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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
Howitzer

Story Friday, June 10, 2016

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19 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

And I see it more as like a best friend in junior high was shoved in a freezer. Since then we've finished high school, gone to college, gotten established in a career... and the best friend from junior high just showed up, *still in junior high*, and trying to fit in our life the same way she used to. It's awkward.

Could you explain a bit more? I'm unsure I understand you... you're saying this explanation is like a best friend time traveling from the past?

8 hours ago, Scotty said:

And now I'm wondering why no one has asked Dan to draw an actual Cyndaquil/Quilava Justin, Jiggly-puff Tedd, or Sentret Grace.

I have, multiple times, for multiple characters, with multiple Pokémon (and multiple different non-Pokémon animals, too). A few times on the Patreon, even. ~shrug~ Dan and the People clearly don't want it, I suppose.

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13 hours ago, WR...S said:

This just makes me sad for this comic's lack of perma-TFs... I wonder if they're more a thing in Kaoli's world, or Magus's, or Lord Tedd's, or Beta Tedd's...

Well ... Tedd did said he now knows how to make permanent transformation wand ... and Lord Tedd likely actually tried ...

3 hours ago, Duke of Pretzels said:

The best part of this, to me at any rate, is that Sarah is a male pikachu

Good job on Dan, sneaking that in there! 

Funny as it is, I suspect Dan simply don't know. The difference only appeared in Diamond/Pearl.

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5 hours ago, hkmaly said:
9 hours ago, Duke of Pretzels said:

The best part of this, to me at any rate, is that Sarah is a male pikachu

Good job on Dan, sneaking that in there! 

Well ... Tedd did said he now knows how to make permanent transformation wand ... and Lord Tedd likely actually tried ...

Funny as it is, I suspect Dan simply don't know. The difference only appeared in Diamond/Pearl.

Also, the tail goes off panel. The notch could be off screen, so to speak. (combined with the breasts and generally feminine figure pikachu!Sarah has in that image, I think it's probably mostly safe to assume she's female in that panel, sex-wise at least).

 

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This was reproducing a comic Dan inked back when he was in High School.

Had the female Pikachu even been introduced at that point?  Really, I am asking.  I don't know the Poker man timeline or how it intersects with Dan's personal timeline.

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Pokemon did not have visible sex dimorphism until Generation IV (Diamond/Pearl) in 2006, with the exception of Nidoran, where the male and female had been given entirely separate Pokedex entries ever since the franchise began. Indeed, except for Nidoran, Pokemons' sex was not even part of the game data--that was introduced along with Pokemon breeding in Generation II (Gold/Silver) in 1999.

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Seeing as Dan started uploading El Goonish Shive in 2002, I think we can safely assume sex-differences in Pokémon didn't exist when Dan first drew Sarah as a Pikachu. 

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45 minutes ago, Maplestrip said:

Seeing as Dan started uploading El Goonish Shive in 2002, I think we can safely assume sex-differences in Pokémon didn't exist when Dan first drew Sarah as a Pikachu. 

/me covers ears lalalal can't hear you.

Sarah was never the damn yellow mouse.

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7 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

This was reproducing a comic Dan inked back when he was in High School.

Had the female Pikachu even been introduced at that point?  Really, I am asking.  I don't know the Poker man timeline or how it intersects with Dan's personal timeline.

It definitely had not been introduced by that point. The only way would be if Dan adjusted it intentionally when inking it in this update. I suspect that's not what happened, though, due to the difference being mostly obscure, combined with the other stuff I pointed out earlier.

3 hours ago, mlooney said:

/me covers ears lalalal can't hear you.

Sarah was never the damn yellow mouse.

I legit can't understand why this is such a big deal for you.

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1 hour ago, Matoyak said:

 

I legit can't understand why this is such a big deal for you.

You aren't a table top gamer are you?  CCG don't count in this context.

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14 minutes ago, mlooney said:

You aren't a table top gamer are you?  CCG don't count in this context.

I am, though? DnD 3.5 and Call of Cthulhu are mostly what I play. Though I have been looking into The Sprawl...just need to find a group to play it with.

Why does that matter one whit, though? If I like one, I must not like the other? ~raises eyebrow~

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And as usual, the false emperors lapdog's first reaction is to scream heresy...

Some things never change.

Chill out dude, pokemon references aren't the end of the world.
would have been better if it was digimon, since that had the better show... but whatever.

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18 minutes ago, InfiniteRemnant said:

Chill out dude, pokemon references aren't the end of the world.
would have been better if it was digimon, since that had the better show... but whatever.

Agree. In Pokemon, the world was never in danger. In Digimon, every season finale.

It would be fascinating how in Pokemon the society somehow adapted to children usually having pets capable of mass destruction if not for the fact that they didn't even attempted to explain how. And the only gun shown caused the episode be banned in US, because being shot is much more dangerous than 4rd degree burns from Charizard - wait, actually it might've been, considering it happened to Ash multiple times ...

