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DM of the Rings XLVIII:
Dwarven Diplomacy
Previous in DM of the Rings: DM of the Rings XLVII: -2 to Maturity, +2 to Funny | Next in DM of the Rings: DM of the Rings XLIX: The Name Game |
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I see a lot of kids with those “I Roll Twenties” t-shirts. I don’t know what game they are playing, or where they get their dice. I need one that says, “Help. The dice are trying to kill me.”
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Previous in DM of the Rings: DM of the Rings XLVII: -2 to Maturity, +2 to Funny | Next in DM of the Rings: DM of the Rings XLIX: The Name Game |
There are more than 137 comments. But less than 139
*I need a shirt that says, “Help! The dice are trying to kill me!”*
I know *I’d* buy one or two! I have a number of fried who do not have cordial relationships with dice…
Hehehe. InCREDible.
Or one that says “My dice think my character is a dimwitted, ignorant, blind person that wants to swim in lava.”
I remember one time in the underdark, I was playing a rogue that got pulled into a river by some creature or other, and then succeeded to stab it’s tentacle off, thereby plunging himself helplessly down the river.
The DM was really trying to help me out, giving me swim checks every few feet, but I still failed every one. (At least ten in a row.)
I finally succeeded a reflex save as I was getting sucked into an underground tunnel by the river by taking my dagger and jamming it into the rocks above the tunnel and using it to hold myself against the flow of water. I then failed my next save (With a generous +5 for the dagger, DC 10) to hold on to the damn thing.
That was by far the unluckiest character I ever played. His corpse is probably still rotting in the underdark as the rest of the party decided he wasn’t worth trying to save.
Awesome!
“Jesus saves!!! The rest of you take full damage.”
I once found a list of things to do to dice to “make them cooperate.” On it were things like:
-Exiling the dice to a clear plastic container, so they can see all teh other dice all snug in the dicebag, but cannot be a part of it.
-Placing on in the freezer and then showing it’s frozenness to all the other dice, making them watch as you shatter it with a hammer.
-Lining up all your dice on a counter and slwly melting one d20 into a pile of goo as an abject lesson to the others.
The list was long and unproductive. The dice just don’t listen to reason.
This one had me in tears!! It’s the unexpected surprises that make this such a great comic. “Let’s see what these losers want.” Hah! been there done that…
The only dice shirt I have is alluding to the contents of the shirt, not dice, just making a joke that gamers would get but non-gamers probably wouldn’t.
I love how you managed to make the movie dialogue make fun of itself. there is no higher form of low humor! The title of the script says it all, but I had no idea you would manage to stick so close to the actual movie dialogue.
We have a baby around, so we keep our dice in clear plastic containers anyway. It’s sort of an updated geek version of Pop-a-Matic, from the old Trouble game. And he’s already figured out what you do with them. If you leave a dice container lying around, he’ll pick it up, give it a good shake, look inside and say “Oh SH!T!”
If you do run across that shirt, let me know and I’ll get one or two as well. I was on roll #8 only 10′down a knotted rop on a 40′ wall with my 4th level Drow rogue. Finally, the guys at the top just cut the rope and had the cleric heal me at the bottom. Then somebody mentions the take 10 rule. Bastards.
[Killer Dice]
Went to a convention once, with a nice, shiny army of lead figures each painstakingly modified and painted to a reasonably high standard. Had one heavy weapon in the mix. Fired it (i.e. rolled dice for it) 37 times over the course of the long weekend*. Missed every time. Not bad odds considering a 5 or 6 would have got the shot in. One opponent on the Sunday got so embarrased on my behalf he began begging me to re-roll. I refused, of course. When the dice are killing you, the only thing to do is go with it. It builds character.
I also fielded a bod in heavy armour that was virtually indesructable on paper. It got shot to pieces in one volley with the equivalent of three cheap flashlights in that same Sunday battle with the begger. He took it worse than I did.
As far as D&Ding with these die-rolling abilities, it fair does for the old reputation as a fearless Dwarf fighting machine if you can only roll better than a 10 once every 8 combat rounds, I can tell you. My D&D pals don’t take kindly to the fact that my principal role playing skills are screams of pain either.
And no-one, repeat, no-one ever asks me to move silently.
Dice. You have to love ‘em.
Steve.
* It got longer as the carnage wore on.
I had a low level thief who was extraordinarily good at picking locks. He only had a 15% chance, which we tested by rolling a d20 and hoping for a 1, 2 or 3. What the DM didn’t realize, and I’m about to ruin this for anyone else who cheats like I did, is that each vertex connects five different numbers, and if you spin the die, rather then roll it, it will land on one of the five numbers revolving around the vertex you’ve put at the North Pole. As it happens, the first three numbers have a common vertex. :) In essence, my thief had a 60% chance of picking a lock. Not bad for a first level thief.
