Iron Sky
Procedurally Generated
Round 2, Match 1 Judgement
Let me preface this by saying I have a few personal biases in this match that I'm going to work very hard at not swaying me as a judge:
1) I love scifi roleplaying games. After I tried to run a Shadowrun Campaign, we called the game "Unkillable Troll, the Intense Over-specialization RPG" (maybe 5E fixed this), but that you even entered a scifi adventure made me grin since they happen so rarely in the contest. Modern zombie/vampire adventures we see once in a while, but scifi? Rare mojo.
2) Fantasy names where every name has apos'trophe or t'w'o is a huge pet-peeve of mine and I struggle (often in vain) to finish novels that do this regularly. Ironically, theterrible ambitious fantasy novel I wrote in college and subsequently spent a year failing hard to get published has TONS of them.
3) I don't understand people's fascination with drow and the Underdark in general. Neither ever existed in my fifteen years of D&D campaigns and, barring the rare beholder or glowing mushroom, Underdark staples like drow and dogoorar never have either.
That stated, I was pleasantly surprised (and relieved) that both adventures are readable – though one's writing superior to the other, as we'll get to later – well edited, interesting, and both seem to be complete adventures. You had double the words to do it with, so I'd hope so. Man was that first round difficult to judge.
They both look pretty solid (pre-analysis), so you may have made my job challenging yet again.
Let's get started.
[sblock=Corporate Downsizing]Does it have any "cool factors" - things that will elicit "neat", "cool", "awesome", or, best of all: "wow!"?
Busting into a corporate mega-tower to steal or destroy the Immortality Project while avoiding or co-opting a battle-centaur only to face down a cyber-zombie. That's pretty neat (and pretty easy to sum up).
Does it seem like an adventure that would be fun to play and an interesting premise to pitch to players?
The pitch is easy – one advantage of choosing Shadowrun as there's a pretty set "we're a team of covert-ops cyber-mercenaries" episodic shtick that makes setting them off on an adventure as easy as having a Mr. Johnson show up with a mission and some nuyen. As far as fun for players, let's see what they get to do:
They get the job, scope out the place, bust in, discover there's almost no security, run from, fight, or co-opt a centaurborg, take on a cyberzombie in a temple penthouse with spirit-walls, fight an unkillable cybertank, and kill it with poetry before a sattelite nukes the place from orbit. It sounds fun, only part that might make it more fun is if there was more challenge before the nigh-unstoppable tank shows up.
The hacker doesn't fight them, the drones are easy to avoid (and the hacker operating them doesn't care much), the centaur sounds easily avoidable or cooperative, the spirit guardian only fights if they are breaking stuff, and the cyberzombie sounds like something beyond their ability to kill unless they figure out its only weakness is bad poetry or flee from it. If they like chase scenes running from unstoppable enemies, they'll enjoy this I suppose.
Pacing-wise, is seems to run little to no challenge until the climax where they learn that this thing fights even with no head and either take it out with a silver bullet or have to run; I.E. little challenge jumping suddenly to impossible challenge. This could come across as fun, but I can see it just as easily be frustrating. No one really has a challenge to push them or feel cool defeating until they run into something they can't beat unless they figure out the kill-switch the GM threw in to do it for them OR until Mr. Johnson calls and says he'll do it from orbit...
Lastly, the Eye seems to be a marginal threat if any and seems to be little more help if they ask while the guardian spirit is similar. Without pretty serious GM hints, I doubt players will get to spout poetry at the half-metal murder monster ripping people in half.
Is the entry fun to read or at least easy?
It was an easy, well-written, quick read. The writing is transparent: it gets out of the way to present no barrier to accessing content. This is perfectly that.
The whole scenario is interesting and entertaining.
Is the adventure clearly understandable?
The corporate politics took a couple read-throughs to get and I'm not sure how Jiro's plan is supposed to work. He's got a fraudulent immortality project he's trying to sell, so to cover it up and save face(?), he has shadowrunners steal or delete it? Either way, wouldn't that make Renraku back out of the takeover as the one thing they wanted from the company is gone either way? To top it off, he eventually nukes his own building to get rid of everything anyway – I'm assuming this was because he didn't realize what his father had become until The Eye transmits some footage of the paterfamilia's headless rampage?
Is the editing appealing or at least legible? Are there typos?
Editing was clean, well-organized, and I don't remember a single typo.
Playability
Do the players' choices or, at the very least, their presence in the adventure matter?
Without their presence, Jiro would probably just hire another group of shadowrunners, but this is the shtick for Shadowrun, so it kind-of renders this question null. Still, if they succeed at everything, get the records, take down Toyoshi, they get paid for staying silent after the building is vaporized. If they fail at everything, don't find the records, run from Toyoshi (and live), they get paid for staying silent after the building is vaporized. They only real difference is how much damage they take and whether they randomly get the zombie-chunk bonus because someone's a trophy collector – they were sent to get records, not harvest cyborgs after all.
Usually not a huge sign of an adventure's strength when it turns out almost exactly the same whether they succeed or fail.
As for choices, their most interesting choice is what to do with Glue, though he dies no matter what – either they kill him or Toyoshi does – the only difference is whether he shows them how much of a threat the zombie tank is first.
Is all the cool stuff buried in the backstory or do the players get to see it too?
Good news, most of the best stuff is what they deal with, unless they are into the nitty-gritty of mega-corporate politics, I guess.
Would this be fun and exciting to run?
I'm not sure it would be. For interesting characters to play with, I have Mr.Johnson Jiro, who is the quest giver, Glue who is the sacrifice to show how unkillable the final boss is, The Eye, who just "watch[es] trash soap opera trids", the spirit who just wants to keep people from breaking things, and Toyoshi the literally mindless death droid. Glue seems like the ones they'd interact with most, but knowing he's going to die guaranteed in a bit takes some of the fun out of running him.
Part of the fun of GMing (for me at least) is watching the players squirm when faced with tough decisions and watching how creatively (or stupidly) they handle crisis. Here, the main choice they seem to have is what to do with Uselysses, and he dies whatever they choose anyway.
How easy (or difficult) would this be to GM?
It would be pretty easy, though unfortunately that's because not really much happens. Watch, break in, dodge some drones, fight or avoid Glue, loot a room, fight or avoid a boss, run, get paid regardless.
If it is linear, does it hide it well or will players complain about railroading? If it is more free-form, is there still enough structure that the GM can still run it without a ton of extra effort?
It's not a pure railroad as they could choose to sneak or go in blasting, fight, join, or avoid Glue, fight or coerce the Spirit/The Eye, fight or run from Toyoshi. Since the major outcomes are the same regardless of what they do, it might as well be, however.
