If you were going to rewrite part of the comic what would you change? [Archive]

Porthos

2013-05-02, 07:44 PM

I feel arrogant second-guessing the Giant as it is.

I don't, because no author is perfect. Even the ones I highly admire. :smallwink:

Now lazy criticism? Yeah, that's arrogant. But one that has time and thought put into it (like yours)? Not so much.

What I snipped from your post is an interesting take. Not sure I would have liked it, but I think it probably would have been better than what was delivered.

I've thought about the Celia thing off and on quite a bit, as it really is one of the few things that bugged me about the comic. Doubly so since she was a favorite character of mine before the Resistance Arc. And even during it she didn't rub me the wrong way nearly as much as some people did.

But as I think about it, the real problem with Celia, besides inconsistent characterization (she had no trouble zapping Nale (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0070.html) when she was pissed, she had no trouble suggesting that Haley solve things with violence (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0531.html) when she didn't think she'd be around to see it) is that she came off as something close to a Straw Pacifist. Which is ironic because she was supposed to be shown as giving decent points.

When it was handled well it was handled very well (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0538.html). When it wasn't.... Well it made her come off as a painfully naive person who had absolutely no way of looking at people through other people's eyes. Argumentative and judgmental, unless pulled off very near perfectly, is a very bad combination (see, in regards, Miko). Especially when it is tied to an ideological stance.

Temper down the judgementalness while still sticking to her philosophical ground could have been an interesting take.

Yes, I do get that part of the character growth of Celia was that she overcome her being judgmental over things like this.... Except she didn't show any signs of it previously. Hence my earlier complaint about it seeming jarring at the beginning.

====

Mind this isn't the biggest beef in the world. And, yes, if this amounts to a minor criticism of the comic then it should be doing pretty well. But, well, the OP DID ask. :smalltongue:

ETA::::

Argumentative and judgmental, unless pulled off very near perfectly, is a very bad combination (see, in regards, Miko)

One thing I probably should have made clear in this statement is that I thought that Miko was done incredibly well. Far better than Celia. It helped, I think, that Miko was made to be an antagonist, as well as having more strips devoted to her.

Still, let's be honest, even though I think that Miko was handled very well, and even though there were die hard defenders of her before she stepped on a One Way Train to Fallsville, I think it is very safe to say that she was, in a word, polarizing. Hence my slightly lazy comment when I talked about argumentative and judgmental characters in regards to Miko.

Another example of an argumentative and judgmental character (that was also well written) would be Eugene Greenhilt. And even though he barely appears in the strip, he gets his fair share of loathing.

Come to think of it, when Roy gets in his Eugene-like moods, so does he.

I think I might be on to something here. :smalltongue:

Still, I think the main difference between Celia and Miko, Eugene, and Roy (at times) is that the argumentativeness and judgmental behavior seemed to 'fit' those characters and 'sounded right' while Celia's was offnote, for the reasons I described above.

Amarsir

2013-05-02, 09:00 PM

I would rewrite the Celia is a pacifist strips. Not get rid of the idea. But either build up to it (allude to it in one of her earlier appearances) or introduce it a bit more slowly once the Resistance arc started. As it was, this was one of the very few times I think Rich dropped the ball as it felt very forced narratively.

I get what he was trying to do. I just think it was clumsily introduced, didn't quite jive with the previous characterization of the character, and wasn't executed as well as it could have been until about halfway through the thieves guild arc. By then, the take on it improved dramatically and flowed much better with the rest of the comic.
I was going to say the same thing, but not nearly as well.

NZNinja

2013-05-02, 09:10 PM

Part of me would want to change Belkar's prophecy, because I love that little wise-cracking psychopath; but another part of me is really really looking forward to seeing how his prophecy plays out.

Similarly, I'd want to see MORE of some of the lesser seen characters; but the comic is already 885 strips with at least one major story arc still to come - I don't think making the story take longer to tell would be beneficial for anyone.
Maybe the occasional one-page off-storyline wall of text for the lore/backstory nerds; similar to what Erfworld (http://www.erfworld.com) has been doing - providing it doesn't take time away from the creation of the main story line.

Mike Havran

2013-05-02, 09:14 PM

I would simply toss away strip #648 and get Haley to buy a cool dagger in Sandsedge. Nothing more.

Ninjadeadbeard

2013-05-02, 09:36 PM

I would simply toss away strip #648 and get Haley to buy a cool dagger in Sandsedge. Nothing more.

Why? There is nothing wrong with that page. I'd rather toss out #864. There's a 'Back' button. Recaps about recent stuff aren't fun to read after a hiatus.

Ted The Bug

2013-05-02, 09:38 PM

Well, personally I wouldn't rewrite anything because I couldn't even come close to doing it justice, but in theory, if I were suddenly granted the Giant's ability to make comics, I'd change V's divorce/the early desert strips. The divorce felt cut waaay short - something like that merited much more panel time. The Sandsedge arc in general was just...eh. The jokes felt way too inserted, and I stopped reading for a good while (the only time I've ever done so).

Other than that, nada. I actually think that the death of Kubota was brilliantly done. Not all villain deaths end in a huge thing, and the shoot first mentality was perfect for V.

TRH

2013-05-02, 09:42 PM

Other than that, nada. I actually think that the death of Kubota was brilliantly done. Not all villain deaths end in a huge thing, and the shoot first mentality was perfect for V.

I don't have a problem with his death per se; hell, the guy practically demanded an anti-climactic exit. Still, I didn't enjoy the interminably long ride it took to get there, and it's only cathartic because of how unengaging Kubota was. In and of itself there's nothing wrong with that one strip, but it doesn't redeem the arc leading up to it.

ti'esar

2013-05-02, 09:52 PM

I'd rewrite the first 100 or so strips so they felt more like the rest of the comic. That's honestly the only thing I can think of. I don't really have any major critiques of the story - I've enjoyed it every step of the way.

Pretty much this. The direction the story went in is much more interesting then a D&D gag-a-day strip would have been, but the transition is a little bumpy at times. I think reworking it for tonal consistency can only be a good thing.

I wouldn't change any plot points, though. Partially because I just don't feel comfortable imposing my own story on the Giant's, and partially because of Gift Jeraff's point about how it's impossible to know in an ongoing story how they all fit into the big picture.

Bulldog Psion

2013-05-02, 10:20 PM

I would have the Order join Redcloak, dispose of Xykon, and fight against the Azurites and other human kingdoms for goblin equality, ultimately using the Dark One's plan to force concessions from the gods.

Just to take things in an utterly unexpected direction, you understand. :smallbiggrin:

Unkillable_Cat

2013-05-02, 11:28 PM

I tried to think of a part of the comic I'd like to rewrite, and how. Couldn't really think of anything. But it got me thinking about the next steps of the story. Those steps are probably set in stone by now, but I'm gonna take a small shot at a little fan-fictioning here.

If I was Girard Draketooth, tasked with protecting a world-destroying gate, and being one of the most paranoid individuals in the realms, whom would I trust to guard the gate?

Hired muscle? No way.

An army? I'd be better off herding cats for the job.

My family? From a narrative perspective, that's not really a good idea. Ask any patriarch of a large family or ruler of a large kingdom in our history books if he isn't checking if his kids are carrying large knifes in his presence. Surely, something that's guarded as fiercely as that gate must be worth something, right? Or perhaps contain the key to ultimate power? The family could help, surely, but the temptation is too great. I would not have them as the last line of defense.

No, if I was Girard Draketooth, I would protect the gate myself 'till my last dying breath.

And beyond.

Just because illusions are my specialty, doesn't mean that trickery and deception can only be achieved with them. Sometimes a very real item can be placed in just the right place to create just the wrong impression.

Like a corpse in an overly extravagant sarcophagus to make people believe I was really dead and gone.

Xykon isn't the only lich in the realms. Maybe it's time we saw if Xykon can take down someone of his own 'kind'...

It'd be one hell of a fight, that's for sure.

CoffeeIncluded

2013-05-03, 12:13 AM

Surfing HalfOrc

2013-05-03, 12:34 AM

Dang, most of my ideas have already been posted.

Miko: Not dead, not turned into a Blackguard/Undead Warrior. Blown clear of the city, waking up in some farmer's hut. NO AMNESIA! Keep her just as she was, but seeing the city she destroyed through her hubris. Set her on the path to redemption.

Therkla: Not such a pointless ending, at least for herself (Elan did grow a but because of Therkla.) Maybe not get Elan, but maybe one of the warrior orcs from the islands.

Hilgya: The one MIA/not-dead member of the orifinal Linear Guild. Personally, I am expecting to see her again, with Durkon's Love Child/Children in tow. Hilgya took Durkon's V-Card when he was in his 50's, so I'm pretty sure he didn't have a "Dwarven Defender" in his wallet. :smallwink:

Celia: More on her "Pacifism" BEFORE she refused to fight. She was pretty generous with those lighting bolts in the early strips. To become a militant pacifist later on just doesn't ring true. Not everyone is a warrior/adventurer, but to lay the smackdown on Nale and Thog, then say "I just don't agree with violent solutions to problems" makes her seem like an entirely new character in an old body.

Not sure about any of the rest. The story as written has been extremely enjoyable, and I'm not sure any of my tweaks would make it any better...

Kilo24

2013-05-03, 01:24 AM

Pretty much the first ~100 strips. as others have already said. Disconnected rules jokes don't make for a good introduction to the whole epic story.

In general, I'd want to deepen and/or abbreviate most of the strips up until Roy chews out Miko. I won't say that those strips were actively bad; they're just somewhat lackluster in comparison to the strips after that. As far as I can recall, there just wasn't much depth shown in any character until that point. Deep characters are a primary draw of the whole comic now; that major focus doesn't come into play until roughly 1/3 of the current story has passed.

Outside of that, I could probably complain about a few individual strips and *maybe* some pacing, but I'm really quite happy with the comic as a whole after that point. Burlew has created the only long epic series of any medium I've encountered (book series, TV series, movie sequels included) that has benefitted from its scope without buckling under its own weight, and that's really impressive. (Digger might be the other exception to that, but I'm still not sure at this point.)

EDIT:

Well, personally I wouldn't rewrite anything because I couldn't even come close to doing it justice, but in theory, if I were suddenly granted the Giant's ability to make comics, I'd change V's divorce/the early desert strips. The divorce felt cut waaay short - something like that merited much more panel time. The Sandsedge arc in general was just...eh. The jokes felt way too inserted, and I stopped reading for a good while (the only time I've ever done so).
I think the abrupt, uncontested divorce fit V's character character quite well. The elf was always uneasy in difficult social situations; I'd imagine the abandonment of her spouse for a greater cause was a hell of a lot easier to swallow than trying to salvage the marriage. V neglecting her spouse (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0679.html) wasn't something that changed with V's resolve to be better - and it probably won't for a while.

But, yeah. The Sandsedge strips meandered for a while (and were mainly what I was thinking of when saying "I could probably complain about a few individual strips.) I'd imagine that it was in order to show that the OOTS are back to working together as a (relatively) standard adventuring party; it made for a buffer for the readers between the Order getting back together and them being split them up again via Enor and Gannji. Still, I'd probably personally want to trim out a few of strips that aren't important to the storyline.

factotum

2013-05-03, 01:39 AM

But in all seriousness, I wouldn't rewrite anything. Not necessarily because it's good as is, but because the story is incomplete, so I wouldn't know if the seemingly little thing I'd change would greatly alter the big picture.

+1. Until the story is over we don't know what things we currently find annoying or insignificant might turn out to be important, so this isn't the time to be asking this question. Ask me again when the final strip is posted. :smallsmile:

Sunken Valley

2013-05-03, 03:38 AM

I'm going to warp the bits I'm certain won't affect the plot.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0319.html This goes away for good. Self Loathing was trying to help and the comic says she is wrong. Which she is not.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0408.html Miko attacks Roy before he attacks her. I honestly believe if Roy had tried the diplomacy approach first, the gate would still be standing and Xykon would be dead. This makes Rich's point clearer, because I could see Miko attacking first.

Give V a proper gender from the beginning, because I'm sick of referring to him/her with slashes.

Mastikator

2013-05-03, 04:14 AM

I'd make Elan less annoyingly childish. Same with the thing in the darkness.

I'm also contemplating if killing more characters would make the comic more interesting. If for example Hilgya tried to kill Durkon when he rejected her, forcing him to kill her.
Also, what Belkar (and V once) does to Kobolds should also happen to a human once to make it more obvious how utterly depraved Belkar is. The comic is actually REALLY dark in places and I fear it gets lost on some because it happens mostly to "monster races".

factotum

2013-05-03, 05:10 AM

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0319.html This goes away for good. Self Loathing was trying to help and the comic says she is wrong. Which she is not.

The comic doesn't say that, though. It says that Haley *believes* Self-Loathing is wrong, which is a different kettle of fish entirely. Plus, if Haley hadn't already chosen to deal with her self-loathing here, the bit where she shut her down later on in order to go on the date with Nale would have been less explicable.

Morty

2013-05-03, 05:39 AM

I wouldn't change anything. If someone really put a gun to my head, I'd change something entirely irrelevant. This isn't because I think the comic's perfect, but because in a story everything is contingent on everything else, and changing one thing I don't like might well make some other element utterly nonsensical or inconsistent.

Also, you know, I'm not a professional writer. But that's obvious.

The Succubus

2013-05-03, 06:16 AM

I'd include the deleted scene of Miko and Haley making out.

oppyu

2013-05-03, 06:19 AM

1: I'd have Hinjo or O-Chul make an off-hand reference to a boyfriend or husband. Just something to say 'gay characters exist outside of one-strip gags and demonic incarnations of illicit sex'.

2: Swap Tarquin's gender. Have Elan's Dad as the cheerful waiter, and the Mum as the charismatic, intelligent, genre-savvy warlord. Although I'd imagine that at least one person would say something judgmental when reference is made to her ten husbands... (Also, she'd probably have to sexually harass Roy instead of Haley).

3: I'd prune some of the earlier strips... The jokes about D&D, the 'one hot girl and four pervy teammates' gags, etc.

4: Make Belkar or Durkon a woman. Durkon would work just fine, although Belkar would be an interesting gender swap considering his conduct with Jenny. He could even be a lesbian, address the sexuality imbalance in Oots head on. Although his sexual assertiveness might lead to him being seen as the token lesbianism for male fan service (aka the Katy Perry factor; look at me boys, I'm kissing girls! Isn't that wild! Please approve of me!)... Ok, just a regular heterosexual female. But at least one other LBGTQ+ character aside from Hinjo/O-Chul somewhere.

5: More female leaders (you may be noticing a theme here.) Seriously, the only major problem I've ever had with this comic after the first 100 or so strips is the gender imbalance. They don't have to be major leaders (though I don't see what the problem with Hinjo, Shojo or Jirix being gender-swapped), but background leaders like Chief, the mayor in Belkar's bonus comic, the high cleric of the twelve gods, and so on.

Reathin

2013-05-03, 06:31 AM

There isn't much, but I suppose some of Celia's later appearances could have been different. In the dungeon and in court, I actually rather liked her. After that, it got grating to watch her interaction with Haley. Especially the "I'll give away an enormous pile of your gold and you're wrong to even think about stopping me". True, Haley stole much of it, but it touched a nerve with my inner adventurer (which is to say, weakening myself uncontrollably is unacceptable, ESPECIALLY if done by self-righteous NPCs). If OOtS had been an actual role playing game, she would be full of arrows five seconds after if Haley was my character (although in all odds that would be V. Gotta love magic!).

The rather sudden decision of Roy deciding to abandon Elan to the bandits because he's frustrating was another eyebrow raising moment. Roy's character didn't seem quite so cold at that point. Get annoyed, sure, but never abandon someone to bandits (especially a teammate).

But those are just my opinion. Overall the comic's fantastic.

137beth

2013-05-03, 08:57 AM

I'd rewrite the first 100 or so strips so they felt more like the rest of the comic. That's honestly the only thing I can think of. I don't really have any major critiques of the story - I've enjoyed it every step of the way.

This is my opinion too. I'd probably keep the "up a level, down a level" strip, but other than that I think the first book is an obstacle to new readers, since it isn't as interesting as the rest of the comic.

FlawedParadigm

2013-05-03, 10:06 AM

I'd just throw up the DCF intro so that the comic is more palatable to new readers. I'm not fond of everything done with Celia, but it's Rich's story and she may do something later to make herself more sensible and endearing - much like I rather expect her polar opposite to do.

Xelbiuj

2013-05-03, 10:22 AM

I wouldn't change much.

Was thinking zombie or skeletal Trigak during the Azure siege (or just behind Redcloak in the next comic.) but I imagine his corpse was destroyed during the explosion.

Get rid of Malack backdooring away Mass Death Ward but have him still win.

uhh, make Tarquin less unbearable and self indulgently awesome; have Elan get a good hit on him before being disarmed. Have the order do much better against him outside the pyramid.

Leave the cold feet joke but make it less rapey. Reference that he needed to marry her for political gains or a magical dowry something.

Fish

2013-05-03, 10:36 AM

As others have said, I couldn't consider a rewrite without knowing what's essential and what's not. All stories benefit from an editor's blue pencil, so I would do the following:

I would edit the books to take advantage of book format, and to free it from its strip-a-day origins.

