Title: 1HP Club

Type: Webcomic

Year: 2022-?

Country: Unknown (comic published in English)

Genre: Dungeons & Dragons (fantasy/action/adventure/slice-of-life/comedy)

Status: Ongoing (review as of chapter 130)

Platform: Webtoon (read here)

Appropriate for 30+?: Yes

My rating: 4/5 stars

(Rating scale: 5/5 = masterpiece, 4/5 = quite good, 3/5 = mostly good, 2/5 = bleh, 1/5 = I regret ever being exposed to this series, 0/5 = affront to humanity)

1HP Club is a webcomic series about a group of adults playing Dungeons & Dragons. That’s it, that’s the premise. However due to a combination of eye-candy art, rapid pacing, engaging action scenes, and interesting characters, 1HP Club actually manages to be a surprisingly fun and easy read.

There are a number of works out there that take place in the D&D (or similar) universe, ranging from the live-action Dungeons & Dragons: Honor among Thieves, the animated The Legend of Vox Machina, and webcomics like The Weekly Role. However 1HP Club takes the approach of primarily taking place in the D&D universe but occasionally pulling back to a (also fictional) table-top setting. In my opinion this dual-setting is handled quite well and overcomes the issues frequently inherent to D&D fiction that primarily focus on one or the other: bouncing between table-top and in-game action helps facilitate good pacing and avoids “downtime” in both settings, helps ease the issue of “suspension of disbelief” (because not only is it “just a story,” it’s “just a story within a story”), and adds padding to character development (because every character also has a character playing them).

Do you need prior knowledge of D&D for this series to make sense? Not necessarily, but without at least some basic knowledge of game mechanics and/or general tabletop gaming experience readers are likely to miss at least a few references, plot points, or jokes; the series isn’t quite a parody, but it does assume prior D&D knowledge. However even the completely uninitiated may still find the action/adventure plot and eye-candy art to be more than sufficient to enjoy the series. On the topic of art, I really like how it’s handled: both the table-top and in-game settings done in a colorful and aesthetically-pleasing style, but the table-top characters look more like normal people while the in-game characters are more attractive with some occasional mild cheesecake (interestingly of the male characters only, which is strangely refreshing given that nearly all non-romance fantasy series are more about sexualizing their female characters).

Ages of the table-top characters and in-game characters aren’t mentioned, but they act and look to be in the 20s-30s range. There’s no content “objectionable” to older readers, and while zany antics abound, they’re thankfully of the standard D&D/role-playing variety. It shouldn’t take more than the first ten chapters or so to figure out if this is a series you’ll enjoy or not, and with each chapter being about a one-minute read, why not give 1HP Club a try?

As with all my reviews, the above is nothing more than my personal opinion. Have you read this series? What did you think? Post in the comments!