#erfworld

[maklodes]

If I had a nickel for every time the sinister lesbian necromancer, whose origin was inextricably linked to both her own immense magical power and the doom of her initial home, had a mental breakdown because she fumbled the spunky butch frenemy with a huge sword she had been trying to dominate just as she was on the cusp of ascending to previously unknown heights of power...

[have-you-read-this-webcomic]

Have you read Erfworld by Rob Balder, Jamie Noguchi, and Xin Ye?

Yes, completely!

Yes, partially

No

I've never heard of it

Voting ended onJun 24, 2025

Read it here!

[nemospecific]

There's a lot of unreliable narration going on, but man does Archie have a bias.

[tenleaguesbeneath]

concept: erfworld reboot where they say "unalived" rather than "croaked"

[jiskblr]

Man, Erfworld’s magic categorization is just incoherent. Approximately zero of the variation between types of magic is explained by the chart of {Life x Motion x Matter} x {Erf, Fate, Numbers}.

Take Spookism: “Motion”, without “Life” or “Matter”. It contains Turnamancy, which can mess with time (measured in ‘turns’) and do mind control. Dollamancy, which makes magic accessories and golems. And Weirdomancy, which does metamagic and changing special abilities of units. The only real unifying factors here are change - except that this doesn’t include Changemancy - and that it’s focused on units - except units are, depending how you define it, Life and/or Matter, neither of which is involved in Spookism.

Changemancy, on the other hand, is defined only in being like Dirtamancy except smaller-scale. This is effectively the same thing as Dollamancy but without the golems. Changemancy is considered to be Stuffamancy, which is Matter without Life or Motion. And is considered to be aligned with ‘Fate’. Why Fate? Who knows. For the most part, Fate magic does minds and the future (read-only like Predictamancy, changing it like Carnymancy, binding it with Signamancy).

And then again, Turnamancy, which does mind control, isn’t Fate magic - it’s Erf. Dollamancy, which is entirely about concrete stuff, is Fate. And Weirdomancy does many things, but few of them have anything to do with numbers - unless Numbers also does messing with the underlying rules of Erfworld, which it might.

I’m trying to coerce this into enough sanity that I can write glowfic with it, but I’m basically throwing it all out because it’s such nonsense that there’s no clear picture of how they arrived at this model of the world. Aristotle was at least classifying phenomena by their shared properties in a way that we can understand, despite now knowing better.

[st-just]

I had also read Erfworld as a teen/early twenties, and maybe a year or two ago I decided to see what ever happened to it. Basically I feel like the first book really was the peak. A lot of it turned into a duel between Charlie and Parson, with hints at larger world building up come. Then the day after I caught up, literally, they announced they would be no more updates ever.

I can send you some spoilers if you want, but I found it rather disappointing, tbh.

Ah webcomics, even worse than fanfic for laying out potential and then suddenly ending forever.

Appreciate the offer, but no need. I honestly only barely remember anything beyond the general premise and, like, three names. Still, sad to see it just went nowhere.

[heroineimages]

Aw, man...

Kind of bummed now. Just learned that Erfworld, a strange, charming comic that takes place in and abides by the rules of a turn-based strategy game, got canceled back in October. I used to really love that comic and I’ve been meaning for ages to sit down and get caught up with it. The archives are still up, but from the creators’ last message, I hope everything is alright. Take it easy and take care of each other, folks.

[thewebcomicsreview]

You heard how Erfworld has been permanently shutdown?

Oh no :( 

Whatever happened, I hope Rob and Linda find a way to pull through it.