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2018-10-20, 03:42 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Umm. That part was foreshadowed and fitted within the larger story.
Sure, it's a saga of how they died. However, is it something we, the audience needed to know? I don't think so. It just seems like padding, for padding's sake.
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2018-10-20, 06:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2011
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2018-10-20, 09:51 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Well sure, of course you can. You just shouldn't. Unless you want your story to read like bad fan fiction of course. If that's the goal then Erfworld is right on target.
Well, what do you expect when they've systematically driven off or banned everyone who criticizes the comic? Of course you're going to have an echo chamber there.
I hate these kinds of non-arguments. You could justify anything with this. Sure, individual tastes vary. There's also people in the world who literally enjoy the taste of feces. That doesn't make it palatable to the rest of us.
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2018-10-20, 10:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
I find that I am ready to put Erfworld off of my active reading list. I can happily come back in 6 months and catch up then.
I agree; I'm disappointed by the ending of this book.
Caesar should have been killed by those he trusted.
The Velveteen Bunny should have been brought back to life.
Finding out that the towers can basically ignore the rules and do whatever they want pretty much renders the whole "this is all about abusing the rules" concept moot.
The basic premise seems to have become "everything you thought you knew about this world is wrong". And if we don't know a thing about this world, if all the secondary characters are being changed out under us, what is left for us to care about?Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-10-20, 11:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
One question I have is how did Hueh know that Bunny can't be resurrected?
He wasn't even sentient when it happened. Comes of as exposition. We really need to get a scene actually showing how some of these bodies can't be resurrected, instead of just being told it several times over.
I can only assume that Rob had to include this detail because he needed for Hueh to know that Bunny can't be resurrected anyway, so he would be okay with her corpse being destroyed, despite having a ditto of Caesar's heart, which would have allowed him to understand just how important Bunny is to him. Hueh is just smart enough to know that Bunny can't be resurrected, but just dumb enough to not realise that Caesar doesn't know this and will lose all will to live if he finds out.
It seriously annoys me that no one seemed to catch on that the one line in the sand that must not be crossed was removing all possibility of resurrecting Bunny. This was just one series of stupid moves to get the plot to where Rob wanted it.
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2018-10-20, 11:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
SpoilerI am a: Chaotic Good Human Bard(14th Level)
Ability Scores:
Strength-10
Dexterity-15
Constitution-12
Intelligence-6
Wisdom-9
Charisma-23
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2018-10-21, 12:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2011
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
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2018-10-21, 02:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
In a poorly written unsatisfying manner? Definitely. Especially since I'm betting most of us don't even care about these characters at all beyond the fact that we've been "made to read a lot about" them. The only interesting thing these characters even had going for them was their possible future interactions with GK. When you cut that short we've basically just suffered through the most boring character arcs ever for no payoff. Unpalatable is probably the kindest adjective I'd use.
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2018-10-21, 05:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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- Singapore
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Honestly, I think it's pretty telling that even the Erfworld forums are arguing over this update (there are very obviously a lot of people there unhappy with it - that's the whole reason that argument is taking place at all.)
I mean, any comic's official forums are going to be more upbeat about it than elsewhere. Partially this is because you generally get banned by being too critical, but honestly, I think another reason is because people tend to pull their punches when they feel they're addressing the comic's creators to their face, so to speak. When I was skimming the comments for this one on their forums, my reaction was "wow, that's a lot more negativity than usual."
And I say this as someone who doesn't think this update was that bad compared to some of the other recent ones. I mean, it's not a great way to resolve things, and makes me wonder what all this was for, but at least it feels like the authors finally have all the pieces where they want them to be, hopefully?
Honestly I think the real problem with the last book is that it's been directionless. The first two books were each structured around a concrete military campaign which steadily advanced towards a conclusion, so it always felt like events were going somewhere. This book has just been an endless swing of random back-and-forths - feeling like it's been constantly setting something up with no payoff.
