Cute one, too. I hope Urzal fancies horns and scales.
Also, I wonder exactly what he did to that DM. Until established otherwise, my unshakable belief is that she got a lungful of the same pipeweed he’s smoking, only she hasn’t got quite his tolerance for the stuff.
"Like, have you ever looked at your fingertalon thingies? I mean, really LOOKED at your fingertalon thingies?"
It looks like a cloud of smoke or gas, so maybe poisonous fog? (Green dragons in DnD exhale chlorine gas so it might be similar here) or perhaps it’s a non-lethal breath weapon? (again, in DnD brass dragons can exhale a cone of sleeping gas).
Also, usual disclaimer. I know Rich’s world doesn’t run on DnD rules, but I believe it is an inspiration so might help with theories and conjecture 😛
While I’m often quick to jump down the throats of people who try to pigeonhole my world into D&D rules, the truth that I have to admit is that it is very heavily inspired by D&D, so you are not wrong to make these guesses.
What I don’t do is use the rulebooks to dictate my stories or situations. Nor do I feel bound by them. I don’t actually consult anything but my imagination to write and draw the comic strip.
But they are often in my mind because I do still run and play the game. (Mostly 2e, but also 5e occasionally).
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to pigeonhole I or anything, DnD tends to be my baseline for things like this, despite my reading of YAFGC predating my interest in DnD and was one of the main reasons I got into it.
Hah! Sweet. Of that I am proud. D&D is a most wonderful hobby. It’s been great being able to tell my son with complete honesty, when he’d been cowering in his bed afraid of monsters in the darkness; "Don’t worry, Alex. I’ve killed many monsters in my time, I know how to take out ghouls and ghosts and I’ve even felled a couple of dragons! I’ve got my sword, ‘Courage’ nearby and the longbow is just downstairs. Between your mother and I, nothing is going to DARE threaten our kids."
I cut my rpg teeth on 1e and lost my baby teeth to 2e, where the "rules" were explicitly stated to be guidelines, so those are my reference by being imprinted. Even moreso, I understood the DM may change things for various reasons, so the DM is God for that game. Made it much more interesting for the other DMs and those who had memorized the books that were playing. 🙂
Plus I’ve read so much fantasy based on other systems or general, that I expect but don’t demand differences.
You, on the other hand, are one of the exceptional storytellers so that I never know what to expect, bringing original ideas and twists and viewpoints and… (Continues fangirling) And considering the sheer number of works that have covered similar topics, I’d think it’s very hard to not be even accidentally derivative. So I agree with Kogan that it’s your fault, that I spend so much time savoring this site.
And the rest of you original, funny, thought-provoking peanut-throwers don’t help the situation!
Oh definitely, I got started in 3.5e, but have been playing mostly 5e recently. It’s a lot easier to pick up, to the point I was able to get my wife interested in playing too. Turns out, she’s much more creative and competitive than I am. Always surprising me with the stuff she comes up with.
Bronze dragons also have a cloud of repulsion gas, and the Mistress was pretty thoroughly repelled. Another dragon (Iron?) breathes an incendiary cloud, and a linnorm has freezing fog (hate those guys).
Basically, there’s enough options you can use anything. And most DMs just use a fire-breathing red. Boring.
It’s worse when another book series or movies or something will go out of their way to create a ton of dragon types and they’re all fire-breathers. On the other hand, how much can people get away with? The chromatic = breath weapon thing is very strongly associated with D&D.
Actually, NR, Dragonlance kind of sucks for dragons, both in size and danger level, plus choice. It’s kind of hard to tell since our census takers keep getting eaten, but best guess is that there’s close to 100 varieties of dragons. Metallic, chromatic, lungs, linnorms, gems, planar and more (like the zmei from Slavic mythology). Although oddly none that are elemental, paraelemental or quasielemental.
My favorites might be the gem types that spit out an exploding cough drop. Look them up.
