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I liked this one. Most of the huge text walls could and probably should be condensed, but Ceasar's thought process was grimly interesting to me in it's own right, but also seems to be leading into something actually happening. Of course the next five pages are going to be be, skyy, the towers, and Maggie's version of it. Then it'll flip to the tunnel fight group and some stuff with them will happen. And eventually we'll get back here just in time for me to have forgotten most of what happened in translyvato.
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Oct 5, 2018 23:11
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While it looks like GK's situation is turning around, it's been so long I genuinely forgot what Sizemore is trying to do there...
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Oct 6, 2018 06:24
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I do like that the way to deal with a Dirtamancer upon realising he thinks like a real life engineer is to encourage him to think like a Star Trek engineer. Sizemore strikes me as more of an O'Brien.
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Oct 6, 2018 09:06
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See this isn't a bad page, I just wish 8 other subplots weren't running simultaneously EDIT: So the running idea is that, potentially, the portal is going to be Carney'd before Caeser can hit it. Onmi fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Oct 9, 2018 |
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Oct 6, 2018 13:52
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Apparently this is a book end. I guess if you're going to choose an arbitrary moment in an unending string of things just kinda happening, this is as good as any.
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Oct 10, 2018 08:23
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Wanda is just going to be insufferable when she finds out its possible for her to get randomly killed.
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Oct 10, 2018 12:33
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A bunch of plot threads that have been teased and tantalized and dangled in front of us for at least an entire book all just suddenly cried out in pain, and then were silenced forever.
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Oct 10, 2018 13:12
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he really doesn’t know where he’s going or what he’s doing anymore
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Oct 10, 2018 13:25
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Why would this be surprising? The last time we saw Wanda, Marie was saying she was probably dead.
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Oct 10, 2018 13:34
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Well that'd probably explain why the Pliers became sentient.
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Oct 10, 2018 13:40
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i can't believe the next book is gonna start and we're still gonna be on this one turn
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Oct 10, 2018 14:05
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FWIW she'd become a pretty huge narrative black hole and this at least gets her out of the way for a while.
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Oct 10, 2018 14:45
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Rand Brittain posted:Why would this be surprising? The last time we saw Wanda, Marie was saying she was probably dead. Because the plot was hinting at bunch of Decrypted having plot relevance going forward, and the current page at least strongly hints that the Decrypted all died along with Wanda. It also makes a lot of people look really stupid. We haven't seen Doll Issac in a while, but he's probably feeling REAL dumb right now for delaying Wanda and refusing to even let her call home.
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Oct 10, 2018 15:12
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There are Decrypted right there on the page. They aren't dead.
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Oct 10, 2018 15:23
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it seems pretty clear where we’re headed is the pliers themselves, given sentience, decrypt Wanda. that’s where the story’s been going for a while— zombie queen at the head of the zombie horde. at least we’re getting there.
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Oct 10, 2018 15:51
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Stanley may or may not start to feel 'my tool' is getting a bit too literal. (especially since it's already in-universe opinion that Stanley is Wanda's bitch)
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Oct 10, 2018 16:18
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Book 3 - Page 344 End of Book 4 I know he mentions it in the news update, but that won't stop me from laughing.
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Oct 10, 2018 17:21
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Rand Brittain posted:There are Decrypted right there on the page. They aren't dead. They're on every panel of the page...until Stanley starts freaking out and yelling at Hamster. After that, the Decrypted aren't shown again. And given that there'd be no particular reason for Stanley to be yelling at Hamster just because of Wanda's death, and that he left the room right before suddenly freaking out, I'm assuming that either something happened to the Decrypted (and Parson didn't notice yet because he was busy with Sizemore) or Jed hosed up the city somehow because of the contract fuckery. Given the focus this page placed on Wanda and the Decrypted, I'm betting something happened with them. Probably not dusting, though. Maybe they all dropped unconscious, or switched to neutral, or something like that. They're almost certainly going to be back in action later, probably as part of the Arkenplier zombie army. Now that I think of it, too, this chapter made sure to leave important speaking Decrypted units in important places all over Erfworld. Jack is in Transylvito's capital, Marie is in Faq's capital, Lilith is in the Magic Kingdom, and Ansom is sitting there all alone in the old City of Faq. Whatever happens to the Decrypted next, basically everyone who played any part at all in Book 3/4 is going to know about it.
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Oct 10, 2018 17:46
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ninjewtsu posted:i can't believe the next book is gonna start and we're still gonna be on this one turn I absolutely can. I don't think I was even hoping otherwise.
