Falling from the Sky... (PWA 5)

Falling from the Sky... (PWA 5)

The story advances in mysterious ways...

We now return to the primary story of the Phantasy Warrior Advance arc. This strip is one of those "moving the story along" type of strips where there isn't necessarily anything clever or witty but it puts characters in a particular place.

I had previously mentioned that this strip, Phantasy Warrior Advance, was actually a spawn of both the original Phantasy Warrior strip I did back in 2007 and it's prospective sequel, Phantasy Warrior Advance, which I worked on and abandoned in 2008. When I started writing this comic story, I thought I would unite the original Phantasy Warrior with the ideas I had for the abandoned Phantasy Warrior Advance strip into some sort of new, fancy product that would be understandable. We'll see how that works out.

I thought it would be interesting to post snaps from the older comics to provide context. As this comic introduces a new character, I thought I would hint as to his background (from the original comic strip, perhaps) to provide some context.

Yeah. I made that joke.

This is actually the sixth comic from the original fifty part series, Phantasy Warrior. The main character is the blond haired fellow, conveniently named Andy. Some of this should become more relevant as the story progresses...

It Only Took Me Twelve Years... (PWA 4.2)

Phantasy Warrior Advance: It Only Took Me Twelve Years (PWA 4.2)

I'll finally stop beating the Rule 6 joke to death, now.

APR 6 (Rule 6) is a rarely exercised rule in the Washington State Admission to Practice Rules. Specifically, it's the rule where somebody can become a "law clerk" under a supervising attorney and, after completing a specified program, apply for admission to the state bar association. The Rule 6 clerk still has to take the bar exam, but they do not have to attend an ABA accredited law school. To that end, it's the equivalent of an apprenticeship program.

All that being said, it's extremely rare to see people do it. It's notorious for taking an extremely long time (10 years). Further, I have heard rumors that it does not have the best bar exam passage rate. When I started my own bar review class, there was a Rule 6 guy. The person running the bar review class was quite surprised to see a Rule 6. I took that as a bad sign for him...

I imagine in a fantasy world where adventurers are commonplace, there would likely be absurd certification programs, including a laborious apprentice program that very few people ever properly accomplish. This goes along with my ridiculous notion that being a professional hero (or adventurer) would have an overwrought schooling system and a perverse guild that one would have to join. So, I suppose I've applied my history of bureaucracy and nonsense to fantastic notions of adventure.

How appropriate, I guess.

This Thing I Won't Help You With (PWA 4.1)

Phantasy Warrior Advance: This Thing I Won'T Help You With (PWA 4.1)

This comes up in so many games, yet it also comes up quite a bit in the grim reality of life.  "Let me tell you about this thing that would totally help you in your current situation!  I could help you with it, but I won't.  I'll just tell you about it."  It is a surprising thing to me how often people do this in games and, to a certain extent, how much we let them get away with it.

There is something entertaining to me about bureaucracy in a fantasy realm.  Generally, most fantasy settings (in games and such) have a lot more in common with the modern world than any sort of medieval society, but I rarely see enough modern red tape.  Go to the weapon shop and buy a magical, automatic crossbow?  No waiting period.  Buy a boat?  No licensing or insurance requirements.  Of course, it would be a super-not-fun game if you had to go through that kind of stuff.  The very idea that you have to go to "hero school" or go through a "heroic apprentice program" to be a hero is absurd, but when you consider how much certification and sanctioning we do in the modern age, it only makes sense that being an adventurer or a hero would have the same level of bureaucratic nonsense.

Some people may be wondering what "Rule 6" is.  No, this is not a subtle reference to some sort of strange Internet meme or some pornographic oddity.  But, as the joke continues into the next comic, I'll wait a bit before revealing that.

Always Check the Notice Board (PWA 3)

Phantasy Warrior Advance: Always Check the Notice Board

So, I have already mentioned several times that I was a big fan of the Quest for Glory series (formerly Hero's Quest) back in the 1990s.  Lori Ann and Corey Cole did an interesting thing bringing the concepts of a role-playing game to the classic "3D animated adventure game" format that Sierra On-Line had become so famous for.  There were puzzles to solve, monsters to fight, and skills to improve by using them.  Granted, the game did end up promoting some absurd results (such as spending the better part of an in-game day climbing trees or throwing rocks) but it was fun nonetheless.  A lot of my comic work (both this comic and its predecessor, the original Phantasy Warrior) has strong Quest for Glory influence.

