Celebrating (500 Comics!)
We’ve seriously done 500 of these things!? Well there’s a milestone. It feels like only yesterday when we started cranking out comics, but it turns out that was all the way back on September 7th, 2015. As of this writing that’s 4 years, 9 months, and 6 days ago. In that time we’ve grown from four Heroes (Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Thief) to a cast of over 50 named characters. We’ve started growing as a business too, taking on a second comic in the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy over on Patreon. Along the way we’ve swapped stories, made friends, shared GMing tips, and had more good laughs than you can shake a d20 at. Our sincere thanks to all of you who’ve shared the adventure. We can’t wait to bring you the next 500 comics.
As I pause to reflect on the Handbook’s trajectory so far, I think that there’s a valuable lesson for the tabletop. In the pursuit of better gaming, we spend a lot of time and effort focused on the climactic moments. These are the big boss fights, the dramatic reveals, and all the cool set piece encounters. These moments tend to stand out in our memories, and it’s easy to get caught up in the flashy stuff. But in the same way that classical dramatic structure demands rising and falling action, taking time off from adventuring is important too.
What does that look like in practice? I’m talking about those in-town sessions where you visit your favorite NPCs. Going to the castle to receive your accolades. Basking in the glow of a job well done, relaxing in the tavern or the guildhall, or simply enjoying a little conspicuous consumption. You’ll often hear players talk about how, “We didn’t roll a single die, and it was one of my favorites sessions.” Those aren’t good sessions just because they’re free-form RP. They also offer a valuable break from all-action-all-the-time.
I often think of this concept in terms of musical dynamics. If your song is all fortississimo it stops being exciting. When the slow build towards crescendo is replaced with the constant blare of trumpets, the thrill of anticipation drowns in noise. That’s why the Marvel theme or the Fellowship theme work so well. They take their time to work towards the high points, and a good adventure should do the same.
In other words, when the party is done with Heroic tier and ready to move on to Paragon, I say to take your time and enjoy it. Go to the spring festival or train with your master. Explore the setting for a half a second. The evil alliance of chromatic dragons can always come sweeping in as the next inciting incident. That adventure will always be there waiting in the wings, but the moment of respite is fleeting.
These games we play are long. Campaigns break down all the time. People move away, GMs burn out, and personality clashes bring an end to the adventure. So when you do manage to achieve a major victory, remember to enjoy it. Because those moments are rare, and that’s what makes them worth celebrating.
Question of the (500th) day then! When did you last spend some time wallowing in victory rather than gore? Did the party go to a nice sauna? Maybe you enjoyed a staycation back in town. Or did you perhaps blow all your hard-won gold on a fancy new keep? Sound off in the comments with the details of all your favorite non-adventuring sessions!
EARN BONUS LOOT! Check out the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. We’ve got a sketch feed full of Laurel’s original concept art. We’ve got early access to comics. There’s physical schwag, personalized art, and a monthly vote to see which class gets featured in the comic next. And perhaps my personal favorite, we’ve been hard at work bringing a bimonthly NSFW Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comic to the world! So come one come all. Hurry while supplies of hot elf chicks lasts!
Congratulations on the 500th!
Last time my PCs stopped to celebrate wasn’t actually for their own achievements. A friendly NPC party rolled into town, fresh from adventure, and splurged on roast dire boar for everyone in the inn! My PCs enjoyed themselves immensely, and enjoyed a break from their adventures.
…The most memorable wallowing in victory that the group still talks about, though, was the time their mysterious employer left them a hot basket of garlic bread as thanks for a job well done. The PCs were mostly from poor backgrounds in that campaign, and really liked that simple little reward.
Cheers!
Please tell me there was IRL garlic bread to commemorate the occasion.
There was pizza with garlic breadsticks.
I will bring up this reversal of the old “bribe the GM with food” trope next time Laurel is running. 😀
I’m a DM cook. Still learning recipes, but I do like trying them out on my players.
It can be a bit tricky since I’m vegetarian and can’t have alcohol, and one of my players is allergic to damn-near everything, but it’s still fun to cook for the group.
Congratulations! To five hundred more!
The only real respite my group had was at the half-time of the Out of the Abyss campaign. They racked in thousands of gold as wandering minstrels singing about their noble deeds in the Underdark, started heisting without the approval of the local Thieves’ Guild, crafted prosthetic arms to replace lost ones, got in into bar brawls. All fairly typycal stuff.
Afterwards the Tomb of Annihilation campaign began, since no one wanted to go back down for the second part.
HoH forever!
