Okay, I admit it, I read about a dozen web comics.

Some I have found useful to get my mind in gear, others for gearing back down after I am finished. I am talking about the comics that get your mind going in the right directions, not satire or 'gaming funnies', however much fun they may be.

So taking them one at a time rather than a single long list...

Grand Blue Door by Rebecca "Bex" Veverka - A Victorian era fantasy comic set in a hotel with grand blue doors. An interesting cast of characters, and the strip is new enough that the archive can be read in a single sitting. Very nicely drawn and colored, and just the thing when I want a whimsical Victorian era break from my rather grim Victorian era RPG.

What other web comics serve as inspiration? Please take them one at a time so they can be discussed.

The Auld Grump

Thanx Grump! The Grand Blue Door is defineatly an interesting read, I have bookmarked it for future reference.

Personally, among the 6 or so I read everyday...

Schlock Mercenary rates the highest....(but it's Sci-fi, not fantasy) Others I read: PvP, User Friendly, Order of the Stick....

Ah Schlock Mercenary, a daily web comic that updates daily! (A rare beast, I can think of only one other.) Mr. Taylor maintains a decent sized buffer, so if he gets the sniffles the comic does not end for three day until he gets over them. He gets twitchy when it drops below two weeks, which means if he were to kick the bucket today it would continu on for two weeks before the well ran dry.

A much darker strip, and unsuitable for work, grandmothers, or children - Jack is a comic strip about Hell. I have mined a few ideas from it, back when I ran a Wraith game for a while. It is not a funny strip at all, though often ironic. Hell is a place of punishment, and the main character serves as the Grim Reaper.

The Auld Grump

Order of the Stick is the one I read occasionally. Man does it remind me of an old group that I used to game with.

Link: http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript

Just started reading Jack this morning and wow...powerful stuff. I really like it.

Don't forget Ghosts of Albion!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ghosts/

Its not a comic strip per se, but it fits here I think.

Very interesting, though everyone looks like they are suffering from consumption... (At first I though that they were all ghosts...)

I am going to have to watch it in its entirety.

The Auld Grump

Heh. Yeah, they look a bit hungry. I'm still a big fan of it, though. As an interesting aside, Eden Studios is working on a Ghosts of Albion rpg. I played it last year at GenCon and it showed a lot of promise. However, it seems to have been bumped off the radar due to City of Heroes. It would be a real shame to lose out on such an interesting rpg for one that's been done to death and back.

Well, I've got somewhere in the neighborhood of about 40-50 that I catch up on every few months.

But, there are ones that stick with me. Each link will take you to the first comic (sorry about the "one per post", Grump, but I'll just do two separate genres).

8-Bit Theater is fantasy campy comical goodness, but the story arc and character interaction is comic gold. If you're looking for something lighthearted to add to your games, this may just do it.

A Miracle of Science is a very unique take on a futuristic setting, and has a great premise for a story. This comic can also be an excellent source for your stories.

8 Bit Theater and Order of the Stick are two of the better gaming comics out there, along with Fuzzy Knights.

But one that I suspect will start becoming inspiration - Phil Foglio's Girl Genius, which has gone from being a comic book to a web comic. I think that this is one where I will read it periodically rather than try to keep up with each strip.

The Auld Grump

Hmmm, Miracle of Science is fun. I am not a big fan of Manga style comics, but it is light and amusing fare.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* There has got to be a way to use the line 'Brazil thinks you're cute' in a game...

Sometimes I need help being evil.

You would think that it comes naturally to me, but no, deep inside I want the good guys to win.

Suffer a lot, but win.

So when I need a little bit of extra evil in my mental diet I take a hop down to Chopping Block A one panel, rather sporadic comic about a serial killer.

Unlike Jack, this one is funny. Demented, evil, but funny.

The Auld Grump, sleep typing again, but going home in a few minutes...

*EDIT* And predictably, now that I have started crowing about Grand Blue Door the author is thinking about giving it up. I really hope that she doesn't, it is so very well done.

I just want to personally thank all of you for the suggestions. As I do not have one to add, I know I shouldn't be posting here, but after reading through great portions of your suggestions, I felt the need to show my gratitude. Previously, I just kept up with Sluggy Freelance, (a very clever web comic, but reading from the beginning takes a LONG time. There are almost seven years of comic posted). Now I no longer feel that longing from one cliffhanger strip, but many.

