Science Fiction
(http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2544/29561018.png)
Runner Up! Science Fiction 1:
The Mission (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/SciFi1.html)
Trihan
AtelierGames
Andorxor
[Cameron]
Phemar
Ultra Magnus
monkey_05_06
Babar
tzachs
monkey_05_06 (again)
(http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/5373/33296702.png)
Winner! Science Fiction 2:
Be Quiet (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/SciFi2.html)
Andail
Akatosh
Vince Twelve
The Ivy
Wyz
LGM
DanielH
TheJBurger
Bulbapuck
Wyz (again)
Adventure Game Parody
(http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8905/98545321.png)
Tie! Adventure Game Parody 1:
Shpritz 2000 (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/Parody1.html)
Vince Twelve
[Cameron]
uncle-mum
tzachs
TheJBurger
AtelierGames
LGM
The Ivy
Andorxor
TheJBurger
(http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8905/98545321.png)
Tie! Adventure Game Parody 2:
A "Hero's" Tale (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/Parody2.html)
DanielH
monkey_05_06
Bulbapuck
Wyz
Akatosh
Phemar
Ultra Magnus
Trihan
Andail
Babar
Medieval Fantasy
(http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2544/29561018.png)
Runner Up! Medieval Fantasy 1:
Charming Forest (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/Fantasy1.html)
AtelierGames
Andail
Ultra Magnus
Babar
Wyz
Bulbapuck
The Ivy
Phemar
monkey_05_06
[Cameron]
(http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/4481/51559960.png)
Winner! Medieval Fantasy 2:
Oran's Awakening (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/Fantasy2.html)
TheJBurger
tzachs
Vince Twelve
Trihan
LGM
Akatosh
DanielH
Andorxor
Akatosh (again)
LGM (again)
Voting procedure:
Voting is closed!- Cast your vote for which of the two in each category that you think is the overall better story.
- Feel free to include reasoning behind your pick or mini-reviews of each story. (But try not to reveal which story you worked on!)
- Remember, it was a group activity so try to grade them as a whole.
- Anyone who wants to vote, whether they participated or not can vote
- You can vote for the story you worked on, but please try to be objective
- Voting for each category will last 48 hours from the time the stories are posted.
- After voting is over, I'll reveal the writers of each part!
- Remember, it's just for fun!
For Sci-fi, my vote goes for Be Quiet
Mostly because I think 'Be quiet' is a little better written (In terms of pacing and composure, and in spelling and grammar) And because I felt 'The Mission' drew too heavily from stories like Star Wars and Firefly (just my opinion).
For Adventure Game Parody, Shpritz 2000 gets my vote. I just think it's better written, and is much more funny.
I vote the same as DanielH
Be Quiet and Shprtiz 2000!
I think Be Quiet was largely a better story than The Mission, though in both cases (and indeed, with every chain story I've read) you can see elements where one writer was trying to pull the narrative in one direction only to have it snapped back or distorted. Still, Be Quiet is more cohesive and interesting to me than The Mission so it gets my vote!
I'm also going to go with A "Hero's" Tale because Shpritz 2000, while amusing, reads more like a schizophrenic Groundhog Day than a concise story.
I'm going to vote for Shpritz 2000, Be Quiet, and Oran's Awakening.
I'm following Prog on this and my votes are for
Be Quiet and
A "Hero's" Tale.
Be Quiet is a remarkable bit of collaboration, if I didn't know better I'd say it was written almost entirely by the same person!
The Mission has quite a few instances where as Prog says the plotline gets distorted from where it seemed apparent that it was going.
Conversely to what Daniel said about
Shpritz 2000 however, I didn't find it all that humorous myself. Between the two parodies I only laughed aloud once, and it was in
A "Hero's" Tale when:
Spoiler
Harry tries to hit the guard with the loaf of bread and then:
"No!" Harry quietly yelled to himself, "That’s not what I was trying to do! Damn stupid game!"
That's the line that really got me because it's so true.
