Rules of Warfare

[Stormblessed Dolphin]

in such instances as the KotC rp, there have been theories.. and several people have. 

[Nohadon]

1 minute ago, Leyrann said:

As yes I wanted to mention that as well, oops. That's actually also why my RP character hasn't technically gone off-world yet. Wanted to discuss that kind of stuff first.

Maybe some Worldhoppers have found ways around it?

in my mistborn RPG, I allowed people to store their spren in nicrocilminds, as they are raw investiture

[Leyrann]

2 minutes ago, Nohadon said:

in my mistborn RPG, I allowed people to store their spren in nicrocilminds, as they are raw investiture

Guess that solves the problem. I think some South-Scadrian technology is also needed though, considering my character is not a feruchemist? (and neither is Mraize's)

Edited April 13, 2018 by Leyrann

[Leyrann]

One more thing (apologies for the double post), do we accept non-canonical KR Orders? If given the chance I'd prefer creating a character of this Order  (OB Spoiler board, might contain minor spoilers) I created.

[MacThorstenson]

@Nohadon I would stay away from useing the Mistborn RPG too much as its not canon, and a lot of people havent played it, so they wont know about what it does.

Most of the characters seem OK. I would like them to be more interesting/more flaws, though I'm not sure if that is something you can show on the character sheet. Try to look, when your writing them, about how they would interact with other players. Is there anyone who they would be seriously annoyed by? Mad at? Anyone they would love? What about hemalurgy? How they interact with those people? Their power levels matter less then the way the character interacts with the environment/other characters.

[Stormblessed Dolphin]

are these character's we're creating right now, just for testing purposes?

[Voidus]

What follow are just some of my thoughts on the nature of free-form roleplaying, character design and how to have fun with fights, I am by no means an absolute authority on the subject but the Reckoners RP went for several years in this format so I think broadly speaking I can outline what I found worked and what didn't during that time.

1. Trust the other players and communicate with them, it may take a while before you all share the same understanding of how your RP should operate, but trust that other players are also just trying to have a good time for the most part, if you feel like someones characters actions are unrealistic, talk about it. I'd suggest avoiding dropping some kind of official GM or mediator on all conflicts like this because as a player having one source of authority just say 'No, you're not allowed to do that' is somewhat stifling and doesn't give you a good play experience, hearing from multiple other players that your actions are breaking the immersion of the game or causing discomfort is still saddening sometimes but it at least promotes the sensation that the primary goal of the RP is the enjoyment of the group as a whole. This flows into combat as well, if character 1. is hiding in a building, rifle drawn and takes a shot at an unaware character 2, player 2 can't just say 'I dodge' because that makes no sense and most players would probably agree on that. However player 1 also should have talked to player 2 about killing off their character, seeing if they were ok with it and if they weren't discuss what options they have. Maybe character 1 tries to take the shot but they in turn get ambushed by another PC or NPC, maybe they take the shot but miss any vital spots, character 2 slinks off to fight another day. Maybe they deliberately don't kill character 2 and instead they try to capture them now. If you feel like another PC is doing something that is likely to cause your character to try to kill them, let that player know ahead of time and you can maybe retcon some of that decision so they're not in mortal peril.

2. OP characters are fine, but usually not very interesting. My personal experience that I'd like to showcase this with are two of my characters from one of the Reckoners RPs, Soulcaster had the power to pull the consciousness of anyone, human or Epic, into an Astral plane of his creation and control, pretty much instantly incapacitating any other character if he wanted to. Metronome had the power to accurately know what the time was. That's it. I found Metronome vastly more interesting to play as, because if I wanted Soulcaster to actually get in combat with anyone then that combat would last all of about half a second. That being said an OP character has it's own type of interactions that you can't get with a moderately or non-powered character, maybe your OP character is a fight junkie and is constantly annoyed by the fact that no one can actually fight them on equal terms. They'd go out of their way to avoid fights because they know they'll just end up getting disappointed. Which brings me to...

3. Non-combat encounters are usually more interesting than combat. Combat seems like it should be very interesting, and when you think about your character design your first thought is probably going to be about how you can make their combat interesting or better, but combat will probably be one of the less interesting encounters you have, combat will probably start becoming stale for any character of a limited powerset, you'll figure out the best way to use your powers, then do that every time with some small changes depending on who you're fighting or what your environment is like. But non-combat interactions can be almost infinitely varied and provide far more interesting ways to utilize both your powers and your characters personality, steelpushing a coin at the speed of light into someone skull sounds cool, but when you do it against the 100th opponent it starts getting a bit stale. Trying to subtly move around a person while talking to them in order to get into the exact right position to steelpush a small statue of a cat off the table without them noticing because your character has an incredibly strong fear of both cats and miniature figurines is both novel and potentially more challenging.

