I’m seeing a lot of the same questions in the comments of DM of the Rings. Rather than answering the same question in the comments of a dozen threads, I’m going to gather it all up here and deal with it in one post so that I can link back to it as the need arises.
Q: Are you ever going to publish this?
A: Obviously I’m using images from a major motion picture, which means this work can never be for sale. My current plan is to finish this story and then gather up all of the strips, plus a few extras, and put them into a single PDF freely available for download. The versions you’ve been looking at are cropped and reduced and then abused by JPEG compression. I do this to save precious bandwidth, which has gotten scarce lately. When I make the PDF version I’ll use the crisp, high-resolution originals.
Q: Do you have paypal / a wishlist / a way to give money?
A: Thanks, but no. I’m not doing this for money. Partly because of the legal and copyright issues, but mostly because then I would feel obligated to do it, and this would start to feel like a job and not a hobby. The best way to support the comic is to click on the ads whenever you see something you like. That pays for the bandwidth, which is all I ask.
Q: Can I take one of your comics and put it on my website / print it on a poster / tattoo it on my butt / make a commemorative plate / engrave it into a fine mahogany tabletop?
A: Knock yourself out. You’re free to take as much liberty with it as I took with the original source material. I’d appreciate a link back here, but do what you will.
Q: How long will the comic run? When will it end?
A: Good question. Since the beginning I’ve said that I’ll make these until I get sick of them. That seems like a good policy. I’ll make these strips until I get tired of them, or I reach some sort of ending.
Originally I made 22 comics. Buy the time I posted the third strip, I had 22 of them written. The series was supposed to end on strip #22, when the players rebelled and left to go play Mechwarrior. I didn’t think the strips were very funny, and I was mostly just making them to amuse myself.
Then I realized I wanted to make more, and a lot of my friends (both my gaming friends and the friends over in my blogroll) said they enjoyed them and thought they were funny. Thanks guys, seriously.
So, I started inserting new strips into the story I’d already written. For example, in the original run I spent 5 strips in moria: Teamwork, Of Dubious Value, Cartographer’s Lament, The Epic Sounds of Battle, and Our Dearly Discarded. I managed to insert 7 more strips in there, so in the final run we were in Moria for 12 strips. I noticed the added strips were better than the original ones. I was getting better and having fun and attracting a lot of readers. Only a fool walks away from a deal like that, so I scrapped the original ending and opened it up so that I could keep going if I wanted to.
Q: What do you use to make the comic?
A: I write up the dialog in Wordpad. I own all three of the LOTR movies, and I use Cyberlink DVD to nab the screencaps I’ll need. I put them together using Comic Book Creator. I use Paint Shop Pro 8 to edit the comics afterwards and do the things you can’t do in CBC. That’s it.
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Do people really ask if you’re going to “publish” the strip? If so let me let them in on a little secret: It IS published. It’s right here on the Internet!
Just thought that was pretty funny.
Recently found DMotR – and, by extension, your Site – from a link on TVTropes. I’ve only recently got into D&D via 4E though I loved the Strip and Read the whole thing in two sessions. It was the funniest thing I’ve Read in ages and was wondering if you’ve done the PDF yet?
Ditto on the PDF question. I googled for “DM of the rings PDF” and the only result which even made sense (other than this very page) gave my AV fits, so I’m assuming there’s not actually anything available yet?
Umm, guys, is it just me or are none of the DM of the rings comics actually displaying images? The introductory text is there, but all I see is (for example) “DM of the Rings I: The Copious Backstory”, with the comic itself missing. I’ve googled to the end of the internet and back, and can’t seem to get an answer? Has Shamus run out of bandwidth of something, or is it a problem at my end?
Any news on that PDF download of DM of the Rings?