How to RP fight, Rensin Edition

[Harmonic]

ReservedMy goal in this thread is to foster more RP fights, rather than dice fights. Or to even add insight as to how to RP fight and make it sound a lot better than what it does now. I notice a lot of people let the dice do the talking for them now-a-days, giving way to bland fights that usually have one-line emotes, akin to that of “I punch you in the face.”

Probably the hardest thing to accept as someone who –loves- to RP fight is when someone wins based on these sorts of emotes. It's not only frustrating, but somewhat insulting. I mean, RP fights are fine, but some sort of effort has to be put behind it other than typing out /roll.

In this guide, I'll explore the difference between well thought out emotes and reasons for RP fights, and ones that lack effort, the difference between being creative and being outlandish, and how to effectively apply abilities to what you are doing, rather than just linking the ability into your emote.

Probably the biggest tip I can give? Don't be lazy. RP isn't text racing.




COLORGUIDE


Good Example: Green

Bad Example: Red

[Harmonic]

Section 1, Logic Behind RP Fighting, and Thinking Out Your Actions


So, are you bored of how things are going lately? Do you just not feel that role-playing is that entertaining? Do you say “meh” when people ask you to RP?

Same here. But most of the time, that's due to a wide-spread factor. And that's lack of entertainment. Now you may be wondering why I take the time to actually write things out when RP fighting, since the norm seems to be to roll the dice and just go with it, no matter what happens.

Well, here's my reasoning. What sort of fun is just rolling dice constantly? It's not Yhatzee. If I wanted to roll dice, I'd play Yhatzee. And I hate Yhatzee. So when it comes to role-play, and dice rolls, I take the time to actually type things out for not only my own entertainment, but for those around me who may be watching the fight.

If you find yourself in a roll fight, you may wish to adopt some of the methods I'm going to share with you, as it not only increases your own enjoyment, and character development, but fosters a creative and nurturing habitat for your fellow role-players.



Now, to the meat of this post. Thinking out your actions is absolutely –pivotal- to a RP fight. Rather than just typing a bunch of bullshit and crossing your fingers hoping it sounds good, there isn't anything wrong with taking some time to think how this is going to pan out.

Normally in a fight, you start out emoting your defense against a person's last attack, and then elaborate with your own attack. It could pan out something like this.


“Tony rushes to the side, the sword swiping barely past his head. He takes the time to draw his own daggers, and grits his teeth as he spins them in the palm of his hand. With one deft thrust, he slams the right hand dagger into the man's gut, with the intention of spilling his bowels.”

Now, let's dissect this emote. In the first part, you have a logical dodge, without ever even using the darn word “dodge”. Too often, you see someone say “I dodge the sword”. That's fine and all, but –how-? The point of an emote is to describe how you do something, the fact that you rolled a hundred to the guy's two already dictates you dodge or aren't attacked.

Next, you have the attack. I'm a firm believer of the two/three second rule, which states that most actions should take a little around that time to be completed in a fight. If you have the time to have a conversation with the person (Something even I do yes), while over-prettying up your attack, then you –should- be open for the person to probably do three attacks on you while you're bullshitting. That's only logical, right? The second part about attacks, and this is hashed over on CoTH multiple times, is that I don't assume that it's going to hit. But, I also state my intentions behind the blow, to make my action pretty darn clear.

The last part is pretty simple. I pretty it up by using grammar, and a wide variety of words. I honestly hate it when I accidently use the same word over and over again in an emote, and I sometimes don't notice when I do, but I try my hardest to avoid doing this.

Alright. Now for a bad example.


“Curly goes to the side, and throws a fireball.”

Okay. I've seen this a lot around here. Let's start with what I'm assuming is the dodge. Which side does Curly go to? What exactly is he avoiding? Is the weapon/magic/farm animal close, or did he dodge it pretty swiftly? This sort of thing leaves the person you're fighting on a cliffhanger, and they have to fill in your blanks in order to make sense of it. I hate that, because it makes it appear that the other emoter is dominating the fight, when they very well could be losing.

The second half, “and throws a fireball”. Again, where is this action aimed at, and how was the fireball produced? You're giving the other person creative dominance over your emote, and they could very well be as cynical as I am, and respond with “The fireball Curly launched flies behind them, as Brutus laughs lightly, quickly saying ‘You need to practice your aim'.”

