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Combat Roleplay - The Game of Loss


JustMeMorgan
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LoTC has gotten immeasurably worse since people started taking combat RP seriously, started trying to optimize their characters for combat roleplay, and started lording their knowledge of fencing manuals over other players. I almost miss Anthos combat roleplay with ridiculously heavy armor and composite bows that could shoot straight through plate and ****, because at least that was less conducive to the dumb murderhobo situations I seem to find myself in constantly. If you want to do good CRP, don’t watch a bunch of youtube sword guy videos about how to fence well. You can know a whole lot about medieval warfare and still be a complete dunce and an assh*le in combat roleplay – trust me, I have firsthand experience being that guy. If you want to make your CRP engaging, focus on your character’s emotional and physical reaction to combat. What he/she thinks while they’re engaged in a brutal mano a mano for their life, how their body moves and responds to pain or discomfort, how their manner in combat reflects their inner feelings and motivations. Is this a desperate stand for their life or a dumb, drunken struggle for pride? I find that more compelling as a roleplayer than having to desperately ask google what a “vom tag” guard is to respond to an emote.

 

I have a counterpoint about plate armor in combat roleplay:

 

77f99be873a92045bcbe077766bf70ea.jpg

(If we’re following the techlock, your armor reflects 1440 or earlier.)

 

For one, I severely doubt the historical accuracy of a setting where everyone is allowed to run around in full gothic plate armor. **** was ludicrously expensive, even in the late renaissance – reminder, the Maximilian armor you’re probably basing your character’s set on was made for an emperor. If you’re going to roleplay all of the fine details of your armor and how I can’t penetrate it in ‘x’ spot because this obscure piece of metal from a 1500s suit of plate is in the way, are you at least going to roleplay paying the person who hammered out all that metal for you? Are you going to roleplay your character training extensively to fight competently in a hot, heavy iron exoskeleton? That’s a no, isn’t it?

 

I do not want to roleplay combat on LoTC if 16th-18th century armor is permitted but guns are absolutely forbidden. The lack of attention to this sort of **** in light of a “techlock” absolutely melts my brain. Random hobos having metal armor can at least be understood – Atlas has way more iron than medieval europe, anyway. But if you’re trying to RP 17th century armored fencing at me, all I’m thinking about is how much I want to blast you with a flintlock musket. A few people (it might actually just be Mullraugh) roleplay the realistic mail-plate combination that most modest men at arms would use, which trades some of the 360º protection of plate armor for a realistic price point and the ability to fight effectively on two feet. 

 

Full plate armor was never practical in day-to-day combat. It actually is heavy, it’s at least a little unwieldy and restrictive, and the closed helmet severely limits your field of view. These disadvantages don’t mean much if you’re a knight on horseback charging into a line of undisciplined peasants, but they’re game-ending once you’re pulled off your horse, or in the case of 99% of LoTC battles, you just decide to stroll in on foot. Your armor is almost entirely ineffective against a full-force blow from the spike of a halberd, a war hammer, a mace, axe, or any weapon designed to concentrate its kinetic energy on a single point on your body. For one, people severely underestimate how disorienting and physically painful it is to be hit with a blunt object, even through a decently padded suit of armor. They vastly overestimate their own character’s stamina and endurance, especially while using heavy armor and weapons. Watch a few fights on Worldstar and see how many of those end with someone being punched once and going down. Unless you train constantly and pick your battles, your character is the poetic equivalent of some dickhead getting in a fistfight in an Arby’s.

 

People almost never fight realistically – engaging conservatively, keeping arm’s length, menacing your enemy with feints and generally trying to avoid being struck if at all possible. We have regeneration potions and cleric magic, but realistically in the middle ages if you walked away from your slain enemy with even a moderately deep cut on your person, there was a nonzero chance you were going to die. I get that nobody wants to RP wounds but if your entire business as a character is to fight people then don’t have your injuries just disappear in the next scene like it’s Samurai Jack. Your RP becomes a lot more engaging and realistic when your character is finite, when them getting in a fight is a tense moment with actual consequences. People hyperfocus on the special type of sword their character uses and how cool their one-liner sounded and completely lose sight of the bigger picture. 

