A random question

[Mikeavelli]

I, like many people out there, like to refer to people in narrative to make things easier.

I.E. if 'Hopper is fighting someone named Steve, I'll write something like:

'Hopper slashes at Steve's head

This isn't dialogue, 'Hopper is not saying "Hello there Steve! I would like to hit you in the head today."

'Hopper isn't doing an inner monologue like,
Damn! This steve guy is really tough to beat! thought 'Hopper.

I'm referring to Steve in a description of events. Unfortunately, I'll get dinged for "hopper doesn't know Steve's name, why is he using it?"

I've read through a few posts and judgings, and it appears that everyone who does this gets dinged for it, so I'm not crying about being singled out or anything, this seems to be the standard for all Althanas judging

I'm also wondering, Why is this considered bad form? It's much more clear than saying "'Hopper slashes at the human in front of him" - it doesn't really matter that 'Hopper himself doesn't know Steve's name, because I, Mike, the third-person narrator, know Steve's name, and I'm the one talking about it.

This habit might, concievably, make it hard to remember whether 'Hopper ICly knows someone's name or not, and make it easy to slip-up, but it shouldn't be penalized on it's own.

[NightCast]

It's a matter of form really.

Think of it this way, when you're writing in a roleplaying enviornment, you are either playing in first person or what I like to call third person LIMITED omniscient (it may just be called third person, I don't remember). This is to say that you, as the narrator are aware of what is occurring in your character's and, if approved by your teammate or roleplaying partner, maybe your friend's thoughts. So, while it may be easier and more efficient, knowing your opponent's name could be construed as a form of bunnying, because if you or your character is aware of the opponent's name, without a good IC explanation, it suggests that your character or narrator knows more than he should.

I may not have explained that as well as I may have liked, but the point is that it's matter of form. Unless you're doing a third person omniscient solo thread, the narrator or character should not know more than what he is told. Regardless of writing efficiency.

[Tainted Bushido]

I've read through a few posts and judgings, and it appears that everyone who does this gets dinged for it, so I'm not crying about being singled out or anything, this seems to be the standard for all Althanas judging

I'm also wondering, Why is this considered bad form? It's much more clear than saying "'Hopper slashes at the human in front of him" - it doesn't really matter that 'Hopper himself doesn't know Steve's name, because I, Mike, the third-person narrator, know Steve's name, and I'm the one talking about it.

Its considered bad form, because its a sort of abuse of meta knowledge. Even if the opponent has referred to their character as Steve, Hopper himself doesn't know Steve's name. This creates a problem in suspension of disbelief in a few cases. In other cases it might slip into dialogue. I find, that the best way to refer to opponent's is to give them a nickname, one made up on the fly.

This allows for you to be specific when referring to things, and still be able to stay clean of the metagame trap.


This habit might, concievably, make it hard to remember whether 'Hopper ICly knows someone's name or not, and make it easy to slip-up, but it shouldn't be penalized on it's own.

Its more of a courtesy than anything. Perhaps its a stylistic approach, but when you look at the metagame, its ultimately what it comes down to. Like I said, create witty or clever nicknames instead of Steve, and you clear the hurdle.

[Shadowed]

NC got it more or less right. When writing third person narrative, you generally stick to things that are either self-evident or that the character already knows. An example of self-evident would be a bird in the tree. The character might not know that there's a bird in the tree, but all he has to do is look up to find out.

When you read fiction, no good writers will refer to the name of someone the character meets or otherwise interacts with unless it has been explained at some point beforehand. An example of this would be when Aragorn and the captains met with the Mouth of Sauron at the black gate. The narrator describes who and what the Mouth of Sauron is, and can then refer to him as such in the narrative. But earlier in the book, when Merry sees the Wild Man meeting with Theoden, the narrator describes it from Merry's perspective, as the reader is also just discovering this new person. You can either describe the second person through the narrative, or leave it vague. That's really up to you, but you should never refer to secondary characters by name until they've been introduced in either the dialogue or the narrative.

Generally speaking, when you roleplay your narrative takes on the perspective of the character. You don't write in classical old English when your character is a heavily urbanized member of a biker gang. Similarly, if your character doesn't know the name of someone else, you shouldn't use that name, as it lends too much to narrative voicing. Invent names and references that your character would think up; for example, in round one my narrative referred to one of my opponents as the Glowing One, because Honuse noticed how ridiculously luminescent the other character was.

[Cyrus the virus]

To be honest, it's the judge's mistake.

