This is from the "that moment when you realize your game is gonna crash and burn" thread, but I rather like it (it's not the game-ruining thing, directly): comical backstories for low-power superheroes.

> Another character was hiking in the woods when she found a strange glowing meteorite. She figured the best thing to do was bring it home and put it on her bedside table so it'd be really close to her brain while she slept. She also made sure to taste it a little, just to be thorough. Worked out well for her, as you would expect.

Bleurgh

"How Constable Benton Fraser got superpowers."

[watches joke sail majestically over the heads of non-Canadians]

[reads Wikipedia article on Benton Fraser]

> Fraser's seemingly strange habits, such as tasting evidence and holding the door for anyone and everyone, add hilarity and whimsy to the show.

I suddenly recall an old buddy cop movie featuring a policeman and an actor paired with him for reality TV purposes. The actor has a coach with him a few times who's teaching him how to behave like a cop

One time, as the pair come across some strange white powder at a crime scene, the coach says: okay, so, when you come across a mysterious substance at a crime scene like this, you've got to dip your finger in it and taste it... like... this. [does so]

The actual cop does nothing of the sort and interjects: "What if it's cyanide?"

at which point the coach begins gasping and coughing and wiping his tongue.

@waxeagle Do D&D 4e's rulebooks actually talk about what happens with arrows after combat? I was looking around for information on ammo & thrown weapons but really didn't find anything, and I'm curious since it's relevant to that shuriken question.

Wow you're online a lot :D

@JonathanHobbs If I still had access to the DDI...

@Julix Me? :O

@BESW Mmhm!

I have found a reference to the existence of such a rule, but can't find the rule itself.

Ultimately, though, 4e shuriken are light thrown weapons, not ammo (in 3.5 they were a weird hybrid).

Conflating shuriken with arrows is a 3.5 artifact, not appropriate to 4e discussion.

It's more like saying that you can't dig your dagger or your throwing axe out of the body.

@BESW Ever the problem in rules discussions.

@JonathanHobbs well yeah, but I only found out because I was on here alot... so all relative :D

Not just you though, at least a handful of very active members I guess :-)

@Julix [wave]

Oh, hello Julix, again.

@Julix This room is a particularly active one, yeah

@BESW [wave back] (also tests waves to see what happens)

Hello to you too.

Blipbip.

Still working on that concept art

Single asterisks italicise, double asterisks bold, triple does both.

@BESW The comments here are relevant for context

I'm pretty good at drawing so what do I do? Scan a very preliminary version and do everything photocolage style in photoshop instead!? wth ... soo much time to find a good picture to cut up and use :D

@Metool Jack and Jill went up the hill to ****. Jack fell down and broke his ****, and Jill came **** after.

For all intents it would seem that shurikens just disappear once you throw them, but they are unlike arrows which, apparently, are explicitly stated as being used up and gone once fired.

@JonathanHobbs eeeeh, not even then.

@BESW ok, right, ta.

Which implies but does not make explicit that ammunition is normally consumed; a percentage retrieval would still be "not limitless."

My understanding so far has been that D&D 4e just says nothing about thrown weapons or arrows actually ever disappearing as such, and it says nothing about picking them up afterwards. It just says: "you use one from your inventory."

But all that is irrelephant to shurikens, which are weapons, not ammunition, and there just doesn't seem to be any mention of thrown weapons remaining or vanishing.

@BESW it does not make it explicit that it even leaves your inventory.

@JonathanHobbs Yes.

"I have five arrows. I will now shoot five people with them. Then, I will shoot five more people with the very same arrows that I still have right here!"

4e:realism::honeybadger:pain

Maybe all arrows in 4e really are just guns that shoot bullets at your enemies when you point them at those enemies.

@BESW Er... How does a honeybadger relate to the concept of pain?

@Metool Honey badgers are partially immune to the toxins of many venomous animals which they eat, allowing them to attack deadly scorpions and snakes without even trying to avoid being stung/bit.

