Dudley's (New, Improved) Dungeon

< Apr 15th, 2017 >

Crawldragon

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r "Hey, Dudley, I've been thinking..."

@ "Yeah?"

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r "Well, they call this place a dungeon, but we haven't seen any prisoners."

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@ "Well, who's to say that we aren't prisoners? To the game, to our passions, to our fantasies and escapism..."

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r "So are you saying that the dungeon is a metaphor for our desire to escape?"

@ "Perhaps..."

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@ "But it suggests something deeper, because in order to escape we must first accept our prison, delve deeper into it, face our fears, take what we must, and leave the rest behind."

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r "So in order to be free from our metaphorical prison, we have to relieve ourselves of our emotional baggage?"

@ "Exactly."

Beware, there will  
be no return! Still 
climb? [y/n] y      
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@ "And, facing and confronting those feelings, and having rid ourselves of that baggage, continue to climb..."

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r "You forgot to identify the Amulet, didn't you?"

@ "DAMN IT!"

https://alt.org/nethack/dudley/

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4 Comments

#1	Crawldragon	Sat, 15 Apr 2017 04:09:37
This comic went through an interesting evolution. Originally I wanted to do a joke about the Convict role (i.e. that introduced by the Convict patch, which is implemented in certain variants) but I couldn't think of a punchline. Then the comic ended up being something about ascending the Wizard's Tower, but I didn't want to write about a portion of the game I'd never previously experienced, so the comic ended up taking place on a random level of the dungeon. It wasn't until I'd written the punchline that I decided for certain that Dudley was trying to ascend. So, the rant that Dudley goes on gradually formed in my mind, and while I was making the comic I found that I really liked the image of Dudley punished with only a humble rat as a pet, so I kept it without explicitly mentioning the Convict role. I found it really helped the pacing of the comic to watch Dudley struggle with an iron ball strapped to him, even if it doesn't necessarily make sense this late in the game. It wasn't until I'd written and drawn the second-to-last panel that the punchline finally came to me, and thus the comic became as you are reading it now. Hopefully you enjoyed that little bit of trivia.
#2	rschaff	Sun, 16 Apr 2017 00:12:46
I liked the dialogue, but what happened to Dogley?
#3	Crawldragon	Sun, 16 Apr 2017 00:41:32
Uhm, really unlucky with a polymorph trap? :-)
#4	AmyBSOD	Sun, 16 Apr 2017 13:30:52
Excellent! I love the convict role, IMHO it should be implemented in vanilla. Also, isn't the rat meant to be the convict's starting rat (named Nicodemus)?

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