All the Kings Horses: Part Nine
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE (December 13th): Hello, everyone. I am happy to report that outside work has been completed, several comic pages are inked/lettered and I will be back on track next Tuesday. Thank you for your patience and for not letting me have it in the comments. I know that 99% of you get that I have to juggle comics, freelance, and EHP work to pay the bills. I know that it is the silent majority who understand the most and only a few feel like they own me. Thank you for being understanding and I will see you next week.
UPDATE: So very sorry everyone. I am finishing up all of my other deadlines (I have to pay the bills. It’s tight and I can’t afford to drop). I will be back VERY SOON. I have plotted/sketched the remainder of this arc and into the next arc.
HOVER-TEXT: Happy Food and Naps Day everyone.
And a Happy Pre-Capitalism Frenzy Day of Gorging to you!
oh damn?
also i got first for once?
No, you very clearly got second. Don’t try and invalidate Brian.
you know if you sleeved the cards you could stamp the sleeves with Braille so he could read the cards without help Nerdist had an article about a Magic the Gathering player who did that so he could play
Oh, that’s brilliant!
That sounds like a marketable concept…
Aha! Was right. The Ulim is the teleporter!
Hmmm… The floaty bits are ‘shards’ huh? Curious to know what they’re pieces of. I mean, can just go with generic ‘alien crystal technology’ and I’m fine with that, but I wonder as to story/flavor.
Oh dangit, reply thingy borked.
Anyway, I was thinking his little dice roller widget would be very good too. Turns out they don’t exist…
I’m surprised they don’t actually. Would have thought someone would have gotten around to making one before now, considering how many different people are drawn to tabletop gaming.
Might be bigger than Charlie’s though, since you’d need buttons for each type of die and some way of selecting how many to roll.
Unless it’s voice activated (so you just say something like “Roll d20”, or “Roll 2d6” or similar), which is less reliable what with all the other noise that goes on around gaming tables. (Although you could get around that by having it only accept commands when the user holds down a button or something. Though you’d still be faced with the problem of it possibly ‘mis-hearing’ the command and rolling the wrong thing).
Larger device is less likely to get dropped and lost under the table though, and it probably wouldn’t be any bigger than a smartphone anyway, so convenient pocket size.
Hmm, ideas… 🙂
Perhaps the reason it doesn’t exist is because you can just say “OK Google give me a random number between one and twenty” and the phone with voice assist will just read it to you.
I get that a separate device would be cool, but seems to be a very niche market, so the price would probably be high. Money isn’t everything, of course, and I’d probably geek out over a custom job some craftsman did for a friend or something.
True, though smartphones are a bit less useful to the blind, for reasons.
Still, a little ‘duino module, some buttons, and it could be done.
Hackers would load the dice.
There are a couple of 3D-printed Braille dice designs, but those seem to overlook a basic design flaw. Namely, that you need someone to *see* where the dice landed if your roll goes balistic.
Either that, or something like a dice tower or cup to keep the roll under control
Here’s the link.
Amazon Alexa will roll d20 or any sided dice.
So will the Google Assistant. Probably Siri too. But those require expensive hardware. A cheap little roller shouldn’t be hard.
Siri does not. I was in a small user test earlier this week about these assistant systems, and took the chance to try saying stuff like “Roll 1d20”, “roll 1d6” and “roll 4d6 and remove the lowest”. It was surprisingly not succesfull.
Umm… I’m pretty certain that iPhones are currently the definition of ‘expensive equipment’.
I’m talking about a cheap version of the old Dragonbone device, with a sound chip.
Ah, sorry for the confusion. I was just relaying my attempt to use one as a diceroller “out of the box”, so to say.
*ad break*
…..
Yeah, sorry. I am spinning a lot of plates right now to pay the bills and I have a bunch of deadlines landing at the same time.
You should see if Cards Against Humanity would pay for you to draw an ad for Prongles. And make an actual ad break for amusement (and $).
I just remember this bit from the TINY TOON ADVENTURES music video episode:
Babs: I CAN’T STAND THE SUSPENSE!!
