Is That A Lightning Storm Brewing Overhead?

(WARNING: Explicit talk of Dungeons & Dragons ahead.)

If you've never rolled a d20 to save your life you haven't lived. Those of you who have, this post's for you.

Remember gathering with your friends at the end of the week to munch through bowls of salty chips, suck down copious amounts of soft drink, and bicker endlessly with the DM over game mechanics, some of which were ill-conceived if not irrelevent in the first place? Yeah, me too. I haven't played D&D in a looong, long time, but I still have fond memories of those games, which just goes to show how fallible memory can be.

To remind us what it's really like, Shamus Young, on his Twenty Sided blog, created a series titled The DM of the Rings. In it Shamus, our beleaguered DM, illustrates just what happens when you take Tolkein's classic Lord of the Rings trilogy and try to play it as a D&D campaign. He's managed to do this by stringing together screenshots from Peter Jackson's LotR films in a comic form. Such a simple idea, right? Right. Simple. And insightful. Also a little unnerving. But damn funny!

To find out why (and do set aside some hours for this unless you intend to string out the experience - something you will inevitably fail to do) you should go check it out!