The DM of the Rings

Lately I've been discovering some roleplaying comics that everyone else has discovered several years ago. However, that does allow me to read large number of strips without having to wait for them to be updated. So, in the past few days I have been reading way too much of Order of the Stick, The DM of the Rings, and Darths and Droids. I'm already a third done with Order of the Stick and just finished reading The DM of the Rings from start to finish; the Darths and Droids I only started.

I have to say that out of the above comics, The DM of the Rings captured my attention the most. It was just brilliant on the part of the author, Shamus Young, to recast the Lord of the Rings movies as a D&D campaign ran by a railroading DM and munchkin players, with Gandalf nothing more than an NPC. The mechanic works seamlessly, and many hitherto questionable turns in the plot are easily explained in this way.

Several of the strips, such as "LXXIII: Schrödinger's Familiar" and "CXXI: Blasphemy!", had me laughing out loud, and I was giggling at many more. Mr. Young has a great talent for picking out moments from the table-top RPGs, especially D&D, that many of us have either experienced ourselves or can envision playing out in a real game. As a result, I laughed as much because of the witty parody and expertly presented jokes as I did because the comic pokes fun at ourselves, the table-top RPG players.

The writer's comments about refereeing a game, which he inserts below many of the strips, are also very apt, funny, and penetrating, such as the comment for the "LXI: Words Get in the Way" strip:

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.

The advice to the players dealing with a railroading DM is similarly spot-on, as in the "LII: I specialize in Ranger-ing" strip:

When dealing with railroading DM's, never waste skill points on the tracking skill. If it's part of the plot, you'll find it no matter what you roll. If it's not part of the plot, then it doesn't exist anyway.

Like with the actual comic, a lot of these comments were made even funnier by my seeing myself in the aforementioned railroading DM who gives out no treasure, invests a lot of time into names that the players won't remember anyway, and has the PCs fight the same monsters over and over (in my most recent campaign, the wolves got the lucrative contract).

Alas, despite all the positive points, the comic does suffer from the same gay bashing and male chauvinism that I've come to expect from roleplaying comics. Thankfully, it is restricted for the most part to the player of Aragorn, who repeatedly makes moves on Legolas believing him to be an elven hottie, as well as tries to bed every female NPC the party meets. In one of the strips, Aragorn even uses the euphemism The other San Francisco treat when Legolas objects to the insinuations that he is gay. However, it is possible, based on Mr. Young's observation at the bottom of the "XLVII: -2 to Maturity, +2 to Funny" strip, that this is, in fact, satire and he is actually poking fun at the homophobic and sexist players that all-too-often plague D&D games:

The rulebooks never say that players earn XP for finding ways to imply the other guys at the table might be gay, but you would never know this from observing their behavior.

That said, it's clear the author appreciates this kind of jokes too, as can be further attested by the "The Elven Hillbillies", where he knowingly perpetuates the shaming of transgenderism and mental retardation much to the enjoyment of the audience. The one commenter who was bold enough to offer a mild criticism, Comedic but less than what i have come to expect from you, got shouted down by the overenthusiastic crowd of Mr. Young's supporters.

Overall, I had a lot of fun reading The DM of the Rings, and will no doubt be thinking about it for a long time to come, as well as recommending it to my players, who will no doubt see in it their own struggle against railroading. In fact, reading the comic has almost convinced me to give the classic sandbox campaign a try, since I do see too much of myself in the comic's DM for my own comfort.