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Oct 10, 2018 18:26
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He's gonna go on hiatus now and no one will ever hear from him again.
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Oct 10, 2018 21:54
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I have no idea what was the point of these two last books? First one was great, second one was fine. I haven't understood whats happening for the last 200 pages or so. If this is a tacit admission that poo poo got out of hand and we're going back to two alternating plot threads then I'm all for it. The worst part must be that when the comic started, I understood the setting immediately: "hex wargame with stupid puns everywhere" and our hero dropped in the mix. The more time passes, the less I understand how the game world works. It's like reading a absurdist murder mystery where you're not even sure if someone died. There's very little to relate to and may God have mercy on your soul if you think five page contracts and rules lawyering them is relatable. I think the moral of the story is this: Power gamers turn everything into poo poo and you shouldn't play with them.
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Oct 11, 2018 00:51
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"If magic is unrestrained in the campaign,
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Oct 11, 2018 03:02
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it’s pretty clear that he had a tight, well-planned idea about everything that would happen up to the end of book 1 and maybe a bit beyond that, and nothing else. the story reads like something from a wiki-obsessed nerd’s headcanon, except it’s the author’s original content
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Oct 11, 2018 13:29
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Uuuurgh. And it's not like he can start the next book a few days later, either, there's just so much random poo poo going on right now, including the negotiation of a contract. I mean, I think at this point I'd prefer it if he DID, but it's not going to be very elegant. Yeah, this definitely went off the rails at some point, probably around the Magic Kingdom invasion. I don't know why he got bogged down in all this magic nonsense after spending several hundred pages showing us the rules to a fairly-standard wargame. I can't help but think of kids on the playground, shouting "I shot you with my gun" - "no, I'm wearing armor" - "Well, my gun can shoot missiles" - "My armor has missile defense lasers though" - to the point that there's no wargame system anymore, there's just a bunch of side characters producing unpredictable results that don't fit into the framework they've given us. It just seems like such an easily-spotted trap that he should have been able to avoid. There's almost certainly an end-result to this turn that he's plotted out in advance, but holy poo poo no one cares this much about the minutiae of how they get there. Wanda escapes the Dirtamancers, links up with Isaac, and then gets killed. Parson (and the other casters?) end up back in Gobwin Knob. All the towers come to life. Transylvito allies with GK or maybe disbands, I dunno. It's a lot of stuff, but it's not THAT complicated, and it could have been done with a fraction of the magic hand-waving and glimpses into random side characters' points of view.
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Oct 11, 2018 15:06
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Caster links were cool when they were extremely rare, extremely risky things that could obtain quite literally game-changing results if you assembled three casters of the right disciplines. The volcano uncroaking clearly broke the rules, but it was a desperate last-resort move that nearly killed everyone there, including the people doing it. They got a lot less cool when Parson befriended the best linkers in the entire world, such that he could give his buddies a call and have them set up whatever links he wants between his gaggle of casters any time, no cost and no risk. They straight-up jumped the shark when the book's main villain became someone who could remotely link with anyone in the world at will for free with no risk and no cost and no third caster, could even bake the results of that link into scrolls and other items, and has spent the last who-knows-how-long mass-producing link-built superitems. And then we got trance-fusion, and then we got Big Think the mega-link (with infinite juice, no less). And every time linking power-creep happens, it's used to break more and more things in the world and leave more and more permanent effects everywhere. Similarly, even though the Arkentools were unquestionably rulebreaking, they were limited in what they could do and in who could use them, so they didn't feel like god-mode. The Arkenpliers could completely revive dead troops and turn them, creating reborn armies that didn't even cost upkeep...but that was all it could do. The reborn troops still had to fight using stacks and warlords and all that, just like anyone else. The Arkenhammer tamed dwagons, shot lightning, and turned nuts into birds. That's all (so far). On the other hand, the Arkendish has shown a zillion loving powers, ranging from Charlie's trademark Thinkagram mastery and remote links to poo poo like mental acceleration and predicting the future. And I'm sure the newly-sentient Arkenpliers are going to break open a whole new dimension of bullshit. It seems like the whole idea of Book 3 was that instead of fighting big armies with clever plans and rule-breaking tricks that were used conservatively in desperate situations, Parson would fight someone who was even better at rule-breaking than him and could use his rule-breaking tricks much more freely. But it just ended up turning this rules-driven setting into Calvinball. Main Paineframe fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 16:07
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In book 1, the only rule-breaking that happens is driven by Parson, which is fun. It gives our protagonist a creative way out of tight spots. Afterwards it turns out just about everybody was already breaking all kinds of rules in secret, which is bullshit and removes a lot of the reasons for Parson being the chosen one to
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Oct 11, 2018 16:47
