Winter Ceramic DM™: THE WINNER!
mythago
Hero
Round Four judgment: Cedric vs. Kesh
Maldur
Cedric with a story on loyalty, undead guidedigs and a variantion of the medusa ( lets call it a moondusa
)
Kesh with a very short story on regret and undead.
I have to go with Cedric on this one, even though the statues idea was done before, it s a nice story. But going completely the opposite of salia's technique and writing a VERY short story made Kesh's story to short for my taste( But the idea is fine, it just needs more … everything)
Judgment: Cedric
arwink
Cedric – The Garden of the Moon
Like many stories in Ceramic DM, I can’t help but escape the feeling that
Cedric’s story has been disadvantaged by the time limit on its construction.
There are a lot of great ideas in there – the garden of the moon itself and Pitr
the dead dog, but they way they are connected doesn’t quite present them as well
as it could be.
My two biggest problems with Cedric’s story largely come down to the lack of
tension, and the dialogue. The lack of tension is the hardest for me to
overcome, but after reading this story two or three times I realized that I
still had no real idea of what was at stake for the characters. The king is
missing and Edmund must find him, but I don’t ever really understand *why* it
must be Edmund and what he stands to loose if the King stays lost. The conflict
that’s driving the story is hazy, which leaves me wondering why I should
empathize with Edmund’s journey. On the surface, the story is about the search
for the king, but it needs something deeper than that to carry it. Edmund, as a
hero, seems largely to be following instructions – nothing that is resolved in
the story is really done by him. Pitr does the tracking, the Queens rose breaks
the kings enchantment, etc. Pitr comes off seeming more like a messenger than a
hero – he needs something to do that makes us realize why he, and no one else,
should be on this mission. The one place where he does seem to be necessary –
the months long trail he follows with Pitr – is glossed over so quickly that it
seems insignificant to the story.
The dialogue I may not have noticed if the tension of the story was stronger,
but combined with the lack of strong plot elements it comes off sounding flat
and lifeless. Characters here don’t talk to each other, they annunciate and
state. There is no sense of personal connection between them, no sense of
familiarity. While this appears to be done to create a sense of grandeur and
style that’s appropriate to Cedric’s setting, but it saps the life out of the
characters to hear them speaking so formally.
My favorite part of Cedric’s story is easily Pitr, the undead dog being raised
to track his former master. When I first saw this clue being put up, my gut
clenched with the thought of undead guardians, so it was nice to see the
necromantic option being used to aid the hero, albeit with a slight sense of
discomfort. I would have preferred to see this unease played up a little more,
coming through more effectively in the skeleton creatures interaction with
Edmund and the mystics that create it.
Similarly, the Garden of the Moon is handled with a nice sense of style once we
arrive there – its more fleshed out than the earlier parts of the story, and
carries a greater sense of weight than the introductory paragraphs.
Kesh – Chilled to the Bone
Kesh’s story opens with a nice sense of style, the first paragraph filled with a
sense of ambiguous menace that carries through the rest of the story nicely. He
builds the sense of dread nicely as his barbarian protagonist arrives at the
village, carefully crafting a place where something obviously bad has happened
without giving away what exactly has happened. The crossing of the snow-covered
lawn, with it’s field of bones and skulls, works particularly well for all it’s
a somewhat cliché approach to setting up danger and foreboding.
If this story has a weakness, it’s in the way it shifts gears to quickly once
the protagonist finds his statue. The idea behind it is a good one – the
ominous set-up leading into an introspective moment of guilt rather than a fight
against lingering evil – but the pay-off isn’t handled as smoothly as it could
be. The reader is told, rather than shown, how the King feels about his failure
and why he left. I’d suggest giving a greater sense of familiarity to his
knowledge of the ruined village in the earlier parts of the story (his knowledge
of the gazebo and its use is a good place where the future revelation could be
set-up, but is currently to easily dismissed as common knowledge for someone who
is even remotely familiar with the setting’s social structure). This is a minor
complaint about the story, however, and certainly only a minor detraction from
my enjoyment of it.
Kesh has crafted a brief but effective tale, one full of mood and unspoken
internal conflicts that are only just beginning to be resolved. This story
could easily be played out a little longer should Kesh choose to, giving us some
more detail on exactly why the King has returned and what he seeks to find from
his ancestral home, but can also work quite well as a suggestive first-act only
kind of story.
Judgment
Neither story has used the pictures in any way that gives them a truly
significant edge over the other to my mind, so I’m inclined to look at this
purely on the quality of the work. As a result, I have to give this round to
Kesh whose story is more focused and atmospheric than his opponents. There are
a lot of great elements to Cedric’s story, but it doesn’t hold my interest quite
as well as Kesh’s tale.
