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ColeMaibara's Guide On How To Fite Nao

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ColeMaibara's Guide On How To Fite Nao

Tips: 0.50 INK Postby ColeMaibara on Sun Apr 02, 2017 2:32 pm

How to Fite Nao
A Guide to Fighting RPs


Hello, fellow users of Roleplay Gateway! You may know me, ColeMaibara, as one of the moderators of the site (or maybe you know me from before I was a mod when I was an edgy teenager playing anime characters! I hope not…)

However you know me, I’m the writer of this guide and I will be your…well…your guide to how to properly engage in, execute, and finish fighting roleplays! In this guide I’ll go over a couple key points.

• Godmodding and Metagaming
• The Taboos of Fighting RPs
• When Fighting RPs are important
• Avoiding and Embracing Tropes

And many more. Just read the guide, please. I promise it helps… :(

Godmodding and Metagaming


These two are bad in normal RP, and they’re bad in fights as well. Probably a little more-so due to the competitive nature of some fights. For the uneducated…

Godmodding is many things. There is godmodding in which a character has impeccable skills in everything, and can get out of any situation. An example would be a dumb brute character suddenly knowing mechanics and using his newfound and sudden knowledge to fix a situation. This is almost always pulled out of the ass of a character, and is thus a sudden gain in power just for this special situation.

Another example of godmodding is taking control of another person’s character or forcing an action upon them. Some examples include “auto-hitting” in which an attack they make lands automatically, or dodging every single attack made against them (or if they’re not dodging, they’re virtually unharmed by every attack made against them). Constant use of dodging is most common in anime roleplayers due to the nature of anime, which is understandable. This guide will hopefully prevent the use of dodging as a failsafe.

Metagaming is the act of taking knowledge a character wouldn’t otherwise know and applying it in-use in a roleplay. This isn’t to say a character can’t know the common weaknesses/resistances of a demon or angel, but knowing the exact weakness of this character and exploiting it is regarded as metagaming and should be avoided at all costs, lest you make the fight incredibly unfair, and by product, less fun.

The Taboos of Fighting Roleplays


Teleportation – The act of teleporting isn’t a bad power for a character to have. In fact, it’s personally okay to have a character who has the ability to teleport (even in battle). However, long range teleport (also known as cop-outs in a fight) are very bad practice. Short distance teleportation (common examples include Bleach’s flash step, and Pathfinder/D&D’s Dimension Door) are perfectly acceptable. They are used to make some distance between you and an enemy, but not totally take you out of combat 100%. There is still risk, and you’re not saying “I’m losing. LOL teleport away.” This defeats the fun of a fight, which is risk.

Reality Warping – This is generally regarded as anything which alters reality itself. This one is a bit difficult to tackle in terms of how to define it since it could potentially take many forms. From http://powerlisting.wikia.com/ “Users can create, change, destroy, or even alter reality just by thinking about it; while weaker users are limited to what is already considered "real", stronger ones can make changes from nothing. Depending on the power of a reality warper, they may alter something as tangible as physics to something inconceivable like logic.” You can draw conclusions as to why this could be a big no-no.

Time Manipulation – It’s pretty clear why time manipulation is bad, you could say “Hey, time is stopped now. I’m just going to leave.” Or worse yet “While time is stopped, I stab him thirty times in the face.” Or other potential misuses. Now, there is one way to make time manipulation tangibly acceptable and this is through use on oneself to accelerate or decelerate a character’s speed. A good example would be using time manipulation in order to make a character move quicker, or make their weapon strike faster (though not instant, and certainly not auto-hitting just because time is being manipulated).
Be careful with these three, the only one that should be banned from all usage is Reality Warping since Teleporting and Time Manipulation can be used in a non-broken way. It is still advisable to avoid using them altogether.

When Fighting Roleplay is Important


Fighting RP is important for a few reasons. One of the major reasons is to resolve a conflict between two characters. Another potential reason is for one or both characters to show off, and finally it is also possible RP fights are started out of OOC anger (which is probably not the best way to start a Roleplay Fight, but letting off steam is important. So long as the person letting off steam doesn’t translate that into OOC attacks against the other player, this is fine).

