Adventuring for Dummies, a D&D Comedy Adventure

[Meek]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3502287/1/

This is a D&D story I've been working on for kicks. It's made out of some rejected campaign ideas of mine (rejected by myself – other people thought they were genius, but I'd be embarrassed to actually RUN any of them).

The story starts off a little slow, and does not explain itself in any clean sort of way. World information and character backgrounds will be scattered around rather than clean and in one place, with some exceptions, so if you like all your eggs in one basket, you won't like this :smallwink:

There is a useful disclaimer at the bottom of the story's first chapter. Which I changed very recently.

[Brickwall]

Number 1. That is not a haiku. That is a poem.
Number 2. That's a damn lot of internet culture that one needs to get, because I think I missed all the jokes. Aside from the cleric being a moron, nothing seems funny. I mean...flying werecats...undead amulets...not really funny.

I don't know what you're going for, but it's not coming across. Also, it would benefit you to write in longer sections. Eleven different sections makes for a very disjointed chapter. Try just writing a chapter divided into, say, three parts, but keep it just as long. I've read books divided in this fashion, and I have disliked them.

Overall, I can't really give you anything very constructive, since you're obviously going for something I'm not familiar with. All I can tell you is that you should write for a larger audience. Less in-jokes, or at least more non-in-jokes.

[Meek]

Number 1. That is not a haiku. That is a poem.
Number 2. That's a damn lot of internet culture that one needs to get, because I think I missed all the jokes. Aside from the cleric being a moron, nothing seems funny. I mean...flying werecats...undead amulets...not really funny.

I don't know what you're going for, but it's not coming across. Also, it would benefit you to write in longer sections. Eleven different sections makes for a very disjointed chapter. Try just writing a chapter divided into, say, three parts, but keep it just as long. I've read books divided in this fashion, and I have disliked them.

Overall, I can't really give you anything very constructive, since you're obviously going for something I'm not familiar with. All I can tell you is that you should write for a larger audience. Less in-jokes, or at least more non-in-jokes.

That's the joke. It's not a haiku - it's a poem. In a book of Haikus. One could infer that the poor man wrote similar terrible things. Hence why he should remain anonymous.

And there are no "jokes" per say. It's dry humor. There is no real punchline. It's just meant to be absurd.

Writing in longer sections would detract horribly from it. It's meant to be disjointed. It's absurdism.

The amulet and the werecat were also never meant to be funny.

There isn't really any internet humor yet. I tacked that unto the chapter just in case I ever decided to have Saxophone shout "JUST AS PLANNED" at a random convenience, or introduce Dr. Billy Koen and his Matlab madness. I haven't done so yet, I simply might in the future.

As for writing to a larger audience: Kurt Vonnegut once said "Never make love to the world."

I appreciate your input, and don't think I'm just dismissing what you're saying. Rather I'm explaining what this all is. The story is a disjointed absurdist tale. That's just what it's meant to be. If I were to tighten it up, there'd be no point in me writing it. It's a different style of humor than what you're used to, I see. Unlike the order of the stick, I don't set up a joke that'll end with a punchline that'll have you rolling with laughter. Rather, a sort of semi-humorous confusion is what I'm trying to achieve. It's subtler, and if it doesn't make you laugh, you simply weren't meant to laugh at it. Again, I'm not trying to sound snotty. That's just the way this cookie crumbles. The cut-offs that introduce semi-related concepts are only for atmosphere. The way I picture it, there's some crazy old man telling you this story. He'll chop it up into pieces, and throw in random anecdotes, like the parts of Karin Apuleius' books, the not-Haikus, and etc. Some people are going to laugh at this crazy old man and want to hear more, while others will drift away to the jester doing his silly dancing or the bard throwing those knuckle-ball punchlines.

That's for the humor aspect, anyway. It's also meant to be a fantasy adventure, but those aspects don't show up immediately.

[Brickwall]

As for writing to a larger audience: Kurt Vonnegut once said "Never make love to the world."

Yes. Only make love to 1/6th of the world. That would be the top 33% in attractiveness of the gender that you're attracted to.

Okay, other than that, I still recommend that you write for large audiences if you're a beginner. Otherwise, the ffedback you get will be about as helpful as the stuff I just gave you, and your improvement will be severely slowed.