Buster: Then SIDDOWN!
Desuna is Anused spelled backwards.
Maybe that is where the teleportation portal is? Would be one hell of a Nuisance Effect/Disadvantage.
“Cartman’s Anal Probe”
Been there, seen that.
Can’t unsee it.
Brian, thanks for warning us in advance. That says a lot about how much you care about your readership—you don’t leave us hanging.
What Yelnik said.
Also, longtime readers know some things about your personal history. That’s good, because it means—whatever else may be said about you (nothing but good, to be sure)—you are introspectively self-aware, and you know when to share and when not. But what then happens is common among celebrities with a passionate fan base. We feel like we know you, when we really don’t, not really. Welcome to the world of local news anchors, and podcasters!
Still, when we don’t hear from you for a while, we worry. Thanks for the update. Now I don’t have to worry.
And, rest assured that I, at least, understand. I’m a volunteer with the Coast Guard Auxiliary. My priorities HAVE to be: family—(paying) work—Auxiliary. In that order. So, pay your bills, and this Patron, at least, will wait for you as I have done in the past. Its always been worth it.
Just keep up with the updates. So I don’t have to worry.
—(s) Internet-Dad Vinnie
Thank you so much, Vinnie.
Yeah, I HATE when I have to step away and do outside work to keep the d20Monkey Team housed and fed but it is a necessary beast at the moment. I will be back next week, though and then hopefully, straight on through the year and into 2018. Thank you so very much for your patience.
Gotta say about the delay, this is a perfect cliffhanger page for it.
Finally I have read every post in the archive. Tried to read you in comic chameleon, but it only goes back to 2015. Also, I would have missed out on Brian’s notes and the forum conversations. I hope you get a nice bump in ad revenue for all of that reading. This comic has made this 37-year-old geek want to learn how to game like this (it also makes me wonder if you are running around in my head;I am all the characters , and so far all of their problems…and yes, I am a fat man with a large beard, but I can’t tell you more about that).
Everybody listen up cause I am only gonna say this once. I have read years worth of crap directed at Brian in the last week or so, and we are all lucky that Brian didnt say the hell with us and close up shop. Our world doesn’t revolve around you, and the one he created sure as hell doesn’t. So get over yourselves and quit giving Brian a hard time. He will post when he gets good and ready, and if he doesn’t…count yourself lucky that he gave us so much.
Okay, sorry, years worth of comments got to me.
No worries at all, Brian. Unfortunately, the lack of uploading our memories to AI, means that even you have to deal with flesh-based problems (food, water, shelter, Internet…) and the expenses incurred therein.
We can hold out while you do your “side jobs” (we know you think of this as your main project, but you need dosh to keep it going).
It’s a sad truth, but yeah, I need the side work to pay the bills. I am going to make a big push for new Patrons and Paypal subscribers in 2018 and maybe, just maybe, I can drop all that and JUST work on comics.
Happy to hear you took care of what you had to! I’m waiting eagerly for next Tuesday and the next comic!
People feel like they own you? We own you about as much as any human owns a cat. They are our masters and should be fed and provided for.
Great, now I’m thinking of you as a cat-overlord…
Thank you for the update to the update, looking forward to the next page. THIS ONE HAS HAD ME IN SUSPENSE!
I’ve loaded this page so many times that the page has been cached and loads instantly when I click on it, no other webpage has that kind of treatment. I feel sorry for you thinking of all the negative comments you must be receiving right now, you make an amazing webcomic, and you truly don’t deserve any of that. But I guess there’s one good thing about it, the only other people who get spoken like that when there’s a shortage of supply are cocaine dealers, and for your comics to elicit that kind of response means they’re as good as cocaine. Looking forward to the next dose, hope no one’s giving you too much trouble.
Ooh! So glad it’s going to be coming back. I don’t hold irregular updates against you. I know what it’s like to have weird scheduling trouble, and I understand the level of commitment it can take sometimes to keep a thing going through that kind of stuff. Thank you for taking the time to entertain us and share your stories.