Book 2 – Page 80

[oslecamo2_temp]

The Magic Kingdom portals provide an escape clause for this; but then, maybe Kingworld isn't so unknown after all. Maybe the spell exists so that the Magic Kingdom (or even just a small conspiracy of predictamancers and turnamancers) ends the turn by force for those kingdoms that try to fight their fate in this manner. The only sides that ever see it happen, though, are the ones that are about to fall anyway, and dead men tell no tales...

You just countered your own argument. If a side could abuse the time rule to extend a turn into a million years of relative time, somebody at sometime would've done so. And then their mancers would've eventually called it quits and run away to the MK trough the portal, and told the tale of how their court descended into madness or made peace with their own destiny or reached enlightment or something.

"Somebody would have done so" is not proof that it's not possible. No side would voluntarily choose not to prolong their turn under normal conditions. Food pops and people heal at the start of the turn: if you have just one hungry or injured unit, it's cruel not to. The only rational scenario in which a turn doesn't end is when we know the side will be destroyed right after they end turn. There are a number of simple conditions in which a side would prolong the inevitable and leave no witnesses:

1) The side has no casters. If they're about to be destroyed, this is plausible; they're already weakened.
2) The casters are sent to the MK *before* the decision not to end the turn is made. Queen Bea sent hers away before she killed herself; it's plausible that other rulers would do the same if they're trying something crazy like not ending the turn. Once the casters are in the MK, time passes differently for them, and they'd see the turn end for them in their new relative time frame just like everyone else.
3) The casters remain and are slain with the side.

1)Not plausible at all actually, since we've seen time and time again mancer survival being put over most other priorities by rulers.
2)Dunno about you, but if I'm trying to pull some crazy loophole to turn around an aparently hopeless situation, I would want my mancers nearby to advise me with their discipline's knowledge.
3)They're high value targets for capturing, and even if they weren't directly sent, plenty of mancers have shown to be able to take iniative for their own agenda, which probably includes staying alive.

The point is, we know that turn lengths are variable. We know that time is relative to a hex. We know that night arrives when all turns are over. We DON'T know what happens if a side tries to never end the turn. If I understand your position correctly, you believe that it terminates automatically, because the length of the day acts as an upper limit. That's a valid guess, but it's nothing more than a guess, and we have no solid evidence one way or another as to what really occurs.

On the contrary, again we have Stanley, cornered Overlord, saying they don't have enough time for Hamster to learn how Erfworld works when the enemy troops are some turns away.

[drachefly]

That last one is pretty convincing to me.

[MarbitChow]

1) The side has no casters. If they're about to be destroyed, this is plausible; they're already weakened.
2) The casters are sent to the MK *before* the decision not to end the turn is made. Queen Bea sent hers away before she killed herself; it's plausible that other rulers would do the same if they're trying something crazy like not ending the turn. Once the casters are in the MK, time passes differently for them, and they'd see the turn end for them in their new relative time frame just like everyone else.
3) The casters remain and are slain with the side.

1)Not plausible at all actually, since we've seen time and time again mancer survival being put over most other priorities by rulers.
2)Dunno about you, but if I'm trying to pull some crazy loophole to turn around an aparently hopeless situation, I would want my mancers nearby to advise me with their discipline's knowledge.
3)They're high value targets for capturing, and even if they weren't directly sent, plenty of mancers have shown to be able to take iniative for their own agenda, which probably includes staying alive.

1) How many casters has Jillian popped so far? We know it's possible for sides to not have their own casters.
2) Queen Bea made her choice, sent her casters away, and then acted upon it, so we already have an example of a ruler sending the casters away first as well.
3) Clay and Delphi appear to have been slain when Wanda's side fell.
So, given that we already have examples of these three situations already playing out under different circumstances, I'm inclined to discount your opinions on the plausibility of these options.

On the contrary, again we have Stanley, cornered Overlord, saying they don't have enough time for Hamster to learn how Erfworld works when the enemy troops are some turns away.

This is a good point. My personal reading is that Stanley is saying that doesn't have the patience to train Parson, not that they don't have the actual time. Stanley is not a sterling example of a competent overlord.

