Irregular Webcomic!

Archive     Blog     Cast     Forum     RSS     Books!     Poll Results     About     Search     Fan Art     Podcast     More Stuff     Random     Support on Patreon
New comics Mon-Fri; reruns Sat-Sun
<   No. 17   2003-02-06   >

Comic #17

1 GM: Surprise! Today we're playing a science fiction game.
2 GM: The new minis aren't painted yet, so today we'll use temporary figures. {presents LEGO figures}
3 Serron: Cool!
3 Iki Piki: Hey, nice threads!
4 Spanners: Very Matrix.
4 Paris: Hey! Why am I the redshirt?!

First (1) | Previous (16) | Next (18) || Latest Rerun (2640) | Latest New (5290)
First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
Space theme: First | Previous | Next | Latest || First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
This strip's permanent URL: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/17.html
Annotations off: turn on
Annotations on: turn off

2011-11-18 Rerun commentary: It's the first strip of the Space theme! Now that we have four established Fantasy characters, it was time to shake things up and transplant them to a science fiction setting. The conceit is that it's the same four players (who we never see) switching genres and starting a science fiction game. In reality, this is almost precisely what was happening - my gaming group had fantasy and space campaigns, with the same players playing different characters.

In the comic we haven't learnt anything at all about these Space characters yet (including their names), but I can let you know now that in my own real life games Serron was played by the same player as Kyros, Iki Piki was played by Mordekai's player, Paris was Alvissa, and Spanners... well actually Spanners was played by a fifth player - not the same person who played Lambert.

The guy who played Lambert played a different character in our space campaign, by the name of Lycroft, who was Serron's nephew, and who never appears in Irregular Webcomic! And the guy who played Spanners in our space game played Draak (yet to be introduced in the comic) in our fantasy game.

That's reality though. Within the comic, the conceit is that these are the same four players as Lambert, Mordekai, Alvissa, and Kyros. The mapping is never made explicit though, and as the themes progress the conceit of them being roleplaying games slowly gets pushed way, way into the background along the way, giving each of the characters their own lives and distinct personalities.

The other bit of non-reality in this comic is that in real life we never used LEGO figures for the space characters. We had the painted gaming miniatures (which appear later) right from the beginning of our campaign. I had them at the time I wrote this comic, but decided that using LEGO figures first would make a good gag. So I spent several strips deliberately establishing the Space guys as LEGO figures, only to pull them away a bit later with the gag about replacing them with gaming miniatures. Yes, even at this early stage, I was planning ahead for plotting purposes.

LEGO® is a registered trademark of the LEGO Group of companies, which does not sponsor, authorise, or endorse this site.
This material is presented in accordance with the LEGO® Fair Play Guidelines.

My comics: Irregular Webcomic! | Darths & Droids | Eavesdropper | Planet of Hats | The Dinosaur Whiteboard | mezzacotta
My blogs: dangermouse.net (daily updates) | 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe (science!) | Carpe DMM (long form posts) | Snot Block & Roll (food reviews)
More comics I host: The Prisoner of Monty Hall | Lightning Made of Owls | Square Root of Minus Garfield | iToons | Comments on a Postcard | Awkward Fumbles
Last Modified: Thursday, 19 January 2012; 00:35:02 PST.
© 2002-2024 Creative Commons License
This work is copyright and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International Licence by David Morgan-Mar. dmm@irregularwebcomic.net