T w e n t y S i d e d
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Nothing kills the excitement of battle like starting one.
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Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
I’m officially old. My first thought reading this was “Miniatures? In my day, we didn’t play with dolls!” I’ll be doddering off somewhere now.
We use whatever we have to. Generic mooks are usually pennies; flip ’em tails up when they’re dead. The boss is usually a nickel.
Though I did go on ebay and get a nice set of miniatures for our player characters once. I even managed to find a spear-wielding dragonwrought kobold.
“Nothing kills the excitement of battle like starting one.”
Too true.
And the higher level you get, the more tedious the combat mechanics become. “I cast XXX.” “Oh? What does that do?” “One sec. Let me look it up…”
Great, now I’m terrifieed of paper clips. These battles are so realistic!
Sixth level paperclips. They’re nasty, they are.
Steve
What kind of paper clips? plain metal? Plastic? Colored metal? Metal covered with plastic? Magnetic? Arghhh, wish someone had put all those clips under the same entry in the monstruous compendium, so that I don’t have to look all those up.
“Make Aragorn fall off cliff.”
Priceless!
CLIFF HIM! Yeah!
This is why I prefer computer RPG’s. The computer does all the handywork for you. :P
I always wondered why Aragon had to fall over that cliff, and I always knew there was a good reason behind it.
And when Aragorn wakes up, he sees the floating head of his girlfriend, who inquires innocently about his new rash…
OMG I can see part of Shamus’s hand!
Classic! Make Aragorn fall off a cliff. hahaha
Your best after the ‘walking sticks’ panels! Inspired!
Thank you for all your work on the strip, Shamus, it really is appreciated and is often the only ray of light during a cr*p day in the office.
Many thanks
Ravs
OMG, an army of Clippys. Now THAT’s scary. :)
“OMG I can see part of Shamus's hand!”
Seeee. I told you that you should put the DM’s picture on a mug.( His mug on a mug-get it?)
“It looks like you’re trying to reach Helm’s Deep. What would you like to do? ( ) Fight ( ) Run (X) Die screaming”
Don’t worry ’bout the paper clips – I have BINDER clips!
No, not binder clips!! They pinch something awful.
Talk about your killer cliff-notes.
Wonderful stuff Shamus. I have sent links to all my friends, and they all love it.
[gedece] Well, you could just look up the paperclip template and wing it from there, but in all probability, if you are looking one of these things up then you are already dead.
Anyway, I don’t think players should be looking up the monsters, no matter what color wire they’re bent from. That’s for the DM to know and the players to bleed out while on a voyage of (violent) discovery.
Tsk! Youth of today can’t go into combat without three volumes of the Monster Manual in front of ’em. In my day it was “grab yer crossbow an’ look lively”! None of this pansy “combat librarian” nonsense. Why, fully three fifths of the players I used to game with couldn’t read the tiny print anyway! We left that to the DM. And don’t get me started on the people who can’t swing a sword or chant a spell without ten minutes checking how it’s supposed to work in the six or seven supplimental rulebooks they minmaxed their cheesy characters from! In the old days, only a pansy would be caught looking for a copy of “Blackmoor” in the heat of battle. etc etc rant etc more rant more etc.
Steve.
Tsk! Youth of today can't go into combat without three volumes of the Monster Manual in front of “˜em.
And the 50 year old marine I play with can’t either, unless they are the volumes he’s already rote-memorized over the last 30 years…
That final panel is now my all time favorite!
Paper clips?! Ha! It’s usually more like:
“Well, I don’t actually have any wargs, so these skeletons are wargs, but I’ve only got 10 of those, so these 5 gnolls will be the remaining wargs. If any orcs actually get off their wargs, I’ve only got 3 orc miniatures, so I’ll have to use these goblins for any others…”
Rebecca Says:
OMG I can see part of Shamus's hand!
Actually, I think you’ll find that that’s Shamus’s stunt double’s hand.
Steve.
“Make Aragorn fall off cliff.”
The precise moment when the movie trilogy took its downturn.
