Darths & Droids IV: Not in Numerical Order

[keybounce]

No, Jim and Annie got married. Ben is still single (or at least we haven't met his significant other). Ben played Obi-wan and then Chewbacca. Jim played Qui-gon and then Amidala and then Jin Orso and then Han Solo and now Poe. Annie played Anikin skywalker and then Vader/Princess and is now playing Finn.

Oh, I missed this.

So, we have a married couple doing an in-character fight?

What is this, A Canterlot Wedding?
http://friendshipisdragons.com/archive/51403

EDIT: Hay, they just got to strip 50. Anyone want to do the bonus commentary? :-)

[memnarch]

Oh, I missed this.

So, we have a married couple doing an in-character fight?

What is this, A Canterlot Wedding?
http://friendshipisdragons.com/archive/51403

EDIT: Hay, they just got to strip 50. Anyone want to do the bonus commentary? :-)

Yep! You even did some commentary on the wedding page too!

[Lizard Lord]

Nobody Rollplays properly anymore! Back in my day, we locked the players inside a barrel and sent them rolling down a hill, and they had to play the game while they were rolling. That's why they called it ROLLplaying!

This sounds like an Abe Simpson quote to me.

[keybounce]

Yep! You even did some commentary on the wedding page too!

I had forgotten that, thank you.

No, I was thinking of 50 strips into Canterlot wedding and FiD commentary.

[theangelJean]

Oh, huh. I could have sworn it was Ben and Annie. Jim being a physics PhD made me think he was a bit older than most of the others, who were still in college or just entering it.

Archive binge complete. I was wrong, it is Jim+Annie.

Also, Jim was (working on?) a physics PhD at the start of the series, but you can start your PhD studies 4 years after entering university here, especially in Physics. Annie being a theatre student at the time wouldn't have made her that much younger. And we've had several two year time skips since then (one between each of the main series movies, I think?)

I kind of always thought of Pete as the oldest, followed by Ben, then Jim and Annie, Sally and then Corey. But I could be completely wrong there. (Edit: The cast page says Sally is the youngest and Corey is a year ahead of her in Uni. Also I'd forgotten that Corey was Pete's nephew.)

[The Glyphstone]

Huh, I had it as Jim-Pete-Ben-Annie-Corey-Sally in my head.

[137beth]

Oh, huh. I could have sworn it was Ben and Annie. Jim being a physics PhD made me think he was a bit older than most of the others, who were still in college or just entering it.

Archive binge complete. I was wrong, it is Jim+Annie.

Changing which characters get married is the kind of thing the comic irregulars would add as a twist on the movie they are parodying. Maybe we can have a meta D&D-parody set in a world just like ours, but where Darths and Droids was never made. In this world, a group of tabletop gamers get together and play a game about tabletop gamers playing a game based on Star Wars. Only, in this group's game, the Ben and Annie PCs get married instead of Jim and Annie.

Readers of Darths and Droids in the real world who read this meta-comic will recognize the change as an extra twist thrown in by the Comic Very Irregulars, the same way Star Wars fans (and like everyone) who reads Darths and Droids recognizes the extra twist of making Darth Vader Padme.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Since Ben and Annie were having classes together, they should be fairly close in age. Pete's likely the oldest, since he was already an established professional at the start. Jim's a doctoral student at the start, so he was likely in his upper twenties then. So the progression is likely Pete-Jim-Annie (I see her as likely a part-time student taking classes as finances allow)-Ben-Corey-Sally, with us having pretty much no clues about what the GM does or his age. In fact, the GM being a he is about all we know about him.

[theangelJean]

Since Ben and Annie were having classes together, they should be fairly close in age. Pete's likely the oldest, since he was already an established professional at the start. Jim's a doctoral student at the start, so he was likely in his upper twenties then. So the progression is likely Pete-Jim-Annie (I see her as likely a part-time student taking classes as finances allow)-Ben-Corey-Sally, with us having pretty much no clues about what the GM does or his age. In fact, the GM being a he is about all we know about him.

