City hexes and Archons

[Godskook]

I'll answer this one question as an example of "yes, we did think about this stuff before we started writing." And then I'll stop before I get any farther into the tar pit of explaining the rules while we are telling the story.

Thanks, thats even more information than I needed.

Do you remember when Ansom was getting word passed along through the column about the results of Parson's attack? That was not on the Coalition's turn, but physical notes were still being passed between hexes. Did we specifically show a note passed across a hex? No. The story didn't need it. Compared to showing the abortive celebrations of the Coalition's leadership corps, it's dramatically trivial.

Now, if you are seriously hung up on whether or not Ansom could touch a magical button projected in the air by an Archon hovering just above the city wall, then you are not really granting us any license at all for a joke, you know? There's occasionally some humor in this comic. The EULA joke is meant to make you laugh.

Do you remember when we tried using the batcam's to say that Vinny(or the bats) were color-blind? We tend to take everything as binding, despite knowing that some things aren't. This is our problem as readers and forum-goers. Knowing that the EULA thing is on par with the batcam, as far as canon goes, I'm moving on.

But that's what happened. I thought about it. I knew about it. We didn't show it.

We are telling a story set in a whole alien universe here. We have mythologies and character histories and world mechanics backing this up, but it's the story that matters. I care ten times more about Sizemore's emotional state in the heat of battle than I do about whether or not a sourmander could spit acid across a hex boundary. (But I still know the answer.)

First, let me clarify that I have tremendous esteem for this comic. In fact, I just described it as the most polished comic I currently read(ctrl-alt-del, 8-bit, dominic deegan, Schlock Mercenary, LFG, LICD, Girl Genius, and bobngeorge are some of my other favorites) to my last cab customer. Considering the comic list I gave, thats a prestigious title you hold in my opinion. You guys have taken the time to create a comic that is more than just a story. On top of the compelling storyline, you have extreme artwork, creative in-jokes from sound-effects to spell names to characters, yet the most unique draw, for me, is the inclusion of coherent and binding game mechanics.

Second, I'll admit, I thought it was possible that you missed that. However, I wasn't intending to make it sound as if that was the only way we could arrive at this. Frankly, I still find it odd that two units can interact physically and still be considered to be in different 'zones' which prevents them from attacking each other. As of this post, I've stopped seeking answers to that and have resigned myself to just accepting it as it is what it is.

Third, for myself, I would love to get my hands that info about attacks crossing hex borders or not.

Fourth, as a general rule, I tend only to care about a comic as much as I think its creator does. I wouldn't bother e-mailing bobngeorge over a perceived plothole. That comic opened and filled so many of those, I would've been exhausted reporting them all. You have taken the time to make rules for this comic's world, and to make them incredibly consistent. Thus, when I see what appears to me to be an inconsistency of the rules in the comic, I'm more concerned because I believe that consistency of these rules are important to you*. In this case, I was apparently not understanding the rules.

As this goes along, some mechanics are going to be unclear at times. Please trust that we've thought about these things to the extent needed to support the story. We're not going to pull any major cheapness in how we tell the tale, and we have not written ourselves into a corner.

Before I even begin, I assume that you actually wrote your rule-list down before you began writing the comic in earnest.