The toxins are still painful and incapacitating, but the honey badger powers through it.

@besw whud up

@JoshuaAslanSmith Hey.

I started writing out a big comment reply and then I was like, wait hes probably in chat

He usually is!

So my views were that in terms of the narrative 1 person would be the person making the decisions, primarily speaking for the group

the type of adventure in the "episode" you setup would make sense. science problem = carter, diplomacy = daniel tealc and oneill both blow stuff up but they have different flavors of that and oneills tactical command abilities are different from tealc's experience as a jaffa and storeies related to that

where this gets tricky is if you and the player are willing to have you as GM voice the other group members, not as GMPCs, but rather you could just give a line or 2 for that characters input to help shape the choices that the main character would make

in a combat situation the player retains control of the full aspect with regards to actions, but you could help flesh out the supporting characters dialog

thoughts?

this question feels like it no longer fits the site's scope

@JoshuaAslanSmith Processing.

@BESW Understood, I just threw 3 different complex and not par for the course ideas at you for fate

So how would this be reflected mechanically? Would the other three just be narrative and only the primary PC have skills/stunts/etc?

Im not sure about that yet, I would prefer for the player to still have access to the other 3's abilities at all times, but not 100 percent sure how to work that out to the best end.

Yeah.

something to continue to refine

There's gotta be a happy medium between "running three more full character sheets than there are players" and "just talking to yourself."

yeah

thats why I was suggesting that from a narrative point of view you would try to talk in the voice of the other 3 team members

especially since sg1 is a well known entity, the only other source material I coudl see this working well with would be star trek next gen or deep space nine

Unfortunately, that just puts intraparty drama in the hands of the GM without any mechanical support.

true its a sticky question

I don't want to talk to myself any more than Trogdor does.

@JoshuaAslanSmith It is rather odd how few examples we can think of for shows with more than three main cast members who all get equal emphasis.

yeah cause original trek is literally 3, scotty isnt on the same level as spock kirk and mccoy

and babylon 5 has too big of a cast

the A-team would be a good example but its sort a proto sg-1 in my opinion

CSI comes to mind, but it rarely treats everyone as equal protagonists in the same episode.

B5 and CSI both say "Who gets to be the PCs this week?"

haha

yea

ill need to think on the issue ore and get back to you

And to be honest, B5 is often The Adventures of Captain Sheridan and the Ragtag Band of Misfits Swept Up in the Wake of His Destiny.

@JoshuaAslanSmith I appreciate the work so far, thanks.

Hello!

Hey.

Wassuptichoo?

I really really like Eclipse Phase's Life Path character generation system. Just made another character with it.

It's entirely random, though you can elect to pick instead of rolling at some points, if you have an idea. It doesn't always work, and sometimes produces NPCs. But the 2 PCs we've made with player input have been brought to life by it.

I suppose it's still on the participants to draw the connections between randomly rolled elements, but the elements are generally cool enough that they give ideas.

Shiny.

examples?

What do you call a magazine that releases six times a year? "Bimonthly?"

First player started with the concept of a doctor looking for his lost family. And conventional chargen would have produced just that - lots of points in medical and academic skills. Instead, in addition to that (the dice were very accommodating in actually rolling Medic as one of the things), he ended up doing a brief stint as an XP-caster cook (consumers can taste the food!!)...

@Magician Is that in their core book?

@AlexP Transhuman, the player guide.

It was a novelty show, as he's been randomly in a neo-chimp morph. But it was popular... Until someone close to him betrayed him. So we've decided his manager had ousted him, and even took his right to use his name, and put another ego into the neo-chimp morph to replace him. Later, the dice told us, he got a chance to exact revenge. So he took it, and exposed the deception. The cooking XP had been ruined, but he still can't do it on his own as the contract stands.

Finally, the player wanted to take a Stalker trait. He doesn't know it, but it's going to be his replacement cook that's only ever wanted to emulate his idol that's stalking him.

So there's a touch of bizarre, an ongoing rivalry and a personal plot, plus a lot of background information that suddenly exist because of a few die rolls.