[Meek]

Yes. Only make love to 1/6th of the world. That would be the top 33% in attractiveness of the gender that you're attracted to.

Okay, other than that, I still recommend that you write for large audiences if you're a beginner. Otherwise, the ffedback you get will be about as helpful as the stuff I just gave you, and your improvement will be severely slowed.

I wouldn't say I'm a beginner, by my definition of the word. Amateur, yes. Beginner, no.

This isn't really a project to improve myself, however. The prose is utterly haphazard, the chaptering is completely disjointed, the plotline to me is a matter of indifference (I'll just do the first cool thing that pops up in my mind), and the characters...well, that remains to be seen. I like them, but I wrote them. I can't say they are original, because nothing quite is anymore, but I suppose they'll be 'original enough' after a while. Or maybe they won't. Mostly when I actively try to write well I'll write a short story. Long projects don't lend themselves well to that. Especially fanfiction, which is generally terrible.

If anything this is an experiment into the theater of the absurd, in all it's forms.

Thank you for your time and your directness, however. I really appreciate that you've tried to help me despite not enjoying the story.

[Brickwall]

Alright, but if you're just going for "I wanna write something that would make the Mad Hatter confused," there's not terribly much point in putting it up other than having people like me say that it's a waste of time, pretty much. I mean, reading it is. It contributed nothing to me, other than using up just a few more valuable short-term memory cells.

And "beginner" means you haven't progressed beyond the stage one would expect a beginner to be at, it is not a chronological term. If you still have protestations against the term, you should note them, but at this level of batstuff insanity, it's hard to tell what level you're at.

[Meek]

Alright, but if you're just going for "I wanna write something that would make the Mad Hatter confused," there's not terribly much point in putting it up other than having people like me say that it's a waste of time, pretty much. I mean, reading it is. It contributed nothing to me, other than using up just a few more valuable short-term memory cells.

And "beginner" means you haven't progressed beyond the stage one would expect a beginner to be at, it is not a chronological term. If you still have protestations against the term, you should note them, but at this level of batstuff insanity, it's hard to tell what level you're at.

Nothing to note, as I'd have to show you something I'm actually proud of in order to back up anything I say, which I'm not willing to do. I am really indifferent towards the term and find it humorous in a cosmic sort of way. The only note I would have to say would be this, and it's not very useful: I believe I am an amateur in the sense that I've yet to become professional – but I'm not struggling terribly. Most of my learning I have done by reading the things I'd like to write, and by reading literature, and then applying it. For this story, about all I applied was to embark on a mad homage to Douglas Adams and hit the off switch on my self-scrutiny processor.

It's no problem, and don't see it as any matter of confrontation, nor take it really as any offense. If you think the term fits, by all means use it. Kurt Vonnegut was told by an esteemed professor that he was a hack. If I take every such offense personally I would have either quit writing by now or taken the existentialist final solution. That's just the world I've decided to entrench myself in.

As for making the Mad Hatter confused, that's just a gross exaggeration (which I believe was the whole point of it). You didn't 'get it': but I've had a number of people that did, and do. Not a terribly great number, but the majority of them view the internet culture I mentioned with total apathy (I should also note that my reader base has never been quite high since I used to view my number of readers as something relatively unimportant, which I don't right now). I am not making love to the world, yes – but I am still writing to an audience. In fact, and this purely a fault of mine, I was actually rather shocked (in an "Oh dear somebody's streaking outside my door" kind of way) at your confusion with it, as I'd yet to meet anyone on my travels through the series of tubes that finds it confusing.

There's really nothing to 'get' as there are no terribly important allusions or references thus far that would require any amount of thought. There is really no subtext you are missing that would make the humor funny. There might be, in the future, but right now there is none. If anything, it is the style right now that would be off-putting, much like there's people that simply can't read Douglas Adams because he doesn't make sense to them. This is about the same, only it happens to be stuck in a website that resizes the story to fit your window, which annoys me, might annoy you, and makes everything a lot uglier than in my word documents.

I am, however, sorry to hear that it wasted your time, and I apologize for it.