In every Quest for Glory game, there would be an Adventurer's Guild (or equivalent) with a notice board posting quests, tasks, and general nonsense.  It was a weird idea in the realm of fantasy role-playing.  Classically, everything started out "in a tavern" or some similar nonsense.  Lori Ann and Corey decided to take a more modern approach.  If I really wanted somebody to go find my Cheetaur claws, why not post it on the local Adventurer's Guild notice board?  Looking for somebody to stop the Brigand King?  Post it!

Of course, even then they tended to make jokes about it, with the occasional absurd posting appearing as a joke.  It only makes sense.  For every serious quest giver posting on the notice board, there's bound to be some joker posting some sort of nonsense.  Here, I even put the business card of a local bard because that just seemed like the kind of thing you would expect to see.

For those wondering, this notice board intentionally has a lot of strange references and subtle in-jokes in it.  That is what happens when I stay up late building comic panels.  Hopefully, you can find something you find entertaining.

Please Pay All Late Fees In Advance. (PWA 2.2)

Phantasy Warrior Advance: Please Pay All Late Fees In Advance

This goes back to my original application to take the LSAT, but it's true of just about everything nowadays.  I feel like the idea of the late fee to apply for something must have been conceived of one day by some guy.  Other people heard about it and thought, "Oh, crap!  That's a great idea!"  Pretty soon, everybody is doing it, often for things that do not even matter.

More frustrating than the late fee, though, is the ridiculous idea of itemized "fees."  I often see applications that have five or six itemized fees, singled out one by one as if somehow it made them more palatable when delivered in pieces.  The worst is when you see an "application fee" but then you see three or four more fees that sound like they should clearly be part of the application process but somehow warrant separate billing.  "Processing fee" is my favorite.  Did you intend to accept the application but not process it, hence the need for a separate processing fee?  It never made sense to me.

Unfortunately, it's pervasive.  Everybody seems to do this nowadays.  I guess there is no use fighting it.  Of course, if you are a young would-be hero, what do you do if you cannot afford to pay?  We will see...

Four Letters Only, Please (PWA 2.1)

Phantasy Warrior Advance: Four Letters Only, Please

I always wondered, while playing the host of old console games, why I only had a small number of letters with which to name my character. Four letters? What kind of name do you get out of four characters? Of course, in English, four letters allows you a whole host of terrible names. Although I never did it myself, I had friends who used to run the gauntlet of "four letter words" for character names.

During the 16-bit era, games started adding two extra letters to character names.  Of course, I never really noticed it at the time. I just suddenly had the opportunity to name characters things that were longer than "Alex" or "Rolf." After a while, you get surprisingly tired of every character having four letter names. Of course, even with two extra letters, occasionally you get characters who have suspicious names, such as Final Fantasy VI's "Cyan." I remember having debates as to how his name was supposed to be pronounced. If only we knew the intended name was "Cayenne."

I did not really notice nor comprehend the whole name issue until Final Fantasy VII came out for the Sony Playstation. They had made a big fuss about expanding the character count for names all the way up to nine. Nine! All so they could fit the name "Sephiroth" into the character name boxes. Nowadays, it seems that I rarely encounter games where standard names do not fit. Extremely long names may be an issue, but the run-of-the-mill names like Andrew or Daniel fit in just fine.

Phantasy Warrior Advance

Many years ago, a very good friend that I was living with starting putting together his own webcomic.  I was quite impressed with the idea and wanted a piece of the action.  As I had no artistic skill, no partner to work with, and very little in the way of hope, I cobbled together a very crude comic based on sprites that I had found from old Final Fantasy games.

When I began, I had a definitive idea as to what I hoped to accomplish.  I imagined a classic looking console role-playing game that seemed to be suspiciously affected by a lack of budget.  Of course, that idea did not necessarily translate all that well and most of it just ended up being a series of jokes about whatever games I had played throughout my life.  I did fifty "issues" of the comic before concluding it.  It was absurd.  It was ridiculous.  But, it was fun to do and I learned a lot.

A few years later, I started a similar process, trying to tie a much bigger story to the whole thing while trying to find a way to integrate the original comic into something new.  I was not sure what it was I had hoped to accomplish but I worked at it.  I experimented with new artistic methods, new images, and new potential ideas.  I even began using peculiar art techniques as applied to output photos from The Sims 2.  In the end, I never got especially far with it that time, but I did end up with a growing database of sprites that I had either extracted from various sources or began crafting on my own.

It does have a certain Pokemon look to it.

