A couple of people were foolish enough to encourage me yesterday, so now I’m inflicting another one on you.
– Shamus, Friday Sep 8, 2006
Man, that’s the entire accompanying post for the original panel. No talking about the strip, no more little quips, just a single sentence. Not only that, but it serves as a reminder that he didn’t actually set out to make the whole trilogy into a comic. Like most stuff Dad did, he just sort of followed whatever seemed interesting to do or people seemed to like. It’s easy to look at it as a whole, especially to me since it was nearly done by the time I was sentient old enough to even notice it. It was a completed project.
This week’s French comic can be read here.
The Gameplay is the Story
Some advice to game developers on how to stop ruining good stories with bad cutscenes.
Self-Balancing Gameplay
There's a wonderful way to balance difficulty in RPGs, and designers try to prevent it. For some reason.
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.
Blistering Stupidity of Fallout 3
Yeah, this game is a classic. But the story is idiotic, incoherent, thematically confused, and patronizing.
Raytracing
Raytracing is coming. Slowly. Eventually. What is it and what will it mean for game development?
Getting a 404 on the image, so right now the post is just the text.
Ditto, no image.
Oops, wow, glad I checked my email before going to bed. Thanks guys, I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise. Looked fine on my end. Should be fixed now.
Yep, all fixed now.
You know, I got into Shamus’s blog because he wrote analysis/funny commentary on Bethesda games and No Man’s Sky. Then I read his autoblography. And music stuff (I know more about music, but his foray into music always felt like the first times I started listening and practicing.
Now I’m reading DM of the Rings in like HD or something here, and it has me realizing that I’m going backwards on reading through the site.
Love DM of the Rings. I actually got into D&D and also this blog because of it like 10 years ago. Funny how influential things can be :)
It’s funny the things that seem permanent and eternal just because of perspective. When we moved to this town 5 years ago, one of the first things we did was go into a board game cafe, and we’ve been turning up nearly every Monday for a games night ever since. It’s a quintessential part of our image of the city. It was weird to find out, a year or so ago, that it had only been in business for a few months when we turned up.
Player 1: I can’t wait to play some Teens & Turmoil!
DM: Let’s begin. It’s a bright, sunny day. You all begin your journey at the mall –
Player 2: Ugh, such a cliche. Every T&T party starts at the mall!
This would be a cool premise for a show – a D&D-style fantasy world full of magic and wonder where all the weird races play role-playing games themed around our mundane world, but to them it’s absolutely outlandish and magical.
In fact, I’m sure I’ve seen something like this before. I just don’t remember where…
I’m fairly certain it comes up as a joke in more experienced tabletop parties semi-organically, I’m catching up on Rusty Quill Gaming and I think they did it at some point, Pathfinder:Wrath of the Righteous on a trickster path has a joke where as one of the army management decisions regarding your generals you can
“Let them improve their skills by staging mock battles in a game played atop tables. I’ll keep inventing new rules, we can commit them to paper, and even find people to publish them in books”I’m sure I could come up with more if I scratched my brain a little.There’s also this old chestnut and I’m sure it’s not the only one either.
The earliest version of this that I remember is a comic about a game called “Papers and Paychecks” in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide.
There is a book called “Homerooms and Hall Passes” that is essentially that exact scenario (plus the characters get magically sucked into their game world, and have to cope with our mundane reality).
I knew it! And those are all hilarious!
There was a live action web series called “Humans and Households” that followed a group of fantasy characters playing an rpg set in our world. Maybe that is what you are remembering.
Yes, I knew it! I remember seeing the trailer years ago when I first watched The Gamers. For some reason I never got to watching Humans and Households. Thank you!
I think you should watch it. Really impressive.