On another topic, I have to register my disappointment in the language of this episode.
Tsk, Mr. Bold. Where, exactly, is your moral highground that compelled you to register your disappointment? You’ll confess to cheating at an imaginary game, but you’ll complain about honest language in the funniest webcomic on the Internet right now? *sigh*
Keep on rolling, Shamus — somehow you just keep hitting ‘em out of the park, and I, for one, am very grateful for the laugh three times a week, salty language or no.
Beatiful. Just beautiful.
I saw something like this happen once and the memory still brings a tear to my eye. Dwarves are a blessing and a curse. Well, okay, maybe an occational benefit… or at least not *always* a disaster? But either way, so much fun!
Carl: Thanks for your toughts. I knew this one crossed a line I haven’t crossed before. I’m not bothered if other people register their disappointment as well. That’s what the comments are for.
I don’t use that sort of language anywhere else on the site, and I messed around with different ways of trying to convey this joke without breaking my own rules about the content of the site. I moved that little “Gimli!” bubble around a LOT. I wasn’t trying to push any envelope or anything, this was just how the joke came out. I had to either make it work, compromise my own rules, or throw the joke away. What we have is the best compromise I could devise.
–> “I need a shirt that says, “Help! The dice are trying to kill me!””
Oh God, me too. In fact, I suggest you submit this to Jinx Hackwear as a shirt idea. Or just Zazzle it yourself.
Huh, Shamus – you coulda just said “Frackers” like they do in BSG. *rolls eyes* You can even use that word when girls are around!
This seems a good place to ask…
Does anyone have any memory of a t-shirt from about 15 years ago; it had a large d20 on the front, showing a ’1′, with just the word ‘shit.’ in a jagged typewriter font in lowercase below it.
Either it’s vanished from the face of the Earth, or I’m going nuts.
Or both, I guess.
Oh Shamus, Gold absolute gold my brother. I was literally rolling on the floor laughing. I noticed mom didn’t comment on this one :)
But you raise a question I have always had, what are some good D&D curse words. I mean if you are to truly stay in character you shouldn’t say those kinda words. hmmmmm.. maybe next time things don’t go the way I planned I’ll just yell “soiled dwarven panties”
Ok, my horror story. Well, not mine, because *my* character got through it fine. In Champions, almost all skill/attack/etc. rolls are based on rolling 3d6, the lower the better. Our house rule was that if you rolled a “3″ when attacking you inflicted maximum damage.
As our brave heroes battled the evil supervillain in his lair, my super-strong, super-fast character decided he’d had enough of getting pounded and decided to crash right into the ultra-bad-guy at top speed, hopefully doing some decent damage.
I rolled a “3″ to hit.
Maximum damage. On 24d6. Took the villain out instantly. Knocked myself out. And, unfortunately, sent the bad guy flying across his lair directly into one of my fellow superheroes.
The GM was feeling generous, happy to see a dramatic and appropriately comic-bookish end to the battle, so he told the other player to roll a simple DEX roll of 14 or less on 3d6 to dodge the bad guy.
17.
Then the GM asked the player to see if his character’s armor took the hit, another 14- roll.
18.
The damage resulting from the villain crashing into the hero was instantly fatal, but the GM even allowed a bit of a cheat and let the player roll a Constitution check at 14- to see if the character would merely be bleeding to death rather than instantly killed.
17.
And the brave superhero was turned into strawberry jelly. By an unconscious supervillain. I apologized, but I don’t think my friend thought I was serious since I couldn’t stop laughing.
Dude, I totally need that shirt, too. I can use anyone’s dice but my own!
And then there is the “Night of the Twos”. My current group ran a “hardcore” game (we rolled 3d6 keep ‘em where they lay for character generation as a one-time house rule). It was fun, but our group went out into the woods and got destroyed by an ogre after all of the PC twenty-siders came up nothing but 2 for something like 6 straight rolls. This happened right after the ogre broke out of the Wizard’s web spell. It ducked around the tree where the rogue and I promptly attacked it and missed badly (three of the twos). It then mauled us, and proceeded to clean house with the rest of the party. The Wizard was the only one to escape the combat alive with the use of Expeditious Retreat (never so aptly named). After a few bad rolls and getting lost in the woods, the ogre found her and finished her off, too.
I definitely need one of the “My dice think my character is a dimwitted, ignorant, blind person that wants to swim in lava” shirts.
