Ambrosia Software Web Board: Random Story Trivia - Ambrosia Software Web Board

I've been doing word counts on the chronicles for my spreadsheet using NeoOffice. (I downloaded that program a while back but never used it because it takes so long to open!) I don't know how accurate this word-counter is, but at least all the stories were counted in the same program, and I don't think it has the same apostrophe problem that the online word counter had. So, if anyone's curious, I'm posting my results. These word-counts are for entire series, not individual chapters/submissions. I'm not really sure it's fair to arrange them by word-count since several of the short ones are poems, and some stories (including some of the longer ones) contain TS or Tavern posts. But anyway, here it is:

43038 - The Ronin Saga book 2: New Horizons, by cache22
31218 - The Hand of Fate, by iKaterei & cache22
21739 - A Ruined Crop, by Heidel
20540 - The Trial, by Avatara
18062 - Hym, by iKaterei
16381 - The Shadow Prophecies, by iKaterei
16001 - Dark Legacy, by cache22 & Moonshadow
15869 - Collusion, by Bryce
12628 - The Shadow Warriors, by Rogan
10624 - Frozen Waste, by Jehezekel
10221 - The Book of Tavara, by Rogan
9583 - Tales of Macilnar, by Mr. Somebody
8275 - Dark Mirror: The Movie, by iKaterei
8066 - Sail, by iKaterei
7469 - The Ronin Saga book 1: Arrival, cache22
7389 - Finish Fight, by Selax
7383 - Below Sight, by Celchu
7195 - Interval Notation Time, by BreadWorldMercy453
6593 - Cause and Effect, by Bryce
6558 - A Secret Temple, by Heidel
6391 - The Aftermath, by TheDarkDragon
5929 - How Niobe Didn't Really Save Christmas, by BreadWorldMercy453
5967 - La Coranich, by iKaterei
5585 - Cities of Fire, by Mr. Somebody
5550 - Order of the [various druids], by Dark Jet
5195 - The Order of the Black Flame, by Ragnar0k
5152 - Rogan's Chronicles, by Rogan
5126 - The Account of Thesises the Beggar (etc.), by Half Truth
4780 - Exodus, by dusk
4737 - Silent Dawn, by Mr. Somebody
4713 - The Undine Stronghold.... as Rogan experienced it, by Rogan
4519 - Gateway to the Unknown, by CrazyChick
4347 - Laughter in the Mountains (etc.), by Commodore Antilles
4224 - Beyond, by Bryce
3892 - The Adventure, by Cooldude
3634 - Evil Christmas?! by Ragnar0k
3582 - Once Again, by Talos
3455 - The Swordsmen of Darkness, by Mr. Somebody
3375 - For the Fun of the Game, by cache22
2933 - Ambush, by rUmbler
2870 - A Midsummer Day's Nightmare, by BreadWorldMercy453
2842 - The Puppet Master, by Lord Gwydion
2715 - The Call of Destiny, by Mr. Somebody
2660 - Philinius, Exile, by Jehezekel
2591 - Dependable Grump, by BreadWorldMercy453
2570 - Quest for the Shard, by Bryce
2289 - Dark Contract, by Ragnar0k
2120 - Fanatic's Account of the Undine Stronghold, by GameFanatic
2004 - The Century Cycle, by Mr. Somebody
1862 - An Exodus, by Selax
1668 - The Dark Mage, by bellerophen
1619 - Coastal Empire, by idiotSavant
1433 - The Power Behind the Rings, by Magpie
1413 - The Jewels of a Star, by Theo Nean Donly
1397 - No Regrets, by cache22
1389 - The Origin of Callie, by ferazel_09
1293 - The Dragon's Statue, by TheDarkDragon
1267 - Verran's Journal, by Verran
1238 - A Day in the Death, by cache22
1211 - The Taking of the Undine Strongholds, by LifeKnight
1209 - Tales of Bellerophon, by Selax
1198 - Talis vs. Kyla, by Dark Jet
1149 - Downfall: Not all "heroes" are., by Jehezekel
1081 - The Fate of Tavara, by Slayer
1074 - The 12 Part Story, by Dark Jet
1046 - The Powerful Demon, by bellerophen
1026 - Zephyr's Journey, by TheDarkDragon
995 - Twisted Perceptions, by Selax
954 - Bloodstone, by Pallas Athene
927 - The Quest for the Unknown Power, by ferazel_09
906 - White Death, by Dark Jet
898 - Eternal War, by Selax
857 - The War of Cytkel, by DarkJet
796 - A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Road to..., by Captain of fury
765 - The Hunt, by Aben Zin
691 - Misery Mine, by ~vIsitor~
674 - Downfall, by Selax
663 - Victory Drowned, by BreadWorldMercy453
657 - The History of Cythera's Mysteries, Part 1: Abydos, by Mr. Somebody
655 - Once Again, as Ferazel Saw It, by ferazel_09
633 - A Cat's Night in Kosha, by ferazel_09
603 - The Legend of the Displaced, by cache22
590 - The Portal, by Forcemaster
590 - Words of the Chimaera, by Selax
569 - Cythera Chronicles (etc.) by Slayer JR
537 - theKestrel: I; A Beginning, by theKestrel
496 - THE STREETS, by cgends & CrazyChick
447 - Tale of the Flax Farm, by Jehezekel
425 - The Wrath of Tavara, by Scylla7
388 - Fake Estate, by BreadWorldMercy453
387 - Singing Demo, by BreadWorldMercy453
376 - The Dragon Manuscript, by TheDarkDragon
274 - Life of a Golem in Cademia, by IT 000
265 - Conspiracy of UrSylph's Stolen Jade Book, by Ping
257 - Abydos, by Ice
237 - On the History of Selax, by Selax
232 - A Day in the Life of a Hero, by Jehezekel
218 - Ratlizard in the Kitchen, by Jehezekel
206 - Summer 2011 Chron Challenge, by Jehezekel
204 - Grapper's Return, by Grapper
181 - The Fourth Prophecy of Neleneus the Savant
176 - Life in Cythera, by cache22
166 - Ode to Omen, by Half Truth
152 - Pining for Home, by iKaterei
142 - Megalomaniac's Journal, by BreadWorldMercy453
123 - A Titan's Life, by Jehezekel
115 - Ancient Lore, by Talos
93 - Cave-slime, by Jehezekel

