Problems We Have

[The Willful Wanderer]

I suppose that, in this time, it is inevitable that someone will want to say it. Between the failure to end of the last two (three?) NLBFTs (which is, incidentally, a misnomer so far as I can tell, as there is no longer such a thing as the Nintendoland Battlefield- neverminding the fact that the Gunjin is the Gunjin and not the Nintendoland Battlefield) and all the doomsaying (which is actually rather consistent, and seems to have been for years now) about how the Gunjin ‘isn’t what it used to be’ (again, that’s kind of a given, things and people change, and-

You know what, that’s *way* the hell too many asides. And, all things concerned, I want to explain my viewpoint a bit *before* actually displaying any sort of conclusion, as it is largely inevitable that people will disagree with said conclusions and, without my having explained myself, likely come up with all sorts of totally wrong reasons why I think what I do.

That said, here is a brief background (which isn’t very brief until one considers the amount I could have written about it) of my history dealing with writing- specifically, dealing with writing combat, which is ostensibly what the Gunjin is intended to be about.

Way, way back in about ‘97 (I don’t recall for certain, really), I was introduced to the concept of chat roleplay, thanks to the intervention of the interesting invention known as America Online (or A.O.Hell as it is more commonly called now). I started with just the one character, who I really had no gorram clue what I was doing with, and so really wasn’t much as a character, and basically amounted to a Mary-Sue of fairly bizarre proportions; even then, I was given to being a bit of an odd one out.

Later, after I’d gotten a bit of a grip and reined in some of my more godmodey impulses, I generated the character Reiko from an amalgamation of a number of characters I liked out of video games, seasoned with more than a dash of random ‘hey, this would be neet’. That was in roughly 2000 or 2001- again, I don’t recall exactly, and when it happened specifically doesn’t really matter, just that it did happen.

At about the same time, I began to write fanfiction as well as participating in chat-roleplay, and that introduced me to the more static form of combat-writing. This was a necessity because I started with that old herald of fanfiction, Ranma ½. Shortly thereafter, I encountered Erico, the self-named Super Bard, online and he invited me to his board, the Super Bard Forums. This, of course, was the beginning of something rather interesting for me, though as I understand it I joined the place at something akin to the beginning of the end. Which was rather a shame, as the site had a number of merits and should by all rights have continued to this very day as, if nothing else, an excellent place for tomfoolery.

AT ANY RATE. At SuperBard Forums, I learned the basics of bulletin board roleplay and bulletin board battle, and at least to my thinking, my writing hasn’t changed that much in the time since. This despite SuperBard finally collapsing in- what was it, 2004? ‘05? At any rate, that heralded my moving here, to Video Gamers First forums, and a somewhat different set of rules for battling. Having previously dealt with people like Mr. Chimpo, Lord X, Shinigami, Arkon, Shmeckie, and on occasion Ice Archangel (known here as Erdawn) under a rather different set of guidelines for combat function, there was a bit of a disjunct there.

It jarred me, and it continues to jar me, largely because as far as I can see, the differences between battle there and battle here are the differences between things usually working out and having an end (there) and things frequently going unfinished and/or dissolving into arguments of semantics or the nature of writing (here).

After a good deal of thought brought on by the posts of others about the board in regards to writing style, battling style, et cetera, I think I have a decent grip on if not the root of a lot of the problems, at least the roots of some of them.

I know Erdawn’s going to groan at all the prosaicness of this (is ‘prosaicness’ a valid suffixion?), I figure Wyborn’s going to (again) make thoughtful noises and declare an intent to respond, only to find himself not doing so (likely because of busy-ness), I really don’t know how Galefore’s going to respond, I think Joker would probably partially agree and partially think I’m talking out my ass (but at least be respectful and calm when he says it), and I’m fairly sure a lot of people are going to go:

LOL TLDR.

Just so you know, anytime someone goes ‘TLDR’ to something, whether they use that acronym or not, and then contributes to the argument or respond as though they had read everything, it royally pisses me off and immediately loses them a lot of my respect. If you want to respond or make an argument, you ****ING READ THE WHOLE THING so that you KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT. If you try to respond to this without having read everything I have to say (and I *will* be able to tell), chances are I’ll just ignore you. Because as much as I would like to get in your face and yell at you and either bully or reason you into reading, you can’t even do *that* over the internet, so why waste my time and get worked up?

Anyways.

First thing I want to explain is some experiences that I have had that led me to these conclusions.

First off, the 9th ‘NLBFT’.

In the first round of this, I was basically blasted. Not very hard, but rather thoroughly. Why was I blasted? I was blasted for not being excessively aggressive. Now, I understand that these are supposed to be fights, and the whole idea is that here is a conflict, happening largely so that we can write about that conflict. Probably a violent one. But it is simply not going to be in every character’s nature to instantly try to beat the **** out of someone they just encountered and may not be sure they need to fight. To a certain degree, Karna’s blind belligerence is a reaction to this, my way of pointing out how dumb it is that we’re never giving any background setup to the fights. Sometimes it’s not needed (see Richter versus Terror), but often you need some sort of reason for the characters to fight. And even that isn’t always going to do it for instant-bloodbath. The problem I had with this is attributable to two things: One, there seems to be this constant urge for instant bloodlust, which is something that will dissolve the barriers between characters to where they’re all very ‘everyman’ and hard to distinguish. Two, there is this impetus that there must always be some one-upmanship going on in the fighting. If you’ve ever watched or been in a real fight, or even a convincing dramatic fight, you know that that is quite simply not the case. Fights fluctuate, and there’s none of this ‘haha, I’m more powerful than you thought.... again!’ bull****. There’s also something here that ties in to round two of the 9th ‘NLBFT’.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Part Two.

