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Pope Guilty posted:Wait am I thinking of Sheila or Patty? Which one was on the defending end of the tournament crossover invasion scam? Jesus, it's been a long time. Sheila was the one who was in on the character assassination thing; the conclusion to that arc is one of the few KoDTs I have in hard copy here. Patty is the kindergarten teacher who runs her own group and has a thing for Dave.
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Nov 26, 2019 02:28
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Mister Olympus posted:*failing here is relative, because as I understand it, D&D hasn't actually turned a profit in decades and is kept around mainly as a legacy brand and killing something with that much name recognition would be bad press. So more "4e lost more money than usual" I went to an event here in Seattle a couple of weeks ago that was a live play session and debut party for the "Rick & Morty" boxed set, and interviewed a few people. Long story short, thanks to things like streaming games, transmedia synergy, and its popularity among '80s nerds, D&D is on a substantial upswing. My big takeaway is that the hobby has aggressively shifted, to an extent that a lot of people are still trying to figure out.
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Dec 2, 2019 16:45
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Cat Mattress posted:Wheel of Time, based on a cursory glance at its Wikipedia page, doesn't seem to be openly Problematic. I've been half-expecting somebody at Salon to go into the weird gender issues of Wheel of Time for at least the last 10 years. A lot of the women in WoT are comically domineering, including all five central characters' eventual romantic partners. There are a lot of onscreen marriages and relationships in "Randland" with complicated power dynamics. Then again, it's all surprisingly PG-rated in the end, particularly in a genre that's as frequently horny as modern high fantasy. I don't think anybody in WoT gets chained to a wall and kinkily tortured until something like the eighth book.
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Dec 8, 2019 01:14
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I'm not 100% sure which strip was my first, but I know for a fact that I came aboard after the initial dungeon crawl was over, because I remember being able to marathon it straight through to the Xykon fight in my first sitting.
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Feb 12, 2020 09:19
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Gun Jam posted:Could see it. Thing is, Rich talked in the past about including a transgender character - he's reluctant about it, since he screwed it up in the past. ...holy Christ, do not read that thread. I don't know why he thought his forums were worth saving.
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Mar 6, 2020 23:01
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pseudorandom name posted:Ok, in order to cast an 8th level spell like Polymorph Any Object, you need a level 15 Wizard, level 16 Sorcerer, or a level 15 Cleric. How common would those be in The Order of the Stick world? From a quick Google, in D&D edition 3.5, you'd only need a 12th-level caster to make one of those masculinity/femininity belts. Beyond that, though, it strikes me that in a world with institutionalized, widespread magic, a spell that simply reverses the biological sex of a willing target would already exist. Somebody would've researched that by now, and if turning a dude into a newt is a 5th-level spell, I'd argue that a voluntary biology-flip spell would be no more than 3rd. (Trying real hard to use appropriate terms here. If I screwed up, I'm sorry.) It'd fall into that category of magic that isn't necessarily useful for an adventurer, but would naturally exist in a medium- to high fantasy world simply for the sake of utility, like prophylactic charms, permanent hair dye, mild cosmetic alterations, or industrial sanitation. Some NPC transmuter would have a shop in the middle of the nation's capital offering a big list of ways to become a whole new you, and they'd be making a mint off of the aristocracy. Really, I think this is something we'd have agreed upon a long time ago, but the Book of Erotic Fantasy muddied the waters on this. That book was so loving weird that a generation of nerds all decided as one that we just weren't going to explicitly discuss sex or gender in D&D ever again.
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Mar 7, 2020 19:34
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You know, that's actually an interesting idea, that you'd end up with a lot of different ways to do it, ranging from the quick and dirty to the customized and personal. Anybody who can manage a fireball might be able to pull off the version of the spell where you just end up as John/Jane Generic, a demographically average example of that species and ethnicity, but it takes a bit more if you want to customize the final version. At that point, it does start to feel like maybe the whole spell was part of some greater project to make golems or something, and now you're butting up against cyberpunk themes.