It's best practice to elaborate folks, otherwise you're opening yourself to something that may really piss you off. Now let's fix that emote, shall we?

“Curley runs to the right, dodging Brutus' large sword, watching it slam into the ground. Curley raises his hand, chanting lightly as a single flame flickers, and grows in his palm. He lets out a growl as he tosses the ball of molten fire to the warrior's face.”


Now that we've seen what happens when people aren't hit, let's take a look at something for when someone is hit. I'll give the bad example first, like last time.

“Albert is hit, and starts to bleed.”

Hit where? In the ass? Is his ass bleeding? I don't think I need to elaborate much on this, seeing as how it's like the past examples. But you can see where I'm going.

“Albert is struck across his chest, a large and deep gash starts to flow with his crimson blood from beneath his now torn shirt. He howls in pain as soon as the weapon penetrates his flesh.”

The way I remember it is to think about your body. Not just your head, hands, soft parts. Think of your anatomy as a whole. Each part has to be moved and put into thought if you're fighting. Saying 'Durr I punch you in face' when you're five feet from each other isn't fun to watch nor to fight against. To really put that last bit of shazaam into your emotes, try to remember to type out what the rest of your body is doing, such as fists up, legs pushing against the ground to vault forward the elbow cocks back and flies right to Rofupi to knock him out of his armor and out of the arena, landing in a rooftop in Ratchet down below.

This wonderful quote from Anski describes something that I think is a -must- when RPing a more physical fight, and can help with the detail involved to make something sound better. In real life combat, especially something like Judo, you need to know what to have each single muscle do in order to achieve the results you are looking for. Sometimes, one mistake could lead to... injury. I'll give you and example of a good fighting emote that'd utilize this. I think this is fitting for one of my actual characters, too.

"Rensin, beaten and bloody, faces his oponent with his fists up, and his feet bouncing from side to side. He rushes foward, breathing heavy as he comes around the back of his openent, wrapping his right arm around their respective shoulder, and his left arm around their neck. His forearm tenses around their throat, and his back muscles tense as he attempts to pull the man off his feet by his neck."

Disecting this, I briefly go over my characters current condition, and then I go into great detail about a pretty simple attack, and all I had to do was cite my character's arm placements, and what muscles were working were. Could I have added in other things? Certainly, in this sort of move you have your legs carrying the weight, and his abs doing most of the lifting, but I felt it only needed to state the more visable areas for people to "see".



Now that I think I've covered most of that, let's go further into the guide.

[Harmonic]

Section 2, The difference between Reality and Dragonball

The title of this section will describe most of what I have to say here, so this section will be short. Maybe.

This section is going to touch upon something that the third section will actually elaborate on, and that's how to effectively mix spells and such in a fight, or how to use them creatively. What I'll mainly talk about here is how to make shit –real- sounding, rather than stupid.

Example of stupid.


“Tynis rides his bike between the Orcs who are riding to each side of him. He growls, as he pulls out his two pistols, and stands on the seat of his hog, as the front of it swerves and separates the Orcs from either side. As it whips around, he leaps to the right worg, and shoots the Orc in the back of the head. Taking the reign, he stops to face off against the second Orc. ‘Time to taste blood.' He sneers, and then it turns to a grin, as his bike explodes in the distance.”


Okay. Some of you are probably like, “HOLY HELL THAT'S BADASS WHY IS THAT BAD WHAT THE HELL?”. Read this again, -please-, if you think that. Then watch anything Final Fantasy. Anything. Anything at –all-. That's my point here, this is waaay too epic, and way to Hollywood to even be cool. It's like Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg threw up on it.

Now, my opinion aside, let me dissect it. Fist of all, the whole riding a bike thing is way overdone, and seems to be added to just make this guy come off as too cool. If he had a trench coat and sunglasses, he'd be a damn stereotype. Next, the standing on the motorcycle. This alone should require a roll to be done, to see if he cracks his skull attempting to do something so stupid, and should be based on a needed number, like, let's say seventy because this is so difficult to do. Then from there, he goes and outright kills this Orc without much of a fight.

