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quote:Also, Elan's totally going to try to redeem Tarquin, Vader-style. Elan knows full well that if he tries playing out this worn-out cliche without any proper twist to it, he will be doomed to fail for the sake of our suspense and entertainment. He's going to need a better game plan than that.
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Feb 28, 2012 01:04
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Wait, there's a mechanic by which if you have a "personal nemesis" then they also benefit from whatever experience you gain? Okay, I get that plenty of fiction seems to work that way in practice, but...
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May 7, 2012 11:29
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quote:the point is that either way it's still capital-E Evil. Actually I would say it is EVIL, with all capital letters.
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Mar 2, 2013 12:11
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Given my experience with this forum, I would wager a guess that he didn't exactly, ah, choose this particular avatar of his own volition. There is a fifty-fifty chance that he isn't even Jewish. At any rate, there isn't much useful moral insight to be gained from comparing the moral acceptability of methods of mass murder.
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Mar 2, 2013 13:04
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That sort of thing isn't the sole domain of settings based on game systems. It's a quirk of bad writing that can show up in any work that has bothered to set up a few rules and intangibles, only for those to be inconvenient to the plot later. The most obvious (and bad) way out of that bind is to pull some cheap workaround out of your rear end that has never been mentioned before and is never mentioned since. In my book Rich gets a complete and total pass here because D&D is so loving insanely complicated in a hilariously pointless way that sticking to the letter of the rules would be narrative suicide. As far as believable storytelling goes, I think you may as well throw your hands up and go home the moment you accept the ridiculous concept of "hit points" and how they work. I remember when after the roof fell on Thog, people were calculating the damage and whether he was still alive. After the roof fell on him. Sorry, I feel the need to say it again. AFTER THE ROOF FELL ON HIM.
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Mar 5, 2013 13:41
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quote:To be fair, even a 5th level character in D&D has abilities that are far beyond those of normal people That's the point. Why does killing a lot of goblins eventually make you immune to roofs falling on you? It makes no sense. Telling a good story in the D&D verse will inevitably be full of elegantly skidding around that sort of thing.
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Mar 5, 2013 14:13
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quote:Why does killing a lot of goblins eventually make you immune to roofs falling on you? quote:Because the kind of mythic dude tough enough to carve his way through hordes of monsters isn't going to stop just because some rocks fell on him? Shoo, solid mechanics! Out with ye, laws of cause and effect!
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Mar 5, 2013 16:58
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Re: The previous discussion about what the snarl is building. I remember at one point we were told how the snarl came to life - the gods kept arguing about the world's origin, history and so forth, each pushing their own agenda, and the logical contradictions in the universe continuity took shape. From what I gather, this description of events is supposed to lampoon the fate of long running franchises which have had multiple authors dealing with them over the years, e.g. almost every famous comic book super hero ever. Given this interpretation, it stands to reason that the snarl would be building the equivalent of a franchise reboot: A new world similar to the current one, but with a coherent history and no contradictions. It may or may not also destroy the world we're familiar with, depending on your view of what the debut of The Dark Knight meant for that show that went nananananananananaBATMAN. Triple Elation fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Mar 8, 2013 |
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Mar 7, 2013 13:23
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Yes, the law of conservation of life. It says that 1/2(L^2)+1/2(D^2)+1/2(F^2) remains constant, where L is the amount of living mass, D is the amount of diamond dust and F is the amount of authorial fiat desperately trying to retain a modicum of conflict and suspense in a world where anything is possible if you have the right spell for it.
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Mar 8, 2013 19:29
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quote:maybe some epic illusion that makes the target believe that whatever reason they had for seeking the gate is no longer necessary. I wonder who's going to be the one to see through it. The most obvious choice is Roy, who had earlier demonstrated enough analytic skill to see through not-Thog; but to see through an illusion first you have to want to, and we've just seen Roy almost completely broken, and kind of desperate to get things back in order and win the day. Who else can see through the illusion, then? Maybe someone who would, in doing so, prove that he does count. Someone who has the ability to immediately see the scenario that just occurred for what it is, which is a very awkward anticlimax...