I actually took another "stab" at the process some time afterward, attempting to integrate all of the different ideas into one coherent story (again).  Of course, that effort seemed to last less time than the previous, but I did manage to take some measurable amount of content out of the process.  The story was set in an actual console game and the main character would be a sort of "Captain N" style transport from the real world into the game work.  Most importantly, I finally created an iconic cover for the fantasy game in question: Phantasy Warrior.

When I started, I wanted the box to look like something that you would expect to see in the early days of the Nintendo Entertainment System (Famicom).  I spent a lot of time looking at old Nintendo game box art, trying to capture the iconography and style of that art.  Honestly, it was surprising to discover how bad most of it was.  However, it gave me a solid idea as to how my potential box art should look.

The end result was actually arranged in Comic Life by plasQ (which, comically, I cannot recover).  Although all of the individual images were done in either Adobe Photoshop or occasionally Adobe Illustrator, I found it "easier" to do comic-style layouts in Comic Life at the time.  I did not have sufficient experience working in Illustrator or Photoshop to accomplish my layout goals, so I relied heavily on the software package provided by PlasQ.

Writing bad copy is tough, as it ends up.

I also created a back cover, using the same kinds of old Nintendo game boxes as models.  I hoped to capture the flavor of some of those old game boxes, including the astounding hyperbole ("a fantasy world beyond imagination!"), really uninformative screen shots (even framed to look like a classic CRT perspective), and a game description that says very little about what will actually go on when you put the game in your system.

One of the elements I spent a great deal of time on was the "Adventure Series" marker that appears on both the front and back covers.  The first few sets of Nintendo games had quasi-informative symbols on the cover that were meant to inform you of what kind of game you were purchasing.  It took me a while to find out what kind of game a RPG would be but I finally found an image of the Metroid box cover, one of the last ones before they eliminated the symbolic system.  As it ends up, Metroid was an Adventure Series game, as contrasted to an Action Series or a Sports Series.  I felt this was the closest and best I would get so I did my best to recreate the symbol for inclusion on my box cover.

The reason I spend so much time introducing the background behind the Phantasy Warrior comics I throw into the blog is that the comic as it appears now is actually heavily influenced by the work I did before.  In fact, although the comic does tend to have a certain amount of geek humor, a lot of the "story" relates back to what I did the first time around.  Although I do not intend to fully re-release the original comic, I do expect to reference elements from it (as appropriate).  It seemed appropriate to start with the epic packaging I did for the game back in 2008-09.

Because a Real Hero Applied Two Months Ago (PWA 1.2)

Phantasy Warrior Advance: Because a Real Hero Applied Two Months Ago

I actually applied for the LSAT pretty late in the process.  I never intended to go to law school until I found out that I had essentially zero chance to get into the Ph.D. program I had applied for.  As much as my old boss hated to hear it, law school was not my first choice on leaving the Navy.

That being said, I was surprised at all of the timing issues involved in applying for law school.  Certain tests had to be done by certain days.  Some test dates were too late.  Certain schools had application deadlines by certain dates, but many had "rolling" admissions.  Some had priority admissions by certain dates with other applications acceptable until ... whenever?  Of course, I managed to wade through most of the paperwork and bureaucracy, but at times it was frustrating since my whole law school adventure was very last minute.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like if games started being as draconian as the real world.  "I'm sorry, but you forgot to level up your character by the requisite deadline, so you will be unable to level up your character until the next leveling window."  Maybe there is something to be said about applying "real world stress" within the context of the game, but that just seems like negative fun.

So You Want To Be A Hero? (PWA 1.1)

Phantasy Warrior Advance: So You Want To Be A Hero?

Many years ago, as I started applying to various law schools, I got somewhat frustrated with the process.  Granted, after many years in the Navy, I should have been used to it, but it always confounded me how laborious the process for applying to law school is.  Even the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) website, which is meant to streamline all law school applications, felt like an exercise in ridiculous labor.

When I was young, I played the old Sierra game Hero's Quest: So You Want To Be A Hero (later renamed Quest for Glory I: So You Want To Be A Hero).  The game was all about you being a recent graduate of the Famous Adventurer's Correspondence School.  I never thought much of it until I was older.  It seemed like a school for perspective heroes seemed like a funny thing to think about.  From that, I started putting together a little comic about it.

I never really know where I go with these things.  Making fun of ridiculous acronyms is generally worth a good laugh and I always liked how people go out of their way to name things such that the acronym is entertaining.  I've seen a fair amount of it in both the Navy and law.