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CRP: Give-and-Take vs. Skill


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People with a god complex who can't lose because "I'm the good guy" are actually the bad guy change my mind.

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Okay, let me disambiguate something here. What you're describing is basically "Play to lose", and "Play to win". Play to win is a dumb system because it leads to powergaming, metagaming, and is generally just a terrible system used in some HL2RP servers because of overpowered characters existing. In LoTC, everyone is theoretically on a much more even playing field despite your character's backstory due to rules restrictions, so play to lose is the form of roleplay that makes sense.

 

Yes, your character "wants to win", but you as the arbitrator of roleplay and their actions should ultimately play to lose for the enjoyment of both parties. Basically, the give and take system -- let each party have their fun and then what happens as a result of that, someone will actually lose. It's a lot more fair and fun to both parties.

 

It's not fun to get 1 shot by some random ability or sword or something. It's not fun to get powergamed by some elite swordsman. It's fun to have a two way roleplay experience with another player where you're both not trying to one up the other persons action, but instead just reacting and acting in a simple but fun way.

 

 

 

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I made the conscious decision that my Druid would be more proficient with her bow, than a sword, and would most likely lose in a swordfight against a trained/experienced foe. Since then she's seen a lot more combat, at least in ET events, but usually uses a spear and shield in those instances, with an arming sword as a backup- so suffice to say, her swordplay would still not be fantastic.

 

By comparison my Dwarf is a Legionnaire and has used spears, swords, hammers, maces, a crossbow and so on. She's a much more robust character, but not necessarily more experienced than my Druid for example. Her fighting-style would be much more confident and bullish, she knows her armour can protect her, she'll take a sword swipe across her belly, because there's a breastplate, chain and gambeson between the blade and her body.

I agree with Matt insofar that I take my character's knowledge of combat and then 'give and take' from there. My Druid is more nimble, but lacks brute strength, while my Dwarf is built like a brick shithouse, but has much less reach and is less mobile, thus I can gauge where each is going to be at a disadvantage and where a hit is likely or not relative to the opponent's perceived skill.

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For me a player becomes good at CRP when they master the give and take rules. Pushing their character/persona to the absolute limit to land their own final blow. For example, someone willingly gets stabbed in the arm, leg, or chest but in return uses the action of the opponent to send in their own attack that is practically unblockable due to the attack their opponent just gave them. 'You gave me a final blow, but in the same moment I took you out with mine'

When someone takes a hit from someone, its not to provide a 1:1 ratio in combat. It's to practically force the opponent into a losing position. There's no running dodging or evading when all your energy was put into the attack, and during that attack your opponent realized if they take the hit and rely on their groups healer. They can truly provide the killing blow at the cost of removing themselves from combat.

In simpler terms. Instead of evading the attack, they used their emote to become the attacker. Because in the moment, they can survive the original attack. Because in crp there is no evade and attack, there is only evade or attack. Which is what confuses many people when it comes to crp. Fights last endlessly, if double emoting is involved

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idk man i've watched all the battle scenes in vikings and game of thrones, it's common sense that my 12 year old kid can fight like ragnar and the hound combined.

 

Tho in seriousness I feel like a system where you apply both the methods (though moreso the skill one) would be more efficient, honestly when you find a person that can be fair and let their character get hit when it's fair without having to roll is very respectable, always been telling that to the people i've given CRP lessons to. However I reckon the problem with making skill CRP reliable is that you'd probably want a viable, server-wide system of recording your characters' skill, kind of like a character sheet. Tho that may have it's problems as it can still get abused by powergamers, I feel like setting a bit of a better definition to CRP everyone can follow will make the process smoother and actually make sense, instead of letting everything up in the air.

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9 hours ago, Priceflash said:

Okay, let me disambiguate something here. What you're describing is basically "Play to lose", and "Play to win". Play to win is a dumb system because it leads to powergaming, metagaming, and is generally just a terrible system used in some HL2RP servers because of overpowered characters existing. In LoTC, everyone is theoretically on a much more even playing field despite your character's backstory due to rules restrictions, so play to lose is the form of roleplay that makes sense.