Hopefully I have not put off any other people from commenting. I'd enjoy it. My only suggestion to all of you lurking out there is that you try reading past chapter one, where I'm told it calms down a bit. I don't believe it at all – in fact I think it probably just gets nuttier, but I'm not one to judge.

[Brickwall]

Oh, you're going for Adams' style? You're way off. Adams was much more absurd than this. Try throwing in something crazier, because if you expect to make D&D players think that something is absurd, it's gotta be out there.

So, yeah, I completely missed what I didn't like about this. You haven't made it too weird: it's not weird enough. Try fixin' it.

[Meek]

Oh, you're going for Adams' style? You're way off. Adams was much more absurd than this. Try throwing in something crazier, because if you expect to make D&D players think that something is absurd, it's gotta be out there.

So, yeah, I completely missed what I didn't like about this. You haven't made it too weird: it's not weird enough. Try fixin' it.

It's more complicated than that.

I'm not using Douglas' Adams entire style of writing. It's too wholesale crazy. Which is what I like about it – but it's not what I want to write. I'm going for a more subtle form of it. The greater underlying theme is coincidence, absurdity, rather than complete improbability and randomness.

You can say he's my "Format Inspiration". That is, the way the narration goes, was in part inspired by him. How the story looks is in part inspired by him. But If I wanted to be Douglas Adams I'd quit – because that's just impossible. It's not what I'm shooting for here. I wouldn't be able to tell the story I want to tell. My other major inspiration is Eichiro Oda's 'One Piece', which is the kind of adventure story I want to tell. It's well-developed and within itself somewhat coherent, but with comedy and a charm lent to it by the element of the absurd, and how it part of real life for the characters.

I'm the first to admit that almost none of this is really overtly present in the first chapter. That's because this story doesn't start at its beginning, and its beginning is scattered in bits and pieces all over the rest, and the first chapter is merely a convenient intro to Sax and Polly and the narrator. This story is not something that will ever be truly orderly and its disorder is not simply an element of comedy but a conscious decision in storytelling.

Edit: After a while, I think I know what to say that best sums up everything. I don't want to write a comedy, nor an adventure. It's a Comedy-Adventure. There's more comedy than adventure, because the comedy is everything and the adventure is only a part. It's about the best summation of my own disorganized creative process I can come up with.

[Meek]

Thought it was my duty to tell people here, if any are interested, that it's up to 3 chapters now (Second chapter has 19 divisions, third one has 3 so far). Will try to work on some more tomorrow. I'll be online for the next few hours if anyone wants to chat me up here about it. Ignore the chirping crickets.

[ocato]

I read the first paragraph of the begining. I laughed. Not a loud laugh, just a sort of absurdist's laugh. I understand what you are going for. You didn't quote Vonnegut at random good sir.

[Meek]

I read the first paragraph of the begining. I laughed. Not a loud laugh, just a sort of absurdist's laugh. I understand what you are going for. You didn't quote Vonnegut at random good sir.

Why, thank you! Though Vonnegut is not a big influence on the general story this time, he's always been my favorite writer. And I think a little bit of him gets into everything I write nevertheless...that's the way it goes with writers you admire, you can't keep them out of your writing! :smalleek:

[Meek]

Thought to inform the fine folks here that Chapter 3 is finished at fourteen parts, and Chapter 4 is up now, with one part. I think the crazy has actually mellowed out some, though I expect I will be getting crunk again real soon.

[Meek]

Chapter 4 is now up to 12 parts, one of which is a song. It's personally been my favorite one to write so far, mostly because I love writing the character of Marshmallow...

[Meek]

Not giving up on this yet since it has a fanbase now! Chapter 4 completed with 16 parts, Chapter 5 is up with 1 part.

[FireSpark]

I'm at work right now, and so thus far have only skimmed the first section of chapter 1. But you can but you can bet both of your gluteus maximus that I'm not gonna stop reading, 'till you stop writing. I only wish I could scribe as well as you. Very engaging. Jolly good sir!

[Meek]

I'm at work right now, and so thus far have only skimmed the first section of chapter 1. But you can but you can bet both of your gluteus maximus that I'm not gonna stop reading, 'till you stop writing. I only wish I could scribe as well as you. Very engaging. Jolly good sir!