In the second round, I brought in Karna to the Gunjin for the first time. In doing so, I broke an unwritten rule- one that I found I quite simply *had* to break if I was going to be at all competitive in the battle. That rule was this:

Do not make a character who is overpowered.

Karna is, quite simply, *****ing broken*. Massive chi reserves, intense martial-arts training, weapons-mastery, and a mastery of an obscure and hideously powerful form of magic? Yeah, that, right there, that’s broken. I excuse it sometimes with her physical humanity, but really, with that kind of power behind you, you can bypass the body limits.

And I still lost to Erdawn- why? Well, not to say that I think I did better than him (I still don’t think I write nearly as good as him or Wyborn at their best) but apparently, it boils down to two things. One, I had Karna calling out the names of her attacks as a mantra. Silvie didn’t like that. Fine, well, some things like that happen. Two, it was still felt that I was spending the whole time playing catch-up to Erdawn. And I was, because even with all that stupidly-broken-overpowered ****, *Karna still wasn’t good enough*. Her mantras gave her away too much, her vulnerability to damage and injury was too great, and there were several points there where Erdawn godmoded- because godmoding is rather a given around here- but I’ll get to that later.

Now, this wouldn’t have been even vaguely an issue, I wouldn’t have needed to play catch-up, but for the Gunjin rule that any two characters battling one another are equal when they are in that battle. Keep that in mind, it may be important later, to misuse some George Carlin.

One other point is that Karna was called more or less the same as my other characters. Of course, the fact is, she is also most of those other characters, because she’s pretty much nearly the only character I *have* who can compete in a place where nearly every fight amounts to a game of one-upmanship on power. I don’t have anyone else with theoretically unlimited power, but all fights are supposed to be equal- and my opponent pretty much invariably exceeds the power of the character I’m using (notable exception being my fight with Repster), so, well, hey, I’m ****ed again. Fine, I deal with it, no big hairy.... right?

Flash forwards to Wyborn’s fight with Nameless. And honestly, I shouldn’t have to explain about this one, it’s on page 1 or 2 of the Gunjin, you can go look it up. It’s called ‘Doing This Right’ or something to that effect. There are some things that that argument really brought my attention around to that have been bothering me off and on for some time, which I will get to in a bit.

Then we have my fight with Metal Man in the 11th NLBFT (third unfinished in a row, we have some kind of bad streak going on until the judges finally pass judgement) that fight with Erdawn in the same round and everything that went on with those two sets of arguments. Metal Man didn’t want to fight like that, and neither did I, but because that’s what this place is usually like, we both went ahead and while I can’t say it wasn’t quite a nice bit of writing and fun to do, it wasn’t what it should have been because we both agree on certain things that we both feel should be a bit different from the local standard in fighting. And there was the whole bit with Lucille and the various possible interperetations of her abilities/powers/method of combat.

Altogether, it’s becoming clear that something really is significantly wrong, and it’s not just a matter of everyone reminiscing about the ‘good old days’. Though, what it is that’s wrong needs a little more analysis to actually reach.

So, I went and reviewed the rules. And here’s what I thought.

Rules and Guidelines of the Battlefield

These were drawn up by Wyborn and will be reviewed by Joker, who are the who are the two mods of the battlefield at the time of this posting.

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General Guidelines

All right, first off, I'm going to establish what these rules are for. All the important parts are in bold, so if you want to skim through you can. If you see something that catches your eye, though, feel free to read through the entire point.

These rules just act a guideline, and are basically statements of rules of thumb in most cases. In cases where everyone participating is in agreement, these can of course be deviated from. However, if you're ever confused about how to handle something, look here. If you can't find it here and don't know what the protocol is, either contact your opponent or one of the mods (Wyborn before Joker because Joker is a busy man).

Okay. Now, this forum mainly supports two types of topics. These classifications are very broad and encompass a lot of things.

Doing okay so far, but this isn’t actually the rules, just an explanation.

Types of topics:

1. Battles - this kind of topic is by far the most common, and includes (but is not limited to) the following: direct challenges, open challenges, team battles, free-for-alls, and tournaments. The object of a battle is to defeat your opponent in combat (duh), by way of either beating them into submission, killing them, or, in rare cases, by verdict of a panel of judges. These topics are, of course, a lot more action-packed.

Okay, so let me emphasize the point here. The object of a battle is to defeat your opponent in combat. This is stated in the Gunjin rules. This makes sense. So, as nice as it is to say that you’re really writing combat to have an enjoyable writing exercise, that is against the guideline/rule of the Gunjin to do. Honestly, I no longer think it makes sense to think of the combat as simply a cooperative writing experience- it’s a cooperative competitive writing experience, and we really should be admitting that a lot more. Just because winning is also the goal doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with not winning. There’s another point on this that I want to get back to later, but we’ll get to that, as I just said, later.