 

Yes, your character "wants to win", but you as the arbitrator of roleplay and their actions should ultimately play to lose for the enjoyment of both parties. Basically, the give and take system -- let each party have their fun and then what happens as a result of that, someone will actually lose. It's a lot more fair and fun to both parties.

 

It's not fun to get 1 shot by some random ability or sword or something. It's not fun to get powergamed by some elite swordsman. It's fun to have a two way roleplay experience with another player where you're both not trying to one up the other persons action, but instead just reacting and acting in a simple but fun way.

 

 

 

the problem with play to lose is whoever plays it better... well, loses

 

you get punished for being the fairer and more considerate RPer in CRP

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9 hours ago, argonian said:

the problem with play to lose is whoever plays it better... well, loses

 

you get punished for being the fairer and more considerate RPer in CRP

True 🤣 cuz on lotc every time i CRP with anyone who I don't already know they just start powergaming me 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

 

Idk what the solution to that is because I am not gonna powergame them back but like man i just want to have fun not get dogged on by some elf with a god complex.

 

But other than people dead ass trying to powergame you i honestly have only had good experiences playing to lose because the people that do CRP correctly usually just play it by the situation and whatever happens happens

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Remember, if you're a Striga and say no pvp, no rolls and crp is uncontested, it legally gives you the right to be invincible. 

 

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On 12/13/2020 at 11:51 AM, TrendE said:

n this in itself is why pvp & mechanic balancing around characters is important / a great detriment if (when) not handled properly by staff - the great equaliser & makes things fair for all parties involved since you can treat your enemy like an enemy as opposed to having to pretend to be friendly just so u don't get mugged off for 2 hrs in crp

 

yeah the only difference between pvp and crp is one takes a shorter amount of time

 

how many words you type doesn't equate to any quantifiable dmg, it just gets ignored and then the person does mental gymnastics to avoid it

 

people don't emote fatigue, people don't emote skill gaps, role-play combat is far too nuanced to be used as a default system in a video-game

 

it's not even a matter of nobody being willing to lose -- its a matter of people not having any kind of understanding of combat, martial arts, and the physical limits of the human body

 

when you bring in all these other variables, such as subrace traits, or unsubstantiated vague ancient lore and honors system bs, it just gets muddled and it takes too much time to resolve whatsoever because in the time that some people finish an emote fight, i've already completed a few homework assignments or completed a segment of my shift at work

tl;dr

 

roleplay combat is good between friends and people who know each other, and people tend to try and have good sportsmanship in my experience 

 

but its way too time consuming and vague to make for a good default mechanic, and accounting for "skill" is silly in of itself

 

being skilled is having the capability to write convincingly, spin a good narrative, and display your understanding of combat, movements, and fatigue

 

if you cannot do that you honestly deserve to lose.

 

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lol this is why i just do events

 

I get to enforce CRP my way and also amp up consequences under the 'guise' of authority because I'll take alot more blows because I'll be playing a bunch of NPCS.
Actual CRP as a normal player is horrific and why I basically stay solely to doing assassinations and make most of my actual characters combat incapable.

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5 hours ago, ScreamingDingo said:

lol this is why i just do events

 

I get to enforce CRP my way and also amp up consequences under the 'guise' of authority because I'll take alot more blows because I'll be playing a bunch of NPCS.
Actual CRP as a normal player is horrific and why I basically stay solely to doing assassinations and make most of my actual characters combat incapable.

 

CRP fights for me have usually gone one of three ways:

 

 

One way I'm fighting someone I know OOC, this person and I can communicate and we have fun sorta going toe to toe with each other

 

The other is I've tried to take an offensive on someone (e.g. attack) these usually have the person being overly *evades* as, well I can understand it to, death is ****

 

And the third is when I've been attacked by people who have no intent to CRP but moreover wanted to use it as a medium to transfer to PVP (e.g. a case in one city where the person clearly had no idea what he was doing in combat but was stating what should happen and just said 'do you wanna do pvp instead??')

