The Answer Post (February 2020)

Welcome to our first Answer post for this Patreon!

I may have gone a little bit overboard here, since we had more than 100 questions. I answered 32 of them below, not counting the fact that some were essentially duplicates of each another. I tried to include all the straightforward questions that I could answer with one or two sentences, just to clear them off the list, and then a few of the more open-ended “essay question” types. I’ll try to circle back to some more of those next time, and of course I’ll start a new thread where you can ask new questions in a few days.

One note: Patreon will charge you for March’s pledge on March 1st, even if you only signed up (and paid February’s pledge) within the last few days. That will only happen this initial month, though; from now on, the charges will come out on the first of every month.

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1.) Matt A Johnston: May I use Elan for my Patreon avatar?

Rich: Yes.

That was easy! We're off to a strong start.

2.) Fernando: Do you know how is it gonna end? If yes, since when?

Rich: Yes. I didn’t nail down exact scenes and transitions until working on my outline over this past hiatus, but the big questions of what’s going to happen? I think I locked that in around the time of the first crayon drawing scene in Paladin Blues.

3.) Jennifer Taylor: I'm not going to lie... this might fall under "things that haven't happened in the comic yet" but will we actually get an answer to what the thing in the darkness is?

Rich: Yes, absolutely. I have the timing written in the outline I mentioned above.

4.) Dan S: Why is Roy the only one who seems to have perspective-scaled footwear?

Rich: This is a common misconception, but Roy has never had perspective-scaled footwear. Roy began with “this is an inconsistent sloppily drawn comic because for some reason I can't remember I thought that was a good aesthetic choice” footwear, which then persisted as part of how the character looked even when I developed the style more. It just became one of the things that makes Roy look like Roy, so it stayed around.

5.) Ben Wray: What inspired the idea of mummies repeating the words said around them?

Rich: The thing to know is that the only reason the mummies were even in the story was so that I could have that single moment where one of them fell on Vaarsuvius, thus confronting them with a victim of their actions. I wanted to push that shock all the way up in impact, so it broke down V’s rational responses. I thought having the mummy verbally accuse V would accomplish that, but I didn’t really want to get into the logistics of the Draketooth’s souls and personalities and what have you—I just wanted V’s reaction. So I needed a way to get it to say, “Your fault,” without there being any meaning or intent on the mummy’s part. Parroting other characters nearby was a way to solve that problem, and lent a sort of dark humor to the situation in the process.

6.) Seth Aaron Hershman: Is there any chance V being genderqueer will be mentioned on-panel?

Rich: Not really. The reason being that V would never think of themselves in those terms—that was a word I used to describe V when discussing a scene’s real world subtext in a book commentary. But V doesn’t think about this issue at all (and in fact is annoyed by it when others bring it up), because not talking about gender is just culturally part of being an elf. They would have no reason to adopt the term as a stated identity. And if V wouldn’t use the word, no one else is in a position to put that identity on them. Except me, I can say whatever I want about V because I made them. 

7.) David Green: We've seen a lot about most characters' families. Are there plans to learn more about Belkar's?

Rich: Nope!

8.) Ewan MacLeod: When you finish OOTS, will you go back and remaster the earlier comics?

Rich: I’ve been asked this a few times, and I even went on an extended riff on the topic in the expanded commentary I wrote for the PDF edition of Dungeon Crawlin’ Fools. The short answer is, no: I would much rather move forward and create something new than spend all of my time futzing with something old, trying to make it someone’s definition of perfect. Would redoing all the old material bring me even one new reader? I don’t think it would, and almost by definition, I’d end up taking out some existing readers’ favorite parts. So it is what it is, in all its deeply flawed glory.

9.) Lawrence Madsen: Have you ever considered an animated series?

Rich: Considered? Sure. I’ve even been approached a few times by animation students and/or entrepreneurs who pitched me on grandiose visions and then backed out or just plain ghosted. It’s not a thing I’m pursuing at this time.

(Incidentally, that would probably be the only way I would consider “remastering” the old material, because adapting it to animation would necessitate all sorts of changes to begin with. Not that I expect that to ever happen.)

10.) Nick Piers: Not that the comic will be ending anytime soon, but do you have any ideas for future projects once OOTS wraps up? Some other writing ventures, perhaps?

