Head Alien wants us to think too much.
on February 2, 2018 at 12:01 amChapter: The Seventh Power
Location: Mexico somewhere
Here’s where we get into the meat of the story, for me. Or, at least, for the majorest take-away I needed here for my own ongoing story needs. Walky’s overconfident. He’s had a win or two and no defeats, and at least one of them was by the skin of his teeth, but he doesn’t know that, and so he’s starting to think he’s hot shit. Rikk is a perfect counterpoint. He just went through this arc. He’s overcompensating for his own recent failures. So it’s kind of like if you got to go back in time and yell at your dumb self.
Spontaneity vs. organization! Round one, FIGHT!I didn’t do a survey or anything, but I got the sense that I was one of the most anal-retentive planners in the (shudder) “webcomics community” at the time. This was due to necessity as well as temperament: I was often feeding up-to-thirty-page scripts to multiple artists to make sure Fans kept on schedule despite its ambitious format and MTWTF frequency. My workflow’s loosened up since then, but “go in with a plan” is still a sacred tenet of mine.Now, hey, let’s not overthink this contrast (har). David was no Walky– a complete non-planner wouldn’t even use story titles, let alone larger arc titles with the ominous cadence of “Rise and Fall.” We were actually on a pretty similar wavelength when it came to discussing everybody’s longer-term destiny.But like most people working in the field, he wrote what he drew and drew what he wrote, which always gives you more freedom to feel things out as you go. I appreciate that he was willing to play this one more or less my way, and if we ever do anything together in the future, I’ll be happy to return the favor.
A good opportunity for Rikk, since if I remember, I think all the times the Fans! actually do get to yell at their earlier dumb selves he misses out.
Eh, Walky’s not entirely wrong about not giving HA a chance to talk if you can help it.
To this day I still use his strategy when playing RPGs, especially with recurring enemies of the “talker” variety. Give them time to talk and they’ll trap you; act rashly and, well, you’ll have to deal with the fallout, but the bad guy is too dead to bother you in the future. (Of course, in D&D and the like, normal death isn’t as permanent, but that’s what trapping their soul in a jewel or weapon and then using it as a spell component is for.)
And that’s when you have to worry about DM’s like myself. I don’t allow resurrection magic outside of zombies and Liches.
That is one tactic with such resurrection magic. I just always, when I had time to GM, made it so rare and expensive that maybe five to ten living people on the planet had even ever seen it used and maybe fifty even know it’s something that could be attempted outside “old stories from generations ago” even among the longest lived races. That way I could use it as a deus ex machina at need should I ever TPK a group, but not allow players a chance to rely on nor abuse it.
Walky follows the Indiana Jones style of planning.
“Big fish in little pond lectures bigger fish from even bigger pond” That’s what this is if you ask me. Walky has lead a couple missions and has outsmarted HA but that’s it for his resume.
Not to mention Walky seems to overconfident just because he able to speedit run easy mode but in the future when he goes up against an actual military force he struggles.
In comparison Walky so far has been up against the equivalent of Dr .Robotnic “The adventure of Sonic the Hedgehog”, like early 90’s version of him While Rikk has pretty had to deal with Robotnic Sonic “SatAM”, there’s a huge spike in difficulty there.