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I think OOTS is still pretty charming. Not sure where the vehement criticism's coming from - is it reacting to the GITP forums being a 3.5 charop hellhole? The strip's certainly no Goblins.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:05
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Kai Tave posted:Oh hey, there's a comments section. Roleplaying games... Roleplaying games were a mistake. Edit: V gently caress offffffffffff
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Dec 18, 2017 03:07
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Look, all I'm saying is that CTRL-ALT-DELETE is still relevant in 2017 - you just can't beat that kind of staying power in a comic
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Dec 18, 2017 03:07
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xiw posted:I think OOTS is still pretty charming. Not sure where the vehement criticism's coming from - is it reacting to the GITP forums being a 3.5 charop hellhole? The strip's certainly no Goblins. OotS’ decline began when it fully embraced the idea of “3.5 rules as the physics engine of a fantasy world” as a serious idea instead of a punchline. Ex., Burlew has to come up with various plot contrivances for Vaarsuvius or Durkon to split from the party; that’s because high-level 3.5 casters completely trivialize any kind of conflict that leads to a meaningful story.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:10
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xiw posted:I think OOTS is still pretty charming. Not sure where the vehement criticism's coming from - is it reacting to the GITP forums being a 3.5 charop hellhole? The strip's certainly no Goblins. It's definitely not like Bad Webcomics Thread awful and it's probably one of the better RPG-based webcomics I've had the pleasure of reading but that's damning with faint praise. It's just not a good comic in an artistic sense, not because of the stick figures but just like aggressively bad paneling and dialogue. I remember a semi-recent fight scene showing the back of a character's head - which in this case means a totally featureless circle - and you'd think after all this time the man wouldn't make amateur mistakes like that.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:11
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Kai Tave posted:Has there ever been an RPG webcomic that was actually good? The D&D actual comic for 4e was real good if that counts. xiw posted:I think OOTS is still pretty charming. Not sure where the vehement criticism's coming from - is it reacting to the GITP forums being a 3.5 charop hellhole? The strip's certainly no Goblins. I have nothing against the comic other then disliking it. It never found the right balance between comedy and drama, and it's drama ain't great besides, and it's comedy largely consists of referential humor. It's forums though... Kai Tave posted:Oh hey, there's a comments section. This reads like it could've come from the forums. Surprise, 3.x and TVTropes are liked by the same groups of people!
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Dec 18, 2017 03:16
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ProfessorCirno posted:The D&D actual comic for 4e was real good if that counts. Not a webcomic though. Rip Fell's Five, too good for this world.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:24
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Order of the Stick is quite good.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:30
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Wow, I made the mistake of looking through the old strips. It is desperately unfunny. And yeah, OotS is fine. It's enjoyable enough; the fanbase is just insufferable.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:31
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Order of the Stick is good and I'm a mod so that's the official position of Trad Games now. You're welcome.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:34
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theironjef posted:How is "Let's eat dinner" translated to "What do you want on dinner?" Is this what it feels like to watch Big Bang Theory? All of the writing feels very unnatural and forced, but some of that is probably because all of them are apparently Israeli migrants to the UK. There's some jokes early on about how they struggle with all the weird new britishisms. That doesn't excuse why most of the punchlines are "OMGWTFBBQ nerd stuff!!!" though. Alien Rope Burn posted:Flipping through Up to Four Players, the only joke seems to be "What if somebody acted in an exaggerated fashion regarding tabletop games!" But it's not a punchline, there's no setup, just... it's too bad, because they seem to be reasonably good at cartooning, but the jokes are just the characters hamming on the final panel. God, it's been a long time since I've seen a webcomic attempt to be CAD-but-for-tabletop-nerds. I guess someone had to try again now that most of the competition is past its prime Ettin posted:Order of the Stick is good and I'm a mod so that's the official position of Trad Games now. You're welcome. Wow, and here I thought you had good taste
