Problems We Have

[Repster]

Mistah Kirby man. Don't worry, your doing fine. Time is all you need. Flame... You wanna see what not to do? Go way back in the archives and look up a post by me. That right there is what you should not be doing. That is... if you manage to understand anything I wrote back then.

The tournaments always end up dying down at the end.

I have little else to say, for I am becoming confused by the big words currently in use, but more importantly I see nothing that needs to be added.

Carry on.

[Kargath]

THE MESSIAH HAS AWOKEN

[Wyborn]

Layers upon layers, Kargath.

Layers upon layers.

Spoiler.

I don't get it

[Videospirit]

I'd like to think I've been doing alright so far in the few fights I've had here.

In my eyes, I don't interpret that "All characters are equal" rule as "You have a 50% chance of winning" I take it as "No character should be so superior to his opponent that he is assured victory".

This does cause me to limit my characters ever so slightly based on their power, or possibly remove those limits if my opponent escalates things too much. Reducing Gunther's strength so that Knight's armor was sufficient to stop him from being pulverized for instance, but that contributes to the narrative, instead of taking away from it like you imply.

Writing to win isn't so bad either, it just depends on what winning is to you. To me, writing to win is achieving what goals your character wants to achieve in a fight, this could be as simple as making your opponent use his ultimate move, or escaping with your life, or as complex as completely and utterly destroying your opponent mentally, physically, and spiritually. However, when you start writing to defeat the other writer, instead of writing what your character would do, that's when this rule breaks.

On the overpowered characters issue, personally, I found my fight against Repster to be quite enjoyable, more so than my fight against Wyborn, and this seemed to be because of the power level of the characters involved, but that doesn't mean high power level characters are necessarily a bad thing.

If two characters of roughly equivalent power fight, the authors should have few problems with this rule. The problem with this rule comes into play when Overpowered characters fight against less overpowered characters. Classifying characters powers with a loose scale is a good idea for these purposes. It allows authors to know that maybe they should use a less/more powerful character to fight their opponent. The place my characters got the most action used a sort of tier system... let me grab it.

Tier 1: Even above the gods, only the most powerful of gods are this rank, and most mortal magicians can never become this powerful.
Tier 2: As strong as the gods themselves.
Tier 3: Can take on entire armies of low level warriors by themselves and have a good chance of winning.
Tier 4: These guys could destroy a city in less than a day at a quarter of their full power.
Tier 5: Prime physical condition, access to awesome powers, world changing power.
Tier 6: Power Comparable to Gandalf from lord of the rings, super mortal.
Tier 7: Power comparable to very skilled adventurers, the limits of a human warrior with no magical abilities or sci fi/magical items.
Tier 8: Power comparable to experienced adventurers.
Tier 9: Power comparable to starting low level adventurers to somewhat competant adventurers.
Tier 10: Average Human. Civilian. Self defense, completely inexperienced without decent training of any kind, or sickly/weak warrior at best.

We didn't have too much problem with hideously overpowered characters because we had a balance and the weaker characters tended to avoid impossible fights, or fight in superior numbers. We eventually got bored though, because we kept trying to come up with more powerful villains than we'd fought in the past over and over again and the lower powered characters took to the sidelines.

I'm not saying we should use this system here, but giving your opponents a heads up as to roughly how powerful you want the characters in a fight to be would be a good idea.

[t3hDarkness]

The other time I tried to reply to this the site bit it for an hour at least. Lets tempt fate and try again.

In my brief stint as a judge, I realized just how incredibly boring overpowered matches are. Crack, Crush, Squishy Sounds and absolutely nothing is accomplished except a couple of floating masses of rotting organs trying to squish each other. Or one characters will go so far as to completely disable an opponent in the first post.
I hope to continue trying to judge with more harsh penalties for this sort of action.

Another way to solve problems is in the way you flesh out your characters. What do they desire, what angers them, how would they react to situation 'Z', are they willing to do anything to accomplish their goals, do they even have goals?

Take one of mine for example.
He wants Information, Allies, Items, Intelligence, Power and Pride. None of these need to be directly combat related, but each gives him a reason to fight (or not to fight) as I see fit. Every encounter now has a set up.

I could add more, but I need the notes off of my dead computer. Until the next time.

