Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!

[JavaScribe]

Has been since I joined, before that I obviously don't know, but probably at least a bit.

I guess I never noticed, because before I would always write "new comic." rather than "new page.", which just fills the minimum requirement.

[halfeye]

The bit about signals always being misunderstood seems a bit real world biting the carpet mad to me, it's sort of true, but it's not as if we don't allow for it and compensate. It's like cameras always lying, which they do a tiny bit because the field of view and focus never exactly matches what the eye would see, but on the whole, cameras are useful, and sometimes totally necessary.

[deuterio12]

The bit about signals always being misunderstood seems a bit real world biting the carpet mad to me, it's sort of true, but it's not as if we don't allow for it and compensate. It's like cameras always lying, which they do a tiny bit because the field of view and focus never exactly matches what the eye would see, but on the whole, cameras are useful, and sometimes totally necessary.

Fully agreed. Besides stuff like math, if anything one of the things that defines humanity is that we can get thousands/millions of people to work for a single clear purpose. When the egyptians built a pyramid, the workers all managed to coordinate to cut and pile up the stones to a millimiter precision if not better. Nowadays we build all kind of engineering wonders that are only possible if you can draw a plan and have everybody stick to it.

[keybounce]

Contrast with Wanda, borderline Mary Sue, and Maggie who went from cold-blooded manipulator sleeper agent old lady "let me carefully explain you why you're wrong" to "YAY LOVE STRINGS AND FRIENDSHIP SIGNS!"

My little Erf World
My little Erf World
oh wa oh wa oh wa oh waaah

My little Erf World
I used wonder what gaming could be
...

[whitehelm]

This is going to be confusing for people who read through the comic archives later. How are you supposed to know to start at Book 4 Prologue 3 then jump over to the first 3 chapters of Fumo in the Backer Stories section then jump back to Prologue 4? If there's more to the Fumo story it's going to get even worse. People reading just Fumo have it bad too because the first page randomly talks about Noah without any introduction.

[Iain]

So, ah ... tell me it isn't just me (well, I know it isn't - there's a short thread on their forums too), but - those ads!

I'm not shy of a little adult content, and indeed oglaf is one of my favourite comics, but I don't really want animated banners of sexualised, disturbingly young-looking characters oscillating on-screen, thanks very much. Particularly if my kids might walk in.

It has been like this for a good few days now, and I think it's the final straw for me. The comic has pretty much ground to a halt too, so perhaps it was time anyway.

[The Patterner]

So, ah ... tell me it isn't just me (well, I know it isn't - there's a short thread on their forums too), but - those ads!

I'm not shy of a little adult content, and indeed oglaf is one of my favourite comics, but I don't really want animated banners of sexualised, disturbingly young-looking characters oscillating on-screen, thanks very much. Particularly if my kids might walk in.

It has been like this for a good few days now, and I think it's the final straw for me. The comic has pretty much ground to a halt too, so perhaps it was time anyway.

Oh thank god, I was worried there for a while.

But definitely NSFW, and maybe they should have a warning for that.

[tomaO2]

On the off chance anyone is interested, I've finished the rough draft of my basic infantry combat rules for Erfworld, second edition. I'm polishing it up still, but I think I got all the information I need to recreate simple unled fights between small groups of infantry.

https://rpg.erfworld.com/Toma%27s_combat_mechanics

This was the first page I originally worked on and I feel that I've come up with a lot of good refinements since then. I have a fairly robust setup now, and I've worked hard on making the example battles show off all the rules of basic combat and be easy to follow.

One idea that I like is I came up with a setup for units, either they can be surprised or prepared. Surprised means combat comes out of nowhere, while prepared means that you see them coming and can organize to meet them. If one side is surprised but the other prepared, that means an ambush. I give slightly different combat phases depending on which of the three states the units are in.

I was doing a bunch of hex maps and watching movement beforehand, which just bogs things down. I also switched most combat rolls to being simultaneous attacks, rather than each unit having a dedicated attack and defense round. Again, to speed combat up. Other stuff, various stat penalties and bonuses depending on situations.

With this, I now have two sections done. A unit creator, and an infantry simulator. I still need to incorporate non standard units into the fighting, how warlords change things up, and coming up with ways of speeding up large scale combat. If I can get all that done, then I'll have a decent combat simulator for the comic.

[JavaScribe]

The latest.

