DM of the Rings XLV:
Last Disrespects

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 29, 2006

Filed under: DM of the Rings 32 comments

Last respects to Boromir. Totally retarded. Forgetting something.

How to motivate your players:

  1. Entice them with a compelling story.
  2. If you can’t do that, then bribe them with treasure.
  3. If you won’t do that, then let them know that if they don’t play along they will be stuck in this boring, treasure-less campaign forever.
 


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32 thoughts on “DM of the Rings XLV:
Last Disrespects

  1. Sang says:

    “Let’s rescue our dear friends, whose names escape me at the moment” – Hilarious. Please keep these coming. Don’t stop. AFTER you do the whole trilogy, and maybe the Hobbit, you can tackle George Lucas’ creations.

  2. Ineti says:

    Wow! The players forgot to loot Boromir’s body.

    Great comic. Thanks for the fun read!

  3. Parzival says:

    “Wow! The players forgot to loot Boromir's body.”

    But in the movie, Aragorn took Boromir’s bracers; he’s shown strapping them onto his arms as the boat goes downstream. I almost laughed out loud; it was such a D&D thing to do.

    “Right. First we take anything useful, THEN we give him a Viking send off. Strip him, toss him in a boat and douse the body with oil.”

    “Uhm… we’re down to one flask of oil.”

    “Okay, forget the Viking part. Just shove him off in a boat.”

    “What about his sword?”

    “Is it magical?”

    “No. The horn was, but the orcs broke it.”

    “Uh-huh. Figures. Toss ’em in the boat and shove him off.”

    “You know, those bracers aren’t magical either.”

    “Yeah, yeah. But they look good with my outfit. Hey, I need *some* kind of profit out of this lousy quest.”

    :-)

  4. Don Alsafi says:

    “That’s not very epic.”
    “What?”

    is the exchange that had me laughing out loud. Good stuff.

  5. Shamus says:

    Parzival that’s good stuff. I wish I’d thought of that.

  6. freefall says:

    Why would they even consider burrying Boromir? It would take up the time and effort of a bunch of lazy loafers, not to mention the fact that there is NO treasure burried in the forest that they could dig for. They are selfish and greedy so all of those things would be against their nature. I’m suprised they would even send him of in one of the valuable boats that, if nothing else, they could sell. They seem the type to just let him rot on the ground without his valuables.

  7. nigel says:

    ya, they were prity stupid, b/c even when my brother dies, i imeaditly lot him even if it’s in the middle of battle. but the only thing thats rong with d&d looting is that your not allowed to “spot” their sword, bow, arrows of even their clothes. the dm always finds some way to make it so that you cant take the useless stuff to sell. uhg!

  8. Rick says:

    I am a DM for a group of guys the youngest of whom is 36 and the oldest is 45. I want to give you all hope that when you get to that age NOTHING CHANGES! They behave almost exactly like the guys playing these LOTR characters. When I first read this great webcomic I emailed all my group and said “this is just so us!” They all agreed.

    Although I havent lost anyone to another RPG yet, as they are all too lazy to get to know another system.

  9. Megan says:

    LOL! I love this comic. I’ve been reading for awhile, and I have to say how realistic this is. It’s kind of scary.

    “NO….You decide to rescue the halflings.”

    “I’m telling you, we don’t want to do that.”

    “BO-RING.”

    …………

    “I have an idea. Let’s rescue our dear friends, whose names escape me at the moment.”

  10. Martin Ralya says:

    I just came back to DMotR after some time away, and I was thrilled to see so many comics to read. Now, of course, I’m caught up again. ;)

    I love this comic — I you get as much out of it as we do!

  11. nigel says:

    so.. when shall WE start that online rpg in ur minds?

  12. nigel says:

    i have a cool story, check it out, it’s still in the making though
    http://www.freewebs.com/supperdm/index.htm

  13. ChristianTheDane says:

    Aragons line made me laugh out loud.

    I would have thought that rather than interrupting the gm, they would have just stuffed him on the boat and shoved him downstream. Much faster than digging.

  14. inara says:

    that actually happened inone of our games

  15. Ah Ha Ha Ha…the player stopped laughing as the first echos returned with an eerie warble.
    Something was out there, hissing, skulking, shadowing the party from the… um, shadows?

    Yeah, death is everywhere and it’s really boring trying to loot skeletons. But it’s harded still
    when you take a wrong turn, having ignored a perfectly good tomb for something shiny and
    obvious aboveground.

    As for funeral arrangements – I like the “disapparate” option – none of my party have shovels
    and we used up the fuel-like oils (damn, no more incendiary arrows) in an attempt to slow pursuit.
    Now, with two dead (1 PC, 1 NPC – and no raising them, one was our cleric), we’re looking at the
    proper way to deal with it.
    Hm, we’re landlocked, so boats are out.