[Kargath]

Layers upon layers, Kargath.

It's a portrait of Selene.

And I’m the bastard love-child of the tooth fairy and the alligator responsible for elephants having long noses.

The problem with fights here boils down to one thing - the win condition.

WARNING: AI AND DECISION THEORY TERMINOLOGY AHEAD

Under the current rules, the win (infinite/extreme utility) condition goes something like "award the match to the author whose character inflicted the most damage and sustained the least damage throughout the course of all posts".
An agent only has control over the portions of story it writes. So any rational agent would try to minimise damage inflicted to its character in the agent's story sections, and maximise the amount of damage the character does in the agent's story sections.
The problem here is that the minimum damage the opponent can do in an agent's own sections is nothing, and the upper limit is theoretically infinite (only limited by time and word count).

In addition, due to the win criteria being based solely on damage, there is no incentive to write well. As a simple example:
"The prnce jumped and slashed up and cut the elbow ,off and ta ere was lots of blood"
"The half-blood prince beat his wings as he leapt into the air. His katana sliced up through the air, and there was no longer a joint at his opponent's elbow, but a crimson font..."
The second quote is obviously better written, but the damage done to the opponent is the same. Under the current system, there simply is no incentive to put effort into your posts. (An exception is if "writer cred" is considered - this could be added to the utility function and would produce a shift towards quality, depending on the aims of the agent.)

As for the "equality" rule - an agent gains nothing by following it, but an incredible amount from breaking it (even if you include negative utility from bad reputation). So a purely rational agent discards that rule.

"Respect the other writers" follows the same path as the equality rule - no real gain for following it, but large gains from breaking it.

On this goes for many of the rules - no real benefit for following it, significant benefit from breaking it.

The biggest one is of course "Only you can say when you lose" - a rational agent would NEVER declare itself to lose.

So it is clear what we must do - change the win condition to something that makes all the crappy behaviour turn into irrational choices.
IE: The win condition should be based on "who, over the course of their posts, wrote the best both technically and storyline-wise?"


As for your assertion, Selene, that battles that are not competitive must be choreographed:
We assume battles must be choreographed, if they are not competitive.
Two posters agree to have a topic in the Gunjin.
They agree that they will be taking turns writing a story.
They agree that this story will be centred around a battle.
They agree that they will not be competing to make 'their' character win the in-story fight.
So we have a non-choreographed battle, but it is not competitive. Contradiction found, thus disproving the original assertion.

And gorram is a stupid subsitute of a word.

Erdawn's right in this case. If you're going to swear, swear.


And now, for some possible new rules/talking-points:

-When writing a topic, post what you wish to achieve from the topic. This will help guide the right sort of partner and opponent to your topic, and help them know how to approach writing with you.
-If the topic that you are writing relies on other information to make sense or guide the story, make sure your opponent has ready access to it. If it does not fit well into the actual prose, include it in an OOC section. If it is contained within another battle, post the link to let your opponent read that battle. If it is information that would spoil the story for an interested third-party - PM it to your opponent instead. That being said, don't rely on out-of-topic info to take the place of description of your character in a story.
-Put effort into your writing. ("Script format" is a no-no.) Learn how to put a sentence together. Learn what punctuation goes where (and WHY it's there). Learn what words are capitalised, and learn the spellings of the words you use. On a slightly higher level, learn how sentences flow most effectively to provide a reading rhythm. We accept people of a wide range of skill levels here, but you must always be willing to improve, and always be willing to try with each post. Always provide enough description so others can understand the events of your contribution, and the location of those events (be it the location of a hit on a body, or a fighter in a newsagency).
-If you're going to criticise, be prepared to back yourself up with suggestions for improvement. If you're a writer, don't flip out on learning everyone's not your rabid fan(boy/girl) like they were at your last fanfiction forum.
-Be as original as possible (whilst still keeping sensible writing). Avoid fancharacters like live wires. This is a sub-forum of a video gaming forum, of course, but the more you show you think on your own, the more you will be respected.
-KEEP CONTINUITY. DO NOT JUST IGNORE WHAT THE OTHER PERSON PUTS FORWARD IN THEIR STORIES.
(I know you're saying "but didn't he make a walking retcon machine with breasts attached?" - but I'm talking about Erdawn-style just ignoring your opponent's powers, or Inferno in an earlier tourney ignoring the massive gaping hole in his abdomen)

[Wyborn]

Only thing about that form of winning, Kargath, is that firstly it implies competition between authors instead of between characters and that it is not or should not be reflected in the narrative in any way whatsoever.

