Answers the Second: Randomness and Torture

Matthew Rush asks: Would you rather be Jirayah (Pervy Sage) or Kabuto (the dork with the glasses)?

I can't say I approve of Jiraiya's choice of hobbies or Kabuto's choice of employer, though they are both pretty powerful. But any way I look at it, Jiraiya's got one thing going for him that Kabuto doesn't. Sage Mode:



Susan Kaye Quinn asks: Favored platform: Mac or PC?

I would love a Mac. Thank you for offering.

Every time I buy a new computer, I have to make this decision, and it always comes down to the same thing: Macs are expensive, and PCs have all the open source software I want.

Preferred literary success: Bestseller or Hugo?

Oy. Fine, if I have to choose, I go with the one that gets more readers: bestseller.

Apocalypse: Super virus or sentient computers?

Neither. The world is destroyed by robot pirates and zombie ninjas (also dinosaurs).

Awesomeness: Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?

For the purposes of this exercise, we will pretend George Lucas stopped fiddling with Star Wars in 1983. With that in mind, the most awesome trilogy ever is ISTHATSAMUELL.JACKSONINANICKFURYMOVIEZOMGITIS!!!

Caped Guy: Batman or Superman?

Batman, hands down. Did you know he has a file on every superhero's weakness, just in case he ever has to fight them? The guy's a genius.


Asea asks: What's your favorite local food?

Market food: fried pork and bananas, dim sum and pork dumplings, chicken satay, rotee, fried potatoes... (Hm, just got a Mary Poppin's song stuck in my head).

If your characters (from your various WIPs) were caught in a zombie apocalypse, would they make it?

Heh. Hagai would be the first to go, though Sam and Ren might last a while (good fighters, and I bet the zombies would have a hard time storming their airship). Suriya, on the other hand, should have no problem. She has a tendency to blow things up when she's mad.

Do you ever make up your own board/card games? How about twists to existing ones? Do you play games in combination (e.g. you play Monopoly, and the profits from it fund expansion in Puerto Rico)?

Before I focused my creative energies on getting published, I designed games all the time. As for twisting existing ones, we don't do it often (I tend to assume the game balancers did their job well), but we do it to our most familiar games. We've played Settlers with a blind setup (i.e. flip the numbers over after you place your settlements) or with a 12-sided die, and we once played Ticket to Ride: World Domination, in which we combined a board of regular TtR and TtR:Europe. I don't like Monopoly much, but I love your combination example. Sounds like it would be fun for a tournament or a gaming marathon.


Thanks again for your questions and for putting up with my answers. Don't forget our special guest artist on Friday!

8 comments:

Matthew MacNish said...

What fun!

The best part about being Jirayah is that you could just choose to stop being pervy, but keep being a sage, and a powerful Sanin.

I'm pretty sure Orochimaru would never let Kabuto off the hook.

Great answers! Thanks Adam.

Susan Kaye Quinn said...

Well, I obviously need to start training my own velociraptor. And clearly I need to prepare for NINE movies with Samuel Jackson (whoa). But I'm just straight up relieved you picked Batman. Just because.

Thanks for answering my silliness! :)

Nick said...

Jiraiya is the best! I mean, I think he THINKS he writes racey stuff, but honestly I think it's just all a huge joke. Kabuto is just kind of.... lame.

Actually, why was Kabuto one of two options? For me to think of the coolest Naruto character, my list would probably have to go at least to 15 or 20 before I even thought about Kabuto.

I'd give you the options of Jiraiya or Kakashi, 'cuz even if there are more powerful people out there, these two definitely have the most interesting factor going on.

Nick said...

Oh, the question was "would you rather". I suppose that's kind of a different question. But anyway, I'd pick Jiraiya!

Myrna Foster said...

Yep, Hagai would get toasted, if Sam and Ren didn't have his back.

So, the best trilogy hasn't been made yet?

Adam Heine said...

@Matthew: Glad you enjoyed. I suppose Jiraiya-me could stop being pervy, but for the question I figured that'd be cheating ;-)

@Susan: A lot of those nine are just cameos, like the Ironman movies. I'm a little excited for Avengers and a lot for this S.H.I.E.L.D. business. I hadn't heard of it before I found that link!

@Nick: Yikes. Jiraiya vs. Kakashi would be a tough choice! I mean, Jiraiya's more powerful (I think), but I'm not convinced we've seen all of Kakashi's tricks yet.

@Myrna: It's more that I refuse to decide between those two. Also that Samuel L. Jackson is AWESOME.

Asea said...

I have 5 younger siblings, and somehow it became a tradition to choose one game and play it EVERY DAY for the whole summer. If it was a short sort of game, it would get played multiple times a day. So we ended up with all sorts of complicated permutations. ;-)

But we always changed games, anyway. Once we chalked a life-size Clue board on the road and played as the characters. And we often revised games to make them more fair for varying ages and abilities. Mostly we just wanted to see what we could do with them, though. ;-)

Adam Heine said...

I love that, Asea. I love designing games and tweaking game balance (or talking about how a change might affect game balance--Emmet and I have done that more than is healthy).