T w e n t y S i d e d
From The Archives:
Steam Summer Blues
This mess of dross, confusion, and terrible UI design is the storefront the big publishers couldn't beat? Amazing.
Netscape 1997
What did web browsers look like 20 years ago, and what kind of crazy features did they have?
Trashing the Heap
What does it mean when a program crashes, and why does it happen?
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.
Deus Ex and The Treachery of Labels
Deus Ex Mankind Divided was a clumsy, tone-deaf allegory that thought it was clever, and it managed to annoy people of all political stripes.
Ah, the power of the retcon – “Let’s just say I healed them before we left the city.” There’s a general expectation that events in a campaign happen in chronological order, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Plenty of stories are told out of chronological order, and it can be a very effective storytelling device. I haven’t played it, but I like that flashbacks are a feature in the Blades in the Dark system (with its focus on pulling heists); at any time you can tick off some of your Schödinger’s Inventory and flashback to when you put that very specific piece of equipment in your pack in anticipation of the scenario you currently find yourself in.
The idea of Aragorn riding back and forth for six days while everyone else twiddles their thumbs is pretty funny, though.
It’s kinda Gimli’s players’ own fault. He called out an oversight the players made that the characters would not have, and then complained that another player tried to force a handwave solution. What exactly did he expect to happen? The DM saying “Oops, I guess they died”? A dramatic playing out of the ride back when everyone else just wants to get on with the current plot? Even a timewarp retcon (arguably the most elegant solution in this) wouldn’t really have added drama like Gimli’s speech bubble suggests. Was he hoping to not find about their fate until the party returns? Like the opps they died option, that’s really punishing players for not being perfect immersion roleplayers at all times.
These situations will happen. Even the best roleplayers are not actually their characters. Things in game happen at a completely disjointed pace: passing game days within real minutes sometimes, and waiting for a real week or more in the middle of dramatic cliffhangers. Expecting a player, who has their own life on their mind, to remember everything their character would at all times is not going to work out.
We tend to use the timewarp retcon, sometimes predicated on an int/planning/similar check for the character to see if they would have remembered if it was a minor thing.
Of course, this happens more if the players aren’t paying attention, such as in the DMotR game.
Indeed. Whenever this situation happens at my table (and let’s be fair, we’re all human. Oversights WILL happen), I usually just go “OK, we’ll just assume that you did Task X before you left the town. Moving on…”
I am sure that this is the right solution, but its funnier the way Shamus did it.
Yeah. If it is unreasonable that the characters would forget to do something I’m all for doing that. Even for things that they may or may not reasonably have done or taken with them you can do a luck or specific skill check.
Wait, we all know a single rider can move much faster than an entire army, so it wouldn’t take six days for him to go there and back. However, it does look awful for the new king to totally flub things like that.
Also, Gimli only references two NPC’s. Did he forget about Merry?
Technically, Merry isn’t an NPC, but a former PC. Gimli’s player might be operating under the assumption that the DM wouldn’t kill a PC in the absence of the player (most tables I’ve been at have an unspoken gentleplayers agreement like this), so they obviously wouldn’t have the curse disease, or at least wouldn’t need fancy magic healing.
Even if this table has no such agreement, Gimli’s player assuming that it does wouldn’t be out of character for an experienced roleplayer.
But hey, remembering that there were NPCs in need of help at all is still better than what the other players managed lol
He forgot Faramir. “How did it go with healing that halfling and the princess?”
In his defence they actually saw Merry & Eowyn get wounded but never even met Faramir.
True, and good catch! I totally missed that.
Faramir never speaks to Aragorn, Gimli or Legolas in the movies (he is at Aragorn’s coronation but doesn’t actually say anything that I remember). He only interacts with what in this comic are NPCs or former PCs (players now absent).
Now, if Boromir’s player hadn’t insistent on decomposing of his own free will…