If given the chance, read Richard knaak’s Dragon Realm series- amazing, has a wide variety of dragon types, including iron but I won’t give others away. He also wrote Kaz the Minotaur for Dragonlance world, which I expected to be more strip-mining for stories, but made me love the character
They really aren't the same thing mechanically, half-dragons in 3.5 are *significantly* more powerful than 5e dragonborn. In 5e they are weak enough to be a standard player race.
I love, I mean just adore, the dust/smoke in the background.
Not only does it maintain a constant sense of the fury and confusion of War, but it enables tiny little pocket stories like this one, between a small number of combatants.
And I bet Rich doesn’t mind not having to draw tonnes of fighting people in the background every panel, either.
Oh, and Urzal? Battlefields are always littered with sharp weapons and jagged shrapnel, and in extreme cases, even lego blocks or d4s. I know you’re a perfectly typical halfling girl and all, but MAYBE think about a pair of boots?
A nice suggestion, but…
We halflings are known for our armor class in themselves soles.
For example:
+10 vs pebbles & rocks
+ 5 vs d4
+4 vs all other dice & legos
+3 vs tacks
0 vs glass
-15 vs lava (but that’s a given)
Seriously that would make his mum even COOLER. "Is there anything you haven’t bedded, mum?" "Dragon? No wait there was that fling while Glitterbranch was off at the Elvish council. I didn’t find out until way later when your brother was born of course, with dragons being shapeshifters and all."
After the last page’s new arrivals, I’m just waiting for someone (Glon, maybe?) to scream, "Dogpile!" in a Peanuts-esque fashion, as every living thing on the planet jumps on Ranna. 😀
Interestingly a lot of aspects of YAFGC (the twin goddesses, the map of Falania, some of the specific settings) are adapted from a campaign I ran some years before I started YAFGC. Saved me a lot of time. In fact before YAFGC came along I actually wrote it up and tried to submit it as a possible AD&D published setting for a contest. Unfortunately I sent it with inadequate postage and it came back just to me just as the contest deadline happened.
Man that would’ve been awesome. Just thinking of the maps for Black Mountain makes me excited. I’ve always been curious as to the layout for everyones territory. It’s always a headache to try and design underground cities visually and I haven’t figured out a way that wouldn’t just be a map of every single level/floor of the place.
I love the way he draws goblins and hobgoblins, they’re so cute… not the bugbears though, good god not the bugbears. I have a very strict policy on hairy woman, 1) they can’t be hairier than me, 2) if they are gonna be hairier than me then it must at least be thick and soft like a werewolf or something. YAFGC bugbears look very scraggly and I imagine it being very coarse, like a toothbrush. he did a good job making them utterly repulsive.
I’ve got a scheme for fantasy race breeding that I picked up from a Dragon Magazine article years ago and have expanded upon for my world.
In the case of the Goblins, they don’t hybridize, they produce one of the three classics depending on parentage and statistics.
Goblins + Goblins = Goblins.
Hobgoblins + Hobgoblins = Hobgoblins.
Hobgoblins + Goblins = 75% Goblins or 25% Hobgoblins.
Bugbears + Bugbears = Bugbears
Bugbears + Hobgoblins = 90% Hobgoblins or 10% Bugbears.
Bugbears + Goblins = 70% Goblins, 20%Hobgoblins or 10% Bugbears.
I’ve got similar schemes for Humans+Halflings, Gnolls+Aardgnolls+Flinds and others.
I’d expect a considerable number of bugbears to frown at those who marry goblins or hobgoblins, then, seeing how there’s only a 10% chance of a bugbear child in such pairings.
Exactly right! Bugbear to Hobgoblin is marrying down. Bugbear to Goblin is positively scandalous. On the other hand, Bugbears are pretty rare and as they’re a randy lot, they slum it more often then they’ll admit.
Hobgoblins of course aspire to marry up to a Bugbear and to be blessed with Bugbear children is an honour.
Goblins to Hobgoblins is a social promotion for the Goblin.
As you can imagine, sometimes there are recessive genes hidden away in there and you might get a throwback to a line…. y’know a bulky, unusually tall Goblin might suspect he’s got Bugbear blood in his past somewhere. It’d be like finding out you’re distantly related to royalty.
See the monsters can make fascinating playable characters.