@AlexP "A magazine that releases every two months."

For the reason why, please consult the definition of bimonthly:

The second player wanted to play an uplifted octopus. Why wouldn't you. As she had a more defined concept, the character was a bit less random. Still, after escaping from hypercorps, she ended up with the criminals, and in a morph optimized for intellectual pursuits. What's that, we wondered, that doesn't make much sense. Then she died during the Fall, but not by the TITANS (think SkyNet), but by a hypercorp. Hmmm, we went. She got a new body - an infomorph, and also optimized for processing.

Hmmmm, we went. Then she died in a terrorist attack. This was starting to look like a pattern. And finally, she had survived another terrorist attack. The dice were very consistent. So she knows something. And she's tried for years to figure out what it is she knows. And she's been considering taking a Compromised Memories trait, as one does. Meaning that of course she got away that last time.

That said, in publishing, it's normally the case that bimonthly means once every two months, but it still might be safer to just say "every two months" :)

I'm fond of "dimonthly," myself.

Hexannually.

Those both work wonderfully.

Fortmonthly?

(well, except that hexannual suffers from the exact same problem XD)

The other definition of "bimonthly" is much better off rendered as "twice-a-month." :P

@JonathanHobbs Yeah, but a magazine that's published once every six years is special.

@Magician I agree with you on that

Apparently for "-annual" there's also "-ennial". Biannual is twice a year, biennial is every two years.

Sexannually?

Sexennial?

@BESW I'm so sorry.

@BESW Fourteen months?

@AlexP In "The Business," it's also "semi-monthly."

I am a fan of 'fortmonthly'

@Metool It's a play on fortnight.

@BESW Are you in "The Business?" If so, I have a question.

(I have introduced sf.se meta to badgers.)

@AlexP Peripherally.

Here is my silly question: for like three years straight, I'd get like two-three different home design magazines without subscribing to them. They weren't just advertorial stuff and they were definitely addressed directly to me. It seemed like they just had some reason to give them away. Is there something about padding your "subscriber" numbers or something?

@BESW If you have the badger script on, and you visit the edit history of your question, it's like the editor was just correcting badger to badger.

@JonathanHobbs Badger -> Badger -> Badger -> Badger -> Badger -> Badger -> Badger

@AlexP Advertising?

@AlexP Hmm. I'm not very familiar with that end of things. I'll do some looking.

It's an idle curiousity.

Well, it may be more important than that.

I know that there are some scams where they sign you a subscription and then when you don't ask for it to be cancelled they hammer you with the subscription fees later.

Did you recently move to a new house or do a lot of renovation work?

Some magazine subscription agencies are plugged into credit card accounts and figure it's worth sending free magazines to people who fit the profile for them, for various reasons.

@BESW Probably they started when I got my Real Job and opened a bunch of accounts to, you know, do things with money.

(Before you get excited: "things" mostly means "immediately spend it on food, shelter, and clothes.")

Tell 'em you don't want the magazines.

This is from the past.

I have moved and they didn't follow me.

Ah, okay.

Just curious.

Since it didn't seem like advertorials but they clearly wanted to keep sending to me. And never billed me, either.

Now I just get the stupid local "paper," because it's delivered "put these into every mailbox" style.

No mystery there.

If we had a mailbox we didn't have to drive to, we'd get the local paper.

(We'd have to ask for it, but we'd like to.)

I'm finally to the point in my little artsy thing that I could show it to someone.

More from crash-and-burn thread:

@Julix That is an amazing thing.

better be, spent all weekend doing it :D

@Julix I don't know what it's for, but I like it. I'm gonna vote for "maybe the tiger should just wear the snake hat," though. :)

there's lots of little things I could still improve, but I need a break :D

@AlexP What the...

Yeah, but he can't grapple with his hair that appears to be snakes...

Oh yeah, did I mention the tiger is actually a riding dog with an illusion spell on it?

yeeeees! :-)

@Julix That explains his size a bit.