[Shadowed]

It wasn't a mistake. It really is considered poor form to do it, hence why you never see good, established professional writers doing it. But even aside from that, your team got 4 out of 5 points in that category, and there were other things mentioned besides that. So I'd say you weren't penalized much, if at all, for it.

[Yari Rafanas]

NC got it more or less right. When writing third person narrative, you generally stick to things that are either self-evident or that the character already knows. An example of self-evident would be a bird in the tree. The character might not know that there's a bird in the tree, but all he has to do is look up to find out.

When you read fiction, no good writers will refer to the name of someone the character meets or otherwise interacts with unless it has been explained at some point beforehand. An example of this would be when Aragorn and the captains met with the Mouth of Sauron at the black gate. The narrator describes who and what the Mouth of Sauron is, and can then refer to him as such in the narrative. But earlier in the book, when Merry sees the Wild Man meeting with Theoden, the narrator describes it from Merry's perspective, as the reader is also just discovering this new person. You can either describe the second person through the narrative, or leave it vague. That's really up to you, but you should never refer to secondary characters by name until they've been introduced in either the dialogue or the narrative.

Generally speaking, when you roleplay your narrative takes on the perspective of the character. You don't write in classical old English when your character is a heavily urbanized member of a biker gang. Similarly, if your character doesn't know the name of someone else, you shouldn't use that name, as it lends too much to narrative voicing. Invent names and references that your character would think up; for example, in round one my narrative referred to one of my opponents as the Glowing One, because Honuse noticed how ridiculously luminescent the other character was.
You've said it.

I'd also like to elaborate a bit further on the roleplaying bit. Remember that for the most part people are playing their characters. It's important that we only apply the information our characters have to their posts when considering other players. While I may know that my opponent has the ability to withstand a steel blade to the chest from reading their profile, that doesn't mean my character does. So just because I know their name, my character does not.

Again, this is a roleplaying forum. Creative writing or not, how often do you see somebody in a book say their character attempts and hopes to do something, then goes on to wait for people to see if it actually happens on the next page? There are so many things people do differently here than actual writers do because this is a game.

It's all about the EXPs and GPs. ;]

[Petoux]

Why didn't you just ask the judges in pm? They are the reins behind the horses ... or something like that ... :p

In other words, it doesn't matter if we personally think it's right or wrong ... we don't have a say in the matter anyway ... only the judges do.

Therefore, it makes more sense to ask them and not us.

[Max Dirks]

I've read through a few posts and judgings, and it appears that everyone who does this gets dinged for it, so I'm not crying about being singled out or anything, this seems to be the standard for all Althanas judging.Erm, check here (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=17880&page=2), your own trial thread!
As a side note, Vegna, using names in prose is acceptable. You can only say "the strange man" in so many ways until it becomes a hassle.
It really is considered poor form to do it, hence why you never see good, established professional writers doing it.Professional writers are also taught to develop their characters. Like Yari said, they don't have to collaborate with multiple writers to establish that character, either. I'm no professional writer, but in a solo quest I'd likely just write a situation where the character is introduced, is amongst other familiar characters, or write in his perspective to allow proper noun use rather than write "the strange man" and every possible euphemism of the term 100 times.

[NightCast]

However, I believe Tainted Bushido's way around this is the best, most professional, and the most well written form. He said have the character give them a nickname. The name doesn't have to be creative or anything, for example if one of my characters had to give a nickname they would probably say something like Bob and Bill, but then again, that would be mainly Morgoth and his dry sense of humor.

However, if your character is witnessing them doing something that is noticeable, like maybe he is particularly fast, your character might mentally, and even more feasibly, subconsciously name this fast character Quickie (despite the sexual connotation). The possibilities are really quite endless.

There should be no reason that you would have to resort to using the real name in a metagame fashion.


Professional writers are also taught to develop their characters. Like Yari said, they don't have to collaborate with multiple writers to establish that character, either. I'm no professional writer, but in a solo quest I'd likely just write a situation where the character is introduced, is amongst other familiar characters, or write in his perspective to allow proper noun use rather than write "the strange man" and every possible euphemism of the term 100 times.

Interesting point you bring up here. However I disagree on several levels because of the definition of the nature of this tournament.

This is a writing tournament, the grading of the rubric focuses on how well one can write. Thus, one can draw the conclusion that this tournament is based on how well you write in EVERY ASPECT. Professionally a writer, writing in third or first person, no omniscience, cannot feasibly know the name of the new character. The end all is that if the judges are to grade on writing ability, they need to follow it through 100%, which includes docking for using a character's name. So whether any of us like it or not, better pull out those thesauri and look up "every possible euphemism" or with a good IC reason, be it in your character's nature or just for a distinguishing feature of the enemy, create a nickname until you learn otherwise.