Why learn how to engage in fighting RPs, you might ask? Well, it’s up to you if you want to refine and hone your skills in combat roleplay, but it is definitely good to have when it comes to expanding your repertoire as a writer and a roleplayer. A good RP fight involves tactics just as much as it involves emotion and story.

Avoiding and Embracing Tropes


Often, you might find yourself fighting against many genres of enemies from fantasy to sci-fi to anime. Each have tropes associated with them. While some tropes are really good to embrace and try to detail in a fight, others are probably good to skip.

One trope common to fighting roleplays is dodging attacks…wait, what? You might be asking “But isn’t dodging attacks integral to surviving a fight?!” Well, yes. You’re right. Dodging is perfectly fine…done in moderation. Dodging every single attack however makes a fight meaningless. Think about other pieces of media: If you’re watching a movie, would you rather see the hero and villain dodge all of each other’s attacks and never land a hit until the two just decide to concede and not fight? No, that sounds boring.

Let your character be hit.

In a fight, I’d say between 60%-80% of attacks should connect, but about 10% of those attacks have a potential to end up in the character dying. What I mean by these statistics is…maybe have them continuously skate by with grazes and small cuts rather than outright dodging the attack. Maybe have the character block most of the damage, but take some anyways for some reason (for example, shrapnel). This tends to speed up fights as well, making them go from lasting 20+ posts before someone finally gives up or leaves the scene, to lasting maybe 10+ posts.

This doesn’t mean don’t dodge.

Of course you might want to dodge the super mega death laser being fired at you. If you feel it would result in a lethal blow even if you block it or get grazed by it, dodging is fine. In fact, dodging is a fine technique regardless of what you’re doing really, but don’t make the majority of your responses to a person’s attacks equate to “I dodge” or “I put up a force field and block all of the damage”.

Another potential thing to consider in combat is how evenly matched two characters are. Assuming both characters have their characters sheets filled out with what they’re capable with (if they do not, see below), compare the two. See how evenly they’d match up against each other. If you’re having a god fight a peasant, that’s obviously an unfair fight. If you have a man with no way of hitting a ghost get into combat with a ghost, that’s an unfair fight. Avoid these as much as possible. If you wish to do a scene like these as part of a story, that’s perfectly fine (so long as the other player agrees), but if you’re engaging in combat without prior agreements on a winner, avoid unfair fights at all costs.

One contributor to unfair fights and godmodding is characters who don’t fill out their profile information and then try to engage in a fight. If they don’t have a place where you (as the player) can see their abilities and see what they’re capable of, don’t engage in a combat scene with the character. There’s one major reason for this: the character has no limits set on their character. This character with no information is essentially limitless, and can throw whatever he feels like at you with no way of saying “You can’t do that”, since technically according to his sheet it doesn’t say he can’t do that. While this most likely isn’t going to be the case with people who have blank profiles (or just a blank combat section), the example below should give you an idea of how this can be abused.

Larry is in a fight with Jim. Larry has the upper hand, his blade is locked with Jim’s and Jim is using his strength to keep Larry’s blade at bay. Both are described as carrying swords and leather armor, and that’s it. They are regular humans with no special abilities. Jim, while defending, pulls out a knife from nowhere and attempts to stab Larry in the neck!

This is information which should be included in Jim’s sheet which he has neglected to add. If it was mentioned “He carries a hidden knife due to being paranoid of being disarmed” or something, no matter how simple the explanation is (it doesn’t have to be a complex reason as to why you carry a hidden knife) that is much better conduct than pulling it from out of nowhere. These same rules apply to spells and special powers. Pulling spells and special powers from out of nowhere is very bad conduct, and could be very easily described as “Plot Armor” or something similar if it’s only there to ensure a character survives due to being the loser.

When playing any character, it is good to know their limits and give them potential weaknesses to go along with their special abilities or traits. If you make a guy who is really intelligent, so intelligent that he can solve tons of high level math in his head, why not add a weakness? Maybe he’s a slow talker and only replies with the answer after a second or two? Maybe he’s clumsy and constantly trips over himself? Granted, these aren’t necessarily combat weaknesses and apply to any character, but clumsiness could very easily come up in combat. Another example of a more combat oriented weakness is having no real way to defend against firearms as a knight.

