Well, it's a good thing you guys are so handy. I've been too busy the last couple days to really get around to answering your questions. Most of the answers you've provided yourselves (or to on another) are right on the money, but I'll clarify here anyways.

Killing characters is forbidden both inside and outside the actual tournament. Corvus brought up the rules rather conveniently for me, but some of you noticed that in the RP threads, nobody is judging anything. That being said, it is still forbidden to kill an OC unless its owner is leaving the tournament and happy to get their head lopped off or whatever, which I highly doubt. So, if fighting outside the official duels, do not kill your opponents, or NPC's. Boring, I know, but sensible when you consider the back-story for the tournament in the first place.

A uestion was raised about the arena being "dug through". Yes, it will be possible to dig in it, but unless your character is somehow wicked fast at moving tons of dirt, I don't think you'll go very far trying it.

And as for your question, Crazy, I would consider that acceptable. You had the chance to kill someone's OC and didn't, leaving you the victor in that fight. Things would go ever so slightly differently in the duel itself, since all actions have to be open ended, but that would be a fitting way to finish once the judges had decided you would land the killing blow.

Guard's taking part in the tournament won't be allowed to take a look at the data files/applications etc of the contests will they? Even if they would normally have high-enough clearance.

Stops them from gaining an unfair advantage.

578197
I think the roster details aren't too hard to obtain in-character, as otherwise you run into a bizzare 4th wall issue of knowing how the fighters fight as an author, but not knowing as a character. This of course means you either: 1) ignore 4th wall breaking info, and oddly specialized counterattacks, or 2) bog down the duels with perpetual in-character factchecking, such as "Would so and so think to use a fire spell given the circumstances? It would be effective, and they could do it, but knowing what they know, would they?"

578755
A roster is one thing. That simply tells the name. Applications, giving you your opponent's personality and strengths and weakness? EXPLOITABLE AS HELL.

578775

Yes, but that's part of the idea. I actually overhauled my character several times, and on the last one, razorbeam specifically said that I couldn't do another, because it wasn't fair to have everyone else's stats readily available, while mine kept cycling randomly. So obviously, we're supposed to use the rosters IC to some degree.

Besides it wouldn't be hard to RP a case of bribery/theft/snooping and such with all the powers the OCs have at their disposal. I could think of 3 ways right now my OC could get access to the rosters.

5787987
Actually, this is about meta gaming here. The profiles informs the players about their opponent's statistics. However, their CHARACTER. Won't. And knowing this information right off the bat is too exploitable. Whenever or not your a guard with clearance, or a thief with super-skills. Your not going to know your opponent's abilities, personality, strength and weaknesses etc unless they have watched them fight, seen their powers for themselves or have overheard them talking about it. That way, character's won't be able to simply exploit people's weakness without having a valid reason to know said weakness.

578842

I know, I'm saying that metagaming is to be expected, because it'd be too damn hard to patrol. Plus, the way the powers are set up, you've basically got some characters becoming reverse broken, such as the illusionists. IE they're weak if you know what they do, and guaranteed to win if you don't.

Plus, you've got the problem of the intelligence stat. The reason everyone tries to take an S rank in that is because... well it's sorta like the dimplomacy skill in the hands of a munchkin: A good player (or at least a shameless one) can tie any decision to egregious amounts of intelligence, such as "I notice a minor imperfection and immediately deduce the nature of my enemy's illusions, because I'm smarter than light yagami"

Also, your tag didn't notify me for some reason, so sorry about the slow reply.

578937
Or you know, the judges/Razor can curb the meta gaming, as well as abuse of the stats.

579094

I had a long speech prepared about how the INT stat basically justifies metagaming, but I think it's blatantly obvious. It's hard to say that an INT S character can't think of a tactic, especially when that same character gave up points in strength or agility to have that intelligence. It would basically destroy 80% of the "mind game" characters on the spot.

Honestly, I wish we didn't have INT, and I have a solid case why:
First, giving up points for it justifies it as a useful power, when it's only application is to grease metagaming. Besides, in real life, intelligence doesn't track reliably with physical ability anyway, so giving up your muscles for brains doesn't really make sense. Usually, in games with an INT stat, it works as a STR for magic. But here, WIL is used for magic, leaving INT purely for justifying your choices.

I think it would be a much stronger system if it was just WIL,STR,AGI,VIT, with intelligence being left a function of your character design and backstory. Then players couldn't draw on extra-disciplinary knowledge just because "I have an S in INT," and players with an S in INT wouldn't be left going "Dammit, they made my entire character design based around a dump stat"

Besides, some back-info is needed. I can list at least one character off the top of my head that would be unbeatable without foreknowledge, with possibly two others. There's a reason duels in real life, and even gladatorial combat, had rules on the allowed weapons. A free for all like this allows too many 'instant kill' techniques.

