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We know that Endmaster is already working through the 17 entries for this contest, but while we wait for the official results, what do you think will be the final results?

(Stealing Fabrikant's excellent list)
(2) Mystic_Warrior, White as Bloodstained Snow [10,974]
(5) CavusRex, Lazarus Cage [4,252]
(7) TrueParanormal, Durwood Mansion [32,532]
(9) fresh_out_the_oven, Gaiety and Sorrow [102,080]
(11) Fabrikant, The Laconia Incident [57,647]
(16) Suranna, I Klled a half Black Man... [1,550]
(17) Petros, Of the struggles faced... [8,092]
(18) goodnight_a, Rifts [3,416]
(20) fluxion, Shadow of a God-King [126,673]
(21) Orange, Lasso of Time [41,146]
(25) Mystic_Warrior, These Shackled Souls [113,283]
(27) Anthraxus, The Backup [5,700]
(28) benholman44, GnD: The Snowbunny Society [5,134]
(37) MiltonManThing, Three Late Knights [12,958]
(39) MrAce321, Bird in a Cage [11,165]
(42) Sherbet, As Ink [111,262]
(46) Mizal, Kobald Kebabs[13,338]
(47) Clayfinger, Don't get distracted! [8,643]

I think the most likely top six would be:

1) Sherbet, As Ink
2) Mystic_Warrior, These Shackled Souls
3) fresh_out_the_oven, Gaiety and Sorrow
4) Fluxion, Shadow of a God-King
5) Orange, Lasso of Time
6) Mizal, Kobald Kebabs

Any one of these entries deserves to win, going on the extraordinary effort the authors put into them.

Also Kobold Kebabs should become the new cult classic of the site based on its name alone.

It will be very close I bet. It might even come down to what genre you enjoy the most or what mood you're in. Durwood Mansion's plot sounds really intriguing as well, at least to me. Sounds introspective and psychological. 

Hell, Fabrikant wrote a novel length game about a literal Nazi protagonist, if that doesn't deserve the win I don't know what does.

Maybe I owe a little explanation (apology?). This idea started here on the forum, when somebody asked if Nazi symbols where okay and got the reply that its acceptable as long as you don't make the Nazis the good guys. This is the sort of thing this gets me thinking.

Also I study authoritarianism professionally and have long wondered what would it be like to grow up in the Third Reich. I can imagine that it would have turned me a Nazi, and I can imagine that I might have realized what is going on but been too cowardly to speak up. Finally, I can imagine that I would have spoken up and ended like Scholls or Stauffenbergs. Each of these scenarios harbors a different flavor of horror and I wanted to explore this in a game.

Fascism as an ideology is as close to absolute evil as I can imagine, and some people forget this these days. It's not that a lot of people where murdered, it is the way this was orchestrated that makes it even more horrible and the little evils that were committed against every single citizen to keep them in line to fuel a system of hate. I didn't put too much of that into the game because it would have been too horrible, though it is hinted at in the story that Haber tells (which is true btw).

Today we stylize Nazis alot as comic book villains. And that makes it easy to believe we couldn't have been like them. But that's a lie. If it happened again, 90 percent would just go along with it like 90 percent went along with it in 1930s Germany. So didn't want black and white characters, but a greyscale. The protagonist is certainly not a Nazi in the beginning but he can drift toward it depending on choices. I really liked how Renkow turned out as a villain. He is one of the most horrible people imaginary, but when faced with an external threat you may be forced to team up with him, and he might even become a friend of sorts (there is one ending that few people wild find that I am absolutely in love with). -- Sorry for the long post (didn't want anybody to think the Nazis are the good guys)

Thank you. I enjoyed Endmasters stories, they were the first I read when I came to the site (basically worked my way down the highly rated list). That's where I learned how the narratives are structured here (and what content people are interested in). For the contest I tried to imitate his style a bit.

Huh, this was really cool. It definitely made me more intrigued about your story. You've clearly done some real shadow work to even recognize that under different life circumstances, you might have ended up a Nazi. Most people live with the illusion that they're immune to propaganda or radicalization. But history and sociology make it painfully clear that almost no one is. 

KOBOLD KEBABS is going to win.

I've only read three of the contest entries so far. For the time being, I really like 'As Ink'. I'll probably revisit this thread once I've read them all, assuming that I can read faster than Endmaster can release the results which is unlikely lol.

I'm also dreading reading GnD. XD

OK there are a lot of great games, but I am honestly surprised there is not more activity on 'These shackled souls'. It's such a good game. Total winner for me.

Easy answer, it's only been up a day and this contest contains too many words. I haven't been able to do more than skim the first few pages of most of these and probably won't do much more than that till Monday.

Gower set out to read all the games, really interested to see his thoughts if he decides to post any.

... not going to draw any conclusions from the fact he read holman's game first and then disappeared.

Oh, I'd love a Gower review! I read his articles on this site and found them really useful. Still a bit too scared to use semicolons though, hehe.

I'll get there in time.  I have to submit final grades this week.  Then I get to read these wonderful entries.

I'd like to get ahead of it and before he does read it mention that English is technically my 3rd language (or fourth depending on how you count them)

Then, if you have learned English as a foreign language, I'll expect you to be particularly well informed about the technicalities of English and to be particularly adept at it.  Those who are native speakers, I can forgive some minor errors, but *certainly* not those who studied it.

Hoisted by your own learned, grammatically correct petard.

I hate that I agree with that argument...