How many times in playing adventure games have we all encountered that situation? :=
I'm voting for Be Quiet and Shpritz 2000.
"Be Quiet," although somewhat speedy at times, I think overall contains better storytelling, pacing, and structure than "The Mission." I also thought "The Mission" was at times a bit too much caught in the moment and didn't hold as well together as a larger story.
I liked "Shpritz 2000" better than "A Hero's Tale" partly because it set up what it was trying to do in the very first sequence (have a normal guy as a protagonist, unable to counter-act the unconscious whims of the player controlling him), and then continued that thread throughout the rest of the story. "A Hero's Tale" had a similar concept, but I feel that it wasn't as humorous in its execution, although it was a lot easier to follow.
My votes go to Be Quiet & Shprtiz 2000. Both stories managed to draw me into their world, and I was driven to finish reading and see how it ends.
So yeah, they be my votes.
I'm voting for Be Quiet
The story throughout as good consistency. The mission had a drawing appeal but some really weird plot twist unfortunately. :)
Close call for the adventure parodies. A "Hero's" Tale although its consistency got stuck at some point and lost it's flow. Shprinz 2000 has a really good consistency but end fairly abrupt. I vote Shprinz 2000.
For me Be quiet was the better of the two sci-fi ones in that it was more consistent whilst the mission was a little bit all over the place.
A Hero's Tale gets my vote for the parodies, less obviously amusing but more interesting and overall better.
Haha what are the chances both of the stories I was in hardly get any votes.. :(
Anyhoo I'll vote for A Hero's Tale and The Mission.. because, well I helped write them ;)
You've gone and told us now... :)
Hey vince, any sign of the Fantasy tales? :)
The person who has it now (person number 9) asked for a few hour extension because he was busy. I hope to have it fairly soon here so I can pass it on to the last person. The other fantasy story is done.
Quote from: Phemar on Thu 27/08/2009 18:57:00Anyhoo I'll vote for A Hero's Tale and The Mission.. because, well I helped write them ;)
You fool! Now you've gone and rigged the voting! Now
everyone is going to vote for those two just because you worked on them!!! :P
...or avoid them like the plague coz you worked on them. ::)
Stee: I probably confused you, sorry. Just post which one out of the two you like best.
How do I vote. Do I just pm you vince?
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Wed 26/08/2009 18:17:47
(But try not to reveal which story you worked on!)
Woops, think I missed this clause :/
Quote from: Stee on Thu 27/08/2009 20:55:29
How do I vote. Do I just pm you vince?
Just post your votes right here! It's all very informal!
Well so far, I've only read Sci-Fi. I'll update this thread when I've gotten through all.
For Sci-Fi, Im voting for The mission. The story I felt was excellent, and I'd love to have read more (maybe your group would like to carry the story on after the comp? I'd love to have worked on this if I had the time). I also liked the twist at the end, and could see this working quite well as a game with a few tweaks.
I felt a little lost reading Be Quiet, It was too fast, it felt like one of those book to movie versions where the movie cuts a ton of crucial points out to fit into the 2hr slot. I wasn't sure what was going on throughout the story, and it didn't really grip me.
Sorry If that sounds like a harsh critique but thats what I felt. Both of you did excellent jobs, and I look forward to seeing this crop up again.
Update to come once I've read the parodies, and a further one after the fantasy articles have been released
Update:
This was really a difficult one. I enjoyed both stories pretty much equally.
Shpritz 2000, was funny, reminded me a little of Intense Degrees Colin Simpson leaves Employment. It fitted in well with the parody concept.. a parody generally is meant to be funny and it ticks the boxes on that front. It did however feel more like a script for a game than a story. Like a game it did get repetitive when you die, and the **click** all the time did ruin the immersion a little bit.
