T w e n t y S i d e d
From The Archives:
The Truth About Piracy
What are publishers doing to fight piracy and why is it all wrong?
If Star Wars Was Made in 2006?
Imagine if the original Star Wars hadn't appeared in the 1970's, but instead was pitched to studios in 2006. How would that turn out?
Video Compression Gone Wrong
How does image compression work, and why does it create those ugly spots all over some videos and not others?
Fixing Match 3
For one of the most popular casual games in existence, Match 3 is actually really broken. Until one developer fixed it.
Project Frontier
A programming project where I set out to make a gigantic and complex world from simple data.
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 …