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The next boat back from Norway, you say?quote:You, good Cornelius, and you, Voltimand, Let's find the ship with the monkey and the wizard. They should be rushing back to Denmark soon enough.
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Mar 27, 2015 18:14
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Let's swim. No time to wait for boats with revenge on the line.
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Mar 27, 2015 19:13
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I'm for the boat.
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Mar 27, 2015 19:35
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This writing instantly reminded me of why I stopped reading Dinosaur Comics. Swim, I guess.
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Mar 27, 2015 22:57
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Decoy Badger posted:This writing instantly reminded me of why I stopped reading Dinosaur Comics. He does seem rather proud of his own cleverness.
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Mar 28, 2015 00:59
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For all we know, the sailing ships might be as fast as swimming in this day and age. Let's give it a shot!quote:
It appears we have a very arbitrary selection of ghostly superpowers. Are we going to use them to get back home or to get back home with maybe a massive quantity of pirate gold? Voting closes tomorrow at 4 PM CST. Decoy Badger posted:This writing instantly reminded me of why I stopped reading Dinosaur Comics. Pretty much the only bit of writing by Ryan North that I ever sort of liked was his Dig Dug run; that was the one thing that nudged me into trying out this game. Dinosaur Comics to me was always at best forgettable and at worst annoying. Pittsburgh Lambic fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Mar 28, 2015 20:49
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Examine pirate shipDecoy Badger posted:This writing instantly reminded me of why I stopped reading Dinosaur Comics. I might just be a nerd who hates fun, but i'm pretty sure I would enjoy this more if it were written a bit more "straight".
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Mar 28, 2015 21:03
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Kellsterik posted:I might just be a nerd who hates fun, but i'm pretty sure I would enjoy this more if it were written a bit more "straight". I remember reading in a review on this that some of his prose gets even worse. And Dinosaur Comics was funny when I was like 14. I had really wanted to get this when it was on Kickstarter but didn't have the money to get all the bonus stuff as well. Such is the problem with Kickstarter. Search the pirate ship.
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Mar 28, 2015 21:09
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Another Ryan North endeavor that's also victim to his writing voice is his Let's Read thing of the crazy Back to the Future novelization. The book itself is really out there and interesting but North's commentary is subject to his usual EXCESSIVE CAPITALIZATION, hella dope colloquialisms, and rampant abuse of the exclamation mark! Exciting!! Anyway let's look at the boat I guess.
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Mar 28, 2015 21:35
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Seyser Koze posted:He does seem rather proud of his own cleverness. The phrase you're looking for is "insufferably twee." This thread inspired me to watch the MST3K version of Hamlet. I think it's also on YouTube? Finnish scud missiles exploding, now that's funny.
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Mar 29, 2015 15:22
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I think I fall squarely into the target audience for this. I guess I don't find North's writing voice that bothersome. Also, Search the Boat!
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Mar 29, 2015 16:30
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Ignore boat, pursue vengeance We're doing Hamlet, not the mystery of the sunken boat. We found that the boat had a leak, that's what we found.
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Mar 29, 2015 16:35
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Search for ghost pirate booty.   
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Mar 29, 2015 16:44
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Per the votes, let's spend some time searching for pirate treasure.quote:
Well, other than the achievement that was perfectly fruitless. Do we want to do it some more and enjoy some more Hilarious Undersea Jokes by Ryan North, or run along to Denmark and enjoy some more Hilarious Hamlet Jokes instead? Voting ends tomorrow at 9 PM CST. Pittsburgh Lambic fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 23:07
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Back to Denmark! We have a murderer to catch!
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Mar 30, 2015 00:09
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Hamlet jokes because the pirate ship was incredibly disappointing and I can't see the sea being any better.
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Mar 30, 2015 00:11
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Get home ASAP and do whatever we can to avoid further Little Mermaid references. Hans Christian Andersen won't even be alive for a couple hundred years.
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Mar 30, 2015 00:18
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Stay in the ocean and possess a dolphin or something to use as our instrument of vengeance.
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Mar 30, 2015 00:30
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Go back to Denmark because Shakespeare is a better writer than Ryan North is.
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Mar 30, 2015 00:52
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Back to the ocean, we were promised multiple paths and dammit, we're taking them!
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Mar 30, 2015 04:09
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This would probably be a lot funnier if the writing were more deadpan and a bit less self-indulgent. gently caress it dude let's go trawling in the ocean.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:02
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Derp derp wacky money cheese! To the sea!
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Mar 30, 2015 07:35
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Let's go back to the ocean and find that pirate ship that took our treasure.