[Anteros]

Yeah, so I'm not gonna read these any more. Hopefully one of you guys will say something when the story is relevant again.

[pendell]

It's relevant in the sense that the new side -- Tidepool -- is preparing to attack Transylvito, which might bring our newly popped warlord into relevance in the main story.

Truth be told, I'm fast losing interest in erfworld. It's like the story's diverged onto so many tangents and our protaganist -- Parson Gotti -- spent most of the last book doing anything noteworthy. In the new epilogues we had several new players introduced, and I had enough problems tracking the old group.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[halfeye]

It's relevant in the sense that the new side -- Tidepool -- is preparing to attack Transylvito, which might bring our newly popped warlord into relevance in the main story.

Are they new? there were a couple of sides Transylvito was at war with, and I'm not sure they're not the side that was opposing that other chap, the shore military that got stuck on a ship and tamed a bird.

All in all there are way too many sides as people have said, and if this lot are entirely new that's a bad thing.

[deuterio12]

Are they new? there were a couple of sides Transylvito was at war with, and I'm not sure they're not the side that was opposing that other chap, the shore military that got stuck on a ship and tamed a bird.

All in all there are way too many sides as people have said, and if this lot are entirely new that's a bad thing.

Half-new since it seems like they're a small colony from another (unnamed) side that's technically independent but still expected to pay tribute to the "motherside", and in this case the tribute will be Fumo as an extra body for the meatgrinder against Transylvito. Hopefully the unnamed side is somebody we already know, probably that one that had a big fleet that we saw taking one of the vampire's coastal towns.

[Rockphed]

Half-new since it seems like they're a small colony from another (unnamed) side that's technically independent but still expected to pay tribute to the "motherside", and in this case the tribute will be Fumo as an extra body for the meatgrinder against Transylvito. Hopefully the unnamed side is somebody we already know, probably that one that had a big fleet that we saw taking one of the vampire's coastal towns.

I think it is carpool. I saw some mention of something like that as the parent side.

[Hawk7915]

Most delicious irony: Thread title is "Finally, it's HAMMER TIME", thread launched in August of last year, and five months later we're still waiting for Hammer Time. And I am certain given the direction of these side stories and backer stories and all of the real-world delays (since apparently five full-time adults "can't realistically pump out a hundred updates a year"), we'll spend this entire thread still waiting for Stanley to be able to do anything and still have nothing except a few appearances by the time we hit page 50 . I know we're not even half way but let's all agree that the next thread be titled "Can we please for the love of the Titans have it be HAMMER-TIME?!??!?!"

I haven't bothered to read any update since the first Noah one, and don't really intend to but I'll check back occasionally if someone wants to let us know when/if we ever get back to the main story.

[Morgaln]

Most delicious irony: Thread title is "Finally, it's HAMMER TIME", thread launched in August of last year, and five months later we're still waiting for Hammer Time. And I am certain given the direction of these side stories and backer stories and all of the real-world delays (since apparently five full-time adults "can't realistically pump out a hundred updates a year"), we'll spend this entire thread still waiting for Stanley to be able to do anything and still have nothing except a few appearances by the time we hit page 50 . I know we're not even half way but let's all agree that the next thread be titled "Can we please for the love of the Titans have it be HAMMER-TIME?!??!?!"

I haven't bothered to read any update since the first Noah one, and don't really intend to but I'll check back occasionally if someone wants to let us know when/if we ever get back to the main story.

Fair warning: in his latest announcement, Rob said this, among other things:

I want to get back to Dylan & Thomas, but the main story needs something else right now. So the current prelude update with Noah Moore will be the springboard to a short story for a different backer.

This makes me believe that whatever goes down in this backer story will be relevant to the main storyline. As such, it might be required reading if you want to understand what is to come. Personally I think that's a bad decision and everything relevant to the main story should be part of the main story. But things are what they are, and I might still be misinterpreting Rob's words.

[-D-]

Most delicious irony: Thread title is "Finally, it's HAMMER TIME", thread launched in August of last year, and five months later we're still waiting for Hammer Time. And I am certain given the direction of these side stories and backer stories and all of the real-world delays (since apparently five full-time adults "can't realistically pump out a hundred updates a year"), we'll spend this entire thread still waiting for Stanley to be able to do anything and still have nothing except a few appearances by the time we hit page 50 . I know we're not even half way but let's all agree that the next thread be titled "Can we please for the love of the Titans have it be HAMMER-TIME?!??!?!"