[Cyrus the virus]

It wasn't a mistake. It really is considered poor form to do it, hence why you never see good, established professional writers doing it. But even aside from that, your team got 4 out of 5 points in that category, and there were other things mentioned besides that. So I'd say you weren't penalized much, if at all, for it.

Feel free to show me the established, professional writers who come to Althanas to roleplay like dorks.

In RP, we write from an omniscient perspective. To say 'Luc observed Steve with interest,' when Luc does not know Steve's name is not something a judge should dock a point for. I understand that it's proper to do otherwise, but it's not improper to do it in this medium.

The rules and norms are not the same when you're roleplaying.

[NightCast]

In RP, we write from an omniscient perspective.

Negative. Unless you're doing a solo, you SHOULD NOT be writing in an omniscient point of view. By doing so is metagaming in roleplaying. By definition, as you are probably well aware, omniscient points of view are centered around a narrator who, for reasons of simplicity, is the equivalent of God. He is everywhere, knows everything, and you CANNOT do that. How are you, not being the creator of your opponent's character, going to know what he is thinking? You cannot be omniscient and just know his name. Limited omniscience is when an author is telling the story from the point of view that every FAMILIAR character, as in the main characters, are open for him to read and tell of their feelings. You cannot even do that in this tournament, because then it's suggesting that you know what your friend is thinking too.

You cannot be selectively omniscient. Either you are or you aren't. None of this, I'm omniscient enough to know his name, but nothing else about him. It just doesn't work, whether it be form, professionalism, or just good manners.

[Shadowed]

Professional writers are also taught to develop their characters. Like Yari said, they don't have to collaborate with multiple writers to establish that character, either. I'm no professional writer, but in a solo quest I'd likely just write a situation where the character is introduced, is amongst other familiar characters, or write in his perspective to allow proper noun use rather than write "the strange man" and every possible euphemism of the term 100 times.

Refer to my examples. It's acceptable once the other character's name has been established, either in the narrative or in the dialogue. Collaboration means nothing in regard to this specific aspect of writing; when you roleplay, you only write your own post. You don't have to use the same style as the other guy, nor recognize everything that he recognizes. Yes, there are minor variations in how you write something out, but that's only a magnification of what professional writers do. We might say "Dave aimed his rifle at the distant shape of his enemy; as the crosshairs rested upon the man's head, Dave squeezed the trigger." That's entirely permissible within roleplaying, and normal writers do it. The difference is simply that we put more emphasis on the actions leading up to and including the final action; professional writers will say the exact same thing, then follow with what happened.

"Dave aimed his rifle at the distant shape of his enemy; as the crosshairs rested upon the man's head, Dave squeezed the trigger. The bullet flew through the air, striking the soldier between the eyes, leaving the man's head looking as a jagged stump."

The last part of that would be written by the other person, yes, but it's still the exact same thing. What it really comes down to is readability; if your narrator introduces the other character, there's no confusion because the reader knows who's being referred to, even if your character doesn't know the name. But if you simply refer to the character by name as if it's basic fact, then you stand a good chance of confusing people. If the reader doesn't know that person X is named John, referring to him as such would be bad. If another person in the thread already referred to his character's name, your narrator would technically be able to do likewise, but it would still be considered bad form without at least a brief narrative introduction.

When scoring comprehension, mechanics, etc, there is one principle that should always be used: You should read one person's posts straight through, skipping all the others. Yes, you'll miss some specifics, but a good writer will contain everything that's relevant in his own posts. A brief narrative recap of what his opponent did in the previous post is vital for clarity, so long as it isn't too long or expansive. But when using that method, if out of nowhere you begin calling the other character by name, well, that's a problem. Your posts should be able to stand completely on their own. The best way to think of it is as a series of books; a good author will briefly recap any relevant events from the previous book(s) as needed, letting each installment stand on its own. Is it better reading them all in order? Of course. But each book can still stand on its own. That's the entire point of not using people's names in the narratives until it's properly allowable.


Feel free to show me the established, professional writers who come to Althanas to roleplay like dorks.

In RP, we write from an omniscient perspective. To say 'Luc observed Steve with interest,' when Luc does not know Steve's name is not something a judge should dock a point for. I understand that it's proper to do otherwise, but it's not improper to do it in this medium.

The rules and norms are not the same when you're roleplaying.