At least they weren’t paperclips with the Microsoft (aka “undead”) template. Those things force Will SV or die every minute.
Gotta agree here. The solution is lots of prep ahead of time by the GM to have the battle info lined up. But if the GM ever does that, the players either:
a) avoid the entire combat by launching off on a tangential hare-brained idea
or
b) immediately use a tactic / spell / power that immediately makes the entire setup of the combat changed or irrelevant.
Or just do the whole combat freeform in terms of placement, which works as long as the players aren’t too combat-mechanics-geeked up, but requires good, consistent description.
Hmm… I wonder if Aragorn will go off to play Star Wars d20 with the halflings once falling off the cliff (thinking he’s been killed). Maybe the failure of that campaign will be how the hobbits return to the story…
Yeah Shamus, we can see your speckled dice. They’re very pretty.
Seriously though, great comic. Came here a few days ago from PointlessWasteOfTime.com and immediately added you to my Bookmarks.
What?!? Am I the only one who uses torn-up sticky note paper for markers? Tear into half-inch pieces only the paper sections with glue backing, stick them to the battlemap, then write “W” for Warg and “O” for orc using a water-based pen on each half-inch piece.
The DM can watch the worried expressions grow on the players’ faces as more and more pieces are added to the battlemap. To make things _really_ interesting, leave some of them blank and tell the players they can’t tell yet what the markers represent because the players are too far away/busy with nearby opponents/etc.
Don’t want to take the time to write? Just use different colored sticky note paper. Either way, a small army can be ready to rock and roll on the PCs in less then 5 minutes.
This tip brought to you by GOFGA, the Gnarly Old Farts of Gaming Association.
Don’t y’all play anything besides RPGs? Most boardgames have stuff you can use for combat. My favorite was dumping out the 100 plastic minis from Zombies!!! on the board. :D
Oh, that’s perfect.
Makes me wonder about the reasons for someone dying recently on BSG, but that’s off-topic.
I’m printing this one for my DM. Our games’ on sunday. I bought her some xtra miniatures so she doesn’t run out of monsters…
Thanks again.
Our DM uses lego men to represent bandits, orcs, evil mages, whatever nasties our party comes across.
I remember a war in ‘Knights of the Dinner Table’ where the PCs found themselves outflanked because (1) some players had forgotten which markers were their own troops and which were the enemies, and (2) some players had forgotten which markers were troops and which were snacks. The hazards of using M&M’s as chits… :d
As far as the comic goes, very funny, although I don’t find transferring from RP to combat mode as disruptive as *the arrival of the food*:
“As the dying woman accepts your gift, there are tears of gratitude in her eyes. In a harsh croak she whispers…”
[i]DING-DONG[/i]
“All right! Pizza’s here!”
Sigh.
That punch line had me rolling on the floor. Classic!
Can’t believe nobody mentioned the Risk pieces!
DM: Ok guys, the cavalry guys are orcs on wargs.
Players: So if they’re risk pieces does that mean each cavalry guy represents five warg riders?
DM: No just one.
Players: What about the different colors. Do they have significance? Do these orcs have difference allegiances? Maybe they could be, like, for different levels.
DM: OK fine, the black cavalry guys are normal warg riding orcs, and this red cavalry guy is an Orc leader. It’s only one guy, but he’s five times tougher than a regular orc.
Players: Whoa five times tougher?! That’s too much!
DM: Ok, here, your side has one of these cannons. It does 1d12+4 damage and has a range of five grid squares.
I could keep going and going…I’m really amusing myself with this.
Ah, yes, this is a classic. DM rule number 2, have that shit done with before or be prepared enough to be able to do set it up quick. It is a very effective way of killing all tension and excitement, which in turn may drag the entire battle down to the level of “I hit that guy, 5 damage. Your turn.”
For when you’re done starting the battle, the exciting stuff starts to happen! … Well, not necessarily. That’s why I hate hack-and-slash DnD. If done by a bad DM or by uninterested players, combat can be just as unexciting as everything else. Attack someone. Roll the dice. Tell some numbers. It isn’t really that fun on it’s own. The fun comes when you can actually see yourself fighting. When it feels like your interacting in LOTR or whatever.
paperclips? bah. We use dice.
