Hello,

So, I think personally the jury is still out for me on what I think of the first Trollbabe story. However, I have been showing the strip to a few people to see what other's think of it. Now, admittedly this is a very small handful of people but I've noticed some commonality in their reactions and I thought I'd share.

1) More than one person has automatically jumped to the conclusion that Retta must hold a prominent position on the ship since she can just walk around freely without having to row or attend some other duty.

2) Some women have found the fact that Retta just readily jumps into bed with an obvious lunatic a bit "offensive."

3) Almost everyone says the story falls apart where Retta sleeps though an entire ship being slaughtered, and when further questioned concerning the roleplaying context they have stated they would never allow a GM to "get away" with just skipping to everyone being dead like that because there's no way any one could sleep though an event like that.

4) Most people want to know why Retta killed Eskindar instead of just incapacitating him until she could get more information.

5) I had one person just shrug and say, "Well, it doesn't matter now anyways." When I asked what he meant he said, "Do you have any idea how low the survival rate of ships dead in the water are TODAY with all our modern technology? There's no WAY Retta survives being stranded in a boat like that out at sea with no crew to pilot it."

Just some observations from the peanut gallery. Still not sure what I think.

Jesse

Hey Jesse,

Can you clarify which comments/reactions in your post were made by non-gamers?

Paul

Hey Paul,

Ah, I haven't shown Trollbabe to any non-gamers. These are all gamer comments, and again, a VERY small number of gamers.

Jesse

Hi Jesse,

No surprise there. I'll bet a patootie that they were under the impression that the story is an example of play.

Gotta say, man, I'd sure hate to see a movie with folks of this ilk ...

Also, I'm having a hard time imagining a story that's (a) demonstrably inoffensive and (b) interesting to the slightest degree.

Best,
Ron

Hey Jesse,

The reason I asked, is because to me the comments all betrayed gamer style thinking, critical inspection of causality and treatment of the material as a representation of the output of gameplay interactions. Now you got me real curious to see comments from non-gamers who come to it from the perspective that it's a story.

Paul

I would say that its a fine example of the lost art of spinning a yarn. It doesn't make for a good story (because even in a story as opposed to a game the causality is all out of whack) but its a great tale. By this I mean the same sort of thing as Hansel and Gretel and the trail of bread crumbs. Come on...breadcrumbs? Who in their right mind would ever mark a trail like that? But it works in the same way as oral traditions worked. It has a mythical, legendary kind of feel to it, the way old stories did when they weren't concerned with all the miscellaney.

What I find interesting about 3) is that folks assume she WASN'T possesed by the ancient foe and thus didn't do the killin' herself. I, personally, assume she was and did - this Eskindar bloke seems much more reliable than some half-human, horn-crowned who- , er, adventuress.

Though she does wield TWO hand-axes . . . :-)

Seriously, I personally think the comic was kinda neat, even though there's just not much there. In general, I like a little more meat on a story, and I never did get into comics. So I'm left with a bit of a "shrug" reaction, but there was enough to keep me reading. And I'll read the next one, too.

Gordon

I'm surprised that none of them said that they would've known that he was up to something and subdued him when they first met him because he was obviously an important NPC and therefore the GM's tool for conflict.

It's reactions like these that reinforce my belief that most gamers don't want anything more than some orcs to kill and a magic weapon with which to do it.

I agree with Ron--I hate watching movies with people like that. ("Hey! How did Roy Batty know the other replicants were dead? We never saw a scene in which he found out!")

1) I don't remember the story saying one way or the other. Maybe she was an important member of the crew. Maybe she was captain. Or maybe she was hitching a ride. Was it important to the story one way or the other?

2) On behalf of obvious lunatics everywhere: Hey! Besides, at that point, I didn't see him as an obvious lunatic so much as a moody, haunted bard. And as well all know, moody musicians get laid all the frickin' time.

3) No chance of sleeping through that? After a bout of intense, moody sex? Of course you'd sleep through that! I would. Besides, who said the slaughtering made any noise? In any event, it's a bloody Bang! (I really don't like gaming with people who have to have every second accounted for & every action "on-screen.")

4) Oh, lord. That's like the session of Sean Demory's Adventure game where the PCs interrogated the bad guys for hours, rather than doing the pulp thing of asking a few pointed questions & then letting them go. (Or punching them out & walking away.) That's not narrative-oriented, that's dungeon-crawl oriented, in the worst sense of the term.

5) Oy vey.

Gordon C. Landis wrote: What I find interesting about 3) is that folks assume she WASN'T possesed by the ancient foe and thus didn't do the killin' herself.

Hi there,

Gordon's nailed the primary and intentional ambiguity of the story. Look at Retta's thought balloon in the first panel of the final strip - that's not filler.

Best,
Ron

When he says, "My old foe has possessed YOU", for some reason I read that as, "You are this life times INCARNATION of my foe." It didn't occur to me that maybe Retta was possessed, killed the people, and simple doesn't remember because she's no longer possessed.

Hello,

As a general rule, I'm not sure what value is brought to a conversation regarding someone's reactions to a comic strip that they haven't read. It's a visual medium, 'n all.

Best,
Ron

1) I don't remember the story saying one way or the other. Maybe she was an important member of the crew. Maybe she was captain. Or maybe she was hitching a ride. Was it important to the story one way or the other?

Ron Edwards wrote: As a general rule, I'm not sure what value is brought to a conversation regarding someone's reactions to a comic strip that they haven't read. It's a visual medium, 'n all.

Hi Ralph,

Just coincidence, or parallelism, maybe. I always liked the image of Retta on a dragon-ship, so that expressed itself (1) in the text as an example bit of character generation, (2) as a topic for the cover (although the cover character isn't supposed to be Retta necessarily), and in the comic as a story setting.

Best,
Ron

jburneko wrote: But certainly, someone can react to the thematic content of a STORY independent of the medium in which it is presented. Can't they?

Thinking about critique #3:

What if Retta was posessed, and she killed everybody, and doesn't remember it 'cause she was posessed? Hell, this could just be the intro to a longer story which revolves around Retta discovering that she's posessed and then struggling with the beastie. Or not.

Lon

Hi Jesse,

"But certainly, someone can react to the thematic content of a STORY independent of the medium in which it is presented. Can't they?"

No, they can't. Medium plays a crucial role in processing stories.

If you verbally delivered a version of the comics story to some other people, then they experience that story in the medium of verbal transmission, sub-set J. Burneko. They did not in any way experience a (or "the") story independently of a medium.

Best,
Ron