Is this page too wordy? Yes? Well, is that because Rich had a lot to say, and the page needed two more panels? Or is it because Rich had more panels to fill than he needed? Maybe another page is too sparse. Could we tighten up the panels there, and trim out some bits?

As others say, the beginning strips are definitely different in tone; I would encourage some kind of storytelling hook, a dynamite opening, to get the reader (the non-D&D-playing reader) pulled in. I would introduce backstory earlier, to take advantage of storytelling (and art direction) hindsight. I would let Redcloak be who he later became, and less of who he started as. Some early story-telling nods to prehistory might be nice; Redcloak mourns the loss of a one-eyed goblin zombie, but we don't learn right away who that is. You know, just go back through the story and say, "Rich didn't know the whole plot when he wrote this panel. Let's adjust a bit."

tassaron

2013-05-03, 11:21 AM

I pretty much agree with every post in this thread, though most of it is minor. The only thing that actively annoys me about the rough beginning of the comic is how Vaarsuvius's gender ambiguity is not introduced. I love the character as-is but that aspect didn't actually register with me until like 150 strips in when I finally worked out from context that she wasn't supposed to look like one binary gender. That made some early jokes fall flat for me.

Dr.Epic

2013-05-03, 11:31 AM

Actually have Roy act LG and multiclass to paladin because it makes sense.

gellerche

2013-05-03, 11:54 AM

I'd have Haley come by my house.

And feed me grapes.

Would it be too creepy to have Miko fan me with fern leaves at the same time?

Dr.Epic

2013-05-03, 02:32 PM

I'd have Haley come by my house.

And feed me grapes.

Would it be too creepy to have Miko fan me with fern leaves at the same time?

They're stick figures.

skim172

2013-05-03, 05:25 PM

I would simply toss away strip #648 and get Haley to buy a cool dagger in Sandsedge. Nothing more.

In the book, there's a bonus story that the Giant initially intended to put in the online continuity, but decided to remove because it was too long. It shows Haley and the Thieves' Guild as they recover Roy's body and makes pretty clear that Crystal and Bozzok were actively trying to kill Haley and would have continued pursuing her once she'd left. In the commentary, the Giant himself says he somewhat regrets taking those strips out, as they make Haley's actions seem less cold-blooded and sociopathic. She's a little aggressive, and doesn't exactly hold back violence as a last resort, but I actually like that - it's a flaw that makes her seem more of a well-rounded character.

If I had to change one thing, it'd be in Start of Darkness to remove Eugene and Right-Eye's meeting , and that's a tough decision for me. Because I think SoD, standing alone, is a great story, and that moment was a pivotal one. But, it's a moment that seems to me inconsistent with the other characterizations of Eugene, that for me, it's either remove that one sympathetic scene, or make Eugene seem less unlikable in the regular comic. The latter seems like it'd just disrupt the story more.

The counterargument would be that it makes Eugene more complex, kind of like Haley's flaw up there. But that in itself, I'd say is inconsistent, because Eugene is generally not characterized as a complex individual. He's a jerk, who doesn't care about his family, and his jerkiness got Roy into the mess he is, and Roy's personal battle involves triumphing over the negative influence of his father on his life.

Eugene is a pretty simple character, outside of that one scene in SoD, so rather than making him a more complex and well-rounded character, I think it just makes him almost bipolar - a general attitude of being the worst person who's not an evil villain, and then one moment of personal self-sacrifice. Even Tarquin and Malack - self-professed villains - are written as more sympathetic individuals. Eugene has never given us reason to sympathize with him - outside of one extremely poignant and significant scene. It just seems ... off.

fill-in-name

2013-05-03, 07:46 PM

I would add more pranks between V and Belkar back when they were getting at each other. Those were hilarious.

Acanous

2013-05-03, 08:45 PM

I'd have the giant add subtitles to the strips where Haley can't speak common :p
I've got the book, and the translations are there, but then I have to dig it out every time I introduce someone to the comic.
At which point they ask me weather to read it online or in the book.
That they can't get the book anymore rankles newbies, too.

ti'esar

2013-05-03, 10:53 PM

factotum

2013-05-04, 01:43 AM

Eugene has never given us reason to sympathize with him - outside of one extremely poignant and significant scene. It just
seems ... off.

Have you considered that this was the entire point of that scene? All Eugene's appearances in the online comic are related to his interactions with his son, and there is bad blood between the two of them. Since Roy is the protagonist of the comic and we therefore identify strongly with him, we take all these interactions as showing Eugene being a jerk, even though Roy is probably at least as much at fault as his father in most of their conversations.

Therefore, I think Rich chose to put that scene into SoD to show that Eugene really does qualify as Lawful Good so long as he isn't anywhere near his son. It's not something he can really put in the main strip because it's not plot-relevant, so he put it in the prequel book instead.

Mike Havran

2013-05-04, 05:19 AM

I think the only really glaring thing would be to fit the whole Crystal-Haley-Bozzok golem retrieval scene into the main comic, so Haley's killing Crystal didn't come so out of the blue and seemingly unjustified.

In the book, there's a bonus story that the Giant initially intended to put in the online continuity, but decided to remove because it was too long. It shows Haley and the Thieves' Guild as they recover Roy's body and makes pretty clear that Crystal and Bozzok were actively trying to kill Haley and would have continued pursuing her once she'd left. In the commentary, the Giant himself says he somewhat regrets taking those strips out, as they make Haley's actions seem less cold-blooded and sociopathic. She's a little aggressive, and doesn't exactly hold back violence as a last resort, but I actually like that - it's a flaw that makes her seem more of a well-rounded character.

I get what you say guys, but the bonus strips don't serve as a mitigating factor to me, because the main problem with the strip is not killing Crystal, per se, but the circumstances in which it was done, the manner and the "reasoning" behind it. To me, reading that Haley is even capable of doing it at that time and in that manner broke the character I thought she had and I wasn't able to enjoy her ever since (and prior that, she was my favourite character).

I would write more about it but it since it's probably a closed chapter I'll let it drop.

Kish

2013-05-04, 05:41 AM

Have you considered that this was the entire point of that scene? All Eugene's appearances in the online comic are related to his interactions with his son, and there is bad blood between the two of them. Since Roy is the protagonist of the comic and we therefore identify strongly with him, we take all these interactions as showing Eugene being a jerk, even though Roy is probably at least as much at fault as his father in most of their conversations.

Therefore, I think Rich chose to put that scene into SoD to show that Eugene really does qualify as Lawful Good so long as he isn't anywhere near his son. It's not something he can really put in the main strip because it's not plot-relevant, so he put it in the prequel book instead.
To be quite honest about it, I don't understand why people interpret that scene in Start of Darkness so positively for Eugene. Yes, he mouthed some wise-seeming platitudes (which Redcloak's brother wasn't to know Eugene would eat one day). And then he went to "an equally pointless meeting" with the son whose life he had no interest in. The best possible interpretation is that he wants to be there for his family but doesn't have the first clue how to do so, not even a clue that he should accept the clue his wife tries to hand him as explicitly as possible; it's also easy to read it as "he came up with a socially acceptable excuse rather than saying truthfully, 'Xykon? That was so ten-years-ago! Bother someone else!'"

GnomeGninjas

2013-05-04, 05:56 AM

Miko kills Belkar in 258. Durkan will raise him "because he's a sucker" but we would have an arc of Belkar's afterlife. This would also generate more conflict between Belkar and the rest of the party because the diamond dust they used on Belkar could have been used on Roy later if they hadn't decided to raise Belkar.

oppyu

2013-05-04, 06:49 AM

In the book, there's a bonus story that the Giant initially intended to put in the online continuity, but decided to remove because it was too long. It shows Haley and the Thieves' Guild as they recover Roy's body and makes pretty clear that Crystal and Bozzok were actively trying to kill Haley and would have continued pursuing her once she'd left. In the commentary, the Giant himself says he somewhat regrets taking those strips out, as they make Haley's actions seem less cold-blooded and sociopathic. She's a little aggressive, and doesn't exactly hold back violence as a last resort, but I actually like that - it's a flaw that makes her seem more of a well-rounded character.

If I had to change one thing, it'd be in Start of Darkness to remove Eugene and Right-Eye's meeting , and that's a tough decision for me. Because I think SoD, standing alone, is a great story, and that moment was a pivotal one. But, it's a moment that seems to me inconsistent with the other characterizations of Eugene, that for me, it's either remove that one sympathetic scene, or make Eugene seem less unlikable in the regular comic. The latter seems like it'd just disrupt the story more.

The counterargument would be that it makes Eugene more complex, kind of like Haley's flaw up there. But that in itself, I'd say is inconsistent, because Eugene is generally not characterized as a complex individual. He's a jerk, who doesn't care about his family, and his jerkiness got Roy into the mess he is, and Roy's personal battle involves triumphing over the negative influence of his father on his life.

Eugene is a pretty simple character, outside of that one scene in SoD, so rather than making him a more complex and well-rounded character, I think it just makes him almost bipolar - a general attitude of being the worst person who's not an evil villain, and then one moment of personal self-sacrifice. Even Tarquin and Malack - self-professed villains - are written as more sympathetic individuals. Eugene has never given us reason to sympathize with him - outside of one extremely poignant and significant scene. It just seems ... off.
For more depth into Eugene, try re-reading 495 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0495.html). He's not a bad man per se, just flawed, and a pretty crappy dad to Roy. (If all the crappy fathers in the world were unsympathetic bastards with no redeeming personality features, then... that would explain a lot about the world. Actually defeating my own point here :smalleek:) He's probably much nicer to Julia though, and if she were the protagonist we'd be getting a much more positive outlook on Eugene.

B. Dandelion

2013-05-04, 07:08 AM

I don't, because no author is perfect. Even the ones I highly admire. :smallwink:

Now lazy criticism? Yeah, that's arrogant. But one that has time and thought put into it (like yours)? Not so much.

Porthos, you're always so nice. :smallsmile:

I've thought about the Celia thing off and on quite a bit, as it really is one of the few things that bugged me about the comic. Doubly so since she was a favorite character of mine before the Resistance Arc. And even during it she didn't rub me the wrong way nearly as much as some people did.

But as I think about it, the real problem with Celia, besides inconsistent characterization (she had no trouble zapping Nale (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0070.html) when she was pissed, she had no trouble suggesting that Haley solve things with violence (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0531.html) when she didn't think she'd be around to see it) is that she came off as something close to a Straw Pacifist. Which is ironic because she was supposed to be shown as giving decent points.

Yes!!! Exactly. I found it frustrating that it seemed quite apparent she was there to represent an alternate point of view, there was no evident intention to have her serve as a strawman for her pacifistic argument. Yet between her and Haley, it felt like the narrative overwhelmingly sided with Haley, not only as having the more practical approach but also being the more reasonable partner, who tended to get in the last word. (With exactly one exception.)

It was suggested to me here, and I found it pretty persuasive, that Celia's real purpose in the narrative was to serve as a foil and an obstacle to Haley in her leadership role, which had the secondary effect of both highlighting the differences in her capabilities compared to Roy and also of giving Haley a fair amount of empathy for what Roy goes through regularly. She was also meant to provide an "outsider perspective" (no pun intended) on the typical MO of adventuring parties, but because she had to serve as an obstacle she had to be extremely aggressive in promoting her views, and because Haley was the designated empathetic character she couldn't make Haley look so callous as to lose all audience sympathy. Given those two factors, it's a pretty delicate balancing act to how far you can push the "alternate perspective" angle while treating it as genuinely valid and reasonable. As it was, that element felt somewhat... tertiary at best and at worst completely superficial. Celia is judgmental and yet naive and her arguments are introduced only to be played up for their more frivolous elements (like, say, stressing that chocolate ingestion can kill cute fuzzy animals).

Keeping Celia's "foil" attributes while allowing her to make stronger points might have made Haley come off as less sympathetic during the DSTP arc, but I felt like things tilted towards Haley in such a skewed way it would have possible to tip the scales a little more in Celia's favor without alienating Haley from the audience entirely.

I think also having it developed earlier that she had a militant pacifist streak might have helped, since that would have helped to establish her alternate point of view as something that had always existed and was important in and of itself, rather than something introduced solely for the sake of getting on Haley's nerves.

Szarrukin

2013-05-04, 07:31 AM

I'd remove this whole "recurring kobold gag" thing, especially part with Yukyuk.

Miko: Not dead, not turned into a Blackguard/Undead Warrior. Blown clear of the city, waking up in some farmer's hut. NO AMNESIA! Keep her just as she was, but seeing the city she destroyed through her hubris. Set her on the path to redemption.

All my yes for this. I really would like to see Miko changing from Lawful Stupid to Lawful Good. And yes, I realize that she was made to be LS, but I would like to see her as a character, not just long-running gag.

crayzz

2013-05-04, 07:34 AM

Nitpick time. The right hand rule (1st panel (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0838.html)) applies to all vectors, not just magnetic ones.

It annoyed me when Haley didn't bother to give any reason to Celia to go to Cliffport rather than Greysky. She didn't even say, "The clerics are controlled by the thieves guild, they'll take our money and screw us over."

factotum

2013-05-04, 08:42 AM

It annoyed me when Haley didn't bother to give any reason to Celia to go to Cliffport rather than Greysky. She didn't even say, "The clerics are controlled by the thieves guild, they'll take our money and screw us over."

I think that's part of Haley's character--she was brought up to be obsessively secretive by her father, and even saying "There are people in Greysky City who want to kill me for stuff I did a while ago" is saying a lot more than she wants. Having said that, I do think she should have given more reasons to Celia for not going there--it would have made Celia look all the more foolish and naive for doing it anyway, of course, which is perhaps why the Giant didn't want to do it.

crayzz

2013-05-04, 09:15 AM

Having said that, I do think she should have given more reasons to Celia for not going there--it would have made Celia look all the more foolish and naive for doing it anyway, of course, which is perhaps why the Giant didn't want to do it.

That's what I meant. Without going into her relationship with the thieves guild, it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion to avoid dealing with them. Or, Haley could have said she was a scab, and that the thieves guild doesn't take kindly to scabs. Both could have been done without divulging any personal information.

I'd have Belkar sneak Roy's body away during the night to try and find a cleric to cure his curse.

Porthos

2013-05-04, 12:27 PM

Porthos, you're always so nice. :smallsmile:

Aw. Thanks for the compliment. :smallredface::smallsmile:

I think also having it developed earlier that she had a militant pacifist streak might have helped, since that would have helped to establish her alternate point of view as something that had always existed and was important in and of itself, rather than something introduced solely for the sake of getting on Haley's nerves.

A good place might have been an offhand comment about it when she first started dating an adventurer. You'd think it would have crossed her mind at some point. :smalltongue:

Of course, getting into narrative structure, the whole point of those scenes was to give Roy some much (much much) needed screen time where he was happy. As well as establishing Celia as a character in her own right. And introduce yet another Chekhov Gun. Not entirely sure how an allusion to Celia's pacifist streak could have been placed there without ruining that to a degree....

... But that's why I consider Rich to be a far better writer than I could ever be. :smallwink:

ti'esar

2013-05-04, 01:32 PM

To be quite honest about it, I don't understand why people interpret that scene in Start of Darkness so positively for Eugene. Yes, he mouthed some wise-seeming platitudes (which Redcloak's brother wasn't to know Eugene would eat one day). And then he went to "an equally pointless meeting" with the son whose life he had no interest in. The best possible interpretation is that he wants to be there for his family but doesn't have the first clue how to do so, not even a clue that he should accept the clue his wife tries to hand him as explicitly as possible; it's also easy to read it as "he came up with a socially acceptable excuse rather than saying truthfully, 'Xykon? That was so ten-years-ago! Bother someone else!'"

I agree. It's always been one of my favorite things in SoDthat Right-Eye was convinced to give up his pointless quest for revenge and build a family by a terrible family man who didn't really know that much about revenge either. Very ironic.

stsasser

2013-05-04, 01:48 PM

I'd have more of the major characters be female. As I recall The Giant himself has mentioned that he thought he had a more equal gender balance in the comic than he actually did.

Mama Black Dragon - dead
Samantha - dead
Therkla - dead
Miko - dead
Tsukiko - dead
Crystal - dead for now

That seems a pretty high casualty rate for the number of significant female characters shown.*

*unaudited

Bedinsis

2013-05-04, 02:11 PM

rgrekejin

2013-05-04, 02:40 PM

Mama Black Dragon - dead
Samantha - dead
Therkla - dead
Miko - dead
Tsukiko - dead
Crystal - dead for now

That seems a pretty high casualty rate for the number of significant female characters shown.*

*unaudited

I think this may just be a side effect of the fact that this comic seems to have a high casualty rate for non-Order members period -

Shojo - dead
Dorukan - dead
Kubota - dead
Samantha's Dad - dead
C.P.P.D. Chief - dead
Eviseratus - dead
Thanh - dead
Yikyik - dead
Yokyok - dead
Yukyuk -dead
Grubwiggler - dead
Old Blind Pete - dead
Adolescent Black Dragon - dead
Team Peregrine Commander (and most of Team Peregrine, really) - dead

If you're getting panel time and you're not a major protagonist or antagonist, the odds of your long-term survival are pretty slim.

FlawedParadigm

2013-05-04, 02:41 PM

Mama Black Dragon - dead
Samantha - dead
Therkla - dead
Miko - dead
Tsukiko - dead
Crystal - dead for now

That seems a pretty high casualty rate for the number of significant female characters shown.*

*unaudited

I guess the forty-thousand or so men who died in the Battle of Azure City don't count for anything, yeah? Including the hobgoblin ones, unless they're equally worthless? That's going pretty far to be insensitive.

