TS: How come you’re hiding in here?
RD: Eh. Turns out PvP isn’t as much fun when you’re the GM. You're all doing fine without me.
TS: I thought we’d established that the whole point of this is for everyone to have fun. That includes you.
RD: Yeah, well.
GM: Hey, there you are. What’s up?
RD: All right, I understand, fine. I’m not as good at this as you, so I won't get in the way. Satisfied?
GM: … I didn’t think it was a competition.
GM: You want to know something? One of my first times GMing… I set up an encounter that was supposed to be unwinnable to start, thinking that everyone would run away. Almost wiped the party.
RD: You?
GM: Yep. Had to bring in a GMPC to pull them out. That whole game was a dumpster fire.
TS: See? Nobody is an expert from the start.
GM: And I’m hardly an expert even now. I’m just pretty good at faking it.
TS: The important thing is to take what you’ve got and figure out how to fix it.
RD: … thanks, guys. And… I think I’ve got an idea how to fix this…
RT: Aha! Critical domination! Take that, pirate scum! As you might say, ‘how do you like them apples?’
AJ: Jes’ you wait. Ah just gotta take mah second wind—
PP: Joke’s on you, Moonlight! I’ve got a bolas here with your name on it! In really, really small print!
RD: Hey guys… can we take a time out here for a minute?
RD: So… this PvP thing… it isn’t really working, is it?
RT: Well… I suppose it is a little clunky…
AJ: It ain't bad, ah wouldn't say. Still…
PP: It's… kinda fun.
FS: I’m quite enjoying it, actually.
RD: But it's not really turning out like what I wanted. Maybe we could try again later. With a different system. For now let's try to finish this adventure the old-fashioned way.
GM: Any objections?
RD: OK. “As the four sisters have each other at their mercies—“
TS: How can all four of them—
GM: Shh.
RD: “You all feel a rumbling from the nearby asteroid. As you turn to look, suddenly the rocky shell burst open, revealing—“
RD: “A space dragon!”
AJ: ‘Space dragon?’ Seriously?
RD: Yes, seriously. *plunk* I’ve been itching to play with this mini.
PP: “Mini” is so the wrong word.
RD: All right! <deep breath> Everyone roll for initiative!
Guest Author's Note: "I wanted to emphasize that despite everything that's going wrong, everyone (well, almost everyone) is actually having fun. Especially Pinkie, who I felt was the one who most enjoyed her 'cursed' personality in the last arc.
This is the same dragon from this cover (fav.me/da4te49), which is also the same dragon from 'Dragonshy'. Poor guy's been trying to find a quiet place to nap for centuries and keeps getting interrupted."
Notice: Guest comic submissions are open! Guidelines here. Deadline: February 20th.
I own the Colossal-sized red dragon from the old WotC miniatures collection. The day I plopped that sucker down on the battle mat, my entire party shat a brick and thought I went mad with power.
Well, they weren't wrong. XD
However! It was the best final campaign boss fight they've ever had and the fact they all retired rich as kings says that it was worth the thirty bucks I spent on it.
I'm not usually one for elaborate minis—one campaign saw us use Lego minifigs and it was quite fun—but the Niv-Mizzet figure they released to go with the Ravnica D&D supplement is very tempting.
When I first started up my old gaming group, I used LEGO for the figures and set pieces. They work very well, but the problem is that we all would end up just playing around with the LEGO instead of running the game. XD
The old WotC plastic figure collections were pretty nice and I was able to find them on the cheap. And their cardboard dungeon tiles were pretty good too.
Less shock factor than with the Final Fantasy Bahamut figure (mentioned below) because they already knew I owned it. And then the other GM borrowed it a few years later. And for the most part people were more interested in playing with it than with actually doing the encounter.
Plus it's really hard to move. If you're doing a dynamic combat arena it's almost simpler to just redraw the scenery around it.
I'm not allowed to incinerate anything. I borrowed a roommate's lighter in 2003 so I can give a treasure map that 'burned edge' look for my D&D campaign. Instead I got a 'charcoal in the fireplace' look and a 1/3rd degree burn on my fingers.
The really big figures are clunky on a small combat map, yeah. I find anything bigger than Huge category might as well just sit in place.
I love how the transition from panel 5 to panel 6 has the blue pony making threats with her bolas and then tied up with her own bolas without anyone commenting on it. Apparently some dice happened.
I never have fun with PvP, but sometimes I feel that I must, that's what my character would do at this moment. That leaves other people confused: if I don't like it, why am I doing it. So they probably think I secretly like it no matter how much I protest.
The only time I've ever actually done it was when we created a customizable deathmatch arena in the castle we'd magically conjured out of a swamp. So, no actual rationale whatsoever.
Guest Author's Note: "I wanted to emphasize that despite everything that's going wrong, everyone (well, almost everyone) is actually having fun. Especially Pinkie, who I felt was the one who most enjoyed her 'cursed' personality in the last arc.
This is the same dragon from this cover (fav.me/da4te49), which is also the same dragon from 'Dragonshy'. Poor guy's been trying to find a quiet place to nap for centuries and keeps getting interrupted."