After class today, while surfing the web with a fierce series of clicks and unnecessary double-clicks, I happened upon a comic called The DM of the Rings. The title itself is a bit of a giveaway as to what it’s about: a retelling of Lord of the Rings, in which the characters are Player Characters in an RPG.

Shamus Young does a fantastic job weaving the elements of Tolkien’s epic prototypical tale of a group of adventurers attempting to save the world with the everyday group of roleplayers who balk at that same task. It’s interesting to see story elements that we originally did not bat an eye to seem surprisingly strange and spur-of-the-moment when adorned as a GM covering a plot hole.

As for the art… there’s no art. The entire comic is done in screen captures from the LotR trilogy. The word balloons are consistent, with a slight yellow hue to denote NPC and narrator comments, with standard black-and-white tailed-balloons for the player characters.

The writing is top-notch. You can imagine what type of players sit behind Legolas, Gimli, and the rest of the gang. The characters exhibit little character development, in keeping of the premise, and that’s part of charm.