darths and droids

(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized old friend.)

Honestly, I don’t understand Sally at all anymore.

A couple of weeks ago she was dismissing not only Jar-Jar but the entire game as incredibly “childish”.

Now not only is she back in the game, but – despite still dismissing Jar-Jar as “stupid” – she’s going back into the same well of incredibly ridiculous characters.

Is she growing up, or isn’t she? And is she just now a device to invent everything ridiculous you can find in Star Wars, whether or not it makes sense for her to have a character from which to do so?

(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized stupid childish game.)

I have to say, this strip caught me off-guard because I’m only used to the kiddy, making-stupid-stuff-up, “meesa” fun-loving Sally of Phantom Menace.

In a sense, it’s a little odd because we haven’t seen all that much of Jar-Jar here. The last time Sally showed up, it was to mention how much “fun” the mysterious fantasy game played between movies was from Ben’s perspective – presumably, a role-playing game like this one. Was she embarrassed by the stupidity displayed by Ben and Annie in chasing down Amidala’s assassin? There’s a hint of Sally being ashamed of how she played in Phantom Menace, but she’s still making up stupid stuff in the same strip, and she seemed enthusiastic enough when the campaign started, but on the other hand she’s had maybe one line in character…

A quick check of Wikipedia shows that Jar-Jar does have an important role in the plot later, as the representative that serves as Palpatine’s patsy in granting Palpatine Hitler-like emergency powers. But in the movie, Jar-Jar is merely acting as Senator in Amidala’s absense, while they’re co-Senators in Darths and Droids, so the Comic Irregulars could – though it’s a long shot – have alternate plans in mind. Especially since Jar Jar only makes a cameo in Episode III.

Still, it’s interesting to wonder if Sally’s disgruntlement with the game here leaves her open to manipulation by the GM later… or even if she deliberately derails the game and the GM’s plans and sets up the plot of the next four movies without being present for any of them.

Eventful day in webcomics I follow, as we still have two more posts to go.

(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized things that go bump in the night.)

I may be leaning towards removing Darths and Droids from my RSS reader.

I’ve said in the past that Darths and Droids is incredibly innovative, taking the basic concept introduced to it by DM of the Rings and building a rich, layered metaplot on top of it, creating a comic I found more captivating than either its predecessor or Irregular Webcomic!

IWC has since moved into a rich, unified plot of its own, but that’s not the only problem I’ve been finding with Darths and Droids. I still believe every word of that description – I was remiss in leaving Darths and Droids out of any consideration for the greatest webcomics of all time last week, at least in those places where it would be on the same list as IWC. Yes, I mean that; it would rank low, but its sort of innovation is worthy of notice, and if it somehow sparked a wave of “RPG screencap comics” there could be no denying its influence.

But as it’s progressed, it’s gotten disjointed.

This problem started as we entered the climax of Phantom Menace, as the strip, following the lead of the movie, split into three separate subplots: the battle between the Gungans and the droids, Anakin and R2D2 taking off on their own little mission, and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan squaring off against Darth Maul. The resulting cross-cutting can work when the comic is read all at once, but when the comic is read on Darths and Droids’ Tuesday-Thursday-Sunday schedule, each switch to a new plot, the one snippet of the story we get on a particular day, has no connection to what has come immediately before, and one is forced to think back more than a week to remember what we’re picking up on. Each strip becomes an individual moment in time. Imagine going about your day and remembering it’s Tuesday and Darths and Droids must have a new strip up, and seeing this. Oh, and imagine waiting two days later for this.

Once again, with a “long-form” comic you have to maintain that balancing act between making sure your comic makes sense read all at once, and also makes sense read in bite-size chunks. This is a major reason gag-a-day strips have held the edge over longer continuity strips to this point in webcomics.

Things calmed down a little after Qui-Gon was critically injured and we settled into Darth Maul’s flashback. That meant several strips of fairly linear, strip-to-strip storytelling. Even when we went back to cross-cutting afterwards it was mostly to mop up the aftermath. It was fairly slow-paced, but readable.

Then we went through an intermission of several strips.

Then came Attack of the Clones.

