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redirected from Main.Adventurers

Adventurers! is a webcomic by Mark Shallow, who later created Antihero For Hire (there's a crossover...of sorts). The storyline is now finished and the comic no longer updates. http://www.adventurers-comic.com/ is the place to get your Archive Binge.

Adventurers! began as a series of console RPG jokes connected only by the presence of the main characters, but gradually developed a storyline that culminated with a massive battle against the Final Boss.

The RPG Console, also an Affectionate Parody of CRPGs and their tropes, uses Adventurers! strips for some of its illustrations.

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Adventurers! provides examples (almost always lampshaded or parodied) of the following tropes:

• Aborted Arc (Nate Wars, among a several recurring comics during the first 100 strips.)
• Acceptable Breaks From Reality (Parodied, by showing how silly they really are)
• Action Bar
• Action Girl
• Affably Evil
• Affectionate Parody
• Alien Geometries
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield (Khrima has one built just for the sake of conforming to this trope)
• Anime Hair (Karn uses Hero Hair brand hair gel.)
• Anti Villain
• Apathetic Citizens (the Bystandrians)
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit (made fun of in this strip)
• Art Evolution (And how!)
• Artificial Stupidity
• Author Guest Spot
• Back From The Dead
• Barehanded Blade Block (involving a robot arm)
  • and again during the final boss fight
• BFS (Karn's)
• Behind The Black
• Big Bad (Two of them: Khrima and Eternion)
• Big Damn Heroes
• Big Red Button
• Bishonen Line (the Trope Namer)
• Black Cloak
• Blind Idiot Translation (parodied)
• Block Puzzle
• Bonus Boss
• Boss Battle
• Bottomless Magazines
• Bowdlerise (parodied)
• Breaking The Fourth Wall (Not a heavily used trope, but there is one notable example. Final Boss Khrima uses an attack spell with an animation so over-the-top, it doesn't just include an Earth Shattering Kaboom, it actually cracks the Adventurers! game disc, requiring Karn to tell the "player" how to replace the disc with a backup copy.)
• But Thou Must
• Caps (After strip number 999, every subsequent strip was also numbered 999.)
• Card Carrying Villain ((Khrima))
• Cerebus Syndrome (Though, notably, even after the plot picked up there would be periods where they went back to complete "gag a day" strips, justified as taking time off from the plot to level grind.)
• Character Development (a few nice bits. Karn is frustrated, but he never did have much patience for anything that didn't involve hitting things with swords.)
• Chest Monster (And it's bigger than the box it was hiding in!)
• Chekhovs Gunman (Played straight with Argent. Inverted in this strip, in which a character is conspicuously introduced and then never seen again.)
• Collapsing Lair Averted because the designers 'were on a budget'.
• Commonplace Rare (apples)
• Continuity Nod (Most of the summons seen in the comic return when Ardam summons Pantheon is just one example))
• Convection Schmonvection
• Crossover (With RPG World. And with Antihero For Hire...sort of.)
• Crowning Moment Of Awesome (quite a few, especially in the final arc; the most impressive being "Summon Pantheon!")
• Cut Lex Luthor A Check (Khrima)
• Cutting The Knot
• Cutscene Power To The Max and Cutscene Incompetence (parodied in one comic)
• Dancing Pants
• Dangerously Genre Savvy (This enemy.)
• Dark Action Girl (Mizuna)
• Dark Is Not Evil
• Death From Above
• Death Trap
• Designated Hero
• Dimension Lord (The Eternals are a race of these, with Grand Maxima being their initial leader, followed by Eternion.
• Divine Ranks
• Dramatic Thunder (Karn makes Ardam use a lightning spell only for the sake of this trope)
• Dramatic Unmask (Eternion when Khrima hits him with the Mallet of Extreme Pain. The fact that the mask is his face should tell you where it [[Anticlimax heads]].)
• Dreadful Musician
• Duel Boss (the author has a rather low opinion of these)
• Dungeon Bypass
• Durable Deathtrap
• Earth Shattering Kaboom ("Magmarmageddon")
• Easter Egg (Karn goes to great lengths to find one)
• Elemental Crafting
• Elemental Powers
