T w e n t y S i d e d
If you’re reading this site, then you know about DM of the Rings. That comic turns 13 this year. When that comic came out, both BioWare and id Software were still independent game studios, and the Red Ring of Death was plaguing the new Xbox 360. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the first Saints Row game had just released. XKCD was relatively new and hadn’t yet exploded into the institution it is today, which means there was possibly a window of a few weeks somewhere in 2006 where my work was as popular as Randal Munroe’s.
It was a long time ago, is what I’m saying.
After that comic ended, I teamed up with artist Shawn Gaston and we made Chainmail Bikini. It was an interesting collaboration between two people with very different creative sensibilities. Even though we never finished the story arc we had planned, I still look back fondly on the time we put into it. It was a very different project for both of us and there are several entries that I’m really proud of. Occasionally one comic would lean hard on the text and another would lean on the art, but the best ones were the points where Shawn and I both contributed to the jokeThe pig-transport gags are probably my favorite..
The original run of the comic vanished. Shawn and I re-posted the whole thing to his blog with new commentary. Then in 2018, Shawn’s domain lapsed and the comic vanished into oblivion. So now I’m going to post the comic for the third and final time, here on my blog, and hopefully it’ll stay this time. I’ll also be reposting our commentary that went with each comic.
I traded messages with Shawn and got his blessing for this. He also said that he was planning to renew the domain so the site could re-appear at some point.
I’m still not sure what the posting schedule will be. The week is already pretty full. Monday is the podcast. Tuesday is Mass Effect. Wednesday is Experienced Points. Thursday is either an essay or Spider-Man. Saturday is reserved for Bob Case, in the event he gets the urge to write again. This leaves us with Friday and Sunday. Maybe I’ll repost the comics on those days? We’ll see.
Anyway, that’s the plan.
Footnotes:
[1] The pig-transport gags are probably my favorite.
Artless in Alderaan
People were so worried about the boring gameplay of The Old Republic they overlooked just how boring and amateur the art is.
Trekrospective
A look back at Star Trek, from the Original Series to the Abrams Reboot.
Games and the Fear of Death
Why killing you might be the least scary thing a game can do.
Batman: Arkham City
A look back at one of my favorite games. The gameplay was stellar, but the underlying story was clumsy and oddly constructed.
A Star is Born
Remember the superhero MMO from 2009? Neither does anyone else. It was dumb. So dumb I was compelled to write this.
Nice – I’m very excited about this! Back in the day, I used to follow your Escapist column, and would only occasionally come here. In recent years, however, I started catching up with the content on the blog, and I’m always hungry for more! This comic is the only series of yours that I haven’t read (when I first saw it 6-7 years ago, I saw the name, and I assumed it was crap – I’m still kinda kicking myself for it :D)
And since we’re talking about old times, does anybody else really miss the way the blog used to display how many comments a post had? It used to display the number of comments with D&D dice, and it had a little remark depending on how many comments an article had…
Oh I remember those little comments. Some were fun.
Regarding Chainmail Bikini, since I hadn’t read it, I’m happy to have that occasion.
“my work was as popular than Randal Munroe’s. ”
Bit of a grammatical issue here.
How so?
It probably needs to be either “more popular than” or “as popular as”.
If I had to guess, I would guess that he wrote ‘more popular than’ first. Then decided to change it but forgot the second part…
Some animals, er, I mean webcomics are more equally popular than others.
A great opportunity to revisit DMotR’s lesser-known brother, so to speak
You’re writing more Chainmail Bikini! Yes? Yes?
(reads article)
…no…
In other news, copy-pasting already-made comics and commentary sounds like great fit for the Lazy Sunday slot.
I told a friend about the black hole of time that tvtropes is, he told me about this site. We both won.
For a certain definition of “winning” anyway.
I think you got the better end of the deal :-)
Please reissue the D4:D20 t-shirt to commemorate! I really need/want a new one.
I never actually read this comic. Personally, I don’t see the problem with posing these things on the same day as something else. If anything, the thought that each day may only court one piece of content seems very arbitrary to me when you have a relative glut of content…
*ahem*
Thor: YEEEEEESSS!
Becaue I can’t put in an nimated .gif of that bit frm Thor: Ragnarok.
It seems like we’ve gotten quiet Thursdays recently, just random scheduling hiccups?
I remember when DM of The Rings was still going and was one of the main reasons why I was reading this weblog.
Now I feel old…
Semi-random side note, but I don’t remember seeing a literal chainmail bikini in any game. To me, this seems to be more of a thing in the kind of 80s fantasy art where everybody is a half-naked barbarian. Some Skyrim bandits wear fur or leather bikinis. Same for the Diablo rouges. “Robes” for female mages can be ridiculously skimpy in many games. (Age of Wonders 3 is even equal-opportunity about that.) But there are people poking fun at chainmail bikinis in games, so I guess they must exist somewhere?
EDIT: Skyrim mods don’t count ;)
Last game I played with them was Divine Divinity (2002). In character creation you could pick a male or female version of each of the three starting classes, and the female warrior was dressed up Red Sonja style. The rogue wasn’t much better off.
They’re also all over the Spellforce series. It was pretty much a franchise tradition to have an underdressed fantasy babe on the cover of every entry until the second game’s last expansion. Spellforce 2: Faith in Destiny (2012) was the last to go for that.