Edited by xxx
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10 hours ago, DISCOLIQUID said:

For example, MineCraft fantasy world plate armor takes less than an hour to put on,

Real armour doesn’t take an hour to put on. I’ve used that, I do historical fighting as a hobby. Armour is involved. It takes maybe minutes to suit up, sometimes less, sometimes more if I’ve just woken, but never has it been close to an hour.

And no I don’t need a crane to be able to sit down somewhere or stand up again.

Also on another point, I’d have to agree with some other posts and say that CRP should be omre fun and should be more focused on the characters.
Like, I sure as **** don’t have practical things for CRP on my chars, I picked weapons and armour that fit their personality and fighting styles that work the same way for them that I can still RP out relatively alright.

But like, daggers and a kinda shitty crossbow doesn’t work against plate, which is what ninety percent of people are always wearing as everyday clothing. Even some mages, but oh well.

I get why, its more protective, its easy to emote *Has plate, the sword bounces off* and its a lot more safe to go to places then, and for some characters it makes sense to wear armour when around town. Guards, as an example, but I do doubt the hordes of people all wearing plate armour as everyday clothing. While also complaining there’s no smiths around.

 

And also Tato has a good point of how incredibly dismissed murder is on lotc. Yes, I contribute to this, because its a much easier way to solve some problems (still sorry for the duel-ending Tato) and in a lot of cases, its either you get murdered or you murder them so hey.

But there should still be other consequences for losing combat, I’ve taken a habit of marking people with a scar on an old character I had instead of killing, or even going through what made them lose and giving a mini-lesson instead of just gutting them, it was fun. More relatively creative solutions like that should be seen a lot more.

 

And yes before it gets pointed out, I’m personally terrible with many of the things this post discussed, being willing to lose, playing armour correctly, all that, but I try. Occasionally.

Edited by Chryosaurus Rex
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I think people misread why I put the YouTubers there, it was essentially there to express how swords really move and attack, too many players emote “swings at their arm”/leg/hand/etc without saying HOW they do it which is a crucially important thing as you can stop blades going to swing at your hand very easily with your sword just by moving it a little, doing so could allow for a counter.

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If anything this forum thread only helps to further validate the need for CRP to relooked at. Whether the decisions are liked or not. The fact of the matter is that the name “Combat Roleplay” emplies that roleplaying the current character is the emphasis.

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23 hours ago, xxx said:

LoTC has gotten immeasurably worse since people started taking combat RP seriously, started trying to optimize their characters for combat roleplay, and started lording their knowledge of fencing manuals over other players. I almost miss Anthos combat roleplay with ridiculously heavy armor and composite bows that could shoot straight through plate and ****, because at least that was less conducive to the dumb murderhobo situations I seem to find myself in constantly. If you want to do good CRP, don’t watch a bunch of youtube sword guy videos about how to fence well. You can know a whole lot about medieval warfare and still be a complete dunce and an assh*le in combat roleplay – trust me, I have firsthand experience being that guy. If you want to make your CRP engaging, focus on your character’s emotional and physical reaction to combat. What he/she thinks while they’re engaged in a brutal mano a mano for their life, how their body moves and responds to pain or discomfort, how their manner in combat reflects their inner feelings and motivations. Is this a desperate stand for their life or a dumb, drunken struggle for pride? I find that more compelling as a roleplayer than having to desperately ask google what a “vom tag” guard is to respond to an emote.

 

Slight disagreement, you should study enough to be able to understand what an unskilled fighter looks or acts like and how you should respond to hits or similar.

 

 

23 hours ago, xxx said:

(If we’re following the techlock, your armor reflects 1440 or earlier.)

