NEWS: Episode VII news!

We had a big discussion at our last fortnightly board games meet-up, about where we're going and what we want to do next. On the positive side, we're all excited to start work on Episode VII, and we discussed a bunch of plotting ideas.

The big issue is the logistics of writing strips, now that we don't have lunchtimes together to do the writing. We talked about it, and the current plan is:

• We finish off the Muppets story, then do the usual 3-strip intermission, at 1 strip per week.
• While that's playing out, we plan story material for Episodes 7-9.
• I (David Morgan-Mar) will start writing skeleton scripts for comics, outlining plot points and story beats and with some dialogue filled in. Some of these will be completed scripts, others will have gaps where I need more inspiration or ideas.
• At our fortnightly games nights, we'll do a quick run through the skeletons, brainstorm ideas for gaps in the scripts, add punchlines, tweak things, and hopefully manage to produce six completed strips a fortnight. We may also have catch-up sessions on voice chat to polish things off.
• We will try to build up a buffer of 3 strips per week, to allow us to return to our 3 strips a week schedule for Episode VII.
• We'll see if we can sustain this level of activity. Hopefully yes. But if not, we may have to decide to cut the schedule back a bit.

In these enlightened times, we sometimes stop to think about the environmental consequences of things. This is not something that happens in roleplaying games very much, though.

But what if it was?

Druid characters are probably the most likely to actually do this. They tend to want to preserve "the balance of nature", which can be interpreted as restricting humans from cutting down too many trees or hunting too many animals. But taking inspiration from modern life, they could also be concerned about construction projects, or mining, for example. Say a local ruler wants to build a new castle on a strategic location, but the local order of druids is adamant that the land supports unique wildlife, and so does everything in its power to stop it.

But imagine broader application of this principle. Woodcutters are taking too much wood from a forest, and faerie nobles send a delegation to the village to deal with the threat to their livelihood. Superheroes have an epic battle against supervillains, prevailing but leaving a huge scorched crater full of destroyed buildings and machinery behind - someone has to take responsibility and clean it up. Space traders make a routine stop at a port world, but they've inadvertently brought an invasive species aboard their ship, and now authorities are after them.

Transcript

Chewbacca: Valorum and Palpatine... Good lord, imagine if they came back somehow.
Kermit: Know something of this, I do.
Kermit: Obtained DNA from the charred remains of Grievous, Gunray did. Sent it to Kamino to be cloned as his new general.
Kermit: Dissatisfied with the limitations of his organic body, cloned Valorum was. Including looking like Valorum.
Kermit: Slowly replaced himself piece by piece, he did, becoming a cyborg—
R2-D2: Wow, he really was an exact copy of Grievous.
Kermit: —until eventually he was entirely a droid!
Luke: And then he decided to make droids to pretend to be clones of everyone else?
Kermit: Naturally. More productive than organic beings, droids are. More efficient. More environmentally sustainable.
C-3PO: But they turned out awful!
Kermit: Easy being green, it is not.