DM of the Rings LXXXV: Press Triangle
shamusyoung posts
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
2024-07-27 10:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostDM 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
2024-07-20 10:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostDM of the Rings LXXXI: Let’s Get Rolling
"Sometimes initiative is a little odd." ~Shamus
2024-07-13 10:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
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
2024-06-29 10:00:08 +0000 UTC View Post
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 ...
2024-06-15 10:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostDM 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 l...
2024-06-08 10:00:07 +0000 UTC View Post
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
2024-05-25 10:00:10 +0000 UTC View PostDM 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...
2024-05-18 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostDM of the Rings LXXII: A Truly Thrilling Encounter
"Nothing kills the excitement of battle like starting one." ~Shamus
2024-05-11 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
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...
2024-04-27 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostDM 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...
2024-04-20 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View Post
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
2024-03-30 10:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostDM 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
2024-03-23 10:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostDM 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...
2024-03-16 10:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostDM of the Rings LXIII: Overly Requited Love
"Sometimes the most sadistic thing the DM can do to is to let the players have their own way." ~Shamus
2024-03-09 11:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostDM of the Rings LXII: Everything But the Girl
"“Plot” is what the DM does to amuse himself when the players aren’t talking." ~Shamus
2024-03-02 11:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostDM of the Rings LXI: Words Get in the Way
"If you’re having trouble with wayward players derailing your carefully designed plot, you can always fix this by making the game non-interactive.
Let me know how that works out for you." ~Shamus
2024-02-24 11:00:08 +0000 UTC View PostDM of the Rings LX: The Madness of King Whatsizname
"On one hand, taking away their weapons is a dead giveaway that they will need them. On the other hand, by the time conflict starts the players will already have opened the rulebooks and found the parts that deal with bare-handed combat, performing disarm moves, and using improvised weapons.
Players may blunder through ...
2024-02-17 11:00:05 +0000 UTC View PostDM of the Rings LIX: Disorder of the Stick
"I don’t blame them for wanting to hold onto their walking sticks. Edoras has about the worst wheelchair / handicapped access I’ve ever seen. If you take a bad step at the entrance to the Golden Hall, you won’t stop rolling until you’re outside of the city.
2024-02-10 11:00:04 +0000 UTC
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DM of the Rings LVIII: It is a Silly Place
"Jaquandor once said this about quoting Monty Python at a Renaissance Festival, although this applies just as well to playing D&D:
[…] So it’s with nothing but love and heartfelt concern that I ...
2024-02-03 11:00:03 +0000 UTC View Post
DM of the Rings LVI: He’s Going to Tell
"Players usually get their quests from very powerful NPCs. If the NPCs weren’t powerful, then players might just be tempted to save themselves some trouble by killing the NPC and taking the reward. Besides, who wants to work for some weakling nobody?
But since quest-dispensing NPCs are powerful, it naturally ...
2024-01-20 11:00:04 +0000 UTC View Post
