19 June 2009

Darths and Droids

Fibonacci showed me this comic a while back, and it didn't catch my interest. Then he showed it to me again recently, and either it was on a better segment or I was in a different sort of mood, because I then went back and raced through the entire archive.

The comic is called Darths and Droids. The premise is that the Star Wars prequels are in fact RPG's, and that the players are not even trying to cooperate with what the GM has planned. Jar Jar, btw, is played by a young, easily bored girl, who has a tendency to invent stuff at random. The truly bizarre, or possibly impressive, thing is that the movies make a heckuva lot more sense this way. I mean, the plot of the prequels, is, well... um... Basically, you can tell that they knew they needed to get from X to Y to Z, and rather than try to make this make sense, threw in anything that they thought might be cool and/or help sell merchandise. Turning it into an RPG with uncooperative players, though, makes the whole thing work. Especially Summon Bigger Fish. Just be careful how you use it. ^/^

Oh, I should point out that the commentary is at least as entertaining as the comic. They're currently somewhere in the middle of whatever Episode II was called. Random rant: what happened to George Lucas' naming ability between IV, V, VI and I, II, III? The Phantom Menace? Attack of the Clones? Revenge of the Sith is semi-decent, but still... Seriously, "The Dark Side Lurks" is better than "Phantom Menace," and it's still pretty pathetic.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I saw Episode I and checked out. Everyone thought Lucas was doing Joseph Campbell when he was actually doing Flash Gordon. Or was it American Graffiti?

Qalmlea said...

Yeah, I crossed my fingers and hoped that Eps. II and III would be better. They were. Marginally. To be honest, I had no real desire to see them ever again until I started going through the comic. Now I think it might be fun to rewatch them, thinking of them as an RPG gone wrong.

John said...

Darths and Droids is good, but I liked DM of the Rings better. Both bring back fond memories of paper-and-dice gaming, but I am more of a fantasy geek than a Star Wars geek.

Qalmlea said...

I guess I tend to think of Star Wars as being closer to fantasy than to sci-fi. Yes there are hyperdrives and lightsabers and blasters, but you could easily map the entire system onto a single planet with sailboats, swords and guns. With the Force as the magical system, of course.

John said...

That's true. I meant that I'm more into sword-and-sorcery fantasy than space fantasy.