Limited omniscience. I covered this. You can only know what's either known, or self-evident. The only way around this is making it specific that the character doesn't know. For example, you'll often see "Though he didn't know it, the bomb was already set." Referring to another character by name without introduction lends too much to narrative voicing. Your narrator is generally supposed to be invisible, unless the style specifically intends to give the narrator a distinctive voice. Film noir, for example, or even Tolkien's "tale around a fireplace" approach. It's always improper to take something as given fact without proper explanation or introduction.

Also, as NC said, this is a writing tournament. Why wouldn't you try to write professionally?

[Max Dirks]

Professionally a writer, writing in third or first person, no omniscience, cannot feasibly know the name of the new character.Most folks that come through Althanas usually write in what I dub "third person personal" or "third person narrative," Nightcast. Aside from naming in prose, there are only a few other noticeable differences between the two. Those differences affect description the most. To give you an idea of what I mean, personal would focus on the character's interpretation of what the scene was whereas narrative would focus on what the scene was. For example, here is a blurb in personal: "The sky threatened rain, a fitting welcome for Althanas' most revered criminal." Here is one in narrative: "The sky threatened rain. Dirks found it to be a fitting welcome for Althanas' most revered criminal." Did you notice the difference? Personal incorporated Dirks' feelings into the prose whereas narrative separated the description from Dirks' feelings, actions, dialogue, etc. To say the latter (which allows unknown names to be said in prose) isn't an acceptable form of writing in an RP setting is just ridiculous.

[NightCast]

I'm slightly confused by your post Dirks. Perhaps I am merely missing your point, but it feels like your post is also missing relevancy to my post, perhaps, again, a misunderstanding of the point of my posts.

Could you please quote specific parts you're referring to so that I can better understand where the relevancy lay?

And while what you mentioned is correct, I was referring to the omniscience. Omniscience, regardless of the way you look at it, is a narrator who is privy to everything, every thought, every emotion, everything about the familiar characters. Whether it be limited omniscience which Shadowed and I have been trying to convey, which, in reiteration, is the narrator knowing everything going on with each character that is familiar. And I use familiar and not important, or main, because it cannot be disputed by any that each character in these threads is important and relevant. This nullifies the use of omniscience. By only having one character that your narrator can feasibly understand limited omniscience, in essence, becomes third person narrative. Full omniscience cannot be achieved because you cannot know what your opponent is or thinks.

By saying something such as this: "As Dirks went about his business in the town below, DarkStrike floated high overhead, observing his target," you do exactly as Shadowed says; you lend to much to the narrative voicing. What you end up with is a convoluted, not to mention distorted, cross between omniscience and narrative. It's not good technique unless the character is already familiar one that has been explored by the author. There are FOUR authors per thread. You cannot exercise this kind of narration because it results in a bastard child of the third person narrative and omniscient points of view.

[Cyrus the virus]

Negative. Unless you're doing a solo, you SHOULD NOT be writing in an omniscient point of view. By doing so is metagaming in roleplaying. By definition, as you are probably well aware, omniscient points of view are centered around a narrator who, for reasons of simplicity, is the equivalent of God. He is everywhere, knows everything, and you CANNOT do that. How are you, not being the creator of your opponent's character, going to know what he is thinking? You cannot be omniscient and just know his name. Limited omniscience is when an author is telling the story from the point of view that every FAMILIAR character, as in the main characters, are open for him to read and tell of their feelings. You cannot even do that in this tournament, because then it's suggesting that you know what your friend is thinking too.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Metagaming is using OOC knowledge of someone's character to have an advantage. Moreover, not writing from an omniscient perspective is limiting your spectrum.

How else could you write a comparison of emotions or thoughts? Including a comparison of how my character approaches battle differently than yours adds depth and spice to my post without your character having to include some ridiculous, stupid monologue about his life. Every great non-action, non-dialogue/monologue post ever made includes some kind of omniscience to it.

When you're roleplaying, you are mixing narration with your character's perspective. Otherwise, you are writing purely action and dialogue. And that is dull as shit.

I could take what your character thinks and put a new spin to it as an omniscient narrator, improving our thread in general. Being an omniscient narrator doesn't mean I'm going to have Luc know your guy is thinking "Hey, it's a good thing Luc does not know I'm weak against the color yellow and my alter-ego is Steve Johnson."

[Karuka]

With multiple authors per thread, I'd think that would make it even more important to use each others' names in narrative, but out of dialogue and internal thought. You can't just say "she" or "he" because you get your pronouns all jumbled and who knows who you're talking about?