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Dec 18, 2017 03:35
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Nuns with Guns posted:Wow, and here I thought you had good taste Modding both RPGnet and SA Tradgames does things to a person.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:40
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Ettin posted:Order of the Stick is good and I'm a mod so that's the official position of Trad Games now. You're welcome. Oh, right, this is the part of the movie where you tear off your mask and reveal that your face is just one hideous circle.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:48
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xiw posted:I think OOTS is still pretty charming. Not sure where the vehement criticism's coming from - is it reacting to the GITP forums being a 3.5 charop hellhole? The strip's certainly no Goblins. OotS isn't horrible and it doesn't plunge down into the depths of at truly bad webcomic, but it's a poor use of comics as a medium when your dialog balloons consume more panel space than anything else, like what happens in OotS on the reg. "But the art is deliberately poo poo, so the word balloons make up for it." Is a tired excuse when so much of the dialog is completely extraneous and other minimalist webcomics have managed to do so much better in both writing and art. It's a masturbatory exercise in applying D&D logic to morality and world building, and is basically TV Tropes: the webcomic at this point. I say this as someone who used to read it, but fell off when I forgot to check it for a while during one of the dozens of long-winded, but "quirky" and "self-aware" speeches I thought was so cool in high school. Kai Tave posted:Modding both RPGnet and SA Tradgames does things to a person. Ettin, please know that we're here for you if you need to talk Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 03:49
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I for one welcome our new stick figure overlords
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Dec 18, 2017 03:51
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Simian_Prime posted:So one of the systems used by said GM for his nominally 5e game was a DCC style Funnel. Everything from race to occupation was rolled randomly on a bunch of tables, so I figured “I’ll flip a coin to randomly determine gender as well for my four characters.” I got 3 men and 1 woman. The woman was the only survivor of the funnel so she became my 1st level paladin character. She was the only female character in the group (I’m male). That's... depressingly familiar. I can't blame you for ditching; frankly, this sounds like the kind of guy who would find a way to be groggy regardless, but I agree that the groggish "you can play an elf or a troll or a sapient wildebeest, but God forbid you play a woman or a non-white person" attitude is intolerable. Honestly, this reminds me of a weird conversation I had with one of the friends I played AD&D with in high school. It was our second campaign, and I'd decided to play a male dwarf with the Wandering Blacksmith kit, which specifically had fluff involving the concept that shield dwarves with this kit were wandering the world in large part to find a marriage partner/start a family. That became an explicit goal of my character, and he expressed interest (very non-explicitly and chivalrously -- think buying drinks and chatting, not ARE THERE ANY GIRLS THERE? IF THERE ARE, I WANT TO DOOOO 'EM) in female dwarves he encountered. This led to one of the most awkward conversations of my life: one of my friends sitting me down and asking, incredibly circuitously, if my playing a character who liked girls meant I was really a lesbian, or what...? My answer was "no," but I feel like "why do you even care?" would be a better one. Then again, that was a high-school story. The concept that there are actual grown-rear end adults who do poo poo like this about people playing outside their gender/race/orientation/whatevers is deeply sad.
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Dec 18, 2017 03:59
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Nuns with Guns posted:OotS isn't horrible and it doesn't plunge down into the depths of at truly bad webcomic, but it's a poor use of comics as a medium when your dialog balloons consume more panel space than anything else, like what happens in OotS on the reg. "But the art is deliberately poo poo, so the word balloons make up for it." Is a tired excuse when so much of the dialog is completely extraneous and other minimalist webcomics have managed to do so much better in both writing and art. It's a masturbatory exercise in applying D&D logic to morality and world building, and is basically TV Tropes: the webcomic at this point. I say this as someone who used to read it, but fell off when I forgot to check it for a while during one of the dozens of long-winded, but "quirky" and "self-aware" speeches I thought was so cool in high school. OotS has really good art, though. Like, it's not a high-detail feast for your eyes like something by Minna Sundberg or whoever but it's very good at what it's trying to do.