Not wishing to start a “system war,” but this is one of the reasons I really like Savage Worlds. You can -do- those epic battles with lots of allies and enemies, and it (a) doesn’t take forever to get started and (b) runs very fast and very cinematicaly.
One of the reasons I use SW for Shaintar: Immortal Legends is so that I can have an LOTR experience at the game table.
Today’s strip just nails the point home with a sledgehammer. We all know D&D, and it’s the “standard,” but that doesn’t make it the best choice for all types of gaming.
Thanks again, Shamus. This one’s particularly gratifying for me…
I don't find transferring from RP to combat mode as disruptive as *the arrival of the food*:
I don't find transferring from RP to combat mode as disruptive as *the arrival of the food*:
We don’t start any more until everyone’s eaten. Means shorter sessions, but less pizza grease on books.
The worst to get going is a Champions game. *shudder*
As for the movies, I like to pretend the whole bit between leaving the Golden Hall and arriving at Helm’s Deep never happened. Of course Mr T likes it because of Liv’s see through dress, so we can’t FF through the *whole* thing. ;)
[Woulda Coulda Shoulda department]
I just thought how neat it would have been to cut from sleeping Aragormless to sleeping Hicks in “Aliens”, do a page of Aliens – the roleplaying game with the players in the dropship eagerly talking about about how great this game is gonna be then have “somebody wake up Hicks” only for him to discover the awful truth – The combat still hasn’t started.
Meh. The World’s a Critic.
Steve.
First comment!
If you are planning to have an epic battle and you find yourself clearing space, setting up a mat and digging for figures, then you’ve already failed. At the start of the session you should have had your miniatures selected and hidden off to the side, the mat out and in place, initiative pre-rolled for everyone but the players, and ready to go! It should have gone: “Your ravenous foes…ride to battle! Okay, give me your initiative rolls. Aragon, looks like you are first.” 5 minutes of prep work before the session will save 5 days of regret looking back at how you spoiled the moment by breaking the game to clean up and lay down your equipment.
I’m not saying what you demonstrate is not the most common case. But it can be easily avoided, especially if the DM is of the plan-everything-that-will-happen-to-the-characters type.
This comic strip gets better and better! I can recall in my youth how many times the poor DM had to ensure the attention of his players wasn’t straying off as he was trying to set up the battleground. Aragon sleeping while the battle started was exactly what happened to me. Funny enough, I got lucky like Aragon that eventhough my enemy fighter was award automatic initiative as punishment for my inattention, he missed and I removed his head with a flukey critical roll! The DM wasn’t happy that All his plans to punish me backfired!
Backfired implies that you gained something from it, if it just didn’t come to anything it wouldn’t be accurate to say it backfired.
So THAT’S why Aragorn fell from the cliff!! I always wondered… I’m starting to wonder if perhaps Shamus has the notes of a game GM’d by Peter Jackson and played by the actors in the movie. That might explain a few things…
Of course, with a battle of that scale, there’s no way the players will range to every opponent, so you might as well just run it without a map. Each of the players will be fighting single opponents anyway. If you want to play map battles, play Classic Battletech or Warhammer. Leave maps out of the roleplaying environment. It really kills the fun.
On a second note: Aragorn falling off the cliff in the non-extended movie was apparently a GM hate crime. Heh. In the extended version, I concluded it was because he was poisoned a few hours before by Eowyn. Anyone who saw the extended version knows about the scene where Aragorn (being a REAL MAN), eats the foul-tasting stewed garbage that Eowyn cooked up for him. Anyone would weaken after eating that. Heck, GIMLI, who probably has dwarven Constitution in the upper levels, refused the stuff. ^_^
Refused? He took one whiff of the stuff and physically recoiled! I shudder to think what she’d done to screw up a pot of stew that badly.
