Substitutions
Once again, Wizard’s penmanship has landed her in trouble. You’d think that such a learned scholar would be better at the whole calligraphy thing.
Of course, it wasn’t words that got us into hot water today. It was a hot skillet. The origins of today’s comic reach beyond the misty borders of Handbook-World and into the etc. of the real. To quote my flanking partner:
Hey everyone, I wanted to let you know that things might be a little late this week. I burned my drawing hand pretty badly tonight and while I’m hoping I can draw tomorrow, I’m not totally sure. I’ll keep everyone posted, hopefully this will turn out just fine and there won’t be a hiccup in our schedule, but the possibility is unfortunately there.
It should go without saying, but this was a VERY BAD THING. Getting burned sucks for anyone. An artist getting her arting hand burned is a calamity. Fortunately for the fate of Handbook-World, I am a gallant knight, supportive friend, and extremely talented so-and-so.
You need me to draw the comic? I’ve got colored pencils and stuff. You just gotta promise you’re not to laugh too hard at my fumbling attempts.
What you are seeing today are the results of that offer. It is also the result of watching way too many Strongbad Emails in my misspent youth. Fortunately, there is an upside to all this. Thanks to the ceaseless klaxon of my internal critic, you guys have a chance at fabulous prizes! It thus gives me great pleasure to announce…
The Great Claire Sucks at Drawing Contest!
The rules are simple. Beneath your usual comment, post a number. This number represents the total number of errors you think you can spot in today’s comic. For example, where was the
PhotoshopMS Paint conspicuously bad? How many paper figures can you spot? Where did I color outside the lines? Next Tuesday, Aug 22 at whenever-I-feel-like-it o’clock, I will contact the player with the highest number. If they can send me a list of all their errors, and if they all check out, they will win 1) The original art of today’s comic, signed by both the writer AND the artist, and 2) A big bag of Handbook merch.
All clear? Alrighty then! That only leaves our questions of the day! What was it like the first time you took over GMing duties? Did you realize you had a natural gift for it? Or, as with my experience in today’s artistic endeavor, did you find yourself suddenly overcome by newfound respect for the usual guy? Hit us with your tales of do-it-yourself shenanigans down in the comments!
GET YOUR SCHWAG ON! Want a piece of Handbook-World to hang on you wall? Then you’ll want to check out the “Hero” reward tier on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Each monthly treasure haul will bring you prints, decals, buttons, bookmarks and more! There’s even talk of a few Handbook-themed mini-dungeons on the horizon. So hit the link, open up that treasure chest, and see what loot awaits!
Why, zero, of course.
:3
Indeed, this is an artistic copy-paste collage where the incongruity and non-perfectly blended transitions are a deliberate part of the overall effect.
It’s well executed too.
I might make a post in the spirit of the challenge later through
You say that, but I see a “3”at the bottom of your post. :3
>:0
Ouch burning your hand sucks.
I wish Laurel a smooth recovery
Me too. Art is hard!
Thank you, I’m doing much better!
Best wishes for smooth recovery.
And on the mistakes I see none.
I’ve been a sarcastic twat to me readers for years! How did they all turn out so nice?!?
If that’s what you call “sarcastic twat” than you need to up your game girl. ;D
Thanks! It’s very scary to burn your hand as an artist 🙁
Dang, hope Laurel recovers soon! Really soon. Before Monday, preferably. :p
As for mistakes, I can do better than just a number!
https://imgur.com/a/iYhG00W
That counts 13 that are plainly visible, and another 4 that I’m happy to explain if asked, bringing a total of:
17
Cool graphic. Are you sure you want others to be able to see it this early in the game?
Lemme know if you want me to pop in and delete your link.
Nah, I figured someone would beat me even without it.
Also I’m pretty sure costs for shipping the rewards to Europe would make you cry.
I am doing much better, thank you! Monday’s comic should be on-schedule 😀
Ouch. That sounds like a painful burn. I wish Laurel a swift recovery.