FLHerne

2013-05-04, 04:45 PM

Why was the treasure from the black dragon cave destroyed by the explosion? It is just gold pieces, even if they're exposed to extreme heat, all they'd do would be to melt. That is still salvageable. Unless there is something fundamental that I've missed.I assumed that it was scattered over a wide enough area that it wouldn't have been practical to collect them up. At least before locals (or people who heard about 'raining gold') got to them first.

Bulldog Psion

2013-05-04, 04:47 PM

I assumed that it was scattered over a wide enough area that it wouldn't have been practical to collect them up. At least before locals (or people who heard about 'raining gold') got to them first.

Good point. If you throw a few sackfuls of coins into long grass in overgrown fields, you're probably not going to be able to collect them, realistically speaking. Heck, I've had a hard enough time finding a pocket knife after dropping it in a three-foot-square area of long field grass while out working; finding all the coins scattered by an explosion, or even the majority of them, would be well nigh impossible.

Red_Lava

2013-05-04, 04:55 PM

Not a single thing.

HA! HA! No, seriously.

Kish

2013-05-04, 05:50 PM

I guess the forty-thousand or so men who died in the Battle of Azure City don't count for anything, yeah? Including the hobgoblin ones, unless they're equally worthless? That's going pretty far to be insensitive.
Do the women who died there count for something?

Oh wait. There were very few women who died there, weren't there? The whole city was captured. All its people fled, died, or were enslaved. I would venture a guess that if you asked Rich, he'd say that humans in the OotS universe are approximately half each sex, and that Azure City was certainly not heavily skewed toward a male population.

And yet, deaths in the fall of Azure City, as you note, seem to have been mostly men. Slaves after the fall, mostly men. Resistance (before they were wiped out), mostly men. Refugees on the ship? Mostly men.

So, is it better to die, or to never exist at all?

Bulldog Psion

2013-05-04, 05:57 PM

Can we please not turn this into a big gender argument, guys? Just saying.

Jay R

2013-05-04, 06:09 PM

I would switch Vaarsuvius's gender.

There. Done.

Bulldog Psion

2013-05-04, 06:11 PM

I would switch Vaarsuvius's gender.

There. Done.

Heh, I like that. :smallbiggrin: Very clever, good sir; bravo! :smallsmile:

LuisDantas

2013-05-04, 09:29 PM

FlawedParadigm

2013-05-05, 03:57 AM

Do the women who died there count for something?

Oh wait. There were very few women who died there, weren't there? The whole city was captured. All its people fled, died, or were enslaved. I would venture a guess that if you asked Rich, he'd say that humans in the OotS universe are approximately half each sex, and that Azure City was certainly not heavily skewed toward a male population.

And yet, deaths in the fall of Azure City, as you note, seem to have been mostly men. Slaves after the fall, mostly men. Resistance (before they were wiped out), mostly men. Refugees on the ship? Mostly men.

So, is it better to die, or to never exist at all?

Oh, the women were separate. I might not be remembering the exact numbers, but I thought the total conflict was about sixty thousand, between humans and hobgoblins. I just figured about a third on each side might be female (although I'm not sure we've actually seen a female hobbo, I'm assuming some are present.) If the actual numbers were different, adjust accordingly. I'm not trying to get into a big argument or anything, I just saw the post about a couple of dozen dead women saying that women didn't seem to be doing too well in the Stickverse, but so far as I can tell, then men have it as bad or worse.

The Giant

2013-05-05, 04:41 AM

Let's drop the discussion of the exact number of women I'm supposed to kill to keep everyone happy and stick to the original topic. Thank you.

DaggerPen

2013-05-05, 05:33 AM

As amazing as the whole Vaarsuvius and O-Chul phylactery arc was, someone a while ago pointed out that "And now, power comes in the form of a 3rd level spell" was an even better retort than "Guess what spell I cast on this before giving this to the bird." So I'd change that.

I'd have called the comic with Roy falling "Fallsville, Population: 2".

I'd probably have trimmed out a lot of the early strips, and would definitely have gotten rid of "Evan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion" and the two strips with the guys perving on Haley.

That's probably about it? Just minor tweaks that I think would have fit well into the rest of the comic.

I mean, if I were to take more liberties, I'd have shown more of O-Chul and the MitD, I guess, because I love those two interacting, but I'm overall totally find with the way the plot has gone, even if it completely emotionally wrecks me.

EDIT: Oh, I wouldn't have killed Therkla, though. She was really fun, and NEGL, I might maybe have wanted a Therkla/Haley/Elan threesome. Just a little bit.

Craft (Cheese)

2013-05-05, 06:48 AM

oppyu

2013-05-05, 06:58 AM

Why not have femTarquin still harass Haley and have ten wives? You could accomplish both goals at once!
The two most (and only) prominent gay characters in the strip (Sabine and FemTarquin) would be depraved and evil. That would have the dual problems of portraying the gay community as depraved and evil, and falling into the Mass Effect school of inclusion (Look! Hot blue bisexual alien space chicks who dig aliens... and sometimes each other! We're inclusive and diverse!)

It would be pretty funny watching Elan try to deal with his Mum hitting on his girlfriend though. I'm guessing he would need all the therapy after that.

Craft (Cheese)

2013-05-05, 07:40 AM

The two most (and only) prominent gay characters in the strip (Sabine and FemTarquin) would be depraved and evil. That would have the dual problems of portraying the gay community as depraved and evil, and falling into the Mass Effect school of inclusion (Look! Hot blue bisexual alien space chicks who dig aliens... and sometimes each other! We're inclusive and diverse!)

It would be pretty funny watching Elan try to deal with his Mum hitting on his girlfriend though. I'm guessing he would need all the therapy after that.

I fail to see how making Hinjo/O-Chul/Thanh gay wouldn't also be inclusion for its own sake, but... Oh hey, look, we're getting off-topic!

Uhh, put me down for "edit the first ~100 strips to be more consistent with the tone and style of the rest of the series." Oh, and Tsukiko could have used some more character building before she bit the dust, I guess.

DaggerPen

2013-05-05, 08:17 AM

Carry2

2013-05-05, 09:29 AM

I would have given more of a spotlight to Hinjo, and written Belkar away from the story early on.

Miko would be a bit less obviously deranged, too. She turned out almost a caricature of herself ever since she lost her Paladin status. There was a sore lack of room for ambiguity or sympathy towards her ever since. In fact, she was hardly tolerable at all.
I didn't really have a problem with her psychological reactions per se, so much as how obviously contrived the surrounding circumstances were. (I don't know how much of the plotline could survive if you modified those, but maybe that's not automatically a net loss.)

As for ditching Belkar? Pfff. I dunno. He should probably have been put on a leash sooner, anyway.

I don't necessarily think keeping Miko or Therkla alive would make the story better, but I'd love to see where it would have gone if they had as a bonus alternate universe thing.
It's been done (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5614417/3/Orphans). On a related note: now I'm traumatised again.

Most of the rest of what I might suggest has been covered, but I'd try to give Tsukiko, Therkla and Hinjo a bit more depth. They've all been pretty one-dimensional, and the latter in particular always struck me as a tad bland.
.

Tragak

2013-05-05, 10:26 AM

Let's drop the discussion of the exact number of women I'm supposed to kill to keep everyone happy and stick to the original topic. Thank you.

Exactly, The Giant's personal life is not the issue here! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Quotes/JossWhedon)

Rogar Demonblud

2013-05-05, 01:47 PM

On the Celia thing, I would've liked to have had a scene where she realized that her 'principles' (air quoted because they're too erratic) had made her an accessory before the fact to every act of murder, robbery, extortion, torture, rape, etc the resurrected Guild members committed from that time forth.

Also, Yor's a hoot, and I kind of wish he'd met Roy.

VanaGalen

2013-05-05, 02:35 PM

I wouldn't change any of the main plot points, though there are some parts that don't really advance the plot much - like the travel to the false gate and that slave traders thing, the whole king of Somewhere story, or parts of Roy's afterlife when he was staying with his mom.
Instead I would love to see more details about Haley's stay in Greysky City in the main comic or perhaps Nale visiting his mother after returning from the western continent.
I also don't understand the story of the elves joining Azure City Resistance - they jumped out of nowhere, appeared in 3-4 strips and were brutally murdered for no reason. I just feel it wasn't really necessary.

As for the first 100 strips, I actually like to see how the comic evolved from simple (but hilarious) jokes about rules into complicated, epic story. The only thing I feel bad about is Dorukan. He was great guy and great wizard, but because his gate was shown first, his defenses are really lousy compared to Azure City or that kickass secret order and illusions of Girard. That's somehow inconsistent and I would probably change that.

As mentioned in many posts above, I would like to see more integrity in Celia. I think that Nale's character could also be more consistent.

The last thing I would change is Sangwaan's death. Because it was simply too sad.

Dire Lemming

2013-05-05, 02:36 PM

Not that Tsukiko's death wasn't very well done and integral, but the fact that she died as she did itself seems off and quite convenient for the OotS.

Knight.Anon

2013-05-05, 02:39 PM

I'd like to see have seen Miko become an Anti-Paladin Undead Abomination. It would have been great to have a villain that is flat out insane.

VanaGalen

2013-05-05, 02:44 PM

I'd like to see have seen Miko become an Anti-Paladin Undead Abomination. It would have been great to have a villain that is flat out insane.

Well, I believe Thog already took up that department.

factotum

2013-05-05, 03:03 PM

I also don't understand the story of the elves joining Azure City Resistance - they jumped out of nowhere, appeared in 3-4 strips and were brutally murdered for no reason. I just feel it wasn't really necessary.

Having the elves join the Resistance added two important things:

a) Enough strength that they were able to convincingly retrieve Xykon's phylactery from the search party--a bunch of guys mostly below level 4 were never going to manage that.

b) Enough racism that the Commander went rushing in to try and kill Redcloak once he saw what he'd done to the other elves, rather than escape with the phylactery as soon as they could.

HardcoreD&Dgirl

2013-05-05, 03:09 PM

1) I would write up in an early strip (but post 100) another adventureing group that they run into, has it's own fleshed out crazy characters, and they can then see them come to help Azure city (insted of team what ever that dies). Then when red cloak kills the restance, one or two escape.

2) I would make eugine a little more friendly sometimes, makeing him more well rounded.
SoD spoilier
like when he met right eye

3) I would put slightly more scenes where belkster is getting laid

tom712

2013-05-05, 03:33 PM

I wouldn't change a thing...

archon_huskie

2013-05-05, 03:46 PM

First strip. 3.0 to 3.5 conversion joke. lame.

Even the Giant changed it in the books.

deworde

2013-05-05, 04:21 PM

First strip. 3.0 to 3.5 conversion joke. lame.

Even the Giant changed it in the books.

Did he? Never noticed that. How'd it change?

FlawedParadigm

2013-05-05, 04:59 PM

Not that Tsukiko's death wasn't very well done and integral, but the fact that she died as she did itself seems off and quite convenient for the OotS.

Not really. She was only ever a fair opposition for the Resistance; an opponent they could fight that wouldn't crush them in under a minute the way Xykon would (or Redcloak did.) Against the entire Order, she'd be a moderate distraction. Heck, one Disintegrate would probably have rolled her. She was largely a threat to the Resistance only because they lacked any sort of real casters.

sam79

2013-05-05, 05:21 PM

Tough question, and there have been some good suggestions so far (in the bits of the thread I've read). I like the idea of tightening up Celia's characterisation; and if the strip was written as an Epic Story rather than gag-a-day from the beginning, it would probably be an improvement overall (though, of cours,e it may not have ever taken off...)

Anyway, don't know if this has been mentioned, but I would have made V's oracle prophesy say "beings" rather than "being". The explaination that V was saying the four words to herself never sat that well with me.

Dire Lemming

2013-05-05, 05:28 PM

Not really. She was only ever a fair opposition for the Resistance; an opponent they could fight that wouldn't crush them in under a minute the way Xykon would (or Redcloak did.) Against the entire Order, she'd be a moderate distraction. Heck, one Disintegrate would probably have rolled her. She was largely a threat to the Resistance only because they lacked any sort of real casters.
I personally disagree.

While she obviously was not at the level of Redcloak, let alone Xykon, she could have at the least inconvenienced the OoTS's spellcasting capabilities in a given battle. Also, undead.
A fight with a rogue of an equal or possibly higher level isn't the best way to ascertain the power of a person with a casting class.

Of course, I am by no means well versed in such discernations, let alone an expert. I apologize for any misinformation.

FlawedParadigm

2013-05-05, 06:39 PM

Oh sure, if she were allowed to fly around uncontested and fling spells, she could be a problem. But if any attention were paid to her, I'm confident one Disintegrate would wipe her, and Durkon would have to make awful rolls to not explode the level of undead she has access to. Two standard actions in one round would deal with her unless maybe she was wandering around invisibly or something.

Mage Paradox

2013-05-05, 07:31 PM

I changed my mind about what I would alter. I would have the story stay consistent the whole way through, as to whether it will link with D&D rules or not.

137beth

2013-05-05, 07:39 PM

I changed my mind about what I would alter. I would have the story stay consistent the whole way through, as to whether it will link with D&D rules or not.
Well technically, it could have been inconsistent with the D&D rules the whole time, and the first 100 strips were just a coincidence:smallsmile:

But yea, I agree, and I think the Giant does as well (along with other people on this thread), it could really just be decoupled from D&D from the beginning.

veti

2013-05-05, 07:56 PM

A good place might have been an offhand comment about it when she first started dating an adventurer. You'd think it would have crossed her mind at some point. :smalltongue:

I still cling to the opinion that Celia's introduction after Roy's death was as a temporary PC, introduced for Roy's player.

Consider:

She represents Roy's viewpoints and interests
She immediately starts to lead the party, using much the same techniques as Roy himself
Haley listens to her and treats her as an equal. (Compare and contrast how she reacted when Miko tried to lead the party.)
She conveniently vanishes the moment Roy comes back.

So the discrepancies between her early appearance and later can be ascribed to the change in her status (from NPC to PC). What follows is exactly the kind of thing that happens (in my experience) when a player gets an opportunity to do some roleplaying that won't handicap their 'real' character. It's a player - *gasp* - having fun.

(Yes, I know there are no players. But seriously, the whole strip makes a lot more sense if you assume there are.)

So yes, there are discrepancies. But I wouldn't write them any other way. The story evolves in much the same way as a D&D group does, and that's a good thing. If new readers don't get it - well, there's plenty else to read out there, not everyone has to like this comic.

The Pilgrim

2013-05-05, 08:11 PM

My list of things I'll change:

1) Belkar joining the Order.

That's all.

Xacal

2013-05-05, 08:33 PM

I guess I'd make Élan a little bit smarter, if I could. Not a lot, but a little bit less goofy. I know that he's one of the main contributors of light-hearted comic relief, but perhaps he could be a little subtler? You know, if he could be toned down a little.
I suppose that Elan's been having progressive character growth, so my suggestion here could eventually become obsolete. Still, just a thought.

Stormlock

2013-05-05, 08:48 PM

TRH

2013-05-05, 08:50 PM

I'd have liked to see Julia join the order. She'd catch up in levels pretty quickly, the dynamic of them protecting/teaching a lowbie would be interesting until she did, (like Celia but without the preachy pacifist slant) and she'd make for some interesting party banter with Roy at the very least, and probably V as well.

The Giant goes to enough trouble to keep one wizard ineffectual. I don't think he'd be eager to throw in another. Besides, how much acerbic dismissiveness does one adventuring party need?

Mage Paradox

2013-05-05, 08:50 PM

I'd have liked to see Julia join the order. She'd catch up in levels pretty quickly, the dynamic of them protecting/teaching a lowbie would be interesting until she did, (like Celia but without the preachy pacifist slant) and she'd make for some interesting party banter with Roy at the very least, and probably V as well.

This would be very entertaining actually. She'd always be levels and levels behind, but no reason she couldn't be useful.

Stormlock

2013-05-05, 08:55 PM

The Giant goes to enough trouble to keep one wizard ineffectual. I don't think he'd be eager to throw in another. Besides, how much acerbic dismissiveness does one adventuring party need?

1. : I find that trouble tends to be highly amusing. Seeing V get stomped into the floor by a trap was hilarious.

2. : My favourite fictional character in recent memory is Gregory House. So... MOAR. WAY MOAR.

weeping eagle

2013-05-05, 09:02 PM

I would replace Roy's sword with a walkie-talkie.

Also, I would excise anything overtly D&D-related.

TRH

2013-05-05, 09:02 PM

1. : I find that trouble tends to be highly amusing. Seeing V get stomped into the floor by a trap was hilarious.

2. : My favourite fictional character in recent memory is Gregory House. So... MOAR. WAY MOAR.

1. I'd say this is a question of how much of a (good?) thing you can handle. I'm honestly getting sick of V getting to do something halfway decent every 200 strips or so while Haley and Durkon are the ones who actually keep the story going. In fact, I'd say my number one criticism of Order of the Stick as a whole is that the Giant has gone too far with keeping Vaarsuvius from breaking the story. She's basically an accessory to the story if she can't effect it at all. Roy, Haley, Durkon and Elan's actions make things happen in the main plot, but anything V does is strictly limited to her own character arc excepting Familicide killing the Draketooths, which just made things worse, by all indications. The kid gloves need to come off eventually, or else we're eventually going to have to admit to ourselves that the problem lies in the challenges, not the powerful character class opposite them.