I also vouch for the bag o zombies [and zombie dogs]. They can be numbered easily and then you have 100/each of bipeds and quadrupeds for any need. [so sayeth the person who has been reffing since 1973]
At the risk of sounding like a drooling fanboy, I turn forty this year and this is some of the funniest stuff I have ever read. I haven’t laughed out loud at a comic this much since reading Matt Groening’s classic Life in Hell books back in the mid-80s.
Yeah using dice instead of paperclips works much better… We just turn them all to different numbers to represent each different bad guy.
Heh. Then again, Aragorn might not take that as revenge. He may think you decided to make it up to him by adding some excitement.
Pennys. LOTS of pennys with stickers on them numbered one to whatever. I love the look on my players faces when I throw out a handful of them. Classic!
Paper clips? We always just ripped the corners off our character sheet to represent where we were. We didn’t have enough dice to do that.
Great work Shamus! This one ranks as 3rd best yet in the series. (after New Dimensions in Storage and Riddle Me This).
Personally im an old school gamer so usinging minis in an RPG seems odd (minis are for tabletop strat games damnit!), but i can certainly feel the pain of not having enough/the right miniatures to use (“ok, i dont actually HAVE a Madcat, so we can use this urbanmech to represent it”).
This was also the subject of a recent Order of the Stick.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0413.html
(Note: if you dont actaully read OotS already, don’t continue on from that point, go back to the start or you will spoil it)
It’s only funny because it’s so painfully true…
(groan)
Personally, I think all those &%$@ rules come out because the Players are trying to be their Characters. You made an elvan bowmaster… let him do it. You can’t because your NOT AN ELVAN BOWMASTER!
ME: (dramatically) The hidious creatures crest the peak with their evil riders spurring them forward… Initiative.
Leggie: Am I able to hit any off them with an arrow?
Me: You have struck many an opponant at far greator distances.
Leggie: I shoot an arrow at the first creature of the advancing horde.
The player doesn’t need to know the actual details because he trusts that his Character does.
AGGGH! A co-worker told me about this site a couple of weeks ago, and since then I’ve been reading a few a day, enjoying myself, never realizing that one day I would come to the LAST installment, and have to wait for more… As I moved to the last page, and realized that there was no “next” link, my breath left my body as through a bugbear had smote me with a Mace of Ouching…
You must do 10000 more of these TONIGHT so I can keep reading… I am begging here…
Make ARAGORN fall off a cliff
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
BEST COMIC EVER
Titanium paperclip elementals!? :o)
“Make Aragorn fall off cliff” is fantastic!
It so fits, since Jackson & co. did appear to make that up for the film for no good reason. Now we know the real reason it happened!
And the introduction of scenes from the real world: the PHB and the note to self… I was surprised by them, but they actually do add to the strip, given that it’s ‘all about’ the clash between the triviality at the gaming-table and the epic deeds the game claims/attempts/hopes to portray.
You are mining a really good vein of material with this strip.
(Does that make it strip-mining? Arf arf.)
man, last I’ve played tabletop D&D was 15 yrs ago and reading these comics are awesome, every page I’d go, “hey! that happened to us!”. It’s great to get to experience those pieces of truth on every turn of the page! keep it up man, coming from all the way here in the Philippines! Id send this link to my old party mates, wherever they are now:D
I ran a game once where I failed to have any miniatures for the combat, so I used dried beans. Kidney beans, navy beans etc. Became a running joke for the whole 13 week adventure even though I only used them one night.
I find that people who try to run combat without using a hex map tend to forget to tell the players everything, and I suddently find myself 2 feet away from a troll (or whatever big bad monster there is) with no idea how I got that close without noticing it.
If you want to fight the wargs, turn to page 73.
If you want to run like little girls, turn to page 104.
if you want to negotiate with the Orcs, close this book.
[melchar] Once again I am left breathless by the sloppy, slipshod, half-arsed approach to everything by today’s youth. How are we supposed to follow your advice if you leave us without vital information?
