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2018-10-11, 10:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
FeytouchedBanana eldritch disciple avatar by...me!
The Index of the Giant's Comments VI―Making Dogma from Zapped Bananas
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2018-10-11, 12:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
You cannot hate a character without an emotional investment in them.
So ... author attempting to get readers emotionally attached to characters: success?Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-10-11, 06:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2011
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Gotta love the "We're starting the new book but will only figure out the name later". In particular since they only came out with the name for book 4 literally after ending. So just more confirmation they've simply been improvising at the last minute for the last years.
Also they've got some real courage to claim they're not making cliffhangers considering all the months we were stuck waiting what had happened to Wanda after rocks fell on her.
And "no major breaks in the schedule". Meaning expect lots of "minor" breaks in the schedule.
I'll give that much to Rob, he can really make us care about the characters, for better and worst.
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2018-10-11, 08:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
No, the specific thing here is that Rob doesn't want a hiatus cliffhanger where nothing gets shown. While it was a long period of time where we didn't know what happened to Wanda, there were still other updates (which, yes, caused information to be much more dispersed due to the smaller update sizes).
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2018-10-11, 09:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
I think killing Wanda is just plain annoying. She has survived so many things over the course of the story, but dies to rocks falling? That is about the easiest thing for Fate to stop from happening that is possible. Which can only mean, in my mind, that Fate wanted her to die.
If Wanda was going to die, I would like there to be this epic push and pull of fate trying to rescue Wanda from constant attempts of killing, maybe some multiple prophecies that duel with each other, or possibly Wanda ignoring clear signs that she needs to do X thing and Fate just finally shrugging its shoulders and giving up. At least the dynamic of Charlie vs. Fate has some interesting byplay when we see just how absurd things have to get in order to keep Parson around.
Now that the moment has finally arrived with a character that is Fated to keep living getting killed off, I want to see what is this "worse" thing that supposedly happens when fate is thwarted. I want reality to twist, for maybe some sort of natural reconjumancy to happen and things reset to the day before, but someone is now tasked to putting things back to right.
There are so many interesting directions things can go, but we already know how this is going down, right?
Awakened arkenepliers, as soon as this happens Fate goes, "guess we can kill wanda off in a meaningless manner and put her under the thumb of the pliers." Pliers then decrypt her. Instead of interesting mechanics, we just get a another bullcrap boop-pull to bring things back to normal.
Boring. In the end, Fate always wins, and the rules will break in absurd ways to keep the status quo. It didn't need to go this way, and I don't know why Rob felt so strongly that we MUST have sentient Pliers to continue the story. One thing I really like about OOTS is that there are absolute limits on what you can do, and Rich also discourages the stuff that can quickly solve problems, like how long the resurrection of Roy took, or making sure V can't use teleport. One would think that a wargame/rpg would also have hard rules, but that just never seems to be the case. Rob just refuses to write higher stakes without pulling out bull**** for the protagonists to win.
Honestly, I'm starting to wonder if Rob regrets making Parson the protagonist in the first place, a protagonist that uses his head to win wars has no place in a story like this, which we can clearly see by the fact of Parson being sidelined for such a long time, Rob had some good ideas during the first two books, but that well seems to have run dry.
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2018-10-11, 10:13 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2011
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Interrumpting the Wanda battle with countless pages of tower legalese in a completely parallel conflict in another dimension that had zero interactions to what was happening with Wanda may as well count as a cliffhanger for all pratical purposes.
Meanwhile we also got the "not"-cliffhanger of what exactly happened to Caesar. Stop switching scenes when a character is about to croak damnit!
There's already been contant attempts of killing Wanda and she escaping by absurd conditions:
-Survived a battle in the Mee Kay between Charlie's archons with rifles then the free mancers ganking her.
-Got sentenced to croak by the free mancers only to escape due to Ivan just dying.
-Got ganked by archons with rifles again, refusing to team up with Charlie only for the thinkmancer gestalt to pop in at the last second.
-Kept hanging in the underground instead of rushing back to her side only to finally a team of dirtmancers stopping her.
And I'm not even counting earlier stuff like all the times in book 1 and 2 that Wanda tastes the dirt and luckily there happens to be an allied caster nearby with a healomancy scroll handy.
To be fair, people had been predicting "And now Wanda will be decrypted by her own pliers!" since book 2.
"Run dry" pretty much since it indeed feels like he's just been throwing stuff at the wall and pray something sticks for the last 2 books. "Awakened cities!" "Thinkmancer Gestalt!" "Awakened golems!" "Awakened arkentool!" "STRINGSSTRINGSSTRINGSbored now let's talk about city sign language".
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2018-10-12, 01:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
I understand that Wanda has has a lot of machinations to save her, I didn't mean to imply that she didn't. I'm just pointing out that her dying at this point for something as mundane as rocks falling is a real let down. If a character that is protected by fate dies, then I expect epic reasoning as to why that is the case, along with big consequences.
Neither of these things is the case, and I know the reason why is because Fate WANTS her to die, so the pliers can decrypt her, which makes her death worse than meaningless in my eyes. I'm sure Rob has a plan for why this is the case, but I just absolutely HATE the rule breaking power creep. I hate all of it.