My brother and I are sort of self-taught GMs: When we first started playing D&D, it was pretty much just the two of us, so we sort of co-DMed and took turns coming up with adventures for each other (mostly silly freeform stuff). Later we transitioned into doing campaigns with groups of friends, and while I still had much to learn when I started running for them, I wasn’t completely out of my depth (it helped that I read the Dungeon Master’s Guide cover-to-cover for fun). It’s weird to look back and think how far I’ve come, from just goofing around with the rules to planning out full, structured campaign plots.
What were the silly freeform games like? Do you remember any of the encounters or plots?
It’s been quite a few years, so my memory’s kind of fuzzy, but I recall it wasn’t very serious at all: We had things like a rogue whose repeated deaths and resurrections became a running gag, a pair of dwarven best friends who could never get good drinks, a wolf skeleton that would play loud music whenever it was set off, and other comedic stuff. The one big arc I remember involved my brother’s kobold sorcerer becoming a king and helping improve the lot of other kobolds, but I’ve forgotten most of the details.
Thank you! It’s healing up well so far, so I’m back on it!
There are a lot of “mistakes” i saw, and I can’t help but think there are a few that I am missing, however, because we also have to explain the mistakes, I am going to stick with what I see:
19
Best of wishes to Laurel for a rapid recovery.
My first time stepping in as a GM demonstrated that I needed a lot more practice! Lol! I’m glad to say over the years my GMing skills have gotten much better.
As for mistakes, honestly I wouldn’t have even noticed any until you pointed them out. And I had to look to find the ones I did. I’m going to say a whopping…
5
Thank you!!
Man, I feel bad for using Zarhon’s post as a springboard; but I can’t unsee those now. One of those errors in particular really illuminated just what we’re looking at, and made locating other errors easier.
26; though some of those are similar errors in different places.
My first attempt at DMing was in middle school. It was a fairly railroad-y job of overpowered homebrew items and clues pulled from the lyics of popular songs. Folks voted to quit after a bit and play something else run by anyone else.
Lest this seem like an ego-crushing disaster, the players did praise the descriptions and home-brew items as really cool; I was just a better writer than I was a DM. After unintentionally building reputations as a monte-haul DM then as a killer DM, 40 years and multiple editions later I think I’m finally hitting my stride.
As to today’s challenge– Before I read the rant I thought perhaps our illustrious creators were just trying something clever and new (like your experiments with animation, light, and shadow). I fear I won’t win, as I can’t spot more than 10.
I can always blame my poor eyesight.
I see you’re putting that backlog to good use. Now, I’ve always been a GM for as long as I’ve been doing tabletop, so I don’t really have a good story for this.
Also, I’m gonna say 11 for right now.
I was wondering why the comic was over-sized and the font was off.
Also, Wizard is a scholar, not an arter, can’t expect her to have mastered calligraphy, illumination, //and// scholastics. She better be getting extra exps for branching out in this manner.
“What was it like the first time you took over GMing duties?”
Fun and mildly humiliating. I mixed up some of the icons on the legend… of course I think my DM (who I was DMing for for the first time) made for a very shitty Player, calling out my “mistakes” and belittling me. (look, it was the mid 80s, I was 12 he was 16, no one was particularly adult about anything. He did apologize later.)
But as I’ve got certain … ‘disorders’ it didn’t strike me harshly and when I DMed again a year later with an adventure I’d made up myself, it went a lot better. It did rather cement my dislike for using pre-mades though, for better or worse.
“Did you realize you had a natural gift for it?”
I eventually realized I had a natural grift for it, is I think the way I’d put it. I still feel like I’m in ‘fake it till I make it’ mode, despite having GMed now for over 30 years.
But then, unless you’ve got the arrogance of a Greek God, don’t we all suffer a little from impostor syndrome?
Apart from some minor DM´ing in my childhood, I had pretty much always been a player until I took over for the current campaign. Where I first DM´et a oneshot for my group. My personal two takeaways from it was that it was both easier and way more fun than I expected. And these days I some
As someone who rates themselves as a decent GM (Not great, and not good, but decent), it really is far more easy to GM than most people think. And players are often far more understanding than most GMs think them to be. In my experience most players don´t mind if you go “We are going to take a 15 minute break to figure this out” or “Listen, you could do that, but that would derail everything I have planned so please don´t do that”.