2. This here's just a matter of taste. I can only handle so much Greenhilt snark before it gets irritating. It's really hard to see Sara and Horace as related to Eugene, Roy and Julia, they can be so thoroughly unpleasant sometimes. It hardly needs saying that at this point Roy's less likeable than Belkar, even without the latter's black comedy.

crayzz

2013-05-05, 11:48 PM

She's basically an accessory to the story if she can't effect it at all. Roy, Haley, Durkon and Elan's actions make things happen in the main plot, but anything V does is strictly limited to her own character arc excepting Familicide killing the Draketooths, which just made things worse, by all indications.

Methinks that's the point. V has plenty of power, sure. But she sucks at using it. She went toe to toe with Xykon with the aid of 3 epic casters and lost because she didn't bother to judiciously apply her power. She's becoming more proficient lately (like her battle with Z). Until recently, she's had the power to affect the plot, she just didn't have the judgement.

TRH

2013-05-06, 12:13 AM

Methinks that's the point. V has plenty of power, sure. But she sucks at using it. She went toe to toe with Xykon with the aid of 3 epic casters and lost because she didn't bother to judiciously apply her power. She's becoming more proficient lately (like her battle with Z). Until recently, she's had the power to affect the plot, she just didn't have the judgement.

Alright, I'm going to have some difficulty articulating this in full, but suffice it to say you're not thinking on as meta-textual a level as I am here. You're focusing on V's spell use, but I'd submit that that only matters inside a battle, not to the actual story. In story terms, the world goes out of its way to prevent V from affecting the plot. Even when the elf is thinking, she's still not allowed to prevent the fall of Azure City, because that's already going to happen; he can't reunite the party, because that's Haley and Durkon's job and the story flow is dictated by their vacillation; can't prevent herself, Haley and Elan from getting dragged to the Empire of Blood in chains, because the story goes nowhere otherwise. I select these three instances because they're the most prominent examples of the main plot marching right along past V and because no amount of good judgement on her part would have made a difference; she was fighting epic-level magic in two of the above, and the third had her disabled in the surprise round. That's what I'm talking about, really; it's not that Vaarsuvius blows these strategic-level fights due to poor judgment, although that does happen along the margins and within her personal subplot, it's that there isn't even a fair fight involved re: giving the elf a little bit of agency. I'm definitely rambling a bit now, so I guess I'll summarize: V's screwups only matter in minor fights or in her subplot (and you know it's such when none of the other Order members know the first thing about what's going on with her), but when an excess of arcane magic would actually change where the Order is going or what they're doing, then V gets sidelined preemptively, which is different from the stuff about efficient use of V's magic.

Felhammer

2013-05-06, 01:01 AM

I'd shorten the amount of time the Order was separated from one another. That was by far my least favorite story arc.

Sith_Happens

2013-05-06, 01:37 AM

This is something I didn't get in the comic proper, so should I rewrite it I would ensure that the comic explained it better:

Why was the treasure from the black dragon cave destroyed by the explosion? It is just gold pieces, even if they're exposed to extreme heat, all they'd do would be to melt. That is still salvageable. Unless there is something fundamental that I've missed.

Yes, the fact that all of it was in Bags of Holding. You so much as poke a hole in one of those and you can kiss everything inside goodbye:

If the bag is overloaded, or if sharp objects pierce it (from inside or outside), the bag ruptures and is ruined. All contents are lost forever.

As for me, I'd have Elan take up the mandolin. Much cooler than a normal lute.:smallwink:

factotum

2013-05-06, 01:45 AM

My list of things I'll change:

1) Belkar joining the Order.

That's all.

Wouldn't that mean Haley, Elan and Hinjo would now all be dead on account of there being no Fireball-wielding Belkar on the walls at Azure City? Haley would be dead twice over, in fact, since she would also have been killed by Bozzok and Crystal without Belkar's interference, and Hinjo would be dead twice over due to being killed by the thief with his poison arrow. So, your change requires a great many *other* changes in the plot to get us to the same point!

Weiser_Cain

2013-05-06, 03:06 AM

Well once blekar dies replace him with a warforge monk.

137beth

2013-05-06, 03:12 AM

Well once blekar dies replace him with a warforge monk.

But this isn't Eberron...

Mike Havran

2013-05-06, 06:59 AM

Now that I re-read recent strips, I would also rewrite Malack's speech in #875. Firstly, the part about killing chambers feels really uncomfortable (in the wrong way) because of Unfortunate Implications. And also, it came a bit out of the blue. I don't mind that Malack is an undead monster with inhuman frame of mind (but I admit it surprised me), but the whole delivery was too much of a generic_insane_evil_rant to my liking.

The Pilgrim

2013-05-06, 07:33 AM

Wouldn't that mean Haley, Elan and Hinjo would now all be dead on account of there being no Fireball-wielding Belkar on the walls at Azure City? Haley would be dead twice over, in fact, since she would also have been killed by Bozzok and Crystal without Belkar's interference, and Hinjo would be dead twice over due to being killed by the thief with his poison arrow. So, your change requires a great many *other* changes in the plot to get us to the same point!

If you are going to go that way, please note that without Belkar, Miko wouldn't have snapped, wouldn't have killed Shojo, and under his proper leadership the azurites would have probably won the Battle.

Anyway, the thread is about what things would you change in the comic. I would change a psycophat midget being a protagonist. Does that mean that his narrative role would have been taken over by other characters? No problem for me.

Bedinsis

2013-05-06, 08:23 AM

Yes, the fact that all of it was in Bags of Holding. You so much as poke a hole in one of those and you can kiss everything inside goodbye

Ah. Thank you for the information.

FlawedParadigm

2013-05-06, 08:28 AM

Honestly I liked Belkar since I first read him, albeit because I realise he's a fictional character. His antics would not be amusing in real life. But I swear, the more and more people who complain about him, the more I like him. It's hilarious to see how righteous and indignant people can get over a character who's spent 90% of the comic holding up a giant sign saying "DO NOT TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!" Yet people blithely forge on ahead and do precisely that to no useful end.

Kish

2013-05-06, 08:43 AM

Ah. Thank you for the information.
Actually, that's real unlikely. We know the Order hauled the treasure out of the dragon's cave in wagons full of gold. A Bag of Holding is a bag that looks small and remains light despite being filled to (high) capacity.

sam79

2013-05-06, 08:50 AM

To each their own of course, but in my view the comic would be far less entertaining without Belkar. A lot of the stuff he says and does is funny and works well becasue he is an evil little pschopath. Giving his narrative role (Go To Guy For Mean/Bad Taste Comedy) to another member of the Order would be too out of character for any of them. So no Belkar would mean a lot less Comedy Gold, IMO.

Bedinsis

2013-05-06, 09:01 AM

Actually, that's real unlikely. We know the Order hauled the treasure out of the dragon's cave in wagons full of gold. A Bag of Holding is a bag that looks small and remains light despite being filled to (high) capacity.

And that treasure was transported in Bags of Holding in their wagons(since even Bags of Holding get heavy when you have many of them); bags which later were stored in the vault of the fancy inn. Or am I missing something?

Jay R

2013-05-06, 09:42 AM

I'd spend less time on all the side issues and stick with the main quest.

I mean, how long has it been since we've even seen Frudu and the Ming?

Kolhammer

2013-05-06, 09:57 AM

Probably something about the gender swap Roy went through. That scene was just meh for me.

Morty

2013-05-06, 09:58 AM

If I were to rewrite something after all... I'd change the hobgoblins' behaviour and tactics during the Battle for Azure City. The way they just kept charging to their certain deaths felt unrealistic and less than believable to me.

Kish

2013-05-06, 11:12 AM

And that treasure was transported in Bags of Holding in their wagons(since even Bags of Holding get heavy when you have many of them); bags which later were stored in the vault of the fancy inn. Or am I missing something?
I don't know that you're missing something, but either I am or you're adding a hell of a lot.

The wagons were in Haley's Bags of Holding, she said. Not the other way around. Purse-sized bag that appears to have nothing in it when it's closed=Bag of Holding; big bag of coins sitting in a wagon=nonmagical bag being used for transport.

Sir_Leorik

2013-05-06, 11:24 AM

Haley's aphasia and the cryptograms. They were cute at first, but it went on too long. Having read the author commentary to book 3, I understand the reasons why Rich wanted to go in that direction, but I feel that in that specific case he really overdid it. The payoff of Haley being cured of her aphasia in order to snap Elan out of Nale's ploy was good, but the intervening strips took up too much time.

The "Get Roy" bonus strips from book 4 needed to be in the on-line comic.

The "4-D" version of the OotS only got less than two dozen pages in Snips, Snails and Dragontales. Please bring them back!

Poppy Appletree

2013-05-06, 02:14 PM

Have Miko die in her fight against Redcloak.

Simply because, if that had happened, Xykon and Redcloak would have been destroyed, and their threat to the world would have been ended.

(I don't really wish this would have happened, but it would have lead to the best outcome.)

factotum

2013-05-06, 03:32 PM

If you are going to go that way, please note that without Belkar, Miko wouldn't have snapped, wouldn't have killed Shojo, and under his proper leadership the azurites would have probably won the Battle.

I don't think it was primarily Belkar who led to Miko snapping--it was her hearing that her lord and master, the person she'd trusted implicitly since she was a child, had been lying to her that triggered that. Also, we don't know that the Azurites would have won the battle with Shojo in command; yes, he might have been able to get more troops (because the private armies of the noble families would probably have been involved), but it wasn't like the battle was all that close-run a thing as it was, so the hobgoblins could probably have taken a few extra defenders. As for Shojo, he would almost certainly have been killed in the throne room with the other defenders when Xykon broke in, which would have happened no matter what the situation on the ground was.

crayzz

2013-05-06, 04:00 PM

Alright, I'm going to have some difficulty articulating this in full, but suffice it to say you're not thinking on as meta-textual a level as I am here. You're focusing on V's spell use, but I'd submit that that only matters inside a battle, not to the actual story.

Uhh... the battles and the story are inextricably intertwined. The battles are part of the story. Their outcome determines where the story may lead, and where the story leads determines future battles.

In story terms, the world goes out of its way to prevent V from affecting the plot. Even when the elf is thinking, she's still not allowed to prevent the fall of Azure City, because that's already going to happen; he can't reunite the party, because that's Haley and Durkon's job and the story flow is dictated by their vacillation; can't prevent herself, Haley and Elan from getting dragged to the Empire of Blood in chains, because the story goes nowhere otherwise. I select these three instances because they're the most prominent examples of the main plot marching right along past V and because no amount of good judgement on her part would have made a difference; she was fighting epic-level magic in two of the above, and the third had her disabled in the surprise round.

No one was allowed to prevent the fall of Azure City. And when she tried to find Haley, her tactic was the same damn thing over and over again. V's greatest trait for most of the comic is slothfulness. She nearly always relies on magical might, rather than judicial application thereof, in battles and out. There have been times where her agency has been removed, sure, but that's true of all the characters.

TRH

2013-05-06, 04:26 PM

Uhh... the battles and the story are inextricably intertwined. The battles are part of the story. Their outcome determines where the story may lead, and where the story leads determines future battles.

Not necessarily. To take one example, did the random encounter from strip 145 have any chance of affecting the overall story? No, it was a random encounter to add a little flavor. Hell, V even lampshades the pointlessness of the whole exercise. This is part of what I was talking about with regards to meta-textual thinking; if you assume that Order members could have actually died in that fight, then yes, it was important insofar as they didn't. But that's not how it works, because this isn't a game and the results are not random; the Giant has said so himself. In that sense, there are the battles where the direction of the story could be affected, and I already listed two examples. There are those, and there are more deterministic ones like the fights in Girard's pyramid, none of which would have had the Order going anywhere else or doing anything else other than looking for the Gate some more.

No one was allowed to prevent the fall of Azure City. And when she tried to find Haley, her tactic was the same damn thing over and over again. V's greatest trait for most of the comic is slothfulness. She nearly always relies on magical might, rather than judicial application thereof, in battles and out. There have been times where her agency has been removed, sure, but that's true of all the characters.

Okay, this will be easiest to address with numbered points.

1. Yes, but no one else got separated from the party explicitly so they wouldn't affect what the others were doing.

2. That ignores the attempt with the animal messengers that arbitrarily were killed by Haley and Belkar before they could convey their messages.

3. Maybe so, but removal of agency is more consistent for V and more protracted than it is for anyone else, Roy's dirt nap notwithstanding. It's the default start to any fight, and it, far more than any particular inefficiency in method, is the main reason why despite explicitly being the most powerful Order member, V contributes the least and the least often to the Order's success. Compare to Haley or Durkon for a moment; the former's obsession with secrecy makes it damn hard to cooperate with other people in regards to planning, and the latter consistently screws up with regards to having the right spells prepared, and yet they're still the party mainstays with regards to anything not involving combat. Why? Are they really that much more competent? Not really, it's just that they're usually the first into action and the last to be taken out of it. At any rate, I'm not particularly interested in debating this any longer, my original point was that the Giant wouldn't want to be writing another wizard, which is still true, IMO.

Rogar Demonblud

2013-05-06, 05:23 PM

Honestly, I have to wonder why Vaarsuvius didn't tie a letter to the birds' legs. You can use a lot more words that way.:smalltongue:

Grey Watcher

2013-05-06, 05:47 PM

Honestly, I have to wonder why Vaarsuvius didn't tie a letter to the birds' legs. You can use a lot more words that way.:smalltongue:

But then it wouldn't have been MAGIC!

Raineh Daze

2013-05-06, 05:48 PM

Honestly, I have to wonder why Vaarsuvius didn't tie a letter to the birds' legs. You can use a lot more words that way.:smalltongue:

Easy interception?

The Pilgrim

2013-05-06, 05:56 PM

I don't think it was primarily Belkar who led to Miko snapping--it was her hearing that her lord and master, the person she'd trusted implicitly since she was a child, had been lying to her that triggered that.

More than Shojo lying, was the fact that he was consorting the "evil" OOTS. And the fact that the Order chose to stay by an evil murderer instead of her (when she attemped to execute Belkar) sealed her hatred for the Order.

Also, we don't know that the Azurites would have won the battle with Shojo in command; yes, he might have been able to get more troops (because the private armies of the noble families would probably have been involved), but it wasn't like the battle was all that close-run a thing as it was, so the hobgoblins could probably have taken a few extra defenders. As for Shojo, he would almost certainly have been killed in the throne room with the other defenders when Xykon broke in, which would have happened no matter what the situation on the ground was.

Ok, I'll make this simple: Miko doesn't kills Shojo. Miko is a member of the Shappire Guard. Miko is assigned to the throne room with all the other high-ranking members. Miko follows the fate of the rest of the Shappire Guard. Miko is not available to destroy the Gate when Soon is about to kill Xykon and Redcloak.

But my real point is that this is a work of fiction we are reading here. Belkar being absent wouldn't have altered the plot of the comic. Simply, The Giant would have unfold those plot points through other characters.

Weiser_Cain

2013-05-06, 08:28 PM

But this isn't Eberron...

This isn't not Eberron...

Wait, just make an OotS equivalent, maybe even a one-off creation. Yeah that makes more sense.

Katrover_Swatroad

2013-05-06, 10:47 PM

Do you really have to ask? :smallfrown:

I, like Roy, like many on this forum, would love to rewrite things so that Durkon never died or became a vampire.

I trust Rich knows what he's doing, so I'll let it slide (for now).

Bulldog Psion

2013-05-07, 12:54 AM

Probably something about the gender swap Roy went through. That scene was just meh for me.

Like, say, having Roy decide to be a woman permanently? :smallsmile:

factotum

2013-05-07, 02:16 AM

But my real point is that this is a work of fiction we are reading here. Belkar being absent wouldn't have altered the plot of the comic. Simply, The Giant would have unfold those plot points through other characters.

But the fact it was other characters doing those things in itself is a plot change! Either he'd have to create a new character to fill in the blanks, or he'd have to have characters we already know about doing something different; either way, it affects the plot in all sorts of ways.

The Pilgrim

2013-05-07, 08:21 AM

But the fact it was other characters doing those things in itself is a plot change! Either he'd have to create a new character to fill in the blanks, or he'd have to have characters we already know about doing something different; either way, it affects the plot in all sorts of ways.

So? You stated that without Belkar in the comic, Haley and Hinjo would have died. Preventing this would have required greater plot changes.

Ok, let's see...

The attemp on Hinjo's life by the thief was basically a plot developement for Belkar. With no Belkar on the comic, that scene wouldn't have had to happen at all. That Hinjo was under threat of assasination by the nobles was already stated by the appearance of the ninjas.

The fireballing scene is even less relevant for the plot. It was just a bit showing for the Belkster. No relevance for the plot.

The fight with the thieves would have needed to be arranged in another way. So? The outcome would have been the same. The plot rules the choreography and not the other way around.