Like I said, PhD here is 5th to 7th year of Uni, so more typically 22-26 for Jim at the start - I would have made him lower twenties rather than upper. Other than that, agree.

The GM has been pretty mysterious, yeah. Do we even know what they played in the in-between campaigns they didn't GM?

(Do we even know what the others played, apart from Pete as Vizzini?)

[Rogar Demonblud]

Due to the reference to Ben's drinking habit, I'd guess he was Inigo. Which made Jim Fezzik.

Jim's campaign was Airplane!, which I haven't seen in so long I couldn't make any guesses.

Annie's campaign, about all I can tell you is that Pete was Van Helsing. We really didn't get a lot on that one.

Sally's campaign looks to have been Jurassic Park from the PoV of the dinos. No real data.

Ben's campaign was the Nolan Batman movies. Sally as Joker, Pete as Ra's al-Ghul, I think Corey was Scarecrow, which leaves Two-Face for the GM.

[The Glyphstone]

Annie's campaign was probably the 2004 Van Helsing movie. Its the only media I am aware of where Van Helsing and Frankenstein's Monster are both prominent characters. The latter was brought up when she and Jim were fighting in Episode 3, and that the game went off the rails when Jim and the others assumed the monsters were bad guys and started killing them.

[Rogar Demonblud]

And again we see a point where the movie lost me. If you're supposed to be escaping, why are you hanging around and picking a fight? When the Falcon escaped at the end of ESB, Lando didn't pause to strafe the Super Star Destroyer.

[Rodin]

And again we see a point where the movie lost me. If you're supposed to be escaping, why are you hanging around and picking a fight? When the Falcon escaped at the end of ESB, Lando didn't pause to strafe the Super Star Destroyer.

It's been a while since I've seen the movie - since it came out, actually. As such, I don't remember the scene other than "Finn and Poe hop into a TIE fighter to try to escape"

However, my assumption is that they cannot escape by just flying off. They're in a fragile TIE fighter in spitting distance of the Star Destroyer's point defense lasers. What they're doing here is blowing up the lasers that would be in position to fire on them. The lasers can't hit them because they aren't designed to hit something launching from their own fighter bays, but that changes the instant they gain a bit of distance.

The Falcon is better suited for such an escape - it's a larger ship with shields/armor, as we see on various occasions in the original trilogy where the Falcon is shot by lasers. They can take a couple hits if that means getting far enough away to go into hyperspace.

[Rogar Demonblud]

A star destroyer has up to a couple hundred guns. And lots more fighters to launch. And getting closer just makes the targeting solution easier. But yeah, let's hang around at spitball range.

[Keltest]

A star destroyer has up to a couple hundred guns. And lots more fighters to launch. And getting closer just makes the targeting solution easier. But yeah, let's hang around at spitball range.

Star destroyers are meant to kill frigates and space stations, not fighters. They have the same issue with shooting fighters as the death star. They can do it, eventually, but they aren't accurate enough to really be effective at it. They win that fight through durability, not firepower. Start adding in bombers, and the capital ships start to lose the balance of power.

[SirKazum]

And getting closer just makes the targeting solution easier.

I'm not so sure about that, at least for a moving target, since it's able to move across a much larger arc from the gun's POV in the same time. Depending on how the turret works, its tracking speed might not be able to keep up.

[Rockphed]

Based on everything we see Poe do, I think he might have blown up parts of the star destroyer because he could.

[The Glyphstone]

Spoiler

Show

This is going to make for a hilarious callback at the start of The Last Jedi.

[Anonymouswizard]

Huh, I had it as Jim-Pete-Ben-Annie-Corey-Sally in my head.

Yeah, I had it as this in my mind until my latest reread, which sitter Pete and Jim in my mind (I think the timeline is roughly that Pete is working in IT at the beginning of the comic, and becomes a lawyer sometime during the PT). Pete and Jim are at least 22 at the beginning, Ben and Annie are probably in the 18-21 range (and met in an acting class, but Annie possibly wasn't studying theatre), Sally is roughly a decade younger than Ben (maybe 12 at the beginning? 10? I think she entered uni between Episode IV and Episode V, which would make it 12), and Corey is a year older than her. The GM is probably Ankit the same age as Jim and/or Pete.

