1-7 – Lucky vs. the Battle Scarred Veteran
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007– Commentary –
J.D.: If you look closely, you can see the Battle-Scarred Veteran is leaning up against the number 7.
Craig: Lucky is having a very hard time adjusting to Mythband. In roguelike games, you generally don’t talk to NPCs. Lucky obviously —
J.D.: — is used to MUDs.
Craig: Yep, Lucky’s reference to being “of the first circle” is a common way to describe one’s level in character on the MUD. Oh — for those who are unfamiliar, a MUD is a kind of text-based multiplayer on-line role-playing game. Sometimes it’s tough to tell the difference between PCs and NPCs.
J.D.: We disagreed about how to depict the Battle-scarred veteran hitting Lucky.
Craig: Ugh. That’s right. I had to draw that panel at least three times.
J.D.: I wanted to make it clear that the Battle-scarred veteran had to exert very little effort to kill Lucky.
Craig: Yep. My original drawings showed the veteran running Lucky through with his sword in a very dramatic style. But you insisted that Lucky’s death should look embarrasing. So we ended up with the veteran backhanding Lucky into oblivion. In retrospect, it was definitely the right decision. It’s much funnier this way.
J.D.: I’m glad you agree… at last.
Craig: 🙂
January 24th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
And so Lucky becomes another bit more familiar with life in Mythband. Then again, if I was a BSV I’d sure give Lucky a nice hit in any multiplayer game 😉 I like the way her response is totally different to my “Ah, nice! Finally a game that’s not so ridiculously easy!”
Can anyone beat 314 deaths in town by the way? 😉 (I wasn’t a very good newbie… I never bothered with the documentation which showed up)
January 25th, 2007 at 1:00 am
Tell me you didn’t actually count 314 deaths in town….. I’m somewhere between my 150th and 200th characters (not counting ones that haven’t made it past level 1 and sometimes level 5) and haven’t had a winner yet. (Sad, I know.)
On a different note, I definitely agree with the method of execution. The panels give the impression that the BSV just opened his arms from their crossed position and flippantly backhanded Lucky.
January 25th, 2007 at 2:44 am
Lucky’s face in panel 4 when she gets whacked in the face reminds me of how the monsters look when they get bombed in the Bomberman games 😀 Had a good laugh there.
January 25th, 2007 at 6:09 am
I think a quick headbutt without moving his hands at all would have been amusing.
January 25th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Aha! There’s that 7! And yes… method of death was perfect. And I can’t tell you how many times I died in town, sometimes even beyond level 1. I’m level 4 now… I bet I can take that MLM… or BSV… hit, hit, hit… *HITPOINT WARNING*… RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY! Just… three… more… steps… to… stairs… two… one… noooooooooooooo……
January 25th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Brad: So. True. I can’t count how many times that’s happened to me. It’s as though the purpose of the town is to cull the weak. 🙂
January 25th, 2007 at 10:00 pm
I can’t count how many times I’ve gone into the dungeon just to get some rest. You can’t rest in town. It’s safer down there.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:48 am
yeah 314 deaths in town… not all were in my Vanilla newbie times, some where in variants with tougher-than-normal town. But most were when I was starting out, and it was sad to see the highscore list fill up with scores of 0. That being said, not all town deaths were scores of 0, I even lost a clvl 18 character once trying to fight two MLMs and a BSV at the same time.
Perhaps reading some documents would have helped?…
May 23rd, 2007 at 5:53 pm
I remember the first incarnation of this bit. Both versions are hilarious, but I agree this one’s better.
I’ve recently introduced ZAngband at my workplace, and got a few people interested.