Nodwick

This is a /co/ related article, which we allow because we find it interesting or we can't be bothered to delete it.

Nodwick is an early "tabletop gamer culture" oriented comedy comic, by Aaron Williams. Williams already had a following for stuff he'd done for Dragon, so about 2000ish he ran his comic there too. 'Tis in the spirit of Star Trek: Lower Decks for gamers but good. Or, the Knights of the Dinner Table as seen by its avatars rather than described by the players.

The titular character is in fact a non-player character, a retainer for a (usually) three-person party who answers to "henchman". He's a diminutive human with a honkin' schnoz ripped from the early Opus of Bloom County. As such, he's our viewpoint character for the antics of the party. Mostly his task is Porter, which job is often a royal pain in his... back.

Frequently our man gets killed (can't really use "dies" in the active voice here), but the party - especially Piffany - is always there with a roll of duct tape, so Nodwick lives again... and again... and again.

The Party

Yeagar is the tank of the team. He's big and dumb, although violence tends to be his second resort to problems. His first resort is "throw the henchie at the problem headfirst".

Artax is the mage. He's older, with an impressive white moustache down to his navel; and more canny. Deep down, though, he is not much smarter than Artax, and equally as selfish - just for mage-usable treasure. Artax also prefers to solve problems by chucking the henchman at them.

Piffany is the cleric, almost as short as Nodwick but much thinner. She's the conscience of the group: idealistic to a fault, and Nodwick's advocate before the team. When she calls you "naughty", watch out.

Antagonists

Count Repugsive is the Warduke expy, an anti-paladin (later Blackguard) who's angling to take his cousin's throne. He often raises undead.

Baphumaal, portmanteau of Baphomet and Baal, is an evil god.

Where this series ran in Dragon, it tended to pillory ye olde skoole of modules like S1: Tomb of Horrors; where in Dungeon, it commented on the adventures listed in there. On its own of course it couldn't much touch copyrighted material, so it goes more style-parody.

Although mostly done for laughs, Williams is not averse to kicking the reader in the gut on occasion, for instance in an "It's a Wonderful Life" expy in which we see what happens to the party when they don't raise Nodwick from the dead that one time. This author about lost it at that one and faceplanted into a tub of chocolate ice cream.

You can read it all for free at nodwick.com. Although later installments here seem to be out of sequence.