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Its an odd time, switching from Least I Could Do to Between Failures. On another note, I feel as if there is going to be a D&D arc soon. Maybet that’s just me.

Why are you switching from one to the other?

I don’t know about Tanner, and I’m still soldiering on with LICD, but I’m seriously considering giving Looking for Group the push. The mood whiplash between zany Fourth Wall breakage and “serious, epic” fantasy is starting to get on my wick – I gave up on the hideously boring “NPC” and irritating “Little Dick” spin-offs pretty quickly.

I gave up on Looking for Group a year ago. It went off track for awhile, and then it looked like the plot was returning, but they literally killed the only plot. Literally killed the only thing pushing them on, the only bad guy they had.

I gave up on LICD a long time ago. As I got older, the edgy “sex” part of the comic just felt more like careless sexism, and the comedy wasn’t able to make up for how uncomfortable the comic was making me. LFG also completely lost its way. The plot became way too complicated, and Richard was carrying that comic. And then Ryan became way too aware of it, and tried way too hard to sell the comic on Richard. And because the comedy tried too hard, the enjoyability factor tanked. I don’t understand how those comics seem to do so well, but I won’t fault anyone for enjoying them.

When I played DnD with my bosses at my job, we once unknowingly exploited a rupture in the space-time continuum on the island we were on by having our wizard continually revive the dead till we had an army of 500 undead(by the end of it). We had him wait outside the walls of the village we were infiltrating so we could raise their sea-gate, and when we were caught by their military, we had our druid send bats to signal for him to join us. So he terrorized a village (which had civilians), surrounded by bats, with an army of zombies. We turned him into the literal Prince of Darkness.

We were supposed to be the good guys!

I love stories like this. Makes me with I could have played with more people and for longer.

Man, I wish I knew more people who were bigger geeks than me. And also more nerds. I don’t mean that pejoratively. I consider geeks to be aficionados of a subject and nerds to be authorities on it. A Star Trek geek can talk about the Trouble with Tribbles. A nerd knows the character name of every red-shirt, and what episode they died in.

I don’t have a lot of stories from the short time I played D+D (more of a Mech Warrior fan) but there are two things I do recall. Our DM loved throwing Orcs at us en mass, so I set up an ambush; my wizard character waited until all the Orcs were in a clearing and then used a grease spell to cause them all to fall. The next round I used Burning Hands to set the grease on fire. Wasn’t a huge amount of damage per Orc but I got the whole company at once.

Another time I did a similiar trick but electified a bog they were sloshing their way through with Shocking Grasp.

Best story I ever heard was a friend who’s brother was a DM. The group he was running found a cave in the mountains and discovered a treasure chamber guarded by a white dragon. The group won their stealth approach and was able to get all their cold weather gear on since they were fighting an White/Ice dragon. Then they attacked and the dragon woke up and roasted them all with a huge fireblast.

Everyone challenged the DM saying an Ice Dragon can’t do that but he asked did anyone ask if it was for sure an ice dragon and they realized they didn’t. It was then the DM revealed it wasn’t an Ice dragon but an albino Red Dragon. Needless to say there was much more dilligent ponderings when dragons ever showed up after that.

I was one of those early adopties into the RPGA when it was an actual fan based and run organization with corporate as sponsor and mentor. (TSR)

Living City as a campaign had good, bad, mediocre adventures but it had lots and lots of them and they were being played and run everywhere. It seemed there was a game day within an hour or two drive every second weekend except during midterms and finals.

One of the more memorable adventures was a special event at ORIGINS. Multiple tables were run simultaneously at only one time so as to prevent spoilers. Different leveled groups were assigned appropriate leveled missions, which was a new thing at the time. Ours was to infiltrate the Pirate base on a remote island, recover some item/info/person and defeat the boss with prejudice but avoid mass combat. Our group got in, got the job done with creative use of our resources and were ready to sneak back out. The hiccup was that the other tables kind of messed up in their missions and got the whole island up in literal arms. We were in a small fortification built into a hill and the docks were on the opposite side of the garrison town. Think a few hundred mooks with officer and tank types mixed in, no way to tell which was which, on high alert and the party battered and bruised. My spell caster piped up “Storm of Vengeance anyone?” and two of the other spell slingers replied that they had that spell prepared, as well as some other goodies.

