Player Comments on Ylva's Prison Arc Pt. 1

The opening is fine and I sort of like the idea of a random dice generator being determined by a person choosing numbers (though it’s a bit obvious what to pick, you should offer say ten choices and then randomly assign “good” results to two or three). We are thrown into things in which information is not available to the general reader and this was clearly made for a specific reader or readers so it’s weird to see it on a public site. Obviously, the way to roll is werewolf it out and attack everyone in sight.

Whatever we do there is no escape (unless I’ve missed something) so the whole story seems a bit pointless, except perhaps as writing practice. There’s nothing seriously wrong with the story except that it doesn’t really lead anywhere and we waste too much time in the cell thinking about poorly-explained stuff. It would be better to develop this story more, make it more accessible to the general reader and obviously don’t write the story in parts – it’s not long enough to be broken up and this should be taken down, expanded and worked on. You’ve got some good feedback on here already so I’m going to rate it low to encourage you to redo or expand on it.

To add on to my previous comment, you could also add a stat element to your game. This would let you implement a dice roll for options, whilst giving agency to the player since they would be allowed to choose what kind of character they'd like to play. You could also add some backgrounds to choose from, that relate to the world of your setting.

There's some articles about adding this kind of thing into storygames on the site, if you're interested.

This was an odd read.

Why is the player given the choice of how successful their skill check is? The point of such a mechanic is that it's left up to random chance, but players who understand how to manipulate the odds in their favour will get consistently positive results.

If you're going to implement a system where the randomness and consequently, the incentive to learn how to improve your odds of succeeding doesn't matter, why not just have it be a predetermined successful/failure option?

Make the player character an archetype of some kind, then it would be clear what options the player take and the ones they shouldn't.

Surprisingly competent considering that, like others have said, you probably didn't spend a whole lot of time on this (if "part 1" isn't an indication in of itself).

It probably helps that your premise naturally leads to tense but believable choices to be made as the story progresses. I've come to notice these "escape the house or die" plots tend to go well for that reason.

But yeah, this could probably use more work if you want it to really stand out. Like Mizal said, having to randomly roll a dice unprompted does make it seem like this was made for your friends rather than an online audience.

5/8...realistically this should be a 4 but I guess I feel generous with this one! ;) (either that or I'm bored/had fun with your story despite its short comings! lol :P)

DM me if you want a more in depth review for whatever reason!

Cheers! :D

I strongly suggest to unpublish this piece, remove redundant descriptions, fix the grammar and actually let the player understand the basic plot.

Was this meant to be made publicly available, or did you just write it for your gaming group?

The writing itself is pretty solid both in the way the scenes flow and the technical aspects (looking out the door would be peeking not peaking, but that's the only error I noticed), and dialogue is good.

The branching would be the weak point, all endings are essentially identical and even the earlier choices loop and fold into each other at times.

But "part 1s" are usually not loved here, instead of 4000 words that don't go anywhere why not a complete story?

I don't know. I just seem to keep dying no matter what I pick, maybe I'm just not clicking down the correct routes? Story difficulty definitely isn't a walk in the park though, lol.

Honestly its a story with a very small scope, its just about a werewolf trying to escape imprisonment (and seemingly always failing!) but id like to say its definitely not poorly written.

I didn't really like the whole number picking aspect of the story, it felt redundant. It's well written, its just lacks depth, character and scope, fix those issues and you have a legitimately good story.

Keep it up! I Could definitely see you making a story genuinely enjoyable to read, if you allow yourself some more breathing room.