"That's not how roleplaying works!"
— Everybody, at least once.
Long ago, the players rolled in harmony. Then everything changed when the new DM started a homebrewed campaign. Only the chosen ones can save the campaign: The rule lawyer. The showoff. The guy who just wants to stay in the background. The guy with a chip on his shoulder. The one who just watches. Add a new DM with a cruel focus on method roleplaying, a mute DJ playing mood music on iTunes, an alcoholic guest DM, and a sentient dice rolling app, and you get D&D Aangvanced.
D&D Aangvanced
is a webcomic in the vein of DM of the Rings (found here) and Darths & Droids (found here), but instead retells the story of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Manny, the new DM, leads his friends through a brand new world railroading them from set piece to set piece in a game that quickly erodes from wacky romp into a cautionary tale of the power of the DM screen.
D&D Aangvanced provides examples of the following tropes:
- Alternate History: D&D and media are inverted. Several popular movies are said to be campaign modules, including James Bond, Romancing the Stone, and Top Gun.
- Anachronic Order: Session 9 - "Non-Chronological Pirate Adventures, ItÂ’s A Slam Dunk!" is a Stable Time Loop with events randomized until Damien visits time hubs in the right order to fix the timeline.
- Arc Welding: The comic connects the Dai Li and the Kyoshi Island Warriors as two forces within the Kitsune-Yoshi Megacorporation, which has completely erased all knowledge of at least one Avatar.
- Ascended Extra: Jet, a minor antagonist in the show, is given far more power in his comic counterpart.
- Bilingual Bonus: A few examples include Praxis communicating in binary to his troops, in programming code to Mackenzie, and a fair share of Non Player Characters and towns are in Untranslated Chinese.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Bumi, once the King of Omashu, has more jobs in the campaign's universe. One of these is a crooked lawyer who only represents Non Player Characters.
- Call-Forward: Several allusions to Korra have been made, many in The Fortuneteller, one in The Avatar and The Firelord, and there's even a time-bending panel in The Firebending Masters showing the past and future with Season 4 Korra making a cameo.
- Calvin Ball: The system often uses parts of 3.5 and 4th Edition, but also has murky definitions of Action Points, Overcasting (Shadowrun), and Sanity (Call of Cthulhu). Manny's Campaign Packet is never given any specific mechanics and some bending seems almost freeform.
- Campaign Comic: One of the weirder ones.
- Cerebus Syndrome: After Praxis appears, the tone of the strip keeps getting darker. This is the root of the Rick vs. Manny approach to D&D.
- Character Development: Most notably with Lex and Damien growing in different directions of seriousness.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The speech bubbles. Each player at the table has one color, which changes in value depending on who is in the DM seat.
- Rick is orange.
- Lex is grey.
- Mac is red.
- Damien is white. And sometimes brown. The white text depicts Damien at his most stressed, while the brown text depicts him at his most relaxed.
- Shelby is pink.
- Manny is green.
- Rube is blue.
- Praxis is purple.
- Allie is teal.
- Create Your Own Villain: While Manny may have set Rube on the party, he learned how to treat others at the table from watching them play.
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Creator Breakdown: As a self proclaimed auteur, Manny will crumble into this when things don't go his way. - Crossover: Bonnie from Steven and the Crystal GMs was a player at their table in the past.
- Darker and Edgier: The gaming group is more toxic than other Campaign Comics, and Manny keeps making things worse.
- Death by Adaptation: Manny, keeping his story in the grimdark as much as possible, tends to kill entire villages when the players fail, like Kyoshi Island's villagers. Bato was confirmed to have died in his appearance, and Zuko and Iroh both die by the rules of the game. Toph dies in the final session of Manny's campaign after falling from a Fire Nation airship, but is subsequently resurrected (and cloned) by Project SAVAREM, founded by her parents in the wake of her death.
- Drinking Game: Used to explain The Great Divide.
- End-of-Episode Silliness: A filler episode in Omashu ends with a food run and ensemble singing One Winged Angel.
- Gambler's Fallacy: Everyone has a dice ritual from regular manicures, to strict shelf lives, to keeping a d20 in their mouth all day.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Pretty much everyone swears constantly, except for Shelby who will often use animals in place of expletives.
- Handshake Substitute: The Lexby Latch is Lex shaking Shelby's elbow.
