Anime Tropes appearing in Roleplay

[Kage]

Sephiroth.. Cloud..

....

Spoiler:

Sexier then them!

[SachikoMaeda]

Sephiroth and Vincent is where it's at. But enough of my old fangirlisms! There's a greater subject at hand!

Simply put we need to be a bit more level headed and take some time to think during these adrenaline rushes we probably get from an engaging RP fight. Try and be a little realistic with the fights.

Sephiroth fangirls? Cloud is where it's at!

[Rosencrat]

Perhaps the prestige system needs a reboot?

MOTHEROFGODNO

[Kage]

Perhaps the prestige system needs a reboot?

MOTHEROFGODNO

o.o Well I never learned of the bad things It started right before I left and ended before I came back <.<

[Roxas65]

Sephiroth and Vincent is where it's at. But enough of my old fangirlisms! There's a greater subject at hand!

Simply put we need to be a bit more level headed and take some time to think during these adrenaline rushes we probably get from an engaging RP fight. Try and be a little realistic with the fights.

Sephiroth fangirls? Cloud is where it's at!

You're both wrong. Jenova's head is where it's at.

[Aadora]

You two are the wrong ones. Sora beats all.

Anywho I don't think the problem is any kind of rules or system that is in place.

There is no respect for characters that are supposed to be respected simply because the players don't want their character to respect them.
There are characters that are OP and never flinch at the sight of danger simple because the players don't want their characters to respond badly to that.
There is no gray area between OP characters and Old Man Jenkins simply because players pick one or the other.

Perhaps a single problem I can think of... is events not really being fair?

I don't mean to call anyone out or anything, or complain for that matter. But people are often discouraged from making a character that is simply good at what they do and nothing more, because they are treated with a black and white point of view.

I have been through events where I roll a 100 on an attack, "While previously failing at every single offence/defence roll prior. And no that is not an exageration, I literally rolled less than 20 every time during a single event. Except for the one time I roll a 100. The RW literally went:

"A crack is heard and the enemy crumples up on the ground."

Then someone rolls an 80 right after me and:

"Boom! The bullet flies through the mans skull, coming out the other side and doesn't stop there, continuing into another enemy. Double kill!"

So it's hard to want to make someone who is just "alright" at what they do, because these characters that have fought the Lich Kings armies, stormed the Citadel and fought to bring his downfall... suddenly can't even handle a single ghoul by themselves.

Off the note of roll fights, the same goes for trust fights. It's hard to not make OP emotes because they are so rare that people often feel that it's -finally- their chance to show what their character can do. And... sometimes we go over the top a little no? Because often at that point our characters has been an epic failure at everything they do for some odd reason.

[Kage]

Sometimes I don't like roll events. Just the one the other day Krest -literally- got in two attacks, and failed at everything else. Yet in another event, he -destroyed- pretty much everything. Rolls are nice and all, very fair, but there are just some times where there not needed. You took down an abomination with a roll of a hundred, but can't seem to hack away at a ghoul cause your next rolls are all lower then 30.

[Roxas65]

Roll battles are horrible, horrible things. I once witnessed a gnome easily defeating a heavily armored Belf paladin -with paper cuts.- It was -not- okay.

[SachikoMaeda]

I think I have to agree with Aadora here.

The only way I keep from adding into this chaotic mess of roll, trust, event, fight, whatever, is by simply not playing that game. I'll OOCly try to dodge combat RP simply because I feel I will not be able to convey these moves as I imagine them because all of my fight experience is... Well. Nonexistent save for the countless Shounen anime I've watched and manga I've read.

But there are people who love their combat RP. If they love it, then go for it! If you love anime fighting styles, just clear it with whoever you're RPing with. Some people generally hate the fighting style (I love to read/watch it, but I personally would hate to have to RP with the anime style fighter) and could get their jimmies rustled.

I'd love to see our community look more to the middle ground. A character in the grey is great for development!

[Harmonic]

Hrm. Well.

I don't know how to approach this topic. Part of me says "This isn't the real world", and to further prove my point, I'd look at warrior and rogue abilities, some of which are impossible to pull off in a real fight, namely things like Whirlwind or shadowstep. Those are just two examples, since I'm lazy.

Then, my other feeling is that you don't need to be super duper anime-esq to be entertaining in a fight. Playing Rensin as a scrappy feller has shown me this many times... sometimes you have people that try to do over-powered anime-esq "I block the fireball with my sword, the impact pushes me into the ground, through my resolve I'm uninjured, however, there is a small crater left around me" type stuff.

I'll admit, Rof and I, when we fight, we try to do some outlandish stuff. But it's not as if we are going won-tonly out of our way to break our classes, and we stay in the realm of what our characters can actually do. Like, in the case of special classes...