A Hero's Tale on the other hand was quite entertaining. I noticed influences from Elder Scrolls Oblivion in there. It made me think of The Apprentice Games (I think it was those its been a while), as there isn't many ags games I can think of in that setting. The story ran smoothly (I'd almost hazard a guess that a good chunk of those writing The Mission, worked on this too) and was immersive. I could also associate with those timer puzzles - I hate them and they always get me killed, especially if I'm gaming in bed on my laptop. The only major problem I had there was that it wasn't a parody. It was a story based on being in a game, but it focussed on seriousness rather than comedic value (check the definition of parody, you'll see what I mean). I did however really enjoy reading this, the ending reminded of certain Red Dwarf episodes (avoiding spoilers, if you're a Dwarfer you'll know what I mean).
I honestly can't decide. I think I'm going to have hold off for a little while
Ok, My Decision: Personally I was going to abstain my vote for this since I don't feel either fits the rules. However considering they both break the rules to the same extent I felt it was fair to make a vote (since it doesn't disadvantage any competition).
So based on that I'm afraid my decision sits solely with A Hero's Tale, simply because I felt involved in the story. Even though it was more a Fantasy/Sci-Fi Hybrid set inside a game than an actual parody.
Not to take anything away from any of your hard work. Congrats guys on making some interesting reads.
Thanks for your votes so far. Sci Fi and Parody will be closed for voting in 12 hours or so. And Fantasy has just been opened for voting! So, read the newly released two stories and vote for your favorite!
I vote for The Mission and A Hero's Tale.
Quote from: monkey_05_06 on Thu 27/08/2009 20:22:16You fool! Now you've gone and rigged the voting! Now everyone is going to vote for those two just because you worked on them!!! :P
Quote from: Stee on Thu 27/08/2009 22:51:53For Sci-Fi, Im voting for The mission.
...my decision sits solely with A Hero's Tale...
Quote from: Trihan on Fri 28/08/2009 04:13:29I vote for The Mission and A Hero's Tale.
Okay...who called it? I did! ;D
My vote is for
Oran's Awakening. The ending I didn't feel was as strong as the rest of it, but it still held together a lot better than
Charming Forest. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the same people from
Be Quiet worked on
Oran's Awakening.
Overall I loved all the stories. It was great fun writing and reading all of them (yeah...that's right I worked on all of them... ::) :P). We should do this again sometime.
Yea, sorry about that ending. The set-up was too much for me to make a decent ending in 200 words.
I think a tragic end would have worked with 200 words.
I vote for Orans Awakening
So... guess I should vote. I'll go with...
Be Quiet... because The Mission was way too twisty for my taste. Be Quiet has its problems, but at least it doesn't flip-flop as crazily as The Mission.
Oran's Awakening... because I'm an egoistic fuckwit with monkey here. :=
Shpritz 2K... because I thought the idea pretty clever. This one was a close call, but it just fits together better than the hero's tale (although the final twist of that one was really, really funny).
I vote for Be Quiet (surprise! ;)) 'cause it held together very well and I really enjoyed reading it.
For adventure game parody I found it very hard to decide, but I've decided to go with A Hero's Tale because I'm not a fan of the way Shpritz 2000's story was built. (Though I did like them both)
I also vote for Oran's awakening because, even though it suffered from being pulled in different directions, it was far more exciting than charming forest.
As an afterthought: I thought all stories were surprisingly good :D, and I really enjoyed being a part of this. Good job guys ;D
Altough Oran's awakening is far more coinsistent but a bit bland somewhere towards the end it gets a cumbersome twist I think. I really like the way Charming forest was going, if someone would scrape out the inconsistencies you'd have a really good story. I vote for Charming Forest.
(other two votes in previous post)
Quote from: monkey_05_06 on Fri 28/08/2009 04:44:23
Quote from: monkey_05_06 on Thu 27/08/2009 20:22:16You fool! Now you've gone and rigged the voting! Now everyone is going to vote for those two just because you worked on them!!! :P
Quote from: Stee on Thu 27/08/2009 22:51:53For Sci-Fi, Im voting for The mission.
...my decision sits solely with A Hero's Tale...
