Girlz 'N' Games webcomic #70: The Pinnacle of Annoyance

So, the 2010 FIFA World Cup is fast approaching the quarter finals stage, and you just knew I couldn't resist at least one football-tinged Girlz 'N' Games comic before the tournament is over... especially since this year's World Cup is taking place in my home country of South Africa.

The thing is, once the final game is over and the winners' trophy dished out, the one thing the SA World Cup will be remembered for in the long run is a certain plastic, much maligned, trumpet. Brace yourself because unless it's banned from future international events (not an impossibility), you will be hearing a lot more of the vuvuzela!

Girlz 'N' Games #70 is technically a gaming comic, although this time the gaming depicted is pen-and-paper tabletop role-playing as opposed to the electronic kind. For those unfamiliar with fantasy role-playing - and for who this comic may therefore be rather mystifying - let me explain the connection between a droning World Cup horn and traditional role-playing games (RPGs). In Dungeons & Dragons, the granddaddy of RPGs, the halfling bard is regarded as one of the most annoying characters in the game. Take Tolkien's irritatingly over-curious Hobbits as a race, give them the same profession as Asterix's caterwauling, lyre-playing Cacofonix, throw in some "invigorating" magical enhancements to their music, and you've got yourself the walking, talking fantasy game equivalent of a vuvuzela! It wasn't a stretch then to equip the most obnoxious D&D character ever created with the most hated instrument ever invented.


P.S. I strove to depict a D&D game as accurately as possible in Panel 3. This said, to a certain degree, I failed. Above is one of the cleanest D&D tables ever sketched - without piles of reference books, papers, sweet caffeinated beverages and the major food groups required to sustain role-players: sugar, starch, salt and fat.

P.P.S. For the record, when you're in a stadium the vuvuzela isn't actually that irritating. After a while it just becomes background buzzing. When it IS irritating, however, is during lazy suburban Saturday afternoons, when the neighbours' kids insist on blowing their vuvuzela. Then it should be banned.

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