    I’ll have to think about it, but_ if the DM suggests something, IT’S GOING TO HELP and it’s
    probably going to speed up the game. Which is good, since we also need to get some back story
    stuff for the replacement characters that have been generated (ECL, blah blah).

    I think these comics are among the few things that are as consistently funny as our own games.
    I’ll keep reading and tipping other players off to this site.

    To all of you,
    Make Merry and Long
    and Joyfull this Immanent Year
    d

  16. EmeraldTiara says:

    Wow. So all it took was the option of standing around doing nothing to make them go rescue the companions whose names have escaped them? If it were ME, I would want to be paid. Speaing of which, do they EVER find any loot??

  17. ChristianTheDane says:

    Well, i guess they could have looted boromirs sword and chainmail. That might give a few gp…

  18. Telas says:

    I hate to say it, but I’ve had to force-feed a few quest hooks to a group… When the DM has to say, “Well, there is that rumor about X” a half-dozen times, you know they’re just not getting what he’s selling.

  19. Jurrubin says:

    Megan Says:
    >
    > LOL! I love this comic. I've been reading for awhile, and
    > I have to say how realistic this is. It's kind of scary.

    What’s really kind of scary is the amount of effort to make the graphic outtakes match the conversations. Looking at the 5th panel, I can almost hear Lego Lass say “..That’s retarded.”

    Awesome job, Shamus. Truly awesome.

  20. Jaja says:

    Do keep ’em coming, Shamus. My husband and I always remind eachother to check for the latest one from you when we’re at work (what better time to read ’em, eh?)Cheers, and though it’s kinda late, Happy New Year :)

  21. Gahazakul says:

    wow, i just discovered this, and let me tell you i am hooked! I read all from begging at once and am feeming for the next. I am going to introduce this to everyone i know! If you were to put these all together in a book of some kind i would be extremely intrested in purchasing it.

  22. Marty says:

    This happend to a group I played once:

    “You see an old man, lying in the road mortally wounded–”
    “I give him a mercy kill!”
    “Before you strike, he begins to say something…”
    “I rolled an 16, but I get at least +4 because he was helpless. Is that enough?”
    “Umm… you just killed the plot hook.”

  23. Rikku says:

    Aragorn has some of the funniest lines, the others could use lines like his. Either way this story is great! Keep it up!

  24. Vayne Nomin says:

    Helpful DM Hint #241:

    When running an evil campaign, out of character never read off the equipment of an NPC rolling with the party if the equipment is better than anything the party has so far. Soon enough the NPC’s stripped naked corpse will be floating face down in a river and the party much more the richer.

  25. Rat says:

    As a DM since the 80s (yes, sad), I have managed to get this far into the epic without wetting myself, but only just.
    I am making it compulsory reading for my players.

  26. humanist says:

    I’m not a roleplayer myself, and I doubt I ever will be. However, this past year I’ve come to learn the benefits of hanging around while a bunch of friends are playing D&D, which are not entirely unlike the advantages of reading this excellent webcomic: periodically laughing my ass off.

    Anyway, on the first day of one campaign, my friends’ characters were given a quest by (if I remember correctly) a mid-ranking church official with no special powers (c.f. “He’s Going to Tell”. The reason they didn’t just kill him was, among other things, that one of them was a Lawful Good Paladin of the very same church (Palor’s).)

    When one of my friends asked (out-of-character) if they could turn down the quest hook, the DM replied (ditto) “You can, but if you do I’m just going to roll random, high-level monster attacks.” They went with the quest hook.

    I remember expecting the DM in this campaign to do the same in an earlier comic, though I can’t remember now which one. I’m kinda pleased he (I assume) did it now.

    Different topic: Terry Pratchett has pointed out that multiple exclamation points is the sure sign of a diseased mind. I’m wondering: do multiple parentheses indicate the same thing?

  27. Serenitybane says:

    Lol! This one made me laugh so much! Well done!!

  28. A girl named Jessie says:

    ^_^ I’m loving this!!! Kudos!

  29. Bob says:

    “Our dear friends, whose names I can’t recall at the moment” is funny because it’s true. It’s even worse for NPCs; if we’ve got an NPC cleric in the party, that cleric might as well be named “Healbot” because that’s what everyone’s going to be call them anyway.

  30. Watcher says:

    Jeez, I almost cringe when I read this. Here the DM had the oppurtunity to let them go off on their own to explore the diverse world that he’d spent so much time creating, letting the plot flow organically and the players find a meaninful way to contribute to the conflict.

    And instead he forces them back onto a plot that now makes no goddamn sense.

  31. 4ier says:

    There are a couple of messed up character encodings in the comments.
    Parzival:
    Boromir's should be Boromir’s

    Jurrubin:
    I've should be I’ve
    It's should be It’s

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