Anonymous asks:

In regards to your Seven Types, how do you feel about adding Waste, Wind, and Sonic? Waste represents the trash side of Poison, something that would effect Pokemon heavily in-tune with Nature and Magic. Wind would have a greater effect on in-flight Pokemon and light weights while little to no effect on heavy weight or submerged Pokemon. Sonic would effect Pokemon differently based on how sensitive their hearing is. Can you see these three as having a fillable spot in your system?

In reference to this, where I outline a radical condensation of Pokémon’s type chart into just seven attack types (Might, Finesse, Nature, Water, Energy, Magic, Spirit), where Pokémon themselves have no type at all but have weaknesses and resistances by individual species.

So, in regard to these three suggestions – the point of what I was trying to do was have as few types as possible (well, actually, the real point was to think about how I would do a Pokémon game if I were starting completely from scratch, which I’m still thinking about, with a view to maybe writing a long screed of rambling nonsense at some point in the future, but let’s not go down that particular rabbit hole right now). I wanted to see how little I could get away with. So just on philosophical grounds, I don’t think any of these things need to be types. I do think they can be effects that are attached to specific attacks. Sonic I would probably deal with by putting in a Deafness status condition that, say, causes Pokémon to disobey (because they can’t hear your orders properly) and make a couple of Pokémon either especially vulnerable to it (e.g. Zubat, who ‘sees’ with sound) or resistant or outright immune to it (anything with the Soundproof ability, like Mr. Mime). The attacks themselves, I think can just be typeless (which is a thing my system has; they just do normal damage to everything). Wind is similar; I mostly imagined wind-based attacks as belonging mainly to Finesse, with some being dual-typed (another thing my system has – Hurricane as Finesse/Nature, Twister as Finesse/Magic), and all having effects much like the ones you describe; they’re not universally more effective against certain Pokémon, just more effective given certain environmental conditions. Waste… waste is a weird one because one of the ways I wanted to flip things on their head was by having pollutant Pokémon like Koffing and Grimer be vulnerable to Nature attacks, not resistant (not all of the Pokémon that are “Poison” in the existing system, mind you, just those specific ones; other Poison-types could have different vulnerabilities). Poison, like the others, doesn’t need to be a type in itself; just keep it as a status condition that can be worsened or prevented by the traits of certain Pokémon.

Anonymous asks:

Religious attacks aside, I think your recent post on the Orlando shootings were well stated. It sickens me that this kind of thing happens so often in our country, and I can’t imagine any logical reason to allow civilians access to assault rifles. I just want to say I know plenty of religious people on your side. And don’t feel guilty for being “spared” of this sort of attack. Ideally, we’ll reach a time where humans aren’t slaughtered for trivial reasons (or any at all). I’m glad you’re safe.

Thanks; I appreciate the message. I’m sorry if that part bothered you; emotions were running a bit high when I wrote that, but I have Christian, Muslim and Jewish friends, some of whom are gay or bisexual themselves. It’s just frustrating to see religion used to justify bigotry over and over again because a small minority still want to worship a bloodthirsty Bronze Age sky god instead of his 21st century reincarnation – as I’m sure many of the religious would agree.

Godzillakiryu91 asks:

What seven would that be, and what would decide where an existing Pokemon would get placed?

I knew someone would ask that next.

To be honest it’s not even so much a revision of the current type chart as throwing it out altogether and starting from scratch. Sort of a “can I just do this completely differently?” thought experiment, which probably has to go along with massive changes to how we do status effects, PP, accuracy, and several other things (including doing away with physical/special). Pokémon don’t even have types at all, they just have weaknesses and resistances to attack types (of which attacks can have one, two, or even none), and those are assigned case-by-case.

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vikingboybilly asks:

The canned idea of a BIRD type is starting to grow on me. It would have been GameFreak’s way of differentiating the wind element from all the NORMAL birds in the game, and they wouldn’t have had the NORMAL type on them. This also got me thinking that maybe FISH types would be cool to round out the BIRD and BUG types. Some other ideas: EARTH, SNOW, WOOD, FOSSIL, MAGIC, MUSIC, and of course, LIGHT. I’ve also seen COSMIC on youtube. Feel free to praise or criticize any of my choices.

Well, that’s the thing, I have more of an inclination (unpopular, I think, in the Pokémon community) to reduce the type chart down rather than add more to it. So I would reject all of those, as well as probably several of the existing types, including Ground, Bug, Flying and Dragon. I recently thought through this, for no particular reason, and I think you could reasonably cut it down to as few as seven. So yeah. I think we’re just coming at this whole thing from opposite directions entirely.