And, as a final point, a no-metagame policy actively discourages roleplay. Why should you use your powers and interact with people when it just means losing your only advantage? These games are about interacting with other writers, and giving an in-world punishment for that interaction seems backwards. Look at the ongoing RP with Candy: she's got maybe 5-6 people IC who know her powers, and could probably defeat her easily with that knowledge.

580114
Actually, intelligence and strategic ability are two different things. Sure, intelligence is linked to strategic ability. However, a scientist has less strategic ability then a guard with the same level of intelligence.

Also - speaking from personal experience here - characters knowing the abilities of overs, even through they shouldn't, has a huge negative impact on the RP as a whole. Keeping it in character only, not only reduces meta-gaming, but makes things more fun. Some characters simply won't think about these things, while others will keep this in mind. Some might even use this, pretending to show off their full ability, but keeping what they can really do hidden so that they can surprise their enemies.

Removing this element of hiding abilities, surprising the elements and deceiving the opponent in what you can and cannot do... it destorys the combat. After all, as Sun Tzu said 'All warfare is based on deception.' and what is combat but a smaller form of war?

580161

Yes, that WOULD be nice, but what I'm saying is that the cat is already out of the bag. The metagame has begun, and now all that's left is people justifying it, and that's way too thin a line to police reliably. You're going to wind up screwing everyone who isn't clever enough to hide their metagaming in their writing, or doesn't go around engaging in RP simply to goad out people's powers before the match. It encourages munchkin-ing.

Besides, you also wind up unbalancing character designs. An illusionist with int S basically becomes unbeatable, while someone like a soldier gains comparatively little from int B to int S. And then there's the whole issue of the players intelligence, to be blunt. Can you reliably play light yagami, when you are not as smart as he is? I mean, I guess that falls under "Caveat emptor" but that seems a little cold blooded, especially when everyone designed their characters before the use of INT was clearly defined.

580200
To you, the meta gaming has already begun, to me... no. It hasn't started and will never start.

Illusionist's with a rank S in intelligence will have a distinct advantage, but intelligence only goes so far. Everything is balanced in its own way, its just a matter of finding out how.

580218

Everything is balanced? Tell that to the Tiger Tank. Best armored vehicle in world war 2, beaten by the sherman. Why? Because the shermans outnumbered them 20 to one. Quantity > quality.

There are winning tactics, and there are losing tactics. Metagaming is a winning tactic. Remember I mentioned those characters with 'instant kill' techniques? Tell me, do you think those were designed before people read the unicorn-bloated roster... or after?

580228
Metagaming in an RPing tournament is a CHEATING tactic. Not a winning one.

580242

LOL are you kidding me? Look at the roster! Look at it, read it, and tell me people didn't come in here metagaming.

It's not cheating when everyone does it. Then it's just the rules of the game.

580271, 580242
To the both of you:

Metagaming is not a concern. The stats themselves are only applicable to the judges. You might be able to look at them and decide how your OC stacks up against others, but how much do you know? Information about what the stats do has been highly limited. I know you could guess what each stat is for, but I can promise you would would only be half right in the best case.

My point is that knowing anything about another OC is rather pointless. It is not up to their stats to determine whether you win or lose. These stats only help to determine the results of actions you take. They make things easier on the judges. For your part, you have no idea the decisions the judges will make based on your stats. The best you can do is guess how your character will match up against another with the stats.

Basically, if you try to 'metagame' this tournament, you will not be able to. Not effectively anyways. Basic principles apply for any RPG, but I have intentionally set this up in a way where knowing your opponent is fair, not crazy. There is no effective way to prevent players from using '4th-wall' knowledge during the fight. Therefor, the most effective method is to make such knowledge global, and mostly ineffective. Outside of estimates, what can anyone really know? You have yet to judge a fight, and by the time you do assist in judging one, your character is already slotted. Your improved knowledge of how stats work at that point will not help you, you can;t possibly edit yours to give you an advantage.

Hopefully this helps everyone to see that there's no point metagaming. The biggest favor you can do is memorize the character and its abilities, not its stats. This is fair, as anyone can, and should, do this. It will not save you, merely inform you. The uniformed will not fare well.

580495
I see... well that solves the problems with the stats, But still, knowing your opponent's abilities is a huge advantage in battle... and if my character doesn't reveal his abilities during a battle. I don't want my opponent's to go 'Ha! I knew you could do that!' When he reveals an ability. It ruins not just the immersion of the RP, but destroys an extremely legit and smart tactic.

