Critique and Advice; the treadmill of adventuring.

I would appreciate a critique or two of my adventure thus so far. I really haven't gotten into the meat of the actual story so far, so I'm not worried much about the content itself, rather more if it's too dense or any writing issues I may be engaging in. I know it doesn't really conform to the typical adventure quirks/norms/traditions.

im just gonna repost this cause nobody responded to it the first time and im still curious what people think. im getting a little more worried about the content issue because I feel like i should have just jumped into the aforementioned "meat" sooner, and im still not there yet. Not even really sure how to get there at this point.

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it is dense. it takes up 24 pages single spaced in a google doc

I like it. Feels like a real children's paperback book.

I can't even say it's weirder because kid's sci-first gets weird.

The hardest part to read was in the beginning about Sidhas. Trying to parse what's going on in that prologue when the perspective changes immediately after doesn't feel good.

I'm rereading the prologue right now and I don't remember any of it. I guess it feels more... cinematic than the rest?

So now the perspective switched to the Blackhawk copilot's perspective and Sidhas is being described as a creature. It feels wrong

Hrm... I guess what I mean to say that the beginning sets up a tone and that makes for a different first impression.

Wow thanks! It will become more apparent in the future that Im basically trying to recreate a specific genre of children's fiction (maybe even parody/pay homage to a certain series) and I cant wait till i get to that point!

The Sidhas prologue is probably my favorite part, but it could use some editing. The perspective changes and the descriptions used are supposed to highlight some perceptual differences between the characters and the realization that the "creature" that is being hunted and the boy who is running are one in the same, but i think i could build that better if i go back over it. As for the tone that feels "wrong"... I like to think that your reaction is what i was intentionally trying to achieve! I hope to link that tone back into the story in the future, but it really is a set up for something way down the road.

Thanks again for the feedback

goin 2 bed but if anyone has any critique for tossaway i'd like to hear it
also i guess if anyone has questions about what the point of the adventure is, i can try to reveal a few small things?? idk i just wanna talk about my adventure i guess

goin 2 bed but if anyone has any critique for tossaway i'd like to hear it
also i guess if anyone has questions about what the point of the adventure is, i can try to reveal a few small things?? idk i just wanna talk about my adventure i guess

my critique is i like it and it's great.

the only thing that needs work is on not being so GOSH DAMN CUTE (jk never change it)

hahaha, thanks!
okay the first critique i have for myself is that i need to update more than twice a month
there, i said it so nobody else can, now gimme stuff to work with >:y

Thanks again for the feedback

it's not a bad thing, i say, but maybe that's why it's hard to get into. it's well worth the effort.

Kitet, to my understanding, Tossaway's partly a worldbuilding exercise for Paradise Tourism, the game you want to make in this same setting, yeah?

Tossaway currently lacks urgency, conflict, or danger. We've been told by a presumably-reliable guide that lingering outside the main cities is dangerous, but haven't actually experienced that for ourselves. Said main centres so far have been populated by honest, pleasant people.

As Jay pointed out in the most recent update, we don't really need anything. While this keeps our options very open for what we might do next (be that treasure-hunting or working or exploring) it also leaves me inclined to preface any suggestion with an "Well I guess we could..." We've got no pressing motivations beyond "find out what my deal is", and the readers already know the vague outlines of that from the first post (even if we're not up ins on the who and the why just yet.)

I was really struggling to find something to constructively critique about Tossaway, because the setting is great, the character designs are fantastic, and my main issue is definitely "more updates plz".

Hell, "conflict" isn't even completely necessary, particularly if this is groundwork for a game that is more about exploring/discovering than fighting/fixing. Breaking rules about narrative and storytelling is absolutely fine provided you're breaking them consciously, I guess?

/5c

Yes, Schaz! That's entirely true.

And that's true also, that there's not any danger yet. I actually asked in the topic if "we should be a pacifist or not" as more of a way to decide if I should bother thinking up a fighting system at that point; I could have been more upfront about that, but the point is, I can't find a reason to fight anything yet without us walking into the wilderness.

The game (if it ever exists, hopefully) will have combat and conflict, though, it is more about exploring than "fixing", I think. The setting in general is more about dealing with what you've been dealt than it is about stopping an all-powerful evil, or anything like that, so I'm going in the same direction with this adventure, and since this is a worldbuilding exercise, I'm hoping to have us explore the cities more than the ruins... since the cities need to be built, too. That's not ruling out any dungeon exploration in the future, though!

i think there was another point i was going to make but i kinda forgot, but basically what i'm realizing from this critique is that I really need to think of something exciting for us to do when we get to Bonsai. I can't be relying on you guys to give our protag something to do, even if you're the ones giving them commands.

to be clear: thank you so much, that was p. helpful!