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Maybe stuff will break to the point that the comic ends with Parson and Charlie sitting in a Blue Screen of Death limbo for all eternity, reminiscing on how they broke everything. I don't mind a little power creep, I thought it was clever how Charlie ended the turn in Book 2. But his entire armory is absurd. What does it matter if he can't take over the entire world in one turn if he can do it in 2 or 3 and no one can stop him? Dude could already sweep the entire map with his bullshit and clean up in a few more turns. Is this some sort of metacommentary on players who won a thousand turns ago but refuse to finish the game? Also Oz? I've no idea how that links to the entire theme. Is there an Oz-themed wargame I don't know? I get that Charlie is the wizard of Oz and the other characters were somewhere in the snoozefest that was written in summer, I just don't get what that has to do with anything. I much preferred the hint that this entire thing was a hallucination of Parsons, what with Saline IV and all. Then at least the setup makes sense, Parson is fighting essentially himself in Charlie and the only winning move is not to play (linking back to page 16 where his friends are worried that this is too much of an escape to him). It's not just the powergaming and rules-lawyering, it's that I don't understand where this is going and why. There's a hundred pages and angles on Fate and none of it makes sense. There's no reason why people do things any more, things just are done. Charlie bombs thinkamancer temple into big think into stealing the pliers into creating sentient cities for everyone into everyone dying? Okay? Is this something that was supposed to inevitably happen or what? The worst bit is that some of the characters are well-written, relatable and interesting. I would like to like the comic but it sure is hard.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:16
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To be entirely honest I don't see a way to satisfactorily end this comic without majorly breaking the foundations of Erfworld. Just leave and leave everything the way it always was? Considering it was established from the beginning that this is basically a hellscape of endless war, that's not really emotionally fulfilling. An open ending would be lame too. The fundamental (emotional) problems of the place are baked into its very rules. That's why the head hippiemancer whose name I don't recall (E: Janis, right?) was all "I hope he wars so hard he breaks war". Not gonna deny it's gone out of control, but I also strongly doubt it was all flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants writing. The entire point of the climax of Book 1 was that Parson was deliberately breaking free of some fundamental rules of Erfworld and he was gonna continue doing so and if he's the only one doing it then it just ends up being your average isekai light novel. Kyte fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Oct 11, 2018 |
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Oct 11, 2018 17:37
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To me the biggest drag on the story isn't the focus on magic or the billion plots all going at once, it's the author's desire to show nearly every action from multiple perspectives. I get that he wants to use that as a way to illustrate how each character thinks. And also uses it to highlight the differences in magic philosophy. Many of these asides are well thought out and would be interesting, if there weren't so drat many of them. It stretches the story out to triple length and removes tons of audience speculation about why characters do what they do. Back when it was only comic pages the series had to be tightly written because there was only so much to cram in to a page. With the text updates there's not really a limit on how much exposition can be done. So it just encourages the worst aspects of World Building. Like, I love the Silmarillion, but I would not like LotR if every paragraph had a lengthy aside about Aragorn sees the relation between what he's doing and Finrod. I don't think Baldur is a bad writer, or that the story is uninteresting, or even that the magic rules lawyering is inherently bad. It's just there's to drat much of it. This series really needs a editor.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:26
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Well, the end of the comic was going to be finding a way to break the cycle of war on Erfworld. They've touched on it quite a few times, the Hippies' original prophecy for Parson, discussions about how the economy mechanics force sides into conflict, even that (for once) worthwhile aside where we saw the POV of some Archon and her experiments with getting eggs out of chickens. I'm interested in that story, but it's just gotten lost at this point.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:26
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Even when it was only comic strips there were "text" updates that were shots of Parson's journal entries. Balder loves text.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:31
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Kyte posted:To be entirely honest I don't see a way to satisfactorily end this comic without majorly breaking the foundations of Erfworld. No, I suppose that's the entire point. That there must be some change if things are ever to move on. This is just a very strange direction to take it into. Why Oz, why spend so much time on Fate if things will just spiral out of control, why endless contract negotiations as the main way of breaking things, why essentially random things happening all the time with no foreshadowing? Why do we even follow the non-essential characters if this stuff is supposed to be important? Big Think broke every capital (maybe every city!) in the world and we're spending several updates on Albert and his knives. Jillian does something irrelevant for a long while and loses her entire field army to one caster with a gun. We have Juggalo Elves who have done nothing and are irrelevant anyway, we have prince Ansom who did nothing and is irrelevant, we have all of this crap that doesn't matter, we have this entire drawn-out drama in Transylvito that didn't matter. Vinny was completely right, dammit. The entire original setting has been made completely irrelevant. An entire side dies in one turn with zero chance to do anything meaningful. Armies and combat mechanics don't matter, a contract can cause a thousand times more damage and permanently ruin a side forever. Maybe everyone will just agree to not attack anyone else, ever, for fear of penalties that will kill the offending side off for good. Maybe the poor saps calling themselves "rulers" won't even get a say, towers will just decide it for everyone and that's that. So here's the thing that annoys me the most. When the comic started there were several sides with agency and opportunities that mattered. Now there is just the extremely high stakes play that matters. Why are we still following the inconsequential pieces? It was cool to read one page from the life of Wrigley, the spearman, who got to use his spear once. Now it's tens if not hundreds of pages of crap from people who don't matter. And even in the high stakes play there are too many things that are random. Who could have predicted Big Think or that he would steal the pliers or that he would wake up every city? And why did he do that? "The cheat to end all cheats" my rear end, the entire motivation of the high council was to keep things under control and maintain status quo. Galvanik posted:It's just there's to drat much of it. This series really needs a editor. I agree.
