Puptastics: Are people animals?

[TheDavii]

For Puptastics:

Puptastics (1184, Creature Feature) Puptastics may not be attacked by any card that has an animal in the picture or title. Puptastics are a double Orange bunny and may be combined with another Orange (or half Orange) bunny to form a Bunny Triplet.

How should "animal" be defined?

Do people quality as "animals"? (For example, "Xanadude" [0900], "Terminators" [0901], Googol Plexing [0902], Heathers [1007], Walker Wars [1082], Red-Headed Stepchildren [1110])

Or are "people" distinct from "animals"?

[zerodemon]

The Terminators are for sure not human or animals, unless you’re suggesting we’re talking about the actors, and not the characters. I’d say they aren’t animals.

But are terminators people? Do cyborg assassins dream of electric sheep?

While walking along in desert sand, you suddenly look down and see a tortoise crawling toward you. You reach down and flip it over onto its back. The tortoise lies there, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs, trying to turn itself over, but it cannot do so without your help. You are not helping. Why?

[mahobear8]

Jan 27, 2019 17:59:40 GMT -5 TheDavii said:

For Puptastics:

Puptastics (1184, Creature Feature) Puptastics may not be attacked by any card that has an animal in the picture or title. Puptastics are a double Orange bunny and may be combined with another Orange (or half Orange) bunny to form a Bunny Triplet.

How should "animal" be defined?

Do people quality as "animals"? (For example, "Xanadude" [0900], "Terminators" [0901], Googol Plexing [0902], Heathers [1007], Walker Wars [1082], Red-Headed Stepchildren [1110])

Or are "people" distinct from "animals"?

I think this would be a great question to ask JB.  If I were to guess, I'd say that people are intended to be distinct from animals.  Even still, there are a lot of edge cases with Puptastics that need to be defined.  For example, is "animals" only limited to real life animals.  Do we consider Dragon of Doom an animal or not because he is a mythical creature?  How about Gremlins?  How about the creature that is in the Trash Compactor?  What about the aliens in Area 51 or Cyber Bunny?  If we consider all the weapons from Creature Feature as examples since Puptastics was probably created with those in mind, I think the safest interpretation without JB clarification is limiting it to real life animals, excluding people.  I'll attempt to contact JB on this topic and share the answer once I get it.

[TheDavii]

Jan 28, 2019 12:28:30 GMT -5 mahobear8 said:

Jan 27, 2019 17:59:40 GMT -5 TheDavii said:

For Puptastics:

Puptastics (1184, Creature Feature) Puptastics may not be attacked by any card that has an animal in the picture or title. Puptastics are a double Orange bunny and may be combined with another Orange (or half Orange) bunny to form a Bunny Triplet.

How should "animal" be defined?

Do people quality as "animals"? (For example, "Xanadude" [0900], "Terminators" [0901], Googol Plexing [0902], Heathers [1007], Walker Wars [1082], Red-Headed Stepchildren [1110])

Or are "people" distinct from "animals"?

I think this would be a great question to ask JB.  If I were to guess, I'd say that people are intended to be distinct from animals.  Even still, there are a lot of edge cases with Puptastics that need to be defined.  For example, is "animals" only limited to real life animals.  Do we consider Dragon of Doom an animal or not because he is a mythical creature?  How about Gremlins?  How about the creature that is in the Trash Compactor?  What about the aliens in Area 51 or Cyber Bunny?  If we consider all the weapons from Creature Feature as examples since Puptastics was probably created with those in mind, I think the safest interpretation without JB clarification is limiting it to real life animals, excluding people.  I'll attempt to contact JB on this topic and share the answer once I get it.

I think you're likely right (that people and animals are meant to be disjoint sets for the purposes of the game even if they are in the same biological kingdom). I'm comfortable that dragons and trash compactor creature (etc.) are animals, even if mythical or fantasy. My question was whether he meant for people to be included as animals. (And perhaps a little clarification as to whether androids are people.)