Also, ANYONE playing the game proved to be better trainer than Ash in first hour of play.

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Also, apparently children are free to travel the countryside unattended in order to work on their Pokemon training at the age of ten, instead of being made to wait until they finish compulsory schooling.

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50 minutes ago, ijuin said:

Also, apparently children are free to travel the countryside unattended in order to work on their Pokemon training at the age of ten, instead of being made to wait until they finish compulsory schooling.

Well, what's more important, destructive firepower or school?

Also, while Ash seems to never return, perhaps it's supposed to be like for summer holiday, with return to school for winter? (It's not like Ash is aging either, is it? Maybe it's STILL the first holiday.)

And you might actually NEED Pokemon in school. Especially if it's Pokemon school, which is the only kind shown in the series. Oh, wait, there was also that school for Chansey, wasn't it? :)

... yes, I would totally expect they can wait at least for onset of puberty. But I guess most of them would then pursue the other gender instead of pokemons.

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5 hours ago, InfiniteRemnant said:

And as usual, the false emperors lapdog's first reaction is to scream heresy...

The Moderator: I would like to remind everyone here that personal insults, ad hominems and snide comments aimed at other posters are not welcome on these forums. Please avoid it.

~tOH.

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On June 13, 2016 at 0:55 PM, Matoyak said:

I legit can't understand why this is such a big deal for you.

Legit explanation why some RPG players don't like Collectible Card Games?

I used to go to GenCon every year, a huge gaming convention devoted almost exclusively to role-playing games.  There were a few, mostly older, miniatures wargamers, and a few LARPers, but otherwise it was one huge glorious mass of gamers.  It was one of the biggest non-business conventions in the country.  The entire city of Milwaukee was *filled* with gamers, and when we said "gamers" everyone knew that meant tabletop RPGs -- D&D, GURPS, Toon, all sorts of role-playing.

Then Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon appeared, and literally between one year and the next, there were twice as many booths devoted to CCGs as to the RPGs everyone had been coming for year after year.  The thing people had been traveling from across the country to share was suddenly not just sharing the spotlight, but in danger of being shoved off the stage completely.  

And because you had to keep buying cards, not very many people could afford to play both.  With RPGs, you could buy a set of rule books, and keep playing for as far as your imagination took you.  You couldn't just buy a CCG deck and play, because one little pack probably wouldn't have a good balance of cards.  You had to commit to buying an unknown number of packs or why bother?  RPG supplements, new editions, modules, it was all optional.  If a game worked, it kept working.  But these card games were designed to make you have to keep buying new cards, with central rule-making bodies issuing decrees for that purpose.

What was seen as the worst insult....within a few years, D&D, the honored forefather of the whole Role-Playing world, had been bought -- by Wizards of the Coast, the ones who had brought the plague of "gamer crack" upon the community in the first place.

So, that's why there are still a lot of traditional role-playing gamers who resent the heck out of the whole CCG phenomena, but especially MtG and Pokemon.

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1 hour ago, CritterKeeper said:

Then Magic: the Gathering and Pokemon appeared, and literally between one year and the next, there were twice as many booths devoted to CCGs as to the RPGs everyone had been coming for year after year.  The thing people had been traveling from across the country to share was suddenly not just sharing the spotlight, but in danger of being shoved off the stage completely.  

I completely understand why you don't like Magic: the Gathering. What surprised me is that Pokemon is considered same case. I can't claim to not know Pokemon CCG exists, as I played some version of it on emulated Gameboy. But I don't remember it ever being that much popular (compared to Pokemon on Gameboy OR to MTG). Also, the years don't match: Magic: The Gathering appeared on 1993, Pokemon for gameboy in February 1996 - and thats in Japan, and Pokemon CCG ... October 1996 in Japan ...

... I'm not saying your personal experience couldn't happen, I'm not sure how fast MTG spread, but it would be surprising if it will be common occurrence all around the world.

Also note that while MTG is crazy regarding how much cards you need to buy, there are CCG with much more reasonable card set size. Although I'm not sure if it's deliberate or due to small commercial success.

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12 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

while MTG is crazy regarding how much cards you need to buy, there are CCG with much more reasonable card set size. Although I'm not sure if it's deliberate or due to small commercial success.

They still won't give you a playable game right out of the box, so to speak.  I playtested a few CCG at GenCon, and my feedback was usually the same -- Give me a package that has two or three playable decks to start with, and then make all the extras and additions collectible.  For example, the Highlander CCG.  If they had given me a "Connor" deck, an "Amanda" deck, and a "Duncan" deck, with a few basic weapons and moves and such for each one that suited their character.  Give me enough to actually start playing a proper game.  Once I've had a chance to see it's fun, then tell me my character can get cool new weapons and moves and home bases and such.

