Goblins (webcomic)

Goblins - Life Through Their Eyes is a Dungeons & Dragons webcomic written and illustrated by Ellipsis Hana Stephens. It is set in a humorous and still gruesome fantasy setting, and follows the lives of a party of goblin adventurers who started as monsters and declared themselves player characters. The tagline for the comic - "Life Through Their Eyes" - reflects the predominant theme of the comic: telling a heroic tale of creatures normally viewed only as evil and weak. Ellipsis Stephens cautions young readers about the comic, as it often contains scenes of strong violence.

Goblins
Goblins logo
Author(s)Ellipsis Hana Stephens
Websitegoblinscomic.org
Current status/scheduleActive
Launch dateJune 26, 2005 (2005-06-26)
Genre(s)Fantasy

It won the Canadian Prix Aurora Award for "Best Graphic Novel" in 2011[1] and 2012.[2]

Background

The comic debuted on June 26, 2005,[3] and updates presently occur at the rate of approximately 1-2 pages per month. The strip originally began in black and white, before converting to color in the thirtieth strip. The comic often employs humor related to metagaming in Dungeons & Dragons, such as a cleric praying to the all-powerful but nerdy Dungeon Master or characters arguing about whether or not they were subject to a random encounter. As the strip has progressed, the tone has become bleaker and the humor aspects have become less central than they were in early strips, although still present. In August 2006, Goblins joined Keenspot. In September 2006 it won Dragon Con's "Most Outstanding New Webcartoonist" award. A first bound volume of the webcomic is in print in North America[4] and Europe, and contains a foreword by Dungeons and Dragons game designer Monte Cook. A second volume was released in 2009.

In August 2008, Ellipsis began a webcam channel to broadcast her drawing, first on JustinTV [5] and currently on Twitch. In October 2008, she made Goblins her full-time occupation. On August 10, 2010, Ellipsis left Keenspot and moved the comic to Blindferret, which also hosts Least I Could Do, Looking for Group, PvP and Ctrl+Alt+Del.[6] In July 2011, Stephens switched from an ink and paper webcam approach to a digital format, using a Wacom Cintiq drawing tablet. She credits Phil Foglio,[7] Dave Trampier of Wormy, Heavy Metal Magazine[8] and Wendy Pini of Elfquest as influences on her artistic style. Ellipsis currently lives in British Columbia, Canada.

Cast

The main characters of the story are goblins who become player characters with Character classes in order to get stronger and better defend themselves.

Chief: First Seen in Book 1, Comic # 1. Character Class: Cleric

Big-ears: First Seen in Book 1, Comic # 1. Character Class: Paladin

Thaco: First Seen in Book 1, Comic # 14. Character Class: Monk

Complains-of-Names: First Seen in Book 1, Comic # 1. Character Class: Barbarian

Fumbles: First Seen in Book 1, Comic # 1. Character Class: All ("one-eleventh" of each)

Plot

Book 1

Most of the characters and parties are all introduced. Minmax and Forgath are in league with The Drow Party, and they attack The Goblin War Camp. Chief, Big-ears, Thaco, Complains-of-Names and Fumbles must fight to protect their fellow warriors and a poorly locked treasure chest.

Book 2

The Goblin Adventuring Party (GAP) is officially formed. Before returning to their village, the GAP intend to adventure and gain experience so that they can better protect their people. But on their way, Fumbles makes a tragic mistake, and his rash attempt to fix it leads GAP to Brassmoon City, the last place on earth any monster wants to be. Meanwhile, the powerful Dwarf paladin, Kore, whose only aim is to eliminate monsters, has his crossbow set on GAP's village. Dies Horribly meets and is enslaved by The White Terror, whose excavation of a valuable artifact draws a Hobgoblin attack. New friends are found and old enemies cross.

Book 3

As GAP invades Brassmoon City, Captain Dellyn Goblinslayer believes an entire army of goblins is about to attack. When he announces a captured goblin is to be publicly executed in the town square, GAP is forced to take drastic action. Thaco confronts his nemesis. The White Terror gets closer to her goal, and Dies Horribly must venture with a specially selected team into a dungeon crawl. Some new alliances are born, while old ones are cut short by death. The Brassmoon City arc comes to a conclusion by the end of the book.

Book 4

In the dungeon crawl, Well of Darkness, Dies Horribly's team discover and struggle with their ability to handle danger. The artificial arm Klik gave Dies makes some disturbing development. In Brassmoon City which has been left crippled after the incident with the goblins, Forgath and Minmax arrive looking for a ranger to help them track down GAP. Their recruiting effort does not go as planned. Meanwhile, together again and already at Level 4, GAP continue their journey home, but the dwarven paladin Kore intercepts. Great loss is suffered and The Blue Orb of Bloodlight arc comes to an epic conclusion at the end of this book.

Book 5

After the climax of Book 4, the ex-Drow team is back, only to be slaughtered by a powerful, newborn force of evil. Meanwhile, Minmax, Forgath and Kin traverse the pocket-dimension dungeon crawl, The Maze of Many. The trio is locked in a deadly race against over two hundred alternate versions of themselves, ultimately confronting a Psion alternate of Minmax who is sabotaging the Maze. After defeating him, Minmax and Forgath teleport back to their home world to do a long-awaited battle with GAP. However the two teams must unexpectedly side with each other to deal with Kore.