[Lamech]

SIgh... once again the solution that causes no contradictions is turns have a maximum length. And indeed without a maximum turn length "the turn was over early" would be a non-nonsensical comment. All of these contradictions can be answered with the assumption that turns have a maximum length, and will end on their own if the ruler tries to stall.

My point is that we know every side in a battlespace takes a turn over the course of a day, and those turns last an indeterminate amount of time. So what I'm saying is that by the very nature of the fact that turns take an INFINITE period of time, it is impossible for a day to be a consisent, FINITE period of time. If turns are as short or long as the Ruler desires, then days must be the sum length of time sides take for their turns. Conversely if days are set to 24 hours, then each side's turn would only last 1/x of the day and Rulers wouldn't decide when turn ends, it would just "happen". The concepts are mutually exclusive. Does that make more sense?

There not mutually exclusive. We don't know if a turn only ends when a ruler (or commander or whoever) wills it. We know that is one possible condition, but it does not make it the only one. If a battlespace has just one side, and it immediately ends the turn day was only a few seconds, night is 24 hours. No contradiction. If three sides are in the battlespace and no one ends their turn, night could be more like 8 hours. Again still no contradiction.

[Nnelg]

This is true, but keep in mind it also works the opposite way....a Ruler with basically nothing to do could end turn after five apparent minutes...making for a REALLY short day haha.
The drinking involved by the characters makes me take this less seriously than all our other evidence, I just hope it gets clarified at some point

Why not? He could also kill a dwagon in one punch.

[Housellama]

SIgh... once again the solution that causes no contradictions is turns have a maximum length. And indeed without a maximum turn length "the turn was over early" would be a non-nonsensical comment. All of these contradictions can be answered with the assumption that turns have a maximum length, and will end on their own if the ruler tries to stall.

Early is a relative term. It doesn't necessarily mean that there is a time limit. It could simply imply that it happened earlier than the speaker expected. If that unit was under a misconception about the amount that the ruler had to do during that turn, they could expect the turn to be much longer. When it ended, they perceived that ending to be 'early'.

I think there's a middle ground here. Time is relative, both here and in Erfworld. It just happens to be a little bit more relative in Erfworld than here. Here, a second is 'One-thousand one', but that second is different for an astronaut in orbit than it is for the same astronaut at sea level. There's no reason that 'one-thousand one' has to be the same length for every battlespace. Sure, the day is 24 hours long, but the length of an hour in one place in Erfworld isn't the same as another place in Erfworld. There's absolutely no reason that a day can't last as long as it needs to, and still always contains 24 hours.

Every single of your justifications has been "magic lol!". Food, bleeding, reproduction, cleaning, combat, time, talking, movement (invisible indestructible selective barriers!), everything in Erfworld runs by magic acording to you.

That's because it does. Technically it should be called physics because that's the way Erfworld is built, but it's what we would call magic. These things are simply part of the fabric of reality in that world. And Erfworld's physics tend to boil down to "magic lol!".

So by your own words, there's no space left for stupidworld science. Even Sizemore complaining about being hungry happens in the Magic Kingdom.

Sure there is. "Stupidworld science" is a process. Observation, theory, hypothesis, test, conclusion. Lather, rinse, repeat. Isaac's playground in the Magic Kingdom is practically a shrine to the process of science.

[0beron]

I think there's a middle ground here. Time is relative, both here and in Erfworld. It just happens to be a little bit more relative in Erfworld than here. Here, a second is 'One-thousand one', but that second is different for an astronaut in orbit than it is for the same astronaut at sea level. There's no reason that 'one-thousand one' has to be the same length for every battlespace. Sure, the day is 24 hours long, but the length of an hour in one place in Erfworld isn't the same as another place in Erfworld. There's absolutely no reason that a day can't last as long as it needs to, and still always contains 24 hours.

I'm not even sure that can be the case, because Erflings are aware of finite units of time, and how they add up to a day. What would be the point of calling something "an hour" if it wasn't always the same span of time?
On the flip side however, I suppose it could be an issue of PERCEPTION, rather than relativity. Like in real life where we feel as though an hour has passed, and then realize it has only been 15 minutes when we look at a clock.