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Mar 30, 2015 16:27
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A close vote, but it looks like we're going back to the ocean to search for more pirate treasure. What will we find down there?quote:
Looks like King Hamlet's story has come to an end once more. Time for the Haml-O-Meter! quote:(some pointless poo poo went here) Poor Yorick will begin in my next post. Pittsburgh Lambic fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Jun 5, 2015 |
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Mar 31, 2015 03:53
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 Poor Yorick originated as the $90,000 stretch goal for the kickstarter that spawned To Be or Not To Be. It was intended as a short choose-your-own-adventure based on the life of Yorick, the jester whose skull is unearthed and held up by Hamlet in one of the most famous scenes from the play that this work is derived from. The Kickstarter page promised that if $90,000 was pledged then every backer at any tier would get an ebook edition of Poor Yorick, which Ryan North was to write. At the $95,000 and $125,000 stretch goals, increasing quantities of illustrations were added to the book, and at the $150,000 stretch goal it was published as a kickstarter-exclusive physical volume, sent to everybody who had backed To Be or Not To Be at the $25 tier or higher. The Kickstarter met all of these stretch goals and more, even hitting the $500,000 stretch goal listed as "I will literally explode (literally)" which was fulfilled using a dry ice bomb placed inside a 3D-printed plastic model of Ryan North's head. Later on, the ebook version of Poor Yorick was put up for free download on one of the websites that Ryan North writes for. It includes a PDF version and a very functional mobile form, with tappable hyperlinks for jumping between decisions. I've run through every ending of Poor Yorick; while it's very short it has enough different endings to inspire the idea of using the book as an intermission for To Be or Not To Be. It has also managed to be somewhat more amusing to me than To Be or Not To Be, which I'm trying to figure out how to deal with. For now, though, let's see if Yorick can lift the mood in here. Page 1 posted:It’s a brand new day! You roll over in bed, open your eyes and, as you do every day, remind yourself of who and where you are, as well as what your deal is. Oh, Yorick, you little scamp, trying to identify with webcomic artists and other self-proclaimed internet funnymen. Voting will stay open for a few days, since I'll be traveling. Pittsburgh Lambic fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Apr 17, 2015 |
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Mar 31, 2015 04:16
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If we stay in bed, chances are we'll end up dreaming about our future as a civil engineer or some dogshit so let's get up and go.
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Mar 31, 2015 04:54
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Welp I was right. So glad I didn't back this. Option 1
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Mar 31, 2015 04:58
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLN36pgwS5o&t=85s
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Mar 31, 2015 05:14
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If you don't want to lp the game, nobody's forcing you.
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Mar 31, 2015 05:15
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The ghost marine biologist path would have been much better if Mr. North had committed to it and let us have some real underwater adventures, but it really falls flat like this. I don't really mind the occasional nonsense humor but you can't build a whole CYOA book on its back. On the subject of the choice here, I say get out of bed because I get the feeling that the other two are instant death traps and we already used that joke
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Mar 31, 2015 08:42
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I'm kind of curious what would happen if we died immediately but the instant game overs aren't any good so far (possibly ever) so yeah, get out of bed.
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Mar 31, 2015 08:51
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paradoxGentleman posted:The ghost marine biologist path would have been much better if Mr. North had committed to it and let us have some real underwater adventures, but it really falls flat like this. This is a Hamlet CYOA - it's only sensible that the most developed paths are the ones closest to the original story. The idea of a ghost underwater biologist is really interesting, but it *could* easily take up an entire book of it's own, and it doesn't belong here. Ryan North isn't above having interesting ideas and ultimately, when given the change taking these forwards. And I don't really see the writing as masturbatory - it's not 'look how smart I am' ha ha ha - it's always trying to bring you with it on the adventure and share Ryan's enthusiasm. One idea if you are finding the writing style and multiple dead-ends frustrating, then look ahead and mark them as such, or alternately whenever we reach a dead-end immediately backtrack and take the second most popular option, or reopen the vote.
