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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 2791067" data-attributes="member: 2067">Well, I am harsh.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Perhaps I'm not your target audience, then. Most S&S fiction bores me to tears.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />  I'd try less for what others do and more for what you think you need to do for your setting. And I need to be sold on the setting, usually. To be told why to use this instead of that. And the first page or two is going to go a long way toward telling me that. Or, not. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />It's an economy of space. You've got 500 words to get my blood pumping about this setting. GO! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> The above only starts pumping as the fight happens; by about 150 words, I've already decided whether to invest a lot of time in it. Introspection doesn't, generally speaking, make me want to continue reading (though it can shed light on things I've already read).It's not so much the dropping of the names as how you drop them. Again, maybe I, as someone who's not a huge fan of Leiber or Howard, am not your target. In which case it doesn't really matter.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  But when a character goes "Yar!" I'd like to know right away what that means -- whether it's a god, whether it's a name, whether it's a dimension, a kingdom, or whether the character just thinks their a pirate. I don't have an innate curiosity about your world per se, and fiction, especially in the front, is going to have to make me curious, make me want to spend time there. It's gotta lure me in before it can expect me to accept it's terms. And if I have to do the work of reading more to find out what was being referenced in the first place, I'm like as not just to go do something else.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Too boring for me to really read, anyway. Which may be why I'm not a good audience. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> I mean, I look at it as a setting that is using fiction to try and convey what it means, rather than as something like an excerpt from a book suspended in that book's setting. As a game supplement first and a work of fiction second. So the fiction should serve the game, should introduce, color, and contextualize the information in the game. Much like a visual image, it should tell me something about the world. I don't want Piccasso to illustrate my settings, and I wouldn't want Tolkien to write fiction for it, so I don't think the art in a book has to meet or conform to those standards.It's a question of genre, in the end. And fiction in a game supplement is different than fiction that is just fiction, a novel or story. Art in a game supplement is different than art that is just art, a painting or drawing. As much as your story may follow the tropes of Sword-And-Sorcery, it isn't, primarily, a peice of sword-and-sorcery fiction. It's game supplement fiction. So it should, IMHO, follow the tropes of game supplement fiction rather than those of S&S fiction.This is all just my own theory of the situation, and I can be infuriatingly high-minded about such things, so don't think that I'm typical or anything. It may help, but you may want the reader to get something totally different out of this peice of fiction than what I am trying to get out of it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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