The Rules
Was it turned in on time? Is the word count within limits?
On time. My main word counter gives 1504 words, so I tried a few others on the internet. I got 1512, 1503, 1484, 1503. Most of them are over by about "A fifth edition Shadowrun adventure" which is above the ingredients list (and is NOT free) and so it was probably forgotten during the final edits? Technically (and I'm a technical sort of judge) it's over the word limit.
Are any ingredients used in an especially creative way? Was it clear what each ingredient was or were any obscure or vague? How essential are the ingredients: if I changed the words in any ingredient, would they no longer work? How interwoven were the ingredients with each other and how essential was each to the adventure?
One by one:
Heir to Nothing: This is Jiro who is indeed the heir to Ikeda. He's the son and not on the board or a shareholder or anything so he is an heir and, since the company has no value left (especially after the orbital strike – though they seem to have an orbital laser or kinetic lance or whatever, how much is that worth?)
Silken Wallpaper: The hangings in the penthouse that the spirit inhabited. While it is somewhat relevant, this could have been Paper Screens or Bamboo Stands or any number of other things that a spirit might be bound to and that the cyberzombie might smash. There doesn't seem to be anything that requires it be Silken or Wallpaper and the most important part of it is the spirit not the silk.
Useless Glue: The centaur is glue because of GM fiat. I find making something a clue because you name it some part of the clue to be one of the weakest uses. Sure, horses have a lot of collagen and thus are useful for glue, but this is not only a centaur, but he's never used in that way (if Toyoshi had smeared him into fine paste, that still wouldn't quite count) as he's not used to adhere things, even metaphorically. Also, his cutting off the cyberzombie's head makes him at least slightly useful in giving the PCs a way of gauging the level of fight they are in for. If he had died before doing anything, it would have made the ingredient stronger as he would have been truly useless.
Headless Hunter: Toyoshi is hunting his son, but his attacking everyone on sight makes this somewhat weaker as most hunters are targeting specific prey and he's more of a ravager, destroyer, berserker. I guess he does target the holder of the book if he sees they have it, anyway. While he does lose his head, that is not his main feature and if the PCs killed Glue in an altercation before he woke up, it doesn't happen anyway. Also the Gutted Machine.
Gutted Machine: This is a great ingredient. Not only his Toyoshi a machine with actual intestines (a very creative interpretation), but if the PCs somehow figure out the poetry-slam attack, he guts himself. This is how you do ingredients in IronDM. Also the Headless hunter.
Star-crossed Book: The book of poetry that can be used to makeRomeo Toyoshi join his mistress in death. While this use isn't terrible, it would have been stronger if it was "lover" or "beloved wife" or something other than mistress to give a stronger emotional connection between the two. Even then, I can't think of what sort of intuitive/hair-brained leap would cause someone to start spouting love poetry at the walking man-tank that's walking through walls to rip your arms from their sockets and beat your friends to death with them OR how I would even hint at that as GM to get them to do so.
Lazy Eye: This has the same problems as Glue and is only slightly stronger. His name is Eye and, while he does watch security, his watching has almost no effect in the adventure. If the PCs don't destroy anything, he could be asleep, eyeless, dead, or just not there. His essential nature is that of a hacker, not an eye. If he were a private detective (private eye) following them or something but couldn't be bothered to do something about it, that would be much stronger.
Two of these are only there by vague association and "Proper-nouning." One is about as strong an ingredient as I've seen. The rest are about as good as you can expect.
Let's try the ol' sentence summary of the adventure using all the ingredients: The PCs hired by the Heir to Nothing to steal information, facing down the Headless Hunter that crashes through Silken Wallpaper after killing Useless Glue and maybe hindered by the Lazy Eye before possibly becoming a Gutted Machine by an unlikely use of the Star-crossed Book.
Now replacing the weaker ingredients with other possibilities: The PCs are hired by the Heir to Nothing to steal information, facing down the Metal Berseker that crashes through the Paper Screens after killing a Green Berserker and maybe hindered by an Unpaid Hacker before possibly becoming a Gutted Machine by an unlikely use of the Star-crossed Book.
Maybes, possiblies, and unlikelys are not optimal.
Summary
I really liked this adventure at first glance and, it being scifi, was really hoping it would be awesome if only to inspire other people to write more scifi adventures. Unfortunately, it suffered from weak NPCs A to E:
A) dies no matter what (though not completely uselessly, ironically)
B) hires the PCs, then resolves everything no matter what they do with an orbital slug
C) is an invulnerable death machine, unless PCs somehow figure out his (bizarre) silver bullet
D) doesn't even care the adventure is happening and might not even get involved
E) is sentient wallpaper
While the PCs do have some freedom of approach and method, the fact that the final boss is essentially undefeatable, the mission ends identically no matter what they do, and the only influence they have on their reward has more to do with whether they consider body parts loot than their level of success make the PCs choices essentially irrelevant in the end.
Pro-tip, when writing adventures, don't have the NPCs fix everything themselves in the end as it eliminates the need for the characters, creating both PC motivation issues and NPC logic issues (like how is Jiro going to explain blowing up his own skyscraper to Renroku? Guess he couldn't figure it out either, so that's why he took off.)[/sblock]
[sblock=Get Ye to the Underdark]Does it have any "cool factors" - things that will elicit "neat", "cool", "awesome", or, best of all: "wow!"?
The iron golem with a beholder literally at the helm was cool. Dancing between a couple warring factions and playing on or both sides is fun (even if they are drow and dorogoor).
Does it seem like an adventure that would be fun to play and an interesting premise to pitch to players?
The old Earl of Ruchland walks up. "Wondering if you might be the sort to help me out. Got me a little problem with an army of underelves and spidermen falling out of a hole in the sky and filling up my fortress. That ain't bad enough, they's besieged by a tentacled eye ridin' a metal monster with an army of durro... dergu... dark dwarves. Might be a reward if you can reckon how to get rid of 'em and I get my castle back?"
Is the entry fun to read or at least easy?
There are a lot of "has""was""had" in the backstory, making it a slog to read. This is known in the writing biz as Passive Voice and is generally regarded as a Bad Thing. Let's take rewrite the first paragraph in active voice (and fixing the run-on sentences):
"D'roal greatly disappointed his drow family, repeatedly exceeding their expectations by surviving into adulthood. Born into a strongly matriarchal society, the fourth male child of a minor noble house looks forward to no aristocratic title, no military rank, and no religious function. Instead, the matriarchs dispatched him again and again in hopes of securing him a glorious death in battle, again and again disappointed at his embarrassingly victorious-yet-unsung returns."