I'm not into "look he killed someone, it's funny" (I grew past preteen long ago) or "killing scores of faceless mooks is badass" (this tends to kill a lot my suspension of disbelief), hence I find Belkar mostly irrelevant for me. I find that the story would be richer if some other character would have been introduced as protagonist instead of an one-dimensional psychopat who has been traveling for most of the comic in exactly one direction, and not a particulary interesting one. After his epiphany with the Mark of Justice he has become marginally interesting, but still not enough in my view to be anything more than a B or C list character. I find O-Chul, Therkla, or that guy with a halberd to be much deeper and interesting characters.

Of course, this is just my personal opinion about what I'd change in the comic. But, since the OP in this thread is asking exactly that, I'm sharing.

Fish

2013-05-07, 10:37 AM

Like, say, having Roy decide to be a woman permanently? :smallsmile:
Shame it was a Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity in 3.5 edition. The original design was permanent. Ah, those were the days to be a DM, where players were afraid of every magic item in the treasure hoard. *sigh*

cheesecake

2013-05-07, 10:56 AM

Bundin

2013-05-07, 12:32 PM

Very interesting topic, thanks for starting it :)

I'd not change the first 100 or so comics. OotS has evolved. It's an epic tale now but it started out as gag-a-day comics and there's no reason to deny or revise history. Besides, I enjoy rereading 'em, story arc or no.

Apart from subtitling Haley (that's not a change because nothing changes for the characters but a brilliant idea nonetheless), I'd like to see the titles somewhere in the pictures (or as hovertext) so archive-readers get to see 'em as well. But those two are technicalities, they don't change the story.

I would want to take another look at Roy's lines in #788 (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0788.html). The justification for the sudden no holds barred violence from Roy seemed rather thin. Sure, Thog has killed a bunch of people, but so has Roy, and so has Belkar under Roy's leadership. And the victims weren't exactly acquaintances of Roy, let alone friends.

Roy should know that Thog isn't some kind of super-villain, but just a big impressionable oaf. And that's how Thog is initially acting in the arena as well. I'm fine with Roy going to town on someone, spoiling for a fight, but I've always felt that Thog was a poorly chosen target for such an outburst of violence without room for talking.

Having that fight: sure! It was a great fight and made for some great comics on several levels. But I'd try and see if there could be a more convincing reason worked into the past for Roy to lay it into Thog like that.

Kish

2013-05-07, 01:07 PM

And the victims weren't exactly acquaintances of Roy, let alone friends.
You seem to be under the impression Roy is--or should be--Chaotic Evil.

("Sure, he's an axe-happy spree killer, but why would that make me hate him? It's not like I personally cared about most of his victims.")

Warren Dew

2013-05-07, 03:34 PM

You seem to be under the impression Roy is--or should be--Chaotic Evil.

("Sure, he's an axe-happy spree killer, but why would that make me hate him? It's not like I personally cared about most of his victims.")
That would be neutral, but Roy's not that either.

The Pilgrim

2013-05-07, 05:22 PM

Having that fight: sure! It was a great fight and made for some great comics on several levels. But I'd try and see if there could be a more convincing reason worked into the past for Roy to lay it into Thog like that.

The main reason why Roy went all medieval on Thog is basically because Thog is the perfect exemplification of everything Roy despies:

A dumb fighter.

Just like Xykon loses his cool with the "wizards are better than sorcerers" trope, Roy hates the "fighters are dumb".

Thog is everything Roy depises. And also, he is supposed to be his opposite, which means that what Roy most depises in somewhat at the same level than him.

And that's why Roy has that outburst of violence against Thog. It's pretty much explained in-comic BTW.

Velaryon

2013-05-07, 06:32 PM

If I could change the strip, I'd like to upgrade the art of the early strips to the standard we have now. That's not exactly "rewriting" anything, more "redrawing," but I think it's still fair game for this thread.

Beyond that, the main thing I can think of is abbreviating the whole desert/Empire of Blood arc a bit. I feel like the story spent way too long there. There was a lot of good material in that time period, but condensing it a bit here and there to get back to the main plot quicker would have been nice.

Oh, and I like the idea of subtitling Haley's garbled speech. Maybe not at the time they were being published, since trying to decode them seems like it would have been fun, but retroactively once it was over. I'd attach them to the bottom of the strip, or something. I would also have preferred to have the subtitles in the book on the same page as the comics they came from, but I'm not sure how possible that would be with the strip-per-page format.

Bundin

2013-05-07, 08:07 PM

The main reason why Roy went all medieval on Thog is basically because Thog is the perfect exemplification of everything Roy despies:

A dumb fighter.

Just like Xykon loses his cool with the "wizards are better than sorcerers" trope, Roy hates the "fighters are dumb".

Thog is everything Roy depises. And also, he is supposed to be his opposite, which means that what Roy most depises in somewhat at the same level than him.

And that's why Roy has that outburst of violence against Thog. It's pretty much explained in-comic BTW.
Yup, that's why a Roy vs. Thog fight was bound to happen at some point (even though Thog is a barbarian). I don't think the fight should never have happened, but the way I interpreted Roy doesn't fit with him rushing into battle like that, especially when knowing that Thog is 1. a big dumb "kid" that may or may not realise the consequences of his actions, 2. not overly hostile at that time, and 3. known to be swayable with words. In my opinion, Thog is what Enor would have been if Gannji was more like Nale.

The fight absolutely had to happen and there's no better place than an arena for them characters to duke it out. I just would have liked to see a better stated reason than "you killed some people that I ran into once, now DIE". After all, usually Roy is indeed more thinky than smashy.

oppyu

2013-05-07, 08:25 PM

Belkar<3

2013-05-07, 08:45 PM

If you are going to go that way, please note that without Belkar, Miko wouldn't have snapped, wouldn't have killed Shojo, and under his proper leadership the azurites would have probably won the Battle.

Anyway, the thread is about what things would you change in the comic. I would change a psycophat midget being a protagonist. Does that mean that his narrative role would have been taken over by other characters? No problem for me.

I like Belkar :( Hence, the username. Everyone hates on him so much,

Belkar<3

2013-05-07, 08:47 PM

I'd probably speed the whole process up. Cut the number of pages by at least 1/3.

I'd make Miko be turned into something cool as a sub plot villain.

Increase Belkar's body count. He needs to kill more.

Not resurrect Roy. I hate Roy......

Could I agree more? Ehhh..

What I would change is in the cast of characters, change Durkon to a vampire (Haley took the diamond from herself, after all.) That would be a cool little touch. Nobody goes there, but whatever.

Burner28

2013-05-08, 08:58 AM

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0408.html Miko attacks Roy before he attacks her. I honestly believe if Roy had tried the diplomacy approach first, the gate would still be standing and Xykon would be dead. This makes Rich's point clearer, because I could see Miko attacking first.

Personally, I don't really feel that it was a big deal that Roy attacked first as I feel it is understandable for his character, considering the circumstances.

Carry2

2013-05-10, 09:11 AM

Um... Thog is a mass-murdering sociopath who seems incapable of discerning right from wrong. He's attempted to kill Roy, personally, he's tried to kill the Order more than once, he killed one of Celia's best friends, he murdered cops, he, Sabine and Nale teamed up to mimic the actions of a deranged serial killer.
Well, it would be fairer to say they performed the actions of one or more deranged serial killers based on some fairly petty and sadistic motives. Which makes them, for all intents and purposes, deranged serial killers.

The whole thing about 'incapable of discerning right from wrong' might swing both ways, though. I kinda suspect that if Thog had fallen in with a better crowd, he'd have passively gone along with whatever their moral framework was in the same way he blindly follows the LG, as long as he was plied with ice cream, puppies, and a faint undercurrent of metrosexual innuendo.

That kid has strange tastes.

factotum

2013-05-10, 09:40 AM

I kinda suspect that if Thog had fallen in with a better crowd, he'd have passively gone along with whatever their moral framework was

I'm not so sure. The way he said "little ice-cream friends! thog delays boredom-driven rampage only for you" in #252 suggests to me he actually likes rampaging around hitting and/or killing things, and the LG is actually restraining him from that to some extent!

Carry2

2013-05-10, 10:28 AM

I'm not so sure. The way he said "little ice-cream friends! thog delays boredom-driven rampage only for you" in #252 suggests to me he actually likes rampaging around hitting and/or killing things, and the LG is actually restraining him from that to some extent!
True. But my point is that if, say, the sapphire guard were to keep him regularly supplied with chocolate sprinkles, they could point him in the direction of the nearest smite-worthy target, stand back and watch the fireworks. It's the same argument you could make for Roy's efforts to 'redeem' Belkar, except that he looks easier to control.

Carry2

2013-05-10, 10:37 AM

I changed my mind about what I would alter. I would have the story stay consistent the whole way through, as to whether it will link with D&D rules or not.
Since the subject's been brought up before, I'd be interested to see some kind of total conversion to Dungeon World (http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3269630/dwdotcom/DungeonWorld_character_sheets.pdf). I suspect this would give the author about 90% of what he's looking for rules-wise, and might be the local conclusion of the evolution of this fictitious 'gaming group'. So to speak.

I think the question of rules-adherence, however, is actually a tangential approach to a deeper topic. I'm sympathetic to efforts to rewrite the 3E rules, given that most people agree they could stand some patching (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/jFppYwv7OUkegKhONNF.html). The problem, as the author has pointed out (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=15178942&postcount=60), is that rules-fudging is associated with a set of behaviours that are problematic on a more fundamental level:

D&D players who come into this treating it like it is a D&D game become incensed by anything that, at a game table, would be railroading. Because they are (mistakenly) perceiving it as a bunch of players getting their agency taken away by a DM...
...But this is not a game, and the characters are all being controlled by the same person. It is literally impossible for me to be unfair to my characters because "fairness" is not a concept that exists in anything but games.

To expand on this point, I would suggest that while 'fairness' might not have direct application outside of some kind of sporting competition, one could argue there are analagous concepts in writer's terminology. These refer to the notions of 'fair warning' (checkov's gun), internal consistency (suspension of disbelief), and allowing character decisions to matter (protagonism), without getting something for nothing (the mary sue.) And these arguably constitute 'rules' of a sort, even if they're not particularly congruent with the rules of D&D.

To give an example, a number of readers complained that Miko herding the PCs to meet up with Shojo for the trial scene and aftermath smacked of overt railroading, back in the day. Now, this might not have been unfair to any particular real person, because Roy and Co. are purely fictitious entities- but it does mean that the real 'agonists' of this segment were arguably Shojo, Miko and associates. We find out more about them, and their choices have more of an impact.

Railroading might not be unfair outside the context a game, but it still feels like deprotagonisation (http://tobiah.panshin.net/master-of-the-game-deprotagonisation/). And I say this as someone who found Miko and Shojo to be fascinating characters with plausible justifications for (nearly) everything they did. But that's not the point. If the story is really about X, then X need to get the spotlight, and if Y get the spotlight, then the story really needs to be about Y.

Now, to be fair, while I think the problem may have cropped up again in the Tarquin/Malack segment, I think in most segments of the story the OOTS are the primary movers and shakers behind depicted events. But I also think this sort of thing may have been a weakness of the OOTS storyline on occasion, and I think may be attributable to, or at least correlated with, 'unfair' treatment of PCs or NPCs.

I actually hadn't realised this when I started typing this post, but on reflection, that's probably the main thing I'd bear in mind if I were rewriting parts of the comic.

.

Tathum

2013-05-10, 11:53 AM

It's funny, as soon as I saw the title to this thread, i knew exactly what my answer would be. I open it up and see the OP had the exact same idea as I do.

Definitely would have raised Miko up as a greater form of undead. In addition that idea, however, I would have liked to see her be completely blinded to the notion that she was on a slide towards evil. She should still believe that hers is the work of the seven gods and that her cause is righteous in the pursuit of the OotS...

crayzz

2013-05-10, 01:35 PM

I would get rid of the implication (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0492.html) (last panel) that lawful people should feel guilty about sex.

Xelbiuj

2013-05-10, 02:13 PM

I would get rid of the implication (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0492.html) (last panel) that lawful people should feel guilty about sex.

He just says they expect it, not that it is unlawful. That said, in a quasi-medieval setting, sex before marriage could be a strictly unlawful, dishonorable, etc . . . dunno what kind of protection they have in OOTS world but it probably isn't great. Ignoring arbitrarily spreading disease, conceiving children in every port city (alla Julio) is a pretty scummy move.

crayzz

2013-05-10, 02:37 PM

:roy:: Are you trying to make people feel guilty about sex?
archon: Actually yes. We've found our lawful patrons generally expect it that way.

"Lawful people view sex with guilt" is a pretty clear association between sex and unlawfulness. The fact that the after life is content to enforce this makes it more problematic. No, you don't have to interpret it that way, but the implication exists non-the-less.

B. Dandelion

2013-05-10, 03:18 PM

Would it have helped if Roy had said "are you trying to make people feel guilty about one-night stands?" since that was the kind of sex they were talking about in context?

From the archon's wording I had taken it not so much that the people in charge thought Lawful Good folks should feel guilty about sex. He said they expect to be made to feel guilty about it. The LG people are cool enough with commitment-free sex that they not only permit it but have an establishment set up to facilitate it, so they can't think it's all that bad, but if their patrons want to be made to feel guilty about it they'll provide that service too.

Bulldog Psion

2013-05-10, 03:18 PM

I always viewed it as feeling guilty at having "infinite one-night stands" -- that is, a committed relationship is lawful, a casual encounter in a long series of the same is fairly chaotic.

However, I can see changing it to clarify that a bit.

Edit: Pretty much ninja'd by B. Dandelion.

screwtape

2013-05-10, 03:42 PM

137beth

2013-05-10, 04:02 PM

I would have killed V here:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0440.html

here:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0629.html

here
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0799.html

or especially here:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0661.html

I'm really tired of the deus ex machina ploys to save him/her.

I'd have killed Roy again here:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0796.html

And I would have either made Elan less annoyingly stupid or written him out altogether by comic 100. Or had him run off with Therkla and settle down.

How the heck are any of those deus ex machinas?!? V not being able to kill the death knight was to help set up his/her character development arc, realizing that magic can't solve everything.
The IFCC is a plot hook. The dragon existed for the sole purpose of introducing the IFCCs, a new group of villains, and to develop V's character. Again, how could that possibly be interpreted as a deus ex machina?

799-800...that was V defeating his/her opponent purely with his/her own power. Do you even know what a deus ex machina is:smallconfused:

661--again, MitD has had the ability to teleport people ever since his species was established, around strip 100. He was there the whole time, and there was a whole long arc about him liking O-Chul, so...how is it a deus ex machina?

EDIT: for that matter, what possible narrative purpose could you have for killing Roy in his fight against Thog:smallconfused:

David Argall

2013-05-10, 07:23 PM

Now there are lots of things I would like to change, but there would have to be other changes. I'd want Miko to stick around, but she is not a background character. Make her a villain or member of the party who "helps" Roy, either way she is going to change most everything. Even if most of that is just adding a couple more monsters to kill in each fight, it is still a lot of changes. It is not at all clear it is worth the effort.
Now most of are lazy, so including an immediate translation for Haley is a good idea. And showing more justification for Haley killing the assassin before leaving town would have been good [I've not read the book. So I can't say if the expanded version was a good idea or not.]
Now I wouldn't want to change to first 100 or so strips. Rather I would restyle the later strips to accent the funny. Not that OOTS has been all that serious anyway, but we have plenty of serious strips elsewhere, and a stick comic shouldn't be interested in being serious.
Roy is on safe ground killing Thog, who is a vicious murder machine. Now it would be morally superior to give him a ton or two of ice cream and a nursemaid to tell him it is not proper behavior to kill random people, but those are not among Roy's options, and not without risks. No problem for Roy there. [Now maybe for us. Thog was a very useful character.]

ti'esar

2013-05-10, 08:07 PM

Do you even know what a deus ex machina is:smallconfused:

I'd like to nominate this for the official motto of Giant in the Playground.

crayzz

2013-05-11, 08:18 AM

V not being able to kill the death knight was to help set up his/her character development arc, realizing that magic can't solve everything.

I think screwtape meant 441, where Roy lops of the undead dragon's head and it falls on the death knight. That scene was explicitly stated to be a deus ex machina later in the comic.

Not that OOTS has been all that serious anyway, but we have plenty of serious strips elsewhere, and a stick comic shouldn't be interested in being serious.

I'd like to see you back that up with anything besides personal opinion.

Re: If you were going to rewrite part of the comic what would you change?
I always viewed it as feeling guilty at having "infinite one-night stands" -- that is, a committed relationship is lawful, a casual encounter in a long series of the same is fairly chaotic.

Would it have helped if Roy had said "are you trying to make people feel guilty about one-night stands?" since that was the kind of sex they were talking about in context?

"Infinite one night stands" would have been better, yes. But still, I don't think lawful people should be guilty about it. I'm not really convinced that one night stands, in and of themselves, are chaotic. There's no inherent obligation or responsibility to not have lots of sex with different people; hell, STIs aren't even a problem in the afterlife. Roy is in a committed relationship with Celia, but they're talking about sex in general.

Now, a lawful person might prefer a committed relationship, and find one night stands to be distasteful, but's that's more a matter of personal opinion; instead, we have the powers that be actively trying to make people feel guilty.

Reddish Mage

2013-05-11, 10:51 AM

Raineh Daze

2013-05-11, 11:07 AM

Isn't a Lich supposed to be an unholy abomination animated into a twisted mockery of life by the blackest of magic?

At least one D&D setting has good-aligned liches.

And it's more 'spellcaster that shoved their soul elsewhere for safekeeping'. Happens to come with a pricetag of being undead.

