End of an Era: Darths & Droids

Let's do this thing.

Gosh, I seem to be doing a lot of these lately. Apparently it really is the end of an era in webcomics.

Darths & Droids is a Star Wars screencap webcomic produced by Australian writing collective the Comic Irregulars – composed of Andrew Coker, Andrew Shellshear, David Karlov, David McLeish, David Morgan-Mar (the Slim Shady of this D12, in as much as he has his own Wikipedia page,) Ian Boreham, Loki Patrick and Steven Irrgang – and inspired by Shamus Young's DM Of the Rings, a screencap comic in which a highly driven DM railroads his players through the plot of The Lord of the Rings in a world in which the original work does not exist. 

Darths & Droids likewise takes a classic work of fiction – the at-the-time six part Star Wars series – and uses screencaps from those films to form a comic. The dialogue is written to represent the roleplaying group running through this adventure in a world where Star Wars does not exist. Unlike DM of the Rings, the GM of Darths & Droids is a giver, and the plot of the films - more or, in some cases much, less - is created through the interactions between his intended plot and whatever craziness the players can come up with. Jar Jar Binks, for example, turns out in this version to be the result of having to let the younger sister of one of the original players, join in in lieu of babysitting, while R2D2 is a min-maxed engineering twink whose sudden leg jets are the result of letting his player run a session while the GM is busy and the 'laser sword' was just the only thing the starting characters could afford until one of the players rationalised into the ultimate weapon.

A phrase is born.

The in-game narrative of the series runs through the six episodes of the series, each given a slightly different name from the film  – The Phantasmal Malevolence, The Silence of the Clones, Revelation of the Sith, A New Generation, The Enemy Let Slip and The Jedi Reloaded – while an accompanying meta-narrative follows the gaming group over a period of perhaps six years. 

Said group consists of a broad mix of gaming archetypes: Jim (Qui-Gon Jin, Padme Amidala, 'Han Solo'), is a gung-ho would-be master strategist, hindered by his inability to see the glaring holes in his plans(1); Ben (Obi-Wan Kenobi, Chewbacca), is the rationalist, always trying to argue advantages from circumstance(2). They are joined by Sally (Jar-Jar, C3PO), Ben's sister, an imaginative free spirit; Pete (R2D2), a calculating min-maxer with an overabundance of dice superstitions; and Annie (Anakin, Leia, Darth Vader), an actress and hardcore method roleplayer. Finally, Pete's nephew Corey (Luke), joins them for the original trilogy having only previously played computer RPGs. They can all be caricatures when needed for comic effect, but there will be things that any gamer can recognise.

In addition to the plot of the films, the comic also plays with common RPG tropes, such as frequent horrified commentary on grappling rules, and more general fictional archetypes through the medium of out of character commentary.

No plot survives contact with the players.

Among the comic's achievements are giving the prequel trilogy a coherent plot, making Anakin an involving character, keeping the meta-narrative as involving as the main - if these people were real, I would totes hang out with them, although I might be wary of committing to a campaign - and coining the never-before used phrase 'Jar-Jar, you're a genius!' It's also really funny, and often makes valid yet affectionate commentary on the original works.

The series spawned running gags – casting summon bigger fish, and the hints dropped each year about the games they have been playing in the interim, each based on a different film – and (almost) every 50 comics added a bonus page to a chain linked from episode 50, each presenting a page from the Comic Irregular's works in an alternate dimension(3). From A New Generation onwards, the writers worked less to explain or correct perceived flaws in the films, and more to create a genuinely continuous emotional arc from the prequel trilogy, for example by having Naboo and not Alderaan suffer destruction as a test of the Death Star, since that was a world that the players knew and were invested in. It also featured a Han Solo who was really a conman who killed the real Solo in the Mos Eisley Cantina, and Han and Chewie as Imperial double agents, without actually derailing the plot at any point.

It turns out Greedo shot first.

And now, after ten years, the screen circle-wipes on the triumphant party after the Battle of Endor. The circle is now complete; those who went astray have been redeemed and those who engineered the straying - mostly Anakin - have been... Well, okay, maybe that's something for another time, since he's still knocking about as a Force Spirit. The Empire is defeated and the second Death Star... I'm sorry, Naboo Peace Moon has been destroyed. All or most is well with the galaxy, and it it's time to draw the curtain.

This is not the end, mark you; any more than it was the end of Star Wars. What's more, we won't have to wait nearly so long for Darths & Droids to continue. They have announced plans to begin Rogue One soon, and to continue doing the Star Wars Stories until they have a whole new main series trilogy to plot out. The end of The Jedi Reloaded is, however, a very significant milestone, and makes this a great time to get stuck in, beginning with The Phantasmal Malevolence, if you haven't read the comic before and have the time to read through around 1,520 comics.

(1) It is later revealed that he is a brilliant geophysicist who simply considers roleplaying to be an opportunity to switch his brain off for a while and go with whatever seems like a good idea at the time.

(2) Including the fact that a laser sword must be able to deflect a blaster bolt if there is any sense in the world.

(3) In the world of Darths & Droids they were working on a Harry Potter comic, in the world of which they were working on one based on The Sound of Music and so on.