[Max Dirks]

I'm slightly confused by your post Dirks. Perhaps I am merely missing your point, but it feels like your post is also missing relevancy to my post, perhaps, again, a misunderstanding of the point of my posts. Sorry, I was referring to your reply to me, not Cyrus. I've edited the above post. I don't much care for being omnipresent, it just leads to rather dull writing. Third person narrative, however, is a much different story.

[Shadowed]

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Metagaming is using OOC knowledge of someone's character to have an advantage. Moreover, not writing from an omniscient perspective is limiting your spectrum.

How else could you write a comparison of emotions or thoughts? Including a comparison of how my character approaches battle differently than yours adds depth and spice to my post without your character having to include some ridiculous, stupid monologue about his life. Every great non-action, non-dialogue/monologue post ever made includes some kind of omniscience to it.

Erm, you shouldn't be writing a comparison between thoughts, unless it's in direct reference to what the other narrator said. Even then, it really depends on how you do it. You can write the same comparison with limited omniscience; remember, limited omniscience includes what would reasonably be discovered, not what your character can specifically reasonably discover. So if I'm x and you're y, and you write that y is charging in for a fast strike, I can, as the narrator, say that while y preferred fast attacks, x was one to take it slow and work defensively until he found an opening. That's entirely legit, because, even though the character wouldn't know this, you can reasonably determine this by seeing and examining what y is doing. It's the difference between actions and knowledge; you have to know the line. I can say that y is planning to feint to the left, because of the tenseness of his muscles and his minute tendency to put his weight on his left leg in preparation of moving to the right. Granted, that's only if the character's owner says as much, so that you're not bunnying. And unless your character can see and examine that, you can't use it IC. But I can't say that y was planning to shout an obscenity as he ran, because that's only knowable in y's mind. By that token, if no one in the scene has said y's name, and x doesn't know it, I cannot as a narrator know y's name.


When you're roleplaying, you are mixing narration with your character's perspective. Otherwise, you are writing purely action and dialogue. And that is dull as shit.

Yes, that's true. But I don't see how that fits in here.


I could take what your character thinks and put a new spin to it as an omniscient narrator, improving our thread in general. Being an omniscient narrator doesn't mean I'm going to have Luc know your guy is thinking "Hey, it's a good thing Luc does not know I'm weak against the color yellow and my alter-ego is Steve Johnson."

No one is saying that having the narrator know means the character knows.

[Cyrus the virus]

I'm arguing for an omniscient narration perspective, which is what NightCast appeared to be arguing against. He tied it in with metagaming, which it isn't. I'm really only responding to him.

[Shadowed]

You're right that it's not metagaming, but the rest of my points still stand against your comments.

[NightCast]

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Metagaming is using OOC knowledge of someone's character to have an advantage. Moreover, not writing from an omniscient perspective is limiting your spectrum.

How else could you write a comparison of emotions or thoughts? Including a comparison of how my character approaches battle differently than yours adds depth and spice to my post without your character having to include some ridiculous, stupid monologue about his life. Every great non-action, non-dialogue/monologue post ever made includes some kind of omniscience to it.

When you're roleplaying, you are mixing narration with your character's perspective. Otherwise, you are writing purely action and dialogue. And that is dull as shit.

I could take what your character thinks and put a new spin to it as an omniscient narrator, improving our thread in general. Being an omniscient narrator doesn't mean I'm going to have Luc know your guy is thinking "Hey, it's a good thing Luc does not know I'm weak against the color yellow and my alter-ego is Steve Johnson."

By utilizing information that is unknowable in a reasonable situation, you don't have to work at describing the other character. You have more options for word variation, and yes, the narrative can be overall more cohesive if you know every thought and action of your opponent's character. But when roleplaying, you take on the role of that character - the narrator is simply how you get this across.

By utilizing information through the narrative that the character cannot in any way find out, you're giving new light and depth to the narrative beyond what is reasonable for you telling the story through your character's perspective. You aren't writing some article examining both sides of a conflict; you're writing what your character does from his perspective.

To do otherwise is simply ridiculous, because it's not believable. Using third person limited omniscience, you only tell what's relevant to your character. Is it relevant for you to compare your opinions of the battlefield with your opponent's? No, because it has no bearing on anything. Sure, it might be pretty from a writing perspective, but this ain't poetry, buddy.

Also, please respond to Shadowed's post. He likes to debate and felt a bit left out that you passed them over.

[Cyrus the virus]

They don't, because they're not related. I'm not talking about my character's actions or thoughts, but a narration style of comparison between two characters or actions.