• Elemental Rock Paper Scissors (Including such elements as "Tastes Like Orange Tang", "Doesn't Taste Like Orange Tang", and "Peanuts")
  • "Have you never heard of an allergy before?"
• Elite Tweak
• Enigmatic Minion (Argent)
• Everything Fades
• Everything Trying To Kill You (An Inanimate Chair and Evil Pants, immediately followed by a demonic boombox; this trope is the reason why Ardam can't drink coffee.)
• Evil Counterpart (Most of the good guys have one - Ardam vs. Wizrom, Drecker vs. Rio, Karashi vs. Mizuna, Gildward vs. Dirlend, even Chookie vs. Blanc...)
• Eviler Than Thou (Eternion to Khrima.)
• Evil Laugh
• Evil Knockoff
• Evil Minions
• Evil Chancellor (Parodied - the chancellor wasn't evil and the monster impersonating him had a cold)
• Exactly What It Says On The Tin (the character Evil Killer Death Spybot 5000)
• Explosive Instrumentation (Khrima apparently built them like this on purpose)
• Fake King (parodied)
• Fetch Quest
• Fight Woosh
• Final Boss: Khrima and Eternion actually get into a PR battle over who gets to be Final Boss. Khrima wins.
• Floating Platforms (subverted)
• Fourth Wall Mail Slot
• Frickin Laser Beams
• Frothy Mugs Of Water
• Game Breaker
• Gameplay And Story Segregation (Lampshaded - the characters can do ridiculous things in battle, but can't do any of it outside)
• Genre Savvy (Karn)
  • Also Karashi: Everything is protected by floating platforms over lava.
• Giant Space Flea From Nowhere (Parodied and played straight at different points)
• Global Airship
• Glowing Eyes Of Doom
• Goldfish Poop Gang
• Good Morning Crono (This strip.)
• Gotta Catch Them All (The Elemental Relics: Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium...)
• Grand Finale (Goes on for just under 300 strips)
• The Guards Must Be Crazy (subverted)
• Guest Star Party Member
• Guide Dang It
• Half Human Hybrid (despite looking completely human, Karn is quarter-Skyrian, as revealed via painfully straight As You Know; his father is half-Skyrian. The green hair probably should have been a giveaway, but.... Also, Karashi and her sister are half-dwarf. They gets their looks from their father.)
• Halloween Cosplay
• Harmless Villain (nearly all of them)
• He Knows About Timed Hits
• Heel Face Turn
• Heroes Prefer Swords (Karn)
• Hit Points
• Honest Johns Dealership (Honest Cid's Used Airships)
• Ho Yay (Lampshaded by Karn in this strip)
• Humongous Mecha
• Hyperactive Metabolism
• Hyperspace Arsenal
• I Am Not Left Handed
• Indy Escape
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain
• Infinity Plus One Sword: Inverted when a powerful sword is useless.
• Insecurity System (lampshaded here)
• Instant Awesome Just Add Mecha: "Since when did we have giant robots?"
• Insurmountable Waist Height Fence (parodied)
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys
• Intermission- the page is about half-over.
  • -SILLY MUSIC-
  • Chosen One: I've 'Chosen' the large tub.
  • Old Mentor: I've got yellow liquid for your popcorn, and it's nondairy!
  • Stereotypical Bobby : Wot's all this, then? You lot aren't even in this work!
  • Wimp Lo : But they needed the intermission! My nipples are Milk Duds!
  • Narrator: IT'S COMING BACK!
  • All: AAAAAAAA!
  • Now back to Adventurers!
• Item Crafting (Parodied)
• Joke Character (Chookie)
• Just Between You And Me
• Kill Sat (Khrima sure does love his lasers.)
• Killer Rabbit
• Kleptomaniac Hero (Karn is unapologetic about this)
• Knight Of Cerebus (Eternion)
• Lampshade Hanging - and how!
• Laser Blade (Lampshaded by how absurd it is)
• Last Disc Magic
• Lets Split Up Gang
• Level Grinding
• Limited Wardrobe (Made fun of. Also subverted in this strip.)
• Lock And Key Puzzle
• Lost Forever (Both parodied and played straight.)
• Love Interest
• Mac Guffin Delivery Service
• Made Of Explodium
• Mad Scientist Laboratory
• Malevolent Architecture
• Mask Power (the Eternals)
• The Maze
• Mecha-Mooks
• Meaningful Name (The city of Doomdia, and the Bystandrians. Arguably, Gildward, whose name is a composite of "Gilbert" and "Edward", the Japanese and English names for the Spoony Bard in Final Fantasy IV.)
• Memento Mac Guffin (Lumi's amulet)
• Mind Screw ("This is going to cause message board debates for years.")
• Mineral Mac Guffin
• Minion With An F In Evil (Khrima, despite being the Evil Overlord)