[Nnelg]

I think there's a middle ground here. Time is relative, both here and in Erfworld. It just happens to be a little bit more relative in Erfworld than here. Here, a second is 'One-thousand one', but that second is different for an astronaut in orbit than it is for the same astronaut at sea level. There's no reason that 'one-thousand one' has to be the same length for every battlespace. Sure, the day is 24 hours long, but the length of an hour in one place in Erfworld isn't the same as another place in Erfworld. There's absolutely no reason that a day can't last as long as it needs to, and still always contains 24 hours.

I'm not even sure that can be the case, because Erflings are aware of finite units of time, and how they add up to a day. What would be the point of calling something "an hour" if it wasn't always the same span of time?
On the flip side however, I suppose it could be an issue of PERCEPTION, rather than relativity. Like in real life where we feel as though an hour has passed, and then realize it has only been 15 minutes when we look at a clock.

"Say, do you have the time?"
"Four o'Plot."

[0beron]

"Say, do you have the time?"
"Four o'Plot."

*Wills the forum to have a "like" button* hahaha

[Housellama]

I'm not even sure that can be the case, because Erflings are aware of finite units of time, and how they add up to a day. What would be the point of calling something "an hour" if it wasn't always the same span of time?

An astronaut's second is perceptually the same as the scientist on the ground's second, but they are different in an absolute sense. The GPS satellite network has to be reset to 'Earth time' quite often because clocks tick differently in orbit. Since what they use for these things are atomic clocks, which measure physical vibrations in atoms, it's not subjective. The number of times that atom vibrates in the same span of 'time' is different, even though the span was the same perceptually.

There's no reason that Erfworld couldn't be the same way. We already know that Erfworld can see the future. We know that from battlespace assignments. Is it not reasonable to assume that Erfworld also knows how long the combined turns for everyone in that battlespace is going to be and make 'one thousand-one' last as long as it has to to fit in everything that will happen into 24 hours?

On the flip side however, I suppose it could be an issue of PERCEPTION, rather than relativity. Like in real life where we feel as though an hour has passed, and then realize it has only been 15 minutes when we look at a clock.

Same principle applies, except Erfworld has the ability to make perception reality.

[0beron]

soooooo essentially we've got to accept the "Timey-whimey-wibbley-wobbly ball of....stuff" explanation of time in Erfworld? :p In which a day is limited to 24 "hours" but those hours aren't actually hours as we would define them, and can take as long to pass as Erfworld wants them to.
Not that I have a problem with this, I just figure it'd have been a lot simpler for Rob to say "A day last for as long or as short as it takes for all sides to end turn" hahaha.

[Housellama]

soooooo essentially we've got to accept the "Timey-whimey-wibbley-wobbly ball of....stuff" explanation of time in Erfworld? :p In which a day is limited to 24 "hours" but those hours aren't actually hours as we would define them, and can take as long to pass as Erfworld wants them to.
Not that I have a problem with this, I just figure it'd have been a lot simpler for Rob to say "A day last for as long or as short as it takes for all sides to end turn" hahaha.

For us, yes. Timey-whimey-wibbley-wobbly. To the Erfworlders, a day is a day is a day. It just happens to fit in everything coincidentally. There's no perceptual difference to the people in the timestream. That's just The Way It Is. A day has 24 hours, but there always seems to be time to do what you need to do.

[onlyme]

Given this long discussion about the length of days, I'd like to ask: is there any hint in the comic or the texts that a turn lasts till it is ended by the ruler?

I was under the impression that a ruler can end their turn at will, but I remember it often refered to as "end turn early" or the like. So is there anywhere a hint that it needs an explicit ending of the term by the ruler?

[Salem]

I think it's important to note why Erfworld works like it does. I mean, it's a fact that we don't have in relation to stupid world.