Heroes of Might and Magic III. The pegasus riders specifically, and I think the main character wears something ridiculous (but possibly not specifically chainmail) in the opening cutscene.
And for a really high profile example, I can’t believe I forgot World of Warcraft. Chainmail bikinis are all the rage in Azeroth.
I guess *that* explains why it may feel pervasive to others!
Are any of them actually chainmail? My mental image of WoW fanservice is more ornate filigree than 80s cheese.
Just a nitpick I have to get off: Please don’t make me read that specific misspelling of “rogue” ever again. I’m annoyed beyond sanity by it (and several other misspellings in several languages, but this one is among the top 4, I guess).
Life must be tough if swapping two letters impacts your sanity.
It is, you can believe that.
2 letters can be the last testament to a world where I see falsehoods perpetuate without any way to correct them.
It’s like screaming into a void, unheard and hopeless.
Nvm. I should numb to these things one of the next millenia.
It is when the two resulting words are equally as real yet have completely different meaning. It does my head in to read about some red when they’re talking about a rogue.
How do you feel about rouge, commas? ;D
Anyway, I once knew someone who played the same character in every D&D game she was in (saving time on character generation etc) – a elven thief called Elawen.
This player was french, and one day she showed me a picture of the character: Elawen – of course – wore a (red) leather bikini for armor, and also make-up*. Unfortunately, the player in question wasn’t a great artist, so said make-up looked as if it had been applied incorrectly.
…what I’m saying is that Elawen was a rogue rouge avec la rouge rogue.
*Like all cat-burglars do while working, naturally.
Very nice. I like what you did there with the character description, but I’m not sure what exactly you were getting at in the first sentence.
There are just some words that I read more often misspelled than I read them spelled the correct way where in many cases the correct spelling is obvious from the context.
I can’t help obsessing (an obvious character flaw on my behalf, I guess) how an entire subculture routinely chooses to use a specific word and yet its members can not only not bring themselves to consistently use the correct spelling but routinely use the exact same misspelling to the point where I can’t believe it’s an accident that just randomly pops up on 90+% of all instances the word is used.
Look, typos happen, and neither one of them jumps out as obvious gibberish, which makes it harder to spot for me, because I know what I wanted to say.
I hope no one here is allergic to extreme hyperbole: 90%, really?
Sorry to have to say it, but: Yes, really.
At least 90+% of all instances I have ever seen were written that way. I might even say it’s a random accident I happened to come across the correct writing before I dived into a sea of misspellings.
This was honestly not thought to be hyperbole in the least. I thought of going for 99%, then reconsidered and decided to go with the more conservative 90+%.
As I said: There are other words as well that I have not seen spelled correctly (or the correct form picked) for years despite them being used by pretty much every other news article I have read in the time.
Edit: Maybe my dislike for misspellings comes from my family name’s being misspelled on a regular basis (also easily 90+% of all instances, also honest number). Makes administrative issues way harder than they need to be.
I can commiserate! My family name is mispronounced by people who see it spelled literally 100% of the time in my experience; perhaps more than 100% if you count people who’ve heard it pronounced and then mispronounce it again. :D
Try this one: When I made a vacation to the US, my name was mispronounced in a way that got people turning around to know who just dropped the F-bomb.
At another time someone misspelled my name in several ways and mistook me for multiple different people while I was standing in front of him.
I can count the number of times I have seen the word “comprise” used correctly by someone who isn’t me on one hand.
In fact, I think I can do it on one FINGER.
I feel your pain, is what I am saying.
A ‘rogue comma’ is one that’s out of place. So I put one in my joke…about a rogue comma.
No, it wasn’t very funny, I agree.
And now it’s explained to death. Ah well.
I bring you your favourite TvTropes page as a peace offering.
Nooooo, that’s not my favorite Tv Tropes page.
This is.
Fair enough, as someone who actually worked as a translator from time to time I like that one too. Also, I guess I missed an opportunity up there to call it a “piece offering”…
Just lately I tried revisiting Chainmail Bikini and had to find it was not there. Thanks for bringing it back.
If Shawn and you could also continue it I’d be overjoyed.
But to ask: we just had a 4 (3) day break between the column and this post. couldn’t you just use the comic to fill any occuring scheduling holes? I believe there have been more of those lately (or maybe it just appeared that way to me) and since it’s basically a reupload of old material, I don’t see the need for a specified schedule for it.
Haven’t seen anyone else mention this, but on my screens, the comic is truncated because it is wider than the site’s column. I do not see the full comic (and cannot open the image in a new tab to do so either.)
I was confused at first as well, but I think it’s not intended to be a full page, just a splash image. I agree that it being anchored to the top-left corner, and made from the first page in the series, may not help convey that.
EDIT: Never mind. Shamus fixed it.
Correct, this was the intention.
Given the confusion, I’ve updated the image to be a simple logo. (It might take a couple hours for the new image to propagate through CloudFlare, but it should sort itself out eventually.)
I honestly believed it to have been intentional, so as to give people a taste of what to expect without giving away too much before the fact.
Oh My Lord yes!
In particular the fireballing the bard was a favourite of my gaming group.
So excited to hear this. I was sad to see it peter out before it’s run was finished but the ride there was fantastic in my never to be humble opinion.