June 4, 2016: Okay, that was weird...

[Sessine]

That's actually where editors come in. Most authors don't publish their first draft. Even if they don't go over their work again themselves (most do, though), publishers have editors that will read the work and find all of those little flaws, inconsistencies and oversights that are liekly to make it into the story. In most cases authors will have to change things at that point. Obviously, that's not something that will happen in a webcomic where every page is published as soon as it is done.

Well, yes. Obviously I was not talking about print publishing. Webcomics have more in common with performance arts. The show must go on, page after page, even if a piece of the backdrop falls over, an actor forgets his lines, or whoops! A plot hole opens up! Too late to patch it! Just have to leap over it, try not to trip, and keep on dancing!

ÔÇ£The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.ÔÇØ

[Arch Lich Burns]

Instead of the axe breaking randomly in a dungeon against random creatures, it could have built up and broke when fighting Kore again in a last ditch effort to stop him from reaching thier clan. And yes thunt should have edited his writing so we wont have this contrived mess.

[Sessine]

Instead of the axe breaking randomly in a dungeon against random creatures, it could have built up and broke when fighting Kore again in a last ditch effort to stop him from reaching thier clan. And yes thunt should have edited his writing so we wont have this contrived mess.

Oh, I see. What you're saying is, "I don't want this story, Thunt. Write a different story."

That doesn't ever work, you know, not with any webcomic artist, and especially not with one who's more than ten years into telling his story.

Just saying.

[Arch Lich Burns]

No what I am saying is that it should be critizied being 'his' story does not make it immune to critisim. It is on a public area and thus can be critisised. You asked for an example and I provided one, you do not need to be so passive aggressive twoards me for pointing out how the story could be made better.

[Shardstorm]

for pointing out how the story could be made better.

How you think it could be made better. I quite like it as it is. I also wasn't looking forward to spending a few more updates reading content I basically already knew. Know we can move onto new stuff, and deal with the issues this has caused.

Just because the future team stopped fighting didn't guarantee the past team wouldn't keep trying to kill them. Past-Thaco thinks it's a trap even as they go through the Waterfall door. But once the future team recognizes this is some version of a time loop or shadowed actions or [insert in universe magical solution here] they they know there is one definite way to extradite themselves from the combat, make sure nobody dies, and be in the clear to focus on the problem of the Axe and reality cracking. Point to the Waterfall door. It worked on them, it will work again. Hell, this actually works for both parties, as it will lead the past-GAP to the same realization, assuming the past-GAP has a continuing story and aren't a magical construct just to be overcome as a puzzle piece.

The parameters here are a little fuzzy. Some people seem to be assuming that both (all three?) parties represent different realities (timelines?) with their own Axe and Demon breaking out. In which case the idea of breaking the loop and stopping it has merit. But it could also equally be faux copies without a demon dooming an alternate reality. In which case it's possible (and I believe) that this is basically a trap scenario, and closing the loop is the only way to correctly defeat it. I feel like not closing the loop would cause the past-GAP demons to just resume fighting. Yeah, I'm filling in some blanks in a way that I like. But it fits the information I know, I feel like it fits what BE knows, and I feel like it's all reasonable steps I'd take if I was playing out this scenario with my group as a PC or DM.

[Sessine]

No what I am saying is that it should be critizied being 'his' story does not make it immune to critisim. It is on a public area and thus can be critisised. You asked for an example and I provided one, you do not need to be so passive aggressive twoards me for pointing out how the story could be made better.

Well, you did pretty much say that you don't like Thunt's choice of encounter for breaking the axe.

When a story event feels sudden and arbitrary, the cause is rarely the event itself, it's a lack of foreshadowing. Maybe I've missed a bunch of obvious clues in the earlier story, but I'd tend to agree with you that the axe breaking here, in this particular way, is kind of a bolt from the blue. Not everything has to be foreshadowed, though. Sudden reverses coming by surprise are okay... provided that afterwards readers do eventually get to connect the dots and see, "Ohhh... that's why that happened."

So, instead of trying to rewrite Thunt's story so that the axe breaks in something that has been foreshadowed a lot - an encounter with Kore - I would suggest reflecting that Thunt probably already thought of that! and there are reasons the axe had to break before they meet him. And instead of declaring Thunt's story a mess, how about waiting to see how this all fits in?

Though, honestly, even if the only reason the Axe broke this way is that Thunt wanted to draw these pages with the mirror-demon counterparts, I'ma gonna give him a pass on it. Because the art he pulled off here is way cool.