If you want to use that criteria for "victory" in a competitive environment, which is an acceptable idea but lends itself too easily to all the judging crap that KAF is into, there needs to be the stipulation that you agree on a set outcome to be worked towards within a certain number of posts and see what the authors can do within those boundaries. If there's no goal to work towards, there's no way to tell when the fight is supposed to be over.

And there is one thing that following the rules does to one's benefit, or rather a detrimental thing that it prevents: a purely rational agent would not have anyone to play with.

[Microphone_Kirby]

^^While I agree with what you said to a certian extent, this bothered me...

-Be as original as possible (whilst still keeping sensible writing). Avoid fancharacters like live wires. This is a sub-forum of a video gaming forum, of course, but the more you show you think on your own, the more you will be respected.

...with the bolded parts bothering me the most. No question about it, my character is the MOST unorigional EVER, considering I've seen only a few other characters here. My guy: simply a Purple Kirby that can call on certian abilities on a whim, and those abilities in question are either mashed up skills from other games or other characters themselves.

Maybe I'm taking this too seriously, but I'm planning to take Gunjin seriously.

"Try harder to create something origional"? The "Something" would end up looking like something else somebody else created. Creativity is something I seriously lack.

Now that I think about it, that's why I chose to fight as a Kirby here. Kirbies are copycats by nature...

[Videospirit]

Yeah, there isn't really a big issue with using a character from a video game, or even a recolor of one, as far as I'm concerned.

Just don't assume that you can get away with stuff like "He looks like kirby, only is purple" and get respected. Just because your character is unoriginal, doesn't mean you should accept that wholly and assume everyone knows everything about the character you copied so you don't need to explain your character.

You should treat characters the same whether or not they're based on something else, or completely original.

[Metal Man]

Ow, argh, ugh, my brain.

You know, back in the day, we just went 'FIGHT!!!' and that was just fine. It was only until everybody got all cerebral and set up rules talking about fairness that, ironically, the fairness and activity got messed up.

I think if you just went 'Best writing wins; who cares who physically wins in battle, if it's awesome then it's awesome', and then were fairly neutral as far as styles, then you'd have a pretty simple answer.

'Course, I'm thinking with some ancient mindset here, so if it doesn't fit in the logic-hockey going on above, then feel free to ignore it.

[Repster]

MM, That's exactly what the NLBFT was founded on. To many people forgot that, or never knew. Ancient mindsets aren't necessarily a bad thing.

Kirby King, he was Kirby with wings. I don't remember any kind of lack of respect going his way for his fighting. Anybody remember Archmario? Mario with fancy gloves. I'm pretty sure no one will argue that the man behind him is lacking in respect.

I don't remember any lack of respect going around when people threw around Mario, Luigi, Bomberman, Megaman, etc.

Either my memory is acting up, or there is no issue where some are trying to make one.

It's not the cards your dealt, it's how you play them.

[The Willful Wanderer]

After a bit of time and rather too much thinking on this by anyone else's reckoning, I finally have come up with a coherent and comprehensible response to what Wyborn has been saying.

As a writer, and more importantly as an imaginative person, I am always coming up with new things. Because I come up with new things, I want to try these new things out, to see what happens.

This carries over to my writing, as I suspect it does with a number of other people. The upshot of this is.... well, here, let's start from the other end.

The first problem I have with predetermining the winner is that it requires, basically, that both authors agree. In order to do that in most cases, both authors will have to fully reveal to each other every last pertinent detail about the characters involved, to be sure that a winner can reasonably be chosen. Setting aside those cases where an author likes to have something significant about their character remain unrevealed unless absolutely neccessary, there's also the fact that a complete character is a very complex thing, and writers will often either skip or forget details on a temporary basis that they would not when thinking from the perspective of that character in order to write what said character would do in a given situation. Despite the typically relatively insignificant nature of some of these details, some of them can mean a very big difference in terms of which character is more likely to win a fight with the other. This means a change, possibly mid-fight, in which character would win, which can turn things around entirely- and is basically what happens anyways when a winner is not picked beforehand, so why bother doing it in that case? Doesn't make much sense.