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Dec 18, 2017 04:09
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Once you wrap your head around the idea that not gaming is better than bad gaming, life gets much better.
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Dec 18, 2017 04:14
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Antivehicular posted:That's... depressingly familiar. I can't blame you for ditching; frankly, this sounds like the kind of guy who would find a way to be groggy regardless, but I agree that the groggish "you can play an elf or a troll or a sapient wildebeest, but God forbid you play a woman or a non-white person" attitude is intolerable. Kids are taught, intentionally or not, to find people to throw under the bus. There's a few winner spots and lots of loser spots so kids cling to the same bullshit reasons to declare people losers before the game is supposed to have started.
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Dec 18, 2017 04:17
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Rand Brittain posted:OotS has really good art, though. Like, it's not a high-detail feast for your eyes like something by Minna Sundberg or whoever but it's very good at what it's trying to do. No, it fails on even a basic level to do anything but the bare minimum to convey what is going on. Let's put aside that every expression and most gestures/poses are a copy/paste that must come from some stock file Burlew keeps open as he works. Every action is weightless and soft. He absolutely needs to have his characters shout the spells they're casting because otherwise you could never tell them apart. There's not enough distinct features to consistently utilize any interesting visual gags, which is what leads back to the constant little asides and self-aware nods in the dialog to amuse the reader. You can see a lot of this in this very recent page: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1105.html which is mercifully low on dialog, but you only have to go back or forward a page to see the massive word balloons. This isn't even getting into the really unfortunate implications that come out of half-assedly mashing up fantasy elements and real world analogs, like how the Japanese-flavored people worship the Chinese zodiac animals as gods. Nuns with Guns fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Dec 18, 2017 |
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Dec 18, 2017 04:37
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Bar Crow posted:Kids are taught, intentionally or not, to find people to throw under the bus. There's a few winner spots and lots of loser spots so kids cling to the same bullshit reasons to declare people losers before the game is supposed to have started. It’s surprising where it can appear. I played in a Pathfinder game once where I played a trans woman PC among a group of mostly cis gay men. I was honestly surprised by how quickly the “tranny” and “drag queen” slurs started getting thrown around. It’s all good. I’m running UA3 for a group of awesome players now and we’re having a blast.
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Dec 18, 2017 04:41
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Nuns with Guns posted:No, it fails on even a basic level to do anything but the bare minimum to convey what is going on. Let's put aside that every expression and most gestures/poses are a copy/paste that must come from some stock file Burlew keeps open as he works. Every action is weightless and soft. He absolutely needs to have his character shout the spells they're casting because otherwise you could never tell them apart. There's not enough distinct features to consistently utilize any interesting visual gags, which is what leads back to the constant little asides and self-aware nods in the dialog to amuse the reader.  Ok.
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Dec 18, 2017 04:49
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Simian_Prime posted:Right out the gate when the GM realizes this, he starts commanding “I don’t want to see *any* romantic subplots in my games!” Impressive, one line and he's simultaneously Homophobic, Misogynistic and Transphobic. In a way, it's impressive. Ettin posted:Order of the Stick is good and I'm a mod so that's the official position of Trad Games now. You're welcome. 
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Dec 18, 2017 04:55
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I'm fairly certain you could eliminate half the panels in any given OotS strip these days and hit every vital plot point and "gag" in a given strip.
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Dec 18, 2017 04:58
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I'm fairly certain you could eliminate OotS.
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Dec 18, 2017 05:07
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I find that panel particularly fascinating because even in context you can barely tell a guy charged 15 feet, cut through two other vampires, and forcibly jammed a sword in a dude so hard it came poking out the other end. I'm going to be very mean right now and compare it to a similar portion from a recent Kill Six Billion Demons page:  You can see the lines of motion in it, the destructive force of the attack, and the impact it had on the target, even though all the attacker has done here is drive two fingers into the target's chest. Do I expect Order of the Stick to be so excellent at conveying a fight? No, but that doesn't change that this is a D&D comic filled with combat scenes where it looks like everyone is larping with foam swords.