Rich: This was I think the single most frequent question, in one form or another. I 100% fully expect to continue writing after OOTS is finished, if for no other reason than I expect food to continue to cost money. This is my job now, and I’m not so old as to be ready to retire in a few years. What form that writing takes is still uncertain. I definitely have a file folder full of ideas that I’ve had, some of which have test art (or prose) attached to them. But more often, I just have a concept written out with no clue yet whether I would develop it as a comic strip or a comic book or a novel or something else entirely. I will probably have to nail something down before OOTS is over so that I can at least tell you all, “Hey, this is my new thing,” when it ends, so don’t worry that you’re not going to hear about it.

11.) Anibal "AJ the Ronin" Delgado: Have you considered making a OotS campaign world supplement for D&D (or other games)? 

Rich: Yes, I even did some work on it as a D&D 3.5 product, but then 4th Edition was announced and I shelved it because I wasn’t sure what the market would be for 3.5 material. And then I reconsidered and decided it probably wasn’t the best idea. There’s not really anything special or unique about the OOTS world, except that OOTS takes place in it. That’s not enough to write a whole game book about. You can make any campaign world into an OOTS campaign world just by tone, and letting the players explicitly discuss their character sheets in-character. 

(Utterly Shameless Plug: I go into greater detail on this topic in the commentary for the PDF version (not the printed book) of Don’t Split the Party. I even included some snippets of art and text I had worked up.)

12.) Schaefges: Have you ever considered (after OOTS is done) putting together some parts of your book commentaries and some new material for a book on writing fantasy sagas? 

Rich: Uh, no, I have not considered that. I think you have to do something more than once before you can write a book telling other people how to do it. I am currently only an expert on writing The Order of the Stick, which is a very narrow career niche that I would prefer to avoid creating competition for.

13.) Charley Sumner: What can you share about future plans and upcoming sets of your "Monster for Every Season" minis? I use them in my D&D games and my players and I love them!

Rich: I'm glad you're enjoying them! I am just beginning to work on Summer 2 now. This stuff with the forums has sort of put me behind schedule on it, but I expect it will be out this summer. Even if that means September 20. No timetable for Autumn 2 and Winter 2; not this year, probably.

14.) Dad Bod Thor: Will the setting that you submitted to WOTC for the Fantasy Setting Search ever come to light? 

Rich: Probably not. I doubt anyone over there has even thought about it in years, and frankly the fact that it comes with the baggage of having my name on it is almost certainly enough for them to never consider doing anything official with it. Also, it’s been strip-mined for parts over the years, so I feel like if anyone saw it now, it would seem highly derivative (of things that were published after I wrote it).

15.) Matthew Baddorf: Why is your silly stick figure parody one of my favorite fantasy stories of all time?

Rich: A lack of familiarity with the genre? Keep reading other authors, I'm sure you'll find no shortage of better stuff.

16.) Tarl: Is OOTS based on a real table top game?

Rich: No. I think I cribbed maybe three or four jokes from things that happened in a game session I played, but they were entirely different characters, settings, etc. The one that I can remember off the top of my head are the jokes about Haley’s potion of glibness altering reality. Squeaky the dwarven bard is also loosely based on a character a friend of mine I knew during high school played, but only in name, appearance, and broad personality; the details of his involvement with Sigdi are my own creation.

17.) Sarah Scheffler: When you first started writing OOTS, did you think you were signing up for a 17+ year journey? How much of the plot did you have in mind when you wrote the first strip?

Rich: I had literally zero percent of the plot in mind when I wrote the first strip. In fact, I didn’t even think I was going to stick with the same characters when I wrote the first strip; I thought I was going to jump around to whatever sort of character would illustrate my oh-so-savvy jokes about D&D rules. I changed that plan before I even posted the first one, but it’s hard to fully convey the degree to which there was no roadmap whatsoever when I began this, nor in fact deep into the first hundred strips or so. (I talk a lot about the process of how I sort of accidentally fell into writing this in the commentary for the first book, if you were interested in more detail. Shameless Plug: The Sequel.)

A lot of the things that are crucial parts of the story were just random gags early on that I then had to work into a cohesive narrative without invalidating the earlier comics. One example: the reason there’s an elven pantheon is because V mentions it during the original Banjo scene. This was before I developed the entire Snarl plotline and the specific roles each pantheon was going to play in the backstory of the world. I had to retrofit the existence of the elven gods into the framework I invented later, and do so in a way that kept them separate from the unique role I needed the goblin god to play. That’s why the elven gods are described as being “sponsored” by the Western Pantheon and thus sharing their red quiddity—because if I had been planning this all from the beginning, they wouldn’t exist at all!

18.) S C: What exactly was going on in Vampire Durkon's mind when he was a thrall? Would you consider "Thrall Durkon" to be the same character as Vampire Durkon (just under magical influence to obey Malack) or was he his own thing that effectively ceased to exist when Nale slew Malack? If the former, was the childish behavior a ruse or genuine?