Should we buy a Bag O’ Glow-in-the-dark Zombies!!! (or Undead dogs) or should we go for a Bag O’ Un-glow-in-the-dark Zombies!!! (or Undead dogs)?
Tsk!
Steve.
PS :o)
poppalee Says:
The player doesn't need to know the actual details because he trusts that his Character does.
There’s a lot to be said for this approach. However, as the player characters become more complex it throws much of the decision-making onto the shoulders of the DM. Not only that, I’ve found that in confused combat situations, more time is lost due to players whining about something they feel is unfair than is spent on actual combat. This almost always resolves into a difference in perception between the DM and the player as to what the tactical situation is.
I had a problem some years ago (before meny of you guys were playing) with a Traveller campaign in which the players spent an inordinate amount of time in combat (not recommended in Traveller) and the whine factor became so large I eventually made all characters play combats as a “Snapshot” scenario. Snapshot was a game played on plans printed with a square grid (sound familiar?), that used a simplified Traveller character scheme and a completely Traveller compatable weapon system.
At first all I heard were moans about the loss of simutaneous action. After two combats, the players found that the simutaneous action was worth giving up to get a clear, unified picture of what was going on that everyone could share, and that confused actions could be sorted out equitably on the grid with none of the cheesy “I know an NPC can’t do this but I should be able to” thinking that was bogging down the game. The plans also added a visually interesting element, as did representing everyone with (15mm) figures.
That experience taught me a valuable lesson, and I would never suggest doing away with the D&D grid for anything less than a single combat situation or an overwhelming odds tidal wave o’ death. Anything in between goes on the grid.
Steve.
Heh. That’s not the mounted combat section of the PHB. ;-)
“Heh. That's not the mounted combat section of the PHB.”
I can’t believe it took 62 comments before someone pointed that out. I thought for sure that would appear in the first 5.
Since everyone is offering the DM advice on how better to do this bit may I add that after one battle like this we designed a double sided wipe off board from foamcore, some old gaming grid maps I found at the thrift shop, and contact paper. We then got some wipe off pens and used letters and x’s to represent the opponents while the players each used their actual miniatures. He also has a giant wipe off board on the wall to show what rooms and other areas look like. It works beautifully because to move all you have to do is wipe off the previous x and and move write it in the next spot.
And we make sure food is available throughout so there is no “food break”.
Dang, someone else already made the obvious Cliff’s Notes joke…
I’m firmly in the “LEGO minis” camp, having been using them for years and converted a few of my fellow GMs to the idea. (See link if you actually want to read more about it. I won’t bore you here.)
Anyway, I’ve been plugging this comic to my gamer friends ever since I first heard about it…and so ends my first comment here.
As for the movies, I like to pretend the whole bit between leaving the Golden Hall and arriving at Helm's Deep never happened. Of course Mr T likes it because of Liv's see through dress, so we can't FF through the *whole* thing.
I dunno. The raid on the peasants makes sense, especially since Saruman’s been a friend to Rohan beforehand and thus knows what they’ll DO. It’s the dropping off the cliff that’s suspect.
wasn’t the march to helms deep a forced march? It’s not like it showed them camping out overnight or anything or taking lunch breaks. And did it show the scouts they had out? Most of the pheasents disappeared pretty fast too. You don’t see anyone but warrior types on horses getting munched on. I am going to have to start watching the section of LOTR that Shamus is doing just so I remember what Jackson had happen.
I'm officially old. My first thought reading this was “Miniatures? In my day, we didn't play with dolls!” I'll be doddering off somewhere now.
That must have been a local thing for you, because originally D&D was born out of miniatures wargaming.
Yeah, but we didn’t use miniatures when we played the old White Box edition. We were getting away from the need for counters, miniatures, maps and boards for the first time ever in the gaming hobby.
It was a new paradigm thing. You wouldn’t understand.
Steve.
Shamus, I forgot to say that the grab of Aragormless zoning out in panel five is a touch of genius.
Was this a lucky find or were you specifically looking for that expression when you found the frame?
Steve.
