It began as a side-dish, practically a condiment, to one of my favorite webcomics, The Order of the Stick. But it’s become so much more. I’ll admit it: I have an Erfworld thing.
The setup’s like this: depressed, pudgy strategy gamer gets zapped into a fantasy world. It turns out he’s actually been summoned there by a king (probably eviil) in search of the ultimate warlord to command his troops in a huge battle. It works for me as a story — anytime anybody gets zapped into a fantasy world, that works for me — but Erfworld also has a lot of fun tweaking the conventions of fantasy gaming. Everybody divides their time into turns. Food pops into existence at regular intervals. Everybody plans their travel around their move limitations. Everybody speaks in exaggeratedly cutesy euphemisms (dragons are “dwagons”; when our hero, Parson, tries to swear, it comes out as “boop.”)
Parson is hip to all the jokes — he even groans at the lame ones — but it doesn’t overwhelm the gravity of his plight. I swore I would never let myself get obsessed with a mere twice-a-week strip — it updates Tuesdays and Saturdays– but it’s too late, it’s happened. Go on, take another little piece of my heart, Erfworld.
Oh, and the art is really rather lovely. I’ve never actually seen a bunch of stuffed animals fight a bunch of giant spiders, but I’m pretty sure this is exactly what it looks like.