Erfworld works the way it does, because the rules of Erfworld are game mechanics, they make sense only in the point of view of game design, not physics or logic, they probalby work the way they do for game balance. So crazy situations may not be able to happen. Perhaps like some people are compelled to obey their rulers, rulers are compelled to end their turns when they have no more actions to take. Or perhaps like so many other things they just don't think of doing certain things, they don't think of breaking the game. It's like when you're at a table playing a game, not everyone looks for loopholes in the rules, I've known at least one boardgame that was errata'd because of something we were using, not that we caused it but the rule in question was something we were using. I'm not sure the Erworlders see these things like croaking dwagons for an attack strategy.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the ruler would be stalling the turn for every hex in which they have units. So theoretically Parson could end all war in Erfworld by becoming ruler and getting 1 unit in every hex and just stalling. Assuming something such as turn limit max, or compulsion didn't stop him. Not that I think that will happen my money is on Tremanis being more inclined to peace and him playing a big role in it. But plan crazy peace would be neat too if it fit in the rules of Erfworld, minus you know, not for all the lonely units who only had the bordering hexes to talk to.

I've always assumed night was everyside not in your hex that comes after you in order taking their turns. But it could just be crazyness on my part. I just assumed Erfworld shared turns. And that relative time never split by more than the components of a day, like every hex in night waited for every other hex to get there before it moved on. Granted this would mean little to no night for some hexes which could be weird.

[Oberon]

A day consists of 24 hours. A turn ends when a ruler says it ends. Time is relative within each hex, and a unit can experience more than 24 hours worth of personal relative time in a single turn. These are all established facts.

Close. These are all established facts, but don't take them at strict face value. Erfworld is famous for adding to our knowledge of the established facts in ways which (mostly) do not contradict our earlier understanding.

The entire discussion on some ruler forcing an endless turn can be made moot by a few simple and logical rules:
"A turn ends when a ruler says it ends." But if the ruler has no more units to move, or chooses not to move them, their turn ends. Many board games operate in a similar way: Once you declare that you've got no further moves planned, your turn is over. This does not contradict in any way all the times we've seen a King/Overlord or a CWL end the turn. Since there is almost always going to be some unit that you're just parking in a city for permanent defense, declaring the turn over has the exact same meaning as declaring that you do not intend to move any more units. You're done, turn over.

This also does not contradict the wonky way time works between units on the same side. The sun may seem to turn back in the sky for one stack which moves from hex to hex, but this has nothing to do with the amount of units left to be moved, or the King/Overlord/CWL decision to end turn without moving some or all units.

And it also does not contradict the fact that a Side which expects to go at the start of the day, for example GK when the archon swarm entered their battlespace, sees a few hours pass before they get to go. Charlie was convinced to end his turn, passing the turn to GK.

Even the amount of exposition we've seen does not contradict this. I've engaged in idle chatter in a game where I needed to finish moving my units and pass to another player, the only enforcement at the table is the other players tolerance for distractions from the game. In a story such as Erfworld where the other Side's leaders cannot say (for example) "Common, dude, finish your turn up and talk later," it's not unreasonable to see exposition in between passing out unit orders.

[...] we haven't knowingly met a Unit for whom age would be an issue.

I recall some vague mention of dusting due to extended age. I'll try to find it.

"Somebody would have done so" is not proof that it's not possible. No side would voluntarily choose not to prolong their turn under normal conditions. Food pops and people heal at the start of the turn: if you have just one hungry or injured unit, it's cruel not to.

This has no real merit. Kings and Overlords need to rule the entire Side, and cannot give much though to any single unit's hurt or hunger. Saying that they would end turn just so that some stabber could heal the next turn has no rational basis. Especially in the scenarios some have posed, where the Side is doomed to die the next turn. Ending turn to allow a stabber to heal at the start of the turn where your treasury is exhausted and your Side ends makes no sense at all.

[Salem]

"A turn ends when a ruler says it ends." But if the ruler has no more units to move, or chooses not to move them, their turn ends. Many board games operate in a similar way: Once you declare that you've got no further moves planned, your turn is over. This does not contradict in any way all the times we've seen a King/Overlord or a CWL end the turn. Since there is almost always going to be some unit that you're just parking in a city for permanent defense, declaring the turn over has the exact same meaning as declaring that you do not intend to move any more units. You're done, turn over.

