Moments when a piece of entertainment completely lost you.

K · Post by K » Sun Apr 26, 2015 3:53 pm

Prak wrote:Yeah, pretty much. It's like he walked into a tattoo shop and said "give me all your crazy, jester, and clown related flash." I'm fine with the laughter, though it would be more in-character if it were less "carefully designed tattoo" and more "schizoid break-induced self harm." I'm kind of fine with the grin, although it's just.. odd. The facial tattoos are just cheap and generic.

Yeh, it seems like tattoo design by someone who doesn't know a lot about tattoo design or art direction. Basically, anyone with the ability to do a Google Images search could come up with that particular set of tattoos.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 7:14 pm

He needs this one.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Apr 26, 2015 7:26 pm

I could see him with a Bat-tramp stamp.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 6:15 am

How to piss on the idea of character development and show the problem with D&D "heroes" all in one post

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 7:35 am

I don't really see how it does either of those things. Haley's character development is sincere and nothing about her actions are at all unique to D&D, tabletop gaming in general, or player-controlled characters in general.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 8:29 am

Having proven that Haley can't take her in a straight fight and given her stated intent to just start killing people with no end in sight, this seems to me making the best of a bad situation.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 8:49 am

I thought the problem was where she had to stop using all her character abilities and MTP her way through the damn fight by convincing the DM she was having a character development moment, which then resolved without a single die roll, which just sucked.

Then the DM encouraged her to be happy about the victory, lest it be tougher next time, so she was happy, because that's how this game rolls. If the DM gives you ultimate power it's only used to screw the whole party later on, and Roy's Architecture skill is basically more valuable than everything because it's "in character". OOTS just have a terrible DM.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 9:09 am

Much like Rowling sending the entirety of Slytherin to the dungeons in the Battle of Hogwarts, it's just an abominably missed chance to tell a better story. Golems may be immune to magic, but you could just as easily resolved the fight by having V drop 11 tons of platinum on her if you just wanted to kill her. And when your update schedule and plot:filler ratio is as terrible as Burlew's, if he was just going to kill Golem-Crystal, I'd have rather he'd done it in the panel directly after she appeared.

Instead, Hayley ran for 17 pages, ended in an appearance of character development where Golem-Crystal realized she'd been a tool her whole life and Hayley started talking about how she was the only person in the guild she'd been honest with, even if only to be a bitch, and was past all that, all paired with a title that alludes to Crystal becoming a follower and joining the Order, just to kill her in a shitty, over-done terminator reference.

It's getting to the point where I wonder why I bother with OotS anymore, except that it takes a lot for me to stop reading a webcomic. ...though considering I stopped reading LFG for a similar "we could give you actual character development, but instead we're going to give you a shitty gag" reasons...

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 3:35 pm

The reason I bother with OotS and LFG or really most webcomics is I get bored with them at some point (waiting for updates) forget about them for a while and get reminded that they exit later. So I go and read them. Now I don't really have a problem with the way they handled the golem thing. I'm guessing the only reason it was even brought up was to get some action in the down time scene and to give basically a recap of Haley's character development. An interesting story could have been told with the golem but 'meh' I won't miss it. Hell I actually forgot who the fuck Crystal was and even after dropping her out of the story again I still don't care. I would guess that's the point. He didn't want anyone to care about Crystal. She was just a random plot element added to 'action up' this part of the story while giving Haley some spotlight time.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 3:37 pm

Prak wrote:How to piss on the idea of character development and show the problem with D&D "heroes" all in one post

Holy crap, OotS updated! Is it May already?

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 3:50 pm

Prak wrote: It's getting to the point where I wonder why I bother with OotS anymore, except that it takes a lot for me to stop reading a webcomic. ...though considering I stopped reading LFG for a similar "we could give you actual character development, but instead we're going to give you a shitty gag" reasons...

OotS at least has a plot moving on. Stopping the immortal villain from gaining control of the portals to super-powerful entity that threatens the very fabric of reality. If nothing else, I want to see how Redcloak turns out, now that he's been growing a proper spine.

In LFG (that I also gave up) they killed the evil king of destiny or whatever he was and then just kept moving around killing and looting for no clear reason.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 6:33 pm

I stopped reading LFG when they were meeting The Innocent and each party member saw them completely different from the others, something that represented innocence to them, and I know I wasn't the only person expecting Richard to see his young human self, they had been building up to that.

And then, out of nowhere, for no discernable reason, giant fucking flower.