A bit more:
"D'roal's magnetic attraction to S'aznn, the older, married matriach of a strong noble house, spawned conspiratorial whispers of their co-dependency and, thus, weakness."
It's almost the same content, but not only does it shave about 15% of the word count off, its a much more interesting, compelling read.
Ironically, when you shift to present tense, your writing suddenly drops the passive voice and blazes right along. Seriously, the difference before and after "Adventure Hook" reads like two different writers wrote both parts. Passive voice still creeps in here and there, while the occasional run on weakens the writing.
Is the adventure clearly understandable?
Its a slow read, due to the above and the below.
As for running it, assuming the editing and writing for the last three paragraphs (where backstory ends and the adventure begins) cleaned it up, it would be fairly easy to run. As is, I would break it down into bullet points to keep track of it.
Is the editing appealing or at least legible? Are there typos?
The second sentence in the first paragraph is a run-on sentence, as is the second. Several of the loooong paragraphs could probably have been broken up as giant blocks of text like that can lead to reader fatigue. Breaking them up and avoiding long sentence after long sentence after long sentence would do a lot to help with this.
White space. Short, punchy sentences mixed with longer ones. Each paragraph ideally focuses on one idea while each sentence does even more so. Long sentences with multiple ideas in long paragraphs with multiple ideas makes accessing the cool stuff you have here much more difficult.
Playability
Do the players' choices or, at the very least, their presence in the adventure matter?
So, if they don't show up at all, what happens? The siege goes on indefinitely. Nothing really changes, but in this case, that is bad news for people on the surface. On the minus side, if they do help, they'll probably end up giving one side or the other a device capable of teleporting more darkness to the surface, which is a fun twist. (The PCs in my current campaign inadvertently helped created a death cult then accidentally gave them the map to a portal network in somewhat similar fashion).
The players' choices are where this really shines. I dinged Imonhotepthewise's Preacher for having 90% backstory to 10% adventure. This one does 70% to 30%, but that's a change from 75 words to 450 and that's enough – plus the backstory including the rough layout of the fortress – to make this much more doable for the GM.
Here's what PCs have to figure out: Do I side with the beholder or the drow? If we work with one or the other, how do we help them win? Maybe instead, we try to wipe out both straight up, get them to fight and finish off whatever's left, or maybe see if we can mediate? Will they backstab me at some point in the process if I work with them?
Hard decisions = good games.
Only issue is it could use a couple more defined encounters or situations as right now there's good stuff, but the GM is going to have to come up with a fair bit on the fly.
Is all the cool stuff buried in the backstory or do the players get to see it too?
Most of the cool stuff here is the decisions the players have to make, so, yes.
Would this be fun and exciting to run?
The only downside is some options might be a bit too fast. What if they convince both sides to sit down, ace some skill rolls and/or lay down some savvy persuasion, and get it resolved the first hour of the session? Sure the GM can throw in some wrenches, but as-written, there seem to be few blocks to this approach going off too easily.
Any of the fight-it-out options look interesting, layered, and deep enough to make for a fun session. Helping brew golem glue is fun and watching the PCs get punted into drider webbing and squirm is good GM fun. Watching their faces as you plunk down a cyborg beholder would be priceless too.
How easy (or difficult) would this be to GM?
Most of the difficulty stems from all the choices being crammed together into two fairly long paragraphs. This is mostly an editing issue, not a content issue.
If it is linear, does it hide it well or will players complain about railroading? If it is more free-form, is there still enough structure that the GM can still run it without a ton of extra effort?
This has just about the sweet spot for choice in an adventure, though I think a couple hundred words of extra back story could be trimmed to fatten it up a bit, drop some more complications (especially to the negotiation angle), twists, and battle surprises into the mix. Saying it could have more of a good thing is a fairly minor critique, however, and so far this is the strongest adventure playability-wise I've read in the competition so far.
The Rules
Was it turned in on time? Is the word count within limits?
Yes and yes. Maybe you have a stingy word counter, but mine says you have 70 words left to spend or so.
Are any ingredients used in an especially creative way? Was it clear what each ingredient was or were any obscure or vague? How essential are the ingredients: if I changed the words in any ingredient, would they no longer work? How interwoven were the ingredients with each other and how essential was each to the adventure?
One by one:
Heir to Nothing: D'roal, expected of and expecting nothing. Works. His main feature seems to be his co-dependent relationship, however. If it said he was trying to prove himself worthwhile if he was seeking a better position, it would be much stronger.
Silken Wallpaper: The spider-silk webbing on the walls of the fortress. It's not essential (and will be missed if the PCs negotiate), but is fun and cruel enough to be worthwhile.
Useless Glue: Drider bile, golem glue. It's glue in that it's supposed to gum up the golem, useless in that it doesn't. Interesting because maybe the PCs can fix it to work. Pretty Strong. Only weakness might be why they think in the first place glue might work? I guess they're desperate. Not sure why it has to be glue to stop the golem, they could equally be using Massive Webs or Weak Chains or something.
Headless Hunter: The iron golem. Necessarily headless because it's the vehicle for a floating head (unless you go Krang TMNT-style!) It hunts after the drow when they steal the machine. Only quibble with the headless part – he never seems to ride it and Beholders can levitate. If Eyz'la was somehow cursed to not levitate and was forced to ride it, this would be much stronger as it's primary purpose is the hunter part with the headlessness being weaker.
Gutted Machine: The teleportation portal, whose stolen innards stop it from functioning and are an essential part of the issue. However, that Eyz'la and an army of dorogur can follow in a day from the frickin' Underdark, sounds like Eyz'la already knows pretty powerful teleport spell(s) so not sure exactly why he needs this.
Star-crossed Book: The spellbook D'roal stole back for his lover that started the whole thing. Star-crossed means "ill-fated", which I guess his gambit turned out to be. Aside from the McGuffin, it doesn't see much play in the actual adventure however.
Lazy Eye: A beholder is essentially a large floating eyeball sprouting eyeballs, so this works. He's lazy in that he doesn't want to follow through with the hard work of a battle, though not so lazy he won't teleport an army of doogoor to a random place on the surface to get his book back.
All-in-all, uses are pretty decent.
Summing up the adventure with them included: The Heir to Nothing steals the Star-crossed Book and flees the Lazy Eye's Headless Hunter by fleeing with and through the Gutted Machine, hoping to stop his pursuer's forces with Silken Wallpaper and Useless Glue.
Didn't have to stretch too much to get it all to fit.
