18-09-08 I know your kryptonite

[midgetshrimp]

It's the classic punkette look. Think Pat Benatar.

I am. Who doesn't? Pat Benatar is freakin awesome. Her voice is just as amazing as her body. If not even more so, but that's debatable I suppose.

[MerchManDan]

Hoooo golly. Normally Sneak Attacks don't work as well when you yell "SNEAK ATTACK!!!" but Zii's way is certainly effective. I can't even decide who to high-five.
I have a prediction of what MAY happen, but I'd rather see how Giz & Dave handle them.
IT!! Handle It. The comic.
Uh. Yeah. ;)

[Retiarius]

Heh. Does anyone want to start a discussion on the damage done by Zii’s sneak attack?

I mean, assuming, say, D&D 3rd Edition rules, what level rogue is she, and what’s the base damage on her “morningstars”?

Does she get a Strength bonus? Any buff spells running?

If Gary has a nosebleed, is that a DoT attack (Damage over Time for you non-geeks)? Although DoT is not a typical D&D condition.

Given the light-heaarted nature of this comic, I’ll assume the attack does nonlethal damage. For now. :twisted:

[Don Alexander]

Heh. Does anyone want to start a discussion on the damage done by Zii’s sneak attack?
I mean, assuming, say, D&D 3rd Edition rules, what level rogue is she, and what’s the base damage on her “morningstars”?
Does she get a Strength bonus? Any buff spells running?
If Gary has a nosebleed, is that a DoT attack (Damage over Time for you non-geeks)? Although DoT is not a typical D&D condition.
Given the light-heaarted nature of this comic, I’ll assume the attack does nonlethal damage. For now. :twisted:

Hail, Elder Geek!!

Alas, I have never played D&D, so I cannot comment on that.

I can say, though, that Gary is burning blood rapidly and obviously went into torpor...

Or that he failed a sanity check and suffered harsch sanity loss, BUT his Mythos Lore is increasing... :geek:

[Retiarius]

Heh. I haven’t played Vampire: The Masquearde; I’m not into playing emo blood junkies. I can deal with Call of Cthulu, though. I learned quickly from reading the rules that everything had a fixed movement speed, so you couldn’t outrun anything. And you couldn’t outfight the nastier stuff without military hardware, so I made a character that was a cat burglar—maybe I can’t run, but I very definitely could hide. I saw to it that his Hide and Sneak scores were maxed. :twisted:

I think that while Zii or DiDi might cause Gary SAN loss (let’s face it, the boy’s so hard up that it’s like sandblasting a soupcracker, as Scott Adams once had Dogbert put it), I don’t see his Mythos Lore score increasing. It’s hard to argue that either of the girls qualify as Things That Man Was Not Meant to Know.

But then Gary is a Lesser Geek and still susceptable to bare female flesh; Elder Geeks develop a sang froid attitude about it because they are so far past the sour grapes stage that they don’t even remember what it looked like when they passed it.

Case in point: DiDi strips in the park.

Lesser Geek reaction: Homer Simpson gargling drool noise. :geek:
Elder Geek reaction: raised eyebrow, then return to rereading the Discworld novel he brought with him. :ugeek:

[Bear]

Lesser Geek reaction: Homer Simpson gargling drool noise. :geek:
Elder Geek reaction: raised eyebrow, then return to rereading the Discworld novel he brought with him. :ugeek:

Yay for Simpsons, and Discworld name checks! *Grins as they're two of my favourite things*.

I dunno about Zii being an DnD fan or player, she doesn't seem nerdy enough even though she is a comic book geek as we found early on. I never got into DnD myself, appart from the PC games (Icewind Dale, Balders Gate, Neverwinter Nights), was more of a White Wolf Fan. Theres plenty of other games with sneak attack rules though, so I'm surprised no-ones suggested she's a fan of one of those instead..

[Makkabee]

Gary thought the bottle would get him to Boobtown.

He was right.

And of course the really amusing thing is a few weeks ago he wouldn't believe he'd be so lucky as to be in the position he's in with Zii there, and now it's just adding to his sexual frustration. Boy's going to explode soon.

[midgetshrimp]

Boy's going to explode soon.

I thought he did. Not major boom there goes his head explosion. But we know at least a very active vein in his head let loose.

[oni]

Super cheap. Super. Cheap. And I'm not sure Gary is ready for Didi's epic proportions. I mean, if he has an anurism from Zii, I'm sure his head would actually explode (much like the digitally remastered Death Star).

Yes and No. Double standard...maybe...

This hath becometh an epic battle of sorts.
And I wonder, is Zii still turned on at this point?
o_O

... I know you know this answer. She's the one Aishabe to save the sexually deprived web-comic-matrix. Now to arms!

