Standard act sequence: Introduce characters, put them in as bad a situation as possible, then get them out. We appear to be finishing up the 2nd.
Now, comedy rules generally do not allow for characters to die. Simply put, it’s not fun, and that’s the whole purpose of your standard comedy. So normally, even though you worry about your comedy characters, there’s a belief they’ll be fine.
I’m still EXPECTING that to happen here, but the feeling isn’t quite as strong as it could be. Very good writing.
Well kinda avoided here but: http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/05132009/
doesn’t pick up with her agian until these ones: http://ps238.nodwick.com/issue/issue-18-high-spirits/
but basically she wanders around performing post-hypnotic-suggestion and such until she gets healed
(her power was a guardian-angel-like spirit-thingy that kept her from even getting a cold, so remove that and you get immune system mayhem).
Honestly, at this point in the game, I’m expecting Grinner to just win, everyone dies, and Mike to announce he’s done with the comic due to burnout or moving on wit his life or something. Seriously, I cannot see any particular way for them to get out of this; he’s got too many angles covered and has shown he’s too smart to handle. I’m expecting Rusty to try something, then get stomped, and one page of everyone dying, a big ‘The End’, and that’ll be that.
I somehow doubt that’ll happen. This is a very lighthearted comic, so why end it on such a dark note? An epilogue needn’t involve all characters dying; them living vaguely happy lives works just as well.
There’s more than one example out there of a lighthearted comic getting a tonal shift due to either something or other happening in real life, or just deciding ‘nah, this is getting dull.’
Believe me, I HOPE things get better, but it’s just really hard for me to see how without giving Grinner the Idiot Ball (to use a TVTropes definition), which he’s been shown is NOT something he wants to hold on to.
Unless the failure demonstrates the flaws in their plan, and after they all lose, they find themselves all waking up back with Zar at the gold farm between reality. Or something like that.
I always thought that was a pretty big loophole with D&D. Oops, I put a sword all the way through you and cut through your kidney, stomach, and severed a few nerves in your spine. BUT, you still have 2 hitpoints, so you are ok if you drink a potion or something.
First, have you tried it the other way? I have. Runequest when it first came out (“Okay, we have two hours to come up with your 16-year-old peasant’s background; that should be just enough if you don’t die during character creation…”), Morrow Project (“Okay, the bullet hits you in the second joint of your little finger: roll against systemic shock or die…hey, help me look up these modifier charts…”) and the Tri-Tac stuff (Bureau 13, Fringeworthy, et cetera: “Okay, the bullet hits you in the second joint of the little finger of your left hand; it breaks the bone but doesn’t sever the artery and you’ll suffer no lasting nerve damage… how about we roll for the other four rounds in that burst?”) .
Basically, the more ‘realistic’ the system becomes, the slower combat resolution becomes and the more frequently character re-creation happens; eventually, both lead to bored players and overworked DM’s. Simple works better for most purposes; maybe with some good bloodcurdling GM descriptions of damage done (“He’s lost three-quarters of his HP in one blow: that’s a mess of broken ribs and blood, folks…) and a good critical-hits table.
Second, are you sure you really grok “Fantasy”?
Pfft. I understand “Fantasy” just fine. I’ve had some involvement of it with my life since the 1980s when I first started playing D&D. I am just saying it is an obvious “loophole”. Nothing against the comic of course.
As for modeling it, we went through that phase of trying to get it to seem more realistic, mainly to hamper the party from wanting to have those kind of attacks. As you stated, it soon became something time-consuming and we threw it out for the standardized play.
We even went in the opposite direction, where I started the game with a pet pig and kept having it protected and healed up because we bolstered its hit points and made it our party “mascot” as it just followed us around and didn’t do anything. We kept taking things and putting it on the pig, which drove the DM crazy. The DM became so fanatical on wanting to kill our “party pig” he finally had it buried under a rock wall that collapsed down a 50′ pit. He then had to have an underwater spring fill the pit with water because the party started to go down to try and recover its body to resurrect it in town. He never let us start with small non-useful animals after that..Ah, good times.
It can work in video games though since the computer can do the calculations. (It still leads to super deadly combat, but tat fits with some games.) The spinning Dwarf Fortress hits the goblin in the arm, severing it! The severed piece sails off in an arc!
This is gross misinterpretation of “Hit points” abstraction. Hit points are about how much endurance your character have to avert lethal blows and make them nonlethal. And amount of lost hit points is not about “how many times I’ve got my guts slashed and pierced” it is about how much you character already strained himself to avoid swords-to-guts happening to him.
