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No. 110: But it wasn't the same man! Where's the rule book?

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But it wasn't the same man! Where's the rule book?

First | Previous | 2017-03-01 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/pomh/?comic=110

Strip by: Ian Boreham

caption: Heraclitus 535 - 475 BC
{Heraclitus is speaking.}
Heraclitus: A man cannot step in the same river twice...
Heraclitus: ...even if his die roll would allow it that turn.
{A large game board, divided into squares of different terrain, with playing pieces standing on it.
Heraclitus: Satyrs must stay in or adjacent to forests
Heraclitus: If Zeus encounters a maiden, he must end his turn.
Heraclitus: Heracles must visit each of the twelve task sites, in any order.
Heraclitus: Each army stack consists of one hero, nine real fighters, eighty target counters and up to ten other units.
caption: When asked if the complexity of the rules of "Flux: Golden Age" was the cause of its commercial failure with Greek board gamers, he responded that sales were bound to rise soon, since there was nothing constant in the board game market except change.

The author writes:

I looked around for images of Heraclitus as reference. As usual, for ancient figures, nobody knows in detail what he looks like. Even ancient marble busts don't seem to share much in common with each other (they were probably carved after his death, anyway). Like most ancient Greek philosophers, he seems to have been somewhat eccentric. The stories about his death seem to involve smearing cow dung on himself and possibly being devoured by dogs.

I almost typed "Hercules" rather than "Heracles" in the rules. It reminds me of a Japanese TV show I saw once, which seemed to consist of a panel of loudmouthed and ignorant foreigners complaining about Japan, Japanese people and Japanese culture. One guy started complaining about how English words are butchered when absorbed into Japanese (which is true - the Japanese sound structure is fairly limiting). But the example he gave was the name of the Disney film "Hercules", which was called Herakuresu in Japanese. He laughed about how bad this rendering was, apparently unaware that the name used in Japanese is based on "Heracles", not "Hercules".

Drawn in Krita and Inkscape.