I'm going to have to disagree that this has anything to do with an infinite turn unless there is some mechanic in play to force an action, which I imagine there probably is. In theory if the only requirnment to force an end of turn, is the inability to make any more actions or even the decision not to make any more actions. You could simply withold the last action you intend to take.

For example it's the reason competative card games normally have time limits on each action. I've seen people stall out 30 minutes of a 45 minute match by taking 30 1 minute actions, had there been no mechanic to stop them, as soon as anyone would take a lead they'd win by stalling. Not that the same "time limit" thing applies to Erfworld. But there is most likely something that makes people move on. It doesn't seem like long turns lets the rest of the world move ahead of you in turns or else, we'd probably see the more powerfulsides rushing as fast as they can through their turns at some point.

This has no real merit. Kings and Overlords need to rule the entire Side, and cannot give much though to any single unit's hurt or hunger. Saying that they would end turn just so that some stabber could heal the next turn has no rational basis. Especially in the scenarios some have posed, where the Side is doomed to die the next turn. Ending turn to allow a stabber to heal at the start of the turn where your treasury is exhausted and your Side ends makes no sense at all.

I think Marbit meant it would be inhuman to prolong a turn that was essentially completed if someone was suffering in any capacity. Not that when there were things to be done continuing would be bad.

[Oberon]

I'm going to have to disagree that this has anything to do with an infinite turn unless there is some mechanic in play to force an action, which I imagine there probably is.

You aren't making much sense, because you appear to be disagreeing with me but saying the same things as I. There is no infinite turn. There is a mechanic in play to force an action, which brings the end of the turn if not taken.

I think Marbit meant it would be inhuman to prolong a turn that was essentially completed if someone was suffering in any capacity. Not that when there were things to be done continuing would be bad.

And again, nothing you've said disagrees with anything I've posted. There would be no reason to prolong a turn if there wasn't some gain to be had from said prolonging of the turn, and that has nothing to do with the supposed "suffering" of any particular stabber in the Side who might be injured.

Did Stanley call for an immediate end to the GK turn when Wanda was injured? No. Have we any example of a King/Overlord/CWL calling for the end of the turn so that some unit can heal or get rations upon the start of the next turn? No. So that argument is specious at best.

[Nnelg]

Erfworld works the way it does, because the rules of Erfworld are game mechanics, they make sense only in the point of view of game design, not physics or logic, they probalby work the way they do for game balance.

Although I have no problem with your main point here...

I challenge you to find just one logical contradiction internal to Erf's physics. So you can't assume anything in real physics applies.

"Somebody would have done so" is not proof that it's not possible. No side would voluntarily choose not to prolong their turn under normal conditions. Food pops and people heal at the start of the turn: if you have just one hungry or injured unit, it's cruel not to.

This has no real merit. Kings and Overlords need to rule the entire Side, and cannot give much though to any single unit's hurt or hunger. Saying that they would end turn just so that some stabber could heal the next turn has no rational basis. Especially in the scenarios some have posed, where the Side is doomed to die the next turn. Ending turn to allow a stabber to heal at the start of the turn where your treasury is exhausted and your Side ends makes no sense at all.

Right now you're missing the point. You're using (unintentionally, I hope) a weak bit ancillary support as a strawman, and have failed to address the real argument: that "somebody would have done so" is itself invalid. I hope you take measures to ratify this, as more recent arguments have been harsh enough to leave me doubting the innocence of the matter...

I'm going to have to disagree that this has anything to do with an infinite turn unless there is some mechanic in play to force an action, which I imagine there probably is.

You aren't making much sense, because you appear to be disagreeing with me but saying the same things as I. There is no infinite turn. There is a mechanic in play to force an action, which brings the end of the turn if not taken.

The difficulty here is that you, Oberon, have already assumed that such a mechanic exists, while Salem has not. This is confusing him because you are drawing logical conclusions from essentially out of nowhere, in his eyes, and his puzzled responses are naturally just as nonsensical to you.

Essentially, he's agreeing that what you say is true IF there is such a mechanic in place. But he's not so sure it does, and that's what he's trying to argue.