This post has been edited by BreadWorldMercy453: 06 February 2014 - 04:07 PM

Awww yiss. I have three entries in the top six.

I'm not sure why your word count for Hym is 500 words higher than what MS Word tells me though.

Hmm, I always thought Hand of Fate was a 10,000 word story, but I guess I never actually counted the words - that was Slayer.

I have Part 1 at 18,807 and Part 2 at 11,397 for 30,204. I also have my story at 20,192. Are you counting the comments?

Do we have any way of finding stories that aren't in the Chronicles forum? Obviously, there's the various Glass Menagerie stories, but also e.g. the Cinderei story, which is decently-sized (around 5k words) but basically impossible to find.

(relatedly, I've never quite understood why GM exists in the first place when the stories there could be in the Chronicles forum)

I am not counting any comments. I'm not sure why NeoOffice is giving me higher numbers than Kat & Tyry's programs :\

Most (maybe all?) of the stories that aren't Taverns, TSes, or chronicles are in my "other stories" folder in my archive.

This isn't technically true, but in my mind the GM exists to separate stories based off the current TS from all other vaguely-Cythera-related stories. The GM also has illustrations & comics, which isn't something people have posted on the Chron board before. Plus the soundtracks, but I guess now people do post soundtracks for their chronicles. Personally, I like having all my TS-satires in one place, but admittedly they could go on the chron board instead.

Pallas Athene, on 05 February 2014 - 06:18 AM, said:

Wait a minute, that doesn't sound right at all. I counted it at 913. 5k is a lot for me, most of my GM stories are around 3k.

Oh yeah, oops. 913 words. 5170 letters (well, characters).

Pallas Athene, on 05 February 2014 - 06:18 AM, said:

I suppose they could, though the forum search is still bad at finding things (though I guess a mod could curate and maintain a topic of indices). The GM was set up originally to handle all kinds of media - short stories, comics, artwork, whereas the chronicle forum had always been stories. I don't think that restriction has to be there, but it was a prevalent perception.

Also, I don't think people regularly check the chronicle forum (which is a self-fullfiling problem).

Avatara, on 05 February 2014 - 05:04 AM, said:

I think Slayer tasked us with writing a 10 000 word chron, which we rather overshot.

Pallas Athene, on 05 February 2014 - 06:18 AM, said:

We could set up a secondary index (whether on the GM or not), though it might have like two entries so far.

Or we could just repost them to the GM/chron forum.

There's not a whole lot (that I know of). & most of them are their own topics, not buried like the Cinderei story.

If you get me a list of topics, I'll just move them to the chronicles forum.

There's a random poem and story in the Katerei Appreciation Thread from a few years ago that I know of, but that's not an actual full topic.

Okay, but I'm not sure you'd consider any of them "actual full topics." I also may have missed some when I was archiving. If you're going to move story-topics, are you also going to move all the TSes, taverns, GM, etc.?

I'm not sure which of these qualify as stories, but these are the Cythera board (non-TS, non-Tavern, non-Chronicle, non-GM) creative writing pieces I saved. I didn't check my links, so I may have mis-copied some numbers and ruined the links.