Judgment: Kesh
mythago
Maldur
Cedric with a story on loyalty, undead guidedigs and a variantion of the medusa ( lets call it a moondusa
) Kesh with a very short story on regret and undead.
I have to go with Cedric on this one, even though the statues idea was done before, it s a nice story. But going completely the opposite of salia's technique and writing a VERY short story made Kesh's story to short for my taste( But the idea is fine, it just needs more … everything)
Judgment: Cedric
arwink
Cedric – The Garden of the Moon
Like many stories in Ceramic DM, I can’t help but escape the feeling that
Cedric’s story has been disadvantaged by the time limit on its construction.
There are a lot of great ideas in there – the garden of the moon itself and Pitr
the dead dog, but they way they are connected doesn’t quite present them as well
as it could be.
My two biggest problems with Cedric’s story largely come down to the lack of
tension, and the dialogue. The lack of tension is the hardest for me to
overcome, but after reading this story two or three times I realized that I
still had no real idea of what was at stake for the characters. The king is
missing and Edmund must find him, but I don’t ever really understand *why* it
must be Edmund and what he stands to loose if the King stays lost. The conflict
that’s driving the story is hazy, which leaves me wondering why I should
empathize with Edmund’s journey. On the surface, the story is about the search
for the king, but it needs something deeper than that to carry it. Edmund, as a
hero, seems largely to be following instructions – nothing that is resolved in
the story is really done by him. Pitr does the tracking, the Queens rose breaks
the kings enchantment, etc. Pitr comes off seeming more like a messenger than a
hero – he needs something to do that makes us realize why he, and no one else,
should be on this mission. The one place where he does seem to be necessary –
the months long trail he follows with Pitr – is glossed over so quickly that it
seems insignificant to the story.
The dialogue I may not have noticed if the tension of the story was stronger,
but combined with the lack of strong plot elements it comes off sounding flat
and lifeless. Characters here don’t talk to each other, they annunciate and
state. There is no sense of personal connection between them, no sense of
familiarity. While this appears to be done to create a sense of grandeur and
style that’s appropriate to Cedric’s setting, but it saps the life out of the
characters to hear them speaking so formally.
My favorite part of Cedric’s story is easily Pitr, the undead dog being raised
to track his former master. When I first saw this clue being put up, my gut
clenched with the thought of undead guardians, so it was nice to see the
necromantic option being used to aid the hero, albeit with a slight sense of
discomfort. I would have preferred to see this unease played up a little more,
coming through more effectively in the skeleton creatures interaction with
Edmund and the mystics that create it.
Similarly, the Garden of the Moon is handled with a nice sense of style once we
arrive there – its more fleshed out than the earlier parts of the story, and
carries a greater sense of weight than the introductory paragraphs.
Kesh – Chilled to the Bone
Kesh’s story opens with a nice sense of style, the first paragraph filled with a
sense of ambiguous menace that carries through the rest of the story nicely. He
builds the sense of dread nicely as his barbarian protagonist arrives at the
village, carefully crafting a place where something obviously bad has happened
without giving away what exactly has happened. The crossing of the snow-covered
lawn, with it’s field of bones and skulls, works particularly well for all it’s
a somewhat cliché approach to setting up danger and foreboding.
If this story has a weakness, it’s in the way it shifts gears to quickly once
the protagonist finds his statue. The idea behind it is a good one – the
ominous set-up leading into an introspective moment of guilt rather than a fight
against lingering evil – but the pay-off isn’t handled as smoothly as it could
be. The reader is told, rather than shown, how the King feels about his failure
and why he left. I’d suggest giving a greater sense of familiarity to his
knowledge of the ruined village in the earlier parts of the story (his knowledge
of the gazebo and its use is a good place where the future revelation could be
set-up, but is currently to easily dismissed as common knowledge for someone who
is even remotely familiar with the setting’s social structure). This is a minor
complaint about the story, however, and certainly only a minor detraction from
my enjoyment of it.
Kesh has crafted a brief but effective tale, one full of mood and unspoken
internal conflicts that are only just beginning to be resolved. This story
could easily be played out a little longer should Kesh choose to, giving us some
more detail on exactly why the King has returned and what he seeks to find from
his ancestral home, but can also work quite well as a suggestive first-act only
kind of story.
Judgment
Neither story has used the pictures in any way that gives them a truly
significant edge over the other to my mind, so I’m inclined to look at this
purely on the quality of the work. As a result, I have to give this round to
Kesh whose story is more focused and atmospheric than his opponents. There are
a lot of great elements to Cedric’s story, but it doesn’t hold my interest quite
as well as Kesh’s tale.