One that is now winding down to its end - Mixed Myths started out as a fantasy humor strip, and developed a plotline. Good for people looking for ideas to toss into a standard D&D setting.

The Auld Grump

5-5-05 And today was the last day.

And while the last one I mentioned is ending Return to Donelly has just begun. (This is a recent find for me, on Alice - which while a great comic is not gaming inspiration.)

Return to Donnelly is about a soldeir transferred from our world to a fantasy world - and realizing that he has been there before...

The Auld Grump

Wow, the artist for A Miracle of Science is going into surgery - he is donating a kidney to his sister. My prayers are with him, I hope that both he and his sister pull through safely.

The Auld Grump

Gives some added meaning to the title of his strip

One that might work for inspiration for a D20 Modern Shadow Chasers game is Van Von Hunter about a monster hunter... ummm, sort of. It is silly stuff I fear.

The Auld Grump... Well hello cutey! I just found a house centipede crawling across my monitor!


I took him outside and let him go, I don't think we have enough bugs here to keep him fed.

*EDIT* Added image

Well, Grump, if you're in to the occasionally silly strip, try Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire.

It's full of bad (and good) puns and jokes, but there's actually a pretty good storyline underneath, to hold everything together through the groaners.

Yeah, though DD does have its ups and downs. Von Hunter was something that I read through in a sitting, I don't know if I will frequent it, just a bit too silly in concentrated doses.

Serious fantasy is much harder to find.

And my house centipede either found his way back in or he has cousins... I woke up with one tickling across my face this morning. I like them, but that was a little closer than I might prefer - I could have killed it. (By accident that is...)

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Never mind, there is a colony of the rascals... I just found three in the kitchen...

About ten years ago there was an RPG called Teenagers From Outer Space, about, well, aliens going to high school.

High School Changed Me reminds me a great deal of that game, and almost made me want to dig it out and run it for the first time in years.

Not the best drawn comic in the world (I am not a huge fan of manga style cartooning), but the backgrounds are interesting.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* Thinking it over, I really do want to run a game in this setting... it is so completely unlike my normal habits... Maybe Savage Worlds rather than TFOS.

*EDIT 2* And my little creepy crawly friends all seem to have found new homes. I still think that house centipedes are nifty!

And to prove that web comics can serve as game inspiration the next couple of weeks I will be running a High School Changed Me SW campaign... though only as a filler and a one shot.

The Auld Grump

This sounds very interesting. I just finished reading (not a web comic) Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman. Great art, liked the story. Some nice environments in there for kitbashing.

Hmmm, an odd one or two Gunnerkrigg Court. Another school comic, with a bit of a... twist.

The Auld Grump

Whoof! High School Changed Me just broke up in an amazingly ugly way - the two creators sniping at each other, both on the comic itself and the forums... I don't think that I have ever seen a comic self destruct like that before.

The (shellshocked) Auld Grump

Hmmm, ran across this recently, some good, some bad, some just plain dumb. Stupidity in Magic - Warning, not grandma safe.

Good in small doses.

The Auld Grump

http://www.realmofatland.com/

A small contribution to this nice thread.

The classics:


Larry Leadhead
http://www.larryleadhead.org/

Full Frontal Nerdity (a classic in the making)
http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/nodwick/ffn/ffn.htm

I need my daily dose of PVPOnline. I even got a Skull plush on my monitor.
http://www.pvponline.com/


Nodwick
http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/nodwi ... dwick.html

Girl Genius by Foligo
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/

Goblins: Life through their eyes
http://thunt.comicgen.com/

Knights of the Dinner Table. Okay, technically not a webcomic per se, but past issues are being posted on the web so I count it.
http://www.kenzerco.com/periodicals/kod ... urrent.php

Dork Tower! 'nuff said.
http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/dorktower/

And not so classics:

Inverloch - Sort of grows on you. Not really a classic, but cool.
http://www.seraph-inn.com/index.html

My friend likes this, I think there is better:
http://www.dungeoncrawlinc.com/

Oh, I reccomend this Wonderful Life typs storyine recently finished in Dork Tower. It's all about remembering the FLGS store. Ask yourself, did my game come from a FLGS?
http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/dorkt ... ic&id=1069