Posted on July 18, 2013
My things, let me show them to you.
A couple of things that I think are great and don’t have to be cluttering up any place other than this one: 1) Table Titans. I don’t think Scott Kurtz is great. In fact, I think the whole Kurtz-Holkins-Krahulik-Straub axis of game-related Seattle webcomic artists seem like – to borrow a phrase from Ben O. – 10lbs of cunts in a 5lb bag. I can’t begrudge any of them the living they make – hey, I can’t both draw and make up one good joke every three days either – but I have the suspicion that they are terrible people and that they’ve put the web part a little too far in front of the comic part. All that said, Table Titans is really enjoyable. Its about a bunch of people playing 4th edition D&D, with the action split between the players and their characters. There isn’t a whole lot of it and it moves slowly, but at twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, it runs on a more satisfying schedule than the otherwise reasonably satisfying Order of the Stick. 2) WTFD&D? Is just as great as it always is. Did you need reminding. 3) My iPhone. iPhones are dumb, but once I realised I can play games on it, iPhones are great. In particular, Elder Sign: Omens is great. Ticket To Ride, Steambirds, Agricola and Trainyard Express are also all great, but Elder Sign: Omens is particularly great. I think JIM has been on here before, singing its praises and I’d harmonize badly with that, one finger in my ear.
The game mechanics don’t take too long to pick up although you’ll keep adding tricks as you go. The interface is easy and the art, reused from the Fantasy Flight dice game/parent is fantastic. It makes me want to see how the physical games works out, because I think slowed down with more players, you’d soak up more of the Call of Cthulhu-ness of it all.
- …like a caveman!
The gents: Leftmost is Ishiro, a fisherman who does no fishing, but carries around a big shiny sword. Central is Jask, who was a later addition to the party having been shackled in the brig when the shipwreck happened. Rightmost, adding a dash of colour to the otherwise scruffy males, is Gelik, a gnome of no fixed ability.
The ladies: Leftmost Cheesecake is Sasha, mercurial goat slaughterer; this is my first Bones miniature and I think it worked out well. Central is the mercifully-uncheesecakey but as yet lost Ileana; a rather old GW villager model. I may put more pattern on her headscarf, I’m not sure. Rightmost Cheesecake, Aerys being a lot more smirky than her current sullen state.
CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT THIS.
http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/
While Table Titans sees Kurtz finally come up with something actually enjoyable, Broodhollow sees Straub come up with something actually good. Start from the beginning and stick with it, it is a doozy.
I’m surprised you don’t like Straub more. I always like Starslip Crisis and I think Broodhollow’s good too. Those chainsawsuit strips are throwaways, but some of them crack me up. I was surprised when he joined up with the Penny Arcade nightmare machine of making comics that aren’t funny and putting them on websites that don’t work.
Everything he does with Scott Kurtz is dumb, but I blame Scott Kurtz for that. How that guy got himself an audience I will never know.
Straub might be the funniest of all of the 10lb Axis, but that’s a shockingly low bar and until Broodhollow there was nothing particularly interesting about his comic-creating ability… and if you can’t do that, you should probably just crack jokes.
Straub also falls into Kurtz’s weirdly territorial bullshit where he’ll bitch about other webcomics, but like Kurtz, he’ll do so from no particular elevation.
All that shouldn’t detract from the fact that I think that Broodhollow is fantastic. The art is some of the most evocative I’ve seen and the writing isn’t bad at all. I would buy that story in a book. I can’t say I would do that of any Kurtz/PA product.