I think with special classes, you gotta remember, this is a fantasy setting. If this was a straight up 10th century Europe setting, then yeah, I'd say for sure we'd only use stuff from Game of Thrones and like, maybe King Arthur to go by, but this is a game with magic, mechs, tanks, helicopters, orcs, dorfs, gnomes...

All sorts of crazy stuff. So, to me, the fighting is more than what the average person could do. It's fantastical and magical, and even mechanical.

That's my two cents at least. Too much realism is bad, a fair balance is okay.

[Sol]

So it's hard to want to make someone who is just "alright" at what they do, because these characters that have fought the Lich Kings armies, stormed the Citadel and fought to bring his downfall... suddenly can't even handle a single ghoul by themselves.

And what's the problem with that, exactly? Although there are better ways to resolve smaller-scale fights like duels, in my opinion, I think that rolling for combat events is both practical and, more often than not, thematically suitable. Looking at history, there have been poor soldiers, mediocre soldiers and good soldiers, but you'll find that the only really "great" soldiers seem to be the consistently lucky ones. Battles - especially the large, thrashing mêlées of the sort we often see in big combat events - are inherently chaotic and frenetic things. Armour can largely negate serious damage unless you get in a lucky hit. Hell, look at the Game of Thrones fight Xigo linked - Bronn only touched the guy with his sword three times, and one was a killing blow after the fight was won. The first two were lucky hits, and although Ser Vardis was obviously a skilled warrior, Bronn won because he fought dirty and got lucky.

Now transplant that scenario into a pitched battle of the sort you'd see in a big event. Skill and experience become meaningless because at the end of the day, if you or I went back in time, somehow snuck up on Bruce Lee back in his prime and smashed a brick over his head, I imagine Bruce Lee would still get knocked the frick out. In a battle, if you slip up, you're going to get cut, and if you get cut, you're probably going to bleed and die. You don't necessarily become a better fighter or a more worthy soldier by surviving a lot of battles. You're just luckier than the rest, and sometimes, your luck can run out. And I think luck is a hell of a lot more important than skill in that kind of situation, so if a ghoul gets a lucky hit in and you slip up, you're dinner. The Scourge wouldn't use them if they had no use other than to be sword buffers for dashing heroes.

Anyway, in case it wasn't clear, I think rolls represent this kind of chaos perfectly. It's why I love tabletop.

Edit: Thousandth post. Hot damn.

[DaveM]

1. I think a prestige (or more rather a power-level-diferentiating-and-limiting) system would do wonders for this.

Such as, off the top of my head: Something simple like four layers.


Each Grunt or such can have:

- 1 Epic character (+20 on rolls VS commoners, +10 vs elites, +5 vs heroes)
- 2 Hero characters (+5 VS elite, +15 vs commoner)
- Any nuber of elite characters ( +10 vs commoner) (or maybe just 3-4 of these?)
- Any number of commoner characters

The typical "fodder ghoul"'d count as a commoner.

And the roll "modifiers" (evidently ultimately optional) are 1. to use in roll fights if so wanted, but more rather 2. to gauge the power-level difference.


Note: +5 on /100 rolls is not just a +5% chance to win, it's much more.

May not sound like much, or worth the hassle, but I think it would boost a lot of plots to have lesser characters in a very tangible way.


2. Why I'd like such a layering system is because I'd love to play more in-between-ers, but I constantly get the feeling that if I would, I'd be in a world in which the nooby RPrs have the epics and the nuanced skilled ones have the rest. It may not be that black and white, but I often up my powerlevel against nooby strangers and play the development scenes with my friends who I can trust not to OP at me. The above would make things fair(er), make them pick some 3 characters that are truly badass and not 20.


3. Death in events.

Please. Plenty of it. Why not charge when nobody dies? Chargers tend to die? That's bravery.

Yeah, Singe charged under a crypt lord to slash upwards for its guts. When the thing dropped or struck downwards, I forced a KO despite mechanically having plenty of hp left over because that's the kind of consequence that kinda' thing should be likely to have. But I could have not, I could have epic-ed throughout the whole damn event. Could have counted defensive spells being cast my way as fully saving and not just preventing death.

Event DMs should call out things like: Risky attack! Double damage if succesful, double damage from the target when it strikes back!

[Harmonic]

1. I think a prestige (or more rather a power-level-diferentiating-and-limiting) system would do wonders for this.

Such as, off the top of my head: Something simple like four layers.


Each Grunt or such can have:

- 1 Epic character (+20 on rolls VS commoners, +10 vs elites, +5 vs heroes)
- 2 Hero characters (+5 VS elite, +15 vs commoner)
- Any nuber of elite characters ( +10 vs commoner) (or maybe just 3-4 of these?)
- Any number of commoner characters

The typical "fodder ghoul"'d count as a commoner.

And the roll "modifiers" (evidently ultimately optional) are 1. to use in roll fights if so wanted, but more rather 2. to gauge the power-level difference.