Good example! My group had all kinds of fun at Mithral Hall. A lot of it had to do with my character selling some bad beard dye to King Bruenor in my backstory. Never has the Mask of Many Faces invocation seen so much use….
Congrats on 500 strips! Here’s hoping for another 500! And then another 500… And another… Never stopping until death blissfully claims you, the comic triumphant over your feeble mortal form, it claiming your mind, body and soul as its own.
Also, cute dress on Thief! Have we seen it before by chance?
I don’t think so… there are so few opportunities for that kind of outfit when you’re an adventurer. You’re spending most of your time in armor, and the exceptions tend to be the formal events…
Last time we saw Thief in a dress was during the ball when Wizard went femme, I believe; archive binge? Ah, but alas, I cannot remember exactly when the comic was! I have not choice but to start from day one, and trudge through all five hundred in desperate search!
The only other time I recall a dress of that frilly caliber was the ‘Special Snowflake’ character. Whom Thief couldn’t help but giggle at.
O_O
If Laurel has a chance to draw a new floofy dress, you’d better believe she’s going to take the opportunity and draw a new floofy dress.
Creating so many floating lanterns with magic that there’s no spell slot left for summon fire brigade…
Congrats! Here’s to the next 500!
That’s a pretty interesting way to reflavor “summon water elemental.”
I’ll have to see about getting a cake or something for #1000.
You don’t need to wait that long for cake. You can get one in as little as 166 more comics – a Devil’s Food Cake. I wonder if it would have the BBEG equivalent of a ‘victory celebration’.
Not a bad time to tackle the satanic panic. I’m sure Succubus could be persuaded to answer a few questions on the subject.
Well, this one did not happen to me, but to my wife. In the Shadowrun game that she had, she was part of this hitteam. The team consisted of triplets, one boy and two girls. And they played in The Netherlands, where they were from Surinam descent, so people of colour, with a distinct culture. Although, in the Shadowrun world, their colour made them stand out less (what with all the elves, dwarfs, orcs, and stuff around), the culture thing was basically what the whole session turned on. They were between jobs, and one of the girls suddenly remembered that it was their mother’s birthday! So they spend the whole session first deciding, and then buying a proper present, and then, after getting to their mother’s home, playing the whole birthday party, with all the rest of their extended family, all the while trying to answer any questions as truthfully as possible, without giving away that they were more or less guns for hire now. Mama wanted them to have regular jobs of course, so pestered them about it, and some of the uncles tried to get a little too personal and stuff. Just, you know, the usual at a big family gathering.
Nice! The home life of career criminal and professional heist-meisters can be a blast. That’s part of what made Ant Man so unexpectedly endearing.
Did the town set itself on fire in the celebration zeal, or did the party buy 1000gp worth of flying lanterns?
Or has Wizard devised a new spell for the mass conjuring of floating lanterns?
I did a bit of googling for this one. Apparently those lanterns can be crazy dangerous!
https://www.dw.com/en/sky-lanterns-the-most-elegant-fire-hazard/a-51860495
As with most things in Handbook-World, it is 100% the Heroes’ fault.
My group rarely stops at the end of an adventure; they’ll pat themselves on the back for killing that mad mage, then immediately say, “I hear Baator is nice this time of century, perhaps we’ll go devil slaying”. However, they also invariably take a pause at the very start of the next quest; sure, sure, I hear that the haunted house is extra-haunted right now, but can that wait a few days? I’m busy proselytising the glory of these lamingtons, and triple-checking that every party member agrees that this is where we spend our fortunes.
And yes, those actually happened; our Saltmarsh group spent a whole three-quarters of an hour saying, “I really like these laminations, do you agree with me?” over and over in circles, before expanding the cult by grabbing the nearest NPC and repeatedly asking them of their thoughts on our confectionaries.
Huh. Thought there was a typo in there. Learned a new word:
https://www.recipetineats.com/classic-lamingtons/
I must second Zarhon’s comment, and compliment Thief’s cute dress. It’s also nice to see Fighter just… relaxing. Not being rude, or egocentric, or power gaming, he’s just hanging out with the party, and being happy. Even with Cleric’s woes as being the only one to have Create Water prepped, Fighter of all people is able to provide a nice sense of calm.
I like to imagine he’s dreaming adorable murderhobo dreams.
In my kids’ campaign, they’ve been relaxing on the beaches near the village of Tanaroa on the Isle of Dread. They destroyed a budding Evil Empire that was growing in power in the central caldera, then defeated an evil necromancer and his army on one of the islands to the south. now they’re just hanging out for a couple weeks, waiting for the merchant ship they sailed down on to return and take them back to civilization.