The Comic Irregulars are explicitly making each movie a separate campaign played out with several years between them. So we’re introduced to the players as they exist two years after the events of the first campaign/movie, including a Sally significantly older and wiser. It’s a significant change to the dynamic, one that’s been brought into sharp focus with the recent huddle-up involving all the PCs. It’s awkward seeing everyone all huddle up as an established group after ten game years apart.

When we actually get into the plot, it resumes the disconnectedness while maintaining a single plot thread. Now I admit, I’ve seen almost zero of Attack of the Clones, and what I have seen is nearer the end. But we basically launch into the story in media res and almost immediately are subjected to something that’s basically a gag. At this point, it feels like the Comic Irregulars are rushing through the story much faster than the occasionally stalled pace at which they moved through The Phantom Menace. They spent a lot of time in Phantom Menace trying to establish the characters and building hints of their personalities and relationships with each other. We got to know the various characters, we paced through the story and every single thing the characters did, and the characters, in turn, slowly learned about the world and the campaign. In Attack of the Clones, the Comic Irregulars basically barge into the story guns a-blazin’. We already know the characters, they already know about the world and we can take care of the campaign in one strip, so let’s take a pure utilitarian approach and get through the plot as quickly as we can.

In The Phantom Menace, the Comic Irregulars may have created a more captivating story than they ever intended.

Truth be told, that may be partly because they actually created a story. So far, Attack of the Clones has mostly felt like a bunch of disconnected moments loosely strung together. Each individual strip has mostly served the purpose of a gag. It’s almost been a reverse Cerebus Syndrome, where the strip has developed less of a reliance on the plot and become more gag-a-day in nature.

Consider the succeding sequence, where Padme/Jim meets with the Jedi Council and Chancellor Palpatine over the vote to create a Grand Army of the Republic. The first strip involves everyone discussing Padme’s character, and Padme walking in, checking the Jedi’s support for the Army, and trying to boss Palpatine around. The second strip creates the subplot of rebuilding the moon of Naboo, destroyed by the Trade Federation during The Phantom Menace. And strip #3 mostly involves back-and-forth dialogue between Padme and Bail Organa. All three are somewhat disconnected from each other, especially when read one at a time. The last strip in particular comes off as being disconnected even when read in sequence all at once.

I say that a “long-form” webcomic should take care to make each strip a complete, satisfying experience, but it’s a balancing act. If it’s too diffuse, it loses cohesion; it may come off like a complete comic when read all at once, but as a day-by-day comic, it almost no longer becomes a plot-based strip.

Two factors may make that sound absurd. The first is the popularity of gag-a-day webcomics, and the second is the specific fact that The Order of the Stick is very much gag-a-day and yet balances that out with an ongoing plot. But gag-a-day strips don’t have an expectation of a plot unless they’re undergoing Cerebus Syndrome, and OOTS substantially advances the plot with each strip, building a strong connection from one strip to the next, and still lets each stand on its own and end with a funny gag. The two share billing on OOTS while the Comic Irregulars seem to be sublimating the plot to the funny. (So you don’t think I’m showing my OOTS bromance too much here, I’ll also ask you to look at Sluggy Freelance. And the OOTS balance between plot and gags has been especially apparent in recent strips, as I’ll cover in a day or two.)

But perhaps more than any of that, is the problem that gag-a-dayness is not in Darths and Droids‘ DNA. The strip has been funny throughout The Phantom Menace, but it’s been a sort of punchlineless humor, where the humor has existed in equal amounts in every panel, a natural result of the personalities of the characters (especially Jim, Sally, and Pete, in that order), so if each strip ended with a gag, it did so as part of the natural progression of the story. That’s helped to minimize the extent to which the Comic Irregulars have had to contort the story to fit each page and actually built the sense of the strip as a long-form, drama-based, comic-book-style webcomic. While I’ve certainly laughed along with Darths and Droids, that wasn’t the reason I read the comic, and the plot is starting to fall out of focus, especially read one-installment-at-a-time (I didn’t quite grasp much of what was going on until I re-read these strips). I wonder if the Comic Irregulars are/were trying to move Darths and Droids in the direction of gag-a-day in order to avoid the Girl Genius/Gunnerkrigg Court problem, and are running into the limitations of that.