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Dec 18, 2017 05:07
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I’m critical of OotS’s writing, but there’s a reason the comic is called “Order of the Stick” and not “Order Of the Highly Detailed Anatomy and Chiaroscuro Shading.” Creating a highly-detailed comic in the style of K6BD isn’t what Burlew ever set out to do. The drawings are based off of stick-figure counters he made for his own D&D games, and to his fans that low-res DIY feel is part of the charm. It’s not always my thing, but I can’t criticize his intent. (Though I don’t read it because he’s just pandering to his audience at this point.) Also it’s well know that he’s got some serious chronic health problems, which may limit his technical proficiency.
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Dec 18, 2017 05:27
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Like, clearly there's a surprising amount of detail work going into these "haha I'm a self-aware talentless hack artist" stick figures, but it's so chained to its original look and formula that however much Burlew's improved over the years his comic hasn't escaped what amounts to just referencing itself forever and ever. Which, okay fine if that's what he and his audience want, good for them I guess. I don't think I could stomach being so creatively stale in a creative medium for so loving long, no matter how much money I made at it.* * Of course, I say this in the comfortable knowledge that I just do not have the temperament to scrape together a life out of the grueling existence of a full-time creative person.
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Dec 18, 2017 05:27
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It's been years, I know there's no reason to get better artistically, but drat man get better. The manga artist One does barely more than scribbles, and he just loving gets how you lay out panels to convey action and movement, which is important in the visual medium they both work in.
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Dec 18, 2017 05:29
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Simian_Prime posted:I’m critical of OotS’s writing, but there’s a reason the comic is called “Order of the Stick” and not “Order Well I did say I was being mean and I don't expect fantastic art, but that doesn't mean the art in this is good or serves anything more than a workmanlike role of delivering the dialog to the audience. And I'm aware that he has a chronic illness, but like Goblins, that still doesn't mean the comic is more than D&D fanservice or is above criticism for having rear end art.
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Dec 18, 2017 05:38
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I like OotS.
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Dec 18, 2017 05:57
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Evil Mastermind posted:I like OotS. You are a monster and I'll see you in baator
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Dec 18, 2017 06:12
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Cassa posted:It's been years, I know there's no reason to get better artistically, but drat man get better. For instance, original art for One Punch man on the left and redone art on the right:  e: both convey the same sense of action
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Dec 18, 2017 06:35
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I love how in here we talk about OotS' art and layout while in the BSS thread it's top to bottom HAHA ALIGNMENT YOU GUYS.
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Dec 18, 2017 06:46
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Whether you like or dislike OotS it is the best tabletop games specific webcomic due to it's..."competition." It will also always be the best tabletop games specific webcomic because the age of webcomics ended long ago and "webcomic" as a thing increasingly doesn't even exist.
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Dec 18, 2017 07:55
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Reading webcomics in 2017...
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Dec 18, 2017 08:54
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I liked DM of the Rings.
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Dec 18, 2017 09:09
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I thought the Star Wars one was kinda clever.
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Dec 18, 2017 09:11
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Halloween Jack posted:Yeah, STR as D&D defines it is actually this very weird specific facet of overall strength that doesn't correspond to how muscles work in real life. It wasn't a conspiracy against fighters, either, it was just an accident brought about by cargo-culting D&D's mechanics. In old-school D&D, STR is important for melee fighting, lifting and carrying heavy things, and forcing doors open. That makes it really valuable in the context of D&D and not so much in a ton of other games in different genres.
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Dec 18, 2017 09:18
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Kibner posted:For instance, original art for One Punch man on the left and redone art on the right: One is like one of the best artists I've seen at layout and conveying action. The later webcomic chapters still mostly scribbles yet still looks great at showing motion and action.
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Dec 18, 2017 10:10
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