Now, I wrote this to be a character killing NPCs, not players, so I gave him the advantage of being able to say when he harms someone else, so let's look past that. But the rest of it, from his cliché phrase to his sneering grin, to the needless explosion just oozes too much epic. I honestly was thinking of a way to make this a “Good” version, but even this character disgusts me, which says a lot.

Next, is the overuse of vomit-endusing verbs.

“Tilyanna sits down on the chair, her flowing golden locks of pristine hair falling past her curvy and endowed chest. She puckers her ruby red lustrous lips as she looks upon the male in front of her. A glimmer can be seen in her bright fel-green eyes.”

Now, I know this isn't a fight scene, but it serves to prove my point. Over-usage of verbs can be disgusting. I don't find this character more attractive by the person saying this shit, and I certainly don't think they are anything beyond a shallow tool for eRP. In the fighting aspect, over-usage of verbs can result in you glory-whoring your character, making them appear to be another type of Mary-Sue, and that's the perfect fighter. If you cover your bases –too- much, and make yourself appear to be without flaw, chances are people won't RP with you much.

Now, let's try and fix this.

“Tilyanna sits down, her blond hair falling past her breasts. She purses her looks as she looks to the man in front of her, and her eyes glint for a moment.”

Now, to me, this person comes off as a bit sexy and mysterious. The subtle draw of attention to the fact this person even –has- breasts is more than enough for me to think without the person over-using their verbs “This character may be attractive”, and may even perk my interest in looking at your profile, that I'm sure everyone works hard to create, in order to find out more about this character.


The best thing to take away from this section is that a fair bit of subtlety doesn't detract from fight RP (or apparently some social RP too!), as long as you still convey your point in more than just a short blurb. The finer aspects are great when used in the correct context, and during a fight can show that not only can you be “epic”, but that you have an understanding of when being simple and humble is needed.

[Harmonic]

Section 3, Using What Blizz Gave Ya

In this section, I wish to discuss IC abilities. When I was a GM, I noticed the debate of “What is and isn't acceptable” came up a –lot- here. Too much, in fact. And I still see it crop up at least once a month, either in the form of directly asking that, or someone assuming they can do more than what's provided.

Here's how I've said it for the past two years, and yes, it's stolen from Grakor himself.

If it's and ability that's given to your class, you can use it. Yes, warriors can use titan's grip, Warlocks can turn into demons for a limited amount of time, and rogues can throw a pellet and appear to vanish (Be logical in how you use stealth!).

What can't you do? Make stuff up. There was a magic topic up recently, in which I've been debating with the poster on spells. Since magic does not exist in our world, and we cannot grasp how it works, I've always said that making up abilities and the like is risky business. Reason being is that if you make something up, someone else could call “Bullshit”, and we all know at CoTH that means you need to back up what you are saying by providing proof.

Now, on the contrast side, you can use existing spells to sort of “Create” your own abilities, by mixing the results. A warrior could rush someone and try to shield bash them in the process, hopefully bashing them. A rogue could kick someone after they stab a knife into their gut, to drive the blow deeper. A mage could blink forward, to aid in hurling a fireball.

But –be logical-. Would these moves drain them more than normal? And at what point will you need to do another action roll/wait for your turn again? These are questions to keep in mind when role-playing with others. What may be fair to you, may –not- be fair to the other person, especially if you are doing what was covered in the last section and adding –too- much shit to one post.

Again, I'll provide an example.

“Timothy closes his eyes. The enemy before him falls to their knee, holding their head in pain. They look up to Tim, eyes full of tears, and Timothy takes his sword and impales it into his shoulder. Then, the man's head explodes.”

Again, I'm assuming this is an NPC fight. But Tim does two things here. Assuming he's a priest, which is the only class that can do much with the mind, he's created his own spell… and that apparently can blow up somone's head.--- This might leave players going “What the hell?” around him, seeing as how a Priest can only mind altering moves, not ones that can blow up heads. To say something like this insinuates the player not only has a vast knowledge of “magic” OOCly, but that they think they can write the rules for the game itself. This drove me –nuts- when I role-played D&D with my buddies as a kid, because not only is it a form of God-moding, it borderlines on powergaming as well, or min-maxing.

The second part is that he does three crippling attacks here. First one numbs his mind, second is the stab in the neck, with a third being the head exploding. That's fine if this is a roll for a killing blow, but otherwise it's unnecessary and can appear to be unfair to the other player.

