Another project I will inevitable not finish.

black

Yeah No

n/a

Goddamit phil.

My first storygame of all time.  If you didn't like it, all constructive criticism is GREATLY appreciated and highly valued, so please write those comments.  

  Many of the characters appearing in this storygame are based off of Maplestory, a MMORPG, which constituted a good three to four years of my childhood.  I don't play anymore, as many of the changes took away what I thought was fun in the game.  Do note that the storyline will be different from the game, it's mainly the character professions and looks that will remain the same.   Note that the world is much, much smaller than Earth, so don't think each individual place are vastly far apart.  Also, if you are familiar with the game today, I am leaving Shade, the sixth hero out, as incorporating pirates with guns into the story is not easy to do.  Thanks for reading.

It's tricky opening up with dialogue, yes.

The biggest concern is that we don't have any context about any of the characters, settings, or events that transpire in your story.  You realized this, so you tried to add adjectives and descriptions as you go along.  It IS a bit clunky, but not necessarily too bad.  Since you're a bit out of time, I would work on your story as a whole, and come back to this if you have a couple of hours to brainstorm and think of a better situation.

A story that starts with dialogue that came to my head was Endmaster's Eternal, although there is a few differences in my opinion that makes it different over your dialogue.  First, it's told by two nameless characters that have no real importance, so the author doesn't need to spend time in developing them.  Actually, through the use of dialogue, he helps supplement the setting in which his world is set in.  We know something about the Eternal program, supersoldiers, the empire and emperor; and a little something about the protagonist.  Secondly, it's End.  Many of his readers will know something (or everything) is going to be fucked up in his world, so going into the story, we already have an idea on what to expect.  

Reading over his dialogue again, I also notice that he mostly develops background information, rather than any critical current event.  Perhaps you will take away something from writing dialogue first.

Best of luck.

I'll just point out the use, or lack of, punctuation marks in your piece.  When you have a list, such as "same old white roof", use a comma to separate the adjectives.  So, it would be "same, old, white roof" or "same old, white roof."  Depends if you are using same as an adjective here, so I think people could argue both cases.

As a quick note, yes the Oxford comma is necessary.  The use without it really is distracting, at least to me, and the debate going on whether we should use it or not is ludicrous.  

This sentence is grammatically confusing, although it isn't distracting, if that makes sense: "Nothing, no sounds of life or happiness could be heard from the structure."

The next sentence that follows could use a comma and replace one of the commas with a semicolon.  "Letting out his breath[,] Tyler relaxed[;] that lack of sound was confirmation he was home."

Subsequently, the next sentence, "He didn't quite...live there", is unnecessary, at least in the way it was written.  If you find that information critical, I would rewrite it.

  From there, another comma: "The last Tyler had heard of his mother[,] she...of heroin."

Your "father had pulled...his life", sentence is choppy.  "Smash and dash" sounds extremely colloquial, like an adult trying to tell their child about sex yet are being as ambiguous as possible.  The entire sentence just doesn't feel as if it belonged with the rest of your writing.

Like others have stated, dialogue could use a bit of work.  Furthermore, you have missing commas that are littered throughout what you wrote.  An editor would definitely help, although I would take it upon yourself to perhaps understand about comma usage before you publish anything.  Yes, it's boring.  It might not be distracting to a common person, but this is a writing site with good writers, despite all of the Edge Lord contests we have, (Okay only one, but it drew people in like a Walmart during Black Friday) so I'd recommend learning a bit.  That is, if you're staying.

Good luck.

Well, optional "info dumps" should be providing info, even if some of it is in excess.  Really now, when a character in a book or setting in a story is described, not every single detail is absorbed by the reader.  For example, I doubt anyone could remember exact descriptions of Tolkien's introduction to his world.  

If you want to write in a fantastical setting but truly want to incorporate realism, then I agree that you'll have much less "human" soldiers and more animals and machinery.  That's one "tripe" I had/have with many fantasy settings; if a mage or technology is shown to be able to decimate so many men by themselves, the hell is the point in having legions of soldiers?  Anyway, I'll rant somewhere else about that.

Instead of providing a laundry list of the empire's war force, just write something like "Equipped with an armada of fire-breathing dragons covered head to tail in seemingly impenetrable scales to mechanized submarines capable of blowing ships in pieces, the Empire's army is unrivaled on the continent."  This way, it's more enjoyable to read(Okay I might have gone too far with the descriptions), and achieves the same message.  If you want to include those other "army elements", simply show them later in your story rather than tell.  