Somewhat Urzal just reminded me all those wanna-be-adventurers, who just didn’t make it. Perhaps, because she was close to join them…
I don’t know whether it was intentional, but this script shows very well, that the gang picked quite a big adventure for their first try.
Pick up your copies of YAFGC Volumes 1 - 5 at our online store. Multi-book bundles and sketch editions available.
Ooh, don’t think we’ve seen one of them before. Half-dragon?
Cute one, too. I hope Urzal fancies horns and scales.
Also, I wonder exactly what he did to that DM. Until established otherwise, my unshakable belief is that she got a lungful of the same pipeweed he’s smoking, only she hasn’t got quite his tolerance for the stuff.
"Like, have you ever looked at your fingertalon thingies? I mean, really LOOKED at your fingertalon thingies?"
It looks like a cloud of smoke or gas, so maybe poisonous fog? (Green dragons in DnD exhale chlorine gas so it might be similar here) or perhaps it’s a non-lethal breath weapon? (again, in DnD brass dragons can exhale a cone of sleeping gas).
Also, usual disclaimer. I know Rich’s world doesn’t run on DnD rules, but I believe it is an inspiration so might help with theories and conjecture 😛
While I’m often quick to jump down the throats of people who try to pigeonhole my world into D&D rules, the truth that I have to admit is that it is very heavily inspired by D&D, so you are not wrong to make these guesses.
What I don’t do is use the rulebooks to dictate my stories or situations. Nor do I feel bound by them. I don’t actually consult anything but my imagination to write and draw the comic strip.
But they are often in my mind because I do still run and play the game. (Mostly 2e, but also 5e occasionally).
Yeah, I wasn’t trying to pigeonhole I or anything, DnD tends to be my baseline for things like this, despite my reading of YAFGC predating my interest in DnD and was one of the main reasons I got into it.
So really it’s your fault 😛
Hah! Sweet. Of that I am proud. D&D is a most wonderful hobby. It’s been great being able to tell my son with complete honesty, when he’d been cowering in his bed afraid of monsters in the darkness; "Don’t worry, Alex. I’ve killed many monsters in my time, I know how to take out ghouls and ghosts and I’ve even felled a couple of dragons! I’ve got my sword, ‘Courage’ nearby and the longbow is just downstairs. Between your mother and I, nothing is going to DARE threaten our kids."
I cut my rpg teeth on 1e and lost my baby teeth to 2e, where the "rules" were explicitly stated to be guidelines, so those are my reference by being imprinted. Even moreso, I understood the DM may change things for various reasons, so the DM is God for that game. Made it much more interesting for the other DMs and those who had memorized the books that were playing. 🙂
Plus I’ve read so much fantasy based on other systems or general, that I expect but don’t demand differences.
You, on the other hand, are one of the exceptional storytellers so that I never know what to expect, bringing original ideas and twists and viewpoints and… (Continues fangirling) And considering the sheer number of works that have covered similar topics, I’d think it’s very hard to not be even accidentally derivative. So I agree with Kogan that it’s your fault, that I spend so much time savoring this site.
And the rest of you original, funny, thought-provoking peanut-throwers don’t help the situation!
Hee… fangirling for me? (blush) Thanks for the kind words! And yeah, we’ve got an amazing group here, happy to have you among us!
Oh definitely, I got started in 3.5e, but have been playing mostly 5e recently. It’s a lot easier to pick up, to the point I was able to get my wife interested in playing too. Turns out, she’s much more creative and competitive than I am. Always surprising me with the stuff she comes up with.
Bronze dragons also have a cloud of repulsion gas, and the Mistress was pretty thoroughly repelled. Another dragon (Iron?) breathes an incendiary cloud, and a linnorm has freezing fog (hate those guys).
Basically, there’s enough options you can use anything. And most DMs just use a fire-breathing red. Boring.
It’s worse when another book series or movies or something will go out of their way to create a ton of dragon types and they’re all fire-breathers. On the other hand, how much can people get away with? The chromatic = breath weapon thing is very strongly associated with D&D.