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Mar 7, 2020 19:51
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You know, as a kid reading the novels, I never thought Ed Greenwood was that bad. Douglas Niles was always the FR author who really got my eyebrows raised.
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Mar 9, 2020 00:55
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rocketrobot posted:Dude is straight up racist. It's really obvious in his Dragonlance work, The Rise of Solamnia. I never read that. What I'm thinking of mostly is the Moonshae series, and the sheer density of crazy poo poo that happens there. There's a chapter early on I've been meaning to dig up and submit to one of those bad-sex-scene mockery boards.
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Mar 13, 2020 19:33
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Getting caught up on the strip, and I appreciate that the basic potion guy in the last one is a stick-figure version of O'aka from Final Fantasy X. I'll always remember him because there's an exchange with him in FFX where someone actually asks him why he's charging for poo poo, since if the party loses their next fight, O'aka's as good as dead. He says, without missing a beat, "I have faith in your abilities."
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May 6, 2020 01:13
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Raenir Salazar posted:I feel like there was some book or other webcomic whether the author had a tongue in cheek complaint about how far things have moved since they first started writing. I know Asimov had a forward in one of his Foundation books about how the science mistakes were because new discoveries hadn't happened yet when he first started writing and joked about that, but that's a different category. Warren Ellis wrote at one point about how the jumped-up cell phones he gave the operatives in Global Frequency were absolutely science fiction in the first issue, but ended up being old hat by the twelfth.
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Jun 30, 2020 06:47
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Gnoman posted:Read this strip. There's a lot to unpack with EGS. It'd probably be easiest to say that the creator really enjoys bodily transformation on the level where it's probably a fetish, but it never gets up to the point where it's even porn-adjacent and it's handled relatively intelligently. It's also gradually acquired a lot of weird continuity over the years, so it's more or less impenetrable without a fan wiki.
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Jul 1, 2020 17:28
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Gnoman posted:That particular strip is pretty emblematic of the comic as a whole, so I felt it was a good way to make an informed conclusion. You aren't wrong. I was piggybacking to say that the best precise critical evaluation of EGS, moreso than a lot of comics, is "there's a lot going on there."
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Jul 1, 2020 22:22
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I remember running into Jones-Quartey in 2001 or 2002 at Otakon in Baltimore, where he was walking around with a placard that said "Yes, I am the RPGWorld guy."
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Jul 14, 2020 06:17
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It's kind of funny how OotS is doing an arc about negotiation with Redcloak, whose aim is for goblinoids to be treated like people, at the same time Wizards of the Coast is reconfiguring D&D's ethical structure to allow its traditional villain races to be morally complex. It feels like Redcloak already got what he wanted, in a way.
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Jul 17, 2020 04:25
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Redcloak did just use a Fort save or die spell on a high-level dwarf. That's not a terribly high-reward use of a turn.
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Aug 4, 2020 01:42
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Mniot posted:It's hard to imagine any way that Redcloak's current path could be considered to be disappointing The Dark One. I feel like the fact that the Dark One has never spoken directly to Redcloak in 35 years is one hell of a Chekhov's gun here.
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Aug 19, 2020 03:07
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SlothfulCobra posted:Yeah, we really haven't seen much of the worldwide hatred and disdain for goblins in the comic. Gobbotopia managed to get international recognition as a state. I'm not entirely sure what "equal rights for goblins" would entail that they don't already have some access to. That's not a term that particularly means much in a medieval pastiche. That's a fair point. Most of the events that set up Redcloak's side here are in Start of Darkness, to the point where I'd call it required reading as we go into Redcloak's endgame.
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Aug 25, 2020 01:54
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In retrospect, everyone's been putting a lot of faith in Serini's diary to tell them the score, and that's probably a mistake.