2. RP Topics - short for "role-playing", these topics have a different focus from battles in that they aren't oriented around killing the other participants...usually. RP topics are also called "story topics", but they can apply to a lot of different things: writer-controlled story topics, inns/lounges/hotels, and...actually, that's all I can think of. RP topics are usually focused around telling a story or interactions between characters, or both.

Those are the two types of topics. Pretty simple, right? Sure. Sometimes RP Topics can be really battle-heavy (this is often the case, in fact), but in general the difference between Battle topics and Story topics are exactly that.

Again.... no big worries here. This is just fine.

These are some general rules that apply to both kinds of topics:

1. You can use any kind of character you want. I mean that, too - most people make up their own characters, but you can use a character from an anime, a cartoon, a videogame, a book...whatever you want. We're equal opportunity people here. The only stipulation is this: You can't use other people's original characters. Ever. Ever. I know, that should go without saying, but I have to say it.

We don’t seem to have been having any problems with this. Admittedly, I am one of the first to groan when someone brings in a character who is for all intents and purposes some copyrighted character only a different color and with some powers changed and the author’s personality, because that to me speaks of a lack of imagination, but hey, to each their own. Some people *really really like* pre-extant characters, and while I don’t much like the use of them, I don’t see where I have a place to say someone can’t do that because it’s unimaginative. Because chances are either they’re okay with it being unimaginative, or they aren’t actually using that character from laziness.

2. Respect the other writers. I know that sounds very broad, and it is, but I have some particular points to make here. Respect is pretty simple in and of itself, and despite the nature of the place you should be courteous to other writers when you're not in-character. The only really important thing here is If you write someone else's character as doing something (and it's a perfectly acceptable practice), make sure that it's not something that doesn't make sense for that character. To make an example here, if you are fighting someone who's character is a giant, hideous ogre, you would not have them shy away when you pull a pocket knife on them. If they're fearless, don' make them into cowards. If they're smart, don't make them seem like idiots. In fact, Never make your opponent look like an incompetent moron.

This.... actually gets to be a major problem. Largely because of the two different perspectives on the way of battling around here. The way I, and some others see it, when you have a post where one character simply doesn’t do anything and you as the person who came up with that character (i.e., their author) know they would have done something (a chronic problem in dealing with posts like Inferno’s- which aren’t so much bad in that regard as based way too heavily on chat-style battling to work well in a BBS battle), and they don’t, you’re already starting to edge into ‘bunnying’. The very strong penchant around here for one character to simply pound another until you switch posters and then things go the other way entirely until you switch again smacks very heavily of ‘bunnying’ to me, which is part of why I often post like I do, with a number of minor exchanges and then one major attack whose results I largely leave up to my opponent. This can also be a major problem because it’s very easy, if your opponent is not completely understanding of your writing method or simply doesn’t like that way of writing, to wind up getting your ass handed to you when it shouldn’t have been simply because you don’t want to take the risk of saying that, for instance, you broke your opponent’s bones when their bones are gelationous/harder than you thought/nonextant/indestructible/etcetera. Again... more on this later.

3. Don't act uuber-powerful compared to everyone around you. I cannot stress this enough. In a battle this is very important, but it's even moreso for story topics because it can really upset the balance that the topic author is trying to set. I'll get into this in more detail in the topic-specific rules.

Re: the last sentence of that: So will I.

4. If your character can transform, he should carry over damage into his other forms. This means that if your leg is cut off and you turn into a werewolf, either that leg should still be missing or you should have some loss of energy that represents it.

This only makes sense. No worries there, I don’t think anyone’s been skimping on this one.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Three's a crowd.

5. Writing is not as important in battles as it is in RP topics. I'm going to repeat this again later, but I thought I should state it here: you don't have to write a freaking novel every time you post in a battle, and no one is going to make you feel like less of a battler if you don't use a lot of description. Hell, you can use script format if you want to. In RP topics writing is slightly more important, but if you don't feel like making huge posts when you want to kick the crap out of the other guy, then don't.

This one gives me chronic problems. I would really, REALLY like to say that I am completely not a writing snob and will happily engage in cooperative writing and/or a fight regardless of your skill with words. Unfortunately, this is simply not true. I have to admit to suffering a certain amount of psychological pain from the more poorly-written stuff, and it’s not really just a matter of grammar and spelling- if that were the case, I wouldn’t be able to deal with Repster at all, who has capitalization errors coming out his ears and frequently misspells any word not in extremely common use. No, my real problem is with people who cannot manage to adequately describe what is happening. Part of this, I think, is that I really get ticked when I feel like I’m being made to think for my opponent, a problem I had with X-3 a ways back and which he hasn’t completely solved, but has been making progress on, no longer simply saying ‘he was bleeding’. Part of this is that it’s really, really, really, really, really ****ing impossible to figure out how your character would respond to seeing something happen that you can’t figure out what the hell it was that happened. Too often I see ‘attacks him with his spear’. Well, how? Stab? Slash? Clonk them with the butt end? Please, please, PLEASE, we need to put in at least some sort of guideline that says that you have to describe what’s going on reasonably well enough for someone to respond to it. I hate to have to pick on the newbies for this, but it’s a chronic problem with new writers, and being nice and ignoring it only encourages it to stick around. Criticism of failings in your writing will only do you good, as with the criticism I once received for my blatant overuse of commas among other things.

This also brings up another important point. Writing exists to be read. There, I said it, and I know it’s blasphemous to say in this era when writing mostly exists for the sole purpose of either expressing yourself regardless of whether or not anyone can make heads or tails of it, or in order to be ignored because who wants to read anything anyways?