Let's try replacing some stuff: The Codependent Thief steals the Star-crossed Book and flees the Lazy eye's Iron Hunter by fleeing with and through the Gutted Machine, hoping to stop his pursuer's forces with Invisible Walls and Weak Chains.
Summary
Though the setting/enemies are really not my favorite and the writing was tiring to read and difficult to skim to find specific parts, the ingredients are well integrated with one another and hold up pretty well on closer examination.
Where this adventure truly shines, however, is that players have actual, meaningful choices that have a huge effect on how the adventure plays out. In playability, at least, this is the strongest adventure I've seen so far.[/sblock]
[sblock=Comparison]We have LongGoneWriter's Corporate Downsizing(hereafter Corporate) against Duece Traveler's Get Ye to the Underdark (hereafter Underdark).
Appeal
Cool Factors – We have a beholder that might ride an iron golem and a standoff at a fortress vs infiltrating a tower and fighting an unkillable cyberzombie with the aid of an assaultaur. I'm giving a bit of an edge to Corporate on this one.
Other Appeal – The writing in Corporate is clean (see Writing Levels below); it conveys the adventure contents cleanly and well. Underdark took me at least thirty minutes longer to judge just because the reading was slower and finding information in the long, dense paragraphs was harder. I actually just counted and both have 10 paragraphs, so that underscores how much cleaner and clearer Corporate's writing is.
Corporate takes this section easily.
Playability
Players matter and have choices – In Corporate, Glue dies, Eye and the Spirit don't even need to get involved, Toyroshi comes across as invulnerable, everything gets nuked from orbit in the end no matter what happens, and the players' reward has nothing to do with how well or poorly they did. In Underdark, the adventure is what the players choose to do. Who do they side with, if anyone? How do they help them win? Do they trust the blatant bad guys they are teaming up with?
Easily taken by Underdark.
Other Playability – Corporate is such an easier read, it's fortunate for Underdark that the actual played part of the adventure is crammed into three dense paragraphs so even if it can be hard to find what you're looking for, it's all right there. Underdark would be a bit harder to run, but it makes up for it by being more fun to run as there's more stuff going on, more tough decisions and a few neat twists (glue, webs, golemholder) to give even the battles a bit of a surprise (assuming they fight rather than talk).
Underdark takes this section by a bit.
Rules
Time and work count – Underdark had both, Corporate was over on word count (at least with 4/5 word counters used).
Ingredients – Though Corporate had probably the single strongest ingredient I've seen so far (the Gutted Machine), a couple of its ingredients were Proper Nouns with a hint of more (centaur = 1/2 horse = glue, security hacker = (marginally) watching cameras = eye), one does its best to stay out of the adventure, and the rest are decent.
Underdark had two McGuffins that almost entirely feature in the back story and the PCs will probably never even see them, and the rest are pretty solid. Underdark has a slight edge here, but on interconnectivity Underdark pulls away a tiny bit more.
Corporate has two ingredients (including the strongest) as the same thing, one as his son, while the rest sadly aren't central to the adventure; a security guy that doesn't do his job, a guardian that can be avoided, a book that no one would think to use, and a rival whose only use is to warn PCs the final boss is invulnerable.
Underdark's McGuffins are both at the heart of the crisis at least, two are the opponents on either side of the battle, and three are the weapons they will use against each other in the looming battle.
Underdark takes this section by a few words and a slice.[/sblock]
[sblock=Conclusion]I was so excited that we had a scifi entry to break up the overwhelming majority of fantasy adventures. When I first read it and it was actually clean and readable, another notch. After five(six?) hours of analysis, sadly not to be.
Corporate had probably the best writing any of the adventures I've judged (though Imonhotepthewise's Preacher wasn't too far behind), but it suffered from non-essential or overpowered NPCs, a silver-bullet I can't see ever being fired, an ending that makes whatever the PCs just accomplished (or failed at) worthless, then gives them the same reward whatever they did.
Underdark was a slow read, heavy on passive voice (especially in the beginning) that offered the best actual adventure-in-play of anything in the competition thus far.
Both had a couple ingredients that were only weakly involved in the adventure, a couple that were solid, and one or two that could have been left out without really changing much. Underdark wove them together a bit better, clinching the deal.
@Deuce Traveler moves on to the Final. [MENTION=6857996]LongGoneWrier[/MENTION], thanks for migrating over from reddit for a bit to share your writing and creativity skills with us. Hope you come back next year and grace us with more![/sblock]
One down side of these long analysis I do is I get really down-and-dirty with the entries and probably excessively critical of them (it takes at least two hours per entry, plus another hour or more for comparison and conclusion) . This can lead me to a strange meta-judging state where I try to figure out once I've picked out all the flaws what ingredients done perfectly actually look like and how ingredients would link together as Platonic Ingredients.
Should the ingredient be just clever, does it need to be well anchored in the back story, or does it have to be integral to the adventure too? Is it weak if it can be bypassed or isn't essential? What if it ties together other ingredients? If these seem exceptionally harsh or nit-picky it's because I'm so far down the rabbit hole by the end that sometimes I can't remember what the rabbit I'm looking for was supposed to look like...
That's it's almost 4am doesn't help things.
[sblock=Writing Levels]1) Garbled – itsomis peled an broknupu ca nbarl e red wht th heell thayre saying
2) Garbage – they right whatevs; extra or 000 punctuation's and seeminglly no idea. Whare, it goes. Wall o' text or rand
om carriage! Returns....
3) Difficult – The reading you have the capacity to do, but it can be slow, either due to really really long sentences and/or paragraphs, also run-ons; also might be pedantic or excessively, extensively, positively erudite, repetitive, repeating; it is still mostly readable, but by the end of a sentence, you're probably a bit tired of trying to keep track of everything you read: like this one.
4) Decent – Nothing exceptional. It might be a bit bland, but its readable. By the end, maybe you're a bit tired or bored, but you can get through it. Remembering the ideas in it, maybe not so much.
5) Clean – The writing is solid. It's well paced, interesting, a mix of long and short sentences. Each sentence contains one clear idea. White space is used, and used well. Good writing draws no attention to itself; its transparency lets you directly access the content.
6) Active – Writing reaches out of the page, grips your attention in a vice and hurtles it across the page. Your reading rate kicks up a notch and hauls your pulse with it. Active writing perfectly executed trembles with emotion, racing with action before exploding in a flurry of excitement.
And then, when the time is right, it knows just when to slow down and breathe. Time to rest, room to relax, space to stretch out. Then ready yourself for whatever unknown lies undiscovered beyond the horizon of the next page.