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Nov 17, 2020 20:04
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YggiDee posted:Mary Sue was mostly used for female characters at the time, but to be honest I could have probably counted male fanfiction self-inserts on one hand. Oh, there were a fair number of them. Back in my Mystery Usenet Theater days, I ran into several, including a guy who's been working on stories in the same weird crossover universe, starring himself, for almost 30 years now. I just went to look, and his most recent update was on Christmas Day of 2020. I remember there was a lot of it around Neon Genesis Evangelion in particular, for whatever reason. The one that I always remember is one where some new American kid joins up with NERV while on the run from an unspecified government conspiracy. The detail that's stuck with me for decades now is that the author seemed to be under the impression that "flashbang" grenades are, in fact, micro-nukes; whenever his character threw one, it would take out walls and clear out rooms.
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Jan 18, 2021 22:28
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Gynovore posted:We've already seen the the Regeneration spell exists in OOTS and can restore a limb after any amount of time. Since Serini is no doubt rich from all that adventuring she could easily have that cast on her at any temple. So, the missing hand/foot has to be something real unusual. It's still a seventh-level spell in 3.5. Isn't there a whole thing about how clerics at that power level are fairly rare in the OOTS-verse?
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Feb 19, 2021 19:53
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I feel like that bit at the end of the desert arc, where the Snarl suddenly went nuts, has yet to have a payoff. If we see Tarquin and his buddies again, it'll have something to do with that.
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Apr 29, 2021 05:01
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You could put that into the pizza shop sequence in Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and I don't think anyone would notice.
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May 21, 2021 20:57
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SlothfulCobra posted:If magic was real, it wouldn't be something exclusive to one small group of people using it to do things like throwing fireballs at goblins. It'd totally revolutionize society and penetrate all sorts of facets of life. Depending on how hard it is to learn magic, maybe a lot of people would pick up a spell or two. You'd sort of have to suppress magic somehow, like maybe it drives you crazy or it takes decades of study in a setting without a good public school system, or you need to be a dedicated follower of a god for it, or you need to be a special species, or you have to be a vegan, or by knowing magic you open yourself up to some kind of extradimensional malevolent influence. Then you play Unknown Armies, where it's "all of the above." The secret tech behind being a non-caster in that system is that you effectively take like eight ranks in "being a halfway functional human being."
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Jul 8, 2021 22:16
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Well, I need a few new T-shirts and thought I might throw some money Rich's way for all the entertainment over the years. So I went to his Cafepress, but most of the links on there are broken for some reason, and typing "Order of the Stick" into the Cafepress search bar is, uh... very highly not recommended, holy poo poo
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Jul 15, 2021 20:29
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NihilCredo posted:Oh come on, you've got a '06 regdate and you're clutching pearls over a t-shirt with the phrase "stick it in my rear end"? It's worth a mild chuckle at best. A) Exaggerating for effect, really. B) Even so, there's a weirdly high number of anal-themed items on there.
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Jul 16, 2021 17:58
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That was definitely the line that marked the difference between a typical player and the serious min-maxer in 2nd edition, as I recall: realizing that raw damage output wasn't anywhere near as valuable as simply being able to end the fight right then and there.
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Jan 13, 2022 20:08
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Yo' caster so old he prepared Spiritwrack twice
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Jan 17, 2022 22:52
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Potsticker posted:Didn't along the way the author have kids (a kid?) who grew old enough to start writing some of the strips on her own? IIRC, any time you see a strip with writing credit by Leah Abrams, that's the creator's daughter. I'd be surprised if she's 20 yet.
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Jan 19, 2022 21:09
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I made a Pulp Fiction joke to a couple of people I was playing an online game with and they sweetly informed me that movie had come out the year they were born.
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Feb 14, 2022 21:12
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Hey, new strip. https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1257.html
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May 13, 2022 19:08
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Tree Reformat posted:Even that is arguably selfish, though, since follower souls are one of those metaphysical nutrients gods need to sustain themselves during the hunker down period whenever the Snarl busts out. It's a binary, though, isn't it? Either let all the souls be unmade, or kill them all early and let the souls survive. There isn't a better option they could be taking instead.