I'm sick of "Awakened cities!" "Thinkmancer Gestalt!" "Awakened golems!" "Awakened arkentool!" "STRINGSSTRINGSSTRINGS".
I want a god damned strategy wargame, with some D&D elements. I want combat pragmatists, and interesting tactics. That is what was advertised when I came in, and this story is just not delivering.
To be fair, people had been predicting "And now Wanda will be decrypted by her own pliers!" since book 2.
Actually, I take that back a bit, if the arkenpliers had attuned to a new person, and that person has ressed Wanda, I would be... okay with that. What I don't like is awakened pliers doing it.Last edited by tomaO2; 2018-10-12 at 02:28 AM.
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2018-10-12, 01:34 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2011
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Well said! Remember Ansom and Trems and Vinnie? Rob clearly doesn't.
Heh, technically the awakened pliers can't move on their own, so somebody will need to pick them up and "attune" enough to don't get their head made to explode so they can carry them to Wanda's corpse.
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2018-10-12, 01:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Pliers can decrypt anything in the hex. They don't need to be next to her, and I'm sure they know she just died.
They'll probably decrypt her, and the other corpses, at the start of book 5.
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2018-10-12, 02:48 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2011
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Hmmm, can they on their own? Wanda was a croakmancer that could animate every body in an hex in her own. I always viewed the ability to hex decrypt was a combination of her magic with the pliers. With no Wanda, I don't think they can pull that trick by themselves, like Ansom couldn't decrypt anything at all, just use it as a melee weapon with bonus against uncroaked.
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2018-10-12, 04:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Wanda died as she lived. As a Rock(y) Horror Show.
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2018-10-12, 04:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2009
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Didn't Parson describe his rpg game as a scenario you need to cheat massively and do weird, nonsensical power ups to win? Later he also noted in book 1 the key to victory was magic threesomes? Clearly Rob likes these kind of games/stories.
As for Wanda, I wonder how much rl influenced the story. It's very appealing in his kind of situation to think about Wanda dying then resurrecting without all the addiction/illness and Contract/insurance/loans drugging you down.Last edited by guttering flame; 2018-10-12 at 04:18 AM.
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2018-10-12, 07:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2007
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
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2018-10-12, 08:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Okay so,
1) You made me go through nearly all of Book 1 to find the text where Parson said this.
2) It's here on page 147. Basically yes, the players had to cheat and think of ways to break the rules.
3) Boy did I enjoy the archive romp through Book 1. It's a grand and tight story. Thank you for that.
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2018-10-12, 11:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
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2018-10-12, 11:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2009
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2018-10-13, 12:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Last edited by Lizard Lord; 2018-10-14 at 10:50 PM.
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2018-10-13, 10:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-10-13, 10:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
So, we are just starting with the whole "none of this (the deaths) matters" / "all of this (the deaths) anti-matters"? :-)
(I'll see myself out.)Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-10-14, 09:23 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
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2018-10-15, 06:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2008
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Last edited by DigoDragon; 2018-10-15 at 06:56 AM.
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2018-10-15, 07:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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2018-10-15, 08:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
What's the difference?
Statler and Waldorf: DOHOHOHOHOHO!R.I.P. Wrecan, he was a true organizer and a gentleman.
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2018-10-15, 08:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2014
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2018-10-18, 01:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
>> Lies and Dolls.
> I thought it was Strings and Exposition.
Twists and Turns?Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-10-18, 07:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
About the first epilogue:
SpoilerSomeone pointed in the Erfworld Forums that the Tool speech somewhat sounds like Wanda's Speech on book one afte being beaten by Ansom.
And the way Isaac reacts after being chastised, not in awe from the Tool, but just speaking like to someone he already knew.
Well, what if Wanda managed to transfer her own string to the Arkentool? After all, she had learned how to deal with strings when fighting Charlie for Lilith, and later used that knowledge to Bind Isaac's string to the Doll. She already had a strong link between her string and the tool on the attunement. If her imminent croaking was fated, as Wanda seemed to be aware, why not take that gamble? It would also allows her to fulfill her fate of serving with Jillian, who is also fated to one day attune with an Arkentool. And it's the convenient way for Wanda to bypass the deal of a lifetime. Also, it links obliquely with the book's overall theme of strings and puppets. Wanda becoming something that will be manipulated by other person.
So, Wanda basically becomes a Soul Reaver. And there's the old annecdote that Wanda is a Chinese Plier manufacturer in our world.
Edit: Oh, yes, and also there's giving sentience to each City's tower. She may have learned a few tricks from that.
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2018-10-18, 07:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Ok, is the next book going to be "Tool Time"? :-)
Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-10-18, 08:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
We would need more grunting and adding more power to things that shouldn't have more power if that were the case.
Avatar by Glasswhistle
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2018-10-18, 11:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2006
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
Exactly!
We need to add more power until the power level goes ... up to 9011.Not "fire at". I never used the word "at"
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2018-10-19, 04:14 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Mar 2012
Re: Erfworld Thread XI: Finally, it's HAMMER-TIME!
New comic.
Another problem resolved by brute force cheating.