OOTS #1216 - The Discussion Thread

[The Giant]

New comic is up.

[RMS Oceanic]

The good old double bluff. Durkon learned from Haley.

[Shale]

I like how this time it was the lawful one who figured out the shell game.

[Dire_Flumph]

So raise your hand if you think they just accidentally led them to the right door by a horrible accident.

[Zonkerbl]

Xykon is super powerful but his achilles' heel is his low Wisdom score. But doesn't he need a high int score to be a lich?

[Dragonus45]

So proud of Durkon here, and he got them out of the way and into the dungeon to boot. I wonder if it's had time for any new monsters to move in. If so they may even be about to be down a spell or two.

[Cicciograna]

"We are loving you so much, Miss Oona!"

- signed: the tracks and all of us.

[Zonkerbl]

So raise your hand if you think they just accidentally led them to the right door by a horrible accident.

It's a door they already cleared out though

[Windscion]

Still a bad plan they planned for.

Zonkerbl: MitD was making extra X's. Might yet be occupied.

[factotum]

Wow, that's some surprising level of smarts from Durkon and Minrah.

[NerdyKris]

So raise your hand if you think they just accidentally led them to the right door by a horrible accident.

I think it's more likely that they're going to go into a dungeon they haven't cleared yet, revealing the MitD's misdirection, but not necessarily his hand in it.

It's a door they already cleared out though

MitD was painting X's on doors they hadn't gone through yet to slow them down.

[Dire_Flumph]

It's a door they already cleared out though

We don't know that. Remeber what the MitD has been up to. At the very least they may have exposed what he's been doing.

[Personification]

The good old double bluff. Durkon learned from Haley.

Actually, this was Minrah's idea.

[Quebbster]

So raise your hand if you think they just accidentally led them to the right door by a horrible accident.

Definitely a possibility.

[Murk]

It's a door they already cleared out though

Or is it??

The MitD has been marking a lot uncleared doors as cleared - this could very well be one of those.
Which, incidentally, could lead Team Evil to realise someone has been messing with their markings.

[EmperorSarda]

I'm pretty sure that is a door that the MitD marked falsely.

[Tuhlore]

It's possible this isn't a door they went through given MitD's actions.
In fact, I think that's more likely.
Edit: Ninja'd

[Hiro Quester]

Yeah.. I'm worried that this is how the Evil Gang will know some dungeons have not been cleared, but are marked with a red X.

could they trace that back to the MitD?

[Connington]

It's a door they already cleared out though

No, it's a door marked with the "cleared out" symbol. That doesn't mean much anymore.

This could lead to an interesting conversation with the Monster in the Dark.

EDIT: Swordsaged

[Tuhlore]

Yeah.. I'm worried that this is how the Evil Gang will know some dungeons have not been cleared, but are marked with a red X.

could they trace that back to the MitD?

It'll definitely cause some conflict between them or they'll get over it immediately attributing it to how long they've been there (Doubtful given Oona's experience with it, but you never know).

[Lvl 2 Expert]

We don't know that. Remeber what the MitD has been up to. At the very least they may have exposed what he's been doing.

Or they check a few more doors and conclude that most of these dungeons have some sort of monster regeneration.

Okay, they're probably smart enough to debunk that possibility within a day or two.

[Windscion]

We don't know that. Reme[m]ber what the MitD has been up to. At the very least they may have exposed what he's been doing.

Or they might come to other conclusions. Leading to hijinks!

[Schroeswald]

Go Minrah and Durkon! Being smart and whatever is cool!

[Raven777]

I love Oona so much.

Problem: This turn of events has about a 50% chance of backfiring by revealing to Team Evil that somebody has been messing with the marks... Hopefully they do not have special reasons to suspect the MitD specifically. It could be anyone else in the village, or a third party, for all they know.

EDIT: It's rather beautiful how the theme of playing with the assumptions around shell games keeps coming back over and over in the comic. This one is even a twofer: Durkon's hiding strategy on top of the tempering with the door's process of elimination that was already going on.

[Wraithfighter]

...

Okay. So.

Remember this scene from almost 200 strips ago?

They had come out of a green door, having cleared that dungeon, with a red door and then yellow door stage-left of it, which the Monster in the Darkness off a number of doors as being already cleared, with the red one being covered by his speech bubble but clearly in range. They are also all three ground-level doors.

...three of the doors we see this time?

Stage-left-to-right: Yellow, Red, Green, yellow and red clearly marked off, green unclear.

I think that's in the same general area, then.

Now, the door they're hiding in front of is not one that's seen.......

...but given that context, I think this is a pretty big-ass hint that there's a good chance that either the evil guys are going to realize that someone's been marking off the doors in an effort to fool them (a subject that's been puzzling them before)...

...or something far, far worse.

EDIT: phooey my loquaciousness, others have already been pointing this out >_>.

[hroþila]

It might be the right door. But if that's the case, they're walking into the dungeon expecting it to be empty, and it won't be. They should be alright even if they've already used up a few spells, but they might be caught off their guards and get into trouble.

[Worldsong]

I like how this time it was the lawful one who figured out the shell game.

To be fair, it was this very same Lawful person who thought of the shell game the first time the strip talked about it.

Redcloak was the one who had the idea of using additional skeletons as decoys for Xykon.

I actually like how this strip helps show that Redcloak, for all his sunk cost fallacies, is dangerously intelligent. He might have found Durkon and Minrah if Xykon wasn't in charge.

It makes me look forward to the moment where the alliance between Redcloak and Xykon falls apart. While Xykon will still be the one who ends up on top I don't think it'll be as simple as "I outplayed you on every level."

[deltamire]

God, I love Oona-focused pages so much. Her tone and style of speech are so dynamic to read. Guess the people who were suggesting they'd go into the doors to escape were . . . sort of right? Clever Durkon, and clever Minrah for building on top of his plan.

Poor Redcloak. Having an ounce of sense only works when you're not getting bulldozed by the rest of the party. That takes care of Team Evil for a couple of pages, at least - more if this is one of the MitD's doors, because monsters don't come back quickly enough to justify a completely full dungeon - so we might get a cutaway to another group (paladins or party?) or are the two dwarves going to pop straight back out immediately?

splurp is a really nice sound effect.

[Quizatzhaderac]

So raise your hand if you think they just accidentally led them to the right door by a horrible accident.

Aye.

Xykon is super powerful but his achilles' heel is his low Wisdom score. But doesn't he need a high int score to be a lich?

But lichs don't have achilles tendons.

[Dragonus45]

Actually, this was Minrah's idea.

Nope, Durkon is the one who makes the call to go into the ground instead of a door. She just added in opening a few extra doors on top.