[OOC] The Tavern

[Amy]

I never thought I could beat out Sinner for that award. Thank KO that ARG retired or it wouldn't even have been a race.

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[Magrok]

Originally Posted by roaddog41

24 players will be allowed to compete in pre-designed adventures in a tournament setting intended to find the best player in the DNDOG Universe! For this year, anyway. The judging will be by a committee of qualified Members and will be based on a variety of player skills including Role Play, Literary Ability, and how the player gets the most out of his/her character.

The Great Player Competition 2008

More than half a year has passed since the beginning of this competition. And it is quite clear from all of your excellently roleplayed posts and continued dedication that you have all put enormous work into this, through your effort making it better and more prestigious than it could have ever been with less commitment. That said, all good things come to an end eventually, and you have waited for this moment: The competition is over and done. And that, unfortunately, means that some of you will have "lost" after all, after half a year of work. Even so, you cannot dwell on that. Even if you are not chosen to win, that does not erase all of the beautiful writing you have brought forth to bring your characters to life for the past seven or eight months. No one and nothing can take that away, and your awesome ability, talent, perserverence, and dedication are recognized by all, no matter what.

No matter what.

Here I speak for all the judges in congratulating you. All of your performances have been truly superior. We have decided to choose, of you six, three people to win the 2008 Great Player Competition, and of them one overall winner. But before I announce them (for fear you may stop reading after you know ), a few pointers from all of us, and comments in general on this round:

Posts wherein conversation is mixed with description work better from a reader's perspective than large blocks of either on its own, or after another. That said, both are usually necessary for a good post - one in which only a short conversational response, or a description is present would be less powerful than one with both, intermingled. Imagine you are writing a page in a novel, and you likely won't go wrong.

Do make sure, though, that you recognize the importance of brevity as well - while one or two sentence-posts are rarely effective, multi-paragraphed posts lose their effectiveness just the same. If you have a large background or historical story to tell, split it up among several posts to make it more digestible for the reader. If in doubt, it may be better to keep history to history, and not dwell on the character's thoughts or background stories; there will likely be a better place to insert them later on. A thought here and there is good, but grandiose internal monologues in excess may (and usually do) detract and distract from the game, and if kept in one large portion and not broken into smaller, scattered parts, should more be kept to solo pieces.

That said, there is one important difference between a novel and a roleplaying game: In a game, there are many protagonists, each equally as important as the rest. Sharing the spotlight sometimes can not only improve the quality of the game as a whole, but help prove your worth as a player and teammate, willing to forego personal glory for the good of the story.

You may note I am being deliberately general here; neither citing specific examples nor specific players. You will find me doing neither in this post. As I have already said and cannot stress enough, you are all great roleplayers. It would almost be an insult at this point for me to pick out specific instances and either uphold them as great virtue or denounce them as great folly, as though I held objective truths of writing in my grasp. All interpretations are subjective, even that of this and the other adjudications. It is up to you, to each of you, to take to heart the pointers you believe you could benefit from or use to your advantage, and discard the lessons you disagree with or have already learned.


All that said, I shall delay no longer. Know, however, that there will be no accompanying description for each player's strengths and weaknesses; as above, we are past that. Decide for yourself, truthfully, what your own strengths and weaknesses are. You'll probably be right.


And now... we the judges present to you the winners of the 2008 Great Player Competition:

 

Embrodak, with his portrayal of Vanai "The Fair" Bloodreaver

GleefulNihilism, with his portrayal of Archibald DePyre

and

RonarsCorruption, with his portrayal of Lian of the Moon and the Stars


~ Congratulations to all of you! ~

And finally... the Greatest Player of 2008: is...

 

GleefulNihilism!

Your hard work and dedication are self-evident, as is your boundless talent.
Although our words can never fully describe your roleplaying skill, we're sure it goes without saying.

This has been a wonderful time, and we look forward to your roleplaying in the year ahead. I know that I personally would accept any of you into any of my games, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that sentiment. Congratulations, good luck in your gaming in the future, and game on!

~The Judges

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[GleefulNihilism]

So as not to risk spoiling the contents of the post I will make this as general, plain, and underscored as possible, exposing as few details as I can.