Of course, there's also the characters who a writer likes to maintain some air of mystery or other about, and therefore does not wish to reveal all, or even any, of the details that they don't have to (See my character Cora for an example). Characters where the mystery is a part of the 'feel' of the character as a whole, and where one gets a very different experience out of writing about that character when those things are revealed than they do when such things are not explained beforehand.

Thirdly, though, is the most important thing. Keeping in mind that we're assuming that not all characters are equal, but that the characters that wind up getting thrown into the fight are approximately equal because some sort of sensibly non-exacting power rating or other has been assigned to them. Now, as I said before, I and probably most of the others here are very imaginative people. This means that tactics, strategies, and moves will be thought up as the fight progresses, in response to what is being shown.

Sometimes, these strategies, tactics, or moves will result in a win or a loss, or will should result in one, to seem grammatically incorrect but to be literally accurate. For instance, when Dragoon (Not Inferno Dragoon, but the Hyren guy) pulled out an Order/Chaos attack against Akane, or when Horror punched a hole in Selene (Deity)'s aura. Had Dragoon not pulled that out- and he didn't have to, he had plenty of other options, Akane would have kept fighting for quite some time and probably made hash of him. Had Horror not come up with those two innovations regarding Selene (Deity)'s aura, the fight would have continued quite a bit longer, and she might have pulled out the final attack I alluded to in that same fight.

Deciding a winner or loser beforehand basically means one of two things about such innovations to me: Either I have to stop coming up with them (I'll be dead when that happens- literally), or I have to forego using them until a later fight with the same character (something I never even know if it's going to happen at all, nevermind when or if I'll still remember whatever innovation when it does).

In essence, then, what you have is at best a limited fight, and at worst a choreographed one- neither of which seems like any fun to write to me at least. I'm not sure how others think.


As far as 'copycat' characters are concerned, I'll reiterate my stance on that once.

The only reason I, personally, would use one is if I simply couldn't come up with anything else. Whenever I see one, I want to knee-jerk react that whoever it is using them is just lazy or lacking in imagination.

However, I know that this is only *sometimes* the case, and a pretty fair portion of the time, whoever-it-is is only paying homage to or fiddling around with that character because they really like them and want to demonstrate respect, interest, or what they would do if they were [insert character name here]. So while I don't particularly care for it, I always forebear on judgement of it until I see what the person does. Because someone can always do what Erdawn did with Mario this last tournament, which is actually pretty original and interesting, despite being about someone else's character. And that's *not* being lazy or lacking in imagination, it's putting a new spin on an old icon or demonstrating innovation and respect for an idea at the same time.

Finally, as far as my use of 'gorram' is concerned:

I'll swear how I ****ing like, Erdawn. You're starting to get WAY the hell too arrogant and it's really getting annoying. I wanted that word because I didn't, at that particular instant, want to convey any more than a mild irritation. Furthermore, I was using 'gorram' before I ever even heard of Firefly, nevermind saw it (which would be about five episodes total and within the last two months).

Snob off.

[Inferno Dragon]

Ow, argh, ugh, my brain.

You know, back in the day, we just went 'FIGHT!!!' and that was just fine. It was only until everybody got all cerebral and set up rules talking about fairness that, ironically, the fairness and activity got messed up.

I think if you just went 'Best writing wins; who cares who physically wins in battle, if it's awesome then it's awesome', and then were fairly neutral as far as styles, then you'd have a pretty simple answer.

'Course, I'm thinking with some ancient mindset here, so if it doesn't fit in the logic-hockey going on above, then feel free to ignore it.

MM, That's exactly what the NLBFT was founded on. To many people forgot that, or never knew. Ancient mindsets aren't necessarily a bad thing.

Kirby King, he was Kirby with wings. I don't remember any kind of lack of respect going his way for his fighting. Anybody remember Archmario? Mario with fancy gloves. I'm pretty sure no one will argue that the man behind him is lacking in respect.

I don't remember any lack of respect going around when people threw around Mario, Luigi, Bomberman, Megaman, etc.

