shamusyoung

DM of the Rings LXXXV: Press Triangle

DM of the Rings LXXXIV: Keeping Score

DM of the Rings LXXXIII: Ladder Game

"In D&D, there is no act more reckless and fraught with danger than that of outsmarting the DM." ~Shamus

DM of the Rings LXXXII: Have Fireball, Will Travel

"Wizards: Work smarter, not harder.

Fighters: Not smarter, hit harder.

Rogues: Lie smarter, steal hardware.

Bards: Sing harder, get- ow! oh geeze! Fine, I’ll stop singing! Quit hitting me already!"~Shamus

DM of the Rings LXXXI: Let’s Get Rolling

"Sometimes initiative is a little odd." ~Shamus

DM of the Rings LXXX: Strange Bedfellows

DM of the Rings LXXIX: AD&D and ADD

"There’s one in every group, but only if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, then all the players are like this." ~Shamus

DM of the Rings LXXVIII: Think of the Children

DM of the Rings LXXVII: An Important Distinction

"I tried making a classic 'gag' strip. It worked! Not only are you getting less jokes, but I’m doing way less work! It’s almost a win-win scenario. Well halfway, anyhow.

I can’t add much to the stuff on sparse loot. The idea has become a sort of zombie joke at this point. It just keeps getting back up, no matter how dead it is. Sooner or later ...

DM of the Rings LXXVI: Our Once and Future Party Leader

"It’s always amusing when the in-game party leader is a different person from the out-of-game leader. The most articulate player – or the one with the most decisive personality – is usually not the same person as the one with the high in-game charisma score.

I’d often have NPC’s assume things about the party leadership and see how the players handled it. I’d have NPC’s walk ...

DM of the Rings LXXV: Incontheevable!

DM of the Rings LXXIV: Equestrian Diving Event

"If the DM is against you, it doesn’t matter what you roll. You’re going down." ~Shamus

DM of the Rings LXXIII: Schrödinger’s Familiar

"I sort of indulged myself with this one. If the joke made no sense, then you can read this. The joke still won’t make sense, but at least you’ll be distracted.

I’ve wanted to make this joke for ages. Long before DM of the Rings, I used to think this way when dice would bounce away and fall ...

DM of the Rings LXXII: A Truly Thrilling Encounter

"Nothing kills the excitement of battle like starting one." ~Shamus

DM of the Rings LXXI: The Spice of Life

DM of the Rings LXX: The Needs of the Many

"This is exactly the sort of behavior you get when players stop role-playing. Metagame thinking is poison. I played this for a joke, but from my own experiences and from comments others have made I know this isn’t that far-fetched. I’m beating up on the players here, but you could make the case that stuff like this is the result of a DM who is strict about rules and lax about role-playing, ...

DM of the Rings LXIX: New Dimensions in Storage

"Observing that the “pack” in D&D is a much-abused simplification is not going to result in forehead-slapping revelations on the part of anyone who has played the game. We know this, already.

Still, it is amusing to see how eagerly these compromises are embraced. Even “hardcore” gamers ar...

DM of the Rings LXVIII: Deeds of Legend

DM of the Rings LXVII: A Sizeable Contribution

DM of the Rings LXVI: Repaying the Advance

"The consequences you impose on your players for poor choices should be directly proportional to how much those choices annoyed you at the time." ~Shamus

DM of the Rings LXV: Gross Misallocation of Resources

"While often nothing the players do makes any sense at all within the context of the gameworld, you can be sure they will fixate on any and all flaws in the thinking on the part of NPCs." ~Shamus

DM of the Rings LXIV: A Shocking Revelation

"In the comments of the previous strip, I said, “In hindsight, the ideal thing would have been to cast Aragorn as a dumb, distracted stoner. He spends about half of the movie blinking very, very slowly. I can come up with a shot of him looking baked or mouth-open stoopid in just about ...