Rich: Durkon-as-thrall was essentially being puppeted by Malack, not the vampire spirit. Malack’s control was not direct, however; the thrall merely took on the personality that Malack wanted it to have. He thought of his vampire spawn as his children, therefore the spawn acted somewhat childish. So there wasn’t really a separate “Thrall Durkon” personality, it was just a reflection of Malack’s desires until such time as Malack died. Vampire Durkon, as we later got to know him, was inside Durkon’s mind that whole time absorbing memories but having no (or very limited) control over the body’s outside actions. 

19.) Daniel: Did you ever consider not restoring Durkon, so he would have remained as an undead for the rest of the story?

Rich: No, never once. I’m not sure what the point of doing that might have been, but it wouldn’t have helped me tell the story I was telling.

20.) Michael Curley: Are the three souls that were spliced to V when V fought the dragon from previous versions of the world?

Rich: I don’t know. Maybe? It’s a reasonable explanation, but I hesitate to declare it to be true in case it becomes important later that they not be. Certainly it was not my intent at the time.

21.) Mike Haley: Do you still map out combat scenes like Miko's rumble in the rain? Can you post these choreographies as Patreon content?

Rich: I don’t, no. In fact, I don’t think I ever did that before or since. I only planned it out at the time because I was worried that readers would be upset at how one paladin could defeat the whole party, and I hoped that by sharing explicit details, I could nip that criticism in the bud. Instead, the specific readers who didn’t like the outcome seized on inconsistencies in the explanation and criticized me for those. And then still complained about one paladin defeating the whole party anyway. What I learned, therefore, was that providing unnecessary details doesn’t change how anyone feels about the story, and I would be better served focusing on nailing the emotional truths of scenes and ignoring the mechanics.

22.) Jared Martin: Do you handle XP according to DnD rules, or is it more about moving at the speed of plot? When you had Hilgya kill Durkon an extra time, was there an element of purposefully lowering his level? Or, his level set to whatever level it needs to be for him to have access to whatever spells & consistency the plot needs?

Rich: I've never considered anything like the exact level or XP amount any character has. Everyone should consider their character sheets to have the little shrugging emoji guy where their level should be listed. Anything more detailed than that would only lead to contradictions later when I need something to happen that would conflict with what I’d previously determined. 

To answer your other question, Hilgya killed Durkon again solely because it was a.) funny, and b.) her emotional truth at that moment (referring back to the answer before this one). A completely unjustified overreaction, yes, but it was her truest in-the-moment reaction to Durkon’s really poorly conceived proposal.

23.) Lisa Artz: Do you have a home game currently?

Rich: There were a lot of variations on this question, too. The answer is no, I’m not currently playing D&D or any other roleplaying game. I haven’t been in a regular group in about ten years. In addition to the normal challenge of getting a group of middle-aged adults with disparate lives together on a recurring basis, I have this problem where it’s difficult to focus on too many ongoing stories at once. A big part of writing for me is letting my mind wander and come up with new ideas; I’m basically always keeping one track of my brain thinking about the story in the background while I do other things. When I’m running an ongoing game, I tend to think about the game when I should be thinking about OOTS or vice versa. Or I come up with a great idea for the game, and then decide that I should save that for the comic, or a future story. Because OOTS is my actual real job, it’s not great to be muddling my work time like that. One of the downsides of turning your hobby into your career is that engaging in your hobby starts to feel a lot like going to work.

But also, I’m…not great with in-person social stuff, these days. Moreso than when I was younger. And being Rich Burlew, The Guy Who Writes OOTS, means that if I were to join a gaming group not comprised of people who already know me, I would feel a lot of extra pressure to live up to everyone’s expectations. That is almost the exact opposite of how I would choose to relax, so I haven’t made any effort to seek out games even as just a player.

24.) Jasmine Lawrence: You've done some writing for the actual canonical D&D books. Do you have a favorite piece of content that you contributed to the game rules?

Rich: Well, the acid-breathing sharks are the obvious winner here, but I’m really proud of my all of sections of Dungeonscape (chapters 2, 5, and 6). I think the chapter on designing tactical dungeon encounters has been especially well-received by players. I also really liked writing the table of Mysterious Travelers for the Explorer’s Handbook. I generally enjoy challenges like that where you need to come up with a large number of varied ideas, because I find that about halfway through, I start to dig deep for concepts that wouldn’t normally occur to me. 

