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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.