‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 419

Colors by Jemma and Audrey. Everything else by me

15% is the minimum for each alignment. Well, you can have 14% and lower, but it won't earn you anything useful/cool. And yes, it is possible to be a jack-of-all-alignments, but that's been frowned upon almost as much as doing Erbana. It's more common to specialize in one with a secondary alignment barely above the minimum.

62 Comments

Hey, I’d been wondering about how alignments worked.

Having a limitless bag of holding is an amazing perk for Erbana, and I can see why players in the know would maintain Erbana 15% just for that.

Don’t know if it’s possible but I would totally go erbana/morto/demoli triple alignment 😛

Collect herbs and rare plants to have plenty of resources to sell for an income while using morto to kill everything that gets in my way and demoli to clear a path to new stuff.

Erbana and Morto are hard opposites, Erbana requires that nothing gets killed in a certain range of you (if I remember correctly) Morto requires you kill something at least once a day.

The requirement that nothing within a certain range of you die only applies to high percentage Erbana – presumably to keep that high percentage -; nothing says you can’t let low percentages get away with more death.

Especially since technically one can be a jack-of-all-alignments, but it’ll limit what you can do yourself as higher level in an alignment lets you do better stuff.

So you just need to be seriously good with a bow right?

Might work if you are an off and on pacifist. But it would probably trash both percentages and require demoli to be the main share.

That works for me. I like it.

Come now guys, you aren’t being creative enough. Those three can totally work together without conflict.

Use Erbana to get the herbs and things required, use Demoli to make bombs and plant them in populated areas. Then get out of the range Erbana requires before they detonate.

And enjoy the Mortali points. 😉

So…now I’m curious to find out if Danni is going to end up jack-of-all the alignments, or if Dude is going to end up pulling it off in an attempt to make sure he’s on whoever’s side ends up winning out between the Villain/Hero divide.

Cardista seems like it’s mostly neutral, with only a slight hero lean, to me, anyway, so I doubt Dude is going to hamper himself like that. (The only reason I’m even thinking it leans one way or the other is that Morto, Mani, and Demoli all seem particularly Villain focused, so the other three are probably Hero ranks to balance it out.)

Is this just the Plant Bag, or can you put anything in there? Because that’s a pretty good perk, in most games.

At the 15% level, it’s just a bottomless plant bag.

Hammerspace is an awesome power. Want proof? See here: https://youtu.be/ahJYd3KVdbg?t=3m33s

Okay, scariest ever story format. That is all I can say about it.

If you add up all your alignment values, can you have only 100% in total or can you be e.g. 80% Kesti, 60% Morto, 40% Cardista and 20% Demoli?

Only 100% in total.

Thanks for the response.

That makes me wonder what Danni’s total is, because she started as 32% Morto, so if the rest are distributed evenly among all other alignments she’d be just below 15% for each of them, i.e. her score was nearly the worst possible score in existence, because slightly fewer points would have given her a second alignment advantage.

I’m curious about the Game rules, but I’m also curious about the plot, so I’m not sure what to hope for to happen in the next few pages. 🙂 Maybe someone could hold up a rulebook at some point?

I take my question about Danni back, because I’ve scrolled down a bit and saw you already responded to that to a different user.

If you can only maintain 100% total, does this mean it is impossible to get 100% Kesti, for example, since if you kill things you get morto points, if you break things you get demoli points, and if you don’t kill or break anything you get erbana points?

This will be addressed later on 🙂 But Kesti is basically about following a contract (ie: quest) to exactness to get those points instead of other alignments.

So Kesti’s the Rules Laywer Alignment?

Okay, now *I* am looking forward to seeing Saisuke join the team. :p

Really enjoying the game mechanics.

Thanks! They were fun to design 😀

Heh, the bag of holding by any other name is still very, very useful. 🙂

Mind you, I’m now wondering about how inventory works in the Game. Do the non-erbanas need to carry everything on themselves or is there some sort of “backbag”? Or even literal backbag item you can get? Can the characters (not the players) get hungry and need to sleep?

This will be addressed later on 🙂

How does a player gain/maintain the minimum?

By their actions.

Are the alignments mutually exclusive in some way, that is can you be 90% in Morto and 90% in Demoli if you fulfil 90% of both requirements? Or is everything scaled so that the sum of all your alignments percentages add up to 100%. If everything is scaled to add up to 100% and if Danni got 32% in Morto, what is her other 68%?

Scaled to 100%. It’s a maximum, though, not a minimum. If you only do a few actions that get you 32% in Morto but do nothing else, than the 68% will be left undecided. There are also penalties. For instance, if you’re trying to do both Erbana and Morto, certain actions in Morto (and vice versa) can both decrease and penalize the other alignment.

Makes sense about 100% not being a minimum.

This makes Kleya’s and Jake’s 100% performance even more impressive, to get 100% in one alignment you must 0% (or less, if that is possible) in the other alignments. I am guessing that if it is possible to get a negative score, then it is treated as zero in the calculations.

Hmmm… Morte (sp?) and 15% Erbna?
How’s that work… you’re a homicidal maniac but kinda hate being so?
Or do ya just not kill plants? 😀
Anti-vegan! mmmmmm…. bacon.

Strange how so many Net posts come around to bacon…
Now THAT would be a popular alignment!

How does one check and maintain these percentages? Are we ever going to see the status screen?

This will be addressed later 🙂

Hey love the latest comics btw, I have a burning question. Please answer!
I get that mortos have to kill once a day and erbanas stop violence within their area range to keep their alignments.
but what do demolis and cardistas have to do?

Heh, but you won’t like my answer: this will be addressed later on 🙂 Or you can check pg 298 for a basic idea of the alignments. Or the short alignment story that will be included in Volume 3.

