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 the first year of comics, then opened up user submissions after a week's break.
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.
- 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
- Griefer: One seems to be responsible for a nasty bones pile left via Hearse.
- Idiot Hero: Dudley, when he isn't being horrendously unlucky anyway.
- 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.
- Tempting Fate: Dudley does this quite often.
- Yet Another Stupid Death: The comic's most prominent running gag.
- 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. It's a riff on the MyDoom computer worm.
- 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.
- 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.
- Clarke's Third Law: Discussed in this strip here.
- Contemplate Our Navels: Dudley sees a group of
a
approaching him and ponders what 'a' could possibly be. They were soldier ants. - 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.
- 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.[1] He decides against it when he realizes that would also mean more monsters trying to kill him.
- Jerkass Gods:
- 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: In one strip, Dudley polymorphs a pile of seemingly-unrelated items into a bicycle.
- The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything: Discussed In-Universe - they think of everything except poor Dudley, it seems.
- Villains Out Shopping: The Wizard of Yendor apparently plays NetHack in his spare time.
- Here We Go Again: The story picks up exactly where the first run left off and adds another panel.
- Butterfly of Doom: Dudley becomes one in this strip.
- 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. Even though he succeeds, it naturally goes to waste.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Or incredibly lazy at least to not lift a finger about 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.
- ↑ The Chinese language has more than 4,000 "characters" compared to the standard 52 uppercase and lowercase English letters NetHack uses.