And players are way more easily entertained than I could ever believe. I am putting on a puppet show with bad voices and cheap cardboard cutouts, and they treat it like it is the best shit ever. Because they want to have fun with what you are making as much as you do, if not even more.
I try to convince most of my friends who plays to GM at least once. Not just because I think it is healthy to see what it is like on the other side of the screen, but also because I love seeing people GM. I learn something new every time I have a new GM and it is wonderful. Because everyone have their own style, their own mannerisms and their own touches. And their own specialties. And I just think that is really neat.
For my first time DM´ing, I think the biggest effect was on the players of that one-shot, rather than me. I had been playing roleplaying games for most of my life at that point, but for my players our 5e campaign was their first foray into roleplaying. And with our main DM not being very good at it, I think they kinda realized they could have fun WITH the game, rather than in spite of it. Because they suddenly started doing a bunch of cool shit and thinking in ways I hadn´t seen them do since we came out of the pre-made intro adventure.
Hope your hand gets better 😀
Please, I know, Claire is doing her best but, and no offense intended, I prefer your art 🙂
That said I kinda wonder how Inspector would look on Claire’s style 🙂
5 🙂
Thank you! It’s healing well so far, so Monday’s comic is on schedule!
Already seen it, good 😀
How dare you? Such blatant disrespect to my Art! I didn’t go to Drawing Stuff School and spend all those summers shovel paint to be treated this way. 😛
My memories of my first time GMing are somewhat occluded by the “Okay, you whip off your shirt and attach the car battery to your nipples” incident that took place soon after, but I remember being kind of… strangely casual about it? I was an awkward dude back then, bad at starting conversations or making friends, but by some incredible twist of fate I wound up leading a brand new group in a system I had never run before, and I just… calmly went for it and knocked it out of the park. It must have been fate.
Hm, okay, I do want to procrastinate my own work, so… let’s be unfair. I am not a great artist, so these numbers might be inflated, but:
13 (I’m stealing from Zarhon’s infographic, of course), plus 22 of my own. 35.
(these are all made up the comic is perfect perfect perfect)
Wishing Laurel a smooth recovery.
As for errors, I see none. This is a lovely piece of art born into the world the way it always should have been, even if it wasn’t what you intended. =)
It is healing better than I thought, so things are back on track!
There is only one problem with the comic, and it’s that it’s perfect, so I can’t win the merchandise.
Awww! I think so too, Claire is a champ for filling in for me this week 😀
As it was so long ago, I have only vague memories of it. And it was of course my favorite system, KAP (King Arthur Pendragon RPG). And I do know that I did not live up to my own expectations, having played with a (in my eyes) far better GM. But I was apparently good enough that my group wanted to keep playing with me, so I do think I did something correct. However, for about 15 years after that I was the forever GM for KAP. I did and do GM and play other RPG’s since that day, and have the feeling that I am a reasonable good GM now. And as I still have people that want to play at my table, I think others feel that way too.
Nice copy-paste. I find this really funny, because it’s how I make my character art as well – pick some image from the internet, and edit it into what I want to represent the character. E.g., going from [this](https://i.imgur.com/BkILPLM.jpg) to [this](https://i.imgur.com/78DqV6z.png) or from [that](https://i.imgur.com/WXKFtxz.jpg) to [that](https://i.imgur.com/frNZSxK.png), and generally removing battle damage, non-fitting weapons, and incompatible appearance features.
Have to say, though, I have never literally printed the images I wanted to use to do a paper cut-and-paste before.
As for the mistakes, there’s probably over 9000. Or 23.
I think I’ve found 39 errors and have a sloppily annotated image I can produce upon request! That being said I loved the actual piece, there’s something inherently charming about collage especially on physical paper! Back in the day if I had a particular image in mind for a character but couldn’t find an artwork online that suited them, I’d Frankenstein together a character out of separate artworks in ways that would definitely hurt anyone who understands shading and/or perspective!
39
Same! Like, I can reach for nitpicks, but I genuinely find this collage really fun. The scuffs are a part of what makes it feel “physical”.
It took a few hours, but I got to 51 :’)
I genuinely love this comic though- I really debated competing, but my friend encouraged me to keep going. Got everything organized in a Google slideshow XD
You have a shot at the prize! Let me know if you didn’t get the email.