7?) Poetic – These words are poured through a crucible, flowing molten into exactly the right curve and texture that best pleases the senses. The writer forges them with absolute care. Honing, refining. Cutting away every unessential word.
Until pure essence remains.
Or... a rich embroidery, a luxurious sable fringe that lets you luxuriate in the language, enriching it in subtle ways, calling attention to itself in just such a way to flatter the idea at the heart of the matter...
Or falls flat on its f*&king ass, dawg, and ruins the whole goddamn thing.[/sblock]
Let me preface this by saying I have a few personal biases in this match that I'm going to work very hard at not swaying me as a judge:
1) I love scifi roleplaying games. After I tried to run a Shadowrun Campaign, we called the game "Unkillable Troll, the Intense Over-specialization RPG" (maybe 5E fixed this), but that you even entered a scifi adventure made me grin since they happen so rarely in the contest. Modern zombie/vampire adventures we see once in a while, but scifi? Rare mojo.
2) Fantasy names where every name has apos'trophe or t'w'o is a huge pet-peeve of mine and I struggle (often in vain) to finish novels that do this regularly. Ironically, the
3) I don't understand people's fascination with drow and the Underdark in general. Neither ever existed in my fifteen years of D&D campaigns and, barring the rare beholder or glowing mushroom, Underdark staples like drow and dogoorar never have either.
That stated, I was pleasantly surprised (and relieved) that both adventures are readable – though one's writing superior to the other, as we'll get to later – well edited, interesting, and both seem to be complete adventures. You had double the words to do it with, so I'd hope so. Man was that first round difficult to judge.
They both look pretty solid (pre-analysis), so you may have made my job challenging yet again.
Let's get started.
[sblock=Corporate Downsizing]Does it have any "cool factors" - things that will elicit "neat", "cool", "awesome", or, best of all: "wow!"?
Busting into a corporate mega-tower to steal or destroy the Immortality Project while avoiding or co-opting a battle-centaur only to face down a cyber-zombie. That's pretty neat (and pretty easy to sum up).
Does it seem like an adventure that would be fun to play and an interesting premise to pitch to players?
The pitch is easy – one advantage of choosing Shadowrun as there's a pretty set "we're a team of covert-ops cyber-mercenaries" episodic shtick that makes setting them off on an adventure as easy as having a Mr. Johnson show up with a mission and some nuyen. As far as fun for players, let's see what they get to do:
They get the job, scope out the place, bust in, discover there's almost no security, run from, fight, or co-opt a centaurborg, take on a cyberzombie in a temple penthouse with spirit-walls, fight an unkillable cybertank, and kill it with poetry before a sattelite nukes the place from orbit. It sounds fun, only part that might make it more fun is if there was more challenge before the nigh-unstoppable tank shows up.
The hacker doesn't fight them, the drones are easy to avoid (and the hacker operating them doesn't care much), the centaur sounds easily avoidable or cooperative, the spirit guardian only fights if they are breaking stuff, and the cyberzombie sounds like something beyond their ability to kill unless they figure out its only weakness is bad poetry or flee from it. If they like chase scenes running from unstoppable enemies, they'll enjoy this I suppose.
Pacing-wise, is seems to run little to no challenge until the climax where they learn that this thing fights even with no head and either take it out with a silver bullet or have to run; I.E. little challenge jumping suddenly to impossible challenge. This could come across as fun, but I can see it just as easily be frustrating. No one really has a challenge to push them or feel cool defeating until they run into something they can't beat unless they figure out the kill-switch the GM threw in to do it for them OR until Mr. Johnson calls and says he'll do it from orbit...
Lastly, the Eye seems to be a marginal threat if any and seems to be little more help if they ask while the guardian spirit is similar. Without pretty serious GM hints, I doubt players will get to spout poetry at the half-metal murder monster ripping people in half.
Is the entry fun to read or at least easy?
It was an easy, well-written, quick read. The writing is transparent: it gets out of the way to present no barrier to accessing content. This is perfectly that.
The whole scenario is interesting and entertaining.
Is the adventure clearly understandable?
The corporate politics took a couple read-throughs to get and I'm not sure how Jiro's plan is supposed to work. He's got a fraudulent immortality project he's trying to sell, so to cover it up and save face(?), he has shadowrunners steal or delete it? Either way, wouldn't that make Renraku back out of the takeover as the one thing they wanted from the company is gone either way? To top it off, he eventually nukes his own building to get rid of everything anyway – I'm assuming this was because he didn't realize what his father had become until The Eye transmits some footage of the paterfamilia's headless rampage?
Is the editing appealing or at least legible? Are there typos?
Editing was clean, well-organized, and I don't remember a single typo.
Playability
Do the players' choices or, at the very least, their presence in the adventure matter?
Without their presence, Jiro would probably just hire another group of shadowrunners, but this is the shtick for Shadowrun, so it kind-of renders this question null. Still, if they succeed at everything, get the records, take down Toyoshi, they get paid for staying silent after the building is vaporized. If they fail at everything, don't find the records, run from Toyoshi (and live), they get paid for staying silent after the building is vaporized. They only real difference is how much damage they take and whether they randomly get the zombie-chunk bonus because someone's a trophy collector – they were sent to get records, not harvest cyborgs after all.
Usually not a huge sign of an adventure's strength when it turns out almost exactly the same whether they succeed or fail.
As for choices, their most interesting choice is what to do with Glue, though he dies no matter what – either they kill him or Toyoshi does – the only difference is whether he shows them how much of a threat the zombie tank is first.
Is all the cool stuff buried in the backstory or do the players get to see it too?
Good news, most of the best stuff is what they deal with, unless they are into the nitty-gritty of mega-corporate politics, I guess.
Would this be fun and exciting to run?
I'm not sure it would be. For interesting characters to play with, I have Mr.
Part of the fun of GMing (for me at least) is watching the players squirm when faced with tough decisions and watching how creatively (or stupidly) they handle crisis. Here, the main choice they seem to have is what to do with Uselysses, and he dies whatever they choose anyway.
How easy (or difficult) would this be to GM?
It would be pretty easy, though unfortunately that's because not really much happens. Watch, break in, dodge some drones, fight or avoid Glue, loot a room, fight or avoid a boss, run, get paid regardless.
If it is linear, does it hide it well or will players complain about railroading? If it is more free-form, is there still enough structure that the GM can still run it without a ton of extra effort?
It's not a pure railroad as they could choose to sneak or go in blasting, fight, join, or avoid Glue, fight or coerce the Spirit/The Eye, fight or run from Toyoshi. Since the major outcomes are the same regardless of what they do, it might as well be, however.