@BESW More from the same player and GM:

There's also a rather long and hilarious story about what happens when you play Mage and the GM just shafts you with Paradox all the time even when you're not really, like, doing anything. (One point to whoever can guess what happens.)

@AlexP Nope.

[swaps BESW's gifs around because the absconding badger has suddenly become a lot more relevant]

Heheh.

I'm actually starting a Pathfinder campaign with a friend sometime imminently. She and her friends have been playing D&D 3.5e for many, many years, and are at the point where they pretty much know everything about every spell worth knowing about and have total system mastery and so on.

She's starting the new campaign in Pathfinder because all the little changes everywhere means they have a lot of familiarity but their ability to rely on prior knowledge is completely out of the window.

She would also very much like spellcasting to be more than just "I wish that guy dies" or "I use fireball" and I am pretty content with that.

Huh. I actually got to use my "disagree with flag" powers. Interesting!

I'm not sure Pathfinder is content with it.

Her chosen method is going to be to ask people to put some roleplaying detail into how it happens.

@JonathanHobbs You mean like "His flesh is seared off and he screams, and then he falls down into a pile of quivering charred bones?"

@AlexP No; more like describing what the wizard does when they use fireball, to maintain an actual ability to understand what's going on in the world from a roleplaying perspective.

In other words this group is a fan of the roleplaying side of things, but in combat they tend to fall back on "I shoot a fireball" which is pretty counterproductive and destructive to maintaining the roleplaying side.

"I summon ectoplasm exhaled from the freezing lungs of the damned and, through sheer force of will, bend their congealed screams into the form of a steed to bear me."

@BESW EVERY SPELL is better that way.

@AlexP What way in particular? c(:

Kyeh.

(I am not sure if I'm missing a reference or y'all are actually being genuine)

@JonathanHobbs I'm genuine.

@JonathanHobbs I just made it up, but it's based on solid sociomythological notions.

Magic, traditionally, is horrific and impactful because the power has to come from somewhere, and that "somewhere" is rarely a nice place.

@AlexP Then yes I agree. :)

Every spell is better when the character at least says something about how it's happening and what's going on.

Then you just end up sitting around flavoring your food with the congealed screams of the damned.

So I took an ordinary harmless non-combat spell and gave it a source which turned it from "I have an imaginary horse I can actually ride" to "I exploit the despair of sinners in Hell for my own convenience."

And using the congealed screams of the damned to read scrolls.

This is actually a Burning Wheel character I had for a short while.

"The Congealed Screams of the Damned" is a good name for a Cradle of Filth tribute band.

I went deep into Rogue Wizard so I ended up with Spooky (a mere descriptive trait) and Aura of Fear (a send-people-running-away-screaming trait). And my main magical paradigm was basically the raw driving soul-wrenching emotional energy of the dead.

That said, also a curve ball for Pathfinder: the setting is low magic. Most PCs will be martial. Divine and arcane power does exist; people are widely unaware of its existence or nature. It will almost certainly emerge further on in the plot in very significant ways.

So I played the Aura as a "I can't really ever fully turn it off, man."

@AlexP I love it.

@JonathanHobbs That could be difficult to maintain balance with, but it could be very cool.

Especially since you're a rogue wizard with an aura of fear manifested from the raw driving soul-wrenching emotional energy of the dead, and I'm imagining that being said in the voice of a hippy.

...now I'm imagining you're Lord Hater.

@BESW Yeah; I'm mainly comfortable with it because of the level of social maturity of the GM. I trust they'll manage it well, and interact with us well.

@JonathanHobbs Which setting?

@Metool Custom setting.

Ah, rightyo.

After the holidays, a new column on D&D Next. Nothing particularly interesting, the best part is the owlbear illustration:

@Magician That guy on the left is having way too much fun.

@AlexP He's armed with a special owlbear backscratcher.

@AlexP Anyone with an owlbear for a buddy in a fight is going to be having fun.

Is it just me, or does the owlbear look copypasta'd?