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May 5, 2013 17:09
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This trap is just the worst possible thing. It's not a TPK, but it's a TP... Something. Realistically speaking, when they wake up from this they should be having trouble functioning as normal human beings, let alone as adventurers. Unless they can find someone who knows a house-ruled remove psychological trauma spell.
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May 13, 2013 09:58
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Roy owes an apology to both Elan and Belkar now.
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May 22, 2013 16:55
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IMJack posted:Bets on strip #900 being the entire party + Linear Guild being pulled through the rift? Or going back up to ground level in the pyramid elevator.
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Jul 2, 2013 20:47
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The whole thing with hit points just never ceases to be funny to me. So you roll dice to see if you lost any hit points and how many; and then the "hit points" are also just representative of chance/danger/morale/whatever, and not an actual thing you lost. There's no mechanic to keep track of what is actually happening to your character, and whether perchance they should have obviously died a horrible death. I'm picturing an epic level bard being slowly squeezed by an inescapable crushing wall trap, and all the while he's singing that ooooh now you feel like number one song from Bleach which enables him to survive because his epic level singing boosts morale/ability to cope faster than the crushing wall can drain it.
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Jul 12, 2013 17:45
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Though Nale's reaction wasn't very wise given his situation, it was appropriate. Remember this? Tarquin's whole story about how he merely "led Malack to believe" he will get to kill Nale is hogwash. Tarquin likes to manipulate people by telling them what they want to hear - or rather, what he thinks they want to hear. Those two things are often not at all the same thing, and that is one reason Tarquin ultimately failed to manipulate both the linear guild and the OoTS and bring them under the fold of his implicit authority. He apparently thinks everyone's a cold utilitarian like him; he has no concept of other people's emotions or principles. To Tarquin, the OoTS' campaign to save the world is a dry statistic, Nale's rage is incomprehensible and Elan's refusal to accept his help makes no sense. Still, despite his constant failure to intuit people's motivations and adapt his smooth-talking accordingly, Tarquin has this strange unwavering faith that as long as he can tell them a pretty enough story, they would be willing to turn around and do as he says. Then they don't, and he either shrugs and says "oh well" or stabs them in the lung. Because he has that latter option, because he's powerful and influential enough. Woe betide Tarquin if he ends up in the way of someone with the capability of getting him out of the way.
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Aug 22, 2013 00:59
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quote:Say what you want about V, but he does know how to deal with overdramatic petty tyrants who think the whole story revolves around them. Disintegrate. Gust of wind. Now can we PLEASE resume saving the world again?
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Sep 13, 2013 00:15
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Tarquin and his "narrative" gimmick can't go away soon enough. Art imitates life for good reason; myself being an actual person in the real world, I don't find Tarquin's too-clever-by-half approach to manipulating the narrative flow of life very realistic or relatable. IMO it would have been much better for Rich not to paint himself into that corner, and to let Tarquin stay at "I will manipulate how people tell my story and how they will tell it for generations to come" rather than advance to "mwa ha ha I can see through the fourth wall". Really, what saves it for me right now is that 1. Everything else is being handled pretty well, 2. Tarquin will probably go out of focus soon to make way for a new subplot and 3. everyone except for Elan and Haley seems to flat out ignore Tarquin's "I am metagamer hear me roar" act altogether.
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Sep 22, 2013 09:27
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If your character effectively has 90 strength and is one-shotting ancient black dragons, what business does he have actually dealing with ancient black dragons? If I were your DM, I would throw your almighty-psy character into a campaign where the gods demand that he oversee family therapy for Selūne and Shar.
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Sep 27, 2013 17:35
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quote:Rolled three straight natural 20s and one-shotted what was supposed to be my group's recurring nemesis on his first appearance. Well, at that point the DM just might say "fine then" and proceed to introduce the uber-powerful sorcerer Lich who killed your party leader's dad's master and is guarding the thing you're after, your party bard's hair-tearingly persistent evil twin, an anal-retentive paladin more powerful than your whole party who insists on railroading everyone from one plot point to the next, a thing that's under an umbrella in the shadows that can OHKO you if you insist on not being diplomatic with it, and a mad goblin cleric allied with a dark god who is intent on manipulating a rip in the time-space continuum capable of undoing all of creation.