The Rules
Was it turned in on time? Is the word count within limits?
On time. My main word counter gives 1504 words, so I tried a few others on the internet. I got 1512, 1503, 1484, 1503. Most of them are over by about "A fifth edition Shadowrun adventure" which is above the ingredients list (and is NOT free) and so it was probably forgotten during the final edits? Technically (and I'm a technical sort of judge) it's over the word limit.
Are any ingredients used in an especially creative way? Was it clear what each ingredient was or were any obscure or vague? How essential are the ingredients: if I changed the words in any ingredient, would they no longer work? How interwoven were the ingredients with each other and how essential was each to the adventure?
One by one:
Heir to Nothing: This is Jiro who is indeed the heir to Ikeda. He's the son and not on the board or a shareholder or anything so he is an heir and, since the company has no value left (especially after the orbital strike – though they seem to have an orbital laser or kinetic lance or whatever, how much is that worth?)
Silken Wallpaper: The hangings in the penthouse that the spirit inhabited. While it is somewhat relevant, this could have been Paper Screens or Bamboo Stands or any number of other things that a spirit might be bound to and that the cyberzombie might smash. There doesn't seem to be anything that requires it be Silken or Wallpaper and the most important part of it is the spirit not the silk.
Useless Glue: The centaur is glue because of GM fiat. I find making something a clue because you name it some part of the clue to be one of the weakest uses. Sure, horses have a lot of collagen and thus are useful for glue, but this is not only a centaur, but he's never used in that way (if Toyoshi had smeared him into fine paste, that still wouldn't quite count) as he's not used to adhere things, even metaphorically. Also, his cutting off the cyberzombie's head makes him at least slightly useful in giving the PCs a way of gauging the level of fight they are in for. If he had died before doing anything, it would have made the ingredient stronger as he would have been truly useless.
Headless Hunter: Toyoshi is hunting his son, but his attacking everyone on sight makes this somewhat weaker as most hunters are targeting specific prey and he's more of a ravager, destroyer, berserker. I guess he does target the holder of the book if he sees they have it, anyway. While he does lose his head, that is not his main feature and if the PCs killed Glue in an altercation before he woke up, it doesn't happen anyway. Also the Gutted Machine.
Gutted Machine: This is a great ingredient. Not only his Toyoshi a machine with actual intestines (a very creative interpretation), but if the PCs somehow figure out the poetry-slam attack, he guts himself. This is how you do ingredients in IronDM. Also the Headless hunter.
Star-crossed Book: The book of poetry that can be used to make
Lazy Eye: This has the same problems as Glue and is only slightly stronger. His name is Eye and, while he does watch security, his watching has almost no effect in the adventure. If the PCs don't destroy anything, he could be asleep, eyeless, dead, or just not there. His essential nature is that of a hacker, not an eye. If he were a private detective (private eye) following them or something but couldn't be bothered to do something about it, that would be much stronger.
Two of these are only there by vague association and "Proper-nouning." One is about as strong an ingredient as I've seen. The rest are about as good as you can expect.
Let's try the ol' sentence summary of the adventure using all the ingredients: The PCs hired by the Heir to Nothing to steal information, facing down the Headless Hunter that crashes through Silken Wallpaper after killing Useless Glue and maybe hindered by the Lazy Eye before possibly becoming a Gutted Machine by an unlikely use of the Star-crossed Book.
Now replacing the weaker ingredients with other possibilities: The PCs are hired by the Heir to Nothing to steal information, facing down the Metal Berseker that crashes through the Paper Screens after killing a Green Berserker and maybe hindered by an Unpaid Hacker before possibly becoming a Gutted Machine by an unlikely use of the Star-crossed Book.
Maybes, possiblies, and unlikelys are not optimal.
Summary
I really liked this adventure at first glance and, it being scifi, was really hoping it would be awesome if only to inspire other people to write more scifi adventures. Unfortunately, it suffered from weak NPCs A to E:
A) dies no matter what (though not completely uselessly, ironically)
B) hires the PCs, then resolves everything no matter what they do with an orbital slug
C) is an invulnerable death machine, unless PCs somehow figure out his (bizarre) silver bullet
D) doesn't even care the adventure is happening and might not even get involved
E) is sentient wallpaper
While the PCs do have some freedom of approach and method, the fact that the final boss is essentially undefeatable, the mission ends identically no matter what they do, and the only influence they have on their reward has more to do with whether they consider body parts loot than their level of success make the PCs choices essentially irrelevant in the end.
Pro-tip, when writing adventures, don't have the NPCs fix everything themselves in the end as it eliminates the need for the characters, creating both PC motivation issues and NPC logic issues (like how is Jiro going to explain blowing up his own skyscraper to Renroku? Guess he couldn't figure it out either, so that's why he took off.)[/sblock]
[sblock=Get Ye to the Underdark]Does it have any "cool factors" - things that will elicit "neat", "cool", "awesome", or, best of all: "wow!"?
The iron golem with a beholder literally at the helm was cool. Dancing between a couple warring factions and playing on or both sides is fun (even if they are drow and dorogoor).
Does it seem like an adventure that would be fun to play and an interesting premise to pitch to players?
The old Earl of Ruchland walks up. "Wondering if you might be the sort to help me out. Got me a little problem with an army of underelves and spidermen falling out of a hole in the sky and filling up my fortress. That ain't bad enough, they's besieged by a tentacled eye ridin' a metal monster with an army of durro... dergu... dark dwarves. Might be a reward if you can reckon how to get rid of 'em and I get my castle back?"
Is the entry fun to read or at least easy?
There are a lot of "has""was""had" in the backstory, making it a slog to read. This is known in the writing biz as Passive Voice and is generally regarded as a Bad Thing. Let's take rewrite the first paragraph in active voice (and fixing the run-on sentences):
"D'roal greatly disappointed his drow family, repeatedly exceeding their expectations by surviving into adulthood. Born into a strongly matriarchal society, the fourth male child of a minor noble house looks forward to no aristocratic title, no military rank, and no religious function. Instead, the matriarchs dispatched him again and again in hopes of securing him a glorious death in battle, again and again disappointed at his embarrassingly victorious-yet-unsung returns."
A bit more:
"D'roal's magnetic attraction to S'aznn, the older, married matriach of a strong noble house, spawned conspiratorial whispers of their co-dependency and, thus, weakness."
It's almost the same content, but not only does it shave about 15% of the word count off, its a much more interesting, compelling read.