Note: +5 on /100 rolls is not just a +5% chance to win, it's much more.

May not sound like much, or worth the hassle, but I think it would boost a lot of plots to have lesser characters in a very tangible way.


2. Why I'd like such a layering system is because I'd love to play more in-between-ers, but I constantly get the feeling that if I would, I'd be in a world in which the nooby RPrs have the epics and the nuanced skilled ones have the rest. It may not be that black and white, but I often up my powerlevel against nooby strangers and play the development scenes with my friends who I can trust not to OP at me. The above would make things fair(er), make them pick some 3 characters that are truly badass and not 20.


3. Death in events.

Please. Plenty of it. Why not charge when nobody dies? Chargers tend to die? That's bravery.

Yeah, Singe charged under a crypt lord to slash upwards for its guts. When the thing dropped or struck downwards, I forced a KO despite mechanically having plenty of hp left over because that's the kind of consequence that kinda' thing should be likely to have. But I could have not, I could have epic-ed throughout the whole damn event. Could have counted defensive spells being cast my way as fully saving and not just preventing death.

Event DMs should call out things like: Risky attack! Double damage if succesful, double damage from the target when it strikes back!

Please no. I hate roll fights, personally, and I think the point -of- the prestige system right now is that you can roll a character class that's on par with all others, rather than one that gets "Pluses" to stuff.

[Anski]

I would much rather perish atop my final stand in war before seeing a return of the prestige system. Even raising the notion of it is a quick fix to a non-extreme problem, and it's only going to bring trouble. I can elaborate if need be, but let me be assertive: I fought long and hard for the prestige system to stay afloat in its last days. I was one of the only persons on staff vying for it, and took up the mantle of trying to fix the system to rerelease it. From this time and from watching the server, I have come to the great conclusion that the prestige system is no longer applicable in almost any possible form. I will never support another prestige system unless it is necessary somehow, but I fail to see how. I know you are all in good faith, but from time and experience, let me inform you that this is a bad idea.

[Dae]

Playing a super-powered, stronger-than-everyone-else character is selfish.
And therein lies the problem. CotH isn't just a place to RP. It is an RP community that has a persisting continuity and standards within the world to uphold.
Whatever event happens, its there, in the memories of the participants, the server logs and in future discussions and in the characters' development, and it contributes to the whole of the server.
If people go pushing the limits of what is acceptable, sure, those individuals may be having a dandy time, but they're doing no good for the server as a whole.

If you're going to roleplay here, you should be putting the server and the other participants as high on your priorities as your own pleasure.
If you can't do that, just go back to retail, or go to another RP server where you can have your own little world in your own phase or something.


That being said, if you don't know someone well and are about to fight them ICly, how about before initiating a battle, you ask them to describe how strong their character is. If they casually describe them as "only a master of three schools of magic" or something, then don't proceed with the conflict. You have every right to opt out of a RP situation OoCly.
And possibly inform a GM so that their skewed understanding of what is acceptable is politely addressed.

Abomination? "Oh, what's that smell". Dragon. "I want to ride that".

This. I admit, watching people treat a dragon like it were a kobold just plain confuses me. It's one of the most powerful things in Azeroth. Really, unless you're a lore figure, you should be giving about a hundred damns if there's a dragon in your face. Trash talking the thing just isn't "cool". /endrant

Though I wouldn't mind seeing a crass and cocky character trash talking it after the fact, for, say, months if they participated to any degree in killing the thing.
Flora doesn't trash-talk the thing, but when she helped the Argent forces slay that frost wyrm, that was the biggest moment of her life Forsaken-dead-guy-livingish-time-thing. She talks about it whenever she gets the chance (though I haven't gotten a chance to RP her much as of late) and wears the ivory she pilfered from the body proudly.


Though speaking of Forsaken characters, Flora's weird in that I don't play her with the "Will of the Forsaken" racial, aka: the "Give zero damns" ability. If someone wants to play someone fearless, they have a perfectly reasonable option in the dead guys. Granted, they'll also have to pay attention to the limits of a rotting corpse as well for them to make a good character, but with the Forsaken around as a lore-friendly race for unfearing characters, there's even less of an excuse for abuse of such a trait.


Also, I've been thinking, and can we perhaps have some kind of absolute minimum (and hopefully average estimates as well) someone needs for training for being average in a class in their character's history? Yes, in-game RP and IC forum posts work on wonky time. But if it takes, say, eight years of training that's as consuming as, say, university-level education to get basic mage training and be competent in one school, maybe there'd be a bit more thought put into what a character is capable of ICly. No, it won't stop someone who is absolutely certain that their character is a special snowflake, but we'd be a little less Anime-ie around here if characters can't just grow magic powers one day while going about their life story.
(Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but even Thrall, chosen by the spirits and a major lore character, had three years to dedicate solely to shamanistic study and over a decade afterwards of practicing shamanism to get to where he is now)