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Sep 27, 2013 22:29
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t=0: Population is composed entirely of always chaotic evil demons. t=10000: Random mutations in the demon population produce a tit-for-tat demon. This demon is an rear end in a top hat to all the other demons, but only because they are assholes to him. t=20000: Tit-for-tat demons are now a small, yet extant, minority within the demon population. They are not assholes to each other, but the chaotic evil demons are assholes to them, and to each other. t=50000: The tit-for-tat demon population thrives on the benefits of cooperation; the chaotic evil demons are held back by their lack of access to those same benefits, have difficulties competing for resources, and are slowly dying out. t=100000: Notable demon political scientist Robert Axelshtrazanga'aa'abazurq authors The Evolution of Cooperation: Why Nice Imps Finish First.
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Oct 20, 2013 01:23
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I keep hearing Belkar as Cartman from South Park. I don't know why, but I do.
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Oct 25, 2013 15:37
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Now if only I had clicked on the 'new posts in the OoTS thread' button and found content actually relating to OoTS, as opposed to in-jokes from some video game I never played and puns about bird rectums.
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Nov 23, 2013 21:44
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quote:When a god or angel speaks in Supestrial, the listener hears it as whatever language they're most fluent in. I am really curious about the implementation details of this language. Is it like Java? It sounds like Java.
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Nov 28, 2013 21:22
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If I could think of a less esoteric, yet still concise way to say "that's not only patently impossible, but patently impossible in an interesting way" and get across the gist of what's so interesting here, I would have used that instead.
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Nov 28, 2013 21:39
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quote:In the next 40 years we build a new city called Neo New York, and then immediately let it fall into ruins? And then I imagine we get right to building Novo Neo New York.
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Jan 10, 2014 23:00
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quote:Three-quartersling Exercise: Let H be the set of real numbers r such that an r-ling could possibly belong to a human/halfling lineage. Prove that H: 1. Has cardinality aleph-null 2. Has zero measure 3. Is dense in the interval [0.5,1]
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Jan 31, 2014 13:49
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quote:Some one challenging a writer to write a story combining the Lost Roman Legion and Pokemon and then turning it into a best selling series of novels. This guy's idea of 'lame', 'difficult' source material to work with is a fantasy franchise which was insanely popular in its heyday and even now, 15 years later, can still get 4 million copies of something sold in a single weekend. Mr. Challenger basically handed his adversary "things doing fancy fantasy battle with other things" and "coming of age saga" as story elements to work with. Well, that's certainly never drawn an audience before. What's a Star Wars?
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Feb 3, 2014 19:05
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I like that V and Roy just got to talk out things like reasonable human beings. I was worried they would put it off forever for some irrational reason and then it would of course eventually come back to bite them in the rear end. Obstacles that result from people just refusing to do the obviously reasonable thing are way too convenient and common in fiction for my taste.
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Feb 16, 2014 16:59
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I have a feeling that Rich could have gone either way on Durkon and on exactly how many Kilonazis the latter clocks in at currently; and that only in this strip Rich finally made up his mind to go with basically the worst possible outcome for the order he could come up with. See, the few last strips were on a fairly positive note. You're thinking, look at the order, look at their capabilities and team spirit, they pulled through even the crazy few last hours and now Roy's sorting everything out, they'll do fine against any threat. And if that's what you're thinking, a plain old 'oh no evil is afoot' cliffhanger isn't going to have a lot of impact. So sure, you can still go with that and make do with what tension is left, but it's much better if you can instead punch your audience right in the gut and destroy that optimistic state of mind with a decisive "LOL NO".
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Feb 20, 2014 00:57
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Sleep of Bronze posted:2e Fighters were supposed to be getting themselves a castle by level 9 so that they could become a lord. If they did, they got about 100 soldiers to follow them around and had to deal with all the other consequences of being a landed ruler like raising taxes, protecting their domain and so on. "Congratulations, lord Alabast the Conqueror. You have reached level 20. Your adventure now continues." "I... I don't understand. This is a copy of Sim City." "Yes. Yes, it is."