For those not in the know about this spell, it calls forth a green tinged cloud that covers a reasonable area on the map. It starts with one round of hail followed by a few rounds of acid rain followed by normal rain that washes things clean. That is scary enough if you are on the receiving side, now add the option of dropping a number of lightning bolts on designated targets withing the active period of the storm before it becomes just a strong downpour of normal rain. Round 1 – all mooks wend down like wheat in a hailstorm as many dice were rolled. Round 2- the mid level guys did a convincing wicked witch of the west impression as the town dissolved with them. Round 3 – lets just say it was a very flashy/boomy end for those left standing in the pond of organic goo. The DM sat there open mouthed during the 3 minutes or so as we tallied the damage distribution. He then got up, went to the event Marshal, chatted a bit and then came back and asked how much time we would spend looting what was left since the acid would have destroyed all lesser materials. Answer – none since we would leave that for the other teams, which surprised him. We went on to explain that we would be liberating the pirates ships to donate to the local Navy. Not trying to keep them for ourselves? How many? All of them. We showed him how we were going to do it and he just grimaced and sighed. Got up and went back to the Marshall. The exclamation “WHAT?” had the room see the Marshall do a double handed face palm. Priceless.

That is a fantastic story! I want to play in that group!

Yes, using something like that on the party currently attempting to assault a city in my group. HaHahaaahahhahha

Funny thing that, it was a pickup table of people who never sat at the same table before. It was just of those times when everyone just clicked.

You played enough table, you were bound to have at least a few awesome experiences, which more than help bury the absolute horrible ones.

Unfortunately the Living City campaign is long gone and the RPGA has morphed into the marketing arm of Wizards of the Coast as Organized Play. With some google-fu and networking you may be able to dig up some of those adventures.

There were other smaller campaigns as well – Living Jungle & Living Death were my two go to campaigns when I was predominantly Judging LC at the bigger conventions. Jungle was very low tech, low magic and not human centric, Death was the Raven-loft 1890s campaign with guns, nerfed magic and horror rules. Both still have active fanbases.

Weren’t they trying to save this failure of a store and Mike’s job at one point? Its become a college dorm of sex and childhood stories in here while the bulldozer is on its way.

Who fucking cares? This is how humans spend our pointless lives before the grave calls us home.

We’ll get there eventually anyway. The store all this is based on was “being closed” for 13 years before they remodeled it and it still stands.

In-Comic time, I can’t imagine more than maybe a month has past in the course of the last few real-world years.

Is “Ed, Edward, Eddie Baby” a reference to something? I recognise it from somewhere, I was thinking maybe a British sitcom like Bottom or Absolutely Fabulous.

So what I’m getting from this is that Mike is indeed fucking useless, AND delusional to boot.

GREAT manager…

I’d rather have an incompetent manager who has basic grasp of humanity and caring about their employees, than a highly competent diligent manager who couldn’t give two flying damns about how miserable and broken the human capital is as s/he scrapes the bottom of every barrel in the name of Profit Margins.

Conversation between me, wife, and visiting niece, with a positive punchline:

Me: Hey, Niece, do you read Between Failures? Do you like it?
N: Yes I do!
Me: Because Wife read it over my shoulder and didn’t like any of the characters and wasn’t interested in them.
W: Not only I wasn’t interested, I actively wanted them to die. They all suck.
Me: I think that’s what the comic is about. Different ways of sucking, and how by working together, they can suck less.
W: So… it’s like Jane Austen for the 21st century.
N: Exactly.
W: I prefer Jane Austen for the 19th century.

So, Jackie, you’ve now been compared to Jane Austen. (Wife is a big fan of Jane Austen, BTW.)

I hope your wife chokes to death on your dick.

Uh, sorry. I actually thought you’d like this story. Two out of three people like the comic, and the third compares you to a famous author she really likes. I did not intend offense. Feel free to delete this whole comment thread.

Re-reading, I realize that I only implied what I should have stated: I like BF a lot. Wife was reading over shoulder – because I was re-reading it from the beginning. For the third time.
If Niece hadn’t heard of it, I was going to recommend it to her.
Again, sorry my clumsy write-up caused pain/offense.

Don’t worry about it. It’s hardly the worst thing that’s been said about this comic. 2/3 popularity is more than it deserves on a good day.

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