Why thank you good sir! I plan to write this for a good long time. The concept is very simple to write for, and due to being divided into so many parts each chapter is very easy for me to write at a leisurely pace. So life doesn't ever really cut into my writing time. I've got material set ahead for a long time, and pretty much every time a new D&D book is out I potentially have an extension to what I can do.

I hope you continue to enjoy it!

[MrEdwardNigma]

I've read the first chapter now, and it's fairly well written, with reasonable pointes, if you can call them that in this sort of literature, or rather, writings.

I do approve of the whole idea, but it seems the text could be more fluent. Every line seems to stand on it's own in a way, and often too may lines trying to make a point each, get very chaotic. I used to write like this too, but have given up on it for it's lack of coherence. This being said, with some work, your writings could turn out to be very good.

[Meek]

I've read the first chapter now, and it's fairly well written, with reasonable pointes, if you can call them that in this sort of literature, or rather, writings.

I do approve of the whole idea, but it seems the text could be more fluent. Every line seems to stand on it's own in a way, and often too may lines trying to make a point each, get very chaotic. I used to write like this too, but have given up on it for it's lack of coherence. This being said, with some work, your writings could turn out to be very good.

Thank you for your comments. As I said in the posts above, the writing is chaotic and disjointed on purpose. I've been told it mellows out as it goes along. My purpose really isn't to provide a fluent, beautiful narrative, but that's just what I've been told. Maybe later you'll find it to be better. Or worse. Personally I'm hoping it gets worse as it goes along, and maybe someday degrades into babbling. Or not, but I hope you get my point here.

[Meek]

Updated again! Chapter six is finished with 12 parts. Expect Chapter seven sometime soon.

[Meek]

Chapter 7 is here, with three parts!

[Meek]

More parts of 7 will be up soon. I've just had some very busy days.

[Meek]

Chapter 7 is updated now, up to 7 parts. You'll notice the style is slightly different here, because it's a more "serious" portion (as serious as it gets for me anyway), so I tried to be more descriptive. Plus these are characters that will be important (and in the case of Ilaria, that are dear to me) so I want their introduction to be different than the rest of the story so far.

[Meek]

I may be alone in this topic, but hey, I'm persistent.

[PlasticSoldier]

I can't find the mad bombedr what bombs at midnight character got a link? And for the book thing i started reading and it's kinda funny but i miss lots of the jokes.

[MrEdwardNigma]

This thing has the evil midnight bomber hat bombs at midnight? Awesome. Oh, and Plasticsoldier, just search Google, you'll find him.

[Meek]

It does not YET feature the mad bomber what bombs at midnight. However, he is scheduled to make an appearance sometime soon. (Ssssh, don't tell anybody.)

As for the jokes, like I said, there aren't really any yet. The humor comes more from the situations and characters. There aren't any "punchlines", per say, spots were you "get" the jokes and laugh aloud. If you aren't laughing throughout or at least at certain points (such as Saxophone's asking the villain to break for lunch before starting the fight) then it will probably never be funny for you. As for the mentioned Mad Bomber, you can google for it. What you're looking for is a thread on the Gleemax forums for D&D. It should still be alive.

Anyway: CHAPTER EIGHT IS UP. CHAPTER SEVEN IS COMPLETED! YAY!!!!!!

I had so much crap going on in my life that I simply lacked the will to write (and sometimes to live) but now I'm back, and you can expect more from me.

[Meek]

Chapter Eight is finished, Chapter Nine coming up.

[Meek]

Chapter 9 is completed, and I'm taking a break before starting on ten. Maybe I'll have ten by the week after next.

[Meek]

Chapter 10 is up!

[Meek]

I was busy all week so chapter 11 was postponed. However, today, I dug up some material I had scrapped and touched it up a bit, and now it is the official Adventuring For Dummies Sidestory Theater, Episode 1! Ilaria's Amazing Day Off! In celebration of the story getting 1092 hits!

[Meek]

Chapter 11 up, and yes, I am quite adept at talking to myself.

[Meek]

Chapter 14 up. Whoo, it has over 100,000 words already. And it's not even a quarter done (not even close!).