T w e n t y S i d e d
From The Archives:
The Opportunity Crunch
No, brutal, soul-sucking, marriage-destroying crunch mode in game development isn't a privilege or an opportunity. It's idiocy.
Batman: Arkham Origins
A breakdown of how this game faltered when the franchise was given to a different studio.
Trusting the System
How do you know the rules of the game are what the game claims? More importantly, how do the DEVELOPERS know?
Object-Oriented Debate
There are two major schools of thought about how you should write software. Here's what they are and why people argue about it.
Secret of Good Secrets
Sometimes in-game secrets are fun and sometimes they're lame. Here's why.
Something that strikes me as we reread these comics is how badly the players want to get invested in the story and take it seriously, and how determined the DM is to sidemine them so he can play out his grandiose epic.
Like, come on, they keep giving him easy wins and he keeps throwing them away!
It’s the fault of an inflexible DM. Some railroading is necessary to keep a campaign on track or to have the players go on planned “sidequests” or personal quests but a good DM has to accept there are going to be times when that written page or two of dialogue and events has to be essentially binned because the players made a reasonable decision or solution that bypasses or skips it. It was long established the players realized they were going to play a campaign of the DM’s fanfic. Part of what makes this comic so great is it makes fun of the players and the DM and yet anyone that has ever been in a tabletop rpg campaign almost certainly can relate in one way or the other to everyone involved.
This is part of why I never clicked with Chainmail Bikini’s “railroading” GM. At no point did any of the players seem interested in anything other than ignoring Casey’s story. He went along with all of their stupid decisions, he was just bad at adapting to them. Unlike DMotR, at no point did Casey have an annoying GMPC, or do things that invalidated their choices.
I can’t say for certain that it was intentional, but it took me quite a while to get the reference of “Have it your way, King”, which was the long time slogan of Burger King …