Tournament of Champions Finals: The Whole Glory vs. Whispers in the Wind.

[NightCast]

Could you please remove your post TB. Thanks in advance.

A wave of nausea swept over followed closely by an ear-splitting pain ripped through Ryondel’s head, causing the malevolent laughter to die in his throat. It had been a long time since he had felt such discomfort and he knew exactly where it came from. Once upon a time, before achieving his near god-like powers, if DarkStrike had used a spell of such strength, he could be rendered unconscious by the amount of energy it drained from him; in fact, if he attempted something too far beyond his abilities, it could kill him.

Grandstand much? Despite the cynicism, Morgoth’s concern was apparent.

Might’ve been too much, was Ryondel’s reply.

Might?

Shut it.

All in all though, it had been worth it; a single powerful spell was all it had taken to eliminate every combatant down on the field, or so he thought. Your senses are dulling, master, Morgoth’s thought intruded upon DarkStrike’s sense of triumph. Taking his index and middle fingers from both hands, he massaged his temples as the pain in his head began to subside and pass into nothing. He Sent a mental inquiry to the meaning of his companion’s statement, and whatever he had assumed Morgoth meant; it was not what demon said next.

Something neutralized the bulk of your spell, all targets are still active. DarkStrike did not understand it; how could something have simply neutralized his magic? A wave of indignant fury blotted out his rationality and he dove. Dropping beneath the clouds, he entered the rough winds of the light storm that mulled over the battlefield. His eyes narrowed as he assessed the situation. A ring of rubble and debris surrounded the area around his intended targets, but the arena remained untouched for the most part. Ryondel watched as Honuse struggled with his footing, but then performing an acrobatic move, the avatar stood ready to meet any further attacks.

Ryondel knew that one of the opponents that had come to face the Whole Glory was responsible for the negation of the Spectral energy, but which one? He didn’t know, so he did the next best thing: he guessed. Pulling Bane from the sheath upon his back, he let it maintain its two-handed long sword form and dove at the elf. As the last remnants of the nausea and pain passed, he leveled out, just above the branches, moving toward the airborne girl in the direction opposite and parallel to that which she was traveling and aimed a wide sweeping blow at her head, making sure to keep the girl between him and the old man fighting Honuse.

[Tainted Bushido]

Round is concluding. The only people left to post in the quad are Petoux and Mikeavelli. Once they are done, the judging commences.

[Mikeavelli]

'Hopper had but one advantage over the massive beast of a man he was challenging. He wasn't subtle.

It might sound obvious, especially after the bit where he rained down lightning, but now instead of sending him running for dear life, it's saving his hide. To 'Hoppers experienced eye, from the moment his opponent grabbed that axe to the time he hurled it at 'Hopper, the giant was telegraphing every nuance of the throw.

Because of 'Hoppers experienced eyes, he probably knew where the axe was heading even better than the giant did! From there on out, it was a simple matter of not being there!

'Hoppers movements weren't hurried or panicked, he moved only enough to let the axe whiz by, mere inches from his chest. Despite the lack of physical impact, 'Hopper still felt the force of it ripping through the air. So powerful was the throw, so great was the difference in physical strength between 'Hopper and his opponent that even a near-miss like that was enough to leave him breathless.

His opponent clearly never intended for that to finish him off, just keep him busy long enough to get into a fighting stance. 'Hopper hated that it worked.

But, with his opponent on the defensive, it did give 'Hopper the chance to size up the situation. Soddin' Hells, one lil' tap from 'im an' all the bones in me body'll be ground up like flour ta' make 'is bread with! This ain't quite a beanstalk, but I sure as Stygia know how Jack musta've felt... S'not fair, never is, I got'im hard as I could, piker should be havin' trouble jus' walking now. Instead, he's flippin' end-over-end better 'an before! AN 'is blood is makin' Styx not better 'an a metal club. He's not so good at swordplay as I am, but he don't have ta' be, all I gets is one more hit 'afore Lucky gets an' acid-bath, an' it's all over. Can't hurt him none with that either, iffin' that nasty piece of work what used ta' be his leg is any clue. I'm outmuscled, outmagicked, totally outclassed. Powers, I haven't 'ad this much fun in years.