I would like to propose now the notion that there are many other potential reasons why turns do not go on forever besides a hard limit et cetera.

If you happen to have a logical proof as to why there must not be, then I will completely rescind this statement.

[MarbitChow]

Did Stanley call for an immediate end to the GK turn when Wanda was injured? No. Have we any example of a King/Overlord/CWL calling for the end of the turn so that some unit can heal or get rations upon the start of the next turn? No. So that argument is specious at best.

You're completely misreading the point I'm trying to make.

Under normal circumstances ("normal", in this case, being defined as "not being wiped out before the start of the next turn"), there is no reason to prolong a turn indefinitely, and lots of reasons to end the turn at the regular time. Food replenishes, wounds heal, everything gets cleaned up... ending the turn is natural. Nobody even thinks about not doing it; why would you cancel your auto maid/chef/medical treatment?

Only extreme duress - as in "I know our side ends as soon as I end the turn" duress - would cause a ruler to even consider fighting the natural order. Rulers in this situation would have already exhausted every other option - hiring casters, suing for peace, calling for allies. All tried, all failed. They ARE going to die, hopelessly and overwhelmingly, as soon as they end the turn. They've already sent their casters on with instructions to carry on the side, or to live well, or whatever. The heir they popped and sent away was captured and croaked. Their treasure is empty. Their field units are already wiped out - there's no cavalry coming. They don't want to die, but they know they're going to as soon as they end the turn.

So, they don't end the turn. And something happens - the turn stretches on forever, they start to starve, they go insane... or nothing happens, and the turn ends normally at the maximum allowed duration... or predictamancer-led turnamancers burst in, forcibly end the turn, and vanish back into the Magic Kingdom... we don't know.

There is NO logical reason for a ruler to choose to prolong the turn under normal conditions, and a whole multitude of reasons why they should end the turn normally. And in the only imaginable circumstance under which the turn would be prolonged, no one outside of the hex would ever know that anything was amiss - from their point of view, the turn ends at its regular time, and life moves on, no matter how long the ruler inside tried to prolong it. But maybe, when that enemy force enters the hex, everyone is already dead... or maybe there are just faded bones, or maybe there's nothing at all... maybe they just see the hex turn neutral after the last person inside the hex dies of old age, and when they enter it, it's lifeless and grey (like Queen Bee's capital).

But the argument that "someone would have already done it if it could be done" isn't a logically valid argument. That's my main point (as Nnelg more succinctly pointed out while I was composing this) - there's a very plausible reason why no one tries it normally, and why anyone who might have tried it isn't talking about it.

We don't know what happens if a ruler chooses to avoid ending the turn. We all have pet theories, and any of them might be true. Personally, I assume the Titans are evil, and as a result I assume that whatever implementation of the physics of the world would lead to the most suffering is how the world is, so I choose to envision an Erfworld where a ruler's final moments can be stretched out for an agonizingly long period of time, with hopelessness rising, hunger setting in, boredom and ultimately rage and madness as the end results. None of us can actually prove or disprove any of these theories, so pick your own resolution and enjoy.

[Oberon]

If you happen to have a logical proof as to why there must not be, then I will completely rescind this statement.

No logical proof. Just a proof by absence. No turn we have seen has ever stretched on forever, therefore it's logical to assume that one cannot, or that we'd have seen some mention of such a stratagem. Or at the very least, that the argument that the turn can stretch on forever needs to come up with stronger evidence to be considered seriously. I seem to be being contradicted by the argument that since something hasn't been dis-proven, that it must therefore be possible. That is a specious argument. To prove that something is possible requires a much stronger backing of factual evidence.

And I've provided plenty of rationale why such a theory of an endless turn is contradicted by many other evidences and cases which we have seen to date. I've seen no such rationale from the "endless turn" camp. Just idle speculation with no backing evidence.

I know that it is impossible to disprove a negative. I can't "prove" that a turn cannot go on forever using the evidence we have available to us. But it's also impossible to prove something on the basis of no evidence, and there is no evidence that a turn can go on forever. Just common sense.