Oh, there are plenty of pointy objects.
Oh, there are plenty of pointy objects.
Retired Administrator
Elijah Belov, "Everything else is just a chef!"
Bitterwood -- Red-Stained Night
Excellent.
Originally Posted by Double 'The Fun' Felix, Jul 10 2008, 12:55 AM
Alright, I think what Synz was trying to say is that on Dark Rain, PvP fights are mostly done during roleplays. Thus, fights are not judged, and the winner is not who writes better. The winner is whoever doesn't get stuck with a pointy object. For plot and realism purposes.
I'm not Tom.
That, too, may happen here. During quests (read: threads that aren't designated as battles) PCs can fight with each other, though the difference is that said PvP fight isn't the primary/only focal point of the thread, and as such there are no winners or losers and the thread is given a single, overall score.
Retired Administrator
Elijah Belov, "Everything else is just a chef!"
Bitterwood -- Red-Stained Night
Yeah. Except we don't have judging.
I'm not Tom.
Most places don't.
Retired Administrator
Elijah Belov, "Everything else is just a chef!"
Bitterwood -- Red-Stained Night
The key is that the system needs to promote the purpose of the tournament. Why are the players coming here, to write, or to fight? Open ended rubrics often promote needless writing about trite details that do little but hamper the pace of a fight. Sure, the information in the posts are nice to have, but if an editor was quick with his pen, most of their posts would be removed. During the Tournament of Legends, this was a -massive- issue. The posts were less about fighting and more about attempting to look good while fighting.
Often times, when a player found that the individual they were fighting was better at them in combat, they would begin to stall the fight through OOC and IC means. This happened to my team countless times during the tournament. Furthermore, the lack of focus in the writing contributes to judging woes, since more is written. The goal needs to be to have a concise FOCUS of the tournament. I would dare say, a word limit might be a nice addition to the rules to prevent such dawdling.
The in character pacing would be far easier to obtain if everyone was reserved to say, 750 words or so, maximum.
My suggestions:
1. Decide if interrupts are going to be allowed. Often times people begin to lose sight of when their opponent would be able to 'act' and write volumes of actions that are going to be negated by a simple step. Do you force the character to be a moron who stands still for a minute, or do you allow them to act?
2. Word Limit.
3. Give more points in the rubric for actually demonstrating combat knowledge if this is meant to be a display of fighting knowledge. Make people -want- to win by taking out their opponent, it is a tournament, after all.
4. Impose harsh penalties for timeliness. Role playing is all about staying on task, and if someone cannot post in time to allow the role play to come into fruition. One way to do this is to say that unless a thread has 12 posts, the winner will be the team that has posted the most timely. This prevents the judge from having to view nothing but introductory prose, rather than a fight.
5. Make a thread for individuals to post about the unique properties of their characters so they can begin to come to compromises. Is Elementalism = Magic? Etc.
6. Impose power limits to what characters are capable of doing. Real world examples are typically the best way to instill the limits on individuals. Ie, you cannot Fireball a city in one turn.
7. Make every team keep a 'Cliff Notes' for their thread to submit to the judge when it's time for their match to be completed. This will make it easier on the judge to figure out the pacing / limit the need to wait for answers on questions.
8. Make it -very- clear what kind of tournament this is going to be. One of writing, combat, or both. Even if it is both, set the expectation level to which side it leans towards...
Also, I do have documentation on fighting systems if necessary, from a series of articles I wrote called 'Grey Area' that I'd be willing to contribute.
Last edited by Ran Iji; 12-16-08 at 04:50 PM.
Did you check the rubric and my battle tip thread?
We've actually already incorporated a lot of your ideas, strangely enough...
Althanas Operations Administrator
Dirks GP amount: 2949
Indeed, and most of the rest we leave to common sense. I know that it can be argued that a lot of people might not possess said common sense, but that would invariably result in lower scores for those who lack it.
Retired Administrator
Elijah Belov, "Everything else is just a chef!"
Bitterwood -- Red-Stained Night
Nope, not at all. I was just throwing out suggestions during my lunch break. ^_~;
Christoph, just remember the saying... Common Sense isn't that common. You cannot rely on it to govern a tournament. =p
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