The All Guardsmen Party

[Shoggy]

Are you allowed to say who you were playing in this thread? I'm very curious.

Well spoiler tags exist for a reason

Spoiler: VERY SECRET THINGIES

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I play Nubby (also Crisp)

[Hazrond]

Well spoiler tags exist for a reason

Spoiler: VERY SECRET THINGIES

Show

I play Nubby (also Crisp)

Spoiler: EVEN MORE SECRET THINGIES

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I KNEW IT, nubby is probably tied with twitch for my favorite atm

[blacklight101]

Spoiler: Secret Stuff of Secretness +1

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My Favorite other than Twitch, you have put together one hell of a cool character right there. Awesome combination of DM and players, that has been quite fun to read.

[Incorrect]

A tip of the helmet to you for this amazing story. I really appreciate the energy you have put into writing it all, it is truly epic. For the last couple of days I have chosen to read this, over published books.

Several times I thought to myself, this is insane; and shortly after it would just get crazier.
Of cause, inspired by your story I am now itching for grim dark.

[Shoggy]

Well it's always nice to know you're appreciated.

A tip of the helmet to you for this amazing story. I really appreciate the energy you have put into writing it all, it is truly epic. For the last couple of days I have chosen to read this, over published books.

Several times I thought to myself, this is insane; and shortly after it would just get crazier.
Of cause, inspired by your story I am now itching for grim dark.

You know, I always felt we wound up rather short on the grimdark. It's been a surprisingly light-hearted campaign given the setting. We actually had some much, much darker campaigns back in D&D.

[Hazrond]

so when do you think we are gonna get more stories

[blacklight101]

For being as light-hearted as it has been, I thought it captured the grimdark pretty well. Now im just waiting on further adventures of the AGP. I put down the novel I was reading for two days, my wife can attest thats not normal, just to keep reading this.

[Shoggy]

so when do you think we are gonna get more stories

Not until the new year, I'll be back in a stable location with a fair amount of free time after the 4th. I'm trying to squeeze in what I can between doing stuff with the folks, but I'm not a fast writer.

For being as light-hearted as it has been, I thought it captured the grimdark pretty well. Now im just waiting on further adventures of the AGP. I put down the novel I was reading for two days, my wife can attest thats not normal, just to keep reading this.

For now the only thing I have left is our old D&D Stories:

(first one is long and poorish quality, sorry, non image version below these)
(also these were my first foray into writing, quality may be rather low)

{Scrubbed}

That last one was the standard I set for Grimdark in our DM's games by the way.

[Asylum]

Just dropped in to say:
Ultra-great stuff, really... frakking... awesome.

[Rainman3769]

I have LOVED reading these stories. I am just sad I have to wait for more, lol. I don't know if you have ever read the Ciaphas Cain novels, but you have captured their spirit hands down. You have shown just enough of the grimdark and overall crappiness of living in the 41st millenium to make the point, but you have managed to convey the characters' reactions and thoughts to show the dark, comical absurdity of the setting. I love my RP group, but I envy you for yours.

[blacklight101]

Really cool D&D stories too, I have to agree with Rainman too, I love my RP group, But I envy you for yours.

[Manatee]

Just wanted to pop in and say thanks for the good read. It took me a couple of days to get caught up on all the shananigans, but it was totally worth it. Looking forward to new entries whenever they get posted. (also subscribing to thread).

[Sartharina]

The Shane and Tommy stories are extra awesome.

Mr. Tulip was... bleh. If you're going to rip off an established character, you need to emphasize the differences between him and the source material, or at least make it interesting, instead of just regurgitating how he's adapated to an RPG. Nubby was fun to read about because, well... while he's Nobby Nobs, there isn't a single Discworld book I'm aware of where he tried buying Anhk-Morpork an interstellar starship that tried to kill the entire Watch.

[Shoggy]

Just dropped in to say:
Ultra-great stuff, really... frakking... awesome.

Really cool D&D stories too, I have to agree with Rainman too, I love my RP group, But I envy you for yours.

Just wanted to pop in and say thanks for the good read. It took me a couple of days to get caught up on all the shananigans, but it was totally worth it. Looking forward to new entries whenever they get posted. (also subscribing to thread).

Thanks a lot guys, glad you folks are enjoying them.

I don't know if you have ever read the Ciaphas Cain novels, but you have captured their spirit hands down.