EDIT: The inevitable follow-up question.

Anonymous asks:

Who is/are your favorite Classical mythological figure(s)? Me, I’ve always been partial to Prometheus and Hephaestus (what can I say, I’m a sucker for fiery things, and Fire’s my favorite type! :P)

You know, I don’t think I really have one. I probably should because I’m a classicist and stuff, and I talked about it with Jim the Editor (who is a classicist as well) for like an hour about it and came to no particular consensus, so I’m just going to go with something interesting and non-obvious and say Helen, just because she’s such a complex and controversial character. Like, you have Homer’s version in the Iliad, where she is vilified by pretty much all the Greeks and some of the Trojans while simultaneously being the exact thing they’re supposedly all fighting over, and she knows it. She is well aware that everyone blames her for this terrible war, and she kinda blames herself for it too, because even if she wasn’t really in control of anything that happened, how could you not, in her position? And there is this one amazing scene where she calls out Aphrodite – the goddess of sexuality, the source of what little power a woman can ever have in Helen’s world – for all the awful bull$#!t she’s been put through over the years because of her beauty. And true, Aphrodite does immediately slap her down for it, but the thing is, no one else in Homer ever talks back to a goddess the way Helen does; they talk to each other about the awful things the gods do to them, but no one will ever actually say it to their faces (or at least not knowingly), because that’s the kind of thing that gets your ass smited, big time.

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thephilosophicalsheep asks:

War has been a concept alluded to several times in the pokemon games, but has never outright happened. What would you think of a pokemon game in which the whole premise was that a war has started to break out, and your job was to stop it? War in the pokemon world sounds like an interesting concept, and using pokemon as tools of destruction could eventually be shown to be an unspeakable sin.

Well, we do have Conquest, don’t we? That’s not really what you’re asking, but I think that would be Game Freak’s answer, that they don’t want that kind of theme in the core series; Pokémon’s preferred tone is a good deal more optimistic than that, and in fact even in Conquest war is pretty seriously declawed, from what I’ve seen of it. Which is the problem, of course; Pokémon’s been around so long that you have people like me who’ve grown up with it, and wish it could have grown up bit more with us, and think that something exploring themes like that would be really interesting, but then you also have Game Freak, for whom Pokémon is (I think) a vision of what they wish our world could be like. Evil exists, but it can always be overcome; people get hurt, but they can always be healed.

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Anonymous asks:

Would you like to see a Mega Vileplume?

Yes and no… I mean, Vileplume is my favourite Pokémon so, like, if you want to give her cool stuff, go right ahead, but I don’t know if the pile of extra stats associated with mega evolution necessarily solves the problems that she has. With the exception of Slowbro, Sableye and Aggron, most top-tier mega Pokémon are offensive powerhouses, and that’s not really what Vileplume is trying to do anyway. I think her real problem is that her hidden ability (Effect Spore) is just bloody useless, and her regular ability (Chlorophyll) is amazing but completely mismatched to her role. You could use mega evolution to cheat in a replacement ability, I suppose, but honestly I would much rather just add a second regular ability; most Pokémon have two, and giving Vileplume something a) really strong and b) different from what other Grass-type supporters have would, I think, just about do it.

Anonymous asks:

Would you think that horror movies in the Pokemon world would be incredibly lame?

I’m not really into horror so I don’t think I’m the best person to comment on what makes a horror movie lame, but… no? I don’t think so, anyway? Horror is fundamentally about the unknown, I think, and there’s a lot of potentially dangerous mystery in the Pokémon world. The reality often turns out to be perfectly benign on close inspection – just like in the real world – but I don’t see any reason they couldn’t manipulate fear of the unknown in exactly the same way as we do.

Anonymous asks:

We all know you despise Ruin Maniacs, but what’s your favorite Trainer Class and why? (or is this an obvious question and you’re just going to answer ‘Pokémaniac’?)

Well, Pokémaniac, but specifically generation II Pokémaniacs like the one in my Tumblr avatar, where they have the long cape thing and the wide-eyed crazed grin. Not really into that half-baked cosplay they’ve got going in later generations. I’m also quite fond of Channellers and Hex Maniacs.

(And let’s be honest, at least part of the reason I dislike Ruin Maniacs and other fictional archaeologists is because they can just take whatever cool $#!t they want while my friends and I have to be all “responsible” and show “scholarly integrity” or whatever)