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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Everett" data-source="post: 6315341" data-attributes="member: 21712">I've looked at other Story Hours from time to time.  Some of them seem interesting, but the truth is that I've never seen another story that's as across-the-board excellent as Sagiro's is.  In terms of writing, plotting -- Sagiro's writing is clear and moves through complex dialectical arguments without ever being dull or pedantic. (This is also to the players' credit, of course.  I'm thinking of the episode when the Company had sworn to give up the Crosser's Maze, but couldn't do because it was part of Aravis' physiology.  Ernie uttered an on-the-spot profundity: “Wanting the Crosser’s Maze is like wanting the ocean.  You can see it, but you cannot hold it. You cannot control it, and no more could we bring it to you, than we could bring the ocean.”) The fights are filled with D&D specific-mechanics, but the mechanics never overpower the storytelling, as they do in many other campaigns; the mechanics instead serve plot points that actually mean something.  Think of the company's transition from low to high-level play, which was marked by the archmages giving up their powers, leaving the company as Charagan's pre-dominant heroes.  Think of how that was mirrored by the transition we just saw into epic level play, after the Thousandfold, when the company was supported by Abernia itself.  Memorable villains -- Moirel, Condor, Shreen, Belshikun, Octesian -- and characters who only serve a particular story arc feel just as individual and real.  Praska, Mokad, the divine animal-rings of Abernia... Even one-shot characters linger in the mind.  There's a woman who appeared for half a page, in Bakersfield, before the "lightless room" and One Certain Step's sacrifice, who I've never forgotten.  I just looked her up (StevenAC's collected makes it pretty easy to find this stuff) -- her name was Spindra.  She believed that everyone there was suffering their deserved punishment because they had all been consigned to hell.  She had no particular plot function to serve, but her presence for half a page added volumes of dimension and depth to my engagement with the story.It's just the best thing ever.</blockquote>

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