I haven't bothered to read any update since the first Noah one, and don't really intend to but I'll check back occasionally if someone wants to let us know when/if we ever get back to the main story.

To summarize the novel version of the latest update (I admittedly skimmed it a lot, can't be arsed reading a wall of nigh impenetrable text):

Fumo's life sucks, the sequel. Fumo is interrogated by Carpool(ish side) over his insignia. Also Noah can't track Fumo's fate, because his bird requires more mineralsmove.

Fair warning: in his latest announcement, Rob said this, among other things:

I want to get back to Dylan & Thomas, but the main story needs something else right now. So the current prelude update with Noah Moore will be the springboard to a short story for a different backer.

This makes me believe that whatever goes down in this backer story will be relevant to the main storyline. As such, it might be required reading if you want to understand what is to come. Personally I think that's a bad decision and everything relevant to the main story should be part of the main story. But things are what they are, and I might still be misinterpreting Rob's words.

Did anyone tell Rob, that Backer stories don't really need to be part of the main story?

[Welf]

On the off chance anyone is interested, I've finished the rough draft of my basic infantry combat rules for Erfworld, second edition. I'm polishing it up still, but I think I got all the information I need to recreate simple unled fights between small groups of infantry.

https://rpg.erfworld.com/Toma%27s_combat_mechanics

I did read it. I can't comment to much on the mechanics since I forgot most of what i ever learned about actually playing.
A few comments:
Maybe you can give a little introduction what you want to achieve with the rules? Do you want to create a table top loosely based on the comic or try to pin down the rules used in the comic? For example you make a clear point that units are interchangeable. But I think the comics makes it clear that individual personalities do matter. Stanley in particular rose from piker to overlord, likely because he showed initiative and unusual talents. To represent this you could add several natural mancies as hidden stats. For example natural luckamancy for lucky guys who can reroll results; natural prectamancy for units that have a fate that gives them protection from critical hits; natural lookamancy for attentive units that can spot ambushes, natural croakamancy for units that have higher chances for critical hits; natural turnamancy who are bold and attack early; and so on. But that boarders on PnP table top and bloats the rules and slows down the rounds.
I also think you oversell stabers. Afaik units with spears are more useful in battle. spears are cheaper than swords, have longer ranges and scale up very well with unit size. Swords are useful against unarmoured enemies and in duels, axes are cheap, mazes are good against armoured enemies. But that is useless if they cannot get into range.
But aside that, that was a good read! I hope I'll see more.

Most delicious irony: Thread title is "Finally, it's HAMMER TIME", thread launched in August of last year, and five months later we're still waiting for Hammer Time. And I am certain given the direction of these side stories and backer stories and all of the real-world delays (since apparently five full-time adults "can't realistically pump out a hundred updates a year"), we'll spend this entire thread still waiting for Stanley to be able to do anything and still have nothing except a few appearances by the time we hit page 50 . I know we're not even half way but let's all agree that the next thread be titled "Can we please for the love of the Titans have it be HAMMER-TIME?!??!?!"

I haven't bothered to read any update since the first Noah one, and don't really intend to but I'll check back occasionally if someone wants to let us know when/if we ever get back to the main story.

I think it's fitting. Reminds me of the time our property management hired some craftsmen to fix the windows and the mold. Half the time they didn't show up (and we lost a vacation day for nothing), the other time they didn't really finish the job and we had to wait for the next appointment, again with random chance of them showing up.

Did anyone tell Rob, that Backer stories don't really need to be part of the main story?

Throwing in random references to the main story creates the illusion of advancement and false sense of engagement.

[tomaO2]

I did read it. I can't comment to much on the mechanics since I forgot most of what i ever learned about actually playing.
A few comments:
Maybe you can give a little introduction what you want to achieve with the rules? Do you want to create a table top loosely based on the comic or try to pin down the rules used in the comic?

Thank you for your comments.

My mid term goal is to create a unit creator/battle simulator that largely adheres to all the rules that have been shown to us from canon. If I can manage to do that, then I'll consider this a success. That doesn't mean I wouldn't want to add some more aspects to it, but that is my current goal.

I guess I could include that in the index page, which is kind of a mess right now. DONE.

The index is still a mess though, I'm using it to store stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere. I eventually want to have a polished look that gives a good overview on my game but I really want to iron out more rules first.

