Angband Tales From the Pit

This story follows the adventures of Explorington III, a valiant @ in the ASCII dungeons of Angband. Bitter, cynical and just plain weird. And that's just the hero. A liking for, and knowledge of, the Roguelike genre of games comes in handy when reading this three-day-a-week strip. You can read it here. (However, some browsers seem to have difficulty maintaining the page, as the page often shifts to a completely different website, and so this comic may no longer be available.)

Has nothing to do with Tales From the Pit, a separate and totally unrelated webcomic.


 * After the End: This strip.
 * All Trolls Are Different: So you need this guide to tell them apart.
 * Anticlimax: By your powers combined...
 * Art Shift: Here.
 * Auction: Auctioning off the One Ring may be harmful to your health.
 * Bait and Switch Comment: That is not the right way to use a Staff of Power!
 * Bill, Bill, Junk, Bill: Here.
 * Bond One-Liner: This strip does it with copious lampshading.
 * Boss Battle: Lampshaded here.
 * Brain Bleach: There are several examples.
 * This is Explorington's reaction to walking in on Morgoth and Sauron... rehearsing for a play.
 * A novice paladin who saw Morgoth naked.
 * Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: Here.
 * Clip Show: Lampshaded here.
 * Comeback Tomorrow: Only 33 minutes and 2 seconds late...
 * Confessional: Angband players have a lot to confess.
 * Consummate Liar: The kobold.
 * Crack Pairing: Explorington ships Legolas/Balrog. (And is apparently a fan of The Very Secret Diaries.)
 * Cutting the Knot: Explorington solves riddles this way. And wins rock-paper-scissors games.
 * Duck Season! Rabbit Season!: Explorington can't get Sauron to fall for it.
 * Explosive Breeder: Angband has them, so they have to show up eventually.
 * Expospeak Gag: The troll.
 * Fallen Angel: Morgoth takes "fallen" literally.
 * Flat Earth Atheist: The whole point of this strip.
 * Fluffy Cloud Heaven / Fire and Brimstone Hell: Here.
 * Fluffy Tamer: Explorington tries to play Tarrasque tamer in this strip. It doesn't go well.
 * Gameplay and Story Segregation: Narsil, the indestructible blade that was broken.
 * Gender Bender: Via reincarnation.
 * Genius Bruiser: Trolls are often treated this way.
 * Good Angel, Bad Angel: Subverted here when they turn out to agree with each other.
 * A Good Name for a Rock Band: In the rant.
 * Gosh Dang It to Heck: Angels aren't allowed to swear.
 * Hollywood Jehovah's Witness: Or, well, Priests of Eru. Same thing.
 * Homage: This guest strip is an homage to The Angband Comic, an earlier webcomic with a very similar premise. As is this later main-sequence strip.
 * Hydra Problem: Don't attack death molds with a scythe of slicing.
 * Ice Cream Koan: "Deep and serious" should not be confused with "meaningful and relevant".
 * I Have This Friend: And he has trouble with premature ejaculation.
 * I Know You Know I Know: Taken to absurdity here.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Or should that be a kobolditarian?
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: The troll is not a fan.
 * Inflationary Dialogue: Inverted here.
 * Intercontinuity Crossover:
 * Morgoth's experiments with trans-dimensional gateways didn't always go as planned.
 * This series is a crossover with Nethack comic Dudley's Dungeon.
 * Jerkass: Explorington. Here's an example of why.
 * Just Between You and Me: Morgoth claims that the Evil Villain Bible requires him to explain his big plans in exquisite detail. This also ends up doubling as Cool and Unusual Punishment.
 * Let's Split Up, Gang: Invoked here.
 * LOLcats: This strip.
 * Look Behind You!: The "Look! An obvious distraction!" Running Gag, which shows up here, here, and here.
 * Lower Deck Episode: Several absurd examples, from the perspectives of a floor tile, a gold piece, a wall, a piece of paper, a trap, and a door.
 * Mundane Utility: Sauron apparently uses the One Ring in the kitchen. What he uses it for is unclear.
 * Mushroom Samba: A few examples. Then again, Angband itself has Mushrooms of Hallucination, so it was probably inevitable.
 * My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Offscreen before this comic.
 * Noodle Implements: "And don't forget to bring the whipped cream and a potato."
 * Noodle Incident: Watermelons were involved.
 * Oscar Bait: Parodied here.
 * Overly Long Name: A Lampshaded example here.
 * Parlor Games: Hide and seek.
 * Parody Sue: This strip.
 * Pig Latin: Kobolds are mean.
 * Perfectly Cromulent Word: "Frasmillion".
 * Preemptive Declaration: Mind the FTOW.
 * Random Number God: Referred to by name, and acts usually in response to Tempting Fate.
 * Recursive Acronym: The Recursive TRTC Creature.
 * Recursive Reality: Explorington's Angband character is doing rather well.
 * Reed Richards Is Useless: The only thing Explorington uses his time machine for... is to travel back in time and give the plans for it to himself.
 * Rickroll: Khamul trains the Vibration Hounds to Rickroll Explorington.
 * Right Behind Me: Poor orc.
 * Rock-Paper-Scissors: Morgoth and Sauron prefer Hound, Vortex, Elemental.
 * Save Scumming: Called out by name in this strip.
 * Schedule Slip: Inverted. The plan was to run three strips a week, but the author ran five a week for about a year because his buffer was getting too big.
 * Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness / Talking Is a Free Action: Lampshaded here. The title of the strip is even "Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness".
 * Shout-Out:
 * To The Matrix, here.
 * To West Side Story, here.
 * The title of this guest strip is a Deep Space Nine quote.
 * Indiana Jones, here.
 * Superman, here.
 * This strip's function is to get all the Monty Python references out of the way in one fell swoop.
 * Harry Potter, here.
 * This is the strip for references to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
 * To Sweeney Todd, here.
 * To Alice in Wonderland, here.
 * To Dune, here.
 * If you make your sword out of titanium, you get a Star Wars reference.
 * Spammer: here.
 * Stable Time Loop: these two strips.
 * Suspiciously Specific Denial: "You'll never pin anything on me, you evil bastards!"
 * Symbol Swearing: Actually, the kobold just likes punctuation.
 * Tempting Fate:
 * Don't ever say "I can't lose" or words to that effect.
 * Or wish for things to be more interesting.
 * Zig Zagged here.
 * And played straight but Lampshaded here.
 * They Called Me Mad: Explorington claims he was laughed at for stocking up on Potions of Weakness. And for creating... whatever this is.
 * Three Wishes: Used here, not very productively.
 * Too Kinky to Torture: Invoked by Explorington here.
 * Trope Name: This strip.
 * Troll: A troll that's... a troll.
 * Very Special Episode: This strip parodies anti-drug PSAs. It would work better as an actual anti-drug PSA if Explorington didn't find one of the stoned people hilarious...
 * Villain Episode: There are a number of strips focusing on Morgoth; notably this guest sequence.
 * Villains Out Shopping: Again, this is frequent. Here's one example.
 * We Were Rehearsing a Play: Morgoth and Sauron.
 * Your Mom: This strip consists solely of Your Mom jokes.