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On 12/14/2020 at 3:10 AM, Luciloo said:

I agree with Matt insofar that I take my character's knowledge of combat and then 'give and take' from there.

 

At least to me, and a few others on the thread, this is one of the core issues on the thread. That doesn't really matter when the baseline for how "skilled" characters are for most people is how many skallagrim videos they've watched.

Now for a lot of people this isn't the case, a lot of us, me included, generally try to work in weaknesses, give the characters their own "style" so to say, a way they fight and act under the stresses of combat that reflect them. But far too many, especially among the younger roleplayers, play the unbeatable hero who has the combined knowledge of schola gladioatoria and skallagrim, as well as the power of god and anime, who knows no fear and jokes in the face of death. I've been very guilty of this myself when I first started out on the server, I bet that's how a few people remember me if they do remember me at all. I was a shitty teenager once too.

 

But the fact that this server is mostly populated by people in that age range means there should be some better worked out combat system that puts on a few limits, maybe adds some block measurements with weapons to make people put more thought into it.

 

It's impossible to measure skill in a lot of cases since we can just emote our characters being great and whipping heavy equipment around like they're nerf guns, so perhaps it's worth looking into a system of positioning that makes where you stand more important because of weapon range, maybe an official ruleset on what different kinds of weapons and armour can do, because twelve different people will give you thirteen answers on how to beat plate.

 

Maybe weave it into the new PVP system, we have the armour IRP we carry mechanically, which will limit people a bit more, and I think that in the case of CRP limits are more neccesary. It provides a challenge, makes us think an extra second before we act.

 

Now, i will add this as a kind of afterthought - there are moments you can measure skill. usually this is when two older players CRP with one another. Because they think a tad more since they're more used to it, more "veteran" in minecraft text combat so to speak, so they don't just shout out german poses but describe in a different way, have some kind of plan, act according to their character and generally use simpler motions in CRP, at least in my experience.

But the system we have right now doesn't support that kind of RP. It should encourage it, and I think that can be done by putting more weight on positioning and equipment in the rules - how much I can't tell. Maybe I'd be able hammer something out if given a couple days and some people to talk about it with. It would need to be fair which is kinda hard.

 

And as a final couple notes - I larp, we havee a general guideline. It isn't about winning, it's about who can look the coolest while losing. That's a mindset more people could benefit from, and could easily become more prevalent considering the threat of a PK isn't common at all.
And finally, far too much weight is put on realism, it's a fantasy world with magic and druids and anime teenagers, **** realism. We should focus on fairness in combat instead, give everyone prepared for combat the same chances. 

In real life a single knight could take out twenty peasant levy dudes with shitty spears, in RP that just isn't fun.

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I believe that 'skill' is something that is important in CRP. Whenever I'm fighting, I try to compare the skills of my character to the skills of the opponent they are fighting. For instance-- if I have an older human character who has been a lifelong soldier, of course they retain the skills that they've obtained throughout their years fighting, and would be better than most other fighters-- but, if they are old, they're obviously going to have the problems that come from it. Of course, even if my old character has more skill in combat, they might not have as much power, and they will not be as agile as a younger fighter-- even one who may be less experienced.

 

Personally I hate rolling I like decisions and outcome in combat to be based on the common sense of both sides fighting, and rolling can just get rid of that skill aspect entirely... so you're telling me that a fifteen year old child who never touched a sword in his life can win a battle against a renowned knight just because he got some high numbers? Unlikely.

 

But, with the way the current system is, many random people choose to either powergame or use rolling in their CRP-- I usually just make myself lose CRP against random people since they usually end up 'blocking' or 'dodging' every attack I make, and it stretches a combat encounter on for far too long. I usually go in hopefully, and come out glad that it's over. And, due to this fact, I've only actually done CRP with people I'm friends with OOCly since I know they will be playing their character as fairly as possible for their skills.

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Make combat skill an application, that requires careful vetting.

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