Darths & Droids: A look at roleplaying

by Collin ~ February 23, 2009

If you’ve never played a pen and paper roleplaying game, or you have and want a laugh, take a look at this comic: Darths and Droids. Here’s the setup, as I understand it:

First imagine the Player Characters are not familiar with Starwars (the gamers live in an alternate universe, where Starwars never came out).

Second, the Game Master is taking his PCs, who normally play a Medieval Fantasy game (like DnD), and having them play in his made-up space world.

The comic really shows the difference between a film narrative and an RPG adventure (and player tendencies). “Qui-Gon: I take all the blasters!“

Make sure to look at the commentary below most of the comics. They really go on to explain the strange relationship between PCs, the GM and Adventure Plots.

The comic points out a lot of the oddities of RPGs in general. All are funny when they point them out, but some are kind of frustrating when you’re actually playing them. A good portion of writing and designing Spellchrome is born out dealing with or avoiding such oddities. For example, the comic makes a funny point about vehicular damage tables. In Spellchrome, I state that the GM should just be able to make the right call as a vehicle loses hit points. (Not that I have never been tempted to make up vehicular damage tables in the past.)

I’m really getting a kick out of reading this online comic. Funny stuff if you’re a gamer.