 

Techlock isn’t a date or anything of the sort. Techlock is you can’t have guns and holy **** stop trying to mimic real life history we have ******* clockwork robots and demons sword fighting each-other.

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5 hours ago, Dunstan said:

Slight disagreement, you should study enough to be able to understand what an unskilled fighter looks or acts like and how you should respond to hits or similar.

 

Sure, whatever. If you want to roleplay a fencer, learn some fencing. This doesn’t make your role-play interesting or enjoyable for other players, but it might be helpful if your character likes swords. 

 

5 hours ago, Dunstan said:

Techlock isn’t a date or anything of the sort. Techlock is you can’t have guns and holy **** stop trying to mimic real life history we have ******* clockwork robots and demons sword fighting each-other.

 

**** off, dude. You guys literally wrote clockwork robots and demons into the lore. Nobody else gets to roleplay those! I literally have no say in that. Same thing when you guys came up with the techlock, refused to give it any meaning outside of “uhh medieval fantasy” and left everyone on their own to interpret what it actually meant. You don’t get to be mad at me when I have no idea what the **** it means!

 

I’m basing my interpretation off of the historiographical definition of “medieval” which described things from the 5th to the 15th century. I drew the line at 1440  because oh, guess what, people started using firearms in warfare around then! And plate armor 16th century onward was hardened and made more protective... in part to protect heavy cavalry from enemy fire and pike-and-shot infantry tactics! Whoah, but maybe I’m being unreasonable! After all, those nonexistent blacksmiths you guys get your armor from must be really good, right?

 

This is the exact screaming non-response I expected from the LT, really. “so what if we have a bunch of nonsense rules that tell you to mimic real-world history in mundane RP? I want robots!” is basically the level of consistency we get from you guys now, isn’t it? “Techlock isn’t a date?” What the **** does it even mean then? Where/when is the tech “locked” to? 

 

Make everyone’s lives easier and just get rid of the rule. There wouldn’t even be this stupid contradiction between robots existing and guns being banned if you just scrapped the techlock all together and replaced it with a rule banning guns and heat engines. But you can’t muster that, because you’re not sure if you want to implement a ******* nuclear reactor that runs on mana or not. Sort out your ****.

 

 

Edited by xxx
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19 hours ago, xxx said:

Nobody else gets to roleplay those!

Have you tried?

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7 hours ago, Dunstan said:

Have you tried?

 

this is a coy response and I’d not like to derail the thread any further but the answer is “no, but I couldn’t if I wanted to”

 

either way my point holds, being engaging is more important than being correct about how to use a sword, having your character be fleshed-out and believable is better than them being powerful or having magic, don’t combat rp for zero emotional stakes. and don’t play a walking suit of period-inaccurate armor if you can help it

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On 3/2/2019 at 2:04 AM, xxx said:

coy

I don’t think you know what that word means.

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14 hours ago, Dunstan said:

I don’t think you know what that word means.

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asking “have you tried?” while omitting the detail that to “try” I would have to befriend a lore owner and do favors for him until he lets me play a member of his CA race fits the definition, I think

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10 hours ago, xxx said:

asking “have you tried?” while omitting the detail that to “try” I would have to befriend a lore owner and do favors for him until he lets me play a member of his CA race fits the definition, I think

That’s some real mental gymnastics right there. It was a simple yes or no question mate.

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On 3/4/2019 at 5:51 AM, Dunstan said:

That’s some real mental gymnastics right there. It was a simple yes or no question mate.

 

Oh, here’s the answer to your question: No, I did not go out of my way to roleplay something I had no desire to roleplay just to prove something tangential to the actual point I was making on a forum thread. Is it really too much to ask from the LT that, even as someone who doesn’t roleplay swordfighting anime demons, the lore that I am now made to follow under pain of being banned is internally consistent? 

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+1 For someone who is still trying to learn the basics, instead of watching the occasinal bandit crp. Its good to know the basics. 

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