Judgment: Kesh
mythago
Interesting that both authors chose similar themes--failure of duty, loss, the fall of a lord. Unfortunately both show the effects of time pressure and didn't, in my opinion, use the pictures as well as they might have.
In The Garden of the Moon, there's a lot of intriguing tension between the missing lord, his lady, and the servant. The bone dog is used well, and the cursed moonlight was a nice twist. However...there was a lot that fell into the category of "awfully convenient". The river is full of beasties, yet the villagers boat on it? The hero is a sworn guard to his lord, yet he failed his duty because his charge insisted on running off alone? (Surely the foolhardiness of young nobles is the whole point of having the oath-bond.) Why does the mystic utter a cryptic warning instead of just saying "Oh, almost forgot--if the moonlight touches you it will turn you to stone"?
Chilled to the Bone was well-written in that not much actually happens--the lord comes home and surveys his dead village--yet it still tells a story, and a believable one. Unfortunately the story didn't use the boats as much more than window-dressing. The dog was creepily used to good effect, but why was it wandering around? And, unfortunately, there were clichéd phrasings that really took away from my enjoyment of the story: the barbarian in leathers with a scar on his brow, uttering a muffled curse, having a broadsword strapped to his hip, and so on.
I did quite like the ambiguous ending.
It was really reaaally close, but my judgment here goes to Cedric
Good job, guys! You bore up well considering the bizarreness of your pic set Cedric, we'll see you up against Sialla in the semifinals.
In The Garden of the Moon, there's a lot of intriguing tension between the missing lord, his lady, and the servant. The bone dog is used well, and the cursed moonlight was a nice twist. However...there was a lot that fell into the category of "awfully convenient". The river is full of beasties, yet the villagers boat on it? The hero is a sworn guard to his lord, yet he failed his duty because his charge insisted on running off alone? (Surely the foolhardiness of young nobles is the whole point of having the oath-bond.) Why does the mystic utter a cryptic warning instead of just saying "Oh, almost forgot--if the moonlight touches you it will turn you to stone"?
Chilled to the Bone was well-written in that not much actually happens--the lord comes home and surveys his dead village--yet it still tells a story, and a believable one. Unfortunately the story didn't use the boats as much more than window-dressing. The dog was creepily used to good effect, but why was it wandering around? And, unfortunately, there were clichéd phrasings that really took away from my enjoyment of the story: the barbarian in leathers with a scar on his brow, uttering a muffled curse, having a broadsword strapped to his hip, and so on.
I did quite like the ambiguous ending.
It was really reaaally close, but my judgment here goes to Cedric
Good job, guys! You bore up well considering the bizarreness of your pic set
Cedric, we'll see you up against Sialla in the semifinals.
Sialia
First Post
The only thing undecided is whether I unleash this ravening thing on poor Cedric, or save it up for AlSi20/Piratecat.mythago said:
I don't know who is in this story yet, or what is going to happen to them, or where it will be, but I sure as heck know what it will be about.
It makes me all trembly inside.
I was pretty sure I was all wiped out after the last one--I spent two days walking around thinking there would never be a story inside me again. So totally empty.
And then Bandeeto said four little words to me that made me go all gooey inside.
The kind of goo that has effervescent little bubbles inside that go pop! pop! pop! when they hit the surface, maybe giving off a bit of bioluminescence as they do, revealing little chunky floating bits suspended in the puddle.
That kind of goo.
Come on Friday!
Cedric
First Post
Bah, that's an EASY problem to solve. Obviously you save it for Clay or PC, afterall, I mean...really, who am I? Save the big guns for big game!
As to my story, I agreed spot on with people's eval of my story. I spotted those same weaknesses and but felt I had done what I could with it in the time constraints.
I liked the voice and descriptors in Kesh's story more then I liked my own as well.
Looking forward to the next round ... but wondering how I'm going to manage to compete if Sialia produces another novella...*grins*
Cedric
Kesh
First Post
Congrats Cedric!
Yeah, my story was far too rushed. I had the idea as soon as I saw the pics, but I couldn't get myself to really write until the last evening. And by then, I was too tired to revise or expand. Ah well.
Glad the visuals worked for some of you. Oh, and the dog was wandering around for two reasons: 1) I had just bought the Midnight CS, so the story is very vaguely set there, with its curse, and 2) it's an island... didn't have anywhere else to go.
Yeah, my story was far too rushed. I had the idea as soon as I saw the pics, but I couldn't get myself to really write until the last evening. And by then, I was too tired to revise or expand. Ah well.
Glad the visuals worked for some of you. Oh, and the dog was wandering around for two reasons: 1) I had just bought the Midnight CS, so the story is very vaguely set there, with its curse, and 2) it's an island... didn't have anywhere else to go.
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