I stopped reading LICD, LFG and Gutters all around the same time, but slightly different reasons. LICD, I just got tired of Rayne being a caricature of himself from earlier in the comic, and Gutters, I think I just got tired of the embarrassingly juvenile humor.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 7:02 pm

Not having read OotS since Giant was a tremendous douche to people on Nifty, I saw that comic and thought that the last panel was a flashback to breakfast with Haley eating two servings of beans. And then when she offed Crystal, she floated because she was farting so much.

After reading the rest of the commentary in this thread, I've decided my interpretation is better [than the comic's actual story].

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 7:39 pm

I wasn't aware of that history, what happened with him on Nifty?

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 8:30 pm

That's the problem with ongoings.

Stories need an ending.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Tue Apr 28, 2015 10:01 pm

We've known about how many arcs OotS was going to have since book 2. There were three magical gate and obviously all but the last one were going to be destroyed to stop the baddies from fucking with them. One arc per gate with one arc of faffing around in between Gates.

The problem of OotS is that Giant sucks harder at writing for serial readers then any webcartoonist I can think of. Even the later arc are ok if you archive binge them but when the story is parceled out in bite sized pieces over the course of months.

The comic is also sort of a bizarre cultural relic. The original joke of OotS was about how 3e was sort of rough around the edges as a world simulator and it was funny because we saw that something worthwhile. The games that have come after are instead openly contemptuous of the idea that they might be asked to do world emulation, and that attitude has been adopted by their fans.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:23 am

Lord Mistborn wrote: The problem of OotS is that Giant sucks harder at writing for serial readers then any webcartoonist I can think of. Even the later arc are ok if you archive binge them but when the story is parceled out in bite sized pieces over the course of months.

What do you call Goblinscomic then? In particular when the author of that one insists on splitting the party more and more. But I'll admit I check on it mostly to see if there's any new monster bewbs.

Noobcomic meanwhile updates even slower, but it's still on the game mechanics gag phase instead of trying to make some giant arc... Oh, wait, one of the characters literally built a giant ark because he deluded himself in thinking he's a prophet for a god or something, and somehow the NPCs that should be murdering him are following him, lolwhut?

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:25 am

I call Goblins dead. Whatever drive the guy had for delivering whatever message it seemed he was trying to tell seems to have left.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:56 am

TiaC wrote:I wasn't aware of that history, what happened with him on Nifty?

He started banning people on his website because they critiqued his work on Nifty, then flew off the handle on Nifty. People weren't even being insulting; they just were mentioning things they thought could be better. It was a shitstorm of stupid.

violence in the media · Wed Apr 29, 2015 11:33 am

I've always had the feeling that Burlew is loathe to let OotS end, as he's terrified at the prospect of having to do something else afterwards (and having it be nowhere near as successful for him).

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Apr 29, 2015 3:04 pm

MGuy wrote:I call Goblins dead. Whatever drive the guy had for delivering whatever message it seemed he was trying to tell seems to have left.

The guy apparently had a literal nervous breakdown and is still in recovery mode from that.

But his real problem is that he's too much of a perfectionist. The better his art style has gotten the slower his updates, because he has to get everything just right before he puts it up and moves on to the next page.

He wants his work to look professional
The thing is, though, professional comics have entire teams working on them like an assembly line, pencilers, inkers, letterers, colorists. It's a bit much for one guy.

Goblins could really benefit from less quality and more quantity.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Apr 29, 2015 3:49 pm

hyzmarca wrote:He wants his work to look professional

Someone needs to explain to him that in the entertainment industry, professional means 'on time.'

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:40 pm

Prak wrote:How to piss on the idea of character development and show the problem with D&D "heroes" all in one post

Eh, I didn't have a problem with it. Feeling bad for Crystal is just named character syndrome - by any measure, she's significantly more deserving of death than the hordes of goblins the OotS has killed. So if this counts as unheroic, they've been that way since the start.

Now my gripe about it, beyond the slooow update schedule, would be that it's still sort of claiming to be D&D, while having increasingly departed from D&D a while ago. Annoying mainly because I want to see what a story that actually did take double-digit D&D abilities into account would look like, and a comic seems like a decent medium for that.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat May 23, 2015 11:08 pm

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0987.html

"Hey Roy. Thor needs me to go to a giant pile of clerics on Zenith mountain. It's the Godsmoot. Yep, told me this morning when I prayed for spells. Shouldn't take long, and Thor says it's important."

Why would that be so hard?

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Sun May 24, 2015 12:48 am

Wow. I looked at that and started to read it. And then got sick of the text and stopped. I think Giant needs to rethink his comic. Break it up a bit. Bleh.