Meaning I can use your character's history and my character's history to draw parallels or opposites without your character, or even you mentioning anything in your posts. Not from my character's perspective but from the narrator's. Like "Steve, like Luc, had spent many years training for battles like these." etc. If Luc hasn't discerned this on his own, I'm writing from an omniscient perspective that NightCase appears to be arguing against.

So, yes, I will draw comparisons between our character's styles or abilities without my character knowing any of those things. Because that's not from my character's perspective, but mine. It's not my character who is making the observation.

I'll try to clarify a bit.


Erm, you shouldn't be writing a comparison between thoughts, unless it's in direct reference to what the other narrator said.

I know. I don't know what the character's thinking unless the narrator says what he's thinking. I never meant to imply that I know what someone's character is thinking more than they do.

Your example of battle isn't what I'm talking about, really. If I haven't explained it clearly in this post then I don't think I know how to.

[Cyrus the virus]

But when roleplaying, you take on the role of that character - the narrator is simply how you get this across.

I think this is where we disagree most. Your definition of roleplaying seems to be becoming the character, knowing only what the character knows, and using another perspective solely to describe actions. The focus on story on Althanas makes it necessary to tell a bigger picture, with your character as a part of the story. You need to step outside of what he knows in order to create a world around him.


By utilizing information through the narrative that the character cannot in any way find out, you're giving new light and depth to the narrative beyond what is reasonable for you telling the story through your character's perspective. You aren't writing some article examining both sides of a conflict; you're writing what your character does from his perspective.

Yeah, this is definitely what we're disagreeing on. I don't view battles as a competition of character versus character but as writer versus writer, and battles on Althanas work because people work together to tell a story, not to try and fight each other into an IC loss. If you and I wrote a battle where we only used what our characters knew, I assure you it would be much worse than one where we wrote from an alternative character-omniscient perspective.


To do otherwise is simply ridiculous, because it's not believable. Using third person limited omniscience, you only tell what's relevant to your character. Is it relevant for you to compare your opinions of the battlefield with your opponent's? No, because it has no bearing on anything. Sure, it might be pretty from a writing perspective, but this ain't poetry, buddy.

No, it's prose, and if you're here to write I don't see why you'd purposely make it worse than it could be. You're trying to write a believable fight about your demon-blooded prince of darkness who throws bolts of lightning, adding narrative beyond what he thinks and knows is going to make it much better and more involved. You used a pretty shitty example in the comparing battlefield thing, but what about comparing perspectives on a major IC event? Comparing emotions? Thoughts? Approaches to the battle? Reasons why they battle?


Also, please respond to Shadowed's post. He likes to debate and felt a bit left out that you passed them over.

I did, but it's not him I'm arguing against so I don't really see the point.

[Shadowed]

Meaning I can use your character's history and my character's history to draw parallels or opposites without your character, or even you mentioning anything in your posts. Not from my character's perspective but from the narrator's. Like "Steve, like Luc, had spent many years training for battles like these." etc. If Luc hasn't discerned this on his own, I'm writing from an omniscient perspective that NightCase appears to be arguing against.

When you're roleplaying, you are not an overarching narrative deity. Your job is to write what's relevant to the story from your perspective - roleplaying is entirely perspective based. You can tell a great story between two people, with each using their own perspective. Comparing histories is completely left-field; it's not something that could even be reasonably known by a reader, or a character, or anyone who isn't intimately familiar with the other person. Stories are driven by three things: Motivation, action, and interaction. As you're writing perspective-based, motivation is purely from your own perspective. Same with everything else. Would you really take a paragraph to go into the history of a nearby deer who you're going to use as a shield to stop a bullet? No, because that's ridiculous. Would you really go into someone else's history as a prelude to stabbing them? I doubt it.


So, yes, I will draw comparisons between our character's styles or abilities without my character knowing any of those things. Because that's not from my character's perspective, but mine. It's not my character who is making the observation.

Narrative. Voicing. Is. Bad. As I said, unless you are specifically going for a distinctive narrative voice, your narrator should be invisible. You're incorporating two primary things: what the reader would see or notice if they were standing there observing everything, and what the character you're writing about would know, think, say, do, etc. Read some fiction. Even books with multiple characters will write the scene from the perspective of one of them. Everything that is said, done, or thought is from that one perspective. Narrators do not have their own voice in the overwhelming majority of good fiction.


I know. I don't know what the character's thinking unless the narrator says what he's thinking. I never meant to imply that I know what someone's character is thinking more than they do.