So, as long as caracter still have some endurance left to avert lethal blows, situation like “I put a sword all the way through you and cut through your kidney, stomach, and severed a few nerves in your spine” cannot happen, unless it is some kind of coup de grace, and in case of coup de grace this strike would be fatal regardless of remaining HP.
I recall some old game manual (I forget which one) explaining hit points as more an aggregate of skill at avoidance, divine favor, blind luck, and yes, plain physical toughness that all sort of pile together to explain why a character is still alive. That guy who got stabbed straight through, maybe they dodged just enough that it went through their clothes and gave ’em a wicked slice on their ribs, but didn’t actually impale, maybe their god interceded or they just got lucky and the sword managed to pass clean through while only nicking the organs around it. The loss of hit points isn’t just that they’re “more hurt,” it’s that their luck and whatnot is that much closer to running out.
It goes back at least to AD&D (that’s the most recent edition I’ve read, and it was in there). And it was always hand-wavy. If hit points really mean “You used up a little stamina dodging that blow” then why do poisoned weapons trigger when you take HP damage from them?
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Owwwwwwwww…
That’s all I have to say. :-/
All I can say is nice try.
And now she has her hands free, a weapon close at hand and hopefully a healing potion of some sort.
All goes according to plan (she had “stick ’em with the pointy end” right?)
“A word in the right ear does wonders.”
That’s right, presti was the pointy end one.
Hmm…very hmm.
What about the left ear?! THIS EAR PREJUDICE MUST END!
You don’t want the left ear; it’s sinister.
A sword in the right ear *does* wonders, especially if it comes out of the left ear.
Not bad. Surprisingly so.
Standard act sequence: Introduce characters, put them in as bad a situation as possible, then get them out. We appear to be finishing up the 2nd.
Now, comedy rules generally do not allow for characters to die. Simply put, it’s not fun, and that’s the whole purpose of your standard comedy. So normally, even though you worry about your comedy characters, there’s a belief they’ll be fine.
I’m still EXPECTING that to happen here, but the feeling isn’t quite as strong as it could be. Very good writing.
Well kinda avoided here but:
http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/05132009/
doesn’t pick up with her agian until these ones:
http://ps238.nodwick.com/issue/issue-18-high-spirits/
but basically she wanders around performing post-hypnotic-suggestion and such until she gets healed
(her power was a guardian-angel-like spirit-thingy that kept her from even getting a cold, so remove that and you get immune system mayhem).
That’s going to leave a mark. “Cleric. Cleric.”
Wait a second, Roxy isn’t on the don’t-kill list, is she?
She isn’t. It’s Presti that the Mob wants.
Looks bad, doesn’t it?
Though we should remember that it was Roxy who healed Maddie at the tavern.
She is a bard, Bards can heal, amongst other things. Now, I wonder who’s ear she’s going to have to whisper in. Probably, Drooly McPuggles there
I very rarely find myself startled by a comic panel. This one did it. Wow.
Honestly, at this point in the game, I’m expecting Grinner to just win, everyone dies, and Mike to announce he’s done with the comic due to burnout or moving on wit his life or something. Seriously, I cannot see any particular way for them to get out of this; he’s got too many angles covered and has shown he’s too smart to handle. I’m expecting Rusty to try something, then get stomped, and one page of everyone dying, a big ‘The End’, and that’ll be that.
I somehow doubt that’ll happen. This is a very lighthearted comic, so why end it on such a dark note? An epilogue needn’t involve all characters dying; them living vaguely happy lives works just as well.
There’s more than one example out there of a lighthearted comic getting a tonal shift due to either something or other happening in real life, or just deciding ‘nah, this is getting dull.’
Believe me, I HOPE things get better, but it’s just really hard for me to see how without giving Grinner the Idiot Ball (to use a TVTropes definition), which he’s been shown is NOT something he wants to hold on to.
And I’m expecting Cube to appear and get that shit done. As always.
Failing that, Summon a Bigger Fish works as well =)
I’m hoping Rusty heard the dog whistle to find the cavern, eats the crane, thus dropping one heck of die out of the bag to hit/roll for heavy damage.
Unless the failure demonstrates the flaws in their plan, and after they all lose, they find themselves all waking up back with Zar at the gold farm between reality. Or something like that.