Hi everyone. I ran a couple of adventures on the mspaforums before that forum went into a coma.

One was Art of Domination and the other was From the Sands.

I've decided I'm going to continue them here on Eagle-time. However, I am unsure as to how to go about making the first post on the forums here. The mspfanventures mirror doesn't have all of the pages of Art of Domination (last one on that site was in 2011, story kept going till 2016)

I do have both adventures backed up, but I'm not sure if anyone's going to like trudging through .rtf and .jpg files to get caught up.

What do you all think? Should I make a really long recap? Just dump the files into a dropbox? Make a version where every post is in image form, with the text and pics in a singular image file like a webcomic?

I'd say go with a recap. It'll refresh everyones memories.

Welcome to the forums!

As I recall, Art of Domination's got a lot of strategy-heavy discussion between readers between updates, so even if you've got "used" suggestions backed up there's a lot of content lost. Sounds like letting returning readers have a backup so they don't go mad trying to half-remember something, and a recap/current state of affairs for new readers would be the way to go? It may put your story's progression on hold until everything important's covered but it'd make a better starting point for anyone (like myself!) who wouldn't know where to start to make adventure suggestions.

Hm. Would need a few days to make the recap segment then.

I really want to make a mirror for Wayward (and boy I need one with my posting size), but I have no idea where to put it or how to even go about doing that. Any advice?

The mspafa site is honestly a great site to mirror stuff. It's easy to use and pretty fast with very little learning curve (It's pretty much just copy, paste, submit). It also works well for the forum adventure layout most adventures have. If you need help I can set it up and mirror your current pages for you so you can get the general gist of how it works.

At the moment I can't remember any other sites that have support for a more non traditional comic layout, just ones that support traditional comics or webcomics where all of the text is inside the panel.

Edit: Forgot to say that mirroring a ton of pages is also no issue on that site, other then it may take you awhile unless you know a few tricks as it has no mass submission feature. [Fortuna] for instance has like 5000 pages at the moment.

I was considering that site, it's easy enough to navigate. I don't think mine deviates too much from the usual forum adventure layout... but some help might be nice. I tried looking but I don't think there even are any other sites with a mirror like that?

I've mentioned this a few places, but we recently did an interview with All Night Laundry author jack_fractal

I bring it up here, because jack had some really great comments about making an adventure, how to update regularly, how to foster quality suggestions and discussion, how forum adventures relate to role playing games and more stuff like that.

Even if you haven't read all night laundry, there's a good 30 minutes of spoiler-free podcast to check out. I recommend it for anyone who makes or enjoys adventures (of course I am biased, having put it together)

We ended up referencing and commenting on several other adventures, Waterworks, Art of Domination, and Lucidstuck in particular. We even got to quote you solekii!

I'm interested to hear if folks agree with what was said, or if you have any comments otherwise. The podcast is about 90 minutes but there are some shownotes with key points and timestamps if you want to check out specific parts.

Thanks for listening!

Yeah as far as I know there's no other site that caters to this style. If you have a skype or discord and want me to help you mirror your adventure toss it my way via a pm and tomorrow or whenever works best with you I can talk with you as I set up and mirror most of your pages and give you a run down of how it works.


Also oh man I need to check out that podcast. It's been on my mental todo list but considering my memory I lost track of it. I'll try and listen to it today and give some comments on it later.

Edit: So I just realized that this podcast came out like yesterday. Turns out my memory thought it came out a month ago. I gotta love my memory.

I'm just going to write my thoughts as I listen to the podcast. Sorry if my thoughts are all jumbled I'm just stopping and writing whenever I feel I have a comment.

After typing this out edit: Whoops there was a lot to comment about.

So I got to listening to the podcast and I quite agree with a lot Jack had to say. I always felt that adventures were nothing like books or the normal comic book UNTIL they were finished. Until then they're more like a roleplaying game where everyone is controlling one more more characters jointly and (hopefully) cooperatively. That's why yes, it's true. It won't have the polishness of a book, but I don't think it can't be polished. (like a comment I saw earlier here say.)