For example you make a clear point that units are interchangeable. But I think the comics makes it clear that individual personalities do matter. Stanley in particular rose from piker to overlord, likely because he showed initiative and unusual talents. To represent this you could add several natural mancies as hidden stats. For example natural luckamancy for lucky guys who can reroll results; natural prectamancy for units that have a fate that gives them protection from critical hits; natural lookamancy for attentive units that can spot ambushes, natural croakamancy for units that have higher chances for critical hits; natural turnamancy who are bold and attack early; and so on. But that boarders on PnP table top and bloats the rules and slows down the rounds.

I called them interchangeable because personalities are not a thing. These are just the nameless members of a hoard that is clashing in battle. What you are talking about is... well, an RPG, which I suppose is what I am calling it, but right now, it's just a developing wargame. Might become an RPG someday but the combat and wargame elements need to be ironed out first.

Hidden stats like you suggest are far outside of my current scope. Something like that might eventually be implemented for PC characters, but not now. I would rate that somewhere behind creating working cities. I actually came up with a luckamancy concept for PCs to give a little more survivability. Basically, you have 3 luck points which can block 3 attacks that would have otherwise killed you. After they are gone, then the next hit kills.

I also think you oversell stabers. Afaik units with spears are more useful in battle. spears are cheaper than swords, have longer ranges and scale up very well with unit size. Swords are useful against unarmoured enemies and in duels, axes are cheap, mazes are good against armoured enemies. But that is useless if they cannot get into range.

The weapon is irrelevant. The reason stabbers are tougher is due to pop rates in canon.

Stabbers pop 6 a turn, while both pikers and archers pop 8 a turn. Stabbers are also the only (basic) unit type that has been shown to be a scout. Therefore, I felt I had to give the unit advantages over the other two, and I ended up creating a template that I can just swap a combat special with.

The issue of multiple units popping is one I'm currently doing more work on. Like, how do you compare a unit that you can create 6-8 of during a turn instead of just 1? Frankly the stats of light units don't seem to vary much. Borgoll, which is a heavy that can crush infantry units, only has an attack of 5. I got a very thin margin to work with.

My newest solution to that is to not scale upkeep with the numbers popped per turn. Beforehand, I was saying that since a piker pops at 8 a turn, that means his upkeep is 2.5 (20 upkeep is standard). I think this makes him too overpowered compared to similar infantry units that don't pop as fast.

Therefore, I'm increasing upkeep. Currently I'm thinking of just making it somewhere between one half to one fifth. It's a difficult balancing act. For a kingdom, 1/2 the cost might be good enough because of the faster pop rate, but for creating battles for players to use, then 1/2 might seem too low, which would cause them to pick something else. I really want stabber/pikers/archers to be a cost effective choice. However, there is also the issue of smaller sized units, that also should be seen as viable for swarm tactics. It's been troubling me the last few days.

But aside that, that was a good read! I hope I'll see more.

There is a fair bit more to read. I have completed a second page that allows you to create your own special erfworld units. I spent a few months on that, ironing out the problems. Please feel free to test the system out and make a unit of your own. Keep in mind that there may be some differences between this and the page you just read, since that page is my most recent work, and this game is an ever evolving process.
https://rpg.erfworld.com/Toma_RPG:_Unit_Creation

My current focus is incorporating non standard units into combat. This means heavies, fliers, beasts, and the various size categories. I'm not 100% sure what order I should be doing it in or how much is too much to fit into one section. I started with beasts, but then I thought I should continue the infantry trend. Given that infantry has those different weapons as opposed to beasts that are typically just short reach melee attackers, this gives a lot of stats to keep track of. I'm currently thinking of doing non-standard ground infantry and their sizes for one chapter, and beasts/fliers in the second.

If you want to see everything I have done so far, then feel free to visit my index page. This includes links to my first draft of my Erfworld RPG concept, along with a few idea threads and my Erfworld story. It's not really a great story or anything, I was just using it as a way to incorporate the rules I had of Erfworld into a retelling of book 1.
https://rpg.erfworld.com/Toma_RPG


Any further feedback is appreciated.

[Rockphed]

The issue of multiple units popping is one I'm currently doing more work on. Like, how do you compare a unit that you can create 6-8 of during a turn instead of just 1? Frankly the stats of light units don't seem to vary much. Borgoll, which is a heavy that can crush infantry units, only has an attack of 5. I got a very thin margin to work with.

