BLACKDIRGE
Adventurer
Pants said:
I think my stroy hour is one of the few that is 100% non-game related fiction, but I could be wrong.
Dirge
Successful Story Hours - a simple analysis (raised from the thread)
- Thread starter der_kluge
- Start date
I think my stroy hour is one of the few that is 100% non-game related fiction, but I could be wrong.
Dirge
Hi, I post under the name Paka and I...I...write a Story Hour. It started off as just a way of chronicling a game I ran in the Midnight setting.
Hi, Paka.
No, no, that wasn't the beginning. It began when I wrote short stories around the D&D games I ran. It was a homebrew world. Oh gawd, the AGONY.
Now I write the Dark Tower's Shadow story hour. I hadn't posted in months, managed to stay clean, keep away from the boards. But, but my story hour had slipped to the fifth page. After all that hard work, all that writing it was nowhere. Readers began posting, asking what was going on. I had no asnwers. The game had stalled, real life had gotten in the way.
*breaks down sobbing*
I freely admit to being a total whore for viewer count and positive comments. I check the damned thing as if I were a pofessional author and the damned thing was the New York Times Bestseller list. I freely realize that this is pathetic and admit it here to you all.
Thank you for listening.
Hi, Paka.
No, no, that wasn't the beginning. It began when I wrote short stories around the D&D games I ran. It was a homebrew world. Oh gawd, the AGONY.
Now I write the Dark Tower's Shadow story hour. I hadn't posted in months, managed to stay clean, keep away from the boards. But, but my story hour had slipped to the fifth page. After all that hard work, all that writing it was nowhere. Readers began posting, asking what was going on. I had no asnwers. The game had stalled, real life had gotten in the way.
*breaks down sobbing*
I freely admit to being a total whore for viewer count and positive comments. I check the damned thing as if I were a pofessional author and the damned thing was the New York Times Bestseller list. I freely realize that this is pathetic and admit it here to you all.
Thank you for listening.
Zad
First Post
Good point Destan. I know I always try to acknowledge a reader post, especially a new one (if one of the others hasn't done it before me.) I'm always thrilled to see a new name or an old one for that matter.
As for game vs fiction, my story (Wizardru's SH) is 95% what happened in the game. There are time where I'll embellish something that happened or fill in an "off camera" conversation for the sake of telling a good story, but the events are all driven from the story.
In game:
Me: "Ok I teleport back to Celene, visit my parents and the Queen. Anything of major interest?"
DM: "No, no new developments"
Me: "I teleport back to the camp."
In the story, that could turn into a few paragraphs probably if there's any interesting interactions that will enhance the story. As I've tried to develop my skills as a writer, I've tried to focus more on things that make good story and less on the sordid details of adventuring.
Last edited:
Thanks!
Pogre,
Appreciate that, but king? Nah...a king has too many responsibilites...maybe I am the Prince of Replies
!
As a general comment, the two metrics for measuring "success" of a particular SH are interesting, although my non-scientific gut analysis leads me to believe that Sep wins the # of comments per installment award. I agree with above posters that I don't write my SH to win a popularity contest, but to:
(1) Have an additional creative outlet
(2) Keep a record of the campaign...somewhat of an enforced discipline
(3) Share my world and ideas with others
Don't get me wrong...I love commentary and it certainly strokes the ego when people post about the SH (yes, yes more adulation please)...but that isn't the main reason I write.
My 2 coppers,
~ Old One
pogre said:
Pogre,
Appreciate that, but king? Nah...a king has too many responsibilites...maybe I am the Prince of Replies
!As a general comment, the two metrics for measuring "success" of a particular SH are interesting, although my non-scientific gut analysis leads me to believe that Sep wins the # of comments per installment award. I agree with above posters that I don't write my SH to win a popularity contest, but to:
(1) Have an additional creative outlet
(2) Keep a record of the campaign...somewhat of an enforced discipline
(3) Share my world and ideas with others
Don't get me wrong...I love commentary and it certainly strokes the ego when people post about the SH (yes, yes more adulation please
)...but that isn't the main reason I write.My 2 coppers,
~ Old One
Better check back, quick...
Rel,
Thanks, but I have to keep you interested so you can keep pimpin' Faded Glory
!
~ Old One
Rel said:I agree. In fact just today I commented in his SH after he posted a long-awaited update. He answered the question I had and prompted a further comment from me. Then he commented on my comment and I'm probably going to comment further tomorrow.
Obviously there is some point where this has to stop. But since Old One was one of the first Story Hours that I read (so inspiring that I stole his whole campaign setting and, with his blessing, wrote my own Story Hour about it), I must have also picked up this habit. Nothing pleases me more than to carry on dialogue with my readers to answer their questions and look for ideas they might have that I can incorporate into the story.
