Darths & Droids

ARCHIVE     FORUM     CAST     FAN ART     RSS     IPAD     FAQ     ACADEMY

<     Episode 1969: Comrades in Arms     >

Episode 1969: Comrades in Arms

<<FIRST     <PREVIOUS     NEXT>     LATEST>>

Detachable body parts that keep moving are a classic way to make a monster more scary and challenging. It works especially well for undead monsters, such as zombies. Chop off a zombie's arm, and suddenly you have a one-armed zombie and a crawling arm to deal with.

It's not only fantasy monsters who can have this trait either. Consider the Terminator in the movie of the same name. Sufficiently advanced robotics means dismembering a hostile robot just generates multiple smaller hostile robots. (Which may be indistinguishable from magic, as per Arthur C. Clarke's aphorism.)

If you've never pulled this trick on your players, definitely throw it in some time. Bonus points for when they least expect it.

Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)

Players (and characters) bantering is normal. Characters learning to respect other characters is normal. Annie is playing Finn, and with her acting/roleplaying skill, she would be playing someone that, as shown here, is still getting used to these crazy people who are doing all these crazy things as her party.

Wait, isn't that exactly what she was doing years ago in campaign 1? :-)

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

So the rest of the group is just ignoring the Force helping Rey then? They are? Hmm, that reads less like something about any of the characters and more like a new game system mechanic now. Odd that it hasn't been mentioned before, but that would fit in with the better grappling we've seen so far. I hope we'll see more references to a new game version being used; I can think of a few good jokes that could result in.

Jeez, amputated tentacles that can still grab things? I suppose there's not usually a need to have an ability like that in the Star Wars universe with most weapons being blasters but still; scary! I think octopodes and squid actually have this ability in real life too. Fortunately for us Earthlings, they're all stuck in the ocean and don't eat people.

And Finn complaining about the method of rescue seems a little off, but it's been quite the long day he's had so far. Or is it two days? Such is the life of a PC. Not having any insight to movie-Finn's or movie-Rey's personalities, I'm not sure if this is remotely close to movie dialogue or not. Finn could be gesturing speechlessly towards the door, or gesticulating wildly while loudly complaining. Or it could be an excellent grab of an in-between frame and neither of those fit. In spite of the large personality differences between the movies and the comic, I think there was still a lot of overlap between the scenes of the screen grabs and the comic characters' emotions.

Transcript

GM: Finn, you drop to the floor.
[SFX]: Splat!
GM: The amputated tentacles continue writhing.
[SFX]: Writhe!
Finn: Yahh! Get them off! Yuk!
[SFX]: Wriggle!
GM: They’re surprisingly strong still. Make a Strength roll.
Finn: 15.
GM: You peel them off.
[SFX]: Convulse!
Rey: Finn! Are you okay?
Finn: Just some bruising, I think.
[SFX]: twitch
Finn: It had me! But the door—
Rey: That was skilful of me, wasn’t it?
Finn: You did that?! You could have cut me in half!
Rey: Maybe then you wouldn’t complain about me rescuing you?
Finn: Sorry, I’m still getting used to this. It’s like you’re my squad now. We look out for each other.
Rey: Right. I had to get you out of arms’ way.


Our comics: Darths & Droids | Irregular Webcomic! | Eavesdropper | Planet of Hats | The Dinosaur Whiteboard | The Prisoner of Monty Hall | mezzacotta
Blogs: dangermouse.net (daily updates) | 100 Proofs that the Earths is a Globe (science!) | Carpe DMM (whatever) | Snot Block & Roll (food reviews)
More comics we host: Lightning Made of Owls | Square Root of Minus Garfield | iToons | Comments on a Postcard | Awkward Fumbles
Published: Sunday, 14 March, 2021; 03:00:11 PDT.
Copyright © 2007-2024, The Comic Irregulars. irregulars@darthsanddroids.net