[Arch Lich Burns]

This entire dungeon is full of out of character moments, contrived mechanisms, unessicary diolague, contradictory spells. I am not getting my hopes up that later will become clear.

[Guus]

I am, because I want to keep reading the comic
Still, making things retroactively good because of a good explanation afterwards doesn't seem like a good strategy in a comic that updates every other week. But hey, if it works out in the end, I'm fine with it.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Guys... Seriously... after so many facepalms reading negative posts since the last 3 pannels, I finally decided to remake my account just to post this.

Every single thing which happened since the 3 panels were so incredibly easy to understand and I actually called everything which happened since the second pannel. The one they started fighting. As a DM myself, it was incredibly easy to see.

First, stop arguing about how the freck did Big Ears axe got damaged by evil intent. It didn't. It actually got damaged by Fumbles new weapon. Which (dun dun dun!), as been very recently discovered, actually destroy magic. That's how he managed to get free of those tentacles in that room not so long ago...

So what actually happened here: the first fight happened to the free will of the GAP "players". The DM took notes. Since they were fighting simulacres (almost perfect copies) of themselves, once Big Ears started to fight Fumble copy and their weapons met in battle, the anti-magic power of the copy of the weapon of the copy of Fumbles activated. Thus resulting in the shattered Axe, which did not actually get completely destroyed or dispelled or whatever because it's such a powerful artifact but rather broke in a very powerful display of force.

From there on, the DM took over the fight. He stopped it, made the copies point at the door (this is something I could easily have planned myself in my DM days so really, nothing strange there) and let the players take the choice to follow or not. Which they did. Once they got thru the doorway, the DM railroaded the fight to make it look like a perfect copy of the other side. Once Big Ears understood what was going on, the DM just gave the players the choice to do the exact same thing which happened on the first side, which they agreed on. THEN speculation and discussion among the players ran rampant, just as depicted on our last update.

This could have been very easily done by the DM part simply by staying very vague at first as far as description goes, then once in the second room or maybe even after Big Ears understand what's going on the DM start explaining to the players what just happened by saying things like "Oh, hey by the way... you realize now that what you just been doing just now was exactly what you saw the "monsters" do in the first place before you tried to sneak on them." And yadda yadda yadda...

And of course, yes, Big Ears detect evil detected the demon evil which covered absolutely anything else around because the demon aura is so strong. That's exactly how it works in 3.5 ed.

Please guys... Enough with the "this is stupid because I don't understand it" remarks. This is actually brilliant and very well executed both as a D&D adventure and especially even more on Thunt story telling side.

[Guus]

/snip.

What I wrote was pretty rude and too much based on assumptions, so I removed it. It's not the way to respond to foolish assumption and doesn't help the conversation. Excuse me.

[Delphince]

How is any of that relevant? The characters didn't even discuss changing the 'loop' that they're in, let alone actually trying to affect it. The subject of time being immutable never came up in the first place.

That's part of the complaint, actually, that the characters realized the loop and didn't attempt to use that to their advantage, especially considering the axe-demon problem the loop created. Whether they would have succeeded or not is irrelevant.

I'm not talking about the GAP characters, I'm talking about the forum goers that say they should have tried to use it to their "advantage".

[SuperVaderMan]

So what actually happened here: the first fight happened to the free will of the GAP "players". The DM took notes. Since they were fighting simulacres (almost perfect copies) of themselves, once Big Ears started to fight Fumble copy and their weapons met in battle, the anti-magic power of the copy of the weapon of the copy of Fumbles activated. Thus resulting in the shattered Axe, which did not actually get completely destroyed or dispelled or whatever because it's such a powerful artifact but rather broke in a very powerful display of force.

From there on, the DM took over the fight. He stopped it, made the copies point at the door (this is something I could easily have planned myself in my DM days so really, nothing strange there) and let the players take the choice to follow or not. Which they did. Once they got thru the doorway, the DM railroaded the fight to make it look like a perfect copy of the other side. Once Big Ears understood what was going on, the DM just gave the players the choice to do the exact same thing which happened on the first side, which they agreed on. THEN speculation and discussion among the players ran rampant, just as depicted on our last update.

This could have been very easily done by the DM part simply by staying very vague at first as far as description goes, then once in the second room or maybe even after Big Ears understand what's going on the DM start explaining to the players what just happened by saying things like "Oh, hey by the way... you realize now that what you just been doing just now was exactly what you saw the "monsters" do in the first place before you tried to sneak on them." And yadda yadda yadda...

Oh good! Someone trying to justify the characters' actions by saying it could make sense in the context of a D&D game!

Let me drop a big nope on this, courtesy of one of the mods.