40 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I completely understand why you don't like Magic: the Gathering. What surprised me is that Pokemon is considered same case. I can't claim to not know Pokemon CCG exists, as I played some version of it on emulated Gameboy. But I don't remember it ever being that much popular (compared to Pokemon on Gameboy OR to MTG). Also, the years don't match: Magic: The Gathering appeared on 1993, Pokemon for gameboy in February 1996 - and thats in Japan, and Pokemon CCG ... October 1996 in Japan ...

Well, I mostly remember MtG being the "gamer crack" taking over GenCon, I wasn't aware of Pokemon so much until later.  But it definitely gets lumped in with MtG nowadays as one of those darn addictive CCGs that ruined things for "real" gamers who played RPGs.

(My first awareness of Pokemon cards was during the costume contest at GenCon, when a girl did a complex belly-dance where instead of balancing a water glass on her hand, she balanced a Pikachu, and instead of beads her skirt was made of Pokemon cards.  And she danced to the Ewoks' "Yub Yub" song from the end of Return of the Jedi. )

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3 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:
49 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

while MTG is crazy regarding how much cards you need to buy, there are CCG with much more reasonable card set size. Although I'm not sure if it's deliberate or due to small commercial success.

They still won't give you a playable game right out of the box, so to speak.  I playtested a few CCG at GenCon, and my feedback was usually the same -- Give me a package that has two or three playable decks to start with, and then make all the extras and additions collectible.  For example, the Highlander CCG.  If they had given me a "Connor" deck, an "Amanda" deck, and a "Duncan" deck, with a few basic weapons and moves and such for each one that suited their character.  Give me enough to actually start playing a proper game.  Once I've had a chance to see it's fun, then tell me my character can get cool new weapons and moves and home bases and such.

Some CLAIM to give you a playable game from starter packages. But as I'm not playtesting them, I can't confirm that.

6 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Well, I mostly remember MtG being the "gamer crack" taking over GenCon, I wasn't aware of Pokemon so much until later.  But it definitely gets lumped in with MtG nowadays as one of those darn addictive CCGs that ruined things for "real" gamers who played RPGs.

Well, I can't comment about how Pokemon CCG is popular on GenCon.

7 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

My first awareness of Pokemon cards was during the costume contest at GenCon, when a girl did a complex belly-dance where instead of balancing a water glass on her hand, she balanced a Pikachu, and instead of beads her skirt was made of Pokemon cards.  And she danced to the Ewoks' "Yub Yub" song from the end of Return of the Jedi.

... sounds interesting. Although not for reasons having something to do with Pokemon.

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41 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Well, I mostly remember MtG being the "gamer crack" taking over GenCon, I wasn't aware of Pokemon so much until later.  But it definitely gets lumped in with MtG nowadays as one of those darn addictive CCGs that ruined things for "real" gamers who played RPGs.

(My first awareness of Pokemon cards was during the costume contest at GenCon, when a girl did a complex belly-dance where instead of balancing a water glass on her hand, she balanced a Pikachu, and instead of beads her skirt was made of Pokemon cards.  And she danced to the Ewoks' "Yub Yub" song from the end of Return of the Jedi. )

I imagine it's a cycle, I think we're currently in another transistion period between CCGs and tabletop RPGs. Sure it seems like CCGs are still going strong, but with all the new online CCGs like Hearthstone, Elder Scrolls: Legends, heck even Runescape has a CCG now. It seems like every major IP get getting a CCG version these days that it may get to a point of saturation. At the same time though, Geek and Sundry's "Critical Role" seems to have ignited new interest in tabletop style RPGs because we now have RPG streams like itmejp's "Roll Play", the Yogscast's "High Rollers" and the Buffalo Wizards' "Unforgotten Realms Live"

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2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Some CLAIM to give you a playable game from starter packages. But as I'm not playtesting them, I can't confirm that.

MtG has long had starter packages that include a deck barely competitive against other MtG starter packages.

I mean, what percentage of experienced MtG players routinely play five-color decks? Not many. Even three-color decks are unusual. There's a reason for that. The starter decks, last I looked, were ALL five-color decks.

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Buy 2 or 3 starter decks and you have enough cards to do some decent 2-color decks. 

The friend who taught me had bought enough cards that he had prebuilt half-decks with the idea that you could put two of them together and have a 2-color deck you could play with.

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36 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:
2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Some CLAIM to give you a playable game from starter packages. But as I'm not playtesting them, I can't confirm that.

MtG has long had starter packages that include a deck barely competitive against other MtG starter packages.

I mean, what percentage of experienced MtG players routinely play five-color decks? Not many. Even three-color decks are unusual. There's a reason for that. The starter decks, last I looked, were ALL five-color decks.

Well MtG is not even CLAIMING it, is it? And yes, starter deck having some theme (color/faction) is obvious prerequisite.

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