It's not like there weren't things like this before (uncroaking a volcano, kingworld.) But they weren't a big deal because they still fit into the arc of a larger coherent story. The problem now isn't that there are these random new mechanics from nowhere, it's that that is now the entire plot.
EDIT: To illustrate, I'm going to summarize the first two books, then this one.
Originally Posted by Book 1Originally Posted by Book 2Originally Posted by Book 3
I have lot of trouble picturing what the synopsis for the third book was like. I don't see how anyone could ever write a synopsis remotely resembling the one I did, then sit back and say "yes, that looks good. That is the story I want to spend the next few years telling." It's incoherent nonsense - the sort you usually get in comics when they pass through a bunch of writers in rapid succession. But this is all one writer, so... I don't know what to say.
One thing I'd point out is that while there's a ton of plot threads and a huge amount of confusing stuff going on, when you boil it down... very little actually happened. None of those threads feel like they've actually made much progress - each one had one event, but none of them are self-contained stories like Book 3 was, and they're often pretty disconnected from each other to boot.Last edited by Aquillion; 2018-10-21 at 06:02 AM.
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2018-10-21, 06:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2014
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
It didn't give him perfect defense.
Spoiler: Harry Potter
However, due to characters being what they are, Tom (a person so obsessed with not dying he decided to create multiple phylacteries, just to be extra sure) didn't want to have his next Avada-kadabra clash again. He heard good things about that Elder Wand, which was incidentally the wand Harry had power over.
That's BS excuse. You can justify anything with that (To quote Parson)
My point is - when writing, drawing, singing, cooking or dancing you need to obey certain rules, certain stylistic choices.
E.g., your meal needs to have some difference in texture, otherwise you make made food, that has OK taste, but has the texture of diarrhea, and is thus unpalatable.
Same with Erfworld. As the great poet himself Harry S. Plinkett said: "Brevity is the soul of wit". What that means, is stop wasting my time. No. Stop it. You keep things nice and simple.
Do you really need to know what Rando McSpearThrower did? No? Then you cut that part of story out. Kill it
And that's what this whole part of TV Saga was. A++ Time waster. In fact, they should have renamed the side from TV(TransylVitto) to WS (Wheel-Spinning). It's good that we managed to know all these characters up close, so they can be killed off in most unspectacular ways...
Look, I'll be the first to admit. I kinda liked the idea of Bunny and Ceasar VS The Thinkamancers VS Charlie. It is a promising story. I mean, an alliance of Bad Thinkamancers and Transylvitto seems like natural fit. It had promise. Hell, a Decrypted Bunny still keeping her love intact through Decryption, would be amazing.
What we got instead - Oh Bunny dies and is foraged for food by bats... Caesar commits sepuku (via portal). I want to make a Last Jedi joke and say it subverted my expectations, but by that time, both Thinkamancers were gone as a threat and Charlie was rendered a non threat. So it, just confirmed my fears - that Book 1 was a fluke.Last edited by -D-; 2018-10-21 at 06:38 AM.
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2018-10-21, 11:54 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Hueh was referring to what happened to Bunny's body. Go back to ceasar's last update. After the deal was made, since the side no longer had any money, the bats left to forage to cover their upkeep. These bats are carnivorous and they went for the only nearby source of expendable meat; Bunny and Don's bodies are gone. That's what Hueh means when he says bunny is more than just dead... just like ceasar whose body was destroyed completely when he went through the portal. So Hueh knows that its impossible to fulfill Ceasar's last desire for Bunny to live again. No body, no decryption. Just another reason why Hueh thinks he screwed up horribly by signing that deal in ceasar's name; he didn't know ceasar at all. He was so focused on keeping ceasar alive that he gave away everything ceasar wanted (and caesar didn't care that much about his own life anyway)
Last edited by slayerx; 2018-10-21 at 12:00 PM.
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2018-10-21, 12:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Hmm, that's a different interpretation. I thought what Hueh meant was that he permitted Bunny to be eaten because he already knew she was irrecoverably dead from frying her brain killing Caesar, and that the bats didn't start eating Bunny's corpse until after the contract was set.
