"Should" Erfworld be balanced?

[MoredanKantose]

Hello, JLrep.

Interesting questions.

So: "should" Erfworld be balanced?

Coulnd't care less, as long as it is internally consistent.

And yes, it still was an interesting question for me, I had to think about it for a long time before I answered. But I came to the conclusion that... I do not care.

would their truth automatically damage the quality of the comic?

Ähem... IMHO, for every characteristic X, which is not "it has a bad quality", it is not true that X "automatically damages the quality" of any piece of art.

Uglyness? See Giger.
Improvisation? See Jazz.
Lack of effort? See some conceptual art.
Simplicity? See "The Black Square" of Malevich.

Never "automatically", never "always", never "besides any other consideration".

is, say, The Lord of the Rings balanced?

No, it is not. Played over and over again, Sauron would win most of the times. There are many moments in the book where the protagonists are just lucky.

If not, should it have been?

I think it depends on the purpose of the books. To have more quality? no.

Did it not matter because that's not a world with "game-like qualities?"

Disagree, it is. For example, it is fun. This is a game-like quality :) .

What about other fantasy series, especially those with uber-powerful big bads (which would be most of them, of course)?

Well, here I must say that I dislike many of them, but at the same time, that I haven't read many of the ones I dislike, because I disliked the mere setting so much that I did not want to read them.

Keyword: "The protagonist saves the world/kingdom from destruction/evil". Any book which gives me the impression of ending like that, I do not read it. I haven't found fantasy books in the last decades which did not give me that impression, even the ones where the protagonist is supposedly weak or evil at the beginning.

If somebody has any idea... I would be glad to read fantasy again...

[JLrep]

Thanks for the reply, MoredanKantose.

My point with the initial post was engendered by the constant callings-out of Erfworld when apparent "gamebreakers" were introduced, such as the zombicano and Decrypt. I found it an interesting question; for instance, since Erfworld was created by the uber-Elvises (Elvii?), did they create it to be a game that was like a world or a world that was like a game? Etc.

I'll agree with you about fantasy. I love to read but I don't usually read fantasy because it all feels the same, an entire genre of LotR wannabes. And probably a good half or more of it takes the form of "young boy w/ destiny defeats Big Bad & saves day." Though if you're interested, I have found some interesting stuff in Glen Cook's Black Company series. They're much darker and earthy than most fantasy, and instead of a young boy or a gallant knight or something, they follow an ordinary (middle-aged) soldier in a mercenary group, which as often works for the "evil" side as the good one.

[Xiander]

If somebody has any idea... I would be glad to read fantasy again...

I would recoment the "first law" trilogy by Joe Abercrombie. I have only read two of the books yet, but it feels safe to say that they will not end with the Hero resquing anything. There seems to be no heroes in the book, only protagonists.

As an answer to the qustion posed by the OP: Balance has little to no bearing upon how interesting a story is. Adversity however has. Or to put it differently: I care little about whether one weapon has the power to level every side on erfworld whithin a turn, as long as it is used to create an interesting problem to be solved or tried solved by the protagonists.

[Estanov]

Yes, but that does not mean that it will.

In many games, the purpose is to be balanced (Like 'Magic the Gathering' or DND.) However, smart players will almost always find exploits or combo's that completely surpass the intended abilities of the game.

Example: Ever fought against a 3.5 fighter with a brilliant energy greatsword and the power attack feat? Autsj...