Now, let's see a good example.

“Timothy lurches forward, and closes his eyes. He raises his sword slightly, as the creature in front of him tilts it's head, and blinks. Seemingly against its own will, it runs forward, into Tim's sword. Tim looks forward, as the beast blinks back into realization.”

What I've done here is effectively used a stabbing attack with Mind control, two abilities of a priest. Not only does this make sense for a single action, but also serves to show that the creature was only affected long enough for the duration of the attack.

I'm the type of person that'd probably eventually play out Timothy's fatigue as well after such a thing, seeing as how combining magic and physical attacks should be draining. Magic attacks alone would make the attacker hungry and thirsty, so that combined with physical exhaustion would be pretty draining.

Now, what about modifying existing attacks slightly?

“Gorgor huffs as the elf strikes his shoulder, blood leaking from his wound. He backs up quickly, and gets a good running start, as he leaps in the air and spins as quickly as he can, making a flying whirlwind of pain and axes.”

Heh, yeah, that was flashy. But it still works. I didn't make it too illogical, and the attack was pretty in general, allowing the other player to determine the effects of such a thing. It would have been a different story if he leaped twenty feet in the air and tried to burrow underground with it or something though, wouldn't it?


In conclusion of this entire guide, the best habits for fighting are to utilize your words creatively, as well as the materials given to you by Blizzard and the wonderful GMs here at CoTH without –over- doing anything. It's not too fine of a line to follow, seeing as how there are quite a few good role-players here, but for those who need a little help, I hope this guide provides some insight as to what I personally try to follow when it comes to such a thing.

If you take to heart what is said here, and utilize it say, the next time you happen to be slaying elves, it might just garner the attention of other players. You'd be surprised what a little effort and good thought can do for you!

Anyhow, good luck in all your battles, and may your blades never dull.

[CallMeMelissa]

*Thumbs up*
Nice. I hope people will follow this. I've been in fights with people who emote like your bad examples, and sometimes I just want to /e dies. Just to get it over and done with.

M xx

[Harmonic]

The guide is finished! I really do hope you guys read it... and point people to it when need be. I will say this -is- my opinion however, and I hope that it still holds some sway and merit when it comes to this sort of thing.

In regards to my mentioning of the "magic" thread, I don't mean any offense, as I said this is my opinion, but I did want to clarify some things, especially from what I've seen the past few years here at CoTH. If there is a problem with what I said or something, please, by all means PM me and we can discuss things rationally. I'm not out to hurt feelings!

Edit: And could a GM maybe move this to the guides section for me, that is, if you GM folk find it worthy.

[Miah]

I very much like this post. *thumbs up*

[CallMeMelissa]

Ive just noticed something, and sorry do 'douse your fire' so to speak, but actually priests can cause pain within an enemies mind, they have "Mind Blast", "Mind Flay" , "Mind Sear" , and "Mind soothe" (implying they can 'heal' or 'soothe' through the mind too.)
Apart from that, Great! I loved it

M xx

[Harmonic]

Haha, duur, I can't believe I forgot that. Just goes to show ya I've never played a priest. I'll edit that part when I'm a bit more awake.

[CallMeMelissa]

Haha Apart from than -minor- mistake, its an amazing post!
I hope people read it and use it.
Well done!

M xx

[Xigo]

This is useful. I know it will most certainly help me.

I...unfortunately tend to be rather lazy with my attack descriptions. So...I'll give this a shot.

[Drumgar]

Hrmmmm... iiiinteresting. Must practice on Xigo. *Stabs.* That wasn't any good... try harder next time.

[Piroska]

Haha, duur, I can't believe I forgot that. Just goes to show ya I've never played a priest. I'll edit that part when I'm a bit more awake.

Heathen! As a self-proclaimed priestaphiliac, I am disappointed by this.

[Harmonic]

*Waggles finger* I used to be a Tauren purist, and they don't have priests.

I'm a warrior-phile.

[HownDoog]

“Albert is hit, and starts to bleed.”

Hit where? In the ass? Is his ass bleeding? I don't think I need to elaborate much on this, seeing as how it's like the past examples. But you can see where I'm going.

That made me give quite a few chuckles.

Anyway, I approve of this post. Nice!
This makes me want to attempt RP fights again...something I avoid.