I Obviously Have a Lot to Learn About Dungeon Mastering

I try to take my guys on adventures filled with mystery and crazy monsters (and, lately, a lot of municipal politics), but recently I was looking through some old issues of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons from the late 80s and, well, I just don't know if I can compete with this, from issue 7:

Your eyes are not deceiving you: that is the magically reanimated and enlarged skeleton of a jester that has been sent to destroy the city of Waterdeep, fighting off that city's griffon-mounted airforce. And, might I add, the skeleton is able to breathe both fire and ice.

It's enough to make a man think about hanging up his dice.

John Buys Comics: More Terse Than Usual Edition

Bit of a sparse week for me, comics-wise, so I have but three observations, one per book. Not that I only bought three books, that is. I just have three observations and they're spread out over three books. Yeah.

Young Justice No. 1 - Though I haven't yet seen the cartoon that this is spun off of, I was quite fond of the original Young Justice book and so trying this out seemed like a good idea. I am going to blame the fact that I found it completely incomprehensible on my lack of prior research - everything seems to make sense, after all, but it felt like I was missing some essential bits of information for not having the show under my belt. Actually, come to think of it that might be a good thing: comics based on other properties are often lacklustre precisely because they're constantly summarizing and paraphrasing what has come before. So I guess I'll just suck it up and watch a cartoon like a man. And shut my fat mouth.

Green Lantern No. 62 - Halfway through, Hal Jordan has a weird prophetic dream that indicates that one of Earth's Green Lanterns is going to die, or at least go away (be "lost" in the words if not the tense of the Guardian who indicates it). Anybody want to start a pool on who that'll be? Because I have a shiny golden dollar coin that I will bet on John Stewart.

And finally:

Dungeons & Dragons No. 4 - I'm trying to decide which of these is more likely to be the case, that all floating, talking skulls are hilarious or that I have only ever encountered hilariously-written floating, talking skulls. In either case, this book continues to capture the joy of a good game of Dungeons & Dragons in a way that both delights and, uh, delights again. 

NO FURTHER OBSERVATIONS WILL BE MADE

John Buys Comics, the Cad

Dungeons & Dragons – I just picked up issues 0 through 2 this week, and as a – and I’m surprised how tentative I am about admitting this, given the forum – as a Dungeon Master I am enjoying it a great deal. The basics of the plot are similar to those in basically any comic based on any RPG: a party has some adventures in the official setting. Unlike a lot of the RPG adaptations that I’ve read in the past, however, this one actually reads true – goals are reached despite all parties involved following their own semi-random course of action, party members are added with little to no preamble and larger-than-life tactics are constantly employed. Plus: a lot of bickering.

Aside from the “Perry White vs. the Internet” aspects of Superman no 706 (news-bloggers! You are wrong even when you have noticed a legitimate pattern of interview bias! Also, you will leap onto a low-paying position at a newspaper at the drop of a hat!), this issue is remarkable for the truly ridiculous level of fake swearing. (examples, separated by periods). This is unacceptable.

Green Lantern, Green Lantern, Green Lantern – I was set to make a snide remark about Emerald Warriors No. 5 being maybe the hundredth time that someone’s been barfing on the cover of a DC comic in the last year, but looking at it now I choose to believe that this specific instance is actually a Christmas thing. Green/Red Lantern is the jolliest being in the DC Universe! Plus, bonus barfing both in this book and in the regular Green Lantern title, which features people upchucking entire metaphysical entities! Gross!

Meanwhile: a Green Lantern/Plastic Man one-shot, and it’s a yawner. No, scratch that – it’s okay, but it utilizes Plastic Man’s Lazily Clever Story Idea. You know, like Spider-Man Almost Gives Up or Batman Relates Current Events To Memories of his Parents or Superman Doubts His Humanity Even Though He is the Most Human of All (currently ongoing!). Every character has one or more – they’re the plot ideas that lie somewhere in between a story where the character acts exactly as he usually does and a legitimately clever idea. In this case, it’s Overly Serious Character Teams Up With Plastic Man and Treats Him With Contempt Because He’s Goofy Until He Realizes That Goofiness Doesn’t Preclude Effectiveness, and it’s been done before and better (Morrison’s run on JLA and recent episodes of The Brave and the Bold are good examples).