Now, it’s early in Attack of the Clones, and the basic situation is only just getting set up. The last two strips have had a bit more of a connection with each other, which bodes well for the future (at least the near future), and I think I have a better idea of where the plot is going and might better be able to follow the strip from this point forward. Part of the problem may have been the need to follow various strips I’m planning to write reviews of over the next month or two, and those strips distracting me to some extent from Darths and Droids. It might be a shame if Darths and Droids were to chase me away, because it’s become apparent, especially towards the end of The Phantom Menace, that the strip is going to be using a very different plot from the movies (on top of alternate interpretations and the things the players bring to their characters) and that would mean we might be in for more surprises than one might think. (I can’t tell from the strip; was the destruction of the moon of Naboo part of The Phantom Menace or not?) But Darths and Droids has recently hit a bit of a rough patch, falling into some easy mistakes made by continuity strips and weakened my investment in the strip. The bad news is it needs to spend some time to win me back. The good news is anyone else looking to dive in can learn from it.

(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized planning.)

Just when I say I’m going to move away from a small set of webcomics, Da Blog practically becomes David Morgan-Mar Central. Perhaps because Morgan-Mar has a lot of stuff going on all at once, between this and Irregular Crisis.

My already-slim prediction of ending the current movie at #200 is looking unlikely. But we have started the preparations for the next movie – including a rather… unusual… answer to the question of who Jim will play next.

Huh? First of all, who are we talking about? Padme, or the Queen? They switched places for the bulk of The Phantom Menace, but while on the one hand Jim is excited about being a ruler, implying Amidala, he specifically asks Obi-Wan to give his stuff to Padme…

…and given the blossoming relationship between Padme and Anakin in the second and third movies, that would seem to hold more dramatic potential. (A man and a woman role-play a relationship between a man and a woman… only they play each other’s gender. Awk-ward! And a minefield of potential commentary to boot!)

Although Wikipedia indicates that, contra the impression I had gotten from the Darths and Droids annotations (with some help from Attack of the Clones promo materials), Padme and Amidala are actually the same person and the person dolled up as Amidala for most of Phantom Menace is completely unimportant. (Which when you think about it, would make sense for Leia being a “princess” in the original trilogy.)

In any case, we can begin formulating what might happen for the duration of two movies now on the basis of a single strip. Too bad we can’t seem to formulate what might happen for the duration of a week on Da Blog on the basis of a single post. But we will break out of the rut on Tuesday, I guarantee it!

(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized heroic last words.)

I promise, an actual review of an actual webcomic I haven’t properly reviewed before is coming on Tuesday. It’s hard because a lot of popular webcomics are taking the holidays off, and I’m not even getting a full week with the comic I actually intend on reviewing.

But I feel I would be remiss not to note the occurance of something fans of the movies probably all saw coming: the death of the character of Qui-Gon. Perhaps unintentionally, the Comic Irregulars actually made even a cold-hearted bastard like me feel a little bit of sorrow at Qui-Gon’s death, mostly in the previous strip where Jim manipulates himself out of his last chance to save his character.

The rest of this post may come across as me being, well, a cold-hearted bastard. But of course, we know that, the beliefs of certain Christian fundamentalists to the contrary, the death of a character in a game does not equate to the death of the actual person playing him. We know that we can put relatively good money on Jim re-rolling a new character and rejoining the game. I’m not in a position to speculate, not having watched much more than the first half or so of Episode I out of the whole series, and from what I read there’s not much room in Attack of the Clones for any real new character to be introduced and heavily featured.

Which brings me to my next point: we are now entering the denouement of The Phantom Menace, and it’s interesting to note that this strip is #197. It makes me wonder if the Comic Irregulars have a plan in mind to wrap this one up with strip #200, and devote 200 strips to each movie. Based on the Wikipedia synopsis of the movie, I would imagine if that were the case, #198 would be the arrival of Palpatine on Naboo, #199 the scene with the Jedi Council, and #200 the Naboo victory celebration – although that’s still a rather cramped space, and by necessity still excludes some scenes, although aside from Qui-Gon’s dead body, there are no PCs present for the cremation of Qui-Gon.