'Hopper grinned.

He tossed Styx away, it was useless now, and probably more dangerous to 'Hopper than to anyone he might hit with it. Old muscles were screaming at him from the recent stress, he could ignore them for a few moments longer. This wasn't going to take long, now that 'Hopper made up his mind to stop playing fair.

Once again, 'Hopper lunged into the fray. He moved like a wild animal, scrambling up branches to gain the height he needed to leap down on the giant from above; a raging berserker with the golden sword Lucky arcing directly for the giant's forehead.

But it was a ruse, a trick, a mad gambit to draw attention away from 'Hoppers left hand, where another of his many rings was in position. 'Hopper knew that even if Lucky struck true, he probably couldn't deal a fatal wound through the giant's thick, brutish skull, and there were any number of parries or counters that he could respond with, and if this didn't work, 'Hopper would soon be wholly shattered.

When everything was perfectly in position, the true nature of 'Hoppers attack would become apparent. At his mental command, the anti-magic field lowers, and his force shield turns on, especially placed to:

A. Leave a barrier between 'Hopper and the giant's impossibly strong counterattack, whatever it might be...

B. overlap with the giant's neck.

There was no guarantee here, the giant could do something unexpected, and powers knew the ring was never meant to be used as a weapon, there's really no telling how effective it could be. But if this works, he'll decapitate his opponent, and move on to the next.

[Petoux]

Sara had actually succumbed to the stupid mistake of becoming preoccupied by the sight of the attack that faced her and ignoring the other senses. Such an error could have cost her dearly as the sword came violently towards her, seeking to claim her neck as punishment.

Pure instinct drew her neck backwards to her left. Not enough. The tip of the blade tasted blood as it was trickling down upon Sara’s neck, staining her garb to a tarnished color. If time permitted, a sigh of relief would have escaped her lips at her fortune for only having a slight flesh wound. Yet, needless to say, the cunning of her opponent permitted little at all.

Suddenly, to Sara's surprise, a suffocation like feeling overwhelmed the elf. No breathing. At that moment, Sara felt it was all over for her as she fell into unconsciousness and landed on a nearby branch. She was still alive, but the loss of blood knocked her out cold for the count.

It was all up to Hopper to come to their rescue now, for all things were not yet lost.

[Tainted Bushido]

At long last the judgment is complete and the Tournament is at a close. I'll be posting judgment in two posts, explaining the counts of Power Gaming that I witnessed in one, then actual judgment on the second. If you wish to discus the judgment have your facts ready and do so in a respectful manner. Yelling at me is the quickest way to get blocked.

With that said...

I want you guys to know, I’ve read over this thread, and I’ve made some notes. I’ll be making note of the biggest things here, and then moving on to the actual judging. I want this made clear that I found some rather disturbing things here in the thread, and so I’m calling out some of the actions.

1) Honuse Relaiyent, is a caster.

I want this made clear, because when you made your character sheet you specifically say that and I quote;

Honuse is a master of both the biological and electrical schools of magic.

End sentence. I do not care what arguments you dream up from here on out Shadowed, as soon as you spoke those words and your profile was approved, everything you did, was magic. From manipulating electricity to manipulating your genetic makeup, it all falls under the realm of magic. This includes and is not limited to your vision you get as a courtesy of your gods. That was the one of a myriad of counts of power gaming, as such mystical vision was not available to you in the realm of Null Magic created by Hopper’s ring.

As I play DnD I happen to know very well what an anti-magic field can and cannot do. It states very clearly the types of things it is capable of, and what happens to things within its confines. As Hopper took from the D20 Open Gaming License; that means that the 3.5 Edition Dungeons and Dragons Rulebook has much to tell me of what is and is not acceptable in these situations. I must also point out that Gods and Artifacts are exempt from it, and you are neither. You are the avatar of the gods at BEST which means you don’t even get that pass.