25.) Bobby Bobby: Since you started and even prior D&D has changed a bunch (both rules and culturally as well). What is your opinion about the game and the direction it's taking?

Rich: I don’t think I’m qualified to speak on this, to be honest. I haven’t really been paying attention. I’ve read through the Fifth Edition core rules. They seem fine. I don’t think I have it in me to get passionate about game rules anymore, one way or the other. As far as the culture, I am old and out of touch now. I know streaming shows and actual play podcasts are really popular with the kids these days, and that seems nice for everyone involved. I personally don’t really enjoy listening to other people play, though, so I haven’t engaged with any of that. (I know this will spur a lot of people to try and recommend to me a show they think I would like, but please don’t bother. My main issue is with the act of listening to a narrative story while I’m drawing, which is the only time I listen to podcasts. I tend to lose the thread of the plot whenever I need to concentrate on my art. I also don’t listen to audio fiction, for the same reason.)

26.) Duke BG: Do you consume a lot / enough (for a fitting definition of that word) of webcomics of other authors and would you say it's imperative for "good" webcomic writing? (just as reading diverse kinds of prose is kinda imperative for writing prose)

Rich: I do not consume very much webcomic writing at all. And no, I do not think you need to read a lot of webcomics, as a general concept, in order to write a webcomic. But that’s largely because “webcomics” aren’t a thing. There are comic strips, and there are comic books, and there are hybrids in-between the two (like OOTS), and all of these things are published both on paper and on the internet. It is not especially helpful, in my opinion, to read a lot of comic strips if you want to write a comic book, even if those strips are on the web. The rhythms and panel usage and everything are completely different. If you want to write a comic book, read comic books—Marvel, DC, manga, etc. And if you want to write a comic strip, read comic strips—old Calvin and Hobbes, the current Nancy, or most of the more popular strip-type webcomics.

In other words, decide what format you want to write in, and then seek out the writing closest to that format.

27.) Ubiquitous Inquisitivity: Do serious "grim-dark" style bards exist as well in the oots universe? Although Nale's complicated configuration resembled a bard, we haven't met any evil bards yet in the story. 

Rich: There is nothing grim-dark in the OOTS world, except for the purposes of mocking grim-dark things. So therefore, no, because by existing they would cease to be that serious.

On a broader note, I’ve seen a lot of comments over the years where someone wonders why they haven’t seen X, Y, or Z in the comic yet, and the answer is always the same: because I didn’t think of a good reason for it to be there. I don’t add things in to the comic as part of a checklist so that I represent every possible character. I’m telling a specific story, and if that character type doesn’t have a role in the story then they won’t be in it. Especially now; there are very, very few new characters slated to appear in this final book—even the ones that are appearing “on panel” for the first time have been referenced obliquely before. If you haven’t seen the type of character you like in the story so far, the overwhelming likelihood is that you’re not going to.

28.) Windscion: What is Elan's mother's name?

Rich: One of the most important skills to develop in appreciating media is the ability to be comfortable with ambiguity. To understand that not all the i’s need to be dotted for a story to be complete. That some facts are not necessary that the audience know in order for them to feel the truth of the story; indeed, that some facts might distract from the more essential understanding of a given character’s role. That an author might, from time to time, deliberately avoid even deciding on the details of some facts, and that once he or she has made that choice, it would be counterproductive to his or her aims to subsequently invent and reveal it extratextually. 

Shorter: I didn't give her a name on purpose.

29.) Alex Fahnestalk: Will it ever be revealed how Tarquin and Elan's mother managed to get married and have children together? I'm re-reading BitF and a line from Utterly Dwarfed stuck out to me too, about how it was an unresolved plot point. 

Rich: Is it something that I could potentially depict someday, probably in a side story? Sure. But I don’t consider this an unresolved plot point at all. People who are terrible for each other get married every single day—especially when they are young and physically attractive—and then regret it later. I don’t feel that it’s something that necessarily demands a more specific on-panel answer than that. If it really mattered to the plot, I would have found a way to squeeze it in as a flashback during the Tarquin arc. 

30.) Jamey MacIsaac: How do you manage pacing and timing of the story (and the humour) in such small pieces over so long a time? I write a lot in my spare time, and I find even in short fiction, it's hard to manage pacing when it's so much faster to read something than it is to write it, and I don't have even to draw anything, or post bits of it as I go.

