Player Comments on The Orb of Detroit

Ok first off I don't think this site is the proper format for a dnd game. Second off all the branching paths lead to the final ending so like a lot of dnd games we're just railroaded into the plot because you couldn't think of alternatives for any choices your players might make.

Secondly, your campaign title is stellar I mean Orb of Detroit? Really setting the bar high for those other DMS out there. That was sarcasm and I highly doubt your players finished this campaign since you couldn't even bother to show up and used this site for a crappy supplement.

I think you missed the point of this website which is that it is for CYOA style stories which DND is as well but the way you have set this story up allows for little to no freedom in storytelling. The whole point of CYOA is that it functions as a cooperative story game much like DND where you offer players choices and that influences the outcome of the story which is not present here.

Obviously, this was not intended for a larger audience which leads me to ask why is it even here? If it was for a dnd group is it really that hard not to just type something up on google docs and share it with your party?

As far as the story goes it seemed fine but not relevant to me since I wasn't the intended reader of this anyway.

Honestly, I would really love to see people use the main story page to hype up their story and entice people to read it. Or at least have some information that might lead the reader to understand what the story might be about. In this case this sounds like it is not a story at all, but a DM tool for a D&D game. So I’m expecting something to store monsters, create maps, and roll dice. I don’t think that’s possible with this interface, so I don’t know what I’m getting into here.

A little tip for any budding authors on this site: please don’t explain why your story is bad (such as the spell check comment). If you know your story is bad, or that something is bad about your story, go fix it! You don’t have to publish now, just go fix whatever stinks about your story, then you can remove the warning and republish it.

It’s a D&D game and I’m in Detroit, USA. Okaaaay. But hey, I don’t have the super-secret map, so I don’t know if that matters at this point. Thanks for explaining “attuning,” but that was kind of a rude way to explain it. In the first intro, Boddynock was the Duke of Detroit and a gnome. In the second intro he has been hidden away. Why was a Duke hidden? Has he been usurped? Is he ruling in exile? I don’t know what’s going on.

The writing is a bit rough, and I suspect aimed at a very narrow audience of people. The naming of people seemed pointless and the way my reputation increased was missing. If my reputation is starting to increase, why not give me a reason? Why not support what’s supposed to happen with additional ideas?

The idea here seems strong, but the implementation of this is off a bit IMO. There seem to be events happening without any reason, outside the story, without any explanation. I think the character point of view changes throughout the story, but that’s not really clear, either. There is even a place where there is an “option” to quit the game that isn’t even a link. There’s one page that says nothing but “Alex will do this part!” Is that supposed to be outside the game? Or was he supposed to make that page?

I think perhaps this was developed for a specific audience and was never intended for the average CYS reader. Perhaps it was never thought that people would be reading this years later. But that’s back to my very first point: if this wasn’t intended for general consumption, that could be noted on the main page to avoid this very type of comment!

At first, the *cough*ing really confused me. Try to introduce the characters differently because I had no idea what you were talking about at first.

Grammar wasn't a really big issue despite the lack of "spell check", which isn't an excuse for mistakes. The paragraphs could be broken down. They were a bit hard to read through.

Otherwise, it was really interesting! I really liked everything except for how it abruptly ended for me. It needs to be longer! I love your style and tone and writing skills, but you needed to spend more time expanding the story, the plot.

I would have rated it a 6/8 if the plot was more... Complete. I might have rated it a 7/8 if you added more story to it while keeping up the good writing. But no, the ending was disappointing, but the writing was great!

Completely incoherent. I have no other thing to say about it.

This may be fine as a tool, but should have stayed unpublished with sneak preview on. It isn't suited as a standalone game.

needs difgferent endings for each choice

Well this was a strange story, but I like strange stories. Also, there is a spell check. Try putting it on Advance.

And, because I forgot to mention it in the last comment, the storygame itself was alright. Not anything groundbreaking, but still alright.

I would recommend you break up your paragraphs thought. Seeing large masses of text just moshed up like that can be a bit intimidating to the reader and prompt them to skim over what you've written.

Good luck in the future!

"Ready for some back story? Well I hope so! (also noticing no spell check in this program so don't judge.)"

Oh, I most certainly WILL judge! Just because CYOA lacks spellcheck in their story writer doesn't excuse laziness. After all, you can always write pages in Word or something else and then copy/paste them over, and even (God forbid) use a dictionary!