In terms of "basic flow", or syntax, I think it's fine.  Nothing to write home about, but nothing particularly critique worthy.  \

One last thing, in terms of developing realism, why are there forces on the ground?  If the empire has massive war fleets and dragons, why don't they use them to just glass the fucking land instead of sending men to die?  Are they searching for something?  Are they tree huggers?  Is there a reason that the tribal people need to live?  Give us a reason why we are using inferior troops instead of one ship to accomplish the same goal.  

Got to go.  May reply later.  May not.  Good luck.

I know very little about the Star Wars universe, so take what I have to say however you will.  To answer your question in short, yay to heavy mix of both original and canon characters.

That isn't to say I'm absolutely clueless on fanfiction in general.  One thing is to consider the time period you're setting your story in.  Is it during (forgive me for my lack of knowledge) Darth Vader's reign of terror?  Is it during a canon part of the Star Wars Universe?  A prequel?  A sequel?  This is important, as depending on the time period you have more or less freedom on how to write canon characters.  For example, if it takes place after the events of canon Star Wars, then you can have characters deviate from their 'canon' archetype.  From a minor thing to [blank evil character turned into neutral/good character] to something drastic, like the enslavement of the entire Wookie species to which Chewbacca is now the leader of, this is a way you can breathe new life into canon characters.

If the time period is something specific to the Star Wars universe, then you probably would want to stay to the roots of the character.  Unless you're doing an 'alternate universe', but if so, that's your problem you can solve.  

You said you aren't thrilled about shoehorning in characters, so your mind is pretty much already made.  Writing should be fun, and if you aren't enjoying what you write, it'll reflect in the quality and overall passion you have.  

As you're making original characters, just please give proper development.  Obviously a character that appears in five pages doesn't need as much as a character that is a foil.  What I'm trying to say is that describing the shade of blue skin and illustrious, stunning pink hair that shines brilliantly under the moonlight's bright gleam for a character that'll die in random battle 152 isn't necessary.  You know that, just putting it out there.   

As a last note, I'd just briefly brush up on round, static, flat, etc character types.  Just so you have a basic understanding or review on how characters are classically written.  

Good luck on crafting your story.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but if your post is anything like your storygame, please be sure to proofread for grammar and syntax errors. (Or have someone proofread; better yet, do both)  The concept itself may prove interesting, but your grammar is distracting and needs polish.  

Ciao.

As a feature that doesn't do any harm to anyone, I don't believe there's a reason to do it.  Besides, I email myself with notes and reminders all the time, and I don't see why I couldn't do the same on the site.  I say keep it.

Hey,

Cresentarstar has made some excellent points.  Hunting the Ripper is definitely a good read if you want some inspirations or ideas to get writing, and I would take note of the rest of her advice.  

You talk about rushing your stories.  I have to ask, is it necessary?  Unless you're writing for one of the contests, I don't see too many reasons why you can't take your time.  The site doesn't have any mandatory story-posting.  

Moving on, you already have good ideas to make the story more engaging to the reader.  You wrote, "I've thought about making the player choose about which location they examine, or who they talk to, but...restricting them to only one option."  I think you should allow the player to miss out on possible clues.  Here's my thinking.  Say you write blah blah blah, and it leads to two (or more) possible suspects the reader can interrogate.  However, due to time restraints, they have only the time for one.  Have the player choose, but make the choices an informed decision.  For example, Person A was a witness at the scene, but Person B is a close family relative that could know important information.  You'll want to develop Person A and B more, and you'll want more benefits/drawbacks for each, but that's something I came up with in a half of a second.  To add, having the information of one person being more useful is an option you can take.  You can even make that one person's information become borderline useless, but have a reason for it.  Like, if through the investigation it's possible for the reader to deduce that Person C won't be helpful/as helpful, you can have them provide less effective clues.  Overall, just don't make it a "pick-a-link." 

One more thing that I am thinking of is the ending, and this is reminding me of the Carnal Sins quest in Witcher 3, if you've ever played it.  In your second paragraph, "It's always going to end with the crime being solved and someone being arrested."  In my opinion, this doesn't have to be the case.  Yes, in the end there'll be a big decision on who to choose from, but you can make it more than just a "You lose" screen if you choose wrong.  How about that the reader and the people in the story are convinced that whoever the player chooses as guilty is correct.  However, the player chose wrong, and the wrong man is sent to jail/executed.  You can have an epilogue where everything seems all fine and dandy, everyone is happy yatta yatta, but there's something not quite right.  I relate this to Witcher 3, as in the Carnal Sins quest, the player can "solve" the case by killing another man who the player thinks is the killer.  However, if you progress through the game, you can come across a note on the ground, directed to Geralt, taunting the witcher that he killed the wrong man, and that he [the killer] will run free.  There's nothing you can do at this point, and the player just has to live with the fact that they didn't solve the crime.  I feel you can make a similar effect here.