I'd guess it as Pete-GM-Jim-Annie-Ben-Corey-Sally. Exact order doesn't exactly matter, and Annie might easily be a graduate student in Episode 1 (which would make her within a couple of years of Jim).


...it only just occurred to me that Finn/Poe is probably (going to be) canon in D&D. Assuming Poe survives and isn't replaced by Wedge.

[137beth]

This sounds like an Abe Simpson quote to me.

It's paraphrasing my best recollection of a quote I saw on the Paizo forum several years ago. I'd link it, but my Google-fu is failing to find the post in question. I don't know if that person got if from somewhere else.

[Kantaki]

New comic

Never change Jim, never change.

[137beth]

This is the same Jim who argued that Qui-Gon died.

[Rogar Demonblud]

He isn't wrong in this case, although he should have spelled out what he was trying to achieve with the roll before he tried it. With the new info, I'd have him reroll with different modifiers.

[Fincher]

He's sort of right, but if dodging the attack was hard enough, a low roll would still mean getting blown up (and a roll would have to be higher to clear that because it's harder to avoid getting hit when you're trying to get hit a little than if you're avoiding it entirely). If "low" is normally getting blown up and "middling" is dodging, then I would say in his case "low" and "middling" are accidentally getting blown up, "high" is accidentally avoiding it altogether, and "very high" is accomplishing what he's trying to do.

[theangelJean]

I wonder if those white things also double as atmospheric heat shields?

[SirKazum]

I wonder if those white things also double as atmospheric heat shields?

I guess anything does, at least for a little while

[Xihirli]

New comic!
...The Sarlaac? Are they somehow bringing the sarlaac back?

Spoiler: Speculation based on seeing the movie

Show

I guess it could be or send the Rathtars?

I hope Snoke just is the Sarlaac.

[Thufir]

@Keybounce, re: 1893: the "So you have chosen... death" line is also from the film of Fellowship of the Ring, Saruman says it in reference to Gandalf, I think right after he escapes from Isengard.

Re: today's comic, I'm surprised it was Pete who suggested wearing costumes.

[Kantaki]

Re: today's comic, I'm surprised it was Pete who suggested wearing costumes.

I mean, considering the kind of dice he showed up with over the years, it perhaps shouldn't be, but yeah it's kinda surprising.
Doubly so seeing that he'd have to dress up as a girl.

Even more surprising is that everyone seems down for it. Even Corey- who reads as the one with the most doubts -seems more concerned about his character being the beach ball.

[Anonymouswizard]

Spoiler: Speculation based on seeing the movie

Show

I hope Snoke just is the Sarlaac.

Spoiler: Entire trilogy spoilers

Show

While that would be great, I suspect that either Snoke is going too be his own villain or will be a corrupted Palpatine, possibly possessed by Anakin.

Actually, we know that Rey is the daughter of Han and Princess. Princess is Anakin's daughter, and we know from the second Death Star that Anakin can possess the bodies of his descendants (subject to potential need for anger). This already makes the ending of E9 make a lot more sense.

Anakin, the one true Sith, has managed to come back from the dead by possessing a body. However due to it not being a family member's it's started to decay, causing him to return to being the man behind the man and controlling his First Order through Smoke (who might just be an independent villain under his command, or might be directly controlled via the Force, hive mind Sith?). Anakin has Snoke tutor Kylo Ten (secretly Rey's brother Ben Solo, or her cousin Ben Starkiller), hoping to increase his rage to the point where he's possessable. Blah blah, E8 happens, and Anakin guides Kylo to him, realises that despite his apparent anger Kylo is too calm to possess, and so uses Kylo to guide Rey towards him, thinking that she is more naturally inclined to the dark side. Blah blah, In the final battle Anakin learns how to stabilise his body, tries to kill off his grandkids, and gets his own Force Drain reflected back at him, the galaxy is saved for now but Anakin might return as long as his bloodline endures.