Tempts Fate and financial controversy

In order to encourage donations, Ellipsis created a side comic featuring a goblin character named Tempts Fate, who is not connected with the main story.[9] At the beginning of each donation drive, Tempts Fate is faced with a series of obstacles and dangers; whether or not he survives, and how skillfully he does so, directly correlates with how much money the donation drive makes. Were the donation goal not met, Ellipsis has promised Tempts Fate will perish, never to be brought back again. Tempts Fate 11 has been implied to be the character's last and most expensive adventure, netting Ellipsis $37,151.67. Donation fees in this adventure were abnormally high and Ellipsis used all the money raised to help purchase a house. After over three years Ellipsis has yet to complete the page the donations were raised for.

In 2008, Ellipsis started a donation drive to create an interactive game with Tempts Fate. This was called Tempts Fate 9. Fans could create their own goblin character and she would help each one through an adventure that would be a mass co-operative experience. Afterwards, she decided to postpone the idea until it could be re-launched as a self-contained game. This job of doing this was given to a programmer. [10] This decision to postpone and retool the game was made after the donation drive started. The money gained was not refunded. Instead, it was rolled over into Tempts Fate 8.5.[11] By the time that the program needed to play the self contained Tempts Fate 9 game were completed, Ellipsis was no longer interested in running it, so the game was quietly canceled without an official announcement. Eventually, a new Tempts Fate 9 game was created, and all references to the original version were deleted from the website.

A fan comic, made by the user name of Worst Case, was created after being inspired by the original Tempts Fate 9 donation game. [12] There is also a sequel to this on her photobucket account. [13]

In July 2013 a further donation drive was funded through Kickstarter raising an additional $177,850 towards the game. As of December 2014, after numerous revisions of the game, Ellipsis claimed that Evertide Games "has run away with all the money". In June 2015, Ellipsis made several allusions on her forums that a further donation drive may be necessary to attempt recovery of funds from Evertide Games. This game has been removed from Kickstarter. [14]

To date, Tempts Fate has survived eleven donation drives.

On October 17, 2019, Ellipsis had an additional fundraiser to help cover costs of her transition to female. Instead of using a Tempts Fate donation drive, she opted to use Go Fund Me. After raising over $21,000 ($6,000 above the original goal), and having the surgery done, she deleted all mentions of the donation drive on her blog. As of May, 2020, her Go Fund Me is still accepting donations. Link to this is not available due to it being blacklisted by Wikipedia, but the title of the drive is "Elli's Transition Surgery".

List of Tempts Fate episodes
1. TEMPTS FATE'S FIRST ADVENTURE: Tempts Fate has to get to a poorly locked treasure chest.
2. ESCAPE FROM THE TROGLODYTES: Tempts Fate needs to retrieve the skull of an ancient goblin chief.
3. TEMPTS FATE'S NEMESIS: Tempts Fate fights an evil creation known as Suffer.
4. REALM OF THE NAKED, MUDHONEY COVERED BABES: Tempts Fate follows Suffer into a realm wished into existence by a human fighter.
5. THE DUNGEON OF UNNECESSARY PERIL: Tempts Fate finds a cool belt and is made to test it in a dungeon crawl.
6. TEMPTS FATE VS. THE MMORPG: Tempts Fate starts trouble in an MMORPG.
7. THE FOUR TESTS OF SHARED DREAD: Tempts Fate explores the land of unfinished DnD campaigns.
8. THE REALLY, REALLY POORLY MADE CHARACTERS: Tempts Fate is attacked by four really, really poorly made characters.
8.5 Untitled: Tempts Fate crosses paths with a monster strongly resembling the predators from the Predator franchise.
9. THE DUNGEON CRAWL THE DM WROTE AT THE LAST MINUTE: Tempts Fate needs to fight a dragon.
10. TREK OF THE BLACKENED DREAD: Tempts Fate takes on a dungeon crawl infested with zombies.
11. TEMPTS FATE GOES TO HELL: Tempts Fate retrieves character sheets from hell.

Current state of Goblins: Alternate Realities

Since the disappearance of the money raised for the game, Ellipsis has been slowly working on completing it on her own. As of October 2017, the cards appear to be finished and are being posted online. Play testing has begun through Steam's Tabletop Simulator and have been live-streamed on Twitch. Ellipsis has been able to retrieve the original backers list from Kickstarter and is intending to find a way to make sure they are able to access the game if feasible.[15]

As of February 2020, updates are still scarce, but last updates seem to regard making modules for the game.

Goblins Animated

A new Kickstarter campaign was launched 10/23/17 for Goblins Animated. This new project is intended to be a cartoon series based on Book 1 of the web comic ending in Brassmoon. Ellipsis and Danielle are working closely with Phil LaMarr and Matt King in the creation of the series. The cartoon already has voice actors lined up, most notably Billy West, Maurice LaMarche, Jim Cummings, Matthew Mercer, and Steve Blum.[16]

References
  1. "Robert J. Sawyer among Aurora Award winners". National Post. 21 November 2011. Archived from the original on 10 July 2012. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
  2. "Past Winners of the Aurora Awards". Archived from the original on 2014-04-07. Retrieved 2015-04-16.
  3. The Webcomic List
  4. http://www.goblinscomic.com/Book1.html
  5. http://www.justin.tv/thunt
  6. http://www.goblinscomic.com
  7. http://www.snotling.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=11430#forumpost11430
  8. "Tarol Hunt." HiSciFi. HiSciFi. CJSF, Burnaby. 13 Jan 2009.
  9. All Tempts Fate Stories
  10. Programmer talking about what happened
  11. A discussion on the creation and shelving of Tempts Fate Game
  12. Link to fancomic
  13. Link to second fancomic
  14. Kickstarter Page showing the removal of G:AR
  15. "The Goblins Card Game".
  16. "Goblins Animated".
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