I love this strip. I love Zii. I love how Gary's all Gollum-like in the first panel. I love the anime-esque nosebleed. And the sneak attack is EPIC WIN.

Doth my virgin ears, deceive me for it must be so, fair maiden diankikula has useth the word Epic! with WIn!?? Curiouser and curiouser...

I love this strip. I love Zii. I love how Gary's all Gollum-like in the first panel. I love the anime-esque nosebleed. And the sneak attack is EPIC WIN.

I referred to Gary as "Gollum" twice in Tuesday's thread...I think Giz noticed.

*Gives cookie to brnleague99 for being a rare psychic pokemon "Nostradamus"*

Best Sneak attack evah!!!

Damn, took awhile to get you back on the boards so it must be indeed; Hell you know you did a Damn Fine Ass job when even Elder Uber Geek Retiarius comes out of D&D dungeon to comment.

My two cents: This particular strip of this month by far is worth two thumbs up with endless praise of "Epic Win", will continue lurking another 2 weeks; Dave step ur writing game up.

[Retiarius]

Damn, took awhile to get you back on the boards so it must be indeed; Hell you know you did a Damn Fine Ass job when even Elder Uber Geek Retiarius comes out of D&D dungeon to comment.

Whether I comment has nothing to do with whether I think the comic was good, actually. I never chide an artist for turning out a clunker as no one bats a thousand. If the quality consistently drops or the updates become so rare that I think the artist has abdandoned it I’ll move the URL to my Dead Comics folder.

I leave the critisism—positive or negative—for others. Mostly, an artist already knows if he or she has done a good or bad job but sometimes you just have to post and be damned. Sometimes a comic one is dissatisfied with draws praise one doesn’t think it deserves and sometimes one gets railed for something one thought was a magnum opus. “This product is sold by weight, not volume; some settling may have occurred during shipment” and all that.

Also, just for the record, the Elder Geek stuff is mostly for the humor value. I thought of the title partly because I have time and money for only one MMORPG and that turned out to be Star Wars Galaxies, the MMORPG That Time Forgot. When the NGE (New Game Enhancement) hit close to three years ago, the profession table (among other things) got revamped and some professions were obliterated, their only remnants being the word “Elder” followed by a profession name, like “Elder Creature Handler” or “Elder Bioengineer”. The title is completely meaningless since you retain it on your titles list even if you now have a completely different profession now, or if it’s profession that no longer exists.

(I don’t bother with fantasy MMORPGs because I already play enough D&D to get my fantasy RPG fix and no computer game really can have a magic system worth a damn. Due to programming constraints, the magic in such games pretty much has to be limited to combat magic, and researching your own new spells? Forget it. Ain’t gonna happen.)

The other influence for the Elder Geek title is, of course, H. P. Lovecraft and the Elder Gods of the Cthulhu mythos.

But I don’t seriously think I deserve more respect for being a geek longer than other geeks. It’s just funny on occasion to pretend that I do. [smacks gums] “Ah, you zygotes have it too easy these days. I remember when you couldn’t buy d20s, so we made our own! And we walked to gaming sessions twenty miles uphill through snow both ways!” (The former is actually true, it was hard to buy the dice where I lived when I was a younger gamer, so we cut the shells from index paper, folded and glued them together except for the one side, then filled them with Elmer’s glue and closed the last side and waited for them to set. Icosahedrons and dodecahedrons are fiddly things to make by hand.)

On a side note, I decided to use the “Elder Geek” term in a series title for some stories I’m writing. For you Googling etymology buffs, I thought of the term first, so far as I know.

The short of it is that I post when I have something to say, and I don’t when I don’t.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled chaos.

[midgetshrimp]

Well said. I guess. I just skimmed that. I just wanted to post so I could see my new avatar. Mopman! Destroying the world's petty establishments one flaming mop swipe at a time.

Edit: I didn't actually draw it, I doctored an image I found on Google. I recolored everything but the earth, and I threw in the space background because it's cool. Photoshop is fun.

[Retiarius]

Heh. Actually, you don’t have to post to see a new avatar or signature, you just have to look at an older message since the avatar or signature will be changed for every message you posted. Most forum programs only store a local URL to the avatar or the signature. But at least we know how you made it now, and what it means.

[midgetshrimp]

Oh, I know I could just look elsewhere. I'm just too lazy. That's right. I'm too lazy to do it the easy way.

[Tengokujin]

Wish I could've posted this when the thread came up. But as a new user trying to register when the confirmation image server was down, that wasn't possible.

Anyway, when I hear "Sneak Attack!", I think this.

Hint: wait for it. Also, it's not one of those "throw random shit on screen with a scream to startle you" videos.

Also, my first post in these forums!