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Feb 23, 2014 17:21
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quote:Actually the subtlety was completely lost on me. I thought it was mostly a reference to how well rich can write a villain to have proper movation and some heroes with none at all (miko). Same here, basically. It kind of rubbed me the wrong way, like it was saying "look at our comic it's so morally relative and edgy". It's odd to find out after all these years that it was just a reference to the awful stupidity of alignment debates.
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Mar 24, 2014 22:57
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I think this situation will eventually boil down to the fact that a person and something with access to all that person's memories are not at all the same thing. (See also: Black Mirror 2x01)
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Apr 8, 2014 18:06
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I could have spent the rest of my life happily not having read that. And yet, here we are.
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Apr 17, 2014 22:33
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W.T. Fits posted:Random thing I found amusing: the guy who got injured being named "Felix." (Latin for "lucky.") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vvBAONkYwI
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Apr 19, 2014 21:25
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Pope Guilty posted:Is what's going on here that we're being shown that V not only isn't trying to avoid using more power and magic than necessary, but is instead using magic trivially and as the first resort? Are we seeing a return to V's earlier attitudes after the soul splice-inspired change in behavior? Maybe, but I'm not a big fan of retreading old plot points. Instead I like to think it's to show us the team becoming over-reliant on V and his overpowered magic, which will come back to bite them in the behind when the fiends inevitably play their hand again.
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Apr 25, 2014 00:13
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25 new posts in the OoTS thread, must be a ... oh. Waiting to see who was going to die next and what gambit Tarquin would pull next in the desert was one thing, but this holding out for airship maintenance procedures and carefully-placed subtle foreshadowing on the origins of Durkon's beard is just too much. I think I'll make myself a reminder to come back to this comic in like half a year or so.
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May 19, 2014 10:23
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Hel's evil master plan amounts to casting a vote that she is fairly entitled to. Usually this sort of plotline ends with "mwa ha ha now I will disrupt/corrupt/destroy the sacred <X> and you are all screwed", I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. Though I don't know about the plan's prospects, given that if it succeeds then Hel will have out-tricked Loki, and is that really a thing that you can do? Durkon might not realize this, but his master stroke here may not be such a good idea given that it will involve squandering his elaborate deception of Roy, the main character. Then again, I guess that if even Tarquin could not see that he himself is not the main villain, we can't well expect Hel to reach that kind of realization. #1000 is obviously going to consist entirely of Belkar pacing back and forth in an elevator, saying "Come on... come on!!"
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Aug 25, 2015 06:45
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Roy's plan to push Hel's plan off the rails by brute force will probably fail, but Durkula's not getting to keep that smug grin. Roy is no pushover. I've lost count of how many times in this comic I thought "wow, Roy is hosed" and instead of a stomp what followed was an even match, or a stalemate or even an upset, because Roy soaked the damage and thought of something clever. We've already been through "lol you thought main character shield was a thing in this comic? Think again" once, we're not doing it again. I don't know what the outcome of this battle is going to be, but "Durkula stomps" is probably not it.
Triple Elation fucked around with this message at 15:44 on Aug 30, 2015 |
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Aug 30, 2015 15:29
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It's pretty clear that Hel has thought the political details of this plan through. Every gambit to foil Hel's plan that depends on details that Hel would have known in advance is not going to work, because of reasons. We're not being told these reasons, and that's fine with me - I'm not so sure I want this to be resolved via us finding out that gee, Hel forgot to take into account subsection 3.0.0.0.C of the Godsmoot rules, which we just now found out about and resolve everything neatly. Nor do I care for prolonged speeches explaining how she did take subsection 3.0.0.0.C into account after all. The setup here is that if it weren't for Roy and Belkar, Hel's plan would have worked perfectly - and it's up to Roy and Belkar to change that outcome somehow. I don't know how that's going to happen, but it's certainly not going to happen in a way that would have been possible if they weren't there in the first place.
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Sep 1, 2015 10:04
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Well, fair enough, I would file Elan and Banjo under "details that Hel would not have known in advance".
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Sep 1, 2015 11:19
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