Slayer Tribute
some cultural/historical info on what I assume was a section of Cythera
Sephiroth's compilation of the history of elves
(original) Happy Hour
Some OT story Bryce was deleting from his hard drive
"Delver Month" song (based on the 12 Days of Christmas)
Ping's first story
World info for an RPG Bryce designed
Deleted scene from Bryce's chronicle Beyond
Build Your Own Story! (the first one)
A teaser for DF's unfinished chron, the Hero of Delomar
A bunch of Cythera-related bad jokes
Chron Wars! & Chron Wars plot
I think this fake news article and amusing analogies are quoted from other sources
A random story by bellerophen (maybe he didn't submit it to the chronicle board because his stories were delayed for so long while Slayer cleaned them up?)
Build Your Own Story (Redux) (the one that was eventually completed)
Some really complicated idea from Wizzy that looks like maybe a mixture of a TS & a game?
Build Your Own Story (Redux) (the abandoned one)
A riddles topic
Kat had a spam thread that partially acted as a precursor to the Crazy Tavern, starting with Tyry's funeral, then of course Sely trying to kill me, then continuing on in post #47, #48, #50, #51, #52, #55, #62, #63, #64, #65, #66, #68, & #84 before puttering out.
& then came the Crazy Tavern
Not a writing, but I can't resist linking Tyry's anti-Wiki banner
The Red-Hot "Love-Love" Passionate Poetry Paradise
"Cythera puzzles" (including an unsolved murder mystery)
The Lost Goats
The Duel (mage vs. warrior)
Nezmy working on his Ferazel levelset
Happy Hour 2011
The lilyrei Love & Admiration Thread
Cytheran Love
Fiery's eMail scam
Choose Your Own Adventure
The Cinderei story, which Fiery already linked
Kat telling off Tyry in a comic

Way more than I expected.

BreadWorldMercy453, on 06 February 2014 - 10:45 AM, said:

That one isn't loading for me. Maybe she took it down.

No, it's still there. Maybe my web hosting went down briefly.

Huh, I always thought that the Hand of Fate was the longest chron on the boards. At least, I seem to recall having read that somewhere.


I could see moving some of those topics to the chron board (such as The History of Elves), but I'm inclined to suspect that they'd receive less attention there than they presently do (which is not saying a lot, mind you). I would think that the ones involving multiple people posting back and forth (Build Your Own Story or the Duel for instance) should stay on the main board though.

Hand of Fate is second only to New Horizons, which included a chunk of the Tavern, so the word count isn't entirely fair.

At this point, I don't think old dead buried topics will receive more attention on the main board than the chron board. I also don't see why group "stories" are less suited to the Chronicle board than the main board. On the other hand, I don't like change, so moving any topics is unappealing in that respect.

I was digging through some old documents and came across the SubEthaEdit file we used for Witch Hunt. If you want a glimpse at what OoC topics might've looked like back then, take a look:

 witch hunt.txt (22.4K)
Number of downloads: 3

Unrelatedly: my count, Grapper's Return was previously the 100th-longest chron (exactly) but now the combined series is up to 1596 words.

Out of curiosity, what is the word count on the final series?

I was getting distracted going through files on my computer, when I found my "in the old days..." notes that I took when I read the old TSes last winter. Here's some of the notes:

• If you wanted someone to be in your TS, you could just write their character in, then they'd have to join.
  
• Most of the active TS characters had died several times.
  
• Even back then some writers worried about their characters being in two places at once, which was one contributing factor to why people kept so many characters.
  
• One of Avatara's hobbies was stealing people's oboloi and melting it into random objects.
  
• If you didn't like a newbie's character, it was once considered acceptable to kill the offending character, then explain in an OoC "No offense, I just didn't like him. Don't revive him, just make a new character." (Why didn't anyone try this with Death King?)
  
• 12 years ago, your character's name was your forum username. If you tried to name your character something else, most people would just call him your own name anyway. This may explain why some people created multiple forum-accounts named after their TS characters.
  
• Requiem was the first time I noticed that a writer's major character died without being resurrected. After Flynn's "death" in the first post, there was only a brief mention of Resurrection being impossible (DF said Avatara could have done it if he were there). Perhaps this was the beginning of death becoming a serious issue for the heroes? Still in the next TS, Air-Castle, Dell & Darken Rahl died early on & were resurrected without any concern.
  
• Some TSes moved so quickly, that when a writer knew he wouldn't be able to post for a day or two, he'd have to write in an excuse for his character(s) to do nothing for a while.
  
• Around the time Chey joined, it became overall accepted that characters could not be in two places at once (for example, in a TS and in the Tavern), prior to this some people worried about it and some didn't. Ferazel cleverly solved this problem by making several duplicates (hallucinations) of himself, and secretly teleporting back-and-forth between stories so that he could be in any one at any given time.
  
• Talos was kidnapped & imprisoned in the awful TS The Quest for the Unknown Power, and his fellow heroes frankly couldn't be bothered to find/rescue him. He remained missing for months until he randomly re-appeared in the Tavern IV (post #58), without explanation.
  
• The female dragon's name in Echoes from the Past did not seem to have an official spelling. I noticed her referred to as Scyrilla, Scyrillia, Scryilla, Scyrllia, Scryila, & Scryllia.

BreadWorldMercy453, on 28 October 2014 - 09:29 PM, said:

I… I did not know that.

Quote

Dragon language doesn't translate into English well.

BreadWorldMercy453, on 28 October 2014 - 09:29 PM, said:

* Don't you mean Fred?

* That was actually a very clever attempt to represent the various different dialects and accents spoken by the various characters. Either that, or people didn't check the spelling carefully.

By the way, the Chronicle word counts I did earlier on this thread are a bit outdated now. Namely, Sail is now by far the longest Chronicle series, at currently 59727 words