, so they made Bakshi change Saruman to Aruman.
This is my first post, so I’ll throw in the obligatory Love The Site comment. Good stuff.
Yay, Shadowrun reference! (Even if not even remotely vague.)
Next up: 6-Sided: GM of the Chrome.
…Nah.