Don’t worry, fantasy characters don’t need internal organs, as long as they don’t run out of life points…
I always thought that was a pretty big loophole with D&D. Oops, I put a sword all the way through you and cut through your kidney, stomach, and severed a few nerves in your spine. BUT, you still have 2 hitpoints, so you are ok if you drink a potion or something.
Haven’t played it, but I was under the impression that D&D was flexible enough that you could model that if you wanted.
First, have you tried it the other way? I have. Runequest when it first came out (“Okay, we have two hours to come up with your 16-year-old peasant’s background; that should be just enough if you don’t die during character creation…”), Morrow Project (“Okay, the bullet hits you in the second joint of your little finger: roll against systemic shock or die…hey, help me look up these modifier charts…”) and the Tri-Tac stuff (Bureau 13, Fringeworthy, et cetera: “Okay, the bullet hits you in the second joint of the little finger of your left hand; it breaks the bone but doesn’t sever the artery and you’ll suffer no lasting nerve damage… how about we roll for the other four rounds in that burst?”) .
Basically, the more ‘realistic’ the system becomes, the slower combat resolution becomes and the more frequently character re-creation happens; eventually, both lead to bored players and overworked DM’s. Simple works better for most purposes; maybe with some good bloodcurdling GM descriptions of damage done (“He’s lost three-quarters of his HP in one blow: that’s a mess of broken ribs and blood, folks…) and a good critical-hits table.
Second, are you sure you really grok “Fantasy”?
Pfft. I understand “Fantasy” just fine. I’ve had some involvement of it with my life since the 1980s when I first started playing D&D. I am just saying it is an obvious “loophole”. Nothing against the comic of course.
As for modeling it, we went through that phase of trying to get it to seem more realistic, mainly to hamper the party from wanting to have those kind of attacks. As you stated, it soon became something time-consuming and we threw it out for the standardized play.
We even went in the opposite direction, where I started the game with a pet pig and kept having it protected and healed up because we bolstered its hit points and made it our party “mascot” as it just followed us around and didn’t do anything. We kept taking things and putting it on the pig, which drove the DM crazy. The DM became so fanatical on wanting to kill our “party pig” he finally had it buried under a rock wall that collapsed down a 50′ pit. He then had to have an underwater spring fill the pit with water because the party started to go down to try and recover its body to resurrect it in town. He never let us start with small non-useful animals after that..Ah, good times.
Aw… sounds like your GM needed a little more quirk in his sense of humor. My favorite GM would have loved the idea of a party mascot pig. ^_^
It can work in video games though since the computer can do the calculations. (It still leads to super deadly combat, but tat fits with some games.) The spinning Dwarf Fortress hits the goblin in the arm, severing it! The severed piece sails off in an arc!
This is gross misinterpretation of “Hit points” abstraction. Hit points are about how much endurance your character have to avert lethal blows and make them nonlethal. And amount of lost hit points is not about “how many times I’ve got my guts slashed and pierced” it is about how much you character already strained himself to avoid swords-to-guts happening to him.
So, as long as caracter still have some endurance left to avert lethal blows, situation like “I put a sword all the way through you and cut through your kidney, stomach, and severed a few nerves in your spine” cannot happen, unless it is some kind of coup de grace, and in case of coup de grace this strike would be fatal regardless of remaining HP.
I recall some old game manual (I forget which one) explaining hit points as more an aggregate of skill at avoidance, divine favor, blind luck, and yes, plain physical toughness that all sort of pile together to explain why a character is still alive. That guy who got stabbed straight through, maybe they dodged just enough that it went through their clothes and gave ’em a wicked slice on their ribs, but didn’t actually impale, maybe their god interceded or they just got lucky and the sword managed to pass clean through while only nicking the organs around it. The loss of hit points isn’t just that they’re “more hurt,” it’s that their luck and whatnot is that much closer to running out.
D&D, edition 3.5, Players Handbook, page 145.
It goes back at least to AD&D (that’s the most recent edition I’ve read, and it was in there). And it was always hand-wavy. If hit points really mean “You used up a little stamina dodging that blow” then why do poisoned weapons trigger when you take HP damage from them?
“It’s just a flesh wound” =)
Yes, but then why would you need to heal those points?
Sometimes you need a little pick-me-up to get your dodging muscles back in shape…
“A word in the right ear does wonders” – and his right ear is open.
Panel 5: Poor Slobber. That’s exactly the same expression my cat gets when the dryer buzzes.