The fact of the matter is, the original purpose of writing is to communicate a concept. You have to approach writing from the perspective of trying to impart an idea or a piece of information to someone else in a clear manner or else all you’re really doing is eating time for nothing, and if I’m going to spend time for no material result that helps anyone else or failing that helps just myself, I’m going to (in the spirit of remaining candid, I will say it) spend it masturbating.

Just to hit the dead horse one last time with the baseball bat, I urge people to improve their writing not because I hate bad writing (and I’m saying this most especially to you, Inferno) but because I want people to be able to actually achieve what they want to with their writing in terms of communication, be it telling a story or informing someone of news or anything else.

We need to have standards of effort into writing if not results of said writing because otherwise we start degenerating the language to the point where what word we use doesn’t even matter anymore and every sentence will look like the next one: fish clat wobbeconehead beedleNorf maltescha the umber twalp lol

Yeah, I’m exaggerating, but hey, it’s to get a laugh out in the middle of this, bear with me.

Let's move on to those, anyway...

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Battle-Specific Rules

Or, as I like to say, the crux.

1. Only you can say when you lose. The same goes for your opponent: he can't say when you die or get knockd unconscious, and you can't say when he does. Try to be fair and go down when it's realistic.

This is easy to do as along as you are reasonable, though some people seem to be trying very hard to ignore that you don’t get to declare when your opponent gets knocked out or killed.

Incidentally, this rule is rather a direct contradiction to our standard way of fighting around here, because we usually show the results of an attack in the same post of the attack, which basically forces people to only get knocked out or killed *ON THEIR TURN*. Which is, quite simply, bull****, and needs to be changed. This is one of the things that enhances the current state of interminable fights and unpleasant dissolutions- because it’s also standard that in your own posts, you don’t get hit, or if you do, not much and it usually isn’t significant.

2. Show damage like it's dealt to you. If you get hit in the face with a hammer, don't just shrug it off. Likewise, if your leg is broken, don't start running around as if nothing's happen. Your leg is broken. Either fix it or limp or run with a lot of pain or something. Just don't ignore it when damage is done.

I could not possibly count the number of times this rule gets bent. It’s been bent so far it’s tied in knots, which is the only thing keeping it from being completely broken apart. With the current thinking that you should keep fighting as long as you have time to (I’m looking at you, NLBFT. **** staying up until time is called, protracting things like that is *not good writing* and it’s *not good fighting*.), people ignore or work around damage so much it’s just stupid. I do it too, and I’d like to not, only then I might get called a bad writer for letting a fight end or not giving as good as I just got if not better than. **** one-upmanship again. With a bat wrapped in barbed wire.

3. Don't do something that would completely obliterate your enemy in one post. This is kind of hard to define - you can do pretty much anything you want to your enemy, but don't just freaking nuke them or something. Likewise, don't severe their heads, or slit their throats, or do something that there is no way possible they could survive in a thousand years. Try to control yourself. Believe me, you can still be brutal without being cheap.

You had me until the last sentence there. That last sentence, however, has not been taken to heart much around here. There is way too much of a culture of beating on the opponent with positively no regard for anything other than the need to hit them harder and worse than they just hit you. We need to change this, to make that last bit of this rule much more important, or else we’re going to continue having the problems that we have now.

4. This is going to sound weird, but Assume that you and your enemy are more or less even. He can be infinitely stronger than you, or you can be a lot faster than him, or whatever...but overall they should be an even match for each other, even if it's not in similar areas. For example, a character from Dragonball Z would be on equal footing with a character from Harry Potter. It's weird, but it's how we keep things fair.

This.

This.

This right here little gem of I’m not sure what to call it is responsible for more problems than I can count. Why is that? Well, first off, there’s the whole culture of one-upmanship that has grown around here. This rule combines with that in one of two ways. Either:

a) You fail to one-up your opponent. The fight ends there, because let’s be honest, he just handed you your head, your ass, and all of your teeth individually shrinkwrapped and labeled for sale. This happens enough, people will learn to stop fighting via constant one-upmanship, and we can keep this rule... for the time being. Then we start realizing that having all fighters even is the reason fights take so ****ing long and never get finished, and we drop it. Because honestly, while this rule is a nice *idea*, it just doesn’t work. You can write about your character being more skilled but not more fast, or more powerful but not better-planning, but with the authorial competitiveness that should be in place here and is (see the rule that states that the goal in a fight is to WIN first, which is only sensible, and have fun along the way second) and the penchant for one-upmanship basically saying that nobody gets finally beaten by anything- because who wants to lose, really? Not even me, and I often don’t care about winning in and of itself- where was I? Ah, yes. With the authorial competetiveness and the penchant for one-upmanship, no character really *has* effective upper limits. So the one-upmanship war basically reinforces this rule, really- they’re all equal, because they’re all infiinitely powerful. And you can’t get bigger than infinite.

OR

b) You have what we do today, where nobody really quite seems willing to admit how brokenly powerful they’re making their characters except for the newbies, who quickly get trained out of doing that by all the people dropping gorram stars on their heads. And all the while we’re claiming it’s not really about winning or losing the fight. Yuh-huh. Sure. And I’m the bastard love-child of the tooth fairy and the alligator responsible for elephants having long noses.