@JonathanHobbs It's true. He clearly is helping the owlbear.

@BESW It's not just you, the author's handled the general uh... spacial placement of feet and so on a little strangely.

@AlexP "I know the winning side when I see it! Later, losers!"

@BESW Ha! Yes

@BESW By the way, we can link owlbears back to the conversation about canon the other night. The comics.

I also find it funny how much the guy in the foreground looks like a Clyde Caldwell character. But then the rest of the hallmarks of his work -- which can be summarized as "he's a pretty good artist, though a bit too into the heaving lady bosoms" -- are nowhere to be found.

So, my friend just got back from some convention and he says that his new favorite game ever is Wolf Spell, from an issue of Worlds without Master.

@Magician So apparently Worlds without Master is quality stuff. (See the post above this one.)

@BESW actually i'll put it this way: the perspectives are off, the people are in the scene but they are in the scene wrong; everyone is in too close and facing a strange direction (except for the guy backing up the olwbear against the losers), the owlbear appears off-balance (but not for any clear reason), the placement of feet is weird, etc.

@BESW a lot of the little things in my witch picture are copy pasted too :-P especially textures, and then warped to fit the shape I needed....

It'd help if the owlbear's tail was covering the spear-guy's feet, and if the spear-guy were not appearing to overlap the same 3D space as the owlbear.

or if the spear-guy were just drawn lower.

@JonathanHobbs Also the owlbear's got a white outline, which is common practice in hatch-pen to keep complex patterns of the figure from blending with complex patterns of the background... but only the owlbear has it.

@AlexP Good to know. Now, to find the time to read it...

@Julix Yes, but your art style is collage, whereas this D&D Next illustration is not.

@BESW This is not a D&D Next illustration. It's ancient!

@BESW .... ok now it's beginning to actually look copy-pasted.

haha, true. If it was an actual drawing they would have probably just fixed it (i.e. color over the tail until you can't see the stupid toes anymore...

This picture is signed, here's the artist: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Roslof

@Magician Oh good! I was hoping so, and that D&D Next was not trying to be super old school with its art.

@Magician Foolish me, I assumed that they'd been trying to evoke the old-school feel, rather than just re-using the art.

there, <2 min fix :-)

@Julix Looks a slight bit off in the line direction, but otherwise fair.

hehe, true, I noticed that right after I uploaded.

@Julix What did you change?

the toes.

they were in the middle of the tail before

@Julix OH LOL! Now I see it.

@Julix way better. guy's spear is still appearing to occupying the same 3D space as the owlbear's body, though, without actually being impaled in him.

i presume dimensional shifts are responsible.

didn't actually think about that :D

I didn't follow the conversation too closely - but the toe thing I noticed myself

not very fixable without redrawing him or introducing the fact the owlbear is being stabbed

@JonathanHobbs The owlbear is a hologram being projected from behind the arch by disgruntled groundskeeper Mr. McReady.

@AlexP makes sense

That's why the guy on the left looks so happy.

He just poked the owlbear and found out it's a fake.

"this owlbear's unbeatable!" "and harmless!" "we don't stand a chance!" "neither does it!" "let's get out of here man!" [flee]

@BESW Nono. He's working with the owlbear. He's prepared to stab through it at the invaders.

On the other hand, by the looks of things they are not equipped to deal with the threats of a dungeon abandoned amusement park with hologram-level tech.

They are not prepared for Mr Bones' Wild Ride

There you go. Good news and bad news.

Good news: dimensions are no longer being broken. - bad news the fight will be over sooner than expected... critical hit went straight through... :-O

:O

poor mister owlbear

What's axe-guy looking at?

and/or missus, it is hard to tell with owlbears

@Metool "guys what's going on i can't see"

@Metool "Who's the guy with the easel? RUN, MISTER ARTIST, WHILE YOU STILL CAN!"

So, a short gaming story. This is kinda the same BW story as before, just a different part of it.

Hey, look what I found.