By stating that your blood was acidic, which would of course be a form of genetic manipulation by your magic, while the field was in effect is a no-no. All magical effects are suppressed in an anti-magic field and any duration continues on despite the suppressed status. That means that if you have something that works for X posts and the anti magic field is in effect for five of them, that these five posts still count against duration. This also means that everything within an anti-magic field functions as its mundane counterpart, which includes blood which is NOT acidic enough to melt a blade.

That is, if we follow Hopper’s intention in using an anti-magic field.

If we don’t, then it works exactly as described in the character sheet, and in that case Honuse would have died immediately upon being within 30 feet of Hopper. As unfortunate as this is, its life, and you deal with it. Characters have weaknesses, it’s what you do to combat and or develop your character that determines how well your story is received. Some characters will wipe the floor with others; we try to balance it out, but if you give yourself real weaknesses, then you create legitimate characters and have a more real story. This isn’t a role playing tournament; it’s a creative writing tournament. I feel this was lost entirely from the get go.

2) With that out of the way, let’s talk about how Honuse created those wings in the first post.

You talk about being able to manipulate your genetic makeup. While altering your genetic code, you never actually said it gave you the ability to mold your body in such a fashion. The closest I get is that you can absorb biomaterial from one source to temporarily give yourself more mass. Slimming your legs to gain wings, I feel is outside the scope of your abilities, however, had you actually used those corpses you were slaughtering to give yourself wings that would have fallen within the realm of possibility. Changing your genetic code only goes so far; modeling your body is a different matter all together, doing so in such a small amount of time, even more so. Once more, had you followed your character sheet I wouldn’t be bringing this up.

3) Nightcast, I want you to understand, that I was greatly distressed by your use of Spectura.


Effectively creating a tactical nuke was well beyond the realms of what a level 5 character should be doing. I know you’re more familiar with Althanas, so I have to ask why you didn’t consider the fact that doing so was probably out of scope? Also your profile mentions NOWHERE that when Spectura corrupts it releases energy at an exponential rate. Just that Light and Dark mages usually abuse Spectura to power their crafts. Atop this all I see in your profile is that spectral particles will gain the properties of the energy about it, turning to light or darkness. This is in no way shape or form a good enough explanation to justify creating a tactical nuke. If anything had you told a moderator that’s what it was capable of, I’m MORE than certain they would have limited your ability to manipulate this element.

Althanas is not GUA so when you add vagaries like that, it’s up to the mods to crack down on it. This isn’t a case of sneaking it past us, it’s a case of outright deceiving us, and your score will suffer for it, just like Shadowed’s will for the abuse of profile abilities. We don’t know what these elements are capable of, so suddenly using Spectura to blow up a large cluster of the battlefield is not in my mind in keeping with how I was TOLD spectura reacts to being brought to the material plane.

4) Now that I have finished with that, it’s your turn Petoux. Sara shouldn’t have been able to jump that far…

You know it, and we know it. I know you were already told in your out of character discussion thread, so I’ll leave it at that. Shadowed’s snide comment about it not withstanding, it is correct, Elves can’t jump 200 feet without an ability to do so. Also saving yourself from dying, by passing out from a flesh wound? I don’t know how something that was a glancing blow, could knock you out so quickly that before you hit the ground you had already passed out. She died or she didn’t, we had already stated that characters would be revived in some manner or another. Hence the emphasis that IC victory doesn’t matter, it matters to how you write and what’s written.

5) Hopper, you’re in the same boat as Petoux as to how you got up there.

Unfortunately Honuse placed you guys on a branch below him. While technically not bunnying I felt it put unnecessary amount of distance between the forces. Despite this, it is your job to figure out how to get up there, and charging just didn’t cut it.

Onto the Judgement; I’ll be using the standard rubric rather than the modified rubric.