If 25 years of playing D&D has taught me one thing it’s this. Players get more attached to dice than any other tool in the game. A player can spend $60 on a D&D book and $2 on d20. If he loses the book he’d be annoyed. But if he decides that the d20 is his ‘lucky dice’ and it goes missing………
Oh, and in a past group, one night, one of the players ran a game. He spent the entire evening rolling his 12 sider for his attack rolls. Nobody said anything. To this day, I don’t think he ever figured out why he couldn’t roll a decent init or attack. (Alas, I was not present for this, but there were multiple trustworthy witnesses, and I’d believe it of the gent in question.)
Dice are Good, lovely little creatures… Honest
I’ve never had a problem with them
I’ve Never Failed a Roll
and I Never Lie…… :P
Oh my…
this one was the best so far, I laughed so hard at the dialogue… mounted combat rules…. ahahahahahhahahahahaha! Awesome!
There was some unhappiness at Kublacon a few years back when it turned out that someone in a D20 tournament had been rolling damage with Formula De dice.
-j
Man, this is friggin hilarious. “Tell me your name, horse-fu**er” made me laugh out loud. There was a barbarian character playing in one of my campaigns who was pretty much just like that, but his outbursts usually involved goats, not horses. Thanks for that laugh Shamus, I needed it today.
I’d be in for one of those shirts too. Doesn’t matter how high my ranger’s saves get, I’ll be sure to roll a one every bloody time!
2bithacker: your ranger, my sorcerer, Gorm the Dwarf (who’s managed to chop off his own foot three times now… but who’s counting?), and any character Larry plays. How many times have Evanar and Vilius died? We could construct a whole new party out of the lost levels. And remind me to tell you the story about the time I gave Larry an exact duplicate of his character, so that he had two of her, and then wiped them both out with the same Power Word: Kill spell.
In my little brother’s very first campaign, he was playing a halfling thief (2nd Ed. D&D). The rogue sneaked up to the edge of a swamp… or *tried* to sneak up (rolled a 00 on his Move Silent). The orc came around the high grass on the raft with his rotary repeating crossbow (picture a crank-firing Gatling gun). My bro rolls a 99 for his hide in shadows, gets spotted, and the orc fires. And rolls 4 nat’ 20′s in a row. Somehow, he rolls min damage, but it’s still enough to render my bro to a near-death state. Bro collapses… DM has him roll to avoid landing in the water (rolls a 1). DM has him roll to avoid landing *face-down* in the water (rolls a 1). DM has him roll to avoid inhaling water (yup, you guessed it… 1). DM has him roll a save vs. death… 2. (“Well, at least it’s not a 1,” says bro. He then tossed the die into a trash can. No one blamed him.) To top it off, at the very end of the fight, the DM mentions that there’ve been clouds of mosquitoes everywhere, and has everyone roll a save vs. disease. On a lark, my bro rolls a save for his drowned and bled-out halfling. Guess who’s the only character to get malaria on a roll of 1?
On the other hand… whatever gods control the rolling of dice automatically favor anyone playing a kender. Seriously. Just try to get a kender killed. I dare you.
Oh god… I laughed too loudly in the office and some people even bothered to check up on me.
These moments are all too true, I’ll send my players to read this ASAP.
Excellent, recognisable, highly game-relevant reworking of the characters’ lines. :-)
My dice think my characters are unremarkable party plodders who never get to do anything cool — except they never let them die either. As circumstances get wilder, my characters’ not-dying can eventually get remarkable. But this is not a charm I want to destruction-test, if you take my meaning…
Dice, very unpredictiable. Back in the day of 2nd ed. I was playing a human fighter (i was in 5th grade, so give me a break), anyway, our party was going through a mountainside full of goblins, orcs and ogres, my meat shield got sapped down to 2 hp, so i hide in the tree while our ranger takes the ogre on, 1 on 1, me, trying to be a hero tried shooting a crossbow into combat to help with the ogre…but instead i end up killing our only able bodied fighter. Once the battle was over i threw the dice in the fireplace, but i belive the spirit of the dice still haunt my rolls to this day
Tell me your name horsefu*gimli!* and i shall give you mine…
Priceless.
The brilliance of Shamus’ comic is that it works on so many different levels. From the screen caps to the characterization to the jokes to the “throwaway commentary” after the comic — there’s never just one thing going on. Humor is cumulative and multilayered, and Shamus puts these together well.
The language may be out of place for Shamus and his site, but it sure as heck is in character for the fellow playing Gimli.
If it makes you feel better, you can pretend Shamus typed “FLISKER” under the balloon. ^_^
Why doesn’t the GM just end the hurt after a string of bad rolls instead of letting the dice decide the fate of the character. Its easier to say “Okay, you just got schelacked, you’re almost dead and if you don’t get healed in a very short time frame, you’ll be dead,” than it is to roll up another character in mid-game.
bwah!
great addition
I have a yellow/black d20 that my players (when I DMed) always said was a killer. Of course, I used it whenever I wanted a player (er, character) to suffer.
