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No. 916: A Dicey Situation

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A Dicey Situation

First | Previous | 2024-01-15 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/owls/?comic=916

Strip by: Buster Maruca

{Steve, Meridien, Holly, and Delkin are sitting around a table with books and a map on it.}
Steve: Then, eight ghouls rush toward the party.
Meridien: Drat, I’m all out of Turn Undead.
Holly: I know! I cast wall of thorns on them!
Holly: Ensnared by my magical barrier of brambles, the ghouls each take 7d8 piercing damage!
Steve: Okay, roll for the damage.
{Holly gets up from the table and walks across the room...}
{...to a pile of giant green polyhedral dice.}
{She picks up one eight-sided die.}
{She totters while holding it for a moment, almost losing her balance under its weight.}
Holly: Whoa!
{Holly regains her footing.}
{She tosses the die.}
SFX: CLATTER!
{It rolls across the floor.}
SFX: ROLL!
{The die comes to rest, with its top face showing a "5."}
Holly: Whew.
Holly: Okay, 1 die down, 6 more to go…

The author writes:

The idea behind this strip is that it's subverting the assumed convention that the LEGO figures are representing actual, life-sized people. Instead, by juxtaposing them with real, life-sized roleplaying dice here, that illusion is broken and they are shown to literally be the size of LEGO figures when standing next to the dice. Further, it's a depiction of one of the consequences that the characters might face if they were indeed that size.

Oh, and in case any readers are confused by this strip and can't really parse what the characters in it are actually doing (which seems unlikely given the generally geeky nature of this comic's audience, though it's not impossible, of course): Tabletop roleplaying games.

The map on the table betwixt the two books is a LEGO reproduction of Thorin Oakenshield's map of Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, from The Hobbit. Maybe that means that Holly, Meridien, and Co. are playing a Middle-Earth RPG?