WE NEED TO GET RID OF THIS RULE.

Because of this rule, our fights don’t end. This rule is the ultimate justification for ‘I’m not dead yet!’ and ‘I got better.’ This rule makes it impossible to be competetive here without an infinitely powerful character, and with infinitely powerful characters, it’s not competition anymore, because we all tie in the stupid pissing contests.

I’m tired of pretending I don’t regularly use broken characters (Karna) or make my nonbroken characters broken so I can use them here (Reiko). And I’m tired as I have no idea what but it’s so tired I have no words for it of not being able to bring my less-powerful characters into competition because I’ll get lambasted for not one-upping someone. I’m even tired of all the problems that get caused by the combination of this vague assumption and the talent some people have for figuring out a way out of any potential dilemma if only their character were tweaked just a tiny little bit. We don’t need that temptation.

If we could, and this is just an idea, just a little pipe-dream, because really nobody has to listen to me any more than I do to them, and sometimes I’m much too good for my own good at not listening, but if we could just give general ideas of how powerful a character is (I envision a very vague system. Rankings like ‘Only Human’, ‘Slightly Superhuman’, ‘Mountain-Mover’ and ‘Dear God, What Have You Done To My Solar System’ come to mind.) before a fight, and then- again, dreaming a bit here- stick to the capabilites we’ve already laid out in our heads for them beforehand, which means a limit to one-upmanship and a reduction on the importans of being impressively annihilation-happy, I think we’d see a lot more fights actually getting finished.

This is not to say that this isn’t a problem that has cropped up in other places. I remember losing my first tournament fight to Mr. Chimpo, who was surprised as all hell that Reiko hadn’t beaten him up. She didn’t beat him up because back then I didn’t compromise my character capabilities just to satisfy the local idea of how a fight should go. It’s a gun I should have stuck to- I’d have lost a lot more fights, but I think I’d have been happier and a better example for it. I didn’t make that ‘mistake’ again there, and I have yet to here.

I think I’m gonna pick that gun back up, because some of this **** is just stupid.

5. Don't worry about dying. In battles, character deaths don't really count. That means that if you make your own char, and he dies in battle, you can still use him in other topics. You don't even have to make up a way for him to come back. That's just how it works. If it looks like you're doing to die, that's cool. Don't worry about it.

See the previous rule, only this one *isn’t* being followed. Mostly because we largely *can’t* because the fights *don’t ****ing end*. I really, really wish this rule mattered more often. But it doesn’t.

6. Don't worry about how you write in battles. See, told you it would be repeated - like I said before, all levels of description are welcome in battles. If you go up against someone who writes massive, eloquent posts that fill up pages upon pages in Word or something but you prefer to write minimalistic paragraphs that concentrate more on what you do to your enemy, that's fine. Don't worry about it. Just make sure you communicate what you're doing completely, and that other people can read it. Everybody has access to a spellchecker.

Okay, you see the bit at the end there? The thing in bold?

This is not followed enough. Most new people aren’t even *trying* to follow it, and I can *tell*. I shouldn’t even have to mention who they are, so I won’t, in the vain hope that they will *realize* who they are.

If you have the time to write this stuff, and it means anything, anything at all, to you, I see absolutely no reason- NONE AT ALL- why you can’t go to a little bit of effort to make it clearer what the hell it is you’re saying. Punctuation, capitalization, and spelling exist for a reason. That reason is to make writing more clear. Sometimes people abuse it by overusing it, which I am occasionally or less occasionally guilty of in the case of punctuation. But if you can’t take the time to at least try to make your grammar and punctuation comprehensible, you really have no business spending your time writing anyways, you should do something else communal and fun, like beating your friends at Smash Brothers or going skateboarding in groups or something.

Bad enough we write semi-incomprehensibly when we’re just communicating (OMG did u c? is jlo!!!!!!!111!!!1111), but when we’re writing something sincerely for the sake of having it read, even a thing like the fights here, and the writer doesn’t take the time to at least try to make it easy to read, there is something seriously wrong.

I may be totally off-base here, but I’m pretty sure that when this rule say s ‘Don’t worry about how you write in battles.’ it’s talking about style, not effort.

[The Willful Wanderer]

FORE! *crash*

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Story-Specific Rules

1. Always respect the wishes of the topic-maker. Usually this will be the person who's in control of the story or inn or whatever. If they say don't do something then DO NOT DO IT, and don't actively go against whatever they're trying to do. Just go along with the story.

2. If it's a story topic that is not yours, don't try to tell a story. If it's an in or a lounge or something, fine, you can start your own subplot, but if someone is trying to lead everyone in a structured story then you shouldn't do something like bring in a militay insurrection from your own planet.

3. If a story topic has a villain and everyone gets in a fight with him, assume he can whoop your ass. This should go without saying, but you'd be surprised how often it's not the case - and I've been guilty of screwing this up once or twice myself, so I know what I'm talking about. If somebody builds a story and puts a particular character as the antagonist for fifteen people, that character can probably kick the asses of those fifteen people. Seriously.

4.Writing is more important in RP topics than in Battles. Since RP topics basically amount to stories, try to make your writing match it appropriately: you're helping to tell a story, here, not just beating up somebody else, and a different kind of touch is required. Not saying you have to write a book, but if you're going to interact with other people it really helps for you to be more detailed and provide more insight into your character's thoughts.