Yet, amazingly enough, you know what he thought in the past. Hence why omniscience is such a slippery slope. You might know everything that Person Y is thought prior to you writing that post, but you don't know what he's thinking right now. "In stark contrast to Person X's calm demeanor, Person Y was boiling with rage; his mind saw images of his childhood home burning, brought back to his eyes by the words of Person X." Yeah, great. But now keep going. "Person X suddenly leapt forward, swinging a sword. Person Y, having an ingrained distrust of all shiny metal objects, was aghast with fear." See the problem? That would legitimately follow from your omniscient perspective, but there is no possible way that you can say any of that without bunnying. For stylistic continuity, it's ridiculous to narrate his thoughts in the first half of the scene, but have no idea in the second.


I think this is where we disagree most. Your definition of roleplaying seems to be becoming the character, knowing only what the character knows, and using another perspective solely to describe actions. The focus on story on Althanas makes it necessary to tell a bigger picture, with your character as a part of the story. You need to step outside of what he knows in order to create a world around him.

Roleplaying. You are playing a role. It's in the name. Everything should be from the perspective of that role. The narrator is invisible, because all actions are simple observation of what your character is doing. All thoughts are his own. All technical aspects of writing are done from his perspective. You cannot narrate the entire story alone, because you have zero control over the other character. It makes absolutely no sense, and in terms of technical writing and style, it's frankly ridiculous to even want to do so.


Yeah, this is definitely what we're disagreeing on. I don't view battles as a competition of character versus character but as writer versus writer, and battles on Althanas work because people work together to tell a story, not to try and fight each other into an IC loss. If you and I wrote a battle where we only used what our characters knew, I assure you it would be much worse than one where we wrote from an alternative character-omniscient perspective.

You're telling a story from two perspectives. The storyline remains cohesive, but the fact that you have two people doing it means it's perspective based. Otherwise I'd tell my opponent everything I'd do and have him write it for me to make it a better story. You're also severely missing the point of limited omniscience. I mean, drastically. It is not only what your character specifically knows.


No, it's prose, and if you're here to write I don't see why you'd purposely make it worse than it could be. You're trying to write a believable fight about your demon-blooded prince of darkness who throws bolts of lightning, adding narrative beyond what he thinks and knows is going to make it much better and more involved. You used a pretty shitty example in the comparing battlefield thing, but what about comparing perspectives on a major IC event? Comparing emotions? Thoughts? Approaches to the battle? Reasons why they battle?

You're making it better by not using your idea of omniscience, not worse. Why the hell would you compare perspectives about major IC events? You have zero influence, bearing, or relevance on the other character. In fact, not having that comparison makes for a better story, because your reader gets involved completely in your character. Imagine how shitty Star Wars would be if, instead of rolling to credits after the Yavin IV award ceremony, it went to a scene of women crying over the pictures of their dead husbands who were onboard.

[Jasmine]

I agree with Cyrus. It's not metagaming or bunnying or anything else of the sort to use your opponents name.

When I write on here, I'm writing a story. If I wrote purely from only what Jasmine can see or know, it would be pretty darn boring. The idea that 3rd person narrative is bad form is just silly. It's good writing to include everything around you.

For the narrator to say, "John swung his sword at Steve's head" is fine. It's third person narrative and makes it clear what John is doing. That doesn't mean that the narrator is responsible for writing Steve's reactions, facial, emotional or otherwise, because that would be bunnying/metagaming.

Now if John says, "Hi, Steve" and Steve has not introduced himself and there's no reason that they should know of each other, then that would inappropriate. But these are different scenarios.

3rd person omniscient narrative should not be dinged unless the narrator is crossing the line between narrator and character and letting his/her OOC knowledge affect how their characters acts and reacts.

[Cyrus the virus]

Would you really take a paragraph to go into the history of a nearby deer who you're going to use as a shield to stop a bullet?

This is an inane question and you know fully well it's not at all what I'm suggesting. If you want to have a conversation about this that's fine, but don't be silly about it.


Narrative. Voicing. Is. Bad.

No, it isn't. I don't really know how to argue against this except to say that you find narrative voice in many elaborate pieces of prose that exist and are good.

Your example doesn't really work for me. If my character is Y, sure. If my character is X, I wouldn't write a sentence about Y 'seeing' or 'remembering' anything to begin with. BUT, if I choose to write a paragraph regarding what character X's perspective might be if he knew about Y's past and what he might do had he any idea, that's fine. Because my character isn't gaining any sort of advantage and I'm not bunnying in any way. It's just adding a bit of added acknowledgment to Y's memories, and it would be interesting to the reader. So long as it doesn't drag.