The Cain novels were definitely a major inspiration for all of the group, as well as the stories themselves. I generally put those books down as the most accessible piece of 40k writing out there.

The Shane and Tommy stories are extra awesome.

Mr. Tulip was... bleh.

Yea, just how it works out sometimes.

[Sartharina]

Yea, just how it works out sometimes.

I actually believe it was a matter of presentation. Actual stories of Mr. Lily in the campaign would have been more fun to read than just re-hashing "Hey, it's Mr. Tulip!" (The only difference being Mr. Tulip self-censors himself)

And I also got a strong Ciaphas Cain feel... at least from Sarge.

[Squark]

And I also got a strong Ciaphas Cain feel... at least from Sarge.

I think that's just a result of playing straight man and the general paranoia any veteran guardsman not from Krieg develops*.

*Technically, the Death Korps also expects the worst, it's just a that when "Become a martyr" is your life goal, you don't care as much.

[Sartharina]

I think that's just a result of playing straight man and the general paranoia any veteran guardsman not from Krieg develops*.

I was more thinking the whole "Downplaying just how much individual initiative and leadership he takes" aspects - he says "All they did was follow orders!", and yet... every one of their missions had him take command of the situation and going out of line to save the day.

[TheOneHawk]

Very very good. Great story. Since you asked for literary criticism I noticed one thing that's been niggling at me the whole time I was reading it. You use the term 'we' when speaking about the entire party, indicating that the narrator is part of the party, but then at no point do you indicate that it's from any particular character's point of view or that any particular character is the narrator. Every character is referred to as they, which grammatically indicates, at least to me, that there's a sixth member of the party and they do absolutely nothing except things that the entire squad does. They have no name, they do nothing interesting, all they do is stand there and whatever the entire party as a group is doing, they do that. Obviously that's not true, but it's how it comes off.

Other than that, very very cool story. I've never liked 40K, always been a fantasy guy myself, but damn that makes me want to go pick up a 40K army of imperial guard and learn to play it.

[Caimheul]

Read all of it today, and just wanted to say it was FANTASTIC. Thank you sooo much for taking the time to write this!

[Shoggy]

Very very good. Great story. Since you asked for literary criticism I noticed one thing that's been niggling at me the whole time I was reading it. You use the term 'we' when speaking about the entire party, indicating that the narrator is part of the party, but then at no point do you indicate that it's from any particular character's point of view or that any particular character is the narrator. Every character is referred to as they, which grammatically indicates, at least to me, that there's a sixth member of the party and they do absolutely nothing except things that the entire squad does. They have no name, they do nothing interesting, all they do is stand there and whatever the entire party as a group is doing, they do that. Obviously that's not true, but it's how it comes off.

Other than that, very very cool story. I've never liked 40K, always been a fantasy guy myself, but damn that makes me want to go pick up a 40K army of imperial guard and learn to play it.

Yea the perspective is all mucked up due to it's origin as a player-perspective story. To me it feels like I'm too deep into the story to mess around whole layout (also I still can't be sure who's going to survive to the end) so I'm not really inclined to change things at this point. If I ever try to make something professional of this I'm going to choose a guardsman or switch to third person and work this whole thing over from beginning to end though.

Anyhow if you like the stories but aren't super into the grimdark of the setting I'd recommend the Caiaphas Cain books, they're the tone I was aiming for when I started writing these.

Read all of it today, and just wanted to say it was FANTASTIC. Thank you sooo much for taking the time to write this!

Thanks a lot, I'm a slow writer and it takes me a while to make these, but it really makes it worth it to know that people are enjoying the stories.

[Caimheul]

Yea the perspective is all mucked up due to it's origin as a player-perspective story. To me it feels like I'm too deep into the story to mess around whole layout (also I still can't be sure who's going to survive to the end) so I'm not really inclined to change things at this point. If I ever try to make something professional of this I'm going to choose a guardsman or switch to third person and work this whole thing over from beginning to end though.

Anyhow if you like the stories but aren't super into the grimdark of the setting I'd recommend the Caiaphas Cain books, they're the tone I was aiming for when I started writing these.

I think you did a good job of getting a similar tone to the Cain books. In a similar vein, it probably wouldn't be too far fetched to treat these as a sort of compilation of the after action reports and thoughts of the various troopers in the cell accumulated by Oak during their service under him.