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Mar 31, 2015 08:55
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Wrong Way Go Back is a great example of how to put humour into a CYOA - by having funny absurd situations evolve from your participation. North just tries to unilaterally force it which is off-putting at best. It's the same problem as those old collaborative goon CYOAs where everyone tried to cram so much plot into their allotted page that they disengage the reader entirely.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:10
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Golden Bee posted:If you don't want to lp the game, nobody's forcing you. The core concept of the book does genuinely interest me. The idea has amazing potential, and sometimes it shines through in Ryan North's writing. He keeps dropping the ball, though, often enough that I question whether he can tell when he's telling an engaging and/or funny story and when he's just pissing off his audience. This particular story path wound up being one of the instances where Ryan North hosed up, and it's not the only time in this book where he's going to do so. I want this gamebook to be good, it's not, and that makes it difficult to LP. Cutting my losses and pronouncing this to be a failed LP on account of a lot of the gamebook being often unfun and unreadable would be a justifiable response, but not necessarily a constructive one. The problem that I see with webcomic creators, and internet artists in general, is that the internet makes it extremely easy to fall victim to confirmation bias. No matter what you post on the internet, somebody is going to tell you that it's amazing and somebody else is going to tell you that it's a piece of poo poo. Countless artists stray into the trap of blocking out everything but their unconditional fans, allowing the ever-reliable supply of positive feedback to convince them that whatever they create is golden. By the time they start to go bad either because their creativity dried up or they fell behind on the times, they've forgotten how to police their own work and listen to constructive criticism, and thus wind up huddled in an unnoticed corner of the internet, subsisting on whatever revenue they can extract from their remaining diehards. Even Tim Buckley has enough sycophants surrounding him to block out the chorus of voices telling him that his work is objectively garbage. The result is that only two types of constructive feedback make it through to these artists. One is the kind that comes from close, honest friends and loved ones, people that the artist can always count on to be fair and objective with his or her work. These are the people whom a good artist shows their work to before releasing it into the wild, people with high standards and good taste whom the artist counts on to tell them if a particular creation is bad. The other type of feedback that can penetrate the echo chambers that internet artists build around themselves is in-depth criticism that takes apart an artist's work and discusses where it was good, where it hosed up, and most importantly, how it hosed up and how it could be better. I definitely think this gamebook's author could have done better, given the inherent potential in the book's concept and the author's experience and talent. The book could have been entertaining, and the reasons why it isn't are, to me, clear and identifiable. Pronouncing the gamebook a lost cause and aborting the LP wouldn't be respecting the gamebook's potential, and it wouldn't send any message to the author other than that that one comedy forum thought the book was so lovely that they cut off their let's play after seeing only two endings. Let's Plays of mediocre and even outright bad games are possible, though they often come in a different format than let's plays that can count on high-quality source material for support, with the LPer's efforts focused towards editing and presentation. What I'm considering doing is shifting the format towards that of a critical LP, the type that focuses on what was done right in a game, what was done wrong, and what should have been done instead. If that falls flat, though, I have no problem with putting up the shutters.
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Mar 31, 2015 15:13
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I actually don't mind North's style that much, and I think the marine biologist ending can be sort of defended. Our choice seemed to indicate we wanted nothing to do with the story of Hamlet, and so to have the story effectively toss off a bunch of nonsense in response doesn't seem that terrible. But what really rankles is the condescending tone. The most egregious part showed at the start in Alas, Poor Yorick. You would think that when producing something likely to appeal to people familiar with Shakespeare, you're not going to treat them like a bunch of 4th graders that need it explained to them. (Not to condescend to any readers or 4th graders out there, but here's the part I'm calling out specifically:) quote:“I live in Denmark,” you whisper to the ceiling. “And my name is Yorick. I’m a man of infinite jest and most excellent fancy.”
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Mar 31, 2015 19:20
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Ryan North needs to put down his thesaurus and just write naturally.
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Mar 31, 2015 19:26
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Pittsburgh Lambic posted:Okay, time for some realtalk. This ending was complete poo poo. The writer went for the wacky monkey cheese scenario of "Danish ghost king becomes a marine biologist and is happy ever after" and tried really hard to convince himself and us that this was a good idea to put on a page and publish. So uh... is this some kind of elaborate troll? I thought the entire point of this was to make ridiculous ghost-marine-biologist riffs on the concept.
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Mar 31, 2015 20:11
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You lads sound right chuffed.
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Apr 1, 2015 15:08
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I'm not understanding where all this bile is coming from. The writing is juvenile, and the capitalization can be insufferable, but it's hardly trying to condescend towards its readers or be "wacky monkey cheese". From the start he's treating things in an irreverent manner and then taking things to absurd conclusions. And if that's not what his audience expects, look at the responses you're getting on this comedy forum somethingawful -T.G. Xarbala posted:gently caress it dude let's go trawling in the ocean. AfroSquirrel posted:Stay in the ocean and possess a dolphin or something to use as our instrument of vengeance.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:53
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I mean you wrote the title with "a circlejerk of web artists" did you really think it was going to be mind blowing? Go ahead an just play the LP and enjoy the absurdness of it all 
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Apr 2, 2015 02:26
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