Dudley's dungeon



Dudley's dungeon (alternately Dudley's Dungeon) is the name of a webcomic originally created by Dion Nicolaas and launched on February 2, 2004. It is an ASCII art webcomic about the adventures of Dudley, a player character in the universe of NetHack, and his search for the Amulet of Yendor in the Dungeons of Doom. Nicolaas wrote much of the first year of comics, with some user submissions and guest comics present here and there.

The comic is made to resemble the tty version of NetHack, and is drawn completely using ASCII characters - sometimes they may contain an interesting additional feature, depending on the page. When characters speak, their lines appear in quotes below each comic panel, preceded by the symbol for that monster; there is also additional text from the NetHack game itself within the panels.

The original run of Dudley's dungeon finished on the very last day of 2008 - the original site was left up for archival's sake, and the source code was made available by the author via mail. From there, two continuations of the series appeared: The first, which retained the original name, began on January 12th, 2009. It was hosted on sadowl.com and ran until January 9th, 2013, when it was last updated. As of July 6th, 2021, the site is unavailable - fortunately, several snapshots were saved, and the most recently available one can be viewed here via the Wayback Machine.

The second continuation, created by alt.org admin Paxed, began on January 19th, 2009 and is still currently active as of July 6th, 2021. Titled Dudley's (New, Improved) Dungeon, it is also open to user submissions, and notably adds colors and a graphical editor among other features. It can be viewed here at alt.org, with the strip numbering starting at 58.


 * Alternate Universe: The two continuations are considered different universes to each other.
 * The use of color in the alt.org comics was the subject of a "webcomic war", billed by some of the sadowl readers as a "conflict" that would eventually proving the superiority of black-and-white ASCII over color. In practice, the "war" petered out pretty quickly, as only the sadowl side of things actually cared enough to run with the subject, and while the alt.org continuation had a barb or two of its own, they ultimately did not care. In retrospect, sadowl dedicating several strips to the use of colored glyphs also arguably defeated the purpose.
 * Conservation of Ninjutsu: Frequently averted as in NetHack, much to Dudley's frequent chagrin.
 * Cosmic Plaything: Oh, the misfortunes that befall poor Dudley...
 * Death Is Cheap: One of the few points where the comic world of NetHack diverges from the game, since Dudley frequently gets better between panels.
 * Final Death: One of many NetHack mechanics averted in the comic, generally for humorous purposes. Dudley and some other characters retain their memory of previous "games", and they all take place within the same dungeon.
 * Gameplay and Story Integration: On multiple levels. The strips are formatted to resemble part of an actual tty interface for NetHack; the game's mechanics are the crux of the story and its humor, and are discussed in-universe fairly often; and most of Dudley's exploits are the sort that could very much happen in a real game, and at worst many are improbable rather than outright impossible.
 * Grave Humor: Naturally, given how Dudley tends to die often.
 * REST IN PEACE - Dudley, killed by Chopin
 * Even other monsters aren't safe from existential mockery!
 * Griefer: One seems to be responsible for a nasty bones pile left via Hearse.
 * Idiot Hero: When he isn't being horrendously unlucky, Dudley makes you wonder how he gets as far as he does.
 * Guile Hero: He does have moments of this, though.
 * Random Number God: Literally deified in the comic's setting. Dudley prays to them in the very first comic (and also calls them "Arnie").
 * Running Gag:
 * Many comics feature inexplicable deaths to incredibly weak Mooks, most notably the newt - the very first instance serves as this page's image, and said newt drops Dudley just as he's convinced he's invincible.
 * Shout-Out: It's about as chock full of pop cultural calls as NetHack itself. See for yourself.
 * Tempting Fate: Dudley does this quite often. "Nothing ever happens in this dungeon."
 * Yet Another Stupid Death: The comic's most prominent running gag.
 * One of the earliest comics establishes the relationship between Dudley and newt-induced deaths.
 * Not even Fido is safe!
 * Viewers Are Geniuses: The punchlines can get ridiculously obscure, even by the standards of webcomics and a geek-friendly community like that of NetHack. For example, have fun guessing the punchline for this two-strip combo here.
 * Visual Pun: Being an ASCII comic for an ASCII game, Dudley's dungeon excels at this. Often occurs in the form of Fun with Acronyms.