In that scene, I had a half-dozen funny faces for him, so I just had to pick the right one.
“It's not like it showed them camping out overnight or anything or taking lunch breaks.”
Well, but on film they also don’t show characters going to the bathroom. Well, usually not, anyway. If it’s not added to the story, then it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You just didn’t get to see it.
On another note, good going on the cliff note. I never understood why they felt the need to put that scene in (being a bit of a purist concerning the books, I’m afraid) and this feels a bit like revenge. Lol.
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html
Try it. It’s great.
Also, what edition PHB is that? Mine dosen’t look like that one.
(I think I have edition two. It’s thirty years old. Literally, coz my uncle gave it to me)
Also, update faster, or encounter the mighty wrath of my piratyness!!
Four random tips:
1. Have your players roll their initiatives at the end of combat. Use this initiative for the NEXT combat. (Initiative scores essentially never change, so it doesn’t really matter when you roll the check. When it looks like the PCs are about to encounter something, roll for its initiative and slot it into the order. If they don’t encounter it for some reason, no big deal. By the time combat actually starts, initiative is already completely resolved and you’re ready to leap out of the starting gate.)
2. Work your set-up into the presentation of the battle. (“Suddenly you hear the mournful baying of wolves and the battle horns of orcs!” “Over the top of the ridge you suddenly a dozen warg riders!” “Aragorn, you’re first: What are you doing?”) The point is that putting out the enemy figures (even if they’re not dramatically painted figurines) can be a dramatic moment in and of itself, if you make it the moment of revelation. On more than one occasion I’ve had players murmur “oh shit” or “how many of them are ARE there?” as the number of miniatures come out onto the table.
3. Buy some of those glass beads that people use as counters for CCGs and the like. For $10-15 you can pick up more than a hundred beads in five or six different colors. (I used to use dice, but the problem is that there are dice flying all over the table when people make rolls. The counters are easily distinguishable and they aren’t designed to roll if bumped.)
4. Get an erasable battlemap and use it more often than not. Even if the players aren’t going to be fighting in a room, the visual reference isn’t going to kill anybody. And that way, when a fight does happen, you don’t have to stop, clear the battlemap off, and take time to draw the whole area. (Also, don’t worry about getting the measurements precise. If you’re off by 5 feet, your players are never going to know.)
I’ve been known to start epic combats against a horde of mooks by literally pouring a handful of counters out on the edge of the map (“Suddenly, on the far side of the cavern, a horde of goblins — hooting and gibbering in their barbaric tongue — leaps up from their hiding places!”) and then rapidly shifting them to make sure they’re all in different spaces.
And there’s really nothing more dramatic at the table than reaching down in a drawer and declaring, “Suddenly, out of the black abyss, a black dragon emerges!” As you pull the miniature out and, with a dramatic swoop, place it on the battlemap.
Nik the Pirate: 3.5 Edition. It’s a little over a year old.
I read OOTS all the time. It really is fantastic. I could list all the ways Rich Burlew’s comic is better than mine, but I don’t want to go all Fred Gallagher on you.
Justin Alexander: Those are great tips. If I ever get a game going again, I’m going to do that for sure.
The only thing that could make this any better was if you guys were playing HackMaster . . .
[gwen] The “you wouldn’t understand” was a paraphrase of a popular tee-shirt slogan often seen in New York, and was an attempt at self-deprecation rather than a dig at your good self. I re-read it. It didn’t work the way I meant it to.
Sorry.
Steve.
Muahahahahahahahahahahah!!
Yes precious, OFF THE CLIFFSES!!; then we takes his fancie swords we do!!
Yes, fancie swords for ME!!
-you mean us…
Yes, I meant us ;)
Panel 7, Gimli “I mean eventually…” = Brilliant screen cap.
34 adam. Says:
March 7th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
paperclips? bah. We use dice.
–Hah, us, too. we got us a Pound o dice and it searves us well ;3
http://www.chessex.com/Dice/poundofdice.htm
as for paperclips? that’s our Besm game. white clips are auto-crits, red clips are auto-botch, and blue clips are Add a d20 to any roll. you earn them through your roleplaying. white are excellent rollplaying, red are out-of-characterness, and blue are “appropriate, but not fantasticlly creative”.
