The Gaming Den

I just finished archive-diving through Romantically Apocalyptic and it is indeed a fantastic comic. It's visually beautiful and the story is quite good; either the author had the whole thing mapped out more than 5 years in advance, or they're very good at re-purposing old content to fit the growing narrative.

That said, make sure you read the journal entries below the comic to get all the plot-y goodness. They can be pretty dense at times, and most, if not all, of the narrators are varying degrees of insane so they read strangely, but they give the real meat of the story.

Thanks again Laertes for passing the link my way. That comic has been bookmarked and I'll be following it with keen interest.


Meikle641, now that I've crawled out of the R. A. hole Laertes pushed me into, I'll have to take a look at Spellcross. I read the first 10 or so pages a while back and it looked promising.

Yes, many thanks and curses for passing along Romantically Apocalyptic. I blew most of Sunday reading that from start to current.

I did the same recently for Will Save World for Gold (I adore the art style) and am starting on Digger. Webcomics seem much more enjoyable when read in a binge rather than sequentially.

Once upon a time Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman was my favorite comic out there, and it held the title for a long while. In the game Half Life 2, you're Gordon Freeman, who's just woken up and been pushed into a grim, dystopian world that you more-or-less set on fire in your trek across it. In Concerned, Gordon Frohman arrives a few months before Freeman does and gets to experience the setting both before and after Freeman's upheaval. Frohman is a naive but seemingly-unkillable idiot who finds the dehumanizing totalitarian regime charming, and isn't as happy as the other human rebels are about Mr. Crowbar showing up and ruining it all.

The whole thing is making fun of Valve's Half Life series, and the comic itself is made from modeling the scenes through a Half Life 2 editor mod. Very good comedy; the grim lethality of the setting provides endless ways for Frohman's exhuberant naivety to provide punchline after punchline, in addition to all the perfectly crafted HL2 mocking. That said, HL2 came out a long-ass time ago and Valve has let the series languish in development limbo for quite a while. I could see some people not remembering it, and others simply not caring about it. The comic does stand up on it's own merits, but you'll get a lot more out of it if you've played (and remember) HL2.

The comic is complete, so you can archive binge through it as fast as you'd like. Oh, and pay attention to the developer notes that are at the bottom of some of the pages; they contain some good stuff. Someday Valve will continue the HL series, despite their well-known aversion to the number 3, and then you can earn some real nerd cred among your friends by pointing Concerned out to 'em.

It was mentioned earlier, but I recently found my way to Gunnerkrigg Court and plowed my way through the 1300+ pages of archives...and it is excellent.

Next Town Over

It's about a steampunk bounty hunter chasing a pyrokinetic outlaw in something resembling, but decidedly not, the American Wild West. Oh, and they have some manner of history, possibly as lovers.

I think part of the reason I like it so much is because the bounty hunter is very much the sort of character I play, laconic, single minded, and very much determined to not let the innocents around them (who they care about) die because they caught a bullet, no matter how much you have to change said innocent to accomplish that.

violence in the media wrote:It was mentioned earlier, but I recently found my way to Gunnerkrigg Court and plowed my way through the 1300+ pages of archives...and it is excellent.

Yeah this. Whenever two people linked this last before you, including lazor cows, I read the entire thing in a night instead of sleeping.

Kaelik wrote:

violence in the media wrote:It was mentioned earlier, but I recently found my way to Gunnerkrigg Court and plowed my way through the 1300+ pages of archives...and it is excellent.

Yeah this. Whenever two people linked this last before you, including lazor cows, I read the entire thing in a night instead of sleeping.

Does Main Character Girl ever become interesting?

Blicero wrote:

Kaelik wrote:

violence in the media wrote:It was mentioned earlier, but I recently found my way to Gunnerkrigg Court and plowed my way through the 1300+ pages of archives...and it is excellent.

Yeah this. Whenever two people linked this last before you, including lazor cows, I read the entire thing in a night instead of sleeping.

Does Main Character Girl ever become interesting?

And How!

But... it's been a while since I re-read the early bits, but you can't have gotten far if you don't like Annie yet, can you? If you have, maybe you wouldn't think she does, though I can't actually understand reading all of it and not liking her.

Blicero wrote: Does Main Character Girl ever become interesting?

Not really but everything else more than makes up for it. She's mostly a vehicle of exposition, having shit explained to her all the time in a very vibrant and entertaining world.

Kat is interesting enough for both of them.

Holy shit! Lackadaisy updated!

Goblins updated too, a couple times. Looks like semi-weekly. Bit of luck his meds will help him bring joy and awesome to the world once more.

http://www.goblinscomic.org/09112014/

I'm not sure "joy" is the right word to use to describe Goblins...

Yeah Goblins jumped the shark a long time ago, mostly because D&D "morality" is so stupid that any attempt to deconstruct it is just going to be stupid rather than insightful.

Speaking of updates after a seeming hiatus, Erfworld has actually been having scheduled & regular updates for the last couple months. It's freaky.

Looks like he sacrificed artistic quality to meet this goal, but still.

virgil wrote:Speaking of updates after a seeming hiatus, Erfworld has actually been having scheduled & regular updates for the last couple months. It's freaky.

Looks like he sacrificed artistic quality to meet this goal, but still.

Yeah, the newest artist isn't on the same level as the previous two, but I care about that faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar less than I do about regular updates. It's really nice; let's hope it lasts.

Lord Mistborn wrote:Yeah Goblins jumped the shark a long time ago, mostly because D&D "morality" is so stupid that any attempt to deconstruct it is just going to be stupid rather than insightful.

If you attempt to "deconstruct" it by swapping the goodies and the baddies then certainly. I think pointing out that the alignment is more or less random with tenuous correlation to behavior might get you somewhere if you don't get overambitious and know when to end.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I'm not sure "joy" is the right word to use to describe Goblins...

>not posting the superior artwork one

http://oglaf.com/heel/ [sfw, language, but if you read the word "fucker" here then clearly that isn't a problem]

tussock wrote:Goblins updated too, a couple times. Looks like semi-weekly.

There's a new one.

What the fuck.

I dunno about Erfworld. The first comics of each artist were rougher than once they got some practice in.

I concur that there's probably a tradeoff between maximum artistic quality and time required to make.

Oglaf, NSFW, cartoon tits below the spoiler

I support this as an explanation for dragontits.

Prak_Anima wrote:Oglaf, NSFW, cartoon tits below the spoiler

I support this as an explanation for dragontits.

Part 2

Prak_Anima wrote: I support this as an explanation for dragontits.

>Implying you ever need to explain or justify tits