Oh and, Angcuru, I tend to write nice, chunky (if sometimes infrequent) posts to my Story Hour. If you'd care to follow the trail of links via my sig to my first Story Hour thread, you can read huge tracts of it unadulterated by other comments (it got lost in an earlier board switch so I reposted the whole thing). Not that I'm pimpin' (much)
Rel,
Thanks, but I have to keep you interested so you can keep pimpin' Faded Glory
!~ Old One
Carnifex
First Post
rigur said:
Interesting. My SH gets a relatively low rating on this 'cos its been around for quite a long time now - but a coupla times it's gone onto hiatus when I've just been too distracted by RL stuff or too busy with work. This probably hasn't helped me with retaining readers in the past, though I hope to do a better job of that this time by being fairly consistent in updating every so often without too many large gaps of time.
Plus two of my readers have now ended up as players
Wisdom Penalty
First Post
story hours - any new ones in the "Top 10"?
if you havent read this thead, it attemps to place story hours in a ranking based on page views, responses, duration, etc. they use two methods of different criteria.
the first method spits out these authors as the "Top 10":
Piratecat
Sepulchrave II
Cheiromancer
Destan
BLACKDIRGE
(contact)
Old Drew Id
Lazybones
Capellan
barsoomcore
the second ranking spits out these story hours a "Top 10":
Piratecat's Updated Story Hour! Piratecat
The Mésalliance. Sepulchrave II
Sagiro's Story Hour Returns Sagiro
Sins of Our Fathers Destan
JollyDoc's Shackled City JollyDoc
The Liberation of Tenh (contact)
Poll: DarkMatter D20: Drunk Southern Girls...jonrog1
Medallions d20 Modern Old Drew Id
Pogre's New Story Hour with Mini pics pogre
Metamorphosis - From Dretch to Demon Lord
a couple notes - cheiromancer doesn't have a story hour - his thread is a compilation of sepulchrave's story hour. so that, in effect, makes sepulchrave's a solid (but distant) #2 to piratecat. destan's story hour seems entrenched at #3. then it gets a bit random, between both lists, with some entries not appearing on both lists.
(it was mentioned earlier in this thread (but bears repeating) that this is by no means a "scientific" way to rank story hours. someone said en world used to have a voting system and took it down just to prevent this sort of needless exercise. this is based on popularity, not, um, "goodness".)
so why resurrect this thread?
well, for one, i think that numbers don't lie (all that much). readers, like myself, probably get some sort of an idea as to what story hours are the most popular. and popular usually means good.
second - and this is really my point - i wonder: do these rankings still stand?
have any newcomers busted into the Top 10? Perhaps even the Top 5?
some of the names on these lists rarely update anymore. i wonder if this has affected their position.
found a new story hour that you think can hang with the big boys? share it with us. time to spread the spotlight.
W.P.
if you havent read this thead, it attemps to place story hours in a ranking based on page views, responses, duration, etc. they use two methods of different criteria.
the first method spits out these authors as the "Top 10":
Piratecat
Sepulchrave II
Cheiromancer
Destan
BLACKDIRGE
(contact)
Old Drew Id
Lazybones
Capellan
barsoomcore
the second ranking spits out these story hours a "Top 10":
Piratecat's Updated Story Hour! Piratecat
The Mésalliance. Sepulchrave II
Sagiro's Story Hour Returns Sagiro
Sins of Our Fathers Destan
JollyDoc's Shackled City JollyDoc
The Liberation of Tenh (contact)
Poll: DarkMatter D20: Drunk Southern Girls...jonrog1
Medallions d20 Modern Old Drew Id
Pogre's New Story Hour with Mini pics pogre
Metamorphosis - From Dretch to Demon Lord
a couple notes - cheiromancer doesn't have a story hour - his thread is a compilation of sepulchrave's story hour. so that, in effect, makes sepulchrave's a solid (but distant) #2 to piratecat. destan's story hour seems entrenched at #3. then it gets a bit random, between both lists, with some entries not appearing on both lists.
(it was mentioned earlier in this thread (but bears repeating) that this is by no means a "scientific" way to rank story hours. someone said en world used to have a voting system and took it down just to prevent this sort of needless exercise. this is based on popularity, not, um, "goodness".)
so why resurrect this thread?
well, for one, i think that numbers don't lie (all that much). readers, like myself, probably get some sort of an idea as to what story hours are the most popular. and popular usually means good.
second - and this is really my point - i wonder: do these rankings still stand?
have any newcomers busted into the Top 10? Perhaps even the Top 5?
some of the names on these lists rarely update anymore. i wonder if this has affected their position.
found a new story hour that you think can hang with the big boys? share it with us. time to spread the spotlight.
W.P.
Queen_Dopplepopolis
First Post
So, this is sort of a personal plug seeing as this is my group's Story Hour... but, I do really enjoy spending time reading lots of the Story Hours... and, I think that A Kingdom of Ashes is shaping up to be really good. Even better than I anticipated when The_Universe told me he was going to start working on it (and, that's saying something because I had high expectations).
It's only in the beginning stages... but, it's really shaping up to be an incredible story... The_Universe is an amazing author and I think that y'all should check it out and see if, indeed, he can hang with the big boys...
See link in my sig.
It's only in the beginning stages... but, it's really shaping up to be an incredible story... The_Universe is an amazing author and I think that y'all should check it out and see if, indeed, he can hang with the big boys...
See link in my sig.