I wish these rules were important enough to warrant a point-by-point dissection. But stories haven’t been a major component of the Gunjin for some time now, so I really don’t have the background to go into these worth the time of doing so.

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I think that roughly covers it. Other things, like healing and draining life, should be left to the discretion of the battlers. Ask your opponent about that kind of thing, or set it down in the rules.

There - that's the ruleset. Not too restrictive, right? Soon as I get approval from Joker and a few more members I'll take down the old ruleset and put this one in its place - and this topic will never be locked, so people can keep posting in it if they want to, in case revisions need to be made according to the times.

Comments wanted.

[ June 04, 2005, 09:16 PM: Message edited by: Wyborn ]

Well, there’s your comments, as part of a whole big other thing.

At any rate, in the end, I think that the biggest concentrated blame for the Gunjin’s troubles, both in the short and long term past, is rooted in that ‘all characters are equal’ rule and the consistent dependency on one-upmanship in both brutality and power that has become staple here. Because honestly- my score in that first round of the ninth ‘NLBFT’ was basically pure crap- it was predicated by the fact that I wrote my character not so aggressively or powerfully.

Well, guess what- she wasn’t intended to be aggressive OR powerful. Sarah Midori is a reclusive and occasionally sullen low-end psyker. That’s her nature. I wanted to write her fighting because I wanted to write *her* fighting, not some character who becomes, because of the insistence on equal power and one-upmanship, just the same as all my other characters- a short female powerhouse. Because that stuff is gods-damned boring, which is another contributing factor to the failure of things to ever get finished around here. Everyone’s all the same, and if people being the same was worth that much interest, we’d all be clones already.

As if the sameness wasn’t enough, there’s this tradition to write the effects of your attacks. While I can understand this for the standard punches and kicks of a battle- otherwise this stuff would take even longer to write and nobody would ever finish anything- I really, *really* think that any major attack’s effect should be left to the person it’s being used on. After all, only you really know your character’s strengths and weaknesses, and even a complete breakdown in the Book of Warriors won’t necessarily help, because, c’mon, who actually browses that massive lump of largely unused information? I know it’d be kind of naive to expect nearly so many attacks to connect under such circumstances, but one can always hope, and it will certainly tone down the sheer number of ‘but my character (would have dodged/is immune to that/ has no [insert body organ here]/would have been destroyed instead of bloodied/can’t do that)’ incidents, regardless of whether or not someone brings up the disjunct (I get the odd feeling that most people just suck it up, which is great for avoiding conflict, but ****ing awful for maintaining character integrity and writing integrity).

Please read the WHOLE GORRAM THING if you intend to respond. Intelligent responses and thoughts welcomed, public only. If I see a PM response to this, I’m going to delete it offhand. I want this to be discussed publically in the Gunjin because it affects (or at least is relevant to) the whole Gunjin and the way of doing things here. I’m sorry for the swearing and briefly vulgar candor, but I’m tired, and I’m not talking about having had a long day and being really ‘shagged out after a long squawk’, to borrow a Monty Pythonism.

[Wyborn]

I read the whole thing.

Operating on the assumption that battling is by nature competitive is the largest problem in this post.

The rules are archaic and need to be revised, but it's not the equality rule that needs revising, it's the "intent of battles" rule.

We're here to tell stories more than we are to fight - it's just that the stories often take the shape of fights.

I need to respond to Holocaust. And several other people.

If you're going to communicate this many ideas, Selene, trim the fat. Thoreau said "Simplify, simplify" and it definitely applies to a post that is that damn long.

[Apiary Tazy]

......she's right.

I'm sorry, and I DO suck at arguing, but we need a Rennaisance. NOW!

First off, We need to revise Wyborn's Rules. Which, may or may not include a "Please finish what you start" Rule.

Second, We need to tone down on the Tourneys....Maybe one or two a Year, Tops. The NLBFT and Toyrney of Red Lions are more than enough. No Second NLBFT. F' doing what we used to do.

Third, We will need to force more Description on the Newbies. If they don't like it, they can join the Battle Board and act stupid there. And I don't want to hear Galefore saying anything about needing more people.

Finally, we need to enforce a "No just Copying and Pasting from the BOW". If you are going to use a character, Describe him, and do it differently each time! Too Hard? The Battle Board is two Topics down for those who want it "easy"

Gunjin is H-A-R-D. Learn to love it.

[Metal Man]

Pardon my cynicism, but somebody else also brought up stuff, people said they'd address it, and then absolutely nothing changed. (Alternatively, stuff may have changed, but only a handfull of people seem to be doing anything at the moment.)

While I can wait for all eternity for the Gunjin to change to a point where Galefore, other people, et al, will actually work up the enthusiasm to respond to the varied topics they either made to fight me in or I made for them, the bottom line is that something or some other thing has absolutely destroyed several people's wills to post any battling, whatsoever.

And that's just no good at all.

[X-3]

I read it all. This post will mostly be used for agreeing on some points and pointing out where I'm guilty in a few parts.
---
First off, where I'm guilty.

One, I'm guilty of starting sub-plots and other stuff when others are trying to have their own plot. I used to do this WAY too much in an earlier version of the Virtual Hotel. I don't do this as much anymore, thankfully.

