Friday, August 31, 2012

Comic - What's in a name


***Of course, this comics refers to the game, Project Ninja Panda Taco. Famed for its successful Kickstarter and mentioned on an episode of Gamer to Gamer.But, mostly, I'm poking fun at D&D Next. I hate the name "Next".It's kinda terrible. Yes, they just want to call it "Dungeons & Dragons" and avoid calling it "5th Edition" because of the negative stigma and connotations the gaming community has heaped upon the term "edition". Edition wars and the like.However, we've already had an edition that was just called "Dungeons & Dragons". In  point of fact, we've had two edition just called "Dungeons & Dragons, which we refer to as "OD&D" and "Basic" as a means to differentiate between them and distinguish from discussion of the game as a whole. If they don't call it 5th edition, everyone will call it 5e anyway just to clarify what they're talking about.The only way to avoid calling it AD&D 5th Edition is to call it Basic D&D 6th Edition, or start a whole new line. Revised D&D 1st Edition or something.Anyway, this is all beside the point. Really, if you take away one thing from this comic and post it should be this: the Wizards of the Coast logo is hard to draw. Really. Give it a try. I tried a half-dozen times and it always looked terrible. 

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Comic - Plausible



***A little 3rd Edition teasing today.It was noted in 3e that a cat was CR 1/4 while a human commoner was somewhere around CR 1/3. Which meant, all things being equal, a house cat could kick the crap out of a grown human being. Okay, the game only referred to "cats", which meant it could just as easily refer to feral cats living in the mean alleys of Waterdeep and not necessarily the contemporary domesticated and pampered Mr. Whiskers. Even then, the average medieval tabby kept as a pet was likely a skilled mouser and trained killing machine.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Comic - Oh, rats

***The "bag o' rats" is one of the sillier ways some D&D players try and mess with the reality of their game world. I don't know of anyone who actually used a bag of rats, and personally consider it more of a "thought experiment", but you never know what a player will try.The bag works like this: the PC has a power that triggers off the death of an enemy. They kill something and a power triggers. Like a raging charge or extra attack or some other bonus. So, the cheap solution is to just carry a bag of rats and kill one whenever you need the power to activate. 

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Comic - Venca's

***Vecna is a classic D&D villain.Not being a major D&D lore junkie, I'm uncertain if the artifacts attributed to him came first, or the evil plots and story. I believe it was quite late in the game's early history before he appeared in an adventure, but that doesn't mean he wasn't huge in a homegame or the magazines. Vecna is most famous for his artifacts. The Hand of Vecna and the Eye of Vecna. The cool hook behind them was that they could replace missing body parts. You can imagine them being introduced to the game after an evil DM removed a hand from a player, oinly to have it replaced with an evil magic item. Although, there is the cool dilemma of finding the item first and then having to do some self-surgery to use the artifact. Amusingly, the day after I drew this comic I ran my Ravenloft homegame, and removed a PC's eye. Fate?

Comic - Jack and the Beans

***I would just like to say, on my initial pencil sketching, the cow's head looked awesome. It was a great cow. It's cow mamma would have been proud. Somewhere when inking and tweaking I lost all the awesome. The body was always poorly proportioned and I didn't notice until looking at the much smaller picture.

Comic - Fighter Spells

***When I first started doing the comic, one of my first ideas was fighters casting spells. It was also requested quickly by Newbie DM who is more than a little responsible for my doing this strip.It's a tricky idea for a one-panel comic. Trying to represent a classical 1e fighter and a modern 4e fighter without multiple panels of dialogue. Depicting a "spell" without motion. 4th Edition fighters, at least the early ones, kinda do cast spells. Which bugged the crap out of me and really drove me away from the edition for a time. It's not the fact that fighters have powers, but that they have the same powers as wizards and clerics: the same number of powers, the same formatting, the same recharging, and the same usage, etc. Some people really dug the fighter powers, so it's a matter of personal taste...

Comic - Warlock Pact

***There's bound to be some entity out there willing to exchange souls for phenomenal cosmic power who is super cute and cuddly. I do think warlocks suffer from the "badass" syndrome. They all have the same shallow brooding darkness of a teenaged goth kid from the suburbs (we can recognise our own). Okay, they wanted power and to be special, so they sold their soul (or something) to a nameless being. But was looking like an '80s metal character part of the deal? If they lacked any magical power and had to bargain for it, shouldn't more warlocks look, well, average?I think I'd like to see more witchy warlocks. The classical warlock who made the pact with Satan (or devilish forces). 

Comic - Named Sword

***Little known fact: the goblin words for "fluffy pink bunny" are"eckscal eebur".

Comic - Buried Treasure

***This image comes from the classic and iconic Trampier illustration from the 1st Edition Monster Manual, which was also mimicked for the cover of Adventurer's Vault 2.

Comic - Monster

***Yes, I'm implying someone at Hogwarts built and animated a monster built from corpses. 10 points from Slytherin. Frankenstien's Monster is pretty much the direct inspiration for flesh golems. But what's always bugged me about flesh golems is that they're large-sized monsters. Large sized. As in twice the height as your average dude.Yes, Frankenstein's Monster in the classic Universal movie was pretty big. But he wasn't rocking the 10 foot mark. Who are they building all these giant flesh golems from? Is there some graveyard filled with basketball players and gigantism sufferers with really poor security?

Comic - Errata

***The last couple editions of D&D (including Pathfinder) have had some pretty heft Updates and changes over the years. At its worst, I was telling my party not to use the latest book for a month until the first wave of Updates had passed and cleared away the most broken options. A different party managed to break a boss fight through a poorly worded spell, sending me to the Paizo forums that night, scrolling for a Designer's corrective post before the net game.

Comic - Sword in the Stone

***This is one of those classic bits of story/ prophecy that would not survive contact with your average D&D party. They'd spend all of 30-seconds trying to pull the sword out normally, the move onto Taking 20 on Strength checks with buff spells to really maximize their pulling power. Then they'd start thinking outside the box and begin trying to grease the sword or disintegrate the stone.

Temporary Home

I need a place to host my comic strips.

I'm not sure if I'm dedimicated enough of a cartoonist to spring for an actual URL and set-up a full website. That's a steep financial commitment for something I've been doing for a fortnight. Plus, my finances are stretched tight at the moment.

So a temporary home. If I end up making enough content to warrant a site I might make one.