Round 3 - War Story
Two entries were received again, this time from Legion of Hell and Terikel706.
The stories were posted and marked by the community in this thread. The coments of Andrew Dunn have been copied out below.
Legion of Hell: 12/20
Marked down for: grammar errors, anachronistic concepts (IEF, for example), numbers that are both unfeasible for M2 and unfeasible historically, errors that change meaning (France declaring war on the French?), names such as 'Mu-mu', strange and inconsistent dating, little characterisation, weird moral coda epilogue.
However, it's readable enough despite the above, and the characters are undoubtedly more defined and involving than in Terikel's story. You need to spend more time making the story appropriate to the time, adapting it, deciding whether you want it to be entirely fictional or closely following a campaign. Whichever you do, try to flesh it out, particularly in terms of the characters. Give a sense of the wonder these people would feel in the New World, in an unfamiliar landscape. M2 (and to a lesser extent Rome also) provides a nice basis from which to do all this, but it's still up to you as the writer to take the main burden.
Terikel706: 10/20
Marked down for: out of place bracketed note, phrases like 'Speakers of Words' and the like smack of stereotypical big-chief-go-to-white-tipi-on-iron-horses-for-pow-wow-and-to ronto nonsense as if 'barbarians' can't comprehend big concepts, far too much recounting which is tedious to read, weird descriptions like large groups of men on campaign smelling of wine rather than shite, transplanted stereotypes (garlic-eating Gauls?), total lack of involvement with the characters, too detailed in terms of military actions for its own good, lack of clear direction at any time other than 'oh we're conquering the world'.
This story read more like an inventory or log than an actual story, although the beginning was promising. Despite the high-faluting Tolkienesque language used, the beginning, introducing Terikel and his background, worked well. If you had maintained the quality throughout the story (and trimmed it down substantially so that it doesn't drag to read it) then this would have been marked substantially higher. As it is, you got bogged down by the sheer scale of all that you tried to describe, and introducing yet another faceless name to carry on the litany of conquests without giving us any personal details, well... it didn't work. You need to flesh things out more, and provide more focus for the story. When you take in such a long timespan, chapters and multiple stories within the larger story would help, also.