Kish

2013-05-11, 11:13 AM

Isn't a Lich supposed to be an unholy abomination animated into a twisted mockery of life by the blackest of magic?
Your phrasing makes me laugh.
:girard: Supposed to be? Sure, but I'm Chaotic.

Not that I believe Girard is a lich, or still among the living undeadmobile, or cool enough to have a line like that while not blowing his own leg off, I'm just amused by the phrasing that implies "being a lich while not being an unholy abomination animated into a twisted mockery of life by the blackest of magic" is illegal.

David Argall

2013-05-11, 12:31 PM

I'd like to see you back that up with anything besides personal opinion.

What in particular? The statement has several parts. Now if you were interested in the most clearly opinion..."a stick comic shouldn't be interested in being serious." There is a relationship between art and how serious the treatment. Stick art says childish, not serious, etc. Wisely or not, we tend to think that if the artist will not put more effort into the art, the message is also lacking in effort too. One might dispute this, but as said with the definition of fashion, "that which the wise ridicule, and obey." if the writer wants to reader to pay much attention to any message, a medium that seems to require effort is useful. Stick art is quickly dismissed as casual and non-serious and any "message" apt to be overlooked.

"Infinite one night stands" would have been better, yes. But still, I don't think lawful people should be guilty about it. I'm not really convinced that one night stands, in and of themselves, are chaotic. There's no inherent obligation or responsibility to not have lots of sex with different people; hell, STIs aren't even a problem in the afterlife. Roy is in a committed relationship with Celia, but they're talking about sex in general.

Now, a lawful person might prefer a committed relationship, and find one night stands to be distasteful, but's that's more a matter of personal opinion; instead, we have the powers that be actively trying to make people feel guilty.
Now there are several points to keep in mind here. Basic is that we are dividing behavior. With or without good reason, we must say behavior A is chaotic while B is lawful. It doesn't ultimately matter if our distinctions are valid, we must still call a great deal of behavior chaotic, and a great deal lawful. We may not need a precise split, but we do want large numbers on all sides. It is a common error in D&D to think that if it is good, it must be lawful good, but the system [& logic] requires that a number of virtues be absent from lawful good and reserved for chaotic good.
In the case of sex, the one night stand is clearly more chaotic than the formal marriage. You go to random location to meet random girl[?] to do random activities, following which there are random results. You may or may not ever see each other again. All very chaotic.
"...no inherent obligation or responsibility..." But that is another reason to call it chaotic. The essence of law is that you are ordered to do X [or forbidden from doing it]. If there is no obligation, there is no law.
"STIs aren't even a problem in the afterlife." Our model here is based on mortal behavior. Nor are we concerned with the chance of getting a bug when we are considering the morals of the subject.
The basic point remains that we need to have a substantial amount of good sex that is not lawful good sex. So if not casual sex, then what?

davidbofinger

2013-05-11, 01:10 PM

subtitling Haley's garbled speech.

Maybe instead of garbling the speech just print what she's trying to say, but upside-down. (But then some character would be standing on his head and we'd have a joke about his understanding her. Not sure if that's good or bad.) Also, some day for comparison it would be interesting to see a few of those strips with Hayley the only comprehensible character and everyone else garbled. I don't know why I want to see that.

I would have liked to keep Miko, alive or undead, but maybe then the interest of Durkula would be reduced.

The finding of the phylactery always felt forced to me: it was lost, then it was in the hands of the goblins, then in the hands of the resistance, then you think Xykon's getting it but instead Redcloak keeps it. That could have been developed better, I think, if it was slower.

The same themes seem to recur a lot. I'd encourage the Giant to ask himself what other questions deserve discussion.

Therkla was a fun character and her choosing to die if she couldn't have her man, while not entirely out of character, was overly neat, a bit cliched and weakened her as a person.

I could probably find some other examples but really there's nothing very bad, very little I'd change and if I was able to force the Giant to do these rewrites I'd probably turn out to be wrong about half of them. The whole story, at least since about #100, is sycophancy-inducingly brilliant. (Is sycophantogenesis a word? Should it be?)

crayzz

2013-05-11, 01:27 PM

There is a relationship between art and how serious the treatment.

There is a general trend, yes. There need not be one, and I see no reason why The Giant should follow that trend.

Stick art is quickly dismissed as casual and non-serious and any "message" apt to be overlooked.
Perhaps. But it would seem a great many people have gotten the message, simplistic art not withstanding. And maybe the trend of "simple art; simple story" is a prohibitive one, and we'd be better off without it. If what you say is true, someone with a serious story to tell will be over looked because of their simple art (maybe the haven't the time or the skill to do better), and many of us are missing out on it because people insist on sticking to a pointless trend.

Basic is that we are dividing behavior. With or without good reason, we must say behavior A is chaotic while B is lawful.

Eating an apple: good or evil? Drawing a picture: lawful or chaotic? Perhaps the action is orthogonal to the axis of law and chaos; perhaps, without any details, there's no reason to place the action within either camp.

You go to random location to meet random girl[?] to do random activities, following which there are random results. You may or may not ever see each other again. All very chaotic.

You have an oddly specific view of what a one night stand must be. Perhaps the only variable is the other person. Perhaps someone likes sex in the same place, around the same time, doing the same thing, and cooling down the same way once finished. The next morning, they cook the same food for their guest and themselves, and say the same goodbye.

Our model here is based on mortal behavior.

And, for some reason, the powers that be are enforcing that behaviour. Apparently, it's not just mortal who think that way.

The essence of law is that you are ordered to do X [or forbidden from doing it]. If there is no obligation, there is no law.

If there is no law, there is no standard by which to decide whether or not an action is lawful or chaotic. It's no different than any other action not forbidden or encouraged by existing standards and obligations.

-EDIT-

The key thing here is that the afterlife is trying to instill guilt. Even if we say one night stands are unlawful, it doesn't mean lawful people should feel guilty about it. It just means that their behaviour in one area of their life deviates from the rest of their behaviour.

Bulldog Psion

2013-05-11, 02:33 PM

The key thing here is that the afterlife is trying to instill guilt. Even if we say one night stands are unlawful, it doesn't mean lawful people should feel guilty about it. It just means that their behaviour in one area of their life deviates from the rest of their behaviour.

Which they then feel guilty about because it's chaotic behavior and they tend to think in a lawful manner.

Honestly, I don't see what the problem is. Unless you're conflating "chaotic" and "evil" here, which is not the case.

One night stands being chaotic doesn't make them wrong. It's just that people who are used to obeying rules (lawful-minded) expect to feel guilty when they do stuff at random (chaotic). Randomly hooking up with random people temporarily for mostly physical pleasure does seem a lot more chaotic than an established relationship where the same people stay together for many years in a precisely defined, exclusive, formal arrangement which includes a whole battery of emotions beyond basic lust. Not saying one or the other is better, but one is chaotic and one is lawful. Unless we dismiss the meaning of all words entirely.

And if you'll pardon my saying so, this seems like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too big a deal of something that was basically being played for laughs anyway, IMO of course. Unless classifying all sex as lawful behavior has suddenly become some kind of burning issue rather than, say, a minor administrative detail. :smallconfused:

ManuelSacha

2013-05-11, 03:05 PM

Without the chocolate milk vs fruit bar battles, or whatever that was.

crayzz

2013-05-11, 03:08 PM

Which they then feel guilty about because it's chaotic behavior and they tend to think in a lawful manner.

Since it's chaotic, they should feel guilt? How does that follow? That a given behaviour fits a description separate from the description that fits the rest of ones behaviour is not a reason to feel guilty. Inconsistent, sure, but not guilty.

Randomly hooking up with random people temporarily for mostly physical pleasure does seem a lot more chaotic than an established relationship where the same people stay together for many years in a precisely defined, exclusive, formal arrangement which includes a whole battery of emotions beyond basic lust.

Again, it need not be random. It could be always Tuesday evening, down at "The Blue Marlin" pub, after they've ordered a steak. It might always be a red head, usually someone with an interest in puzzles. This could go on. The only variable necessary for a one night stand is the person in question. One variable doesn't seem very chaotic.

And maybe this person is avoid marriage because of the huge change that would cause to their lifestyle. Living with someone will most likely cause a huge lifestyle change that this person want's to avoid. Maybe they've grown set in their ways.

-EDIT-

"Purely for lust"? Is that how you imagine one night stands have to happen? It can't be about enjoying company, or caring for someone else? Making someone else feel good?

And if you'll pardon my saying so, this seems like waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too big a deal of something that was basically being played for laughs anyway, IMO of course.

My first post on this consisted of 1 sentence. My problem is largely with lazy arguments. Even then, typing out a response requires little effort on my part; in what way does it demonstrate any sort of "big deal"?

ti'esar

2013-05-11, 03:30 PM

Without the chocolate milk vs fruit bar battles, or whatever that was.

It was a parody of... something, although I can't remember what off the top of my head.

Bulldog Psion

2013-05-11, 03:41 PM

Since it's chaotic, they should feel guilt? How does that follow? That a given behaviour fits a description separate from the description that fits the rest of ones behaviour is not a reason to feel guilty. Inconsistent, sure, but not guilty.

Because they're lawful ...

... oh, never mind, forget it. There's a basic impossibility of communication here and right now, we're just talking past each other to no effect, other than maybe annoying everyone else in the thread. Agree to disagree, no harm no foul, and all that sound good to you?

"Purely for lust"? Is that how you imagine one night stands have to happen? It can't be about enjoying company, or caring for someone else? Making someone else feel good?

1. It's pretty hard to care for someone else in any significant way when you've met them maybe an hour or two before, other than the general benevolence one may feel towards one's fellow sapient.
2. What part of "making someone else feel good" is incompatible with "purely for lust?" :smallconfused:

crayzz

2013-05-11, 04:05 PM

Agree to disagree, no harm no foul, and all that sound good to you?

Cool.

1. It's pretty hard to care for someone else in any significant way when you've met them maybe an hour or two before, other than the general benevolence one may feel towards one's fellow sapient.
2. What part of "making someone else feel good" is incompatible with "purely for lust?"

1. For you, maybe. Perhaps I have different definition of "significant".
2. Lust is sexual desire. Anything that does not necessarily entail sexual desire need not be described as "purely for lust". Making someone else feel good does not require sex; sex is just one means to that end.

-EDIT-

I think maybe this is the problem. I understand that lawful people might feel guilty for chaotic behaviour. That's a given. However, I think many aspects of lawful behaviour are personal preferences (ones sexual behaviour is almost certainly so), and I see no reason why a lawful person should feel guilty for engaging in chaotic behaviour. Just because one prefers lawfulness doesn't mean one should feel guilty for occasionally being chaotic, any more than I should feel guilty for liking classical music when I usually like jazz

If this clarification does nothing to clarify, then yeah, subject dropped.

rodneyAnonymous

2013-05-11, 07:04 PM

I think screwtape meant 441, where Roy lops of the undead dragon's head and it falls on the death knight. That scene was explicitly stated to be a deus ex machina later in the comic.

Vaarsuvius called it that. S/he could be wrong. I would tend to agree but I don't think it is unquestionably true, as implied by "explicitly stated". For that matter Qarr has explicitly stated that V is male.

Weiser_Cain

2013-05-12, 04:35 AM

It was a parody of... something, although I can't remember what off the top of my head.

Let's all go to the lobby (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHYgjyGoV9s) I'd guess

veti

2013-05-12, 07:50 AM

I think screwtape meant 441, where Roy lops of the undead dragon's head and it falls on the death knight. That scene was explicitly stated to be a deus ex machina later in the comic.

It may be 'stated' as such (although 'described' would be a less loaded word, and would avoid the implication that the person saying it was some sort of authority on the subject) - but that would be a mistake. A DEM involves something new that hasn't appeared in the story until now, which the dragon's head definitely isn't. And it solves a problem that was otherwise unsolvable, whereas I can imagine half a dozen other ways the author could have got V out of that situation without even stretching probability much.

(E.g. with the help of Azurite soldiers, or hobgoblins, or a scroll of, I dunno, Wall of Force or something, or just by turning invisible.)

FlawedParadigm

2013-05-12, 12:50 PM

Vaarsuvius called it that. S/he could be wrong. I would tend to agree but I don't think it is unquestionably true, as implied by "explicitly stated". For that matter Qarr has explicitly stated that V is male.

Qarr has explicitly stated that V is female, as well. http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0656.html

So yeah, I think we can consider anything Qarr says on the matter to be inadmissible.

rodneyAnonymous

2013-05-12, 04:27 PM

So yeah, I think we can consider anything Qarr says on the matter to be inadmissible.

That was my point, except not just Qarr, most characters... unless they are talking about something they should have definite knowledge of, what they say should be considered their own opinion, not fact or the author's opinion. For example Roy calling Shojo an octogenarian is not evidence that Shojo is age 80-89 (because how would Roy know? he is just saying that), any character using a gendered pronoun for V is not evidence of V's gender (only of that character's perception), and so on. Similar with V calling the zombie-dragon head a deus ex machina, that means V thinks it was, but it doesn't mean that Rich thinks it was.

crayzz

2013-05-13, 06:52 AM

Similar with V calling the zombie-dragon head a deus ex machina, that means V thinks it was, but it doesn't mean that Rich thinks it was.

I never claimed that Rich thinks it was.

A DEM involves something new that hasn't appeared in the story until now, which the dragon's head definitely isn't.

Which is why I don't think it was a DEM. I never said it was, only that it was stated to be one. "Statement", to me, has no implication of authority or truth. How it could makes no sense to me.

I only brought this up because there was some confusion about how 440 could be an example of a DEM; I assumed the poster meant 441 instead of 440, since (rightly or wrongly) the scene was referred to as such.

screwtape

2013-05-13, 09:40 AM

V not being able to kill the death knight was to help set up his/her character development arc, realizing that magic can't solve everything.

V was cornered and out of spells with no reasonable way to escape. Instead of dying like (s)he should have, (s)he was rescued by a gag. I flipping hate when Rich resorts to jokes to get the OOTS out of trouble. The first time was sort of cute (lawyers against the mind flayer in #32). After that it was just obnoxious.

I think in general this forum should us the phrase "character development" more sparingly. Not everything is character development.

The IFCC is a plot hook.

Does that make it any less of a railroad?

Given that in the OOTS world the afterlife is a known-for-certain thing, there is no reason for the dragon to not kill V and still carry out her plan. The results are the same. V would still suffer knowing the fate of his/her family, whether alive or in the afterlife.

So the only reason for V to survive was to advance the plot to a predetermined point. Classic Deus Ex Machina.

The dragon existed for the sole purpose of introducing the IFCCs, a new group of villains,

Which sort of bolsters my point that the whole episode was forced.

and to develop V's character.

You said that word again. I do not think it means what you think it means.

799-800...that was V defeating his/her opponent purely with his/her own power.

Maybe. But at this point I feel Rich has taken too many liberties regarding rescuing V and for me at least, does not get the benefit of the doubt.

But that aside, if the drow was supposed to be the ultimate anti-V, why no detect invisibility? I find it difficult to believe the drow caster that high level also had no way to deal with small sized hand crossbows.

661--again, MitD has had the ability to teleport people ever since his species was established, around strip 100.

You are saying it was well known long before 661 that the monster could teleport? If that is true, then I missed it and may change my mind on this particular strip. In what strip was that revealed?

how is it a deus ex machina?

V was defeated yet again, with no reasonable expectation of rescue and is rescued completely out of the blue.

The monster had no idea who V was and no reason to teleport him/her. In fact, he might even know V is a member of OOTS and thus, an enemey, which makes V's rescue even more out of place.

for that matter, what possible narrative purpose could you have for killing Roy in his fight against Thog

Because it's flipping awesome? Because I like Thog better than Roy? Because Roy is a tool? Because it is obnoxious for Roy to get his butt so thoroughly trounced and then win for no good reason? Because it strains my credulity that Starshine was locked up forever and yet somehow had a healing potion? Because Roy dying every 30 or so strips could be an intersting plot hook (and ongoing gag) too?

You seem to be arguing with everything I've said on the basis of "if you did that then the strip would be different." Well, yes, that's the point. The thread is "what would you do differently?"

Fish

2013-05-13, 10:08 AM

V was rescued through no action of his own, because it's part of an overall plot arc. It's pretty easy to understand the story mechanic at work. And for obvious reasons it had to be something like a deus ex machina, or several of them.

Since the beginning, V has demonstrably been in pursuit of ever-increasing levels of arcane power. The various directions you can go with that:

1. V continues his/her pursuit, gaining in power but always craving more, and thus never develops. The difficulty of the enemies ramps up so V doesn't dominate the story. V becomes a one-note character, always about MORE POWA!! and becomes extraordinarily tiresome.
2. V obtains greater and greater levels of power, meaning there is little in the story that presents a challenge. The other characters lag behind in importance until they're nothing but caddies for carrying V's spell components. Nothing happens that V can't counter and the story becomes stale.
3. V is made to realize that arcane power alone can't solve every problem. This is the "monkey's paw" version of the story, where he gets what he wants, but it isn't what he thought it would be.

Other directions could be imagined. Rich is going with #3, apparently. In order to do that, V had to be pushed to the limits of his power (fighting off an army), escape by sheer luck, and be humiliated and threatened to the degree that a deal with devils seemed like a good choice. If V had the power to get himself out of those situations ... he doesn't develop as a character. Rich is giving the character the opposite of what he wanted.