[Tainted Bushido]

Whispers in the Wind;

Petoux

STORY

Continuity ~ 4/10. Your posts unfortunately suffer from a lack of continuity. The beginning is more confusing than helpful in this regard, as you explain things but give a brief if somewhat vague tie into what’s truly going on. Sara is being reminded of her past, and wakes up on a tree much like the ones at home. Wouldn’t that have more of an impact upon her when Honuse lights them up like a cigarette? I got no sense of consistency within the thread, and only a brief understanding of previous rounds through your posts both opening and otherwise.

Setting ~ 3/10. A backdrop does not a setting make. This is a case of show not tell. If it’s wet, shouldn’t water fly from her weapons? Perhaps she even has to move the hair from her face in order to keep the damp locks from her face? Just think about the images I created in your mind by those examples. These are the sorts of things I should see for setting, just through those two examples you can imagine the rain pouring down upon the combatants. You were also penalized on something that I’ll cover more in Shadowed and NightCast’s setting comments.

Pacing ~ 3/10. Your posts were short. Especially your concluding post which I felt had a small amount of effort put into it, but nothing truly noteworthy. I could almost sense the resignation at this point, and while it is sad the round was cut short, I do not think by any stretch of the imagination that it should have cut your post that short. Your post was meant to reach closure on the subject, not write her basically out of the fight with no effort to give me a sense that the battle was over.

CHARACTER

Dialogue ~ 4/10. Now, here your score begins to pick up. You have learned from my last judgment of you, and I can see that. I appreciate seeing my suggestions taken to heart. Dialogue is NEVER a game of verbal communication. There are many forms of communication. The average score comes from words spoken I could feel were heart felt. The tears at the beginning were a good touch to give me a sense she cared about Hopper. The problem then became, how fast you rebounded from it, and further, how quickly she seemed to forget Hopper existed in her blood thirst. Sara and Hopper have been fighting people and visited places that would give most people nightmares. The lack of effect on Sara was appalling.

Action ~ 2/10. I cap Action at 2 when cases of power gaming occur. This is for the fact you got up onto the branch Honuse was on with little to no effort, with no ability to jump up there written in your profile.

Persona ~ 2/10. The part at the beginning was the only time I felt I was reading about a character, rather than reading a script for what a video game character does.

WRITING STYLE

Technique ~ 4/10. Use of the occasional simile was nice to see, but there wasn’t enough work there to get a gauge of your style. This hurt your scoring here more than I think you’d believe.

Mechanics ~ 3/10. Mechanics hurt you here for a couple of reasons. For the first part you were using properly spelt words, but the wrong version of them. Amongst other problems were minor word swaps. Others are more of a grammatical situation, and part a writing style opinion. Once more Petoux, read over your posts out loud. If you trip over the words, reword them. If you find yourself breathing mid sentence or pausing naturally, place a comma. This simple tip will help you at least make your prose more fluid, and that will bring up technique, pacing, and clarity, along with this part. The rubric rewards fluid posts, and punishes posts that are choppy in that regard.

Clarity ~ 6/10. Aside from the occasional circling of words, your posts were clear. However the other part of clarity understanding what you are trying to convey. The portion with the Phoenix at the start, suffered on this part. What was the point of this, to imply you’re here to protect these trees? Or was it perhaps to remind you of your childhood? Neither of these themes was expanded upon, but both would have been viable. These opening essays as I like to call them, need far stronger tie in to the subject material before they are a valid writing technique. Keep this in mind, though it was nice to see you try SOMETHING new.

MISCELLANEOUS

Wild Card ~ 7/10. You’re improving, you’re making strides. Stick around this site, give your character some thought, and get into the game dude. I’m certain we’ll turn the coal into a diamond in no time. I don’t want you to get discouraged about this at all. I want you to walk away learning something from this man.

TOTAL ~ 38 / 100.

Personal Notes: You did better Petoux. Just to underline the situation, you cleaned your posts up much better than last time. You still have a few problems, and I’d like to see you develop Sara as a character. She still comes off as too one dimensional, and with the recent fight, more as a bi-polar character. Crying at one moment and suddenly enjoying the thrill of battle seems a bit much. I’d have liked to see you transition from it better.