Woo!

That is all for now, there will be more later.

[Zhefonyll]

Well, it's finally finished. Everybody give yourself a pat on the back and return to ignoring each other now.

No seriously - you guys aren't enjoying the fight and you've actually got it in the bag at this point but don't realize it, so I'm not sure if you even want to finish the thing after all. I could probably predict players' actions and write up a finale-post in the battle for completion's sake, but I'm not sure we all want to spend another couple of weeks playing the whack-a-mole game the Horned Devil is rightly up to and finally finding and slaying the boss of the encounter. Any opinions here?

Oh, and by the way, Magrok, I skimmed past your entire post, read the spoilers, and then went back to see if it was the typical "everybody's special" speech.* You can't stop some people from cutting straight to the core of things


* = It's not that I don't believe the 'everybody did great, you made us work our butts off picking winners, things would be easier if some of you sucked, here's some generalized tips for you all' commentary, it's just that those speeches have gotten fairly familiar over the years. Plus, I might be the sort who likes to know the answer and then find out why the answer is, rather than the type who wants a logical progression to the answer through the reasoning.

[GleefulNihilism]

To me it looks more like we lost DarkFuzz is all, I know I'd like to keep going. Just not my turn to post yet.

[hvg3akaek]

Yes, well done to those above, but well done to all participants as well! It has been a long three rounds, and everyone who competed in this last round already showed a great merit of talent


Also, thankyou Magrok for collecting the thoughts and decisions of the judges, and compiling them into the above, well-constructed post

[TheDarkFuzz]

Dudes, nice jobs. You guys rocks.

Also, I'm totally still here, I've just been busy these past couple days. I'm up for continuing the fight, inevitable conclusion or no, but I'm also fine with stopping given the whole "there's nothing afterwards" thing. By that I mean that playing whack-a-mole and so forth for a while with these dudes would totally be worthwhile if there was experience, gold, and plot advancement to be had. As is, there, um, isn't.

On the other hand, I haven't turned Hala into a total babe yet, and I think we can all agree that needs to happen.

[Amy]

Congrats to all of the contestants, and thanks to the judges and DMs. Progressing to the final round was a challenge unto itself. All have a right to feel proud on this one.

It would be great to see this as an annual event.

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[hvg3akaek]

Originally Posted by AxeMan

It would be great to see this as an annual event.

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...but with a change-over of judges, right?

[Sorator]

Probably once every two years, instead of every year, seeing as it takes so long to do, but yes, this should most definitely be a recurring event.

With different judges, so that the current (or formerly current) ones could compete.

Congratulations to you all!

[Zhefonyll]

I feel for the fools brave souls who try to run another of these.

The only reason this one went so well was because it went relatively-unnoticed until the application process was over. Start another and get the word out, and getting through the apps will be like judging the first round was - with the rounds themselves as pure torture on the judges.

Plus, there will always be people showing up after registration closes, wondering why they - great players that they are - weren't 'invited' to compete. That, too, would only be worse next time around.

The test-run always encounters fewer issues than full-scale production, and we almost didn't finish this time through.

[Nimlos]

Originally Posted by TheDarkFuzz

On the other hand, I haven't turned Hala into a total babe yet, and I think we can all agree that needs to happen.

Someone's obsessed.

As for continuing the fight, I'm glad to do so provided Zhef wants to. Honestly, I kinda figured we had it in the bag from the beginning, given the power the six of us can bring to bear. A couple of weeks of "I look here. Is he here?" posts while we try to run down the BBEG may get a little dull, but when don't they?

[GleefulNihilism]

Yeah, as much as I'd like to see this be yearly the logistics don't seem to be in favor of that. Shorter rounds or every other year are the best two solutions I can think of.

[hvg3akaek]

Originally Posted by Sorator

With different judges, so that the current (or formerly current) ones could compete.

I was thinking of resting, personally

[Admin RonarsCorruption]

Hey, great work everybody.

I would like to put a hand out to Nimlos, because I personally feel that he did awesome with Hala; and was probably my favorite character to read about.

Are we going to get more detailed feedback on what put [spoiler of winner] ahead of the rest of us?