Rich: Have you ever read the Spider-Man comic strip? I’m not talking about the monthly books, I mean the daily comic strip that was published in the newspaper every day for years. (You could probably substitute any of the other old school “dramatic” comic strips like, I don’t know, Mary Worth, but Spider-Man is the one I’m familiar with, so that’s my example.) The majority of those strips have exactly three panels. The first panel has to remind the reader what happened at the end of the last strip, because maybe they didn’t buy the paper yesterday. The last panel has to be a cliffhanger or other type of reveal that leads into the next strip, to make sure they buy the paper tomorrow. Only the middle panel actually advances the story. Once a week, you get slightly more middle panels (and color).

That’s how I write OOTS. The first panel of every strip continues on from the previous one, or establishes the scene if it’s a scene change. The last panel has what I usually call an “oomph.” A punchline or a reveal or a cliffhanger. Something funny or shocking or both. All the middle stuff, that’s the story. That’s where the character work and plot exposition and everything else happens. If you ever wondered why sometimes the comic is randomly two or three pages long, it’s because I got to a point where I didn’t want to stop in the middle to deliver an oomph—I wanted to get the whole moment out at once, often because it would be fairly obvious where it was headed if everyone had a week to think about it.

Furthermore, every single strip has a specific reason for existing—a piece of the overall puzzle that it can only contribute in those middle panels. Often, it’s a fact that must be put out in the open so that later, during an action scene, readers aren't asking why such-and-such isn’t happening. (I mean, some of them are going to ask anyway, but at least someone else can link the earlier strip for them.) Sometimes, it's necessary to show a character having certain reactions because they’re on a specific emotional journey and it needs to make sense when they get to the destination later. 

And often, it’s not obvious to the reader at the time what that important reason for each strip existing is, because I’m deliberately obfuscating its significance. Think of the conversation over tea between Malack and Durkon where Durkon talks about Hel for the first time. It provided the character work of giving those two a friendly relationship but it also was absolutely crucial for setting up Hel’s appearance at the end of the book. 

The nice thing about the Spider-Man Comic Method is that it’s also a good way to write scenes. And chapters. And whole books. It’s a bit of a fractal, really. You identify what the important part of the scene is and then you work out in both directions to figure out how to lead into that moment and then back out into the next scene. The real trick is breaking down your whole story into all its component pieces so you can build a strip (or scene, or chapter) around each one.

31.) Juni: Who is your favorite character to write? Whose arc has (thus-far) been the most satisfying to write?

Rich: OK, first I’m going to give you the cop-out answer, and then the straightforward answer.

My favorite character to write is whichever one I’m focusing on at the moment. I wouldn’t make my protagonists be the way they are if I didn’t like them on some level, and the more time I spend with each one, the more I appreciate their individual natures. So the most satisfying arc to write was Durkon’s, except that before that it was Elan’s. I don’t know, it’s just hard for me to think in terms of favorites when they’re all part of me.

But the most fun I’ve had writing a character in a long time was actually Zhou Bo, the sidekick from O-Chul’s prequel story in Good Deeds Gone Unpunished. I got to create an entirely new personality and then tell jokes with her for a hundred pages (some of which I still laugh at while rereading them) while still giving her an actual character arc that came to a solid conclusion. So she earned a special place in my heart.

32.) Petar Tasev: Was there something in your work that you paid special attention to/worked hard, thought it was really cool or awesome, but the reception was totally different than what you thought it would be - maybe the audience ignored or hated it. I know you don't have time to measure audience reactions, but I'm curious about your impression. As an artist I often see people liking something I thought wasn't that good, and vice-versa. Maybe there was a throw-away character that became really popular?

Rich: To some degree, every single thing I put in the comic gets at least one reaction that I could not possibly have predicted. Often, my wife and I try to guess what the most out-there reaction to a given strip is going to be before I post it, and inevitably it ends up being so much further afield than either of us could ever have seen coming.

On a more concrete level, I’ve talked before about how there were huge amounts of ill will among fans toward both Miko and Celia when they were active concerns. Looking back now, I have theories about why those two women, in particular, generated that specific reaction when, say, Lord Shojo did not—but at the time I was just surprised. What I’ve learned over the years is that you can’t be responsible for every reaction of every audience member, and that a lot of times their reaction is based on things that are tied up with whatever they have going on in their own life and have nothing to do with you. So I don’t worry if some people hate something I do, or even if large numbers of people hate it. I worry about whether there are still people out there who love it. If there are enough of them reading it enthusiastically and loving what I’m doing, then that’s enough for me.

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And that’s it! Thanks to everyone who asked a question, even if I didn’t get to it. If you want to ask a follow-up question, please wait for the March question thread. (If you ask in the comments here, I can’t guarantee I will see it or respond.)