Mikeavelli

STORY

Continuity ~ 6/10. I got a genuine feeling that this was getting to be old hat for the Portal Hopper. Further I could feel a bit of experience behind him. You also did a good job in tying in at least the last fight, and linking to it. It created a nice pace where I got the feeling this wasn’t a fresh start, but merely a continuation of what came before.

Setting ~ 4/10. Your use of setting set it up as a backdrop, but even still you forgot it sometimes. You’re on wet tree branches, like Shadowed, I would expect Hopper to have problems maintaining a balance, even when jumping and sprinting about. A setting is not suppose to be a backdrop, it is the area you are interacting with.

Pacing ~ 5/10. Your pacing was good for the most part. You kept an even pacing, but since you could not finish you had no opportunity to score higher. You were also docked for the list, as I felt it chopped up the post a little bit. To go from writing prose to a laundry list of effects like that, was a bit disconcerting. It jarred me out of the flow your post created.

CHARACTER

Dialogue ~ 6/10. Your speech at the beginning was a bit off the wall. I’ll just say that it was filled with a bit of chest beating, and I like the ideas it was trying to convey. I felt it fell short of the mark, yet you also added in some internal dialogue to keep me entertained, even when nothing was going on. Dialogue includes everything, you just need to work on body language a bit more. If he’s hurt have him bite his lip or grind his teeth.

Action ~ 2/10. You fell victim to the teleportation problem. You magically showed up on Shadowed’s branch, and while he made no effort to actually correct you guys, you missed the mark on that one. So, like Petoux your score was capped at 2.

Persona ~ 7/10. While you suffered in action for the small bout of power gaming, you make up for it in raw personality. I am once again impressed with your grasp of the Portal Hopper. What I would suggest on increasing the persona score comes down to body language, and perhaps adding a bit more of the old war memories to his actions. Talk about what the current situation reminds him of, or maybe relate a past exploit to what’s going on. Hell even if for a second he gets caught up in the past and relives it, impressing it upon the present could be an interesting twist.

WRITING STYLE

Technique ~ 6/10. Your techniques are good, and the accent was passable. While I had to stop and reread what was going on, you’ll get hurt in clarity a bit more than here in technique. You have a rather Spartan style, much like myself. Unfortunately, simile and metaphor only mean so much, you need a bit more than that to impress the audiences.

Mechanics ~ 4/10. You held a myriad of problems. Problems that I myself felt was not immediately noticeable or perhaps a mistake of style. These hurt, especially since a couple of times I was slowed down to circle them and note them. This hurt with the pacing because they jumped right out at me and slapped me upside the head.

Clarity ~ 4/10. Again the accent hurt in a couple of areas. Perhaps it was just trying to hear it in my head, or perhaps it was trying to figure out what exactly was being said in the first place, this hurt clarity. I could get a general gist, but the time it took to realize what was being said threw me off, and affected both clarity and pacing.

MISCELLANEOUS

Wild Card ~ 7/10. I dig hopper, I like him a lot, and I feel if I had a choice of reading more of his stories, I’d be so inclined.

TOTAL ~ 51/100.

Personal Notes: I happen to like Hopper a lot, as I’m sure the judgment told you. I would expect no less of you however, especially from the last battle I judged on your behalf. There was some clever use of those damnable rings as well, and I would have liked to see what Shadowed was going to do to counter getting his head cleaved off by magic. Still, the fight was cut short, and I doubt much would have come of the resulting four days you guys would have had left. It was a shame really.

Total for Team Whispers in the Wind = 51 + 38 = 89
Average for Team Whispers in the Wind = 89/2 = 44.5!

Team: The Whole Glory

Nightcast

STORY

Continuity ~ 5/10. I got some feeling of a past for Nightcast, however this hurt you as I wasn’t able to puzzle out enough of it. You mentioned being bound to the lawmaker, yet didn’t exactly go on to describe what exactly had happened. I’m not asking for a total recap complete with pictures, but when you glossed over the details for the sake of moving the story along, I felt you could have at least summarized it in a sentence or two. Otherwise I got the feeling this was another day for Nightcast. Which is a good thing.