I think a forum adventure can have a sense of polish and most forum adventure makers, as they learn about how they make their adventure and how to update most adventure makers will learn how to make their adventure as polished as possible before the update gets pushed. For example, right now I'm going through a redux rewrite (I wouldn't recommend rewriting/doing your adventure before you're finished but because I'm mirroring the whole thing to its own website its a case of "might as well") and one thing I noticed is that early on lots of the updates need total rewrites, they're too messy, or they give useless info that never comes up again, but the later updates don't because I learned over time "No I don't need to introduce random info I'll never use again" and "No I shouldn't slam a wacky joke right here and thus break up the narration and the user's immersion".

This is both a case of learning better writing and also learning how to forum adventure better. Such as, early on I stopped the updates at places where the only choice was "Open the door" or "The obvious answer" now I no longer do that because it doesn't really work and I know readers don't want to state the obvious. (Unless of course I'm trying to buy up time or cause tension.)

Triple time machines is now my favorite string of words. Also I agree. Do not put time travel in a story unless you're really ready to deal with it and the readers messing with it, or if you're going to bar the readers from suggesting anything relating to the timetravel and you have already mapped it all out.

I like that jack and me seem to have the sameish way of planning an update. Procrastinate. > Procrastinate again. > Yeah ok type it out, put notes, ect. > "Yeah that's good enough." (- a lot of the drawing stuff because of Fortuna's layout)

I love the idea of Jack doing short stories. I want that to happen. I'd love to see a few comics that don't have the adventure format too, but that might be because I'm a monthly reader of ANL and thus don't get to make many suggestions. I feel ANL reads a lot better when reading big chunks at once and as such I am more then willing to sacrifice the power to suggest to get a better picture of the story. Which is also why I wouldn't mind more "normal" comic / story.

I'm building my own site like jack is from the ground up. While I do recommend using wordpress like Jack said....well I tried to use wordpress and it made everything look like every other webcomic place. Which works! But only if you're looking for that feeling. I didn't want that feeling and honestly working on things from the ground up works better for what I'm doing, but like jack said, yes if you're making a webcomic site try wordpress first! If wordpress doesn't work for you and you're really willing to learn some coding, then well, do it! Heck, because I didn't go with wordpress I'm able to put the Cosmosdex (a fictional encyclopedia that pairs with Fortuna) on the site instead of some random google doc. Also I needed custom code for cookie giving so characters could remember your name of find out what time it is and tell you you need to turn off the game and sleep.

"If you have too many joke suggestions take them and make terrible things happen." I feel you. I love joke suggestions (But rarely use them) but I think it's nice to have a fun reminder time to time about how badly they can go.



Oh geez. I'm only 30 minutes in and there was already so much to say. Let me attempt to condense my thoughts for the next hour.



ANL spoiler zone

SpoilerShow

I completely forgot that ANL was mostly in french.

Aaaahahahaha I do love that everyone suggested to leave Kendra. I suppose it was because we knew so little about her and things looked so dire. It was merely a case of "us or them" where attempting to save them looked like it would kill us AND them. I have ended up with similar situations where I think the readers would suggest "X", but they go on the suggest "5" which throws me for a fun loop.

Bina suggestions for Bina and Kendra suggestions for Kendra is a very nice way to put it. As people get to learn about a character they tend to suggest more in character. I also noticed how Bina changed over the course of the story and always thought that was really cool.

An old lady fighting monsters with a scarf is what I've always wanted in this world.

Keeping themes is totally hard and I think it's real cool "How do you spot a monster" is a theme that keeps going. I love me some constant themes.

I also totally respected the retcon you made. While killing Bina was a shocker and I was excited to see what would happen, but after thinking and looking back at it I have to agree. Man that section was really jarring. I liked it before because it was jarring and thus it made it cool and out there, but looking at it as a part of a story I can see why it was removed.

I have no idea if Jack will see this but I had the same issue with one of my cookies. Set only certain pages to "update" the cookie. So people can mostly jump back and forth with no issues. Also set it so the first cookies cannot overwrite the future ones. So if page one gives you a cookie with the number 1, and the latest page updates the cookie with the number 10, set it so the page 1 cookie setter (which sets the number 1) can never overwrite the cookie if it has a bigger number then it. Then put on the first page a link to a cookie deleter so people can easily delete it if they want to do a full wipe reread.

At least that's how it works for me and php, not sure if the stuff you use would allow that.


