First of all: Thanks for reading and the praise and criticism
I'm glad you enjoyed it!
An excellent story with great characterization. Really fantastic, especially at the “show, don't tell” rule regarding tone and emotions (my most common stumbling block).
Could you elaborate on what you mean with 'show, don't tell', please? I'm not familiar with this phrase.
Regarding grammar and formatting. This is often something I agonize over as well. Consider looking up the rules for comma use and sentence fragments. Once you do, review them on occasion. I noticed you made the occasional mistake. Not often enough to be glaring, but there when I actually went through with the intention of looking for mistakes. Some of your paragraphs are a bit larger than might be comfortable.
Word has that nifty green scribble line under fragments, and I usually consider changing it. I think most of the fragments are in direct speech where I left it deliberately. But it's very possible that I am an offender elsewhere, too. I'll take a look at it next time.
Regarding commas: This is difficult for me. In Germany we learned English starting in 5th grade and learn a lot about grammar and vocabulary, but next to nothing about punctuation. One of the reasons for this is that learning two different sets of punctuation can easily confuse a student in his mother language. Pair this together with the fact that Germans like to put commas, almost, every, where, this, easily translates into my typing. I usually go over it to check, but some will always get through (a lot, apparently
). It's difficult to proofread your own writing
But I'll see if I can get the paragraphs more readable in subsequent editing, to make it easier on the eyes. I don't want to wall-of-text-crit my readers, after all
After having gone through the UGE (elves and dwarves) boom, and a decade later goblinization, and all the @#%^ that happened there, I think it might be a little odd that they'd inter Surgers. In the current era people are, if not more open, minded at least more jaded to the whole concept of “sometimes weird drek happens, nothing you can do about it.”
I considered this during writing. One of the commentators in the first chapter also pointed that out.
I retained it for several reasons:
a) The CAS are kind of hardliners in a lot of ways. That's one of the reasons they seceded, after all. Being no American, I can only rely on second-hand experience here, but some of my relations down in the south tell me that it's really difficult being different there, right now. In the 2070s, the racism would probably be mostly directed at Aztlaners and metahumans, but in my mind, a sudden second wave of goblinization could trigger the usual response. There were riots even in Seattle, according to YOTC.
b) It's more dystopian that way. People are cattle anyways, and it's a good idea to lock potentially dangerous ... things! away, erring on the side of caution.
c) I wanted a parallel to X-Men narratives. I've always viewed SURGE as a kind of mutation, akin to the Aces and Jokers shared world or Marvel's X-Men. People express strange powers and are confronted with suspicion and hate about it. SURGE fits that description.
The in-game explanation is, that the CAS government didn't know what to do with those people. They had no idea at first if it was a disease, and if it was, whether it was contagious. Camps were opened in the first weeks, getting people off the streets and located under surveillance. After a while, and the intervention of a few human rights groups and courts, the camps were largely abolished and people were sent back to their families. Unfortunately, a lot of SINless people were also interred, and those were kept in the camps out of convenience. This also explains the dilapidated state of them. They were largely forgotten about and no one cared enough.
Personally I'm of the opinion that I'd rather see someone tell a good story than spend all their time worrying about strictly following cannon and all that. But if it is a concern I do notice that the story would work just as well if Sam ran away/was kicked out from home and wound up growing up a squatter in some out of the way/z-zone drekhole, maybe somewhere where a bunch of surgers wound up gravitating. You'd wind up with the same tone of setting and attitude of the inhabitants.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll consider it, if I ever feel the need to rewrite.
Regarding stats/optimization. There's no wrong way to enjoy a game so I kind of find the whole optimzation-vs-roleplay debate to be pointless stupidity. As long as all the characters are either roughly in the same ballpark or the don't care about their relative power, and everyone gets a chance to shine in their own idiom, and they're at about the level the DM is planning for/comfortable with, then the exact level of optimization is irrelevant.
Ah, don't worry. I don't worry about it a bit. I just put up the disclaimer before people point it out in righteous indignation
Also, I don't think she's in any way optimized (apart from the running speed, and even there's a lot of room to grow ^^).