Setting ~ 4/10. You largely remained in a blank slate for the most part. Ignoring the rain and the heat, along with the smoke created a blank slate effect about you. This hurt you, and further you fell into the scenery being a backdrop problem. Setting is about the world around you, you don’t just walk into wide open rooms some rooms are cluttered, some have stenches you cant stand, others are hot and you are constantly reminded of this fact. Don’t tell me the scenery, show me.

Now to explain why everyone took a hit in setting; after Nightcast nuked the battlefield, only a 30 foot radius around ‘Hopper was left intact. I want you to think about that for a second. 30 feet is ten yards. It is not that much space, there was no way in the nine hells that trees the size of skyscrapers were left standing, if they were nuked, and the only part protected was roughly 60 feet in diameter. No one caught this, so everyone fails in the setting category.

Pacing ~ 6/10. I felt your posts had a fair amount of pacing to them, but at times they seemed to jump about. One example is the post where your bonds to Shadowed were broken. It was a sudden jump from being bound to no longer being so, when I felt that fifteen minutes hadn’t even passed yet. I had no sense of time within your posts, which made them seem rushed or forced. So, while within a post you were okay, I felt your timing didn’t sync up with others. Shadowed burning the branches and being attacked by the other team, didn’t take ten minutes. At least at the point you got the estimate.

CHARACTER

Dialogue ~ 6/10. Your dialogue felt far more fluid than most. My problem with your dialogue is the breaking the fourth wall effect you create. Call me old fashioned but I don’t feel a demon should know what an air strike is, let alone be referring to bolts of lightning like they are air strikes.

Action ~ 1/10. I cap action at 2 in cases of power gaming. However, in your case I felt the power gaming was flagrant and more harmful to the thread than what the other team had done. Petoux jumping while harmful for the suspension of disbelief was at least trying to create a battle. While, Hopper’s power gaming could have been a misunderstanding of positioning. Creating the tactical nuke, was a bit beyond that damage.

Persona ~ 3/10. I got to know what he thought about the Norse Gods, what I didn’t get to know, was who he was. I felt Nightcast didn’t give me much insight into his persona, and suffered for it.

WRITING STYLE

Technique ~ 4/10. You suffer in technique as your breaking the fourth wall, was not done well enough to be overlooked. I’m not sure if you intentionally did so or not, but I felt that if you’re going to use this technique you need to embellish more on the character to either explain why he knows of these things, or do so in such a way as to appear comical enough. You did neither, and so the analogies were out of place.

Mechanics ~ 5/10. You had a few awkward phrasings as well as some situations were I felt the writing was off or just wrong. This in a way goes hand in hand with technique, but the hyphen use to put in asides, I felt should have been done with parenthesis, or commas. As you are writing a story, commas fit better, but parenthesis for a much better barrier than the hyphen which feels as if it should be connecting the two words between it.

Clarity ~ 6/10. Clarity hurt for those awkward phrasings, as well as repetitiveness. At times I felt I had already read part of sentences because you had used the word ass twice within it. At the very least avoid using the same word twice in a sentence, in a paragraph is possible.

MISCELLANEOUS

Wild Card ~ 5/10. Dig the character. I felt you had some good work in here, didn’t like the abuse of spectura, and I felt cheated by your quick explanation about why it releases so much energy all at once. Because of all this you score exactly average on Wildcard, as I enjoyed reading your posts, just at times I disagreed with the content.

TOTAL ~ 45/100.

Personal Notes: I liked the irreverent attitude of the demon. It fit in nicely and it gave me a nice break from the other’s posts. From Petoux’s simplistic and Spartan style to Hoppers accent, you added in something different form the others, while staying fresh and free of some of the pitfalls of playing a demon. Demons are Chaotic creatures, and so when Nightcast gave his partner the hint to run, then immediately did his schtick, I felt it fitting. He “warned him” to leave, it was his fault for not taking the advice. It added a “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” comedic quality.