Most dragons I am familiar with, are from Dragonlance, which has Copper and Bronze, haven’t heard of Iron Dragons before
Completely agree that using the bog-standard fire-breathing dragons only gets boring (unless that is what the story and situation requires)
Speaking about color, if the comics will be in color, we might have another clue, but like this it’s really open wide.
Actually, NR, Dragonlance kind of sucks for dragons, both in size and danger level, plus choice. It’s kind of hard to tell since our census takers keep getting eaten, but best guess is that there’s close to 100 varieties of dragons. Metallic, chromatic, lungs, linnorms, gems, planar and more (like the zmei from Slavic mythology). Although oddly none that are elemental, paraelemental or quasielemental.
My favorites might be the gem types that spit out an exploding cough drop. Look them up.
Iron Dragons breath out a cloud of fiery sparks. I’ve always like the Fang Dragon, the only dragon without a breath weapon.
If given the chance, read Richard knaak’s Dragon Realm series- amazing, has a wide variety of dragon types, including iron but I won’t give others away. He also wrote Kaz the Minotaur for Dragonlance world, which I expected to be more strip-mining for stories, but made me love the character
He is a Silver Half Dragon, and he just breathed a cone of cold 🙂
Isn’t it the White Dragon’s that breath cone of cold?
And she doesn’t look frozen to me
Okay, after looking it up, Silver and White both have Icy Breath (but… which one of them had the minty fresh breath?)
On first glance I thought it was a tiefling. But according to the name in the character list it might indeed rather be some kind of dragonkin.
In 5e they are called Dragonborn but mecanicly its the same thing as what used to be called a half dragon except no wings
They really aren't the same thing mechanically, half-dragons in 3.5 are *significantly* more powerful than 5e dragonborn. In 5e they are weak enough to be a standard player race.
The ONLY time ANY girl’s ever been grateful to be near a handsome guy with BAD breath!
A new & unique character has just come on stage? Curiosity piqued!
And a possible love-interest for Urzal 😀
Love on the Battlefield 🙂
He’s actually from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A7cWC9Axu5MhPARkAFCTfvEuH_aWZJ8J/view
Neat.
Is this guy an existing character from the Slissyverse, or a setting-free example of the half-dragon mechanics at work?
The weirdest things come out of massive battles
YAYAFGCS (yet another YAFGC ship). I am happy!
Urzalen? Or Vezal?
Urzal would be thinking, "Who’s this hot hunk who just saved me?".
Saved?
"Hey, I had this totally under control. I was squeezing my eyes shut to…to focus my chai. I mean chi. Quai?"
It’s qi although the Americans spell it as chi.
I bet halflings do say ‘chai’, though.
"If it’s not tasty, why would we even be mentioning it?"
Well if you are interested: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A7cWC9Axu5MhPARkAFCTfvEuH_aWZJ8J/view
Love at first sight?
I love, I mean just adore, the dust/smoke in the background.
Not only does it maintain a constant sense of the fury and confusion of War, but it enables tiny little pocket stories like this one, between a small number of combatants.
And I bet Rich doesn’t mind not having to draw tonnes of fighting people in the background every panel, either.
t!
Yeeeeahhh… I like the dust clouds for that very reason myself. 🙂
Oh, and Urzal? Battlefields are always littered with sharp weapons and jagged shrapnel, and in extreme cases, even lego blocks or d4s. I know you’re a perfectly typical halfling girl and all, but MAYBE think about a pair of boots?
A nice suggestion, but…
We halflings are known for our armor class in themselves soles.
For example:
+10 vs pebbles & rocks
+ 5 vs d4
+4 vs all other dice & legos
+3 vs tacks
0 vs glass
-15 vs lava (but that’s a given)
"themselves soles"?’
the coffee be weak this morning
"in just their soles" is what I meant.
There really needs to be an edit button LOL
Ooooh, a new character! And he looks sorta familiar. Character design coincidence or perhaps a relative of someone we know?
OMG – not ANOTHER half-sibling of Cadugan o.O
Seriously that would make his mum even COOLER. "Is there anything you haven’t bedded, mum?" "Dragon? No wait there was that fling while Glitterbranch was off at the Elvish council. I didn’t find out until way later when your brother was born of course, with dragons being shapeshifters and all."
