Home Artists Posts Import Register
The Offical Matrix Groupchat is online! >>CLICK HERE<<

Content

But why would they even?

- At egscomics

Commentary

- Checkers

It's been... I think actual decades since I've played Checkers? Not trusting my own memory, I looked up how to play Checkers before making this comic.

I'm pretty sure the video was under five minutes, so well worth doing.

Which is not to make fun of Checkers! A lot of things with simple rules can be engaging fun, and require smarty-pants-ness to excel at.

Files

Comments

Stephen Gilberg

Is the whole group willing to trust one strange member's triple hunch? In RL, probably not. In a game, why not?

Some Ed

But did that five minute video include rules on double, triple, and quadruple crownings?

Thisguy

In D&amp;D, most certainly. Many D&amp;D games have reached legendary status by one Player/Character saying, "Hey guys, I want to try something stupid." I mean, many have dies, but it's still legendary.

KC

Nanase getting ready to play 5D checkers

Foradain

Three. Steps. Ahead.

Daryl Sawyer

Secret to being a great DM: Even if Nanase's idea is something you never even considered and it goes against the way you meant things to go, so long as the group is on board and it advances the narrative in some kind of sensible (and/or entertaining) fashion, it works, and was totally what you intended from the beginning.

Some Ed

I believe the real life phrase for this is, "Hold my beer." To be fair, my uncles demonstrated *many* very impressive feats of physical competency after uttering that phrase. But many of them fell under the heading of trying something stupid, especially since most of those "something stupid" feats risked death for the mere purpose of showing off. This is not to say that their beer moves that weren't just for showing off didn't risk death. That said, I've been in whole groups willing to trust one strange member's very unsubstantiated hunches in real life. It happens. It feels rare, though. It seems to generally happen when everybody else has literally no idea of how to progress, *and* they don't have antipathy for the one strange member. That whole antipathy thing is a killer, though. I've also been in groups where the "one strange member" had the training and experience to deal with the situation, but because of antipathy, other members of the group sabotaged the effort.

David Howe

It would be doubly funny if Ellen could have prepared some actual Japanese text in advance...

Some Ed

I don't think claiming it was the way that was intended from the beginning makes one a better DM. I feel like if you admit that it wasn't how you were planning on having the adventure go, but you recognized it would work and ran with it allows others to recognize that you're a DM willing to work with the players, rather than being opposed to them. I'd even go so far as to say claiming that a hairbrained scheme was your intended way to proceed could even cause them to think you're a bad DM, because even the person who suggested that idea might have thought it was a really long shot, and if that turned out to be the one true way forward and anything else would have failed? Then that really wouldn't be a good DM. I've been the player to suggest a crazy solution when there seemed no clear options and then had the DM admit after the game that they had intended for the game to go that way. Even not trusting the DM's honesty on that point, I took that to be cause to not trust their DMing on future games. Otherwise agreed.

Foradain

If Math is running the game, perhaps. If Sydney is the GM, definitely. Blackstone or Artemis from that other Cape timeline also. But this is Ellen, so three may be enough.

AstroChaos

Funny you mention Checkers being simple to learn but not easy to win at per say. Growing up I was decent at Chess... not "enter into championships" level by any means but I won more that I lost. I would go to play my grandfather in checkers, however, and it was laughable how easily he'd win. Like, the only time I EVER beat him, he was in the nursing home, had suffered a stroke that ultimately did him in, and even then I'm not sure that he didn't finally go easy on me, knowing it would be the last time we'd get to play... ANYWAYS... by any objective measure, Chess is a more complicated, "harder" game... but I could never reproduce my success in Checkers that I could in chess, with him being the most telling example.