580114 Technically, in D&D, Willpower is usually a counterpart to Wisdom, which determines healing spells and defensive magics, whilst Intelligence is offensive and debilitarion magics, whilst Charisma handles the hodgepodge of other metagaming magics[boons and banes and such].

But,y eah, just a random comment from a random playa.

And, personally, Kngihtmares 'speshul powarz' are so hgihly limited, he's more built abut creative use of said limitations than relying on special abilities or magical powers. So if you're afraid that someone will pull a 'I knew you could do that!' on you...really, you've got to realize there's more than one way to cast a fire spell.....

....I'm so gonna get in trouble, using knowledge gleaned from the Chessverse in this....

EDIT: and for those wodnering. No, Knightmare will NOT be using a bag of holding in the tournament matches. like...ever. never ever. he's not dumb enough to let something like that get damaged...where would he keep all of his swag!?

I've noticed this repeatedly, and now it's kinda bothering me. What's with people starting random chit-chat in official information threads? Even with Razor saying to keep chit-chat to a minimum in the announcement thread, people STILL dumped random posts in it. And now he's trying to get up a dueling help guide, and people are dropping random posts in to screw up formatting.

Seriously people. I know I'm kinda being a prick, but cut it out. Razor's going through a ton of work trying to get this thing running, and the more you clutter the informational threads, the more times he's going to have to answer a question that he's already addressed. If it's clearly not somewhere you should be posting your meaningless chatter, then don't post there. It's not that hard.

/rant

I'm sorry if I've offended anyone with that, and I know I'm probably over-reacting, but... I stand by the point, even if I did phrase it harshly.

584766
Well I'm not going to disagree, though I certainly am not that angry about it, lol. I admit it grinds my gears a little, but it's really more a limit of FimFic than a common courtesy thing. Why (as the thread creator) I have no means of locking the thread to everyone but myself is beyond me. If I had that basic ability, this would be a non-issue.

584820
Sorry... I shouldn't be this bothered by it, but for some reason it has me really ticked off all of a sudden. And yeah, FimFiction wasn't exactly designed with this sort of thing in mind, so I expect the forums lack most of the features a fully-fledged forum would have. More features will probably be implemented... eventually? I don't actually know what the development schedule looks like around here.

584846
>implying Development schedule is a thing.

584850
... Touché, good sir.

Question with regards to the dueling information that's gone up:
My character (as I currently envisioned her, anyway) is mostly working to drive her opponent into such an emotional/traumatized wreck that they can no longer continue the fight. Physical blows may come into play, but her intent is more to render them unable to continue. Is that going to be a thing, under this rule set? I noticed that you said all attacks would effect vitality, which makes me suspect that I should just shift her combat style to employ physical attacks more often.

584880
Yes and no. Something of this nature would be affected by willpower and intelligence, same as spells or illusions. I highly doubt you'll be talking an opponent into submission, but you may be able to give yourself a distinct advantage doing this. At some point though, yes, you're going to have to do damage to win, or run your opponent out of energy before you do.

584897
Feeeeeh... okay. I can understand that-- I mean, while trying to talk people into submission would have amusing, it's not terribly realistic, so I probably should have anticipated this. It's not too big of a shift anyway, just a different priority set in the fights. Thanks for the quick answer!

Will we know ~how much health/stamina our characters have (left) before we make an action?

584897 I, myself, have a question. Exactly when is the roster going to get a final update showing all participating contestants?

584939
Yes sir.

585174
Tonight, before I start writing the mock-duel.

585194 Ah, good, that means I've got time for a 'weapons test' befor ethe matches can begin[I'd rather show how it works so no one cries BS when I pull a stunt in battle]

585198
Good call.

The dueling rules have been completed, to the best of my knowledge. The thread is now locked.

If you still have a post in that thread, go delete it. Don't make me PM you, because I will send one every five minutes until those posts get cleaned up.

After reading the physics portion of the dueling rules, I realized that the name I gave one of my character's abilities could cause confusion on the end of the judges when determining what is physically possible. Would you mind if I changed the name of said ability to something that would cause less confusion?

Not entirely unrelated but mostly funny

Sadly, it won't recognize page 2 so we only get half of the roster translated.

587001
That.. Is amazing.

587033 thank the dudes at the chessverse for showing me Gizoogle. It's a parody of Goodle but DAYUM it's funny as heck!

587060
Isn't there also a version with pirate speech? Oh damn, now I'm gonna have to go find it!

586844
Not at all.

587448 Thanks

587448
Um, so.

I have this article that says that armor may be heavy, but it wasn't restrictive and anyone who was properly trained could move normally, if possibly not jump quite as high.