We're not even sure the GAP has players. But, aside from referencing the rules and a few odd jokes, Thunt likes to keep things in-universe.

As for running the encounter... I don't see how it's possible. The DM would have to know their future actions before the party knows what's going on. We can speculate about what it looked like, but shouldn't consider it as part of the story, which takes place in-universe.

Bold emphasis mine.

Basically you can't read the characters' actions from the perspective of this being a D&D game, with regards to the story being told. Everything's in-universe.

So it looks like we're back to questioning why everyone decided to point at the door, skipping a potentially very interesting conversation about why they thought this was the best course of action (over, say, doing literally anything else) by just saying "moments later."

[Wolfie]

@Eagle_Of_Fire: Good addition to the conversation and Welcome to the forums.

Let me drop a big nope on this, courtesy of one of the mods.

We're not even sure the GAP has players. But, aside from referencing the rules and a few odd jokes, Thunt likes to keep things in-universe.

As for running the encounter... I don't see how it's possible. The DM would have to know their future actions before the party knows what's going on. We can speculate about what it looked like, but shouldn't consider it as part of the story, which takes place in-universe.

Bold emphasis mine.

Basically you can't read the characters' actions from the perspective of this being a D&D game, with regards to the story being told. Everything's in-universe.

Actually, this could have happened in game, no matter what Wears said. I've had a DM do something like this because he knew our characters and how'd they react. Besides, this is a huge D&D game. There's a DM and everything.

Regarding the GAP, there are a few theories running around about them. 1) They could be an experience RP group schooling the players of Minmax and Forgath. 2) They could be a separate group Herbert is running simultaneously with MM & Forgath's group. 3) They could be a group of NPC's Herbert created for the purpose of the game to show the inexperienced players how they should work together. Etc.

Do we know if they have players? No. There's never been a hint, but since this is a D&D game/universe, it's entirely possible.

So it looks like we're back to questioning why everyone decided to point at the door, skipping a potentially very interesting conversation about why they thought this was the best course of action (over, say, doing literally anything else) by just saying "moments later."

There have been a few moments of "Moments later" in this particular story arc. It skips over unnecessary scenes of simply walking or choosing a left or right in the corridor.

[Krulle]

So it looks like we're back to questioning why everyone decided to point at the door, skipping a potentially very interesting conversation about why they thought this was the best course of action (over, say, doing literally anything else) by just saying "moments later."

There have been a few moments of "Moments later" in this particular story arc. It skips over unnecessary scenes of simply walking or choosing a left or right in the corridor.

I would've loved to read how BE convinces the others that those are themselves.
And who came up with the idea of pointing to the door.
If they just say "because our past selves did", then Herbert actually did give the idea when he first described the demon group stopping fighting, and then pointing forcibly to the waterfall door.

So, in this specific case I would've loved to read a bit more than just "Moments later...".
Anyway, for the general storyline this will not matter much.

[Arch Lich Burns]

However RS, these characters (sans minmax) have been acting out of character ever since they got in the dungeon. Even if they were they still could have tried to break the cycle instead of pointing at the door becuase past selves did it.

[SuperVaderMan]

Actually, this could have happened in game, no matter what Wears said. I've had a DM do something like this because he knew our characters and how'd they react. Besides, this is a huge D&D game. There's a DM and everything.

Regarding the GAP, there are a few theories running around about them. 1) They could be an experience RP group schooling the players of Minmax and Forgath. 2) They could be a separate group Herbert is running simultaneously with MM & Forgath's group. 3) They could be a group of NPC's Herbert created for the purpose of the game to show the inexperienced players how they should work together. Etc.

Do we know if they have players? No. There's never been a hint, but since this is a D&D game/universe, it's entirely possible.

So which is it, your take or WearsHats's? You can either look at the characters' actions as if they're being controlled by players/a DM, or you can't because they're their own people. It can't be both.

There have been a few moments of "Moments later" in this particular story arc. It skips over unnecessary scenes of simply walking or choosing a left or right in the corridor.

If showing how the characters came to the conclusion that pointing at the door was the best decision they could make is considered as 'unnecessary and skippable as choosing a right or left corridor', then frankly the author didn't realize there was a decision to be made.

[Wolfie]

Actually, this could have happened in game, no matter what Wears said. I've had a DM do something like this because he knew our characters and how'd they react. Besides, this is a huge D&D game. There's a DM and everything.