And that’s about it, and as I am wont to do, I find myself without a real ending for this one. I could talk about how Darths and Droids as a whole has felt as of late, and how for some reason I haven’t really got much of a big-fight feel, mostly because of the head-spinning cross-cutting. But instead I just repeat: a genuine new (but really rather old) webcomic reviewed on Tuesday!

(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized self-inflicted breakdown in negotiations.)
When Qui-Gon was caught saying, “Jar Jar, you’re a genius!” it spread through the Internet like wildfire, with more than a little nudging from the Comic Irregulars themselves.

Regardless of whatever the circumstances of the original movie may be, I’m somewhat shocked they didn’t try it again with “Help us, Jar-Jar Binks. You’re our only hope.”

But then I guess you can only do the same trick so many times before people say, “We get it. Now go away.”

(If there were a Darths and Droids drinking game, at this point Pete drinking at whatever fantasy story/RPG cliche happens to happen is worth at least two drinks.)

(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized snacks.)

I’ve mentioned in the past that Darths and Droids has appropriated the Star Wars plot as its own, but has also instituted its own metaplot involving the players of the characters. I’ve also suggested that the introduction of Annie suggested that the epic plot of Star Wars could result in the equally epic expansion of said metaplot.

But as of this strip, we now have a suggestion that the Darths and Droids metaplot may undergo a sort of Cerebus Syndrome without any help from Star Wars at all. Why? The third and fourth panels.

I prefer to believe that Ben was about to say “She doesn’t have a boyfriend”. Which as we all know, can only lead to one thing: Jim getting the hots for her. Possibly expanded into a love triangle with Pete as well.

But I don’t want any spoilers when David Morgan-Mar inevitably comments on this post. In fact, I would have titled this post “Because it’s been too long since we’ve heard from David Morgan-Mar” but I just couldn’t pass up a chance to torment all of you. Again, sorry.

(From Darths and Droids. Click for full-sized sunset.)

What little name I have I owe to Darths and Droids (and David Morgan-Mar in general), so perhaps I owe it to that strip to take another look at it.

I mentioned in my two previous reviews of Darths and Droids that the Comic Irregulars were willing to explore the possibilities of the “RPG screencap comic” much more than its inspiration, DM of the Rings, and broaden people’s horizons in the process.

Well, it appears they’ve done it again, because in the past few strips they’ve adopted a fairly radical new convention that they’ve only acknowledged in the annotation for today’s strip. They’ve adopted a “show-don’t-tell” policy for settings we can see but which the GM must describe to the players. In those cases, the GM’s description is omitted, and we only see, well, what we can see.

It’s sort of jarring that we’re no longer privy to every single thing the players and GM say, and it points to a general problem with RPGs. In the last panel of today’s strip, the sunset itself is stunning by any definition, but Ben’s comment, by necessity, is in reference not to the sunset itself, but to the GM’s description of the sunset. In an RPG, there could be the most brilliant landscape in the world if the players could see it, but no matter how brilliant it is they cannot; they can only attest to the GM’s description of it. Should the GM get a sheet of paper and draw the image he wants the players to see? The obvious answer is no; no drawing could do it justice unless the GM was Rembrandt, and if he was then it would take a year’s worth of sessions to get through a single battle, so that the GM could get enough time for his drawings.

(Okay, that paragraph was a lot better in the version I lost earlier. This would never happen if I had a real Internet connection.)

I don’t think DM of the Rings could have done something like this, because several times in that strip the players directly riff off the DM’s descriptions. I recall at least one strip (which I’m not looking up because, again, I still don’t have a real Internet connection) where the players enter a place, look around, and realize the only course of action is to go back the way they came. If that strip had been done as a series of images of the surrounding landscape followed by the characters deciding to turn around and go back, it would have lost much of its impact (as opposed to today’s Darths and Droids, which would have lost much of its impact if we had been privy to the GM’s descriptions) and its importance to what little metaplot DMotR had. An important part of DMotR was the conflict between the DM and the players; take away the DM’s descriptions and you take away an important part of the strip.

As I said in my earlier review, DM of the Rings was a comic about a role-playing game, while Darths and Droids is a comic about Star Wars. Darths and Droids can get away with omitting scenery descriptions because it’s about the scenery, not the descriptions. Nonetheless, there are still pitfalls with this approach, and I hope Darths and Droids can manage to avoid them.