(They’ve been hanging out on the beach since early 2019. I have further adventures ready for them, and they know it, but they haven’t shown much interest in playing lately. )
I’m increasingly of the opinion that, when the campaign has been dead for months on end, it’s time for the next campaign. I know I always get more fired up for the next shiny thing than the hard work of reconstructing the old adventure.
There’s something pleasing aboot large round numbers.
My party usually gets up to lots of shenanigans in town, drinking, brawling feasting, stealing, and just having a good time. They also spend a lot of time at the bathhouses because they’ve been fighting Demons a lot, and when Demons are poof’d (The proper verb for defeating them outside of their home plane is “Poof’d” since it destroys their physical form but sends them back to the Abyss with nothing more than a hangover) they turn into a foul-smelling, sticky sludge.
The last fight had the Demons turning into fountains of sludge, so they’re basically going to need to soak in high-proof Dwarven alcohol to get clean.
There’s also some debate about the “true 500th comic.” Whether or not to count the guest strips toward the official tally nearly caused a party schism. 😛
So does the “Guest strips count” metric apply to this one or not? Because if the answer is “No” then you can have 2 500th comics.
Sounds like a loophole that a rules lawyer would exploit, only in real life!
I guess in hindsight, I haven’t really had too many of these. Of those I have had, my favorite is probably in the tyranny of tiamat campaign. The DM gave us 2 weeks to prepare everything we needed before the final battle, and after recruiting a air castle of giants and killing and stealing from a powerful dragon wizard, we had a good amount of time to spare, which we spent at neverdeep. My character spent alot of gold on changing back to a half elf from a halfing and spent his time with his fiance. The other players spent on stuff a bit different. First, they went to a nearby demonic warlock, traded some that could be used to summon powerful demons into the world for some demon weed, the fighter then went wandering the streets in a drug induced haze. The others then went to an opera while high, at which the barbarian sat down and enjoyed a good high, the ranger freaked out a bit and left, and the wizard dtarted tripping high, running screming out, selling his soul to a devil, and roasting a concierge with firebolt. The next day we had to pick him out from a antimagic room in jail, with anpromise that he Would return there to serve his sentence after we got rid of tiamat, though ultimately he and the rest of the party besides my guy joined the mafia and got off scot free for their crimes.
Reincarnate?
You know, this solution has never occurred to me, but it makes sense. There’s have to be one in most settlements.
I probably had enough gold to reincarnate toulette till i got to a good enough body, but the dm was nice and let me just spend 1 k gold to get back my old body via a transmuter wizard in waterdeep. I don’t think every settlement would have antimagic rooms, as making a magic room for a high level spell has to be pretty expensive, but i imagine most cities will have a few, particularily the bigger ones.
In the Witcher 3 there are to moments that i remembered with this. One in when Geralt and Yennefer track down something for her. They end up in half a ship in the heights of a mountain fighting a Djinn to tame it so he can break a previous wish. The place in gorgeous, the half ship on top of the mountains with sky all around. And then when the player must decide about Geralt and Yenn relationship. Whatever you choose the two of them end up contemplating the sky and mountains before returning to the problems of the world.
In the end of the Blood and Wine DLC Geralt has end up his contract, maybe his last contract and together with Regis take some Mandrake the two of them near a camp fire. After all the whole DLC thing, the typical witcher contract imposible not to botch, having that small moment of respite with his dear friend is a luxury for Geralt and the player.
And then in Warframe in the Plains of Eidolon you have the Twin Horns, two tall… horns, you can escalate. And there in the top just watch the night, Lua above and the plains bellow, sitting in lotus position while the Eidolon Teralyst thrash the Grineer.
That moments, you are in the world, but you don’t move with it you just let the world turn around you. I like them 🙂
But they are difficult to do in paper 🙁
So more often than not, we the player celebrate the victories of our characters. Maybe it has to do with our PC getting in a hurry from the fallout of their actions that they can’t celebrate. They don’t celebrate while in the king table the great victory, they run of the king guard to not get catch for whatever they did or didn’t this time 🙂
But in any case we are not the ones who need to celebrate, it’s you two who have earn it. So Colin and Laurel, enjoy this. Congratulations on the 500 comics and thanks for the hard work you put on them. I really like them and wish you both the better 😀
Stop making me want to play The Witcher. I don’t have that kind of time!
This is an interesting point. Gameplay is typically about overcoming obstacles, so it can be difficult to make a “game” about celebrating. I think maybe switching genres helps. You’re not longer an adventure game for half a session. You’re a romantic comedy, or the first act of a political thriller, or maybe even a farce. Picking the kinds of obstacles that the session will address (declaring your love; navigating shifting alliances; intraparty practical jokes) takes a bit of a paradigm shift.