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Oct 11, 2018 18:45
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Part of what made the Battle of Gobwin Knob so compelling is that Parson did work within the rules of the setting. Most of his Book 1 gambits were things like "attack only siege units, then retreat rather than trying to wipe the whole enemy stack" or "have Sizemore tunnel behind the enemy lines and attack their leaders". Stuff that broke the social conventions Erfworlders were used to, but worked entirely within the rules. Even in Book 2, his main game-changing move was the dwagon harvesting trick that got his forces out of the sky, and that wasn't a rule-break: anyone could have done it, it's just that it croaks most of the units involved, so that would have been a Pyrrhic move if Wanda wasn't there (or if she hadn't gotten lucky). In all those cases, it still came down to battles between troops, with the schemes and plans mostly serving to shift the odds and give Parson's side a fighting chance by getting them out of incredibly unfavorable situations. Compare with the beginning of Book 3, Stanley attacks Jillian, and Charlie just turns his entire attack force in the middle of the battle, a feat that makes the Arkenpliers look dull by comparison.
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Oct 11, 2018 19:54
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Main Paineframe posted:Part of what made the Battle of Gobwin Knob so compelling is that Parson did work within the rules of the setting. Most of his Book 1 gambits were things like "attack only siege units, then retreat rather than trying to wipe the whole enemy stack" or "have Sizemore tunnel behind the enemy lines and attack their leaders". Stuff that broke the social conventions Erfworlders were used to, but worked entirely within the rules. Even in Book 2, his main game-changing move was the dwagon harvesting trick that got his forces out of the sky, and that wasn't a rule-break: anyone could have done it, it's just that it croaks most of the units involved, so that would have been a Pyrrhic move if Wanda wasn't there (or if she hadn't gotten lucky). In all those cases, it still came down to battles between troops, with the schemes and plans mostly serving to shift the odds and give Parson's side a fighting chance by getting them out of incredibly unfavorable situations. Also, Book 2 was entirely about a terrible situation that Parson had to navigate that was entirely different to the one in Book 1. Namely, that he didn't want to be a general, he didn't want to lead combat, and Maggie, essentially, thrust upon him an issue the battle didn't need. In the long run, it might be better, but Parson makes it clear he doesn't HAVE a plan, the only thing he needs to think of is increasing multipliers so the units can survive. The fact they barely make it out, with most of the force dead and dusted. Well, like was said, He didn't do the smart thing this time, he did the Brave thing. I think the really, well and truly big issue with book 3 and 4 is Parson is neither doing the smart nor the brave thing. In fact, he's not doing much of anything. There's about 8 different plots all running concurrently, some of which I can't even pretend to give a gently caress about.
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Oct 12, 2018 06:05
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Phenotype posted:Well, the end of the comic was going to be finding a way to break the cycle of war on Erfworld. They've touched on it quite a few times, the Hippies' original prophecy for Parson, discussions about how the economy mechanics force sides into conflict, even that (for once) worthwhile aside where we saw the POV of some Archon and her experiments with getting eggs out of chickens. I'm interested in that story, but it's just gotten lost at this point. I thought that the way to do this was have Gobwin Knob slowly conquer everyone, turning them into decrypted units to get around the issue of upkeep. Maybe decrypt some rulers and have whole other decrypted sides subservient to Wanda. When almost no one on Erfworld requires upkeep anymore, then no wars need to be fought for resources. It doesn't look like that's the way the story is going, though.