I'm probably not making it as clear as I'd like to be, but I've never been good with explaining things like this.


Everything should be from the perspective of that role.

You show me a thread written entirely from each character's perspective, with no overarching narration or perspective, and I'll show you limited storytelling. The idea of writing a thread which includes an antagonist who you only see when the protagonist does is the definition of limiting, to me. And the idea that you insult my perspective by calling it ridiculous suggests to me that you're too closed minded to even entertain the idea.

I've written your style before, believe me. I eventually went from roleplaying to storytelling, and it is very rewarding. When your character wanders around a town leveled by disease, the difference between just another setting and a convincing catastrophe is all in what happens beyond your character. What happened before he got there, the NPCs who have lost loved ones. These things don't come across the same way if your character learns them through dialogue and then reflects upon them for the reader to absorb.


Why the hell would you compare perspectives about major IC events? You have zero influence, bearing, or relevance on the other character.

Because there's a world around them. How shitty would Star Wars have been if the death star had been just the platform Luke and Vader dueled on and not a massive spacestation inhabited by stormtroopers, commanders and Vader himself?

Imagine if we'd watched Star Wars from Luke's perspective while he played in the swamp with Yoda. The death star probably wouldn't be quite as interesting if we hadn't seen it destroy Alderaan (outside of Luke's perspective). Vader probably wouldn't have been at all sinister if he hadn't killed his own men (outside of Luke's perspective) or without all of his dialogues with his old boss-man (outside of Luke's perspective). See where I'm going with this?

[Mikeavelli]

I guess I’ll jump right back in on this, not with the whole quoting specific paragraphs and responding to them, but going with the general themes I’m seeing here:

On professional writers: I’ve read it done both ways, but usually the only reason a writer will go out of his way to describe a character rather than simply naming them is when he’s doing it to make a narrative point. This comes up a lot in, for example, mystery novels, where the writer will follow the point of view of several different characters over the course of the novel. Even though we, the reader, know exactly who’s being referred to, the narrative will keep that information hidden from us.

Terry Brooks (I’m on a Terry Brooks kick recently because he finished up his Genesis of Shannara trilogy, and I was a big fan of the series back when I was younger) – does this a lot too, but he does it really badly – resulting in a more confusing narrative than anything else. This might also be because it only comes up during fight scenes, which he’s pretty terrible at writing (relative to the rest of his work).

There are a lot of parallels there to written RP combat, you’ve got two distinct points of view with their own narrative behind them, but not knowing the name of your opponent isn’t usually a specific plot point.

Other authors will refer to characters by their proper name in the narrative as soon as it’s introduced in the narrative, despite the point of view character not knowing it. It’s just the stylistic choice of whether using a decorative description of your opponent adds more, and is worth the potential loss in clarity.

Both are appropriate, determined by the context.

[hr]

I brought it up in public because it’s widespread in Althanas, and I’m honestly really curious about everyones thoughts on this. I tried, -a lot- to find a way to write the original post that didn’t sound like I was just whining, especially since even though it came up in my judging, I don’t think it even affected the actual points handed out.

Hopefully I was successful.

[hr]

Now I get to weigh in on the whole extra conversation that’s sprung up here; describing extraneous things that none of the characters could possibly know in the context of the story. As before, If it adds to the story, go for it! Shadowed, in particular, seems bent on forcing a slippery slope where, if you can write about anything and everything without heed to what the characters know, you will run off on a tangent unrelated to the storyline, or you will reach inside another character’s head and describe their thoughts.

What I’m trying to say here is that there’s nothing wrong mechanically with using an omniscient narrator. Sure, all sorts of bunnying issues can come up if you’re using an omniscient narrator, or you can go off on a tangent poorly – but it’s the way you use that style, not the style itself, that is at fault here.


Also, I lied, I’m going to take one quote out of context:


Would you really take a paragraph to go into the history of a nearby deer who you're going to use as a shield to stop a bullet?

Douglas Adams did this; frequently, and hilariously. It is now, in fact, my goal to incorporate this very sequence into my ToC battle.

[Cyrus the virus]

Shadowed, in particular, seems bent on forcing a slippery slope where, if you can write about anything and everything without heed to what the characters know, you will run off on a tangent unrelated to the storyline, or you will reach inside another character’s head and describe their thoughts.

This is something I wanted to point out, but had no idea how. :( Stupid Cyruz.