This just keeps getting better and better!
Great job!
So would that make them “Cliff Notes”? :D
I remember vividly the day when large scale D&D battles meant waiting an hour before the DM was ready to do anything, and each of the hundreds of people present all had their own individual initiative.
I’ve pulled an Aragorn more than a few times at those times!
BEST. STRIP. YET.
Sarah says:
““Hah, us, too. we got us a Pound o dice and it searves us well ;3
http://www.chessex.com/Dice/poundofdice.htm
Chessex rocks! They made dice for my wedding! If you want to pay for it, they could make dice with text like Orc, Goblin or whatever on them. (I don’t work for them, just a satisfied customer, like you, Sarah).
This comic is why I don’t use grids and minis. Pretty well sums it up!
Great comics.
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up in comment #30:
“…remember a war in “˜Knights of the Dinner Table' where the PCs found themselves outflanked because (1) some players had forgotten which markers were their own troops and which were the enemies, and (2) some players had forgotten which markers were troops and which were snacks. The hazards of using M&M's as chits… :d”
Meh…”Fog of War”, happens in real life, too; friendly fire, etc.
“paperclips? bah. We use dice.”
Us too, when we don’t have the right minis. Our DM has a lot of d6’s. We use lego sometimes, too. And we’ve used all sorts of random objects, including my (Casio) pocket calculator once.
Fabulous, just fabulous. Loving the DM’s POV pics!
lol, I never understood the cliff thing, either, but I suspect it was to bring Arwen back into the story (at least they canceled her fighting at Helms Deep), to show that Aragorn’s elf magic worked on the horse Bregel who in turn rescued him, and to show that Aragorn scouted out some, oh, say, 10,000 Uruk-Hai and ran back like a baby to Helm’s Deep to warn Theoden. And, of course, to cause some kind of drama with Eowyn whom also wasn’t supposed to be there. Speaking OF the cliff thing, there also wasn’t a warg attack to begin with, either. Kind of a different take from the book, huh?
I find this comic a bit weird. D&D is propably the most streamlined and easy game system ever. Just have all players know the rules for their class by heart and use a simple projector coupled with a laptop as your gaming screen and you’re set to go.
If players can’t look up spells beforehand, their characters sit the round over until next round. All Characters have 25 seconds to describe their action for a round, if you speak when it’s not your turn you forfeit your round. Same rules for GM NPCs, think when it’s not your turn, pay attention.
This is COMBAT! If it isn’t fast and furious it is pointless rollplaying that benefits no-one. Sometimes I feel people knock D&D because they are poor players (and even worse GMs).
Another good rule: Make sure the Players know the rules and are prepared to do their own math. It runs SO much faster and better that way.
