The unwritten rules of the Spar

[SmilingHypocrit]

Thank you guys for your input, and I tend to agree with the imbalance of going for matters like attacking twice BUT: Like I stated, to me it is not about ending up victoriously in a spar. It's about the fun behind the exchange of blows, about doing more than just writing your attack emotes and giving small reactions to the opponent's. In that regard, I do not see how I myself would mind seeing my character lose the first-turn move as it might only open up the opportunity for me to steal it back with a proper emote/idea.

The situation posed here by Dice already shows me a flaw in the entire fight, that is that the person who suddenly attacked twice WILL NOT let the other try and reclaim turn-balance or the upper hand. That to me sounds not like a friendly spar but two cocks (pardon my French) in a cockfight, trying to proof to one another who has the best combatant.

What I'd also like to point out is that one is not bound to always spar using your real weapons, and I myself had sparred a few people both using the practice weapons and we ended up with 8-round + spars. In those spars, I could have downed them way earlier seeing my hits were doing a lot of damage to them, but seeing my char is a bit of a beast hp-wise I instead let them continue to emote at me, attack me etc. so we both got a good fight out of it - skillwise and funwise.

I am not hoping to discover the proper ways of doing things like this, but I was mostly hoping to see how you all would want a spar to go along - and I already see a bit of a divide, so that means there's a good variety of 'foes' to be found, of which I am glad.

(Pardon my belated reply, I was called away for the weekend)

[Dice]

I don't disagree with you at all that it's not about winning! I usually do whatever's necessary to make a spar fun/lengthy, rather than whatever will cause me to win. But I think maybe by emphasizing fairness so heavily I've sort of mis-stated my point - so let's just call the issue 'subjectivity' instead.

Let's say you're in a spar where someone hits their opponent on the weapon hand. Person A may think if they're hit on the weapon hand, they should drop their weapon, period. Person B may think they should roll dex to hold on. Person C may think they should roll con, or weapon skill. Person D may say "Well, hey, you didn't take any penalty to aim at my hand - it was equally as easy as aiming at my torso, so why do you get this disproportionate benefit?" Person E may say "I'm too tough to feel the pain!"

Who is right? Who is wrong?

If the attacker thinks the defender's take is unrealistic, who gets to decide which way to resolve the situation? Even if you don't care about winning, you might care about not having to RP something you think is kind of silly, especially if you didn't agree beforehand to bring these kind of non-coded maneuvers into the situation.

If we had a set of rules for emote combat - and I wish we did! - I think it'd be far better to incorporate these kinds of things. But honestly, I just don't want the arguments that come out of people trying to insist that their way is right, when "realism" in combat is so utterly subjective. No two people agree on how a combat system should be written to emphasize realism - so people don't tend to agree on what the outcome of any given non-coded maneuver should be, either.

You could definitely argue that people who are interested in putting on a good show can work out rules between them, or just agree to "go with the flow", and I've actually had some great experiences there. With the right players, it can be amazing. But, more often than not, it hasn't worked out for me - people take advantage of this leeway to perform far above their character's actual skill. And while I don't mind losing, it can get really vexing when somebody refuses to play along and "take the fall" when it makes sense.

So I guess what I'm saying is... with the right person, in the right circumstance, adding non-coded maneuvers into RP can be fun. But in my experience 1) people do care about winning enough to make it hard; 2) even with people who don't care about winning, it's likely to devolve into argument, just because people don't see combat the same way.

[Geras]

I frankly don't see anything wrong with doing two quick attacks if the circumstances warrant it (ie you're actually trying to do a quick series of attacks).

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

I have long been a proponent of a more expanded fighting code. As it stands, the ONLY thing that I think is completely uncalled for is going twice in a row in combat. Ultimately, I think the lack of a more robust ruleset and the inability to be more unique at fighting in a code-supported way greatly limits my desire to be part of traditional fighting/sparring scenes.

[Dice]

Agreed; the fundamentals are sound now, but the lack of tactical depth is boring.

[Geras]

I think people fundamentally don't understand the consequences of double attacking here. It doesn't give someone an advantage anymore than alternating turns does. That's just a matter of our system resolving attacks consecutively rather than concurrently.

Consider this sequence of attacks, with the + numbers indicating who is ahead by how many attacks.

Turn 1:

A attacks - A+1
B attacks - tied

Turn 2:

A attacks - A+1
B attacks - tied

And so on. A will have a 1 attack advantage half the time, and be tied the other half of the time.

Consider this sequence instead:

Turn 1:

A attacks - A+1
B attacks - tied

Turn 2:

B attacks - B+1
A attacks - tied

Now, from this point they could continue alternating as normal, which would mean B has a 1 attack advantage half the time

Or, A could respond in kind, leading to:

Turn 3:

A attacks - A+1
B attacks - tied

Turn 4:

B attacks - B+1
A attacks - tied

Turn 5:

A attacks - A+1
B attacks - Tied.


So note that one person doing a double attack is no less fair than alternating, as either way means 1 player has a 1 attack advantage half the time.

If people alternated double attacks though ("snake order") then the advantage would alternate as well.

Re: Dice's point - I think there's something to be said though about a system where the character's IC's skill rather than the player's OOC skill is the prime determinant of success. I would like to see some more customization options for us in terms of combat strategies though.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

Re: Dice's point - I think there's something to be said though about a system where the character's IC's skill rather than the player's OOC skill is the prime determinant of success. I would like to see some more customization options for us in terms of combat strategies though.

I don't think anyone wants a system that allows ICly unskilled characters realistic chances in single combat against experienced characters, but as it stands the combat code is just so much 'stand there and smash' for it to create, in my opinion, truly compelling stories. There's very little narrative within the flow of combat, very little chance for recovery or play that allows people to play to advantages. Stats and skills are all rolled up together in ways that don't feel like they reward distribution except to the degree that OOC knowledge of how the stats works and what offensive skills are good against what defensive skills is all that matters. An "intelligent" fighter has no advantage over a brute -- in fact, the opposite is true.

There's a lot of simplistic ways to expand on the combat code in ways that keeps the general goals of combat in line. This, however, being a roleplaying game it's not as high on Staff's priorities (if it's on their list at all!) as I wish it was. That's fine, but I think the only answer to all of this, with code not really supporting anything, is "have fun". If you're involved in a fight that isn't fun, leave it.

[Geras]

Yah, I definitely agree we could use more nuance and choice in the combat system. Just saying that the value of simplicity should be retained as much as possible.