DM of the Rings XXV:
Where Are We Again?

By Shamus Posted Friday Nov 3, 2006

Filed under: DM of the Rings 29 comments

Cahadras, Moria, Tomb of Balin, Roleplaying, forgetful DM, Balrog

I had some witty comments to go along with this comic. They are in my notes… around here… somewhere. Ah yes! here they are:

D&D is a sort of simulation. A simulation of living in a fantasy world where fearless heroes and dreadful monsters clash daily in spectacular battles. A world where you are a great champion, and the creator of the universe is frequently disorganized, highly distractable, and alarmingly vague on the rules of the universe he's trying to run.

No, I already used that one. Dangit…

 


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29 thoughts on “DM of the Rings XXV:
Where Are We Again?

  1. Deoxy says:

    Heh. Another good one.

  2. Kiwi C. says:

    I can’t see the image! What’s up?

  3. Shamus says:

    Image is loading fine for me. I can’t imagine what the trouble is, unless you are reading from an external feed on another site. Anyone else having trouble? Any suggestions?

  4. Rask says:

    Is it possible to open up the image linking to particular sites?

    I’m reading from the RSS feed to LiveJournal, and now you’re using even more bandwidth in that you have to serve the placeholder image when I first see the post, and then you have to serve the rest of the page with the comic (and assorted other images) when I come over here to actually read the comic.

  5. Marmot says:

    Works just fine for me.
    At the beginning I almost cried “no, he skipped the Balrog, noooo” until I saw the Caradhras scene. When Balrog popped out I was copmpletely overwhelmed with joy :) Great one!

  6. Rask, he used slightly more bandwidth for you this time but will use much less when you revisit that LiveJournal page, and when all kinds of other people visit it who aren’t actually interested or who have already seen it.

  7. Shamus says:

    Steven is right: as happy as I am for the nice visitors from LJ, that feed was killing me. I have not gotten the October bandwidth bill yet, but last time I looked the ammount due was “The blood of 16 young virgins”, which can’t be good.

    I might lose a few readers this way, but my main concern is keeping everything flowing smoothly.

    Thanks for your patience.

  8. Selki says:

    What Steven Den Beste said.

    As the creator of the feed syndication on LiveJournal (http://syndicated.livejournal.com/twentysidedtale/), I’m A-OK with the new image policy (hotlink protection).

  9. Selki says:

    Shamus,

    Checking the stats on LJ’s Twentysidedtale feed syndication today, only 38 folks are following via LJ syndication — though I am aware that you have more readers with LJ accounts than that, I think many of them are just checking via bookmarks (that may change as more notice the syndication is available).

  10. Shamus says:

    Thanks Selki. Interesting. 38 certainly sounds pretty small when compared to the number of times these big images are getting hit, although it gets are to sort things out amid the noise in the logs.

    And, you know, thanks for making the feed. :)

  11. TheMatt says:

    I’m syndicating it from Bloglines and no images show up in that feed. Of course, that could be due to some setting I have on…

  12. John Fiala says:

    Ha! I keep loving this series.

  13. Pete Zaitcev says:

    There’s a freaking gazillion of sites which suck all images posted to LiveJournal, and hotlink them in some kind of aggregating page. I speculate that owners of those pages trawl through looking for naked chicks. This is facilitated by the ease of programmatic access to LiveJournal.

  14. Rask says:

    Sure, Pete, but if hotlinking is only allowed from LiveJournal itself, then this wouldn’t be an issue.

  15. Wonderduck says:

    “Okay, that’s new.”

    My beautiful keyboard…

  16. telesilla says:

    Another great marriage of words and images there in the last panel. I have no idea how you manage to bring the funny strip after strip, but you do.

  17. LafinJack says:

    …and the creator of the universe is frequently disorganized, highly distractable, and alarmingly vague on the rules of the universe he's trying to run.

    Much like real life!

  18. Rask, let’s put it this way: Your prayers have been answered. The answer is ‘no’.

  19. haashaastaak says:

    this day’s strip is like an entire comic book. A pound of pages for an ounce of progress, or is that a kilo of pages for 50 g of progress?

  20. Ed Dunphy says:

    My heartiest laugh yet…

  21. Eilidh says:

    I just nearly burst an internal organ trying not to laugh out loud at this, because it would alert my co-workers to the fact that I am not working on the department budget, as I appear to be (yeah my job sucks). After all, there’s not much in the budget that’s funny enough to warrant a big ole guffaw, which is what nearly happened when I read “Okay, that’s new” hahahaha This is great stuff. Really enjoying it. MUCH much much better than budgets!

  22. Destroy Gundam says:

    Ironically, that t-shirt would be the only “loot” they would’ve gotten from that tomb.

    Seems Uncle Bally is quite stingy towards his “relatives”.

  23. septima says:

    I would DEFINTELY remember Balrog. I don’t remember everything, but I’d SURE remember THAT!

  24. spiderade says:

    my personal favorite to when players ask where they are

    “your healer is down to -8 hit, the wizard was out of spells and the fighter just had his sword broken by the giants club.”

    its amazing how fast they remember their place after that

  25. Liz says:

    (from a new reader): That last panel is badass.

    This webcomic is the best thing ever. The only scary bit is how much time I suspect it took you to do … ah, the power of fandom. <3

  26. Man, the series is over( im going through the archives) but i have to say, Shamus you rock! I am a new D&D player, and its mainly because of your comics. Also the expersions of Boromiers face on the last panel was perfect.

  27. cheesebunny says:

    ahh… forgetfulness, the funniest thing a DM can do, unfortunatly our does a summerary of the night

  28. Serenitybane says:

    Haha this was really good :) I showed it to my D&D group, and they simply love your comics!!

  29. DAC says:

    You misspelled Caradhras again!

    I’m enjoying the comic, though. I know it’s over, but I just learned of it.

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