Link to: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm

599254
Well, that might be true, but in all RPG's I've seen, it tends to work with heavy armour restricting movement.

599282
That doesn't mean we shouldn't try and make for the most accuracy possible, right?

599498
Balance > Historical Accuracy. It doesn't matter how much of a purist you are, if you're making a game and want the game to be good, Balance Comes First.

Beyond that, having read the section of the article I believe you're referring to ("4. Armor is extremely heavy and renders the wearer immobile"), it never says that the knight's movement wasn't impaired, just that they weren't rendered stupidly encumbered by it and that they maintained their full range of motion. Which basically just says, "Yes, humans were never stupid enough to wear a deathtrap-- our armor was actually combat useful."

I don't think anyone here ever said armor would make you unable to do particular actions, just that it would slow you down and decrease your agility.

So... yeah. Not buying that argument. :/

599566
I think you're making a lot of sense. My concern was that a lot of people seem to assume that plate armor makes it difficult to do basic combat moves, like diving behind cover or turning to face your enemy. I don't expect cartwheels and backflips, obviously, but I did want to bring up the issue so that there weren't judgments like "You're wearing plate armor, so the attempt to stab you in the back succeeds" when you have a character with B or A level agility.

On balance though, I agree. Players with lots of heavy armor WOULD be slowed down, if only because the energy needed to change momentum would be higher.

599603
Your agility would be the main thing getting impaired-- agility is, fundamentally, a combination of your reflexes and your ability to accelerate some or all of your body quickly (preferably while maintaining your balance, but I consider that sort of an optional plus). Since armor increases mass and thus requires more force to achieve an equivalent acceleration, agility is going to suffer greatly. So yeah, if someone in cloth armor with S agility wants to backstab someone in plate armor with A agility, I'd give them a pretty good chance of hitting, moderated somewhat by the backstabee's strength score (because more force can compensate for the armor weight).

In a nutshell, armor doesn't preclude anything, it just makes it harder for you to do things quickly and gracefully-- so while one person might be able to throw themselves out of the path of an attack and roll back to their feet, another person with equivalent agility but heavy armor might have to spend their next turn getting back on their feet.

Like a lot of this, the actual verdicts will depend on the characters and the situation, when it comes down to it. If you think your judge makes a bad call, get outside opinions and have his verdict overruled. I'm sure it won't take long for some form of precedent for that to pop up; call me a cynic, but with a group this size, I'm expecting SOMEONE to get pissy about their judge before the day is out.

599637

So yeah, if someone in cloth armor with S agility wants to backstab someone in plate armor with A agility, I'd give them a pretty good chance of hitting, moderated somewhat by the backstabee's strength score (because more force can compensate for the armor weight).

Exactly, but my beef is with times when the ruling is that the guy in cloth armor with B agility gets to backstab the guy in plate with A agility, simply because plate armor is "restrictive".

while one person might be able to throw themselves out of the path of an attack and roll back to their feet, another person with equivalent agility but heavy armor might have to spend their next turn getting back on their feet.

And at this point, I would point at my article and say that you'd be able to get to your feet, but lose the ability to counter attack. I figure we can agree to disagree on that though, because it's mostly a matter of context and personal preference.

Still, as I say: You're making a lot of sense, and I applaud you for that.

599661

Exactly, but my beef is with times when the ruling is that the guy in cloth armor with B agility gets to backstab the guy in plate with A agility, simply because plate armor is "restrictive".

Eeeeeh, that would really depend on how heavy the armor is and where they're both positioned. I'd probably still give B-agility decent odds of success if he was somehow coming at A-agility from behind, but if he's trying to circle around the A-agility... well, it doesn't take all that much time to turn around, you know? That sort of situation would come down to the situation.

And at this point, I would point at my article and say that you'd be able to get to your feet, but lose the ability to counter attack. I figure we can agree to disagree on that though, because it's mostly a matter of context and personal preference.

That's exactly what I meant to say; their reaction is to get out of the way, and their action for the turn is to get back on their feet. I realize I worded that poorly, so, that one was my fault. :P

You're making a lot of sense, and I applaud you for that.

Making sense? On the INTERNET? What is this madness.
In all seriousness, I do try to make an effort to be rational whenever I can. If you stalked me, you'd probably see me lose my temper from time to time, but if someone presents a rational argument I don't agree with, it's almost always easier to present a logical counter-argument than to channel my inner two-year-old. It's just less effort all around, and doesn't leave me feeling like a damn fool afterwards.

599661 ((Get on Skype :U))

587448
Not so Random question: I know I'm not the only person fielding a character that uses physical ranged attacks and am wondering which stat(s) effect these kinds of attacks? Is their damage and/or accuracy effected by strength, like other physical attacks, intelligence, like magical ranged attacks, or a combination of both?