Angband Tales From the Pit

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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.

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Tropes featured include:

• After the End: This strip is a subversion.
• 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! (You're supposed to lube it up first!)
• 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 Jehovahs 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.
• Rick Roll: Khamul trains the Vibration Hounds to Rick Roll 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 Hitchhikers 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.