Regarding the GAP, there are a few theories running around about them. 1) They could be an experience RP group schooling the players of Minmax and Forgath. 2) They could be a separate group Herbert is running simultaneously with MM & Forgath's group. 3) They could be a group of NPC's Herbert created for the purpose of the game to show the inexperienced players how they should work together. Etc.

Do we know if they have players? No. There's never been a hint, but since this is a D&D game/universe, it's entirely possible.

So which is it, your take or WearsHats's? You can either look at the characters' actions as if they're being controlled by players/a DM, or you can't because they're their own people. It can't be both.

It can, if you think of the characters as living in the that universe and controlled "live" or on auto-pilot when the Player is AFG.

There have been a few moments of "Moments later" in this particular story arc. It skips over unnecessary scenes of simply walking or choosing a left or right in the corridor.

If showing how the characters came to the conclusion that pointing at the door was the best decision they could make is considered as 'unnecessary and skippable as choosing a right or left corridor', then frankly the author didn't realize there was a decision to be made.

It could be that since they had already pointed to the door in their future copy-incarnations, THunt had decided to skip over the interim. Would it have been nice to see how they'd actually come to that conclusion? Sure! But in this case, I believe it extraneous to the actual story line.

[Like-A-Horse]

Golly, people! The only thing you need to understand the situation is a little empathy.

GAP+MM just made it through a possibly catastrophic event during a fight, which ended for no apparent reason. They are walking through the tunnel, courtesy of suddenly pacifistic demons, just to enter the mirror hall.

Is it really that hard to bear the assumption, that they were just freaked out over a couple of things (arch-demon escapees and whatnot) and didn't have the right state of mind to come up with a plan? Is it simply unbearable a thought, that in THunt's multiverse entropy and order fight over the events, and the events in different timelines tend to endeavour towards parallel? GAP+MM might have altered the timeline had they put their minds to it, yet they didn't and it simply frakkin happens.

[Arch Lich Burns]

When the characters give idle banter instead of caring about thier situation? No, not particularly.

[RocketScientist]

However RS, these characters (sans minmax) have been acting out of character ever since they got in the dungeon. Even if they were they still could have tried to break the cycle instead of pointing at the door becuase past selves did it.

Are you responding to me here? I didn't say anything.

[Arch Lich Burns]

Derp, i might have meant wolfie sorry!

[Wolfie]

Derp, i might have meant wolfie sorry!

You did.

[SamWiser]

However RS, these characters (sans minmax) have been acting out of character ever since they got in the dungeon. Even if they were they still could have tried to break the cycle instead of pointing at the door becuase past selves did it.

Have they? They all seem pretty in character to me. Maybe I'm forgetting things, but I can't think of a time when one of them acted majorly out of character.

[Arch Lich Burns]

Minmax: after moment of SAD, forgets the his friend just sacrificed himself; pillar of leud
Fumbles: somehow is fixed by minmax instantly
Ears: out of character aggressiveness/spitefulness, holding the axe in a dumb way instead having someone else, not stopping names transformation again/not caring about names
Goblins: not trying to run from a manthat entirely wiped out thier clan
All: sleeping inside a dungeon in spite of knowing of ot is safe and kore on thier heels
Names: not caring about his transformation
Thaco: not caring about names transformation

[Wolfie]

Minmax: after moment of SAD, forgets the his friend just sacrificed himself; pillar of leud
Fumbles: somehow is fixed by minmax instantly
Ears: out of character aggressiveness/spitefulness, holding the axe in a dumb way instead having someone else, not stopping names transformation again/not caring about names
Goblins: not trying to run from a manthat entirely wiped out thier clan
All: sleeping inside a dungeon in spite of knowing of ot is safe and kore on thier heels
Names: not caring about his transformation
Thaco: not caring about names transformation

The pillar was THunt, not Minmax. He hasn't forgotten Forgath. It's been like an hour for them, tops. He's probably smart enough to know that he can't help Forgath inside the dungeon, so he has to get out and the only way to go is through.
Ears just lost his Chief. He's upset and not thinking straight.
Fumbles is trying to latch onto anything that keeps his Vorpal alter-ego at the forefront. When he reverts to Fumbles, he goes incoherent and lost inside his head. MM helped him with the mustache... because Forgath taught him that not all monsters are for XP.
The Goblins party isn't fighting with Minmax because 1) he helped them get into the dungeon and escape Kore and 2) he brought Fumbles out of his walking coma.
Sleeping: They can't deal with the fatigue negatives they'll take if they don't.
As for Complains' transformation, they're too busy trying not to die and they don't have a cleric of sufficient level who can Remove Curse.

This page May 26, 2016 "Noticing What's In Your Food" sums up a lot of what's going on right now.