353 - The Trap

This strip was a nightmare. First of all, I had about twice as much dialogue. Since it was not really the type of strip that could have been stretched into 2, I had to majorly cut text. The way we do the strips is that we figure out the dialogue first, break it down into how many panels it will be, construct the backgrounds, layout the characters, and then put in the word balloons. Problem is, when I did this strip, I worked everything up for 6 panels when it needed to be 7. So, I had to re-do the whole thing–not a quick task. I’ve done that in the past, but it’s been a long time and I was very frustrated with myself. Oh well…

As for the strip itself, there are a few things I want to comment on. In the first panel, Prospero talks about the “dumb luck” attribute. This is something that is actually from one of the older versions of the DC Heroes roleplaying game (it may be in newer versions too, but I’m not familiar with them). Basically a character will just have the ability to have things go right for no reason whatsoever. It’s kinda cool when you get it work–it requires a percentage and a dice roll. I just thought it would be like Dren to wave away any skill on the parts of our heroes and blame them on a random attribute.

The other comment is pretty simple: don’t tick-off the moderator (or game master, or likewise). It WILL come back to haunt you.

We didn’t plan to have Mad Maxigan come back in this storyline. Originally, we thought it would be Dren’s group and the Pixel kids’ group through the finish. However, when working the details out, this idea was presented and we had to run with it. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.