I know that would make it much more complicated and time-consuming; after all, the player should be able to correctly identify the perpetrator given whichever people they choose to interrogate, places to investigate, and overall intelligent decision making.  However, "mystery solving" is a genre that you can be extremely creative and crafty with, so there's many ideas that you can work with.  Having a unique ending, interesting setting, memorable characters, and good choices all will lead your story to the high praised 8, for this genre especially.  Furthermore, there's a lot more ideas you can incorporate yourself, and I don't doubt you'll think of one or two satisfying ones.  Good luck, and keep writing.  

Edit: Wrote this comment as Ogre posted his.  We have similar advice.

The premise is certainly interesting.  "Superhuman" types of stories aren't all that rare, an incorporation of a Chinese flavour would resonate well.  While I would like to dissect this in more detail, it's late right now, and I most likely won't be visiting the site during the week.  Furthermore, I hate forums.  Anyway, so here's some thoughts that came to my mind:

1.  You should introduce the main character and the world slightly more.  Granted, we only see your first two pages, and I am an advocate of "show not tell", but I would keep that in mind if you do decide to write this story.

2.  This ties in with the first thought, in that I'm not too sure how you are going to make Lin Jinhai appealing as a main character.  Typically, in 2nd person POV, you want to make the character at least share some common ground with the reader.  What we have is a uneducated, orphaned 15 year old, who is in a deep rage and thinks slamming their fists in a grand form of bloody knuckles with the door is a good idea.  I don't know...Others might disagree with me on this, but I think if you developed Jinhai in such a way that he doesn't seem entirely appalling, you'd start your story off better.

3.  Your writing style is distinct, which will take some getting used to.  When we were supposed to sympathize with Jinhai when his parents died, I felt absolutely nothing.  I'm thinking your writing style is the cause of this.  This isn't a bad thing by an stretch of the imagination, but I would heartily recommend you save the more "emotional" parts for later in the story, when the reader has adjusted.  This way, you can engross your readers.

4.  Punctuation, spelling, grammar, all that jazz is decent, and I'm glad you are using the WW.  Some minor things I remember seeing were "...he found at the end a old looking", where "a" should be changed to "an", and that sorta thing.  Nothing too distracting, but you should be mindful of.  

5.  I think your choice of dialogue needs some work.  Is he muttering out loud?  Is he thinking in his head?  Your dialogue doesn't distinguish this, and it should.  Furthermore, I think you're throwing too many punches too early.  Yes, strong language is fine, but I feel it's too excessive, at least the amount in the start.  Strong language should provide comic relief or help connect the character to the reader, but neither of those things happened.  

6.  "The common lifespan of a commoner is 50-60 while somebody that cultivates would be 100+. A powerful person if he/she continues to train is 500+, some but few may even reach 1000 years old but these are hidden masters and they rarely show themselves. They also age a lot slower so somebody in the 100s might look young."

Feels out of place, even when considering your writing style.  I don't think this is pivotal information that the reader needs to know at the beginning of the story, and falls into the "show not tell" I meantioned earlier.  Why not omit this, but use it later, perhaps in dialogue?  For instance, if Lin encounters on of those fabled "masters" during his journey, why not have the master say something like "I have lived for hundreds of years, defeated countless doors in hand smashing contests...what makes you so special?"  Yeah yeah, cliche, but you should get the point.  This might seem like a "tell" and not a "show", and you are right in some sense.  But you aren't breaking the narration.  This is more of a show instead of tell because you, as the narrator, aren't telling the reader directly.  Instead, you have a character develop this certain element in your world, which makes the story flow MUCH better.  

Anyway, there's some more, but like I said, it's late, I have a report that I need to write, and I don't want to be in the forums longer than I have to.  I think you have a great idea here, and if finished, would love to read it and give feedback.  Have a great day.

P.S. Rereading the OP, I don't know if you wanted just a simple "Yes I'm interested", or actual writing help.  I'm thinking the former, but I don't want to erase like, 10 minutes worth of writing.