Ironically, when you shift to present tense, your writing suddenly drops the passive voice and blazes right along. Seriously, the difference before and after "Adventure Hook" reads like two different writers wrote both parts. Passive voice still creeps in here and there, while the occasional run on weakens the writing.
Is the adventure clearly understandable?
Its a slow read, due to the above and the below.
As for running it, assuming the editing and writing for the last three paragraphs (where backstory ends and the adventure begins) cleaned it up, it would be fairly easy to run. As is, I would break it down into bullet points to keep track of it.
Is the editing appealing or at least legible? Are there typos?
The second sentence in the first paragraph is a run-on sentence, as is the second. Several of the loooong paragraphs could probably have been broken up as giant blocks of text like that can lead to reader fatigue. Breaking them up and avoiding long sentence after long sentence after long sentence would do a lot to help with this.
White space. Short, punchy sentences mixed with longer ones. Each paragraph ideally focuses on one idea while each sentence does even more so. Long sentences with multiple ideas in long paragraphs with multiple ideas makes accessing the cool stuff you have here much more difficult.
Playability
Do the players' choices or, at the very least, their presence in the adventure matter?
So, if they don't show up at all, what happens? The siege goes on indefinitely. Nothing really changes, but in this case, that is bad news for people on the surface. On the minus side, if they do help, they'll probably end up giving one side or the other a device capable of teleporting more darkness to the surface, which is a fun twist. (The PCs in my current campaign inadvertently helped created a death cult then accidentally gave them the map to a portal network in somewhat similar fashion).
The players' choices are where this really shines. I dinged Imonhotepthewise's Preacher for having 90% backstory to 10% adventure. This one does 70% to 30%, but that's a change from 75 words to 450 and that's enough – plus the backstory including the rough layout of the fortress – to make this much more doable for the GM.
Here's what PCs have to figure out: Do I side with the beholder or the drow? If we work with one or the other, how do we help them win? Maybe instead, we try to wipe out both straight up, get them to fight and finish off whatever's left, or maybe see if we can mediate? Will they backstab me at some point in the process if I work with them?
Hard decisions = good games.
Only issue is it could use a couple more defined encounters or situations as right now there's good stuff, but the GM is going to have to come up with a fair bit on the fly.
Is all the cool stuff buried in the backstory or do the players get to see it too?
Most of the cool stuff here is the decisions the players have to make, so, yes.
Would this be fun and exciting to run?
The only downside is some options might be a bit too fast. What if they convince both sides to sit down, ace some skill rolls and/or lay down some savvy persuasion, and get it resolved the first hour of the session? Sure the GM can throw in some wrenches, but as-written, there seem to be few blocks to this approach going off too easily.
Any of the fight-it-out options look interesting, layered, and deep enough to make for a fun session. Helping brew golem glue is fun and watching the PCs get punted into drider webbing and squirm is good GM fun. Watching their faces as you plunk down a cyborg beholder would be priceless too.
How easy (or difficult) would this be to GM?
Most of the difficulty stems from all the choices being crammed together into two fairly long paragraphs. This is mostly an editing issue, not a content issue.
If it is linear, does it hide it well or will players complain about railroading? If it is more free-form, is there still enough structure that the GM can still run it without a ton of extra effort?
This has just about the sweet spot for choice in an adventure, though I think a couple hundred words of extra back story could be trimmed to fatten it up a bit, drop some more complications (especially to the negotiation angle), twists, and battle surprises into the mix. Saying it could have more of a good thing is a fairly minor critique, however, and so far this is the strongest adventure playability-wise I've read in the competition so far.
The Rules
Was it turned in on time? Is the word count within limits?
Yes and yes. Maybe you have a stingy word counter, but mine says you have 70 words left to spend or so.
Are any ingredients used in an especially creative way? Was it clear what each ingredient was or were any obscure or vague? How essential are the ingredients: if I changed the words in any ingredient, would they no longer work? How interwoven were the ingredients with each other and how essential was each to the adventure?
One by one:
Heir to Nothing: D'roal, expected of and expecting nothing. Works. His main feature seems to be his co-dependent relationship, however. If it said he was trying to prove himself worthwhile if he was seeking a better position, it would be much stronger.
Silken Wallpaper: The spider-silk webbing on the walls of the fortress. It's not essential (and will be missed if the PCs negotiate), but is fun and cruel enough to be worthwhile.
Useless Glue: Drider bile, golem glue. It's glue in that it's supposed to gum up the golem, useless in that it doesn't. Interesting because maybe the PCs can fix it to work. Pretty Strong. Only weakness might be why they think in the first place glue might work? I guess they're desperate. Not sure why it has to be glue to stop the golem, they could equally be using Massive Webs or Weak Chains or something.
Headless Hunter: The iron golem. Necessarily headless because it's the vehicle for a floating head (unless you go Krang TMNT-style!) It hunts after the drow when they steal the machine. Only quibble with the headless part – he never seems to ride it and Beholders can levitate. If Eyz'la was somehow cursed to not levitate and was forced to ride it, this would be much stronger as it's primary purpose is the hunter part with the headlessness being weaker.
Gutted Machine: The teleportation portal, whose stolen innards stop it from functioning and are an essential part of the issue. However, that Eyz'la and an army of dorogur can follow in a day from the frickin' Underdark, sounds like Eyz'la already knows pretty powerful teleport spell(s) so not sure exactly why he needs this.
Star-crossed Book: The spellbook D'roal stole back for his lover that started the whole thing. Star-crossed means "ill-fated", which I guess his gambit turned out to be. Aside from the McGuffin, it doesn't see much play in the actual adventure however.
Lazy Eye: A beholder is essentially a large floating eyeball sprouting eyeballs, so this works. He's lazy in that he doesn't want to follow through with the hard work of a battle, though not so lazy he won't teleport an army of doogoor to a random place on the surface to get his book back.
All-in-all, uses are pretty decent.
Summing up the adventure with them included: The Heir to Nothing steals the Star-crossed Book and flees the Lazy Eye's Headless Hunter by fleeing with and through the Gutted Machine, hoping to stop his pursuer's forces with Silken Wallpaper and Useless Glue.
Didn't have to stretch too much to get it all to fit.
Let's try replacing some stuff: The Codependent Thief steals the Star-crossed Book and flees the Lazy eye's Iron Hunter by fleeing with and through the Gutted Machine, hoping to stop his pursuer's forces with Invisible Walls and Weak Chains.
Summary
Though the setting/enemies are really not my favorite and the writing was tiring to read and difficult to skim to find specific parts, the ingredients are well integrated with one another and hold up pretty well on closer examination.