Thanks for reading, Schattensturm! Getting to talk shop with you is always a highlight of post day. 😀
“Stop making me want to play The Witcher. I don’t have that kind of time!”
Fine, i will not insist on you playing The Witcher… Now about Cultist Simulator 😛
And you are right. Once in a game a while ago we have finished early, so our DM tells us to have a good time with our characters since the big battle was the next day, that they enjoyed the day and resolved any issue they may have. So the party splits while they enjoy the city they were to defend soon. Having an objective, Make your PC confess his love to the barmaid, Buy new equipment, Seduce Lord Cragchin is good since you have something to achieve before ending the session with a cliffhanger for the next one 🙂
By the way i got a message for Cleric: “Frankie says Relax, don’t do it!”. Sorry i needed to do it 😀
Allow me to echo previous sentiments – Congratulations on your 500th, and may you create many more.
Cheers, Jim! Wouldn’t have got this far without all the support. 🙂
As far as milestones go, how far off until the, ahem, other handbook gets some jolly celebration? And does it add its tally to this one, indirectly?
I’d suggest a… ahem… group shot, but I think Laurel would kill me. That mess takes a hot minute to draw!
Sometimes, hotness requires such sacrifices.
Congrats on the milestone!
So what level does that make you ow? =P
Cheers!
I’m not sure I’ve leveled up, but at some point in Handbook’s development I believe I hit a new age category:
http://legacy.aonprd.com/advancedRaceGuide/ageHeightWeight.html
Someone’s been playing Terraria
Congratulations on the 500 mark
My buddies have been talking about Terraria lately. I really ought to go back and give it another shot….
That last update is a fun one! Do recommend.
I’m getting to the end of The Adventure Zone’s Balance campaign now and I really feel like the way the later Lunar Interludes (about post-Crystal Kingdom or so) were done was a great example of downtime sessions, with the players taking some time to just develop their characters’ backstories and relationships with other NPCs. I’ve also been kind of studying Pathfinder 1E adventure paths lately to learn how to make dungeons and write a campaign and I also like how each book in the AP is kind of designed to give the party some time before the next book to rest and explore the setting after the conclusion of the adventure.
Also, congratulations on the 500th comic! I’m not one for long-term projects so it kind of boggles my mind to imagine making 500 consecutive anything. Listening to all that TAZ during my shifts at work has kind of gotten me interested at trying my hand at a Pathfinder podcast. Maybe if I can ever get that off the ground somehow I can hope to hit 500 episodes.
Final question, at risk of sounding like I have some… ulterior motives, is the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy available for (official) viewing anywhere other than Patreon? I’d like to sub to the Patreon, but I’m saving for law school right now so my disposable income is fairly limited. I understand if it’s entirely Patreon-locked, but I was wondering if maybe you guys release old comics for public viewing after a certain amount of time or something.
Studying written modules is how I got into design myself. All those little sidebars and pacing issues (“A week passes before etc. etc.”) are super-important to pay attention to.
Cheers! It’s all about eating that whale: you gotta take it one bite at a time.
If you go for that podcast, don’t make 500 of episodes. Make one. Then make the next one. That’s all you have to do.
Not at the moment. It occurs to me that that decision limits our visibility though. I might have to revisit this one with Laurel.
Explain Cleric’s panic and discomfort for I don’t understand it.
The town behind them appears to be somewhat on fire. Cleric, being the Lawful and Responsible sort, seems to be thoroughly regretting his decision to drop everything and try to relax for a while.
The town is on fire.
It’s in the hover text.
Grats on 500!!! also, everyone talking about thief’s cute dress but i am digging wizard’s ensemble myself ♥
I guess Thief has finally managed to get Wizard to try a corset. It’s her signature style after all!
the one thing ill celebrate is that you let wizard’s fate to the crowd and have sticked to it since. thats awesome (also she hella cute now 😛
I sometimes wonder what other MAJOR DECISIONS we could leave to the Quest Givers on Patreon. That one just kind of came up naturally. I’m happy that Fem!Wizard wound up so popular though. Doubly so on account of trans inclusivity. 🙂
Of course, she’s only the second mtf character in Handbook-World. Femme Fighter has been a thing since Handbook of Erotic Fantasy #1.
Archive binge complete. And a major milestone is exactly the place it feels right to catch up with the comic.
Colin: “Okay, we have to do something for our 500th comic. What should we do?”
Laurel: “Poofy dresses?”
Colin: “Poofy dresses.”
Accurate.