Either my memory is acting up, or there is no issue where some are trying to make one.

guys, you rock. now see, this is exactly how the gunjin should be. seriously, this place was awsome back in the day, we had one inn, and like 15 battles going on at the same time, and I was involved in multiple battles when I was on here back then. but seriously, things need to go back to the way they were, just a bunch of fights with a little character devellopment in them but not too much. these are just fights, and nothing more, they're not art, they're not gonna ever end up as published books, they're just fights we have for fun. we don't have to make things so complicated and we shouldn't make fights into these overly artistic things. maybe once a year we should have a massive epic battle that should be artistic. But we don't need that for EVERY. SINGLE. TOPIC!!!

honestly I think that the gunjin started to decline when almost everyone started thinking that every single battle had to be really artistic and every post had to be really long to be a good post.

kargath, selene, please try to understand that back in the day we wanted to fight for the fun of it and for one would like to help return the gunjin back to the way it used to be. you can't change us dinosars. there for I am starting a free for all using an already existing character from a videogame just for the hell of it! I haven't had an old style battle in a long time.

[Videospirit]

Yeah, I mostly came cause metal said this place was one big pissing match, and there's nothing like a pissing match to let off steam.

Than I found that you guys were actually trying to have skillful fights, and not just *Player A smashes player B's face and than rips off his arm only to beat him with it*

I'm fine with either style, as long as the individuals in the match are cool with that before hand.

[Galefore]

^^Bro, if people want to make long posts, don't say they shouldn't. It is fairly obvious that, if I feel like making strange, experimental posts that are long and wordy, I should be able to. The focus is, during competitions, who is the better writer in a lot of cases (though assuredly not in every case), the fight itself being the fun part of this match of talent. On a grander scale, two people are fighting: you and the other writer, as well as your respective characters.

It doesn't mean this place is not for the fun of it. But there is still competition, when people are playing to see if they can win, not to physically win, but win in terms of style. Ignoring writing is pretty stupid in a text based forum. Not saying you are, but it is a point that had to be made.

I always viewed this place that way... As a sort of place where amazing battles with sprawling, artistic power strike me and take my breath away as I read them... And as a place for aspiring writers to practice in various styles, forms, and situations. A place to learn versatility, to adapt...

And I definitely appreciate this place.

Also, I represent the newer sect of battlers... Me and Rep seem to be opposite in that manner. He comes from the older days, I come from the newer days. We're pretty equally versed in terms of versatility and ability, but the era gap is definitely there. So, you can have your 'old' battles, but don't try to change a whole forum back to what it 'used to be', because I appreciate moving forward as well as those long, drawn out, well-written artsy battle some of you denounce.

[Inferno Dragon]

I never said that you shouldn't make long posts, you can make long posts if you want, that's your thing. What I said was that battles here shouldn't be these overly artistic things that more current members of the gunjin tend to want to make them. like I said, a fight is just that, a fight. it's not some artistic thing that will end up in a museum, it's a fight.
I personally like making shorter posts when I'm not doing any character devellopment because I can get the same effectiveness from a shorter post that others can from a longer post. and that's my preference.

[Galefore]

^Your preference is fine, but you don't get what I said: Fighting, the act of battling, or whatever you may call it, it a part of the fun. But making the fight pleasant to read, and well-written to an artistic degree, is what makes it fun for others. You're cooperating with another author to build a scene between two characters. That scene needs to be interesting to read, so writing it artistically is a good thing.

Besides, writing is an art. To deny that is to deny one of the key elements of this forum: the writing itself.

[Inferno Dragon]

well, that is your opinion Galefore and I have my opinion on the matter, but there is something I do think we would agree on (and this is directed to some others in this topic who thought up this bright idea).

coriographing a battle beforehand, and then writing it out as it was planned is a very bad idea and a very boring for the two fighters involved in the battle because they allready know the outcome.
see, Improvisation is what makes the battles here so great and exciting for those of us involved in the battle, and if you take that away it would kill this board. and I have other issues with "Kargath's rules" but I'll make a rant on it later.

[Galefore]

^I do agree there: Pre-planned **** is not nearly as fun to read as on the spot, creative technique. That's much more realistic. Having a strategy is fine, but having the whole fight planned out is sort of useless.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Precisely why I'm arguing against deciding the outcome beforehand.