One of the dissenters actually got 6 likes, and some compliments, instead of just negativity, so I decided to make a follow up to that one.
It made me remember Rob posting about how he remembered that Parson was, in fact, the protagonist of the story, and that Parson was going to be making a difference. Took me forever to find that quote because I had forgotten that it was LAST YEAR that it was made. Good god, it's been almost 11 months since he wrote this.
Originally Posted by Rob
Not disagreeing, but book 3 will be officially book 3&4 eventually, so that summery needs to be broken in two parts. Book 3 ended after Parson fled through the portal to TV after the Magic Kingdom battle.
Last edited by tomaO2; 2018-10-21 at 12:47 PM.
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2018-10-21, 05:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2006
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
I stopped reading Erfworld somewhere in Book 3, during the whole thing with the Decrypted Archon raising havoc in Charlie's base and racking up a huge debt for GK. I felt like the plot was getting bogged down and hard to follow. The art was also very poor, although it did get much better around the time I stopped. But it seems the other problems that made me lose interest got worse since then, not better.
My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
Interested in the Nexus FFRP setting? See our Discord server.
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2018-10-21, 06:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Oddly enough, I consider Lilith's escapades in Charlescomm to be the high point of Book 3. At least there the narrative was focused on that story (which actually had some action too!) as opposed to flitting between different POV seemingly at random with nothing but talk and STRINNNGNNNGNGNGNS.
Also Towers weren't as big of a deal.R.I.P. Wrecan, he was a true organizer and a gentleman.
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2018-10-21, 09:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Well, that was probably the only time in the last few books that we had a character with a clear goal and a plan that actually reached completion instead of being derailed by stupid plot twists. It's the closest thing we've had to a completed plot arc in several hundred comics...which is really sad.
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2018-10-22, 03:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Having thought of it for a couple days, the whole "not-really-Ceasar's-signature" would be an asspull in every world but Erfworld - here carnymancy is explicitly a thing, and towers have been established as capable of "natural magic" of all sorts, seeing the full picture that the regular casters are missing.
That being said, I do have mixed feelings. Literally, that epilogue is both awesome and jarring at the same time.
Characters dying abruptly after a book of character development... that I'm ok with. I'm a Game of Thrones reader.
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2018-10-22, 04:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Let's be reasonable. It is asspull even in Erfworld.
The Tower used Dittomancy to create a copy of Ceasar. Then used Carnymancy to steal money from Source, then used said money to promote a Heir.
We saw Towers knowing stuff, we saw Towers even using some Signamancy/ Datemancy to keep their units. But the fact that Towers can do literally anything is frankly stupid.
What prevents a Tower from stealing 3.7 billion shmuckers? Nothing.
I know GoT is popular, but not everyone likes GoT, and Erfworld isn't GoT.
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2018-10-22, 05:42 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
What prevents a Tower from stealing 3.7 billion shmuckers? Nothing.
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2018-10-22, 06:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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2018-10-22, 06:20 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Isn't it obvious? Something, something Fate. Something, something Mathamancy.
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2018-10-22, 07:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
It's like if you're playing Civ and your side started using cheat codes without your input.
Where does that end? With the equivalent of ecological destruction of the landscape.
Aye, well said, and your summaries are a good illustration of why book three fails to maintain readership like the previous books.
At this point, do we even need rulers to do anything? CAN rulers do anything? I think their agency is reduced down to simply existing so that their side continues to get turns.
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2018-10-22, 08:58 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jun 2013
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
The Tower used Dittomancy to create a copy of Ceasar. Then used Carnymancy to steal money from Source, then used said money to promote a Heir.
The tower used carnymancy/dittomancy to create copy of Ceasar, abused admin privileges to steal money from the Source and promote a heir, then cancelled the effect.
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2018-10-22, 04:18 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
I have a different take on the summary for book 3.