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Oct 12, 2018 07:23
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i think my big issue with book 3 is mostly that there's not really one "big event" that everything is centered around. in book 1, everything took place in gobwin knob/the surrounding area. in book 2, it was jetstone's capital. any perspective shifts were contained to still covering the same event, so things pretty much always kept moving, and the cast of relevant characters getting perspectives was a bit more focused as well right now there's what, magic kingdom turmoil? ok, so we have a central conflict around wanda's execution and a lot of focus on the mages surrounding that, sounds cool. but also: there's a ton of drama happening in transylvito at the same time. ok, so we have all the transylvito characters commenting on an entirely independent "big event." but on top of that, lets also occasionally check in on parson and stanley and sizemore at home, who are doing, uh, hm. i don't really remember. but it felt really unimportant until these last couple pages. so we're getting a story that's essentially triple length, because it's 3 stories in parallel. but we're not really getting them in chunks either, it's small bits before shifitng to another story, so it's difficult to even remember/care about what was going on in a given plot thread when we come back around to it, whatever we learn won't actually be relevant until after we've gone back through every other plot thread too. i think either magic kingdom or transylvito would've been a pretty good story. hell, even one of those + miscellanious third plotthread (stanley at home/charlie's headquarters escape/vinny's faq invasion/whatever the gently caress else) would've been fine. but all at once is just too bloated, and destroys the pacing that was already a little slow to begin with.
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Oct 12, 2018 16:00
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like that's honestly the biggest difference between the pacing in book 1/2 and 3/4 as far as i can tell. in book 2 the cast got expanded with the various princes of jetstone so we'd frequently see their perspective on events, and of course we'd see the various important gobwin knob fellows like jack and maggie and ansom and wanda, and we'd even get occasional asides for pricne sammy or jillian, but we never got perspectives into, say, vinny or caesar, because they weren't relevant. well, now in book 3/4, we have the expanded cast of the magic kingdom, plus the expanded cast of transylvito, plus a decent focus on characters who are only tertiarly related to those events (jillian, vinny, parson lol, stanely, sizemore, etc). like, if this story was only one of these plot threads, i don't think the rate of perspective shifts would be an issue at all. each new one is generally interesting and generally moves SOMETHING forward. but the attention is otherwise so split up that it's a huge loving pain that the rate of perspective shifts wasn't changed to accommodate the massively increased scope.
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Oct 12, 2018 16:08
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Sefer posted:I thought that the way to do this was have Gobwin Knob slowly conquer everyone, turning them into decrypted units to get around the issue of upkeep. Maybe decrypt some rulers and have whole other decrypted sides subservient to Wanda. When almost no one on Erfworld requires upkeep anymore, then no wars need to be fought for resources. It doesn't look like that's the way the story is going, though. I suspect he was thinking that too, at one point, until he got used to it. Once the idea was no longer as interesting to him, he came up with a new one, then when he got bored with that he couldn't help but subvert it. Several similar cycles later, an hour has advanced in the plot.
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Oct 12, 2018 17:33
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You can't have war if there's never another turn.
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Oct 13, 2018 02:03
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| # ? May 9, 2024 03:33 |
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there’s two problems running in parallel, each of which could be solved individually, but they also feed into each other. First is the pacing: balder is trying to tell three or four story threads at once and split his attention between them equally, so they all come out disjointed. Second is the actual content. It’s gone from “Tron in a tabletop war game” to “cheaters cheating cheaters.” Magic Calvinball is the only thing that’s actually relevant, since guns completely obsolete any kind of tactics or bravery. In order to counter the super rear end-pully nature of the Arkentools, we get equally ferocious rear end-pulls from every other caster: the wonky wrench, infinite juice, Big Think, the temples, and so on. The big antagonist’s whole “thing” is having plans within plans within plans so he can always pull the rug out from under you, but 1) he’s done it so many times now that it’s become boring and 2) now everyone else can do it too. It almost feels like meta-commentary. Parson came up with a brilliant unconventional plan to save the day but he’ll never get to implement it because insane rear end-pulls keep interrupting him. I think things had been kind of going off the rails for a while but the failure of the scroll to send him home was a huge red flag for me. It’s just bad storytelling: when you set up a bomb and spend so much time and effort explaining why it’s so dangerous and why it must be thwarted, then you detonate it and immediately go “lol nope didn’t matter,” it completely undermines your ability to tell a story with proper stakes.
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Oct 13, 2018 15:26
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