DM of the Rings XXXII:
Fire Safety

By Shamus Posted Monday Nov 20, 2006

Filed under: DM of the Rings 49 comments

Lothlorien, No Shops, Boromir, Aragorn, Spectacular treetop city.

 


From The Archives:
 

49 thoughts on “DM of the Rings XXXII:
Fire Safety

  1. Carl the Bold says:

    First.

    Please, oh please, tackle another trilogy when this one ends. Star Wars. Indiana Jones. Back to the Future. No matter. This gets funnier every week.

  2. mom says:

    This is more than I want to know. You are all a bunch of Gollums!

  3. Mr, Nexx says:

    Oh yeah, there you are. I had a group that couldn’t leave a town without setting something on fire. Usually for highly legitimate reasons… but there was guarenteed to be a fire.

    Like that fuel-air bomb in Waterdeep…

  4. *Brilliant* choice of frames.

  5. Eve says:

    Oh gosh, BEEN THERE. These are so great! Please keep them coming!

  6. Lon says:

    Of course, one can’t blame the players entirely. The elves are snooty and isolationist, and the players have been given no reason to have any personal investment in any of this…

  7. Crusader Corim says:

    I’ve always felt that elves needed to be staked out in the sun while their forests burn. Glad to hear Aragorn and Boromir agree with me.

  8. neotoma says:

    I can’t stop laughing. Boromir/Frank’s rant on the elves is just wonderful — and I so know gamers who would do that. Mobile chaos factories is what they are.

  9. Scott says:

    Simply priceless… I’ve had that conversation with another PC before…

    I like having the character that’s the extrenal monolouge of the party.

    Tense stare down… Heated words… High drama with guns drawn…

    “Oh just off the S.O.B… No? *BANG* There… Crisis averted… I shot through the hostage? So? Wasn’t my kid…”

  10. Orcbane says:

    Dude, I just found your comic. This is great stuff! I used to play the LOTR RPG with two friends, and the DM always had such a hard time because we’d give him hell. I’d purposefully mispronounce the NPC’s names, do stupid things like pee in the town’s well, and search up and down for treasure. This is great nostalgia. Thanks for it!

  11. Nim says:

    Aww, I just started reading this and I’m already at the end? This is great. Make more… please? :D

  12. elucid8 says:

    First D&D game I ever played (years and years and years ago) we blew up The Keep On The Borderlands. And ourselves. Retrospectively, I realise our DM engineered a “Rocks fall. Everybody dies.” moment, but we felt so proud.

  13. inara says:

    [i] Retrospectively, I realise our DM engineered a “Rocks fall. Everybody dies.” moment [/i]

    hey, that’s better than

    DM “You’re walking thru the forest”

    Fighter (me, btw) “Do we have a random encounter?”

    DM (preturbed) “Yes. Zombies fall out of the trees. Take 1d6 damage from it falling on your head.”

  14. Destroy Gundam says:

    “Welcome noble champions, feel free to sleep on our dirt, here are some pointy sticks”

    His face makes the line even funnier.

  15. Lonewolf says:

    ~~DM (preturbed) “Yes. Zombies fall out of the trees. Take 1d6 damage from it falling on your head.”~~

    That is so a classic way to mess with players… oh the imagery! bwahahaha

    1. Silasary says:

      I recently dropped a Gelatinous Cube from 600ft onto a PC. I learnt that randomly praying gods is not a good idea. So did the Cube, come to think about it – Fall damage is more than enough to kill it (And anything it lands on)

  16. Gadush Kraun says:

    Oh dear. BURN IT ALL!!!

    Those dammned elves. This is the funniest thing ever! I agree make a second series.

  17. Cthulu says:

    I love the last box. Reminds of how my favorite line was “Note I’m not making a move to stop him”

  18. Max says:

    First comic to actually make me laugh out loud.

    That’s not saying the others weren’t funny. They’re terrific. But this was the first one that actually made me laugh outside of my head.

  19. Red Zone says:

    “Here are some pointy sticks.” I think I just pissed myself.

  20. SnarkHunter says:

    “Only you can promote forest fires.” Love it! And I’m using that bit where zombies fall out of the trees, dealing a d6 falling damage apiece. =D

  21. Sewicked says:

    I am carefully not, repeat not, showing this to my DM. He doesn’t need the ideas.

  22. Elkie says:

    This is the fourth time I read the Pointy Sticks joke. I still laugh just as much. The font really does it :)

    1. Caroline says:

      I could read a book about this without finding such real-world apporaehcs!

  23. Seve says:

    The elfilk is bunch of nefarious bastards as was shown to us by Terry Pratchett in one of his books which name I don’t know in english nor remember in my own language either…

    Their weakness was ironically iron.

  24. JD says:

    Again: Exactly …

  25. Xzeno says:

    I had a magic village made of glass so i started describing it and they turned around and bought a catapult. my plan to avoid this involved them becoming glass if they broke the law but they consistently rolled 17 or better on their saves.

  26. Aragorn says:

    theres a fear the boot by shamus too and theres a star wars one called darths and droids :) i dont know if darths and droids are by shamus just wanted to tell u

  27. Odeath says:

    I read your comic after particularly frustrating DnD games I run. They found a way into Limbo to stand in front of the personification of Summer herself. When instructed by their employer to find a way to make her happy. . .
    “Uh hi I just wanted to let you know your boy friend gave me an STD.”