Where this adventure truly shines, however, is that players have actual, meaningful choices that have a huge effect on how the adventure plays out. In playability, at least, this is the strongest adventure I've seen so far.[/sblock]
[sblock=Comparison]We have LongGoneWriter's Corporate Downsizing(hereafter Corporate) against Duece Traveler's Get Ye to the Underdark (hereafter Underdark).
Appeal
Cool Factors – We have a beholder that might ride an iron golem and a standoff at a fortress vs infiltrating a tower and fighting an unkillable cyberzombie with the aid of an assaultaur. I'm giving a bit of an edge to Corporate on this one.
Other Appeal – The writing in Corporate is clean (see Writing Levels below); it conveys the adventure contents cleanly and well. Underdark took me at least thirty minutes longer to judge just because the reading was slower and finding information in the long, dense paragraphs was harder. I actually just counted and both have 10 paragraphs, so that underscores how much cleaner and clearer Corporate's writing is.
Corporate takes this section easily.
Playability
Players matter and have choices – In Corporate, Glue dies, Eye and the Spirit don't even need to get involved, Toyroshi comes across as invulnerable, everything gets nuked from orbit in the end no matter what happens, and the players' reward has nothing to do with how well or poorly they did. In Underdark, the adventure is what the players choose to do. Who do they side with, if anyone? How do they help them win? Do they trust the blatant bad guys they are teaming up with?
Easily taken by Underdark.
Other Playability – Corporate is such an easier read, it's fortunate for Underdark that the actual played part of the adventure is crammed into three dense paragraphs so even if it can be hard to find what you're looking for, it's all right there. Underdark would be a bit harder to run, but it makes up for it by being more fun to run as there's more stuff going on, more tough decisions and a few neat twists (glue, webs, golemholder) to give even the battles a bit of a surprise (assuming they fight rather than talk).
Underdark takes this section by a bit.
Rules
Time and work count – Underdark had both, Corporate was over on word count (at least with 4/5 word counters used).
Ingredients – Though Corporate had probably the single strongest ingredient I've seen so far (the Gutted Machine), a couple of its ingredients were Proper Nouns with a hint of more (centaur = 1/2 horse = glue, security hacker = (marginally) watching cameras = eye), one does its best to stay out of the adventure, and the rest are decent.
Underdark had two McGuffins that almost entirely feature in the back story and the PCs will probably never even see them, and the rest are pretty solid. Underdark has a slight edge here, but on interconnectivity Underdark pulls away a tiny bit more.
Corporate has two ingredients (including the strongest) as the same thing, one as his son, while the rest sadly aren't central to the adventure; a security guy that doesn't do his job, a guardian that can be avoided, a book that no one would think to use, and a rival whose only use is to warn PCs the final boss is invulnerable.
Underdark's McGuffins are both at the heart of the crisis at least, two are the opponents on either side of the battle, and three are the weapons they will use against each other in the looming battle.
Underdark takes this section by a few words and a slice.[/sblock]
[sblock=Conclusion]I was so excited that we had a scifi entry to break up the overwhelming majority of fantasy adventures. When I first read it and it was actually clean and readable, another notch. After five(six?) hours of analysis, sadly not to be.
Corporate had probably the best writing any of the adventures I've judged (though Imonhotepthewise's Preacher wasn't too far behind), but it suffered from non-essential or overpowered NPCs, a silver-bullet I can't see ever being fired, an ending that makes whatever the PCs just accomplished (or failed at) worthless, then gives them the same reward whatever they did.
Underdark was a slow read, heavy on passive voice (especially in the beginning) that offered the best actual adventure-in-play of anything in the competition thus far.
Both had a couple ingredients that were only weakly involved in the adventure, a couple that were solid, and one or two that could have been left out without really changing much. Underdark wove them together a bit better, clinching the deal.
@Deuce Traveler moves on to the Final. [MENTION=6857996]LongGoneWrier[/MENTION], thanks for migrating over from reddit for a bit to share your writing and creativity skills with us. Hope you come back next year and grace us with more![/sblock]
One down side of these long analysis I do is I get really down-and-dirty with the entries and probably excessively critical of them (it takes at least two hours per entry, plus another hour or more for comparison and conclusion) . This can lead me to a strange meta-judging state where I try to figure out once I've picked out all the flaws what ingredients done perfectly actually look like and how ingredients would link together as Platonic Ingredients.
Should the ingredient be just clever, does it need to be well anchored in the back story, or does it have to be integral to the adventure too? Is it weak if it can be bypassed or isn't essential? What if it ties together other ingredients? If these seem exceptionally harsh or nit-picky it's because I'm so far down the rabbit hole by the end that sometimes I can't remember what the rabbit I'm looking for was supposed to look like...
That's it's almost 4am doesn't help things.
[sblock=Writing Levels]1) Garbled – itsomis peled an broknupu ca nbarl e red wht th heell thayre saying
2) Garbage – they right whatevs; extra or 000 punctuation's and seeminglly no idea. Whare, it goes. Wall o' text or rand
om carriage! Returns....
3) Difficult – The reading you have the capacity to do, but it can be slow, either due to really really long sentences and/or paragraphs, also run-ons; also might be pedantic or excessively, extensively, positively erudite, repetitive, repeating; it is still mostly readable, but by the end of a sentence, you're probably a bit tired of trying to keep track of everything you read: like this one.
4) Decent – Nothing exceptional. It might be a bit bland, but its readable. By the end, maybe you're a bit tired or bored, but you can get through it. Remembering the ideas in it, maybe not so much.
5) Clean – The writing is solid. It's well paced, interesting, a mix of long and short sentences. Each sentence contains one clear idea. White space is used, and used well. Good writing draws no attention to itself; its transparency lets you directly access the content.
6) Active – Writing reaches out of the page, grips your attention in a vice and hurtles it across the page. Your reading rate kicks up a notch and hauls your pulse with it. Active writing perfectly executed trembles with emotion, racing with action before exploding in a flurry of excitement.
And then, when the time is right, it knows just when to slow down and breathe. Time to rest, room to relax, space to stretch out. Then ready yourself for whatever unknown lies undiscovered beyond the horizon of the next page.
7?) Poetic – These words are poured through a crucible, flowing molten into exactly the right curve and texture that best pleases the senses. The writer forges them with absolute care. Honing, refining. Cutting away every unessential word.
Until pure essence remains.
Or... a rich embroidery, a luxurious sable fringe that lets you luxuriate in the language, enriching it in subtle ways, calling attention to itself in just such a way to flatter the idea at the heart of the matter...
Or falls flat on its f*&king ass, dawg, and ruins the whole goddamn thing.[/sblock]
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