Combat Flow & Timing


This is a tricky one to tackle since not all fights are the same, and most may not even fall under this rule but let’s do some assumptions here for the sake of the example. Let’s say the combat taking place is the same fight between Larry and Jim, two bog-standard humans without special powers.

Fights are normally fast paced, and very rarely last as long as they do in some movies and TV shows. If the posts are between Larry and Jim, let’s say that’s one round of combat. One round is equal to about 6-12 seconds. Each post from Larry and Jim (unless otherwise specified) should take place within that time frame and include actions and reactions. Thus, a 10 round combat between Larry and Jim lasts about a minute to a minute and a half in the RP. It’s quick, dirty, and is going to end in some pain!

This kind of combat flow doesn’t translate perfectly into some other scenarios. For example: space battles, giant monsters (like Godzilla), or battles between deities which could technically last eons.

This 6-12 second rule is meant to serve as a guideline for people playing humanoid characters in a place that has a standard concept of time. If the two players wish to draw things out, they can. For example, Jim could easily try fleeing from the fight and the two play out a chase scene which leads to Larry trying to find Jim to finish what he started. That chase and hiding scene could take up minutes, hours, or even days of IC time (though by the time a day is up, our two combatants may be too physically drained to even fight, or stay awake! This could be equally fun and hilarious to watch).
“Why is this limit on time put in place actually?” the disembodied voice representing a questioning user asks. Well, I’m glad you asked. Plenty times in fights I’ve seen things throw down, and one or both users take way too many actions in a turn that end up in a big mess of different actions that probably shouldn’t be happening all at once. A character who attacks, and then runs, and then attacks again from long range, then drinks a potion to heal himself, then listens to the radio just for fun is taking too many actions. This is where the second part of this section comes in play…

So, if you don’t want to worry about “how many actions can I do in 6-12 seconds” or you want to add this onto that to make it even more confined and understood, look no further. Limit yourself to three types of actions a turn: Attack, Move, and Miscellaneous actions. When you move, try to think realistically (between 30-60 feet, about 10-20 meters). When you attack, think realistically (an attack which takes almost no time to execute and will land the attack in no time). If you need time to charge, maybe make that your “Miscellaneous action” that you start charging, then defend yourself in the meantime while you wait to unleash your ultimate attack!

This “Attack, Move, Misc.” or AMM structure could also benefit space battles too.

Balance and You


Excuse the corny title, please.

So, when you step out of the realm of standard humans, what are you faced with? Sci-Fi weaponry, magic, gods, superheroes, and bears. Don’t fuck with bears.

For those of you engaging in combat and using these various tools at your disposal, how do you balance it out so everyone is having fun? (I mean really, most people I know don’t know the power of bears). On a more serious note, this is where most issues come into play – people start using their powers and special toys and things get pulled into question. Either it’s not fleshed out well enough, or there’s a problem with it that makes it borderline on godmodding.

Well, let’s break it down…what’s an acceptable power to place on your character?

We have standard powers; super speed, super strength, enhanced durability, invisibility, telekinesis, etc.
Then we have unacceptable and unreasonable powers. Here’s just one example:
Guillotine Strike: This deadly attack summons forth many sharp blades from nothingness, whipping them around at their target and cutting them to ribbons without fail.

The problem with this power (and powers in general) is when they interfere with rules like godmodding. Auto-hitting powers, or powers which simply can’t be reacted to are bad. One way you can change this power is to say it is incredibly difficult to block, but never assume it can’t be blocked. In fact, never assume “can’t” because some hot-shot you fight might have something that counteracts it. Basically, avoid ultimatums like “can’t, never, always, etc.”

Predetermined Outcomes


This is a great way to determine where a fight will go before it actually happens, this way you relieve headache among players who may worry about godmodding or similar issues. There are three very important things to determine when doing this:
• What is the goal? (Why are the characters fighting, to the death or otherwise)
• Who will be the victor? (Or will there be a victor at all?)
• What are the stakes? (Life or death, your honor, saving the girl, etc.)
• Who will die? (Everyone, nobody, one person, a bunch of NPCs, etc.)
This is by far the easiest way to do a fight in my book. It’s also a good idea to converse before, during, and after a post to see who dodges, attacks, and who gets hurt when a post is said and done.

