Erfworld

''Erfworld'' is a story-driven fantasy/comedy webcomic and independently published graphic novel. The series follows Parson, a master strategy gamer summoned into a wargame by a desperate faction desiring a warlord- leaving him trapped in the game. It was written by Rob Balder, who worked with many illustrators over its run. ''Erfworld'' began publication in December 2006 on the website Giant in the Playground, better known for hosting ''The Order of the Stick''. It moved to its own website with the completion of Book 1, as had originally been intended, and was highly popular in the early 2010s. It continued until its abrupt cancellation part way through Book 5 in October 2019.

The comic heavily features contemporary memes, pop culture references, and mechanical references to war games. In juxtaposition to its warlike themes, the visual style is deliberately "cute". The characters resemble dolls or toys and are unable to use profanity. The plot, setting, and characters were released under a Creative Commons Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike license.

Books

All material was written by Rob Balder.

* Book 0, ''Inner Peace (Through Superior Firepower)'', a prequel illustrated by Xin Ye.
* Book 1, ''The Battle for Gobwin Knob'', illustrated by Jamie Noguchi.
* Book 2, ''Love is a Battlefield'', illustrated by Xin Ye.
* Book 3, ''Hamsterdance versus the Charlie Foxtrot'', illustrated by David Hahn and Xin Ye, with colors and inks by Lauri Ahonen and Lillian Chen.
* Book 4, ''Lies and Dolls'', illustrated by Xin Ye.
* Book 5, ''Temple Tantrum'', illustrated by Xin Ye, Lillian Chen, Connor Cercone, and Rob Balder.

Selections from the end of book 2 were animated, Ken-Burns-style, with voice-over work by Arthur Chu.

Plot

''Erfworld's'' premise is that Earth strategy gamer Parson Gotti is summoned as the "perfect warlord" into Erfworld where he is to serve as chief warlord to the side Gobwin Knob. Throughout the first book Parson orchestrated the defense of a city atop an extinct volcano. The second book focused mainly on how the relationships of supporting characters affected the way Parson conducted his campaign, and ended with Parson forcing an uneasy occupation of a previously neutral territory. In the third book the histories and characters of other sides were developed, Parson's occupation was defeated through the machinations of an enemy side, and Parson was imprisoned by a third party. In the fourth book Parson engaged in diplomacy to negotiate his own release and events spiraled out of control.

The fifth book, left incomplete when Erfworld was discontinued, focused on a completely different side in another part of the setting, and did not address Parson's situation at all.

Publication

Erfworld was initially hosted at GiantITP, the platform for the fantasy webcomic ''The Order of the Stick''. As planned, Erfworld moved to its own website after the conclusion of Book 1 on May 22, 2009. The change was announced on GiantITP a few weeks earlier, and Balder and Noguchi released a statement on the day. The dedicated website retained a banner link back to ''The Order of the Stick'' in gratitude to Burlew for hosting it originally.

Following on the success of the ''Order of the Stick'' Kickstarter project, in February 2012, author Rob Balder launched the Erfworld "Year of the Dwagon" Kickstarter, seeking funding for a motion comic project. The Kickstarter was extremely successful, resulting in funding of almost $85,000, making it the fourth-largest comics category Kickstarter project as of May 2012.

Erfworld was an early adopter of crowdfunding, featuring the Toolbox, a Patreon-like funding mechanism that was created specifically for the comic and its site. In 2017, amid advertising issues on the website, Balder attempted to crowdsource cryptomining to fund it. This was called "Mine4erf", and was first announced on February 18, 2018. Between the income from Toolbox and Crypto mining, they were able to remove all ads from the website that May.

Decline and cancellation

The webcomic's publication schedule was intermittent at times as it grappled with artist exits and delivery issues, particularly during Book 5. In May 2019, Balder announced that the comic would switch to 3D modeling: The stated goal of this change was to allow Rob himself to more easily create the images needed for the comic and hopefully return to a more rapid update schedule. In the same news post Rob explained that an undisclosed personal tragedy had occurred and, as a result, Erfworld would not be updating again "for the foreseeable future, possibly the rest of the year." This new event was dubbed Horrible Thing II. Nonetheless, updates did resume later in 2019.

On October 11, the website's front page was replaced with an announcement, signed by Rob and Linda, which announced the permanent end to Erfworld as a webcomic as a result of a string of personal tragedies. The Erfworld updates previously published remain available in a
online archive
All former functionality of the site was restricted to users with "heartstrings" badges. A few days later, the original copy of Book 1 was taken down from the GiantITP website.

Reception

''Erfworld'' was recognized as one of the top 10 graphic novels of 2007 by ''Time'' magazine and received positive reviews and promotion from webcomics authors, and ''Time'' author/journalist Lev Grossman in his articles "Webcomics are the New Blogs" and "Erfworld: It's a Boopin' Good Webcomic!" The addition of ''Erfworld'' to GiantITP was noted in "First Watch", ''Dragon'' magazine's monthly section on new developments in gaming and entertainment. Additionally, ''Erfworld'' was reviewed by Webcomic Overlook, receiving four stars out of five,"The Webcomic Overlook #52: Erfworld"
and was profiled by NPR.

References

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External links

Archives of ''Erfworld'' comics

2000s webcomics
Fantasy webcomics
Fantasy parodies
Parody webcomics
Creative Commons-licensed comics
2006 webcomic debuts
2010s webcomics
American comedy webcomics
Unfinished webcomics