- "I Am" Song: Comes out of nowhere and freestyled by . . . Damien. During the Korra Season 2 finale, when Korra meditates in the Tree of Time, Allie sings a pastiche of "I Am Moana (Song of the Ancestors)" from Moana.
- In and Out of Character: Manny's method directing tends to bring out the worst of this at the table.
- In Medias Res: When the players show up late, Manny steamrolls them into the second act.
- Intermission: At regular intervals.
- Between Book 1 and 2, Lex ran a campaign based on The Wizard of Oz.
- Between Book 2 and 3, Damien ran a campaign based on Shaun of the Dead.
- Jerkass: Some Dungeon Masters railroad you into the story. Manny has blackmailed, manipulated and abused his players.
- Killer Game Master: Mackenzie, especially towards Lex. Manny, in his "Do It For The Ratings!" finales.
- Leaningon The Fourth Wall: Manny runs a blog about the campaign. People online leave comments that he brings to the table, as comments from forums and messages come into the comic.
- No Sense of Humor: Damien got this from his mom and works to undo the damage it's caused his gaming choices.
- Min-Maxing: Shelby Brady (who has been banned from national gaming conventions for making unkillable characters) joins the table with Toph.
- Parody Episode: Manny uses episodes for strange purposes. One becomes a love letter to Tarantino's non-chronological storytelling.
- Painting the Medium: Capitalization, speech bubble shape, text, and color value all are used to reflect the emotional state of the various players.
- Prima Donna Director: Manny isn't a Killer Game Master. He's an overbearing director.
- Railroading: Any time Manny wants to move ahead, he tends to outright take over a character and explain that he's on a schedule.
- Romance on the Set: Averted. After Mac and Lex spend years bickering, Mac refuses to acknowledge Lex's crush. Played straight with Lex and Shelby, and later with Mac and Allie.
- Running Gag: All doors have musical locks. No one will let up on the cruel joke that Lex is illiterate.
- There are good times to make an joke. And then there are times that a player should read the room.
- Sanity Slippage: Two characters have lost Sanity Points in the game. One was Damien when he saw Iroh in the hot spring.
- Ship Tease: So are Lex and Shelby dating or what?
- Shout-Out: The comic sometimes cites its references in titles. Rick compares the group to the toxic anime club in "Apologies to KC Green" and a campaign using rules from a Wizard of Oz sourcebook is titled "Apologies to F. Douglas Wall". A third page, at a middle school is titled "Apologies to Louis Sachar". One page only has Rick swearing, and references Bob and George doing the same joke in the tags: "Apologies to Dave Anez".
- Mackenzie's extra potent dice are called "The Battousai".
- Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness: The crux of the Rick/Manny dynamic.
- Slipping a Mickey: When Manny wants to force Lex into a MushroomSamba, he offers to bring him a soda.
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"Stop Having Fun" Guys: Damien. - Speech Bubbles: Color Coded for different characters, departing from the standard used in Darths and Droids and DM of The Rings. Works on a sliding scale of character ranges, with the DM square text bubble being used by whoever is running the game, and with varying color value depending on a player's mood.
- Take That Me: "Easy as a Ben 10 module. Easy as rolling a d6. Easy as writing a campaign com-"
- Talking to Themself: Manny does this when running a scene focused on Iroh.
- The Reveal:
- The last page of Season 1's finale end with the reveal that Rube isn't as mute as he acts and is set up to play Azula.
- The last pages of the Appa's Lost Days subplot show Manny's true colors as an abusive brother turning Rube into a monster for the sake of the game.
- The scene on the Lion-Turtle with the previous Avatars have Rube telling Rick that the Avatar campaign was given to them by their father, who is implied to be as abusive or worse than Manny.
- Title Drop: Rube gets to throw out a subtle one to the canon title in Zuko Alone.
- True Companions: Averted. Rick describes the group as people stuck in a routine who never considered an alternative. Some Fire-Forged Friends have bonded over the years despite this, like Rube and Damien - who have both taken on the entire party at times.
- They Killed Kenny Again: Lex has had over 300 deaths in his career with the table. It's given him PTSD.
- Valley Girl: Allie, Lex's niece, seems to veer between shades of this and a more clear minded presence at the table, capable of stunning Manny with a deft Armor-Piercing Question.
