DM of the Droids

 "The Batman I poke fun at is an untouchable supersoldier icon. [...] Batman Begins is an excellent, superbly-made movie that dissects his motivations, gives him real problems, a real past and makes him human"

"A good movie? Man, that sounds disappointing."

David Willis - Shortpacked 2005/06/20

While I like webcomics, I've never been able to stomach those borrowing their art from some other source: sprite comics, screencap comics, photo comics, etc. If you can't draw... just don't work in a drawing-dependent medium. Write stories instead. (If you can't write either, do it anyway but call it a blog to lower expectations.)

DM of the Rings, a comedic RPG take on LotR after the movies came out, is a notable exception, both observant and hilarious. Imagine Tolkien as a GM railroading a few munchkins through a heretofore unknown campaign with a ludicrous amount of backstory. Hilarity ensues. In the vacuum left by its ending Darths and Droids tried the same treatment for Star Wars, and as far as I'm concerned (as <not> a Star Wars fan) mostly failed. How come?

DM of the Rings focused on the incongruence of LotR with the role-playing game mindset it inadvertently created by inspiring Dungeons and/or Dragons, the discrepancy between wistful, idealistic, retrospective mythology and RPGs' munchkin-first values of escalation, incentivization, violence and narcissism. It was especially funny when such tendencies rubberbanded back to accidental commentary on the movies' abridgement of their source material, like Grima's death or Elrond showing up to tell Aragorn "keep your hands off my daughter." It also repeatedly juxtaposed players' demands for more freedom with the GM's interest in pushing a narrative, a subject I constantly harp on here at my den. In other words, DM of the Rings explored a specific, logical outgrowth of the genres themselves.

Darths and Droids on the other hand... is a fanfic. It takes itself too seriously. It presents an alternate story using the movies' imagery (starting, unfortunately, with the prequels) but the changes seem largely arbitrary instead of stemming from direct observations. Though, admittedly, rewriting Jar-Jar Binks as the product of a ten year old girl's imagination hit spot-on. Unfortunately, it also tries "going meta" in an already parodic work by expanding the gamers' own tedious life stories. Unfortunatelier, it missed the point of DM of the Rings' weighing of LotR against the hobby it inspired.

 

Which is a pity, because Star Wars' unimaginatively bare-bones monomythic science fantasy heroics have had a huge impact on all "action" game genres, and FPShooters/FPSlashers in particular, as opposed to LotR's impact on roleplaying. Start with exactly why stormtroopers needed terrible aim in a movie as opposed to a game, and work your way through the cliches from the viewpoint of a handful of co-op FPS gamers or laser taggers.