"in simplest terms tell us about all the Bina timelines."
I think my response to that would have been "Sure, but first we need to talk about parallel universes."

I just came away more confused person is me. I remember looking at the diagram and going "Ah yes. I...uh...hmmmmmmm...yes."

I used to be convinced that Kendra was the green lady but I starting to point at Bina a little more.

"I don't expect to get to year 4." Finally I know what to set the time machine for. Year 5.

I thought when Bina pointed and said "The botfly is there" was the start of the end too. Wooooooooo.

I always wondered if the dog being human like was on purpose. I'm glad it is.

"Throw a ton of stuff on the floor and then pick it up and explain it if it makes sense."
Aaaaaaall the time.

The color door choice, oh boy. Yeah they never work in adventures. There's nothing to do or guess.

"What music would you suggest for ANL"
My time HAS COME. The Cat Lady is a pretty good sound track for ANL. I listen to it during my monthly readings.

I think no one has suggested using the time machine because time travel is confusing and evil and it feels easier to solve the problem by hand.


I also recommend sprites. I use them all the time and while I feel lazy, I can update faster and sleep on time.

I suggest livestreaming at midnight. Trust me you'll get tons of people at midnight. At least I can say so from my own livestreams.

I like congratulating people from reading my adventure too. Like wowwy it's real important to congratulate new readers.

TLDR: I have too much to say about adventure making and also this was a good episode I can't believe I didn't listen to it before. Also I love ANL.

"Adventures are weird." - Jack

This is both a case of learning better writing and also learning how to forum adventure better. Such as, early on I stopped the updates at places where the only choice was "Open the door" or "The obvious answer" now I no longer do that because it doesn't really work and I know readers don't want to state the obvious. (Unless of course I'm trying to buy up time or cause tension.)

The best place to stop an update is at a moment of conflict; with a clear problem that has to be solved, but has a lot of potential approaches. Another good option is, if you have a bunch of exposition to do, just ask the audience for questions; usually this isn't visually exciting, but it's a very open prompt.

Of course, doing that sort of thing isn't always possible, especially with the demands of a daily update schedule - there have been times in Swamped when I've had trouble thinking of a good prompt to end on. As a basic rule of thumb, I'd say you want to change the situation, and then give the readers an opportunity to respond to the way it's changed.

In the event that you do end up needing to do an "open the door" update, the best thing to do is ask "okay, is there anything you want to do before opening the door?" Here you acknowledge that the door is opening, most likely in the next update, but you give one last opportunity to play with the room.

Actually, that gives me a weird adventure idea, so I'm going to toss it into the ideas thread.

I say there's always an if to a situation. There's always a way to make a big "Don't do this" do able, workable, and successful. It's more of a cautionary tale. A "don't do this". (unless you actively plan and know what you're attempting to do when doing it.)

Such as, I'm sure many writers 10 years ago (and now) would have said don't do that, if you asked them if you should take suggestions for your story from a random group of people online. Maybe that it would be an interesting exercise but it'd likely not be a workable story.


Also yeah I agree. Open the door situations are best when you're trying to confirm they want to leave or hint to the readers there is more to see in this room.

Hi everyone. I ran a couple of adventures on the mspaforums before that forum went into a coma.

One was Art of Domination and the other was From the Sands.

I've decided I'm going to continue them here on Eagle-time. However, I am unsure as to how to go about making the first post on the forums here. The mspfanventures mirror doesn't have all of the pages of Art of Domination (last one on that site was in 2011, story kept going till 2016)

I do have both adventures backed up, but I'm not sure if anyone's going to like trudging through .rtf and .jpg files to get caught up.

What do you all think? Should I make a really long recap? Just dump the files into a dropbox? Make a version where every post is in image form, with the text and pics in a singular image file like a webcomic?

I started reading From the Sands before mspaf went down. I though it was a good read as an archive binge and was intending to catch up.

Wow I need to listen to this podcast when I have time, jeez. Useful stuff since I'm still just starting.

I think my biggest issue is when I get suggestions I get Very Excited and want to use ALL of them. Which I do love doing but because it doesn't seem like my schedule's gonna calm down I maaaay need to be a bit pickier. Also my updates are getting real long and it winds up being a lot of scrolling (thus the need for a mirror right away)

Speaking of mirroring: I've gotta move out tomorrow so I'll be busy but I'll send ya my skype and such and saturday might be cool. Thanks so much for the offer of help!