Quote from: Trihan on Fri 28/08/2009 04:13:29I vote for The Mission and A Hero's Tale.
Okay...who called it? I did! ;D
My vote is for Oran's Awakening. The ending I didn't feel was as strong as the rest of it, but it still held together a lot better than Charming Forest. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the same people from Be Quiet worked on Oran's Awakening.
Overall I loved all the stories. It was great fun writing and reading all of them (yeah...that's right I worked on all of them... ::) :P). We should do this again sometime.
Err, Why do I care what Phemar worked on? I don't know the guy, and I honestly couldn't remember which two he had mentioned when writing my "mini review".
I voted for the 2 I felt worked. To be honest like I said both the Parody ones broke the rules of the thread in my opinion, so if you really feel that way inclined, you can talk Vince into considering all votes null and void for that category. Personally I felt it was only fair that the teams hard work gets acknowledged regardless.
So... suck it up, and take it like a man, biatch :P
It's not my fault that you clearly worked on the other 2 and you're scared of losing ;D
Pretty sure Monkey was joking there, as monkeys are prone to do. These votes are just for fun, so nobody really gets bent out of shape (I hope!) if the story they worked on doesn't win.
Yes Stee as denoted by the ":P" in the original post, it was a joke. I just thought it was funny that the very next two votes in both categories went toward the games (Phem)Zor went blabbing about. ;)
I never knew you could use the CSS transparent value here!Quote from: Akatosh on Fri 28/08/2009 08:20:13because I'm an egoistic fuckwit with monkey here. :=
Ohh the possibilities here are endless!How surreptitiously clever of you. :=
I WORKED ON THE MISSION AND A HERO'S TALE!!! HAHAHA!!!With just under two and a half hours left I for one will maintain my integrity and not go shouting out which stories
I worked on... ::)
Very nice subliminal messaging monkey!
I tend to highlight things as I read them on screen!
OK! I'd better get in my votes before I close these.
I definitely was sucked into Be Quiet from the very beginning. It has such a great opening passage, which is not to demean the start of The Mission; Be Quiet's start was just so evocative and quickly built this great image of the world. And a gondola at the center of a sci fi story? Got to be a first!
Both stories had some inconsistencies. But Be Quiet worked together really well overall, I thought. So it gets my vote.
As for the Parodies, they were both pretty good and both had great twist endings! Great job to both of the finishers! It's kind of a toss up to me here, so I'm going to give it to A "Hero's" Tale, since that makes it a tie!
SO! Here are the final results:
Congratulations to the winners of the Science Fiction catagory: Be Quiet
Writers were:
Andail
Akatosh
Vince Twelve
The Ivy
Wyz
LGM
DanielH
TheJBurger
Bulbapuck
Wyz (again)
Congratulations, you all get to stick the trophy (graciously made by Atelier Games) in your signatures.
The Golden SciFi Quill:
(http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/5373/33296702.png)
[img]http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/5373/33296702.png[/img]
And Congratulations to the winners of the Adventure Parody category: Everyone!
Yay! It was a tie! So everyone gets to add the trophy to their sigs!
The Golden Parody Quill:
(http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8905/98545321.png)
[img]http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/8905/98545321.png[/img]
Also, everyone can add the silver participation quill to their sigs:
(http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2544/29561018.png)
[img]http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2544/29561018.png[/img ]
I've added names to all the stories here, so you can see who wrote what: (let me know if I messed up on anybody's)
Science Fiction 1: The Mission (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/SciFi1.html)
Science Fiction 2: Be Quiet (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/SciFi2.html)
Adventure Game Parody 1: Shpritz 2000 (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/Parody1.html)
Adventure Game Parody 2: A "Hero's" Tale (http://www.xiigames.com/misc/Chain/Parody2.html)
But voting on the Fantasy stories is still open! So please vote and give feedback!
Oran's Awakening please, kthxbye.