If instead you'd rewrite the book so that Elan isn't Elan, Roy is gone, V is gone, and instead we watch random carnage with Thog, that's your choice. But I sure wouldn't read it.

Raimun

2013-05-13, 10:14 AM

I'd give that halberdier-guy more appearences.

Kish

2013-05-13, 11:34 AM

V was cornered and out of spells with no reasonable way to escape.

Invisibility.

But that aside, if the drow was supposed to be the ultimate anti-V, why no detect invisibility?
Because Vaarsuvius isn't an illusionst.

You seem to have confused "Zz'dtri's life goal is to crush Vaarsuvius" with, "Zz'dtri was designed with all knowledge available to Rich to win against Vaarsuvius." "What spells does Vaarsuvius have prepared?" was something Zz'dtri had to guess at. He got lucky in that Vaarsuvius did not have Break Enchantment prepared; he got unlucky in that Vaarsuvius did have Invisibility, Dominate Person, and Dispel Magic prepared.

I flipping hate when Rich resorts to jokes to get the OOTS out of trouble. [...]
Which sort of bolsters my point that the whole episode was forced.
[...]
But at this point I feel Rich has taken too many liberties regarding rescuing V and for me at least, does not get the benefit of the doubt.
[...]You are saying it was well known long before 661 that the monster could teleport? If that is true, then I missed it and may change my mind on this particular strip.[...]
V was defeated yet again, with no reasonable expectation of rescue and is rescued completely out of the blue.
[...]
Because I like Thog better than Roy? Because Roy is a tool? Because it is obnoxious for Roy to get his butt so thoroughly trounced and then win for no good reason? Because it strains my credulity that Starshine was locked up forever and yet somehow had a healing potion? Because Roy dying every 30 or so strips could be an intersting plot hook (and ongoing gag) too?

Wow, you kind of hate the comic, don't you?

You seem to be arguing with everything I've said on the basis of "if you did that then the strip would be different." Well, yes, that's the point. The thread is "what would you do differently?"While I am not 137ben, I am somewhat mystified that anyone responded, "I would make the comic fundamentally different and have the villains slaughter multiple protagonists including the main protagonist," rather than with something...smaller.

Carry2

2013-05-13, 11:58 AM

Other directions could be imagined. Rich is going with #3, apparently. In order to do that, V had to be pushed to the limits of his power (fighting off an army), escape by sheer luck, and be humiliated and threatened to the degree that a deal with devils seemed like a good choice. If V had the power to get himself out of those situations ... he doesn't develop as a character. Rich is widely giving the character the opposite of what he wanted.
While I don't disagree with your assessment, I don't think that this approach is inherently a form of Deus Ex Machina, in that it's possible to strongly hint (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3nn-12cC3U)* at the possibility of an impending devil's bargain well in advance of the event. The IFCC were a bit more sudden than that. (I know, we got the Oracle prophecy, but that was, per spec, so vague as to be useless.)

On the more general topic of whether V gets railroaded, in the sense of persistently subjected to fudged probabilities or contrived circumstances with the intention of producing a fixed outcome... possibly? I'm not sure I remember all the details that closely.

* warning: crazy creepy.

Carry2

2013-05-13, 01:29 PM

661--again, MitD has had the ability to teleport people ever since his species was established, around strip 100. He was there the whole time, and there was a whole long arc about him liking O-Chul, so...how is it a deus ex machina?
The MitD was shown teleporting folk back around strip 100? I must have missed that...

V was cornered and out of spells with no reasonable way to escape. Instead of dying like (s)he should have, (s)he was rescued by a gag. I flipping hate when Rich resorts to jokes to get the OOTS out of trouble. The first time was sort of cute (lawyers against the mind flayer in #32). After that it was just obnoxious....

V was defeated yet again, with no reasonable expectation of rescue and is rescued completely out of the blue...

...Because it's flipping awesome? Because I like Thog better than Roy? Because Roy is a tool? Because it is obnoxious for Roy to get his butt so thoroughly trounced and then win for no good reason?
Well, there were complaints earlier that V was being nerfed-by plot-device too often, so I guess that balances out?

Speaking personally, I guess I would say that while I don't mind frivolous elements of the strip, and I don't mind serious elements of the strip, it does bug me a little when frivolous causes have serious effects, and vice versa. But, to answer the point about character development, I think the idea that people are driving it is that V, or Roy, or whoever, can't learn from their mistakes if they're dead. (Or dead with an inaccessible corpse, in that whatever they learn in the afterlife won't do much good.) So, in that sense, the fudging could be said to facilitate character development?

Also, while I might not consider Roy to be the strongest character in the strip, I don't see how Thog is a viable candidate replacement. I mean, unless the plot gets a lot sillier, which I gather you don't advocate, what happens with the whole destroying-Xykon deal?

Now, as for the idea that Roy's victory over Thog was contrived- this is the sort of question that I find difficult to grapple with beyond a certain point, because part of me says "those pillars sure are awfully conveniently placed, I'm not sure that's realistic", and the other part says "he just got punched through a wall, which already means physics is over in a corner somewhere, sobbing quietly to itself." I guess one solution is to imagine that the GM snuck in a house rule where you can make knowledge skill checks to invent aspects of the environment, such as conveniently placed pillars. It's not that far-fetched (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/paBcfg1YaEccDMQACfu.html).

Fish

2013-05-13, 01:37 PM

While I don't disagree with your assessment, I don't think that this approach is inherently a form of Deus Ex Machina...
I agree there: not every unbelievable escape is a deus ex machina, nor is every contrived coincidence, nor every improbable victory. My point is only that V had to be rescued from that situation; if he had all the answers, he never gets a chance to grow.

veti

2013-05-13, 03:36 PM

Speaking personally, I guess I would say that while I don't mind frivolous elements of the strip, and I don't mind serious elements of the strip, it does bug me a little when frivolous causes have serious effects, and vice versa.

"Frivolous causes having serious effects" is part and parcel of D&D. Players are there to have a good time, sometimes they horse around when they should be ("should be"? says who? - Ed) focusing on the goal, and I've seen many a session (and for the record, a "session" means "not less than six hours of continuous play") completely derailed because of a throwaway joke. Those sessions tend to be way more fun than those where we focus on the plot.

I once saw a whole town burned to the ground - at 1st level - because the more chaotic party members overreacted when the druid couldn't find a zoo. It completely derailed the DM's plans for the session and indeed his plot hook for the whole campaign, which was supposed to be in the town. But he had fun, we had fun, and 25 years later I still remember that session as one of the best ever.

Cizak

2013-05-13, 05:12 PM

[Anything you ever write on these forums]

...Why are you here? I'm not trying to sound rude here, but you seem to hate this comic. I've never seen you write anything positive about it. You hate the protagonists, you hate the gags, you seem to hate the majority of decisions Rich has ever done with the story. Everything is either missed opportunities for writing characters out of the story, railroding, deus ex maxhinas or entierly pointless moments because clearly they are not character development. So I'm legitimately curious... why are you reading?

EmperorSarda

2013-05-13, 06:38 PM

If I was forced to change something? Honestly, I'd change Tarquin's short sightedness about the Gates and wait until Elan's scenery chewing villain showed up.

Tarquin knew before Nale showed up that Elan was looking for Draketooth (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0727.html). In fact, according to his own words (before Nale showed himself), that it is in Elan's vested interest to trounce scenery chewing villains (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0762.html). He knows that Elan and Co needed to reach Draketooth before (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0815.html) Nale, but also knew (or highly suspected) that Nale hadn't left yet (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0819.html).

Then Tarquin is told about the Gates (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0821.html) and can reasonably infer from everything Elan and Nale has said is that Orrin Draketooth is a defender or protector of the gate. Additionally, Nale has confirmed that he worked for someone who has a ritual to control a gate, using his supposition as leverage to stay alive.

Now, maybe Tarquin thinks Elan was searching for Nale the entire time, since they did lie about being a party (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0819.html). But since Elan was rearing to go since they got to town and not just when Nale showed up, and given everything else that has gone, along with how intelligent Tarquin is, I'd change it so Tarquin joins the Linear Guild to be held in reserve, to watch and wait for the scenery trouncing villain to appear fear and have them and the Order of the Stick whittle at each other and then going to take the gate. And then let Malack kill Nale when they realize that Nale's old boss isn't going to give up the rituals at all.

137beth

2013-05-13, 07:29 PM

V was cornered and out of spells with no reasonable way to escape. Instead of dying like (s)he should have, (s)he was rescued by a gag. I flipping hate when Rich resorts to jokes to get the OOTS out of trouble. The first time was sort of cute (lawyers against the mind flayer in #32). After that it was just obnoxious.
There were any number of ways V could have survived. Invisibility. Someone else in the army. A spell which ignores spell resistance. The author chose the one that was most entertaining. It isn't a dues ex machina, since the dragon's head's existence was established before.

Does that make it any less of a railroad?
Please, show me where I said it anything about railroading. I specified that it wasn't a Dues Ex Machina, which is completely unrelated to railroading.

But since you've brought it up, no, this was not railroading: railroading is a concept specific to games, in which the players are deprived of some of their agency. In OOTS, V's player is the author. Since the author was at no point deprived of agency by the DM (himself), he was not railroaded. It is literally impossible for railroading to exist in the context of a comic like OOTS, since the sole player maintains complete control over his character.

I think in general this forum should us the phrase "character development" more sparingly. Not everything is character development.

As a follow up to my question about whether you know what a DEM is, I'll ask:
"Do you even know what character development is?"

Given that in the OOTS world the afterlife is a known-for-certain thing, there is no reason for the dragon to not kill V and still carry out her plan. The results are the same. V would still suffer knowing the fate of his/her family, whether alive or in the afterlife.
So, since the dragon was apparently suppose to assume that V would suffer the same amount, dead or alive, as you claim...
then the dragon has no reason whatsoever to waste a turn killing V.

So the only reason for V to survive was to advance the plot to a predetermined point. Classic Deus Ex Machina.
So, you are making it pretty clear that you aren't particularly familiar with the concept of a Deus Ex Machina. Allow me to explain:

Deus Ex Machina is a Latin translation of a Greek phrase, meaning "god out of the machine."
In ancient Greek tragedies, the plot would frequently reach a climax in which the mortals had done everything in their power to solve their problems, but to no avail. At that point, a god would show up (sometimes portrayed by a machine lowering an actor onto the stage, hence the phrase "god out of the machine") and resolve the plot. This resolution would effectively invalidate everything the mortal characters had done up until that point. That was intentional--the gods were intended to trump anything mortals did. After the god "resolved" the plot, the play would end. It was not used as a plot hook for the next part of the story, because there was no next part of the story.

V getting "help" from the archfiends couldn't be more dissimilar from a Deus Ex Machina. First off, without the IFCC, V still had a way to defeat the dragon--the fiends even gave it to him/her.
Second, the IFCC did not resolve a long-running conflict. In ancient tragedies, the DEM would solve the conflicts which had driven the entire play. The IFCC, on the other hand, solved a conflict which was introduced like, three strips earlier. That is a narratively dispensable conflict.
Third, and most importantly, the appearance of the IFCC did not end the story. A real DEM resolves the entire plot, and then the story abruptly ends, since it just got resolved. The IFCC introduced a major plot arc, while resolving nothing. So in summary, a DEM is something which a) gets characters out of situations which they have no way of solving, b)resolves long-running conflicts, and c) ends the story. The IFCC, on the other hand a)"helped" V by getting him/her out of a situation which he/she could easily have gotten out of b)solve no significant conflicts, but rather introduced a major plot arc, and c) did not end the story.

Now explain to me how those two things are in any way similar:smallconfused:

Which sort of bolsters my point that the whole episode was forced.
So wait, first you say everything is a DEM, then you complain "nope! I meant it was railroading!" and now you just meant "forced"? No wonder you think everything is a DEM!

You said that word again. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Yes, I did, because that is exactly what was happening

Maybe. But at this point I feel Rich has taken too many liberties regarding rescuing V and for me at least, does not get the benefit of the doubt.
What doubt? You get to see exactly what happened! V trounced Z with nothing but the spells he/she had prepared.

But that aside, if the drow was supposed to be the ultimate anti-V, why no detect invisibility?
Detect invisibility does not dispel dominate person. It would allow Z to see V, but it would use up Z's turn, allowing V to get to the kobold. The giant chose not to write in Z using a spell that would have had virtually no impact on the plot.

I find it difficult to believe the drow caster that high level also had no way to deal with small sized hand crossbows.
But you just told us why (and V did)--he had built his character and prepared his spells specifically to fight V. He prepared one spell to eliminate what he believed to be the only archer he would face (Haley), and he had already used that.

You are saying it was well known long before 661 that the monster could teleport? If that is true, then I missed it and may change my mind on this particular strip. In what strip was that revealed?
It was established when the MitD's species was established. Which, according to the commentary, was around strip 100. The MitD's abilities have not changed since then, you just don't know what they are. If the author had decided "hey, even though MitD has been an X for the last 500+ strips, and even though an X can teleport other people, I'm just going to take that ability away from him," that would have been forced. But that is not what happened. MitD used an ability entirely consistent with his character.

V was defeated yet again, with no reasonable expectation of rescue and is rescued completely out of the blue.

The monster had no idea who V was and no reason to teleport him/her. In fact, he might even know V is a member of OOTS and thus, an enemey, which makes V's rescue even more out of place.
Not V, O Chul. It would have been apparent from the previous scene to MitD that V was a friend of O-Chul, so it makes perfect sense for him to want to protect V as well.

Because it's flipping awesome? Because I like Thog better than Roy? Because Roy is a tool? Because it is obnoxious for Roy to get his butt so thoroughly trounced and then win for no good reason?
No good reason?!? Roy found and exploited Thog's biggest weakness!

Because it strains my credulity that Starshine was locked up forever and yet somehow had a healing potion?
1. You have no evidence whatsoever that the healing potion changed the outcome of the battle. So sure, delete that one panel. It still makes more sense for Roy to win the fight.
2. What is hard to understand about Ian being paranoid enough to hold onto something which he had no immediate use for, but which could be used in a gladiator fight (which he was never in) for "forever" (i.e. two and half years)?

Because Roy dying every 30 or so strips could be an intersting plot hook (and ongoing gag) too?
Now you've lost me. How is that the least bit funny? Or interesting, for that matter?

You seem to be arguing with everything I've said on the basis of "if you did that then the strip would be different." Well, yes, that's the point. The thread is "what would you do differently?"
Um, no. I'm arguing on the basis of
1. The explanations for why you want to change X Y or Z are factually inaccurate, and
2. If you made the changes you suggested, the strip would be boring/stupid/not entertaining.

Carry2:

The MitD was shown teleporting folk back around strip 100? I must have missed that...
Not shown on panel, but it was decided what its abilities were when its species was determined.

David Argall

2013-05-13, 07:51 PM

There is a general trend, yes. There need not be one, and I see no reason why The Giant should follow that trend.
As I mentioned, there is also no "reason" to follow fashion, but it is often wise to do so. The same sort of reasons apply here. The writer accepts the disadvantages of his medium.

Perhaps. But it would seem a great many people have gotten the message, simplistic art not withstanding. And maybe the trend of "simple art; simple story" is a prohibitive one, and we'd be better off without it. If what you say is true, someone with a serious story to tell will be over looked because of their simple art (maybe the haven't the time or the skill to do better), and many of us are missing out on it because people insist on sticking to a pointless trend.
None of which denies the basic contention that there will be drawbacks in reader reaction from using using stick-figure art to be serious.

Eating an apple: good or evil? Drawing a picture: lawful or chaotic? Perhaps the action is orthogonal to the axis of law and chaos; perhaps, without any details, there's no reason to place the action within either camp.
True enough, but we do have some of the relevant details here. We are not "eating an apple". We are eating an apple that we stole or one that could keep a beggar healthy or... We are "painting that picture" on the side of a building without the owner's permission, or a picture of somebody's wife carrying on with a neighbor, or... Here, we are not just dealing with sex, but sex under certain circumstances, circumstances we easily identify with chaos.

You have an oddly specific view of what a one night stand must be. Perhaps the only variable is the other person. Perhaps someone likes sex in the same place, around the same time, doing the same thing, and cooling down the same way once finished. The next morning, they cook the same food for their guest and themselves, and say the same goodbye.
Yup, that would make it more lawful. But that is just not the normal definition of a one-night stand even if it does not violate the definition.

If there is no law, there is no standard by which to decide whether or not an action is lawful or chaotic. It's no different than any other action not forbidden or encouraged by existing standards and obligations.
There are other standards we use to divide lawful from chaotic, such as what you normally do.

The key thing here is that the afterlife is trying to instill guilt. Even if we say one night stands are unlawful, it doesn't mean lawful people should feel guilty about it. It just means that their behaviour in one area of their life deviates from the rest of their behaviour.
Which makes it something they would feel guilt about.

crayzz

2013-05-14, 06:36 AM

Yup, that would make it more lawful. But that is just not the normal definition of a one-night stand even if it does not violate the definition.

What? If it fits within the definition, then it is the normal definition. What you mean is that it doesn't fit within the connotations of the phrase.

Which makes it something they would feel guilt about.

I think we may have to just disagree on this one. I'll try again one last time.