If the plant bag is bottomless, why is there a percentage meter? Or is that for something else…?

The percentage meter is demonstrating the 15% in Erbana needed to have access to the bottomless bag.

Is it just me, or is the offset for replies to posts gone? It makes it super confusing to tell who’s replying to what.

Also love the comic as always. <3
And the guest colorists are doing a nifty job!

I still see it with the offset.

It’s pleasantly surprising to see how often you’re responding all of a sudden. Does that mean you’re finally back to having a comfortable buffer after all those harsh times?

Hiring a colorist may be expensive, but I believe it will pay off in the (very) long run.

Ha, no; real life keeps getting in the way so I’m still working on that buffer. But if I didn’t have that colorist, NAV would have been peppered with delays/hiatuses these past weeks. So yay for Jemma and Audrey!

I don’t usually answer questions if the story is going to answer them eventually. But a lot of the game mechanics probably won’t end up in the story, so I replied for those that have an interest in them. Then I felt bad for those I hadn’t replied to and starting answering those, too. >_< I'm a lurker on my own site (and well, everywhere else, too), but I really do appreciate all the comments! They're food for my little artistic soul 😀 Thanks everyone!

Oh, too bad, but good luck on that buffer anyway!

In that case I have one more question about the Game:
Is there something like a level-up system or something similar like in Final Fantasy X that makes more experienced players stronger? When Bandit said that for Erbana the good stuff takes forever to get I thought he referred to the high-level skills, but ever since Kat prevented herself from getting the rare item I am starting to think that he meant that Erbana’s good stuff is hidden exceptionally well instead. So, which of these did he mean, or did he mean both?

Also, if a hiatus becomes unavoidable financially at some point, don’t worry about it. In my experience most comic writers do that. Those who have very few to no hiatuses have either
– a much simpler style (xkcd, yafgc, Freefall),
– fewer and/or smaller panels (see above),
– fewer updates (Flaky Pastry, Twokinds),
– simpler storylines (see most of the above) or
– a boost of success because of nsfw-parts (Grrlpower, Twokinds).

Comics like Goblinscomic, Unsounded, Erfworld and Order of the Stick have their hiatuses, too.

To your Game question: it will be addressed later on 😀

I will probably have to do a break at some point, but I’m desperately trying to avoid it as long as possible. I hate hiatuses.

Understood that you want to avoid hiatuses… haiti… whatever 😛 and that’s awesome.

But I suspect Unsounded and Stand Still, Stay Silent (both *very* prolific updaters) use their chapter/monthly hiatuses to prevent burnout in the middle. And their readers are totally cool with them.

So something to consider is small but regular breaks. Seems impossible when you are still trying to get a buffer, but those two comics above use the hiatus sometimes to fill buffers and sometimes to just let the brain relax. Both are needed.

cheers,

Alright, thanks for the info. 🙂

I think you’ve definitely broken your record for “wait and see” type answers here 🙂

The fact Danni knew very little about The Game before starting means that exposition of the most useful bits of game mechanics can be handled within the context of the story, without having to insert an “As you know…” exposition or release a lot of background material.

Besides which, drip feeding us background information rather than releasing it all at once keeps us champing at the bit, awaiting more 🙂

Could anyone tell me when this gets updated and if there’s an app or something for mobile devices? I started “not a villain yesterday and I really like it for my first web comic.

Found out it’s every Tuesday/Friday but what times? Also could you add all the game mechanics as they’re found out in the about section for quick reference?

Updated at 12:01am! But the cache may take a while to update.

A list of terms/game mechanics is on my to-do list. Alas, it’s rather low on the priority totem pole, so it will be a while.

Maybe that’s something you could let the community update on their own. It isn’t uncommon for readers to enjoy trying to obtain and keep that information up to date =)

Thanks Aneeka! I agree with Ardyvee’s though too though if you don’t want to make the list yourself.

Man Panel 1 is so pretty

*wants to make a table-top RPG adaptation…..*

That would be awesome!

Wait, does Kleya not have an Esone? Everyone seems to have it in their right hand, and I checked all their hands when you asked if anyone noticed anything a couple pages back, but the only shots I saw of her hands obscured the right palm, so I assumed it was there. If Danni’s asking, though, that means it’s straight up not there, right? Man, I can’t wait to see where that bit of information’s leading.

My guess is that Kleya, with her past familiarity with the game and her awesome cyborg-ness, has already set & hidden her esone. In comic #399 Jake/Bandit talks about how Porto Del Fama would be a dangerous place to start since it is villain aligned and they’d have esones that were not yet set or hidden.

http://navcomic.com/not-a-villain/page-399/

Thats a neat feature of the alignment system (Tho I still have my issues with it). Now I am wondering what the minimum benefits of other alignments are. Also, are there any rare benefits of being 100% in a alignment?

Hmm…. if I could have multiple alliances I think I would go for Mani and Kesti. That way I can manipulate others into doing the quest for me or just talk the quest giver into giving me the reward without having to do anything.

The other combo I would do is Demoli and Morto. That way you can just go on a rampage an destroy EVERYTHING. Muahahhaha *commences evil laughter* 🙂

Demoli and Morto is a great way to pull aggro though.

Erbana at least gives the “A high level Erbana can’t afford for us to die, so it’s in our best interest to make sure they stay alive after combat ends.” knowledge to de-aggro themselves.

I’ve totally forgotten what ‘Esone’ means.

It would surprise me if someone wasn’t already working on a game inspired by “The Game” at this point.

I really liked Kat’s face in this one! 🙂

Not A Villain Webcomic

Webcomic of a semi- reformed hacker trying to redeem herself in a post- apocalyptic world she may have created.

‘Not A Villain’ Webcomic – Page 419