Two, I have to admit that my characters are usually copied from video games, and then edited a bit, though they have changed a bit. Example being X-3, who was basically a grey Sonic for a long time. Not much anymore, thankfully. It's probably not as obvious, but the idea for Plasma stemmed from Axl. His "design" at least: personality-wise, they're not much alike. My "newest" character, Phantom v2 is obviously copied from Phantom, a guardian in the MegaMan Zero games. I've yet to use him in a battle, so I'll have to craft him so he has a different personality and motives than the character he was based off of.

Three, "Writing is not as important in battles as it is in RP topics". Obviously, I'm guilty of this, seeing as I was mentioned in the post when Selene went over this rule. I'm glad to hear I've improved from my earlier days, though I still have some ways to go.

There's probably more I'm guilty of, but I feel those are the most important.
---
Now, for the agreeing.

One I agree that it is a bit unfair how your character can be "rated down" in a rated match for not being violent enough. In some cases, like The Tournament of Red Lions, where a main goal is to be vicious, it makes sense. In others, like the NLBFT, where the goal is to have a nice, detailed fight, it makes little sense. I recall Plasma having some points lowered in the NLBFT because he wasn't "violent enough". Sure, Plasma likes hurting things. Though, he prefers savoring the moment, and taking it slowly. More fun that way for him.

Two, I agree how the "All characters are equal" thing doesn't make a whole lot of sense, though I'm not very good at arguing how it doesn't make sense in my eyes, I think I'll stay a bit quiet on this subject.

That's about it, I guess.

[Galefore]

I do think a change around here would help. And I definitely need to help; this time last year, I was attacking this place's inactive-ness, creating a buzz, causing the "renaissance"... But again, we have slowed down.

I'll gladly stop this little break we've taken. I need motivation, though... I feel like I don't miss this place enough anymore. I'm here every day, watching the topics, keeping order... But the involvement level on my part is slowing.

I need to fix that. And I need a good, hard, involved battle to do it with. I miss the excitement, the edge, of writing posts and trying to stay on time. Maybe, like in the 10th NLBFT, it was the thrill of the timer and the joy of a good battle... But my experimentalism sort of made me drop quite a bit over this year.

So I suppose I need to battle someone really, really good. Someone very powerful and very talented. Someone who motivates me to continue.

As soon as I figure out who that is, we'll see. My last change still stands: I have officially canceled all battles before the topic in which I canceled. So this time, I will not overload my ass. Though initially it motivated me, that stress is also what caused my writer's block.

Anyway, I'm going to cook up some announcements soon. Seeing as both Selene and Holocaust have easily stirred the desire to work harder, I think I'll get right on that. But first....

****ING USE THAT DAMNED SUGGESTIONS TOPIC. POST SOME ****ING IDEAS SO THEY CAN BE KNOWN AND PLANNED. After the failure that was Armageddon, I want more planned, ready ideas with some hype. We need something good. And I want some ideas. So post anything you think would be interesting in the suggestions topic, if you don't mind.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Whoa whoa wait slow down huh?

Combat is not by nature competetive?

You're *beating each other up*. You're trying to *beat the other person up more than they are you*. If you're the writer, you're *writing someone trying to beat the other person up more than they are the person you are writing*.

The very nature of a fight is competetive, and saying that writing a fight has nothing to do with competition is, quite simply, either a blatant lie, or a sign that you've left your brain out in the sun too long. The only, and I do mean only, time that a fight is not at all competetive is when it has been completely pre-choreographed and there is no way to change who is going to win.

And to your simplify, I say 'To a reasonable degree'. I won't deny that part of that was just letting off some steam, and some of it was repetitive, but the greater bulk of that was more or less needed to get across what I meant to get across.

As far as actually doing anything goes, I am going to do something. I am going to start fighting the way that makes gorram sense, and leave it at that. I'm bloody tired of this stupid assumption that all characters in a fight have to be equal in power to make the fight interesting and/or worth writing about. I'm sick of making all of my characters the same by boosting their power to keep up with constant one-upmanship, and I'm simply going to stop doing either of those things from here on because they are not functional things to do.

I mean, you really think I would point all of this stuff out, draw my conclusions about why we have at least some of the problems we have, and not actually act on those conclusions?

[Wyborn]

There is no "if you're the writer". You are absolutely the writer: you are not actually fighting. You are writing two or more people trying to kill each other. That fight is competitive, but the writing of it should not be.

I don't appreciate the implications concerning either my integrity or my state of mind for making that statement.

Ignoring the fact that one is not actually fighting here, I will pretend you are talking about the writing of a fight. With that in mind....

[quote="Mistaradrax]The only"]

There is no text equivalent to the slow-clap, but if there was, I would be doing it for you now. Now you've got the idea.

My post against Holocaust will be up in fifteen minutes: it'll stand as a fair example.

[The Willful Wanderer]

Argh.

So what you've basically said is that we should predetermine the results of all fights here, before writing them- because they should not be competitive, and the only way to achieve that is, as I said, to predetermine and prechoreograph them.

I cannot agree with this.

A fight has to be competitive, because predictability is the enemy of innovation and good entertainment. Choreographing a fight is something you do for a play, not for an exploratory writing like the fights here are at least intended to be. Unless you think that none of the writing here should be exploratory, in which case, should people start acting that way, I will have to leave quickly before I get so bored I do something *really* stupid to break the monotony.