Gods, Demigods, and the Supernatural

So. You want to get the big toys, eh? The deities, their kin, and the beasts which can contend toe-to-toe with said deities…well, shit. That’s some heavy stuff, man!

Obviously fights between two deities is going to be harder to write than a fight between poor Larry and Jim. After all, they’re not dealing with so many powers! In this section, I can only offer some advice due to the power level of deities reaching absurd levels and essentially being the most prime being of the universe. At least, until someone comes and takes their place that is!

On the totem pole, deities reign supreme. Just hearing the name “a fight between the gods” gives you an idea of the scope of the battle. Large, intense, and lots of burly men wrestling. Well, maybe not the last part but when you hear this you think BIG stuff. And even still, deities fighting can be boiled down to the same rules as before. Don’t godmod, don’t metagame, don’t use time manipulation, and don’t use reality manipulation. Simple stuff, really.

The real question comes in when dealing with a Deity vs. Non-deities. This is where all of the complaints, problems, and issues come in when it comes to “a fight with a God”. When people think of a deity, they think of something supreme (usually), and something so powerful they could smite a mortal in a second. And while yes, this could be true with your deity, remember something. Everyone is playing a character, not an NPC. The “smiting mortals” should be reserved for minor characters (with player permission) and NPCs. If a character wants to fight a God (even if they’re horribly outmatched), let them and be fair about it.

Remember, when dealing with Player Characters, they’re the center of their own little story. Your deities’ story matters just as much as the guy challenging them. Don’t just kill them outright, that’s a spit in the face to their character. Maybe have your deity taunt them, play with them, or use a mortal form that can be defeated to test them. Maybe they have a reason to not want to kill the other, or maybe they have a reason to kill them so they can alter their soul (with player permission, again). Or maybe…the opposing person defeats (not kills) your deity, shocking them and everyone and leading to a big story about finding out why this is. Just because you’re a God-Tier character doesn’t make you hot shit, being a good storyteller makes you hot shit. This goes with any fight ever, too. Being the winner doesn’t mean you’re hot shit. The person who lost could easily be the “hot shit” despite his defeat or death because he played it out way better. Because he wrote with feeling and meaning.

But that’s just me.

Character Death – Don’t Be Afraid!


This is the heaviest, and last topic of the train of feelings. Most people are attached to their characters and don’t like character death. They don’t like the idea of them losing their character because in most people’s minds, death means the end.

But you’re in the motherfucking Multiverse, guys!

Death isn’t the end, so don’t be afraid to mark poor Carl deceased if he loses a battle and is stabbed. If you like him so much, continue his damned story. Continue him as a ghost, reincarnate him, make him appear in Heaven (or Hell!) and have shenanigans go on there. And most of all, don’t be afraid to end a character’s story if they’ve been around for a long time. Don’t be afraid to close the book of their life, and move onto other characters. Death happens. It sucks, and it’s painful, but it happens. Especially in fights, whenever you engage with another character in a life or death scenario, you’re saying “Yes, death is a possibility and I accept it”, to say otherwise takes the suspense, excitement, and enjoyment out of a scene if you just know the other person will be okay.

This doesn’t mean everyone needs to go out and get their character in situations where they might die, but don’t shy away from it. Now, it is understandable if some people would prefer to keep their characters alive, and I understand that. But if you’re going to engage in combat, or play a character with a dangerous lifestyle (such as being an adventurer) don’t shy away from the possibility of danger. After all, what fun would it be if you’re watching a show and you just know the main character will survive because “of course they will”? That’s boring and not very suspenseful.

But again, not all stories require the threat of death to be exciting, but it adds spice and suspense. It’s better to have those kinds of stakes. If the stake of “death” isn’t present, other stakes should be set. Something that could lead to grief for your character. Say, the loss of a loved one, the loss of fame, or even the loss of something else very near and dear to them. All of these offer something to make the story exciting without death.

Just remember. Even if a character dies, that’s not the end unless you want it to be. Even if they’re dead, they can live on as a spirit, reincarnation, or more interestingly their legacy could continue through a relative or son/daughter.

The only limit is your imagination.

Thank you, whoever read this to the end, I am grateful for your patience and I hope this helps you in your RPing!

Tip jar: the author of this post has received 0.50 INK in return for their work.

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ColeMaibara
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