[TheOneHawk]

I have no problem with the grimdark of the setting, I've just always preferred fantasy to futuristic for my fiction. I've liked the IG ever since I read a Gaunt's Ghosts novel but I have a lot invested into a Fantasy army and honestly I don't have time to play even that right now, and none of my friends that do roleplaying games know anything about warhammer.

[Edge]

Well, these tales have certainly warmed the cockles of an old heretic's heart. Eager to see more come the New Year and to see the death toll of these Imperial lapdogs keep climbing.

[Bob of Mage]

Nice story so far. I agree with the others that you do indeed seem to be channeling a bit of Cain here. Makes for a fun read while staying true to the setting.

Kind of funny that the only half-way decent guy Oak sent you with was the Rupert. The rest were awful at their job. It was like watching them all somehow lose to Brock with their starter. That is quite sad since even Charmander (the one very a major type weakness) had a very good chance of sweeping him. Make me feel like you guys got dumped with all the losers.

By the time I got to the later stories I was always waiting for something to go wrong. That feeling made thing feel a bit silly when they always happened. Sure minor issues would make sense, but sometimes it seems like your party should not be that insanely unlucky. I guess it's an issue with there needing to always be a certain level of action for the players. As a reader I can get by with much longer periods of everything not going to the warp.

As far as POV goes, I find it work for what it is right now. It's the story of a player sharing his game with others, and trying not to have the whole thing foucs on the guy he's playing. Nothing wrong with it for now. If you want to polish it up I would go with a thrid person view. First person would have the issue of having to deal with you having to switch views due to things like deaths.

In the future I hope you get to see some more of the 40K-verse you bring back some good stories (and hopely you don't have too many deaths).

[Ravens_cry]

I am having trouble with the HTML version, it keeps scrolling up in my browser, the latest version of Firefox on Linux Ubuntu. Could you link, in a PM if anything, to the 4chan version? Much obliged.

[Shoggy]

http://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments...ardsman_party/

[Ravens_cry]

http://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments...ardsman_party/

All right, thanks. :)
EDIT:

Spoiler

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No, NOT CUTTER?!

[Shoggy]

New chapter up, external links because sometimes there's naughty words involved:

Screencap version:
http://imgur.com/a/URsER

HTML version:
https://googledrive.com/host/0B3Z9sX...dFWXM/agp.html

[Demon 997]

Shoggy, could you PM me the other stories that got scrubbed earlier? Or email, or reddit, whatever.

I would second that I think your stuff is on a level with the Silverclawshift stuff. I'd be happy to read it published, though it'd definitely need some heavy editing for the transition. Not so much in quality, but just that stuff like this has a different tone, style, and expectations then stuff in a book. How long is each one anyway? My sense is actual text is short story-ish, but you could pretty easily get that up to short novel with you adding a lot more description and detail to where you are and what you're doing.

I think that's the big difference actually. In someone's RPG logs no one cares about detail past "prison cell" or "hosed with lasgun fire" where in a novel you'd need more. It'd also pad it out nicely. Characters would likely need more characterization in a book, just due to more talky bits and people being less accepting of blatant stereotypes.

The overall writing is pretty fantastic and engaging. I'd keep it basically as is for the online stuff.

I know what you mean about people reading and playing off each other. I've done it with improv groups who've been together for a while. Sure, you don't technically know what they'll do once they're on stage, but you can guess pretty well off a few words what their basic character is and where they want this to go. Then you mash ideas into each other and hope for hilarity.

[Shoggy]

This post has all the other image links: http://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments...ardsman_party/

That said, is the HTML version working for people? It's sort of weird how I bent google docs into hosting it and I'm curious if it loads the images correctly.

Anyway yea, these were never intended to grow so big. The tone/perspective/whatever were aimed at something around 10-20 posts long and more in the vein of a player story than anything. Since then it's gotten a tad out of hand size wise, while not really changing much in the writing department.

The last chapter was 61 posts long.


And the whole thing is 371 long (10+19+31+36+44+56+52+62+61)


I've just edged out the third bloody Harry Potter book (107,253 words) and I'm heading for the fourth...

Really it's been a weird experience, this is more or less my first foray into writing anything, I've never had any real education on the subject. Someday it might be nice to try for the real thing, but copyright shenanigans mean I'd have to chuck all this stuff out and start fresh. So it's an odd sort of place to be to say the least, too involved to stop, to esoteric to get published (or even properly edited), it's pretty much destined to stay a web series.

Anyhow, glad you like it and thanks for the input.