@BESW I can't figure out whether that's a color cover or a black-and-white cover and then some kid had fun with it.

@AlexP all signs point to probably coloured in with pencil

So, our BW session. The protagonist, Olrun, is trying to find her friend and once-and-maybe-again-but-it's-been-years-because-magic boyfriend, who she knows is now a successful merchant somewhere. I've exhausted mundane means so Olrun is turning to magic now. I flubbed the roll to establish that a sorceress lives kinda nearby, though, so instead of a sorceress she is a horrible evil giant spider...

This session, Olrun and her two thief buddies stole a bunch of treasure in the form of wealthy people's personal effects. Which is gonna be hard to dump unless they have a fence with deep pockets and far-reaching connections. Like a successful merchant with a shady past who totally won't mind doing them a favor. So now Olrun's thief friends are going with her to this "sorceress," too. Because they've just hidden their treasure and can't do anything with it right now anyway.

Oh but while stealing it all I kinda stole a Byzantine princess.

Somehow the standing on it's tail bugged me so I fixed that too. I considered fixing the axe-man or adding another enemy, but I really don't care enough :D

Who's totally on Olrun's side now, too, and seeks the "sorceress" to find out what happened to her brother after his conspiracy to take out the old fogeys who have a strangehold on the imperial bureaucracy failed terribly.

Stealing princesses sounds fun... for personal use, or commercial use?

@Julix For "Olrun is possessed by the long-lost soul of her undead many-times-great-grandfather, the Undying Emperor of Constantinople, and her thoughts and desires sometimes get muddled with his" purposes. And he was kinda pining for a connection to his family, I guess.

Princesses are long-term assets; they mature into queens.

It was a very short-term kidnapping, in other words.

@BESW Only if they marry someone important, no?

At the end of the session, my wife and I had a discussion about which Wizard of Oz character each one of them should be.

@BESW You have to weigh the reward of potential queen-hood against the risk of knight and/or plumber invasions. It's a complex analysis.

@Magician One of the variables is the value of 1/2 her father's kingdom; it's directly proportionate to the "knights" variable.

Part of the fun was that I introduced her into the fiction with a trait I had. 'Well, I'm stealing everything of value that catches my eye here, and shadow-demon soul-of-Justinian certainly would find a descendant of his to be eye-catching and valuable." Collaboration is awesome(*).

* - Caveat: Don't create and resolve your own challenges, and don't introduce bits that you don't want anyone else to play with and change at all. Then it's lame.

@BESW I think we need to break up knights into idealistic knights doing it for love, or l-knights, and profiteering knights doing it for 1/2 kingdom, or p-knights. We have to take these things into account!

@BESW Yup, I've avoided i-knight for a reason :P

Just learned about the surprise spell... (adding sneak attack to spells!) - while you'd only get one of the magic mistles hitting one target to add sneak, if you throw a fireball EVERYONE is snuck attack by that! Imagine a wedding crasher. What a horrible way to end a party... just when it's getting hot everyone dies.

Therefore we find that while kingom's value will cancel out in the risk-to-benefit analysis, it comes down to the amount of idealistic knights.

@Julix I thought magic missile doesn't count at all because no attack roll? (In 3.5, at least?)

I thought it was about damage rolls...

Wait, no, that's criticals.

"The Surprise Spells class feature allows the Arcane Trickster to add his sneak attack dice to spells that deal damage that target flat-footed foes. This damage is only applied once per spell. In the case of fireball this means it affects all targets in the area, with each getting a save to halve the damage (including the sneak attack damage). In the case of magic missile, the extra damage is only added once to one missile, chosen by the caster when the spell is cast.

Therefore, to make the kidnapping of princesses profitable, one has to undermine the knightly ideals of the society. You could have graphs and everything.

But once you got all the local princesses imagine all the traveling you'll have to do - and then it's not even to go rescue one, but to steal one....

@Julix Diversified portfolios are useful, though.

