Tales From an Inn

Ogre is a much more accomplished and experienced writer than I, so this comment is meant much more for the reader, rather than anything the author could learn from.

Now, to get straight to the point, do I recommend this story? It is difficult to say. Are you here to read some well-crafted stories or are you here to actually play them and make choices? If it is the former, go right ahead. If it is the latter, you may want to skip this one.

That's the ugly part about this story - it has no choices (other than the order in which you will listen to the tales). Now, the author is well aware of that and acknowledges it in the description, but that doesn't really fix the issue. It could have been easily fixed by, as mizal suggested, the option to punt the gnome or anything similar.

Now, if you don't particularly care for choices that much, then go ahead and read the game. You'll probably like it. But there are a couple of additional negatives I could add:

For starters, 5/6 stories are all quite similar: You're introduced to your main characters, they're on a journey of some kind or whatever, and then they get into a fight. A lot of fighting later, somebody, or multiple people, end up dead and the adventurer party is left broken and sad. So basically, by the time I started reading the third story, I could tell what was going to happen.

The one odd story still has some fighting in it, but it was a bit more of a horror mystery deal (the scantily-clad serving lady one). And it's probably the one I enjoyed the most.

Writing entertaining fight scenes is definitely hard and in many of my stories I very quickly gloss over them for that particular reason; so let's give credit to the author for managing to mostly make them different enough that it didn't get dull. Unfortunately, I also dislike reading so many fight scenes so I basically stopped after reading 3 stories and came back today to finish them. There's not enough story outside of the fighting to particularly make me care for any of the characters. I think the only one I felt sad about was the dead guy on the ice lake (whose name I forgot now).

The writing could be just a tiny bit more polished. I've spotted a number of typos (one of them very confusing, the character is introduced as "Xenia", but is referred to as "Xenis" in every single line afterwards), as well as some awkward, repetitive lines such as:

"The path was a very old path, really mostly spaces between the weeds and brush. You had to stay on the path because much of the brush was briars and tangleweed. The path wound back and forth up the steep hill." -> The word "path" is repeated 4 times in 3 sentences, surely it would have been better to say "The path was a very old one", "You had to stay on it" or similar.

Another example:

"The rain was blowing sideways and right through the window. The rain was ice cold. Looking out the window we could see puddles forming in front of our eyes in the heavy rain."

It is understandable, of course, given the author probably didn't want to spend too much effort into a story game that, from the start, wasn't going to be his magnum opus. But it still kinda affected my enjoyment.

I do have to give credit where credit is due, while the stories themselves are all quite similar, each of the "storytellers" has a distinctive storytelling style that differentiates them, in some cases perhaps even a bit too much (the dwarf one, reading it was hard due to the "accent", and I suppose writing it was even harder).

Overall, I rated this a 5/8. It is quite good and competently written for what it is. Its main issue is that it wasn't intended to be much from the get-go.

Rather than a cys this is Ogre showcasing his great writing talent by sharing a collection of several very well-made tales. Taken in that context it's a great read; each tale is interesting on its own and the whole thing with it's consistent fantasy theme reminds me of the Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which is a Coen brother film depicting six unconnected tales from the Old West. I recommend this as a great way of letting someone enjoy some very well-written fantasy stories from a great writer and also, perhaps, putting them in the right mindset or inspiring them to do their own fantasy writing.

Ogre always makes really fun and entertaining games so I went into this with pretty high expectations also taking into consideration the setting in which this takes place in. Short stories compiled in a larger book is something I always enjoyed when I was younger and there was a certain book series that had rather quite a lot of them that I can't seem to remember but it reminds me a lot of it considering the amount of depth and detail put into each story that more than enough makes up more the low choices in my opinion. The dwarfs story was my favorite out of all of them, and it's swell that each story has it's own mood and theme which makes it easier for someone to resonate or like a story given their preference.

Overall very awesome game and entertaining read.

Highly recommend this story to anyone with a little time on their hands. It's even good in segments, like how I read it.
I love the details you've put into this short little collection of tales. It's almost as though I could really see the settings and action going on. You've found the perfect balance to be able to make the reader feel as if they're really there, while also keeping them interested in the story.
My favorite story was the serving wench's tale. Mostly the stories had entirely different kinds of moods. There were the more sad toned ones, like the serving lady's. The dwarf's seems less true and more enjoyable, partially because of the entertaining accent.
Despite it being short and (as you warned) choiceless, you can see there was a decent amount of effort put into this.
I enjoyed it immensely. If there were even just small options, it would be absolutely perfect, but as is I still give it a definite 7/8.

Very nicely written. The lack of choices is made up for by the amount of time and effort put into every story.

This would've been improved by an option to deliberately shun the fatass gnome. Really game, why not take a hint. I left him till last for a reason, I don't want to sit next to that.
It just adds injury to insult that the gnome also exposed me to second hand smoke before the game would let me leave the building. I'm so upset I'm literally shaking.

Ogre, where all the branching choices?!

Well as advertised this really is a collection of short stories from interesting characters at some inn/tavern thing. Really that's all I can say.

It does a decent job of creating the atmosphere of a tavern, and then one can choose to see which character might provide an interesting tale for them to listen to. Some stories more interesting than others, but surely a stylistic choice, I have to presume.

Yeah, I think that concludes my thoughts on this.