Thanks to everybody who worked on and voted for The Mission. I'm sorry if I let anybody down by not voting for our story but I was trying to be subjective!
Great job to the A "Hero's" Tale team as well. I worked on that one early on so it was fun seeing where it went after I had my hands on it. Ultra Magnus specifically, your line ("That's not what I was trying to do!") still slays me.
As for The Mission I felt right from the time that I was writing it that I wanted to justify the ending. It was my second shot writing on that story and I had to bring it to some kind of close. When I first wrote about Anthony being orphaned I had no idea that Babar and tzachs would interpret that to mean that he was raised by them! But I suppose that's one of the challenges and more interesting parts of a collaborative story like this; trying to figure out how what you add is going to be understood, and where the story is going to go from there.
With tzachs moving the story from Anthony being promoted to Captain toward actually being en route for imprisonment (or worse) I wasn't sure how to take that. In my mind Anthony was being promoted because he had always been a hard worker, dedicated to the cause.
I'd just like to be clear that I'm not trying to accuse anybody of doing anything wrong, just pointing out how the way I read the story isn't always the same as the way other people read it. Ultimately I suppose this lead up to the final "tweest (http://www.lifelounge.com/content/detail.aspx?id=1262)" that I threw in though.
As I was saying Anthony seemed to me the type of guy who isn't going to really let himself be taken alive. Here he'd dedicated his life to the service, eradicating the same filth who had stolen his family (and his childhood) away from him.
Yet despite all that, they were going to judge him over crimes from a past life?
No, no, no...Anthony's not going to stand for that. :=
It was hard for me to end it the way that I did but I didn't see another way out. Anthony had to kill Gillian to prove the point that he was still a raider so the raiders wouldn't kill him. And if he tried to protest Gillian wasn't going to let him just walk off the ship!
So I hope that it wasn't too much for anybody, and again thanks for those who liked it. Looking forward to the next round of this! 8)
It makes me so proud to see my creations all over the place! :) Thanks for letting me have the honour of making them, and well done everybody on their stories - they all turned out excellent!
Booyah! Go Team Us! :D
That said, I'm really quite happy with the way Be Quiet turned out. As a funny aside, when I wrote the story, I imagined the guys in the boat to either be terrorists or fugitives. Imagine my surprise when they turned out to be both.
I didn't really expect A Hero's Tale to tie, on account of simply liking the other one better, but it seems I have once again been proven to have stupid opinions. Ah, well, this is one of the cases where I don't mind being wrong. That's a second Go Team Us, then, but with a different "us". :=
I vote for Oran's Awakening, because I thought it easier to read and understand.
Big yay for everybody that worked on Be Quiet from me. Nobody was tempted to make weird plot twists and that is wat made this story work. From the very start it had a direction and every body just kind of followed the flow. (Literally ;))
Also very cool that (some not very ovious) hints got used.
The rendezvous point by Akatosh used by The Ivy.
Andail already pointed out there was something downtown, The Ivy mentioned the end point being the core.
I mentioned the formal clothes and masks, with in mind they used it to get in by crashing some formal party, this actually was used by DanielH and TheJBurger.
I wanted to make the Gondolier smoke under the tree but ran out of words, but LGM made it happen despite that. :D
The rest all contributed into a overal ambience of the setting. Things that helped me to get into the theme where among others, the difference of the army and riot police mentioned by Akatosh and the smell of the air by VinceTwelve.
When I also got to write the ending I was thrilled, I wanted closure, and within the 200 words. ;)
I was happy with the previous entry by Bulbapuck; I could use the sheriff to make a really strong ending. At first I wanted them to open the dome, but it might have killed them, so I needed to think of something else. So I choose for a peaceful solution of a suppressed people that was looking for a way of better life. The six would be the ones to open the door, the gondolier the experienced taxi, who entered and escaped the dome many times. Someone mentioned the the arrest warent, but later on the sherif acts as if he doesn't know him: the only way I could fix that, was by making the dome inhabitant ignorant, something the overal theme supported very well. :D Then I just had to write an ending for the six (open ending since you can only assume what happens) and mention the titel one more time ;)
-----------------
I didn't vote for Hero's tale despite I contributed to it, I felt it had some serious issue's. Reading back, I also don't like my own entry. And Akatosh really slapped it in my face. ;) I think the solution Ultra Magnus came up with should have been done two entries before that because the story was slowed down, and left not enough room for a decent ending. Trihan made me laugh. :) Babar won some of my vote back with his ending, but not enough I'm affraid to tell.