Looking forward to a response! (Sometimes they're surprising!)

[mahobear8]

1. Are people considered animals? (ex. Heathers [1007] or Children of the Corn [0817])
2. Are mythical creatures considered animals? (ex. Dragon of Doom [0825])
3. Are science fiction creatures considered animals? (ex. the creature in Trash Compactor [0818])
4. Are "monsters" considered animals? (ex. Gremlins[0811])

Jeff: 'Animals' may include any if the examples that you listed. It is up to the players to decide!

Not the response I was expecting but it makes sense.  This makes Puptastics similar to cards like Holi-delay[1015] or Shazbot[0730] in that different groups may use different definitions.  Personally, with my group I'll probably count all of the above except people.  I may also include Cyber Bunny since he's probably half bunny.

[TheDavii]

Jan 29, 2019 11:17:19 GMT -5 mahobear8 said:

1. Are people considered animals? (ex. Heathers [1007] or Children of the Corn [0817])
2. Are mythical creatures considered animals? (ex. Dragon of Doom [0825])
3. Are science fiction creatures considered animals? (ex. the creature in Trash Compactor [0818])
4. Are "monsters" considered animals? (ex. Gremlins[0811])

Jeff: 'Animals' may include any if the examples that you listed. It is up to the players to decide!

Not the response I was expecting but it makes sense.  This makes Puptastics similar to cards like Holi-delay[1015] or Shazbot[0730] in that different groups may use different definitions.  Personally, with my group I'll probably count all of the above except people.  I may also include Cyber Bunny since he's probably half bunny.

It was exactly the response I feared.

JB encourages the "human interaction" aspect of Killer Bunnies ("social interaction" for Kinderbunnies). (See the Bunny Bits for "Wheeling and Dealing," which says "The game is all about human interactions and responses, so feel free to express yourself and manipulate others (if you can)."

Thanks for asking the question of JB! I'll add a note in the QCC including all of those categories (people, mythical/fantasy, sci-fi, and monsters), the official ruling and a house rule recommendation mirroring yours.

[marek14]

I presume that bunnies themselves are considered animals, right?

(Though one question I wondered recently is "what" exactly is a bunny? For Bunny Bytes, does a picture of rabbit, hare or any other member of Leporidae family count? What about pikas, their closest living relatives?)

[TheDavii]

I suspect the "Bunny Bytes" answer will be the same as the answer to the Puptastics question: that it is up to the players to decide!

My opinion is that a member of the hare family will qualify, but in looking at the Google search photos of pikas, I'd say those do not qualify. (They don't look like bunnies to me.)

[mahobear8]

Feb 10, 2019 16:11:22 GMT -5 marek14 said:

I presume that bunnies themselves are considered animals, right?

(Though one question I wondered recently is "what" exactly is a bunny? For Bunny Bytes, does a picture of rabbit, hare or any other member of Leporidae family count? What about pikas, their closest living relatives?)

For Puptastics, I think bunnies would of course count as animals meaning it could not be attacked by for example: Defector Detector.  As a side note, I assume the best standard definition for "attacked" would be "targeted by an aggressive card" thus examples such as Poverty Poker or Everyone Feed a Bunny would still function as normal.  I'd also assume a roaming red that has an animal, such as Dragon of Doom, would not consider Puptasics a viable target (This is also a safe assumption since in the JB clarification, I specifically used Dragon of Doom as an example).

As for Bunny Bytes, the clarification begs the question, why would a player show anything besides a rabbit?  Is the picture of the pika more easily available?  I think in most cases when this card is played, the players are doing a google search for the picture, so arguably pika would be a slightly faster search.  However, if you're doing this for optimization, I'd highly recommend the much better optimization of making a rabbit the background image on your lock screen so you always have it prepared easily.

[marek14]

Well, "hare" would be probably more often used than pika