I would find that hilarious. 🙂 And somewhat not at all surprising…
After the last page’s new arrivals, I’m just waiting for someone (Glon, maybe?) to scream, "Dogpile!" in a Peanuts-esque fashion, as every living thing on the planet jumps on Ranna. 😀
Man. Rich should write up a campaign setting for his world pre-Ranna. I’d love to run a monster game in the Black Mountain…
Interestingly a lot of aspects of YAFGC (the twin goddesses, the map of Falania, some of the specific settings) are adapted from a campaign I ran some years before I started YAFGC. Saved me a lot of time. In fact before YAFGC came along I actually wrote it up and tried to submit it as a possible AD&D published setting for a contest. Unfortunately I sent it with inadequate postage and it came back just to me just as the contest deadline happened.
Man that would’ve been awesome. Just thinking of the maps for Black Mountain makes me excited. I’ve always been curious as to the layout for everyones territory. It’s always a headache to try and design underground cities visually and I haven’t figured out a way that wouldn’t just be a map of every single level/floor of the place.
I love the way he draws goblins and hobgoblins, they’re so cute… not the bugbears though, good god not the bugbears. I have a very strict policy on hairy woman, 1) they can’t be hairier than me, 2) if they are gonna be hairier than me then it must at least be thick and soft like a werewolf or something. YAFGC bugbears look very scraggly and I imagine it being very coarse, like a toothbrush. he did a good job making them utterly repulsive.
You saying Hogga is repulsive?
Hogga is a Hobgoblin.
Yeah, realised too late 🙁
So, do hobgoblin and bugbear pairings result in hobgoblin children? Or was the bugbear King’s sister not Hogga’s biological mother?
Or it can go either way, and Hogga got lucky. I mean, imagine her as a bugbear… brrr…
I’ve got a scheme for fantasy race breeding that I picked up from a Dragon Magazine article years ago and have expanded upon for my world.
In the case of the Goblins, they don’t hybridize, they produce one of the three classics depending on parentage and statistics.
Goblins + Goblins = Goblins.
Hobgoblins + Hobgoblins = Hobgoblins.
Hobgoblins + Goblins = 75% Goblins or 25% Hobgoblins.
Bugbears + Bugbears = Bugbears
Bugbears + Hobgoblins = 90% Hobgoblins or 10% Bugbears.
Bugbears + Goblins = 70% Goblins, 20%Hobgoblins or 10% Bugbears.
I’ve got similar schemes for Humans+Halflings, Gnolls+Aardgnolls+Flinds and others.
Ooohhh! That’s really interesting and cool!
I’d expect a considerable number of bugbears to frown at those who marry goblins or hobgoblins, then, seeing how there’s only a 10% chance of a bugbear child in such pairings.
Exactly right! Bugbear to Hobgoblin is marrying down. Bugbear to Goblin is positively scandalous. On the other hand, Bugbears are pretty rare and as they’re a randy lot, they slum it more often then they’ll admit.
Hobgoblins of course aspire to marry up to a Bugbear and to be blessed with Bugbear children is an honour.
Goblins to Hobgoblins is a social promotion for the Goblin.
As you can imagine, sometimes there are recessive genes hidden away in there and you might get a throwback to a line…. y’know a bulky, unusually tall Goblin might suspect he’s got Bugbear blood in his past somewhere. It’d be like finding out you’re distantly related to royalty.
See the monsters can make fascinating playable characters.
Oooh, I like new guys design.
His look and playful nature reminds me of Pan.
Somewhat Urzal just reminded me all those wanna-be-adventurers, who just didn’t make it. Perhaps, because she was close to join them…
I don’t know whether it was intentional, but this script shows very well, that the gang picked quite a big adventure for their first try.
They did, but setting out to punch above your weight class is a time-honored tradition for hobbits…
Could just be me but she kinda looks like Glon in drag from the who gnoll arc thingy way back.
She does share a lot of Glon’s characteristics, being a Half-Orc and all. 🙂