-----------------
I really enjoyed reading and working on them, and also reading the other two stories. The Shpritz 2000 needs an ending though! :P The mission suffered from people that want to change the way the story goes, even if its not your thing, I think you owe it to the predecessors that you at leats give it a try ;) I like the way monkey_05_06 tried to fix it though.
To long, I know, but I had to :P
Yeah, sorry about the in-your-FACE-ness of my part. The plot looking pretty disjointed to me, and I figured that gluing it together to coherentness wouldn't be easy, so I just launched an ICBM against the fourth wall. It seems to have worked. :=
My first non-silver trophies ;D And they're awesome, thanks AtelierGames!
Way to go everyone :D
As the proud starter of Be Quiet, I'm pleasently surprised to see how tight and coherent it turned out (for a colaborative effort, that is).
I really tried to come up with an opening that allowed for many different interpretations and also many different styles.
I think the over all quality of the stories was higher than in previous projects, which is a good sign, especially since everyone wrote several passages each, and under much more stress.
Thank you Vince for the great administration, and also some fine contributions :)
Hear, hear!
ps.
I ran out of space, but I'll think of a way to fit the awards in my signature, hmm....
And the final results are in for the Fantasy stories, and the winner is...
Oran's Awakening!
Writers were:
TheJBurger
tzachs
Vince Twelve
Trihan
LGM
Akatosh
DanielH
Andorxor
Akatosh (again)
LGM (again)
Congratuflations, the winners get the last signature trophy:
The Golden Fantasy Quill
(http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/4481/51559960.png)
[img]http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/4481/51559960.png[/img]
Aaaand... we're all done! Thanks again to everyone for taking part!
If I can give myself a little mini review: I'd like to think that, despite taking a few hours here or there to pass the story on to the next person in line, I saved time overall by being able to deal quickly with people who were not responding, or were taking too long for whatever reason. I did my best to PM everyone when I sent them the story and then would send 12 hour warnings and 5 hour warnings when possible. I definitely wouldn't take on this role again, as it takes a lot of time!!! But it was a lot of fun...
I would suggest the next time we do this activity to maybe have each person mail the story to the next person in the list themselves, like we did in previous chain story activities, but to also CC someone who is acting as an organizer to keep everyone on track. It would take a lot of the pressure off the organizer, but also allow him to get the jump on people who went AWOL.
Anyways, hopefully we'll do another one of these in a few months, and hopefully it can be organized in a completely different way to keep things fresh! Looking forward to it!
Thanks and congratulations to everybody!
I know that's not a very constructive post, but...
Three in a row, bitches! :D
* High-fives Vince, LGM, DanielH and TheJBurger *
(Oh and thanks to Vince for hosting, AG for the trophies, and everybody for participating. This was so much more awesome than the last two times.)
This was awesome. I'm somewhat disappointed with the direction that The Mission went in; when I started it I sort of intended it to be a Firefly-esque affair and the Anthony in my head isn't the one who ended up starring in the story, but then that's what collabs are all about. I intentionally left the start vague so that people could form their own interpretations. Good job everyone!
Booya! I'd like to thank the academy...
High-Five.
Well, that was a lot of fun :D Vince did a heck of a job organizing it, altough I can imagine that it took too much time of him. I think some off the responses could be automated, like the X hours left warnings and the story send and retrieval, that might help. If there are enough people intrested in such system, I could help building one :)
That would be awesome because I'd love to do something like this again.