• Money Sink
• Mons (Humorously averted.)
• Musical Spoiler (Subverted)
• Mysterious Informant (Imposis)
• Nerf Arm (A rolled-up newspaper)
• Never Found The Body (Lampshaded by Karn, who says "We never found the body, so obviously he's still alive!" "But the explosion could have- "We never found the body, so obviously he's still alive.")
• No Endor Holocaust (Which causes Ardam to give up trying to accept the nonsense)
• Non Action Guy (Gildward)
• Non Lethal KO
• No Sneak Attacks (Parodied multiple times. On one occasion, one monster persuades another to attack the party in their sleep...only to discover their tent is electrified.)
• Not So Different
• Not So Harmless (Khrima turns out more competent than he originally seems, but he's still not very threatening)
• Now If You Will Excuse Me I Have A Noun To Verb
• One Winged Angel (Khrima. He uses Wing-B-Gone to deal with it.)
• Only Idiots May Pass
• Only Sane Man (Ardam, who can't stand the absurd RPG tropes he has to deal with.)
  • Subverted/Deconstructed near the end.
    • He gives up.
• Only Smart People May Pass
• Operation Blank
• Padding (Woo boy, that last arc. Lampshaded, of course.)
• Pamphlet Shelf
• Palette Swap
• Physical God
• Plot Coupon
• Product Placement (Parodied)
• Punch Clock Villain
• Quirky Mini Boss Squad
• Quite a lot, isn't there?
• Random Encounters
• Randomly Drops
• Recurring Boss (Numerous. Khrima, Eternion, Blanc, Mizuna just to name some)
• Rewarding Vandalism
• Revive Kills Zombie (This strip illustrates the results.)
• RPG Mechanics Verse
• Rule Thirty Four (This strip alludes to the inevitable content of Adventurers! fansites. Adventurers! fan-made - and author-made! - hentai actually did exist once, but it has long since vanished from the internet.)
  • If by "vanished from the internet" you actually mean "become readily available in abundance" then you're absolutely right.
• Save Point
• Sequential Boss
• Shark Pool
• Shout Out (The "Magic Eight Squall", the name Gildward, and several others)
• Show Within A Show (In addition to Khrima's daytime TV and various other shows, the entire comic turned out to be a Show Within A Show - or more accurately, Game Within A Comic - in the final comic, where it's revealed Wrench of Antihero For Hire has been playing it the whole time.)
• Sidequest
• Slap On The Wrist Nuke
• Slave To PR
• Small Annoying Creature
• Smoke Shield (Lampshaded/Subverted/Parodied/Inverted)
• Sorting Algorithm Of Evil (partially subverted)
• Squishy Wizard (Gildward is a squishy bard.)
• Spikes Of Doom (Used here)
• Spoof Aesop (But most of all I learned never to tick off a ninja.)
• Spoony Bard (Gildward)
• Staff Chick (Lumi)
• Standard Status Effects
• Strategy Guide (Karn is seen reading one.)
• Stupidity Is The Only Option
• Summon Magic
• Take Your Time
• Taking You With Me
• Talk To Everyone
• Temple Of Doom
• The Only One Allowed To Defeat You (The reason Khrima saves the party when Eternion first appears.)
• This Is Something Hes Got To Do Himself
• Timed Mission
• Time Travel (used for a couple of cheap jokes and then never mentioned again)
• Too Awesome To Use
• Took A Shortcut
• Total Party Kill (Save Points make these little more than an inconvenience.)
• Trap Door
• Trauma Inn
• Two Gamers On A Couch (Parodied in this strip)
• Underground Monkey
• Unexpected Genre Change
• Universal Poison
• Unsound Effect
• Unusual Euphemism ("spoony" and its variants)
• The Untwist
• Useless Useful Spell
• Verbal Tic (Chookie)
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon
• Videogame Stealing
• Villain Ball
• Villains Out Shopping
• Walking The Earth
• Wangst (Subverted.)
• Weapon Of Mass Destruction
• Welcome To Corneria
• Well Intentioned Extremist (Argent, apparently)
• When All You Have Is A Hammer
• Where Are They Now Epilogue
• White Haired Pretty Boy (Argent)
• Why Dont Ya Just Shoot Him
• World Map
• Worthy Opponent
• Wrecked Weapon (happens to Gildward once)
• Wrong Genre Savvy (Ardam expects the RPG Mechanics Verse to behave like the real world.)
• Wutai Theft
• You ALL Look Familiar
• You Cant Fight Fate (The characters follow the plot, because that's what you do in an RPG.)
• You Have Failed Me
• You Meddling Kids

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