Community Standards Discussion

[Gavin]

Just a quick comment:

My whole comment regarding skipping someone after 5 minutes is purely to avoid hold-ups with someone being afk or utterly disinterested. If you're in the middle of writing an emote, and you type "turns time" or something, then you'd get another 5 minutes or something. I'm not exactly a blazingly fast typer myself, so I'm sympathetic to allowing someone enough time to craft a desired emote...

... but I don't want to wait around for someone who's afk, in another window, or forgot to put up a flag. In that case, I hate to say it, but I'd rather a "you snooze, you lose" approach taken.

[Dice]

I love the idea of a 'tense turns' system that functions by actually providing an initiative order, and allows for people to use 'turn pass' or something similar.

I don't think we can ever account for situations like Naer's trap, honestly. The best we can do is generate rules for the most common things and, if it's a situation where people can't agree, ask staff to mediate.

I agree that I've had major trouble with grappling, and I think that could easily be covered by the generation of rules. (Unarmed vs. Unarmed contest, perhaps, with certain actions forbidden to the loser and certain options available to the winner?) Alternatively, an actual grapple action within combat could perhaps do this better, but I recognize we are talking a TON of new code for that.

I still would like to hear people's thoughts and ideas about movement, though. Step, lunge, approach, and move all taking 'one turn' as things go right now...

[Dice]

Also: repeated actions.

Let's say you're trying to push past me, but I win the str check. It doesn't make sense for you to repeatedly keep trying until luck goes your way and you win a str check. It should probably be 'one contest per action per scene', no matter how much you keep trying - only re-contest if you've somehow managed to change the situation.

And perhaps rules for multiple people aiding things that aren't done well by code (guard, for example?) Although taking a look at editing guard might just help.

[Geras]

Agree with the above. :)

[Kinaed]

We discussed programming turns outside of combat with Az, and he said he thought it would be very difficult and may mean re-writing combat again for integration. So, don't expect that anytime soon.

With situations like the old Tenebrae's fire pit and fleeing, etc - please do contact a staff member and request mediation. We can act as 3rd party storytellers and roll dice, etc, to come out with a reasonable outcome - mind, I'd prefer players worked it out themselves, but you definitely can call a staff member if you've got a mood sitting there about pitch which you had the forethought to put down, then light it an the other guy is like 'frak you, you're dead.".

[Leech]

So basically we're down to a few points, the main one being the misalignment of what we're now calling Tension Time, to TI Time. TI Time, I'm assuming, is how the code handles things. Magic evocation, movement, etc. Tension Time is, obviously, how time should move in a tense scene. Slowly enough to give all players a chance?

I'm guilty of auto-approaching a mage I caught in mid-evoke, and churning out a short combat emote just to get them within the combat code. Also guilty of having my ass quickly served to me on a platter courtesy of a quick evoke thread.

Which makes me think two things:

1. Combat should be something we enter into with something as simple as 'fight /target' - regardless of range in the room, this will put you into the combat code. The code can manage things like number of steps per turn, from there. Having the versatility of entering into combat without needing to write an emote - and without necessarily needing to make an attack - would be nice for that reason and because then you can do flee checks.

However, it still doesn't solve the problem of people twinking like I did and auto-approaching before attacking. Which of course I only did because I didn't have an alternative and I didn't want the person to auto-run -.-

2. Evocation threads should be removed and replaced with emotes. Aren't we already doing this? Spells that require three part emotes. Maybe even targeting certain recipe items, or some shit, within them.

Ex: emote dances the hoola hoola while chanting, "Rye rye, gastobe," and strangling a warted bean seed at /ariel.

3. Temijul knockout times extended? Anyone? Anyone? Maybe temijul can be an action that puts you into combat (technique), in of itself, and it only wears off after a few turns.

4. I don't think drag can be used in combat, right now - but it was always my go-to check for a grapple attempt. Unfortunately the whole thing about not moving -still- sapping your MV is a bit ridiculous. Maybe change person-on-person dragging to a combat tech, and let the victim do a struggle check each turn that saps MV. That way you get a good amount of time to play with the victim, instead of having to race before both your MV counters are down.

5. That just leaves guards... and really, I think that's a whole 'nother can. Currently, if I temijul you and you had a guard in the room, your guard couldn't fight me and restrain me. That pretty much sucks.

-------

Basically, maybe we should have more things put you into combat (there are a lot of things that would do well as combat techniques) while simultaneously making the combat code a little more versatile.

[Dice]

100% percent agreement with the idea that you can initiate 'combat' with just a single command, so that any kind of attempt to escape and move is then driven by combat turns. This could fix a huge number of problems with 'tense time'.

Also 100% agreement with replacing invocation threads with emotes (though we would then need some way to determine what 'interrupts' an invocation). This would fix a lot of issues about casting in RP.

Evocation... well. That's a whole 'nother bag. It can take up to seven commands to balance a spell, and if that translates into seven emotesl, that makes it impossible. But at the same time, the current state of things is a bit imbalanced too in terms of evoking in a tense scene. To be fair, I've seen this happen a lot less than INVOCATION in combat...

[Leech]

I was speaking under the assumption that invocation and evocation weren't different things O.o Are they?

[Applesauce]

I was speaking under the assumption that invocation and evocation weren't different things O.o Are they?

Evocation is forging the sword, invocation is swinging the sword. It's more work to do the former, but it's necessary in order for you to actually use the thing. Invoke is the casting part which is usually quick.

Also, I don't think the raw herb temijul does anything anymore, and the concoctions you can create from it are not the same instaknockout as the old effect.

Edit: I guess evocation is closer to "honing the sword", since you're not actually creating the spell from scratch, but preparing it for use. But I think the gist is about the same, preparation vs use.

[Leech]

I have no idea about evocation - I've only ever seen people do the finger-waggling dancing thread - so that's where most of my concerns are. Sorry for the confusion!