Hjerne wrote:I feel sorry for anybody who gets upset at Minmax and Fumbles screwing around. It means your D&D games must be as boring as all get out. If my character winds up unconscious, dead, or bleeding to death then the game doesn't suddenly become deadly serious for me.
Yes, because that's the only other way it could be played out, and besides that, playing your way is the only correct way.
One of the things about the comic is that the characters are in an extremely wide grey area between being players and being actual living creatures in a fantasy world that uses D&D as their set-up. Both ends of the spectrum are problematic: if it's a game it's very railroady and leaves little of the story up to free will. If it's an active world then the fact that their world is ending and a psychotic and insanely strong mass murderer on your heels would demand a more direct realization of the characters that something important is happening. So, to me, the answer is somewhere in the middle. They are PC's (if I remember correctly Hunt did say that the story is based on a or some campaigns he ran), but at the same time, they are active characters in the world. At some points in the story they are more the actual goblins, at other moments they are more the players playing the character. It's the only way as far as I can see how the behaviour of the goblins make sense, but others might be able to come up with a better explanation than I.
It mainly has to do with tonal shifts. In the Brassmoon arc, a joke was part of what was happening and didn't detour from the story (we're not jumping to our death here, but there, where there's a tree). Before that, in the orc cave, there wasn't as much of urgency, so joking around after a fight makes sense. In the MoM, there wasn't much of a sense of urgency because it's its own pocket dimension, leaving room for joking around. And even there, the jokes didn't really take away from the action happening. Now, however, a lot of the jokes being made are completely different from what is actually happening in the world, which is quite distracting. To some, that's not a problem. To others it is. Personally, I think a bit more recognition of what's happening by the characters would be well suited. It is kind of fixed with how I view the place of the characters in the world right now, but it still feels like a bit of a band-aid. It's kind of like "how am I supposed to feel for and empathize with the characters if they don't do it themselves", y'know?
Still, I think that when things pick up again that Hunt has something awesome to tell, which is why I stick around.
I feel smart, but I'm pretty sure I'm an idiot.