    But its all better as I see all these other DMs get the same grief.

  28. Saoirse Young says:

    *laughs so hard she starts to cry* OH WOW, this is HILARIOUS.

  29. cheesebunny says:

    ^^ yay fire, for the snooty elvies! ^^

  30. Tuor says:

    ‘The elfilk is bunch of nefarious bastards as was shown to us by Terry Pratchett in one of his books which name I don't know in english nor remember in my own language either…

    Their weakness was ironically iron.’

    I think your talking about Lords and Ladies the 14th discworld novel by Terry Pratchet.

  31. Rowan says:

    I loved this! Made me really go back to my D&D days. Had a 17th level enchantress by the end and loved blowing the DM’s ideas to bits. Major plot, all traps set to go on our exit and I manage to come up with “cast featherfall on party and we jump out the window with the booty”. His jaw bounced.

    1. WJS says:

      Ooh! Foiled by a level 1 spell! I’ll bet he liked you after that…

  32. Wafflebob says:

    My players burned down so many forests, blew up so many inns and robbed so many money changers.

  33. mICHAEL cOLEMAN says:

    lol oh the numbers of times players have destroyed the innocent out of anoyance.

  34. Mr. Bubbles says:

    To prove that it would take more than several high level NPC’s to bully our party of first level characters into submission (and thusly force us to resume the DM’s intended plot line) I once convinced the other players in my adventuring party to soak the thatch roof of a building in all of the lamp oil and alcohol (one of the players insisted on being consistently drunk) from our starting equipment, and barricade shut the only remaining exit (our DM had thought he was being sneaky, and had put bars on all the first floor windows so we couldn’t break in to steal things at night anymore :p )

    Smores anyone?

  35. Thog son of Grol says:

    My DM had our party in a situation very similar to this. we ended up in a Samurai/fuedal japanese village, inexeplicably in the middle of our pseudo-european campaign setting. I think it was to appease our inexplicable Samurai character. (seriously the guy won’t play unless he gets to have a Katana and be overpowered.) Anyway, thinking of feudal Japan the DM decided that they would be wary of outsiders, particularly non-humans. So,the half-elf, the half-orc and the dwarf who made up 3/5 of the party got treated like absolute crap. Thog’s reaction was pretty mch that of any half-orc barbarian confronted by a village of douchebags, he looked for the nearest source of accelerants and ignition.
    My DM also had an efective precaution against this, he broke character to let me known that the entire village was at least 15th level so that i’d metagame, knowing i wouldn’t get out alive. It sucked, i’m still looking for an excuse to track the party back that way and start pitching alchemist’s fire all over thier town. Seriously we’ve been playing since first level, now at 20th an he put the pyromaniac barbarian with the anger issues in a town made out of FREAKING PAPER!

  36. Rose says:

    lol, Boromir’s line at the end is hysterical.

  37. lunjan says:

    I started a long career of being the DB that assaults the DMs plans long ago… We started a group of 9 players at first level in 2nd edition D&D, we had finally reached 11th level, and i decided that it was time for my evil character to show his true colors. In the middle of a fight against a yeti, i launched my first cone of cold at the yeti (after waiting for the dm’s character to move into the way). by the end of the session, that character was dead, and for the next 3 years i had no character last for more than 2 consecutive sessions.

    The most memorable was when my entroduction to the group was as a highwayman that was trying to rob them. the elf ranger rolled 3 consecutive 20s, and it was ruled a 1 hit kill on his first attack. off i went to roll d6s and nurse my grudge

  38. Nanorider says:

    Oh God….this talk about fire reminds me of a time when I were part of a party that [accidentally] set a large city on fire.

    We were fighting a 30 ft. tall fire daemon that some cracy wizard had cunjured up in the middle of this large town with more than 10.000 inhabitants. I believe it was the capital of a major power on that continent. So our “brilliant” fire mage thinks he’s very cunning and uses his wand of FIRESTORM on the daemon!!!

    *POOOF* Someone fetch the marshmallows?

    The rest of the session we spent running across the continent and fleeing across an ocean – with most of the major power’s army in hot pursuit.

    Well, at least the daemon felt good….I guess we went on his x-mas card list.

    1. WJS says:

      You should have just blamed it on the demon…

  39. RawrImmaTaco says:

    “only you can promote forest fires?”
    ‘exactly’
    almost pissed myself at that part…:)

  40. Demoneq says:

    Heh. Not so much related, but it has reminded me of Deadmines instance on heroic difficulty in World of Warcraft – the last opponent has her ship rigged with a heckload of explosives, and tries to blow us up twice during the fight – so, what was there, stopping us from setting said ship on fire earlier, and blow them up with her? ;)

  41. ZAM1359 says:

    A smart DM would plan on his players sacing and burning all the villages & such they come across. On the other hand, that would be the one time they don’t.

  42. Runeslinger says:

    You have a gift!

    I got a few laugh out loud moments from this series, but “Only you can promote forest fires?” takes the prize!

  43. 4ier says:

    There are a few messed up character encodings in the comments.
    inara:
    “Rocks fall. Everybody dies.” should be “Rocks fall. Everybody dies.”

    Lonewolf:
    “Yes. should be “Yes.
    head.” should be head.”
    (You could combine the open and close quotes find/replace to fix both comments at once, but this way I get to write “Rocks fall. Everybody dies.” three times. :D )

    Tuor:
    don't should be don’t
    either… should be either…

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply to Info Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.