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Jun 20, 2022 22:31
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Lowen posted:Nah I checked, and some kinds of Modrons have entries for 4th and 5th editions, but the articles for them are also written in past tense. The FR wiki just does that. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Forgotten_Realms_Wiki:Past-tense_policy
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Aug 11, 2022 19:39
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Bongo Bill posted:Now I am curious why Belkar learned how to make soap. It's made from ashes and fat. He's probably made it accidentally a couple of times 
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Sep 21, 2022 01:38
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Capfalcon posted:If anything, I'm questioning why he's lawful when his whole schtick is getting annoyed when people try to hold him to obligations, familial or otherwise. Eugene's issue, as explained by his late wife, is that he can maintain absolute, unwavering dedication to a single task, but only so long as he thinks it's important. He is visibly a clear believer in ordered systems, such as justice, but only his own order. He was the best husband in the world, but once he picked up a new obsession, he was effectively out of his family's life. Worse, he didn't understand why they didn't prioritize things the same way he did. That's inconsiderate, but it's still an ordered system.
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Mar 6, 2023 22:59
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TheAceOfLungs posted:Does Eugene have ADD or something? Hyper focus, then lose interest, something like that? I went ahead and looked it up: https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0495.html I wouldn't diagnose him with anything, but Eugene's issue is that he doesn't see things through to a natural conclusion.
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Mar 7, 2023 19:09
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SKULL.GIF posted:Will Bloodfeast stay Bloodfeast when the antimagic ray gets turned off (at some point sooner or later) or will he revert back to a lizard? Anti-magic fields in 3.5e suppress effects but don't end them. As long as nobody specifically hits Bloodfeast with a dispel, he's still gonna be a lizard when he falls out of Sunny's line of sight.
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Feb 19, 2024 21:26
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Phenotype posted:How does a T-Rex or Allosaurus or whatever match up against an Ancient Dragon, though? It looks cool, but is this one of those DnD things where the stats are so different that Bloodfeast only hits on a 20 and only does 2d8 against the dragon's 300HP? Burlew has repeatedly noted that he's willing to play fast and loose with RAW when it would make for a better narrative, and an arrogant dragon being caught absolutely flatfooted by a sudden thrown allosaurus attack strikes me as 100% believable within the bounds of the narrative. That being said, the dragon is presumably no older than a mature adult given his size compared to V. That gives him an AC of 32. Since it looks like Bloodfeast has landed a grapple, which would make sense if the goal is to ground the dragon, a 3.5 allosaurus gets +24 to a grapple attempt. That strikes me as doable. In a head-to-head gladiatorial-style fight, Bloodfeast is lucky to survive the first round, but as a sudden surprise anti-air attack? Solid tactics.
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Feb 19, 2024 21:49
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ImpAtom posted:I am pretty sure any GM worth their salt would give Massively Foreshadowed Incredibly Cool Dinosaur Throw a special behind the scenes buff. 3.5 even has a term for that: circumstance bonus. Nobody ever expects sudden dinosaur in your face. Taciturn Tactician posted:Where are you getting +24? Monster Manual 2 on internet archive is saying +22 for improved grab. I just grabbed it off the first wiki I saw, honestly.
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Feb 20, 2024 01:11
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oobey posted:Has this thread gone on long enough that we’ve finally reached the Goblins Redemption Arc? I think it's more that Ellipses was in a worse place when she started. The strip has had ups and downs that roughly reflect her personal arc, which as I recall involves multiple health issues and a gender transition. You do tend to see that with media if it runs long enough, where if it suddenly takes a nose-dive in quality, it's because the creator was Going Through It. Off the top of my head, there are a couple of different urban fantasy series I used to read that had sudden plot twists induced by the creators' personal lives.
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May 21, 2024 18:15
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