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Dungeons and Dragons Comics
Aug. 3rd, 2015 08:48 pmI had actually been looking at somebody’s incomplete collection of late-80s AD&D comics at a yard sale a month or two ago; but eventually opted not to buy them because we don’t really have the space to store comics I’m likely to read once and be underwhelmed by. When DriveThruComics sent me an email noting that they had added them for sale as pdfs, that seemed a reasonable use of my money.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Classics, Volume 1 - A “reprint” of the first eight issues originally published in 1989, using rules from the then-current second edition of the system. (…Though it gets at least a few of them wrong, and one character spends four issues casting spells that have never existed in any version of the system.) It does feel appropriate to the themes of a game, or at least what an aspiring GM would want the game to be like. (A more accurate representation would involve more depictions of the minutia of combat and more intra-party bickering; in both cases it’s a good change.) The second storyline is a lot lighter than the first, centering around the ghost of a jester and (as one might expect) eventually devolving into slapstick.
The give you game stats for various characters and monsters at the end of each issue.
As a random observation, my dad’s old pal Barbara Kesel was the editor on these. (The original DC masthead is removed, presumably for copyright reasons, but I suspect that my dad was listed on that in the original printing.)
I mean, when I take a step back from the nostalgia value (AD&D 2E was my very first gaming system), these are fairly standard media tie-in fantasy comics. But never let it be said that nostalgia couldn’t drive my approval.
Dungeons & Dragons Volume 1: Shadowplague - These are the new comics produced recently by IDW. They’re fun. The banter is witty, and though the plots aren’t anything amazing or particularly new, they take a fun enough approach to them that I don’t mind. (They are specifically going for “fun” rather than “dark and gritty”, which I think has been common to 4E material and I love that.)
It’s clearly using 4th Edition classes/races/cosmology, and as close to the rules as one can get and still have comic stories work. At the end of the pdf, they provide an adventure module for the story you just read, so you can run it yourself.
I rather enjoyed these, both from my appreciation of 4E in general and because they’re well-written.
Dark Sun Volume 1: Ianto’s Tomb - This feels more like a general tie-in somehow, though I’m not entirely sure how to articulate that. They’re less straightforward with what characters are actually doing or with giving backstory (they seem to just assume you’ve read the corebook). The characters are also unlikely allies thrown together by circumstances, rather than any sort of established adventuring party. Dark Sun is not a pleasant setting, but despite giving game stats for the characters being in the epic tier, it’s a very ground-level, “heroic tier” style of adventure. A 25th-level character should be the equivalent of the Prism Pentad protagonists who drove the Dark Sun metaplot back in 2E.
For the record, I’m okay with them simplifying the backstory of Athas in 4E (basically dropping the Blue Age entirely and removing a few other complications), but I’d love to see more meta/world-shaping stories in the new cosmology.
Rat Queens Volume 1 - This isn’t officially-licensed as a D&D comic, but it might as well be. More tongue-in-cheek than most but still obeying the standard tabletop rpg tropes, it follows the adventures of an all-female adventuring party with an assortment of absurd quirks and foibles. There’s plenty of bloody violence, if you like that sort of thing; and also drinking, carousing and “adult situations.”
This is one I’ll definitely be on the lookout for volume 2 of.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Classics, Volume 1 - A “reprint” of the first eight issues originally published in 1989, using rules from the then-current second edition of the system. (…Though it gets at least a few of them wrong, and one character spends four issues casting spells that have never existed in any version of the system.) It does feel appropriate to the themes of a game, or at least what an aspiring GM would want the game to be like. (A more accurate representation would involve more depictions of the minutia of combat and more intra-party bickering; in both cases it’s a good change.) The second storyline is a lot lighter than the first, centering around the ghost of a jester and (as one might expect) eventually devolving into slapstick.
The give you game stats for various characters and monsters at the end of each issue.
As a random observation, my dad’s old pal Barbara Kesel was the editor on these. (The original DC masthead is removed, presumably for copyright reasons, but I suspect that my dad was listed on that in the original printing.)
I mean, when I take a step back from the nostalgia value (AD&D 2E was my very first gaming system), these are fairly standard media tie-in fantasy comics. But never let it be said that nostalgia couldn’t drive my approval.
Dungeons & Dragons Volume 1: Shadowplague - These are the new comics produced recently by IDW. They’re fun. The banter is witty, and though the plots aren’t anything amazing or particularly new, they take a fun enough approach to them that I don’t mind. (They are specifically going for “fun” rather than “dark and gritty”, which I think has been common to 4E material and I love that.)
It’s clearly using 4th Edition classes/races/cosmology, and as close to the rules as one can get and still have comic stories work. At the end of the pdf, they provide an adventure module for the story you just read, so you can run it yourself.
I rather enjoyed these, both from my appreciation of 4E in general and because they’re well-written.
Dark Sun Volume 1: Ianto’s Tomb - This feels more like a general tie-in somehow, though I’m not entirely sure how to articulate that. They’re less straightforward with what characters are actually doing or with giving backstory (they seem to just assume you’ve read the corebook). The characters are also unlikely allies thrown together by circumstances, rather than any sort of established adventuring party. Dark Sun is not a pleasant setting, but despite giving game stats for the characters being in the epic tier, it’s a very ground-level, “heroic tier” style of adventure. A 25th-level character should be the equivalent of the Prism Pentad protagonists who drove the Dark Sun metaplot back in 2E.
For the record, I’m okay with them simplifying the backstory of Athas in 4E (basically dropping the Blue Age entirely and removing a few other complications), but I’d love to see more meta/world-shaping stories in the new cosmology.
Rat Queens Volume 1 - This isn’t officially-licensed as a D&D comic, but it might as well be. More tongue-in-cheek than most but still obeying the standard tabletop rpg tropes, it follows the adventures of an all-female adventuring party with an assortment of absurd quirks and foibles. There’s plenty of bloody violence, if you like that sort of thing; and also drinking, carousing and “adult situations.”
This is one I’ll definitely be on the lookout for volume 2 of.