While Twolls probably can smash stabbers and pikers, I suspect that they have higher base attack and defense. Note that Bogroll is unarmed and unarmored, but has an attack of 5 and a defense of 4. Even if 3 of each are from Parson, that means an unarmed twoll has attack 2 and defense 1. I am fairly certain that light troops have unarmed stats of 0.

[tomaO2]

I actually did give some thought to Bogroll being unarmored. Not much I can do about unarmed though. In terms of seeing stats, we got a

double eagle= cbt: 8/def: 4/ Hp: 20/ Mv: 26.
Bogroll= cbt: 5/ Def: 4/ Hp: 12/ Mv: ???
Jack= cbt: 2/ Def: 2/ hp: 6/ Mv: 8
Ansom= 33 cbt (combines 10 leadership, 8 arkenpliers bonus, 7? stack bonus, and 8? combat)

The lowest stat was also mentioned as being 30, which I would say has to be Wanda herself, being a caster, giving her a combat of 5? .

There's also been a few mentions of move. Which can vary wildly. Like, why have one dwagon with 56 move and other dwagon not even break 40? Can we have some standardization please?

In short, it's kind of a mess, and I wonder if Rob actually thought out a system before doing this, but base stats are clearly on the lower side. I did my best to come up with SOMETHING that exactly followed everything I was given, but I just. CAN'T. so I designed a system as best as I could using what we know as a guide.

Armour has been shown to have some interesting effects. The TV warlords can't wear armour if they want to fly. There was also a mention that not wearing a helmet increases crit chance. Basically, I decided that no armour means a -1 to def, and a penalty to avoid being critted, but also gives a +1 to move, which could be useful, especially for a tribe, where every extra move gives a better chance to find food to survive another day.

I also decided being unarmed halves current combat, rounded down (can be 0), and lowers max damage to 1.

[Darkmyst]

New page... but we're still languishing in the tangent of Noah's cape. Delurking to poke this thread as following the conversations herein was the last remaining scrap of entertainment Erfworld provided.

[Rockphed]

New page... but we're still languishing in the tangent of Noah's cape. Delurking to poke this thread as following the conversations herein was the last remaining scrap of entertainment Erfworld provided.

I was half hoping that the reveal would be that the hiding side would be one of the original sides, but alas.

[Aquillion]

I was half hoping that the reveal would be that the hiding side would be one of the original sides, but alas.

While technically not one of the original sides, they do seem to have more direct knowledge of them than anyone else.

[keybounce]

The name "Page Turner" feels like it belongs to a pony, not a warlady.

[Zalabim]

Two things. The italics on know make me think Archie was informed the portal would be lethal, but lived in a time when it had never been demonstrated. That leads me to the idea: Archie was alive in a time before the Magic Kingdom. Either portals to the MK didn't previously exist, or the portals used to allow all units and were altered to be caster only. The current state of portals and the MK is not the original/natural state of the Erf.

Also, crazy half-waking though here, but I think Archie was a true vampire. Nocturnal, bloodsucker, only able to produce more units by turning others. He would be entirely unsuitable to life by Erf's rules, particularly if he were trapped on a lonely, jungle island.

[DigoDragon]

The name "Page Turner" feels like it belongs to a pony, not a warlady.

I'm glad I'm not the only one on this train of thought. XD

Two things. The italics on know make me think Archie was informed the portal would be lethal, but lived in a time when it had never been demonstrated. That leads me to the idea: Archie was alive in a time before the Magic Kingdom. Either portals to the MK didn't previously exist, or the portals used to allow all units and were altered to be caster only. The current state of portals and the MK is not the original/natural state of the Erf.

Ooooh, see I like that idea and rather wish it came up back when were spending a lot of time in the MK. I had forgotten about the invasion plan too by GK... something that shoulda happened like eight months ago.

[Douglas]

Archie was one of the original 99 rulers, which means he was alive on the very first turn Erfworld ever had. My reading is simply that "portals kill non-casters" is not knowledge units are generally popped with, and no one had discovered it the hard way before Archie, or at least that news of the discovery hadn't reached him.

[JavaScribe]

The latest.

They are apparently familiar with concepts Erfworlders shouldn't naturally know.

[Kornaki]

The latest.

They are apparently familiar with concepts Erfworlders shouldn't naturally know.

I feel like only Noah is, and he's teaching her. As a signamancer it makes some sense he would understand the meanings of words I suppose, but it is odd that their meaning in our world is somehow objectively correct