Parson decides to take the fight directly to Charlie. In the process, he completely violates the neutrality of the Magic Kingdom, and the Magic Kingdom's defenders get involved in the battle. By the time the battle is over, both Charlie and Gobwin Knob have been defeated by the Magic Kingdom's Thinkamancers.
Charlie manages to come out of the defeat with a plan for moving forward; GK winds up with Parson and 2 major casters having surrendered to Transilvito, and no plan for moving forward.Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-10-22, 06:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2011
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
I would say it's the other way around.
Charlie ran out of plans. All he could do was keep sending even more archons with rifles to die then his side was taken over by a talking tower moving them backwards. Even their favored minion FAQ lost their capital and treasury.
Hamster meanwhile managed to negotiate his own release, making a new ally along the way that started by capturing FAQ's capital and their treasury.
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2018-10-22, 08:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
That's like saying having actual Greek Gods show up at the end of a Greek tragedy isn't Deus ex Machina since the Gods are an established part of the setting. It's nonsense. You still have an external power coming from nowhere to completely change the outcome of a story in an unsatisfying manner.
Obviously not enough to matter since we literally just saw one steal money/power.
What's to stop it from happening again? Especially given Erfworld's history of asspulls?
Except Charlie didn't run out of plans. The rules of the world literally changed multiple times to foil his plans. This is not satisfying storytelling, nor is it a good way to bring down the primary antagonist of the story.
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2018-10-22, 09:34 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Things that were not new to that update:
A) The concept of a ditto extending a side (Already happened with Jetstone)
B) Ditto rulers having power over heir stuff (IIRC this also already happened?).
C) Towers being able to steal from the source to power things they are capable of doing.
Things new to the update:
1) Towers turning juice into shmuckers.
2) There being a previously un-mentioned ditto-like-thing ("echo", perhaps, to keep with the possible explanation for the Jed-Parson thing of towers being able to empower the abilities/strings of units) existing in the first place.
3) Towers being able to create ditto-esq things.
4) The ability for one of the parties to undo a contract after it has been signed, if that party is a tower.
---
(2) & (3) could have been partially avoided by HueHue giving some handwave much earlier in the story regarding how he's capable of signing the contract in the first place. Only partially avoided since it still involves towers getting yet more powers. That said, wording it as an empowering-type deal (albiet one lasting a bit beyond death) would give a framework for predicting what towers can and can't do and keep them as a supporting unit. Btw, that explanation is clearly not what is going on - towers appear to actually be capable of anything and are only being held back by their moral values.
(1) could have been avoided by the tower feeding the juice to Benjamin and have him turn the juice into money. That's.. probably something moneymancers can do? Would feel reasonable. They have a caster that specializes in money RIGHT THERE.
(4) just shouldn't have happened. I can't think of any way for that twist to work without implying towers can nullify contracts whenever OR that anyone can pull contract scams by having a ditto ruler sign. This is, indeed, a Dues Ex Machina that came out of nowhere and is resolving a major issue. Promoting Skyy just cancels out something that hit just as fast.
Also I think this should have all went down before Wanda croaking (have Jack just fail for a different reason), with Wanda croaking still being the last page. The next book could focus on that, like it seems to want to, with TV still languishing under the contract albiet with new management.Last edited by Magikeeper; 2018-10-22 at 09:37 PM.
Playtest the 5E Ozodrin! It'll be fun!
Spoiler: Homebrew[5E]
Ozodrin 5E
[3.5]
Base Classes:
Ozodrin 3.5 Update! Posted with Owrtho's permission.
Transmorpher
Prestige Classes:
Speaker of Calm Futures [Vow of Peace]
Spell Reaper [Take on Hi-Op Mages]
Cosmic Horror [Epic, Ozodrin]
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2018-10-22, 10:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2007
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- Singapore
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
My reading of why they were able to do it:
HueHue used dittomancy to fake Caesar's signature on the contract. He was able to do this because he believed his ditto reflected Caesar's actual desires. Because the signature, itself, was dittomancy, he could in theory cancel it at any time, but in practice he was unable to do so because towers are unable to deliberately lie to each other.