Steves comment on players treating the Monstrous Compendium as “light reading” is dead on as far as I’m concerned. I mean, you can’t stop people going out and spending their own money on their own copies, then memorizing it (though I never understood what made that “fun” but I guess it’s part and parcel of the mind set that wants to “win” RPGs…. ) You can forbid those caught doing so from playing in your group, naturally there are limits. That said, I do think it should be strongly discouraged, as my old DM did (he was a vet, so his Compendium was always lying around, an since I was an unemployed college kid we had several “what part of ‘no you can’t read it’ don’t you understand…?” discussions…. ) I mean, the AD&D 2nd ed. Compendium (or, once again, Compendia) were pretty thick; if you can literally quote chapter and verse from memory… well, HS/college kids who spend all their free time reading thick reference tomes for fun need to meet more women (or men, as the case may be…. )
But then, it’s a fine example of why I stopped being an AD&D 2nd ed. player and became a GURPS player; you don’t have to worry much about over-emphasis on combat there because, outside of cinematic stuff like Supers (which I didn’t play for precisely that reason; “cinematic realism” is a contradiction in terms… ) players who love constant combat are a self correcting problem. They may be annoying at first, but when a single blow can cost you your next action, and cause a skill penalty equal to the damage regardless, when the “average” character has <=12 HT and an average character with an average weapon can easily inflict a third of that in one swipe... well, while he's building his next character he won't be picking any more fights.... Bottom line is really the same as any game: Kill the challenge, kill the fun. Sidebar: Making the Uncrowned King of Gondor, the flower of Elder Days Edain returned in its full glory, fall over a cliff and nearly drown because of a single freakin' Warg is another example of a seemingly minor Jackson plot change that made me nuts. It was just a lame excuse to give Liv Tyler some more screen time, so the adolescent boys had fodder for a very DIFFERENT kind of "fantasy" and the adolescent girls could swoon over their undying Love (and never mind Jackson had already changed the plot so Aragorn spends most of the second film leading Eowyn on because there's really no reason for Arwen to make an appearance prior to Aragorns coronation, and many for her not to do so. )
The problem isn’t how much information is in the books; the problem is how much you give the players by identifying the monsters. “You see a bunch of vaguely man-shaped forms coming at you.” If these characters haven’t seen these monsters before, then they won’t know the difference between kobolds, orcs, goblins, or, say, umber hulks. Even if they have, will they recognize them as the same race? (If they’ve only met Europeans, will they assume that the Africans attacking them have the same race and characteristics? Are there white orcs and black orcs?) They also can’t tell zombies from men at a distance, and might not be able to tell a wight from a man. They certainly don’t know the difference between wights, wraiths, or ghasts until they’ve experienced them. And they can’t tell a bat from a vampire until it changes shape. Furthermore, all dragons looks reddish by torchlight and silverish by moonlight.
Of course, I reject the notion that dragons should be color-coded for the convenience of adventurers. I recommend changing a few characteristics. The books tell them what they learned growing up, so they show what people believe about these monsters. But has the character spoken to anybody who has actually met a gold dragon? How do they know what its alignment is?
Get creative. The books don’t tell you that the smell of coffee beans drives hippogriffs into a rage, or that the orcs in one valley have a treaty with the nearby village.
The books didn’t give away all those secrets. Your instant identification of the monsters and use of the books as perfect information gives away all those secrets.
Shamus, I only just began reading the archives a few days ago, and my stomach hurts from laughing so hard! Wonderful comic-take on LoTR, I’m loving it! (I much preferred the books to the movies, anyway.)
What I find strange is that nobody’s commented on the fact that this is the first time you “break the 4th wall” to actually show the DM (well, sort of), ala David Morgan-Marr’s Irregular Webcomic: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/516.html
Thank you for this comic! :)
I guess Staragorn is about to become the same as the end to today’s comic: A cliffhanger.
EX-ACT-LY!
Every time an epic battle is about to commence in my group, it takes at least 5 mintues if our DM is even slightly prepared xD
(I don’t know how old this post id, but I’ll post anyways…)
So this is what separates a good RPG system from a bad one. D&D is clearly a _bad_ system, it’s too complicated, it has too many rules, too many exceptions, it’s too hard to handle, and it’s way too slow.
With all its historical merits, and with all those nostalgic memories, _it_is_a_bad_system_.
I only posted this so there would be 100 comments. Everyone wins!
Ah, the nightmare of complicated battle systems… All hail hack’n slash!
run for your lives! paper clip calvalry!
I just found these recenctly and they ROCK!
I’ve been playing and DM’ing D&D for almost 30 years and can honestly say I’ve encountered just about all of these situations. The fricken’ comments are as much a joy as the series.
Shamus, thanks for all the hours of entertainment you are truely talented. I just wish I’d have found this site when you created it so i could ‘ve commented “live”. :)
Cheers
Anyone else notice that the book isn’t actually open to mounted combat?
Yes?
Thought so.
Does the message change? XD
I particularly appreciate that the entire punchline of this strip is the plot. I had a lot of lulz.
OMG, this one had me crying. Make Aragorn fall off a cliff…bwhahah.