Story Hour Author's Favorites: Battles

[Iron Sky]

I had this idea while I was trying to sleep last night and thought it might be fun to have all the different story hour authors talk about their favorite parts of their own story hours.

It was neat having all the different authors chiming in during the "advice for writing story hours" thread, so I thought it might be neat to get us all in various other threads talking about our favorite bits of our various labors of love.

So, here's thread 1, battles. If you have multiple story hours or multiple answers, post them all! Include links so we can read your stuff!

If you don't want to answer all the questions, just answer the ones that interest you.

Interviewer Question 1: "What was your favorite battle scene(s) to run in the actual game?"

IQ 2: "What was your favorite battle scene(s) to write up?"

IQ 3: "What was the most difficult battle scene to run?"

IQ 4: "What was the most difficult battle scene(s) to write up?"

IQ 5: "Which was your player's favorite battle(s), in-game?"

IQ 6: "Which was your reader's favorite battle scene(s)?"

IQ 7: "What was the most unusual thing(s) you tried to do when running actual battles, if any?"

IQ 8: "What was the most unusual thing(s) you tried to do when writing up a battle scene(s), if any?"

IQ 9: "If readers of this thread haven't read your story hour and were going to read 1 battle description, which would you have them read?"

IQ 10: "If there's anything else you want to say about your story hour/campaign(s) battles, you have the floor."


I'll post my own responses to the questions later, but I'd love to see other story hour author's responses (and read some of your favorite bits of your own story hours)!

Whenever this thread seems to be winding down, I'll come up with another one on a different topic (or if someone else has a good idea for a topic, you can do the next thread).

[Iron Sky]

My replies:

Interviewer Question 1: "What was your favorite battle scene(s) to run in the actual game?"

My favorite battle was probably a battle my players fought against a white dragon that slowly transformed into an undead dragon. The battle starts about half-way through this post.


IQ 2: "What was your favorite battle scene(s) to write up?"

The one above was pretty fun, but it was pretty long (read grueling) and took my multiple sittings to get it all. It was really fun to write up the very first battle of the story hour, getting inside the heads of the first enemies the party took on. Link here.

The scene where warrior woman Ming fought for her life in a trail-by-combat was also a ton of fun to write since both Ming and the noble she was defending herself against were both honorless scum that fought dirty(starts half-way down the post or so).


IQ 3: "What was the most difficult battle scene to run?"

The most difficult to run (at least of the ones I've covered in the story hour so far was this one. Not for any mechanical reason, but mostly because there were hours of intricate planning that went into it, then the main enemy died in two rounds and the next 20 were a regenerating construct versus a statue with high damage reduction while the players watched from afar...


IQ 4: "What was the most difficult battle scene(s) to write up?"

Probably the one where I tried to get inside the head of an friggin' ankheg for the duration of the fight. I was especially worried that it wouldn't make any sense to someone reading it. The battle is half-way down or so.


IQ 5: "Which was your player's favorite battle(s), in-game?"

They really dug the trial-by-combat as well and the dragon fight.


IQ 6: "Which was your reader's favorite battle scene(s)?"

People seemed to like the first time the party was Attacked by Iron Sky. I guess that one could go into the "difficult to write" column too - making a battle with "robot ninja assassins with laser-beam eyes" play and read intelligibly was a challenge.


IQ 7: "What was the most unusual thing(s) you tried to do when running actual battles, if any?"

During the battle I last finished writing up, I made the entire fight one monster and had it do auto-damage each round, the amount increasing the deeper the party went into the pit. It was a cross between a trap and a monster and worked out pretty well.

Note: the fight starts at that post, but the description of the area the fight took place in starts a post before.

Also, I thought the dragon transformation from above worked out pretty neat. Mostly everything else was fairly cut-and-dried 3.5 combat.


IQ 8: "What was the most unusual thing(s) you tried to do when writing up a battle scene(s), if any?"

In several combats (such as the Ankheg and raft-attack combats above), I narrated from the enemies' perspectives rather than from the PCs. In fact, I haven't done that in a while...


IQ 9: "If readers of this thread haven't read your story hour and were going to read 1 battle description, which would you have them read?"

The Iron Sky thread above or the Dragon thread are probably the top two.


IQ 10: "If there's anything else you want to say about your story hour/campaign(s) battles, you have the floor."

Nothing more about mine, but I'd love to see other SH authors' responses to these questions, even if you only feel like answering one or two.

[Iron Sky]

Hm... I was thinking of doing a series of these, "Story Author Hours Favorites: Plot Twists" and "... Favorites: Dialogue" and whatever else I could think of, but it doesn't seem that any other SH authors are into this (or don't have the time for it or never even looked here 'cause the thread title was strange or would rather be posting in their SH thread or whatever).

I'm certainly no stranger to being the only one I know to be into certain things (table-top miniatures space combat games, I'm looking at you!).

It was worth a shot I guess. I got an excuse to re-read some of my favorite parts of my own SH, so I know one SH author enjoyed the exercise at least!