Shadowed

STORY

Continuity ~ 4/10. You wrapped up the last fight by slaughtering your opponents, however I had no sense of history for the character. I’m not telling you to give me his life story in a paragraph, but when fighting and being caught off guard, perhaps relating to his first death or to his fights with others that gave him trouble would have been appropriate.

Setting ~ 5/10. While you often put setting at the “set it and forget it” school of backgrounds, you did make nods towards it from time to time. This is what scored you the average score. What hurt your score was the revelation that should have gone into your post, following Nightcast’s nuking of the trees.

Pacing ~ 3/10. There is an old saying, especially in the field of writing, called K.I.S.S. (Keep It Stupid Simple) I’m not telling you writing a lot is a bad thing, what I am saying, is that I felt I was drudging through your opening post, then drudging through your second post, before you finally reached a manageable post size by your third. This hurt your pacing, as I had almost no desire to move through your posts, more on this in writing technique.

CHARACTER

Dialogue ~ 4/10. Your body language said nothing, your actual dialogue didn’t give me much of the character. The Lawmaker’s personality felt stiff and forced. I got no sense of what he was portraying or feeling through the characters body language or dialogue, other than irritation. I just get the feeling he’s a very angry guy, and that’s it, that’s the entire character.

Action ~ 0/10. Nightcast was given at least one point in Action, for the fact that his actions both in and out of the thread had a limited impact, beyond the setting problem it generated. The reason you have scored no points in this category, is that your brand of power gaming was not only flagrant, but also poisonous to the thread, as it sparked an argument over the boards that degenerated to “I don’t care what you guys say, I am right no matter what my profile says.”

You were uncompromising, to the point actions of other characters were harshly impacted by your acts of power gaming. This comes from forcing other people to write around you, despite it being perfectly within their right to play it out how they originally desired.

Persona ~ 2/10. I got the fact your character is angry, I didn’t get much other character from him. I always got the impression that if they felt that a fight might challenge them, the Norse got delighted, like they were happy to finally do a battle worthy of the god’s view. I couldn’t even get much about who Honuse was, other than an avatar, apparently a lawmaker, whatever this means, and angry. That was it. Honuse was flat and shallow in the development you showed me. Show me what the character is, do not force feed me it, and expect me to understand what you mean.

WRITING STYLE

Technique ~ 4/10. Your techniques were rather flat and unimpressive. Your writing style I would liken to a college essay, while technically there is nothing mechanically wrong, there is a problem in how it is worded and what you have written. The persona problem aside, I felt like I was being drowned in words. If you have the option of being long winded, or writing it more succinctly, I think you should prefer the latter. Add in unnecessary scenes such as the fight with the giant bird, and it leads to a rather unimpressive boring manner of writing.

Mechanics ~ 7/10. Your posts were rather good as far as spelling, grammar and other things go. You merely had some minor mistakes, such as an “if” instead of “of”, and other things you could catch by having another read your post, or reading your own post aloud.

Clarity ~ 6/10. Your posts were clear, they were just so long that I often had to read them again to get a full sense of what was going on. Your opening post is notorious for this, as I feel the first post should be the eye catcher. I didn’t feel that I should even continue on, as your post did nothing to hook me.

MISCELLANEOUS

Wild Card ~ 6/10. You’re one of the better writers in this tournament, I’ll give you that. You just seem to be focusing too much on the writing style, and not enough on the content. Its creative writing, which means you’re here to tell a story, not write an essay on the battle going on. I fell this thread missed that mark completely.

TOTAL ~ 41/100.

Team: The Whole Glory’s combined score = 41 + 45 = 86
Tea The Whole Glory’s averaged score = 86/2 = 43

The Winner of the 2009 Tournament of Champions is Team Whispers in the Wind by 1.5 points!

Team Whispers in the Wind gain 1663 Experience (before doubling) and 1000 gold (before doubling) for their victory!

Team The Whole Glory receive 525 Experience (before doubling) and 500 gold (before doubling) for their loss!

[Tainted Bushido]

EXP Added.

Petoux has reached Level 2!

Mikeavelli has reached Level 2!