Princess hedge-fund.

unless you can find one really evil princess. steal her, then let some guy save her and crash their wedding (providing her with protection of fire) - then you steal her again. ---- this can either go really wrong (i.e. knights all get scared no one comes anymore) or really right and drives up the demand (as she must be really worth it for someone to do that)...

by crash their wedding I mean as described above :D

Quick question: What does the Tin Man need a heart for?

I'm having a hard time finding a picture of a dragon with a calculator.

@AlexP Empathy.

Is he cold and distant originally?

Well, technically he doesn't need a heart.

well, yes

But he believes that having been turned to tin and losing his heart makes it impossible for him to be instinctively kind and gentle.

@Magician Thank you.

The Tin Man thinks that whereas he has to be carefully, consciously, deliberately kind and gentle, people with hearts do it without effort.

Thanks.

It is obviously ridiculous, because he weeps (and must be oiled or he'll rust) when he accidentally steps on a bug.

But he uses this as an example of why he needs a heart: a person with a heart wouldn't have stepped on the bug in the first place.

It's in line with the rest of Dorothy's misfit crew and their imagined problems.

Courage, cleverness, empathy--each of them already had these things, but because they had to work hard to use their qualities they thought they didn't have them, not understanding that working hard is part of using your qualities.

The ultimate irony being that while it appears Dorothy was the only member of the little band who needed something she didn't already have, in fact she not only had the solution all along... she didn't have to work hard to use it.

</litlecture>

Okay, so in our case the princess who's just rediscovering her desire for cutthroat court politics / insurrection is the cowardly lion. But I can't quite make up my mind between the ex-convict petty criminal being the tin man and the old blind beggar-musician being the scarecrow or vice versa.

Is cataract surgery more like an artificial heart or an artificial brain?

Olrun is, of course, Dorothy. She's the protagonist. She's not from here. She's a killer. Witches are weirdly drawn to her. The terrible shadow-monster that kills everything is Toto, obvs.

Perhaps the parallels don't need to be drawn so literally.

@BESW This is kind of a side farce. :)

@AlexP Then you should reference Zardoz.

In play it's more like "New NPC and two old NPCs who are probably gonna bite it because I am terrible at keeping NPCs alive for very long."

@AlexP Psh, that's not your fault.

NPCs are like guppies: when they aren't killing each other, they die for no apparent reason, but if you have enough of them you'll hardly notice.

It's their own fault for hopping on the train to murdertown, really.

@Magician There's currently a NSFW Oglaf comic about this.

(And it's great. And it's extremely NSFW.)

@JonathanHobbs I'll have to wait until I get home, then :)

@JonathanHobbs It really is the best fantasy-genre webcomic, isn't it?

lol

@AlexP Out of the ones I've seen, I think so yes

Rice Boy and Vattu are also a contender

(both are by the same author, though they're certainly not Medieval Fantasy)

Rice boy is fantastic and I highly recommend it. It's also a totally free webcomic that has already been completed, and its author is now working on Vattu. If it's your thing, Rice Boy can also be a bit surreal at times.

(which I think is a very positive thing even from a regular fantasy perspective)

Good Morning.

Spaaaaam in the stack! Flags requested.

Marked as spam. :)

Car dealer magic is a new one on me.

Seems like a Buffy plot.

Also: "sugar mummy."

Suddenly jelly babies seem rather sinister.

I don't like spam.

It leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."

:)

@BESW Have you heard of The You Testament?

No, but it sounds insufferably twee with a smidgeon of self-righteousness.

Ah, it's a game.

It sounds like a self-help manifesto of the "replacing the social contract with the cult of the individual" genre.

Okay, so I read a little about it.

I was going "Okay, a little weird, but I've seen worse on the SDA food store book rack," until I got to the bit about Making a Prophet.

My tolerance for Weird Christian Revisionism may be unusually high, though, from overexposure.

(The weirdest thing about The Gospel According to Biff was its author, not its content.)

@Metool Is there something in particular that made you mention it to me?

Not particularly.

Well, thanks for sharing. It's definitely something to know about.