However, when he discovered that Caesar didn't agree to anything, that changed the calculations. His forged agreement became invalid, and the implicit understanding that held the contract together no longer worked. This allowed HueHue to cancel his ditto'ed signature and negate the contract.
My reading is that towers can't just cancel contracts whenever they want, only under the specific situation where:
1. The signature itself was dittomancied (so they can end the dittomancy to negate it), and,
2. They believed at the time that they were acting according to the will of their ruler (necessary to dittomancy a signature, otherwise it would be a lie), and,
3. They later discover that their ruler's will wasn't what they thought (allowing them to cancel the signature as invalid, which they wouldn't normally be able to do on account of being unable to deliberately lie.)
In effect, HueHue told Shirley "yes, Caesar agrees to this", and was able to use Dittomancy to back it up because he honestly believed this to be the case. When he learned otherwise, he was able to (and may even have been obligated to) cancel the Dittomancy and the contract.
A corollary to this is that towers cannot actually sign fully-binding contracts without their overlord's consent - the overlord's ultimate, eventual agreement is needed for it to remain binding going forward. If the overlord unequivocally rejects it at the first opportunity, their tower can use that as a basis to cancel it. Shirley was unaware of this (I suspect Charlie would have guessed it, if he'd been involved.)Last edited by Aquillion; 2018-10-22 at 10:12 PM.
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2018-10-23, 12:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2009
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
The way I read this update Fate & Croakamancy Golems don't exist. Ceasar Croaked himself dramatically but although it inspired his Tower into action it's Huehue that did everything, not a Ceasar Croakamancy Golem. That's goodk. Strings and such were bad enough. We don't need invisible golems in the works moving the plot.
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2018-10-23, 12:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2011
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Like Ansom said, you should prepare contigencies for your plans and then contigencies for your contigencies, and Charlie didn't plan for rapid-fire rule retcons.
Which you're right it's pretty crappy storytlelling, what exactly was Rob thinking when designing Charlie "I'M SUPER SMART AND HAVE MY OWN ARKENTOOL WITH MORE ABILITIES THAN EVERY OTHER ARKENTOOL COMBINED INCLUDING AN ARMY OF FANATICALLY LOYAL ANGELS WITH SO MUCH SPECIAL ABILITIES I DO NOT EVEN NEED ANY OTHER TYPE OF UNIT TO HAVE THE MOST VERSATILE ARMY IN THE WORLD AND THEN I'M GIVING THEM MODERN GUNS AND EXPLOSIVES DESPITE THE MEDIEVAL SETTING AND I'M A CARNYMANCER ON TOP WWWEEEE!!!!
(totally worth taking those chair-bound cripple, druggie and ugly flaws)."
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2018-10-23, 01:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Actually, the logical extension of the argument of "you can cancel the agreement because it's a ditto", is "you MUST cancel it because it's a ditto". A ditto, by its nature, is a temporary being, unless we want to add in a new rule of permanent copies. Otherwise, by dawn, the ditto will disappear anyway. All Hueh did was speed up the process. Caesar must make the contract official by dawn, or it automatically dissolves.
My interpretation of how this works is both sides agreed to the contract, with the understanding that Caesar would make it official after his release. By killing himself, Caesar denied the possibility of doing so, so the contract was destined to dissolve. This is the only way it could go down at this point.
This is possibly the stupidest way to make a contract I have ever heard of, if I'm correct. Even if Sheril believed Hueh, when he said that Caesar would totally make this official, because cities can't lie to each other, there is still the factor of not being able to guarantee the actions of the person that actually needs to agree to the contract. Doing it in such a roundabout way seems silly, as well. I'm sure Charlie has made contracts with captured rulers before.Last edited by tomaO2; 2018-10-23 at 03:02 AM.