These days it’s no better than any other d20 I have. I think it was all in their heads, but of course … the dread thought that your character is about to be crushed and eaten is all part of the fun.
At least it is for me. :-)
I have to agree with Ethan on that. It is better to just decide to spare the character if it doesn’t add to the story for the PC to die in that situation. However, I’ve been part of many games that went the other way. Sometimes you just can’t believe how bad someone’s luck could be!
Great strip, Shamus!
I dont know what you are all complaining about… i get 80%+ chance of the roll being what i want on my dice… Best case i can think of is of one a few years ago, before it was known to all my friends about my dice, where the DM was using re-roll 20 on to hit and skill checks (with a further modifier of if you did a to-hit of more than 50 above AC you killed the target), and then trying to railroad us… At level three we were walking down a river bank when he wanted us to go crosscountry – this being the 6th (and final it seemed) episode for the game, suddenly (dispite my L3 Rogue having a spot (scouting) check of around 45) we walked into an Elder Red dragon. (The DM had really wanted us to go a different way :-) ) Now in most cases i grant this would have been fatal for a third level character but my rogue ran into the attack with a first roll of 87. The DM refused to believe i got 4×20 in a row asked me to reroll while he checked it. Unwilling cause i didnt/dont cheat my rolls i did it ending with a roll of 115, almost gibbing this elder dragon.
To this end, now that i run games with these dice, im happy to roll against my players but i only take the dice roll as a guideline or i lose too many PCs.
I whipped out a quick “my dice hate me” t-shirt design, but then I realized it would be kind of tacky to go advertising it on Shamus’ site, so I just let it be. The time would have been better spent sleeping anyway. *yawn*
While playing Warhammer Fantasy RPG, I played a dwarf named Alanalda Axeblade… Since no one had EVER played a dwarf in our group for this system before, and since they really aren’t represented well in the old rule book, I got to make up a lot of their culture, and I decided something…
Every Dwarven insult, every single curse and explitive, translated to “Rat Bastard” in common… Made it easier since one player had an issue with certain other swear words…
One set of my dice hate me. I keep them because otherwise another set of dice will begin to hate me (and roll opposite of whatever I want).
A friend of mine took it extremely hard, when, through an entire campaign of about a year or so, he rolled 11 on 2D6 about 70% of the time. A 12 was a critical failure. A pair of the dice he was using are still somewhere below the window he threw them out of as an example.
I eventually made him a lj icon saying roleplayers are superstitious about dice. I know I’m superstitious about my dice. It saves me from being superstitious about other things.
Very entertaining comic. I’m not a D&D player myself, but it’s relevant to just about any other fantasy setting. Like Earthdawn, which I have played.
And oh yeah… It wasn’t my D&D dice that hated me, it was my photon dice in Star Fleet Battles. I got the nickname of “Range 3″ because I’d always lose my nerve and fire at the low end of the 3-4 bracket, rather than waiting until range 2. My usual response:
“Why should I wait? I’m only going to roll sixes!” The time my BCJ fired six photon torps at that range and missed with all of them (five rolls were a six) just sealed it. Lifetime, I think my hit% is half of what it should be, based on my to hit and actual results.
My existence is a disproof of the laws of statistics.
On the other hand, that makes me a REALLY good tactical player, as I have to completely annihilate my opponent tactically to have even odds of winning (thanks to the dice).
While I love the die with a 1 on it shirt and the one word beneath it (and the story of the kid who knows to say it immediately after rolling is pricless), i really just need to get one of those “I roll 20s” shirts and modify it: “I roll 1s”.
I could roll with d12 instead of d20, and it wouldn’t really affect the game much.
I don’t think it was the actual cursing that made me laugh my ass off, it was the punch-line comment, “Whoops. I rolled a ONE on my diplomacy check.” I died and fell off my computer chair!
Personally, unless the people commenting on the ‘language’ are with the clergy, you need to get over yourselves.
I need a shirt that says, “The dice rule me! Opps I cut my foot off!”.
Hear hear!!! My dwarven monk salutes you!
A friend of mine got to the game late once and the rest of us were about to go into combat so he was just wandering around, waiting for an opportunity for his character to join us. As the hacking started, he headed over to the TV, put in the “Zulu” tape (this was a while back) and FFed to the scene where a bazillion Zulus are about to attack Rorke’s Drift and the guys inside start singing “Men of Harlech.” And we started rolling dice. About three-quarters of our attack rolls for that fight were 18s, 19s and 20s. John kept rewinding and replaying that scene from the movie until we’d run through all the monsters, which didn’t take too terribly long. :D Our GM banned the TV during games after that, heh.
This comic strip is so very wrong, yet oh so right…
I choked on my orange juice, but it was totally worth it.