About this Strip

So the story behind this is that my brother-in-law, Mason Williams, posted about some dumb thing some other author said. They made the comment that "good stories only have the essential parts of the story. Everything that isn't essential shouldn't be included." Now, there's a way to look at that and said, "well, sure, certain parts of a story could be removed to tighten up the whole," but it reads like they're saying, "anything that doesn't move the plot forward should be excised."

That is, patently, a stupid way of writing a story. The best parts of many long-form stories are the character asides, the things that happen spur of the moment that show growth for the heroes and the world. They don't necessarily do anything for the plot, but they do enhance the enjoyment. The way Mason put it, if he'd ditched all the non-essential parts of his comic Leftover Soup (which is a great read so go check it out), his comic would have been about one guy working out a crime mystery. That's accurate in a way, but entirely not what the comic was really about.

So I sat there and thought, "what would CVRPG be like if it was just the essential bits." It'd be pretty dumb... and I like dumb. So I made it. Presented now, one comic per game, is the Essential CVRPG. Enjoy!

Sometimes I like my flights of fancy go too far...