 * Alternate Universe: Played for Laughs when Dudley discovers Save Scumming and immediately abuses it, claiming he can now never die. He promptly loses to early-game monsters in two different universes before deciding to stop afterward, both out of guilt and because the gag was getting old. He continues on with his conscience clear... and dies to a jackal anyway.
 * And the Adventure Continues...: Even after, Dudley is still content to revisit the Dungeons of Doom again and again.
 * Artifact of Death: Pay attention to what artifacts you randomly pick up, Dudley!
 * Baleful Polymorph:
 * In set of strips Fido is turned into a dragon, then either a sphere or floating eye and finally a demon.
 * Beach Episode: An extended one that starts in this strip and continues for several more.
 * Be Careful What You Wish For: Dudley probably wishes he'd reconsidered these wishes.
 * Cats Have Nine Lives: At least this one does.
 * Clarke's Third Law: Discussed in this strip here.
 * Contemplate Our Navels: Dudley sees a group of  approaching him and ponders what 'a' could possibly be.
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Discussed In-Universe - they think of everything except poor Dudley, it seems.
 * Emoticon: The ASCII nature of the game and comic lends itself to jokes about forming these with monster and object glyphs. For example:
 * Dudley's failed attempt to shoot a newt with an arrow.
 * Sometimes the best joke is the one played on the player.
 * Establishing Character Moment: In the very first strip, Dudley prays to a new deity - the literal Random Number God, no less - and receives a spellbook. Unbeknownst to him, this also generates a horde of demons and other monsters waiting just down the hall.
 * Eucatastrophe: Dudley tries his best to consciously invoke this trope.
 * Everything's Worse with Bees: Dudley is beset by a hive full of them in this strip homaging Winnie-the-Pooh.
 * Inventory Management Puzzle: Dudley finds his inventory full and wonders if he could solve this trope by learning Chinese. He decides against it when he realizes that would also mean more monsters trying to kill him.
 * Jackass Genie: Don't just live in lamps anymore, judging by these three strips.
 * Jerkass Gods: The gods don't seem to like Dudley very much.
 * When Dudley prays to Crom in the midst of a horde of monsters, the god's response is a message about the Castle passtune - followed by the Funeral March. Crom also contemplates disintegrating Dudley while hanging out with Set, a chaotic god and Crom's "enemy".
 * MacGyvering: An occasional joke plays with this trope and the ability to polymorph monsters and objects in NetHack.
 * In one strip, Dudley polymorphs a pile of seemingly-unrelated items into a bicycle.
 * In another strip, he applies a tinning kit while engulfed by a dust vortex, turning the tool into a vacuum cleaner.
 * In this strip, Dudley gets right of an iron golem by zapping it with a wand of polymorph while it stands on a ring of aggravate monster, turning it into a magnet.
 * Dudley turns an assortment of wands and other objects into an electric motor.
 * Monkeys on a Typewriter: Dudley finds a room full of them.
 * Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: Dudley pulls this on another monster using a mechanism that showed up in previous strips, drowning a master lich that was hounding him.
 * Schizo-Tech: A world where swords, clubs, daggers, and magic exist alongside batteries, computers and email... Dudley gets tired of this sometimes.
 * Self-Imposed Challenge: This strip and some subsequent entries detail Dudley having an awful amount of bad luck with these.
 * Status Quo is God: Dudley barely gets two strips past before he starts dying to newts again. The more things change...
 * This Is Gonna Suck: Dudley's reaction to yet another newt encounter.
 * Victory Is Boring: As Dudely discovered in this strip near the comic's first anniversary.
 * Villains Out Shopping: The Wizard of Yendor apparently plays NetHack in his spare time. He also tends to shop-by-phone while sitting in his Evil Tower of Ominousness, and emails his colleagues while monitoring Dudley's progress.
 * Visual Pun: Dudley encounters a cloud that follows him and rains on his parade, causing him to run into a hallway full of other clouds.


 * Camera Abuse: When Dudley fire a force bolt at the ceiling, he ends up doing this.
 * Medium Shift:
 * The various color comics by Eskimo, which were also made to (unsuccessfully) appeal to a believed divide in the fanbase that preferred non-color ASCII graphics.
 * This strip features what appears to be a first-person perspective of a NetHack game.
 * Here We Go Again: The story picks up exactly where the first run left off and adds another panel.
 * Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Dudley learns that sometimes a peek into the future isn't the best motivational tool.
 * Sdrawkcab Name: Dudley thinks playing under a backwards name will solve his newt problem - and it does!
 * Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: A mind flayer trying to consume the brain of Dudley is reduced to slime.
 * Visual Pun: Occurs when Dudley is run down and killed by a horde of monsters - the Mooks then follow down the hallway in a line that spells out.
 * Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: Used to decent effect here.


 * Butterfly of Doom: Dudley becomes one in this strip.
 * Enemy Civil War: Inverted. This strip has Big Bad Rodney and Vlad the Impaler finish off successful peace talks - just in time for Dudley to show up and possibly ruin everything...
 * Half the Man He Used To Be: An unfortunate ninja in this strip falls victim to this by way of a Hanzo-made katana.
 * Medium Shift Gag: Done in a strip with a chase sequence featuring the Keystone Kops.
 * Police Lineup: This strip features a Keystone Kop walking a widow through one, with Dudley in the lineup.
 * Save Scumming: Often in the vein of the original newt jokes.
 * This strip features Dudley start scumming for a good item or two as a Wizard.
 * Screw This, I'm Outta Here: One strip posted during an alt.org tourney in June has the Plot Coupons left lying around in an empty dungeon for Dudley to take at his leisure, with a note signaling that the Wizard of Yendor and co. had given up.
 * The Guards Must Be Crazy: Or at least incredibly apathetic to not lift a finger during the murder of Minetown citizens.
 * What Measure Is a Mook?: Dudley thinks nothing of butchering a small group of gnomes and a dwarf who were simply discussing mining.