Just because someone normally behaves a certain way doesn't mean they should feel guilt for occasionally behaving another way. I can see that they would (I personally do not), but I see no objective imperative that they should. The whole thing seems to be an is/ought fallacy to me; "because lawful people often will feel guilt for chaotic behaviour, they objectively should".

screwtape

2013-05-14, 01:37 PM

V was rescued through no action of his own, because it's part of an overall plot arc. It's pretty easy to understand the story mechanic at work. And for obvious reasons it had to be something like a deus ex machina, or several of them.

It doesn't matter why V was rescused. It does not matter that there was a plot hook, or that it lead to character development or anything else. All that is fine. In good stories Plots must have hooks and characters must develop. My point is the manner in which it was done reflected poor writing.

You and many others may like the way those situations were resolved. I don't.

Since the beginning,

All of the rest of that is beside my point. It may be valid or not. I'm not arguing with it because it was not something I said and I don't actually care.

But I sure wouldn't read it.

Whatever. You have no idea whether you would read it or not. It could have all those things and be awesome. You don't know. You are just being argumentative.

screwtape

2013-05-14, 01:47 PM

Invisibility.

But that was not how he escaped. A zombie dragon head fell from the sky and killed the death knight.

You seem to have confused "Zz'dtri's life goal is to crush Vaarsuvius" with, "Zz'dtri was designed with all knowledge available to Rich to win against Vaarsuvius."

It is possible I have. But I still find it difficult to see how a spell caster that level gets defeated by a kobold weilding hand crossbows.

Wow, you kind of hate the comic, don't you?

I don't. But I like it lot less than when I first started reading it.

While I am not 137ben, I am somewhat mystified that anyone responded, "I would make the comic fundamentally different and have the villains slaughter multiple protagonists including the main protagonist," rather than with something...smaller.

I am a Star Wars fan. After I saw The Phantom Menace, I felt like there were some fundamental changes that could have been made to make the movie better.

I kind of feel like OOTS has moved into Phantom Menace territory.

Kish

2013-05-14, 02:16 PM

But that was not how he escaped. A zombie dragon head fell from the sky and killed the death knight.

So? You said s/he had no reasonable way to escape. That is a rather broader assertion than "I don't like the specific way Vaarsuvius escaped," and "I would have had Vaarsuvius die," what you said, is a different assertion than, "I would have had Vaarsuvius escape differently."

It is possible I have. But I still find it difficult to see how a spell caster that level gets defeated by a kobold weilding hand crossbows.

You fail to see how one spellcaster that level gets defeated by a kobold wielding hand crossbows, and you fail to see how another spellcaster that level doesn't get defeated by a skeleton wielding a sword*. I observe a lack of consistency here.

I kind of feel like OOTS has moved into Phantom Menace territory.
And yet you don't hate it? Implying that you don't hate the Phantom Menace? Interesting.

*Is this a complete description of a death knight? Of course not. No more than "kobold wielding hand crossbows" is a complete description of a high level ranger/rogue.

screwtape

2013-05-14, 04:09 PM

There were any number of ways V could have survived. Invisibility. Someone else in the army. A spell which ignores spell resistance.

V admits in #440 s/he only has one option left - the familiar. And none of those options you mentioned were shown to be plausible, though, I find them all to be infinitely more plausible than the death knight being crushed by the head of a zombified dragon.

The author chose the one that was most entertaining.

Well, that's a matter of opinion, no? I certainly did not find it entertaining. If you did, then great.

It isn't a dues ex machina, since the dragon's head's existence was established before.

Are you saying that simply being aware that a thing exists is enough to make it not a DEM? By that rationale it would not have been a DEM for, I dunno, the moon to crash into the death knight, because we know there is a moon.

Oh, wait. I see. You want to be nit-picky about defining deus ex machina. Okay, whatever. It's not a DEM. There. Does that make you happy? Woo! 137ben wins teh internets!!!!

Seriously though, is there something wrong with you? Because you seem to be taking my opinions about what I would change about an online comic very personally. Like, irrationally so. I wouldn't expect Rich's mom to react this way.

for example:

As a follow up to my question about whether you know what a DEM is, I'll ask:
"Do you even know what character development is?"

This strikes me as unnecessarily snotty. Does it make you feel better about yourself to talk down to strangers on the internet?

You know, this would have been an interesting and enjoyable conversation for us both if you'd approached this in a friendly manner, instead of the condescening way you have.

then the dragon has no reason whatsoever to waste a turn killing V.

Except there was no urgency and it would avoid any potential unforseen interference from V. Which, you know, happened.

V getting "help" from the archfiends couldn't be more dissimilar from a Deus Ex Machina.

Intersting that you see it that way. I see the two as exactly the same.

First off, without the IFCC, V still had a way to defeat the dragon--the fiends even gave it to him/her.

You say the fiends didn't constitute a DEM because V didn't need them. And then you point out that V needed them to give him/her the answer. 137ben's point undermines 137ben's point, in the same sentence.

Second, the IFCC did not resolve a long-running conflict. In ancient tragedies, the DEM would solve the conflicts which had driven the entire play. The IFCC, on the other hand, solved a conflict which was introduced like, three strips earlier. That is a narratively dispensable conflict.

I disagree that the length of the conflict matters. The wiki page defines it as:

a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved, with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. Depending on how it's done, it can be intended to move the story forward when the writer has "painted himself into a corner" and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring a happy ending into the tale, or as a comedic device.

It does not define it as a necessarily having to solve a long-running conflict. It does point out that it can be used as a comedic device. And it also gives some good examples which, by your strict terms, you would reject.

So I stand by my point. It seems to fit.

Third, and most importantly, the appearance of the IFCC did not end the story.

I hear you, but the end of the story is an arbitrary thing. Unless I'm mistaken, Elan's old man pointed that out. And if we use your definition, then something that would be a DEM wouldn't be a DEM simply because the story does not end there. What do you call it then? Is there a word for it? Or is it just bad writing?

So wait, first you say everything is a DEM, then you complain "nope! I meant it was railroading!" and now you just meant "forced"? No wonder you think everything is a DEM!

Yeah. There is something wrong with you beyond just being pedantic. I'm going to finish this response to you and then ignore you from now on.

What doubt?

[137ben condescention]Let me explain to you what the benefit of the doubt means. [/137ben condescention]

It is favorable judgment given in absence of the full evidence (quote from wiki).

In this context, I was referring to a favorable judgment of the author. As readers, we have to have some trust in an author that he's not going to take advantage of us in some way. By that I mean use hackneyed devices, like Deus ex machina, for example.

For the most part, I like what Rich does. But in my opinion (and obviously not in yours) Rich resorts to gimmicks like this too often for my liking. And so if it looks like Rich is using a cheezy gimmick (call it what you want), at this point I'm assuming it is a cheezey gimmick. He does not get the benefit of the doubt from me.

He prepared one spell to eliminate what he believed to be the only archer he would face (Haley), and he had already used that.

I find it impossible to believe there are no spells that could be used for both purposes. the flesh to stone he used would have also worked against V or the kobold. Protection From Arrows seems like an obvious and cheap (only 2nd level) spell to have in when going up against an archer.

It was established when the MitD's species was established. Which, according to the commentary, was around strip 100. ...

Ah. So, it was not revealed to the readers. From the author's perspective that may matter. He may feel justified. But from the reader's perspective it is indistinguishable from a cheap gimmick (call it what you want). Nobody read that strip and thought, "oh, of course, the monster can teleport. I should have seen that coming." You may have thought it was awesome, and I suppose you are entitled to have whatever opinion about it you like. But I felt cheated.

It would have been apparent from the previous scene to MitD that V was a friend of O-Chul, so it makes perfect sense for him to want to protect V as well.

That's a stretch.

No good reason?!? Roy found and exploited Thog's biggest weakness!

He had his brains beaten out twice. How many times does Roy have to lose before he loses?

1. You have no evidence whatsoever that the healing potion changed the outcome of the battle. So sure, delete that one panel. It still makes more sense for Roy to win the fight.

Now you just sound ridiculous.
Strip 796 - Roy is so badly beaten, he surrenders. And then he takes a face full of stadium.
Strip 798 - look at Roy's wounds before and after the potion.
Strip 808 - Roy is as bad as he was at the end of 796. If we allow that Roy was closer to dead than not in 796, he would have been dead long before the end of 808 had he not received the potion from Starshine. Which I take to be a cheap gimmick (call it what you want).

2.

This is weak. He's in a prison and you are arguing that is is completely reasonable for him to have a major healing potion concealed on him. Get out of town.

Even still, it fits your three criteria.
1. It was necessary for him to have it to defeat Thog.
2. It was a new item.
3. It directly lead to the end of the story arc with Thog.

If it walks like a DEM and quacks like a DEM...

Now you've lost me. How is that the least bit funny? Or interesting, for that matter?

Well since I have not claimed to be a writer par excellence and you are not the final arbiter of what is funny or interesting, I don't take this to be an actual question.

2. If you made the changes you suggested, the strip would be boring/stupid/not entertaining.

No. It would be awesome. And you would read it and love me and call me "the giant" and rain snark down upon all who dared say I was less than perfect.

screwtape

2013-05-14, 04:22 PM

So? You said s/he had no reasonable way to escape. That is a rather broader assertion than "I don't like the specific way Vaarsuvius escaped," and "I would have had Vaarsuvius die," what you said, is a different assertion than, "I would have had Vaarsuvius escape differently."

When I read that strip it appeared that V had no reasonable way out. V says as much. So the resolution strikes me as a total cop out.

When you read that strip, what did you think?

You fail to see how one spellcaster that level gets defeated by a kobold wielding hand crossbows, and you fail to see how another spellcaster that level doesn't get defeated by a skeleton wielding a sword*. I observe a lack of consistency here.

I don't think that's a fair conclusion. We know death knights are very powerful. We observed the death knight single handedly wipe out the whole flank of Azurite guards. We know and have observed little of the kobold. He may or may not have been high level. The LG has used low level replacements before. The half elf, for example. And the kobold couldn't even kill a cat in one round.

And yet you don't hate it? Implying that you don't hate the Phantom Menace? Interesting.

I don't hate the Phantom menace. There are things about it I like a lot. Jedi in their prime are flipping awesome. But I think there are serious structural problems with it. For the record, I do like a lot of what Rich does. I very much like the story are with Therkla, for example.

Porthos

2013-05-14, 04:29 PM

When I read that strip it appeared that V had no reasonable way out. V says as much. So the resolution strikes me as a total cop out.

When you read that strip, what did you think?

I'm not Kish, but I thought it was totally hilarious because of the "Absolutely no effect at all" punchline.

And I still find it hilarious years later.

But, then again, I never considered The Three Xykons to be anything more than a minor obstacle to be overcome. In this case Funny Trumps All.

The fact that the demise of the Death Knight became just another pebble on the inadequacy complex that V was building was just icing on the cake.

Cizak

2013-05-14, 04:50 PM

You know, this would have been an interesting and enjoyable conversation for us both if you'd approached this in a friendly manner, instead of the condescening way you have.

Oh, wait. I see. You want to be nit-picky about defining deus ex machina. Okay, whatever. It's not a DEM. There. Does that make you happy? Woo! 137ben wins teh internets!!!!

Seriously though, is there something wrong with you? Because you seem to be taking my opinions about what I would change about an online comic very personally. Like, irrationally so. I wouldn't expect Rich's mom to react this way.

137ben's point undermines 137ben's point, in the same sentence.

Yeah. There is something wrong with you beyond just being pedantic.

[137ben condescention]Let me explain to you what the benefit of the doubt means. [/137ben condescention]

No. It would be awesome. And you would read it and love me and call me "the giant" and rain snark down upon all who dared say I was less than perfect.

Internet forums are awesome.

EmperorSarda

2013-05-14, 05:10 PM

Jumping in...

I flipping hate when Rich resorts to jokes to get the OOTS out of trouble. The first time was sort of cute (lawyers against the mind flayer in #32). After that it was just obnoxious.

You do realize the whole set up was a joke, right? The whole order just standing around not reacting to Roy getting his brains sucked out, they weren't in serious trouble. It wasn't reasonable or even dramatic danger. It was silly danger, a joke to begin with. So why not use a joke to end a joke?

I think in general this forum should us the phrase "character development" more sparingly. Not everything is character development.
Except the story and character develop sort of drive the comic.

Given that in the OOTS world the afterlife is a known-for-certain thing, there is no reason for the dragon to not kill V and still carry out her plan. The results are the same. V would still suffer knowing the fate of his/her family, whether alive or in the afterlife.
Except Mama Dragon wanted him to suffer as she suffered. Suffer in this life, not in a life where he would be at peace. Suffer knowing that he/she could do nothing to save the lives of the children, knowing he/she was spared. That is what Mama Dragon wanted. It was never an objective to kill V. So that isn't a Deus ex machina, because Mama Dragon's arrival wasn't meant to kill V.

But that aside, if the drow was supposed to be the ultimate anti-V, why no detect invisibility? I find it difficult to believe the drow caster that high level also had no way to deal with small sized hand crossbows.

Because tailoring your build to fight against V doesn't mean you don't make mistakes. Qarr told Z how to press V's buttons, but Z didn't take advantage of it fully. You still make mistakes. You still cannot plan for every situation, just as V pointed out to Z. Z was prepared to be able to resist all of V's evocations. He just was prepared for others to enter the fight, dominated or not.

You are saying it was well known long before 661 that the monster could teleport? If that is true, then I missed it and may change my mind on this particular strip. In what strip was that revealed?

Except all throughout the books we are hinted at how strong the Monster in the Dark is, and the monster not knowing it. Great strength, earthquake like abilities. Heck, there was even some foreshadowing way back when (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0543.html).

So while we as readers may not know what the Monster is, when the monster is revealed it will all make sense to us. Until then, we have to take Rich's word that the Monster in the Darkness isn't some magic wish monster to save the day whenever things get tough. Which doesn't seem a likely scenario to me.

The monster had no idea who V was and no reason to teleport him/her. In fact, he might even know V is a member of OOTS and thus, an enemey, which makes V's rescue even more out of place.

Except the Monster wasn't trying to rescue V. The monster was rescuing O-Chul, and V happened to be helping O-Chul. That is the only reason V was rescued, because V was helping, and even revived with healing potions, O-Chul.

Because it strains my credulity that Starshine was locked up forever and yet somehow had a healing potion?

Prisoners have stuff hidden all the time. Contraband. And given that Ian Starshine had made himself forgotten and extremely unlikely to be picked for a gladiator match, it is very likely Ian had something hidden. He is able to escape often. The only reason he was caught and kept in prison after all this time is due to Geoff.

Now, as for the idea that Roy's victory over Thog was contrived- this is the sort of question that I find difficult to grapple with beyond a certain point, because part of me says "those pillars sure are awfully conveniently placed, I'm not sure that's realistic", and the other part says "he just got punched through a wall, which already means physics is over in a corner somewhere, sobbing quietly to itself." I guess one solution is to imagine that the GM snuck in a house rule where you can make knowledge skill checks to invent aspects of the environment, such as conveniently placed pillars. It's not that far-fetched (http://www.giantitp.com/articles/paBcfg1YaEccDMQACfu.html).

They're fighting in a stadium where Roy is thrown up in the stands, and then crashes through the floor. What else is going to be holding all those seats? Flying Buttresses probably isn't going to work. So what would you have hold up the seating?

I disagree that the length of the conflict matters. The wiki page defines it as:

a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved, with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. Depending on how it's done, it can be intended to move the story forward when the writer has "painted himself into a corner" and sees no other way out, to surprise the audience, to bring a happy ending into the tale, or as a comedic device.

It does not define it as a necessarily having to solve a long-running conflict. It does point out that it can be used as a comedic device. And it also gives some good examples which, by your strict terms, you would reject.

Here is the thing though, Oots is operating in a world where there are literal sell your soul to the devil\demon\daemon pacts. If the fiends to do count as Deus ex machina, it isn't a bad one. Because they don't rescue V in any way, and through this interaction it helps propel the story forward that was hinted at hundreds of comic strips (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0380.html) before. The only thing I would disagree with in regards to the wiki article is the implication that Rich wrote himself into a corner. Given V's choice what s/he asked (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0331.html) the Oracle, it wasn't something unexpected either. So that is the main difference between perhaps this DEM and most others, is that this was planned years in advance. Which, in my opinion, does not cheapen the story in the slightest.

I find it impossible to believe there are no spells that could be used for both purposes. the flesh to stone he used would have also worked against V or the kobold. Protection From Arrows seems like an obvious and cheap (only 2nd level) spell to have in when going up against an archer.

Z did try Break Enchantment. It was counter spelled. Also, protection against arrows only works against mundane attacks. Magical bolts or bolts launched from a magical crossbow get through that enchantment just fine.

Strip 796 - Roy is so badly beaten, he surrenders. And then he takes a face full of stadium.
He only surrendered because he didn't think at the time that it was some crazy ambush scenario. He thought it was only a prize fight.

This is weak. He's in a prison and you are arguing that is is completely reasonable for him to have a major healing potion concealed on him. Get out of town.
And Geoff also has a shiv. The guards aren't going to know everything that everyone in their prison has. Lets look at our prisons, we fully expect that there would be no contraband in prisons, but yet there are drugs, among a variety of other things, smuggled in. If prisons in our reality can have drugs smuggled in, why could a high level rogue in the Oots world not have a good healing potion hidden away?