Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 459108" data-attributes="member: 2">The biggest problem with page views is that a low page view story hour could easily be the best one on the site, but not yet discovered by the folks who read here. That's why I love to see it when people find stories that they like, and mention it in their sigs and other threads. The more people who know about the cool, lesser-known threads, the better.I've wondered about how valuable page views are, myself. But since the vast majority of readers don't post, I think they're a valuable way for an author to find out when pewople are reading their work. To me, that outweighs any negatives.1. How many sessions deep are you into your story?The campaign is about 270 sessions old. My storyhour is roughly fifty or sixty sessions, as far as I can guesstimate. 2. How much do you value reader feedback?I think reader feedback is incredibly important. Knowing that anyone else thinks it's cool enough to comment on is what makes a lot of people keep posting.3. What percentage of your own players read the story, would you say?90%? I think they all do, but some check in less often than others.4. Do you value the page views column on the main page? If so, do you feel like jumping from a bridge when you see Piratecat's views? Hey, look! A three headed monkey!5. What's the worst in-game moment you've had to write up?Nothing embarrassing, I think. There have been a few scenes that I never thought I'd be able to do justice to in print; Malachite confronting the skeletal Aleax, for example. Those are a bitch to write up.6. What three things (single sentences each) would you say are most important in a good SH?- Good spelling and grammar, including spacing paragraphs with a blank line.- An interesting plot that other people can steal ideas from.- An entertaining, colorful or descriptive writing style.7. What "three" things (single sentences each) would you say are most important in a good SH writing style?- Skipping over the boring bits and focusing on the fun and exciting parts- More frequent short posts are much, much better than fewer long posts.- Vibrant descriptions. I want to be able to see the place, to smell it.- Communicating's the PCs personalities, without writing page after page of exact quotes and verbiage- I personally love little DM asides, rules clarifications, and amusing comments.8. How many sessions behind are you in your writing, compared to where the campaign actually is, in-game? Two and a half.9. Have you ever tried to turn events (discouraging a certain course of action, cheesing a rule, etc.) in-game for the benefit of the story hour? If so, have your players called you on it?Nope. I think I've made the game more interesting since I realized other people were reading about it, though. I certainly am more scrupulous about correctly statting out my monsters.  Although I occasionally misattribute quotes, I try really hard to not insert stuff that didn't happen.10. paste here what you would want as the first-page teaser. <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> The ghouls swarm upwards, probably eighty or a hundred scrabbling into sight. Most seem to have once been dwarves or gnomes; their small hands now sport long claws, and sharpened teeth can be seen through the rat’s nest of sparse dwarven beards. Velendo stops grumbling long enough to notice that the ground is shaking. “What the…?” Before he can do anything, the hillside under their feet erupts into a shower of dirt and a rising juggernaut of slimy, rotting gray flesh. At first the group thinks it’s an undead purple worm; as both Tao and Velendo disappear into its huge mouth, that’s certainly their first impressions. But as the creature engulfs them, they realize that they’re wrong. Like grasping cilia, the inside of the worm’s mouth is filled with ghoulish arms, clutching and tearing, and dozens of screaming heads that barely poke their way out of the fleshy wall and tongue. Someone screams. To the horror of people watching, the outside skin of the worm pulses grotesquely and then turns… shuffling itself around and revealing that each 5 ft. section of the worm’s body is the torso of a ghoul, somehow flesh-merged together. Now the worm looks more like a humongous centipede, only with ghoulish arms clutching anything nearby, instead of a centipede’s legs. The monster throws its blind snout skywards, and hundreds of half-seen gibbering mouths slobber and drool in hunger. Inside its gullet, Tao manages to lock one hand around the razor sharp bone-like protrusion of the lip; Velendo, who has never been terribly strong, isn’t as lucky. The raising of the snout breaks his grip, and dozens of clawed arms grab him and force him down the long throat, tearing at his flesh as he goes. He feels negative energy coursing through his body, and his screaming muscles lock in place.</li> </ul>And the cover art for the scene, by littlejohn!<img src="http://www.davidhendee.com/images/necropede.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />11. Give us a link, pookie. <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=779" target="_blank">Start right here!</a></blockquote>

Verification