{"id":58604,"date":"2025-04-27T00:00:36","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T04:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=58604"},"modified":"2025-04-30T08:10:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-30T12:10:23","slug":"dm-of-the-rings-cxvi-but-they-dont-fit-in-my-backpack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=58604","title":{"rendered":"DM of the Rings CXVI: But They Don\u2019t Fit in My Backpack!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a><\/p>\n

What can you do when your players are about to do something astoundingly dumb because they aren\u2019t thinking things through? There are many possible solutions.<\/a><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Use an NPC to nudge the players in the right direction.<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Give the players hints out-of-character.<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Allow them to do the stupid thing, then laugh at them later.<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Find smarter players.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    #4 is obviously the wrong answer. Having players smart enough to outwit you is a tremendous pain in the backside. Don\u2019t make that mistake.<\/a><\/p>\n

    – Shamus, Friday Jun 22, 2007<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

    Edit:<\/p>\n

    Two years ago me and my siblings made the decision to remove a slur from the comic during the remastering process. We had a lot of talks, and went back and forth for a while over several weeks. We brought it up to the community, which was divided on the issue. There was actually a period of time where we did leave in the word for several pages before we finally stopped waffling about it.<\/p>\n

    Our final consensus was that yeah, it was probably funny at the time, but the word has evolved to be associated with cruelty, not comedy. Our dad was not a cruel man, and I think that he wouldn’t have wanted to be associated with hurting people. he himself even stopped using the word in his everyday lexicon when it became more than just a rude joke. Consider it like how reboots of old movies will remove outdated and poorly aged segments. You can still laugh at the original, but within the context of the modern era it just doesn’t read like it’s meant to. Instead it just makes him look like a giant asshole to anyone who wasn’t here when the joke was first made.<\/p>\n

    So the word’s been nixed in the reboot. I’m sorry to anyone who was attached to the original joke. But I’m not too keen on anyone seeing my dad as someone who advocated for cruelty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[631],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dm-of-the-rings-remaster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58604"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58643,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58604\/revisions\/58643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}