Because if you already know who's going to win before you even start, there's no real point to writing the fight- all the fights will become like professional wrestling- interesting in the middle of the fight, but mostly just pointless hysterical attention-grabbing theatrics with no actual value at all.

[Wyborn]

That's reducing the value of all constructed narrative; that claim only makes sense if you've never written something by yourself before, which isn't true. It's perfectly possible to do exploratory writing working towards a fixed goal: easier, even.

This is by nature a cooperative activity and when we cooperate we produce better things that actually extend beyond being a flash-in-the-pan brawl between two people who will never meet again.

[Microphone_Kirby]

^^ Yes, a fight has to be competitive, and it shouldn't be pre-determined. That's why I believe the "You and your enemy are even" rule was made. If a fight ends with one fighter OWNING another, it's not competitive at all, is it??

And another thing to you: If your think I'm not trying say it in a post or a PM and help me. Don't imply I'm not trying. That's why the "Newbie" battle thread was made: for help on my writing.

^ Different people have diffferent points of view on how the battle should go, which may be a potental problem, but it makes the writing process more fun in my opinion. Fights are competitive by nature and there's nothing anyone can do about it, even in writing. I think if you try to plan a fight with the other person, chances are they would be arguing about how it goes, and THAT battle would never end. Opposing point of views are simply unavoidable, no matter how insignificant it is.


If either of you disagree or if I'm mistaken on something, by all means argue back.

And Tazy Ten (you know who you are), I'll take you up on that offer...

Third, We will need to force more Description on the Newbies. If they don't like it, they can join the Battle Board and act stupid there.

...Even if you have to put a gun to my head...

[The Willful Wanderer]

Writing something by yourself does not apply here. Nothing here is written 'by yourself'. The place on this board for single-author writings is over in the 'Art, Literature, Whatever the Additive is Today' forum. You can't ignore that everything being written here has multiple authors and thus, in all likelihood, multiple directions people will be trying to take it. My point is that this is not just a cooperative thing. No, it also isn't just a competitive thing, but it is not just a cooperative thing either. Yes, it is easier to do exploratory writing towards a fixed goal *when you are the only writer*, or when *all the writers agree entirely on where things should be going*.

This being a combat forum, and thus having things like the Tournament of Red Lions, which if I recall you *yourself* organized, it is by its nature involved in competition. The competition should be friendly competition, but it's still competition.

Shadow_Kirby, you have some good points. I don't mean that we should be mixing the planet-crackers with the people who can barely lift an anvil, but having that rule encourages the frame of mind that anything one character can do, so can another, regardless of the natures of the characters. That, combined with the eternal one-upmanship, is the source of a lot of problems around here. We really need to, if not completely remove that rule, at least relax it considerably, so that we can have fights of the human versus the slightly or moderately superhuman. Literature and storytelling is *full* of underdog fights. Raw power is *not* the only way to win, but around here it's being treated as such, and that's not right. The 'autohit' method of writing only contributes to this problem, which is why I post the way I usually do in battles.

Shadow_Kirby, you are one of mighty few exceptions, it's fairly clear that you're trying to at least write comprehensibly (and I get the impression that you're trying to write as best you can).

Tazy, you need, very badly, to stop indiscriminately tossing the term 'N00b' around. Perhaps you missed it all the times I mentioned it in other threads and places, but being a newbie does not make you a 'N00b', any more than being uneducated about something makes you an idiot. The way you throw it around is making *you* look pretty dumb. And I'm pretty sure you're at least not that dumb.

[Wyborn]

The point was not about writing by oneself, which is obviously not what this board is; it was about working within the boundaries of a previously constructed narrative, or at least working towards an end point. This allows people to act as freely as they want, and if they are working towards a goal then their creative energies can be put towards the achievement of that goal: Hell, read Inferno's battle with Holocaust. It starts off rocky, but at least it reads like a semi-cohesive narrative all the way through.

This being a pure combat forum like SuperBard is a relatively new state: at its best, this play has always been about cooperative wirting, which is to say stories.

And the problem with fights never being finished isn't one-upsmanship, Selene. That has been something of an institution of the battlefield since the day it was born, since way back in the old days when most fights ended brutally and without complaint.

The problem is that most people have ceased to really care about the way battling is done. If something needs to be changed, it is the mode of operation in which people no longer care about operating: I'm for that, but a dogmatic adherence to the supposed competitive nature of this board isn't going to help anything.

[Apiary Tazy]

Tazy, you need, very badly, to stop indiscriminately tossing the term 'N00b' around. Perhaps you missed it all the times I mentioned it in other threads and places, but being a newbie does not make you a 'N00b', any more than being uneducated about something makes you an idiot. The way you throw it around is making *you* look pretty dumb. And I'm pretty sure you're at least not that dumb.

Ok, Ok, I'm changing it. Ok, I'm sorry.

[Erdawn Il Deus]

Your English teacher must hate your essays.

And gorram is a stupid subsitute of a word.

[Galefore]

By the by...

The 10th NLBFT was not a failure. I thought it was a success, as, despite Inferno's rebellion in the second round, it went off without a hitch.

[Metal Man]

The problem was the immediate diedown of stuff right after the Semifinal-final round. Yeah.

Although I admit, if it happens again next year or something, I'd like to have a good idea of what people actually want, otherwise I can only attribute victories and loss to random luck of the draw... making it really hard to tell who's good and who isn't, and sort of ruining the idea of a tournament.