4. PCs dying should not be game-ending. If a player character dies either as part of an PvP or some other interaction, that player needs to be able to continue to play, either creating a new character or have some method to revive their existing character. This both prevents the game from feeling like a tournament where the goal is to kill all other characters to win, and also means that players are likelier to be fairer in their assessment of their own characters ability to survive something because worst case, they create a new character.

5. Your character is not their powers. Designing the powers for your character should be one of the least-important parts of their character. Those powers may have some large impacts on their personality such as a Hemalurgist who despises the death that had to happen for them to gain their powers, but that's still somewhat one-dimensional. Who are they without their powers? Design their personality first and then consider how those powers might alter the rest of their personality. The powers that your character has are not nearly so interesting as who they are without those powers, or how their personality influences their use of those powers.

*More stuff to come later, this post got bigger than I originally intended

[Stormblessed Dolphin]

I just had a thought, maybe write in, not necessarily in the rules, something about a distinction between RP within the Alleyverse, and the 'real world' (pfft, like that even exists). Just like a reminder that anything said within the bounds of Roleplay, should not be taken seriously, or as offensive?

Edited April 13, 2018 by Stormblessed Dolphin

[Voidus]

3 minutes ago, Stormblessed Dolphin said:

I just had a thought, maybe write in, not necessarily in the rules, something about a distinction between RP within the Alleyverse, and the 'real world' (pfft, like that even exists). Just like a reminder that anything said within the bounds of Roleplay, should not be taken seriously, or as offensive?

I would definitely agree with that too, there should be a clear distinction between a character and a player, you might get really annoyed at a character because they keep thwarting all of your awesome plans or they just killed your favourite character but you should not let that carry over into your feelings about that characters player, if anything it reflects well of the player that they were able to create a character that evokes such an emotional reaction.
The opposite can be a problem too, where a player lets their character just be a proxy of themselves, always attacking the characters of a player they don't like or agree with, using meta-game knowledge to their advantage, etc.

[Kidpen]

Alright my character:

Spoiler

Name: Kalmar Beowulf

Investiture: Dark oculator. Monocle for the following lenses: Disguiser's, Educator's, Bestower's, Firebringer's.

No spouse, children or siblings.

History: Kalmar has always loved to be powerful. He's also loved things to be in their proper place. This naturally led him to read many horrible fantasy novels, even some as unwieldy as Brandon Sanderson's novels, but the Liebrarians found him soon enough. They came to him and convinced him to join. It wasn't long before he found himself brought to the very top. The highbrary. However, he recently discovered a way to become a character in the books, and thus sort them more accurately, so that's what he did. Knowing the true power in knowledge, he brought few lenses, and only one combat. However, his one shortcoming is that he can't stand it when people don't do what they should. Everything needs to be in it's proper place doing exactly what it should be doing.

 

17 minutes ago, Stormblessed Dolphin said:

are these character's we're creating right now, just for testing purposes?

More or less. We can probably continue to use them after.

@Voidus Yes, I agree with all. Especially the fourth one. I do want to mention that we have put a lot of thought specifically into combat rules and systems, which might not fit into the free form style, but I think that more restrictions specifically in combat is reasonable.

Edited April 13, 2018 by Kidpen
Forgot the weakness.

[Voidus]

11 minutes ago, Kidpen said:

Alright my character:

  Hide contents

Name: Kalmar Beowulf

Investiture: Dark oculator. Monocle for the following lenses: Disguiser's, Educator's, Bestower's, Firebringer's.

No spouse, children or siblings.

History: Kalmar has always loved to be powerful. He's also loved things to be in their proper place. This naturally led him to read many horrible fantasy novels, even some as unwieldy as Brandon Sanderson's novels, but the Liebrarians found him soon enough. They came to him and convinced him to join. It wasn't long before he found himself brought to the very top. The highbrary. However, he recently discovered a way to become a character in the books, and thus sort them more accurately, so that's what he did. Knowing the true power in knowledge, he brought few lenses, and only one combat.

 

More or less. We can probably continue to use them after.

@Voidus Yes, I agree with all. Especially the fourth one. I do want to mention that we have put a lot of thought specifically into combat rules and systems, which might not fit into the free form style, but I think that more restrictions specifically in combat is reasonable.

Restrictions are always good but that doesn't have to mean a rigid system of rules, I'm not trying to say that either is intrinsically better but having free-form combat is perfectly possible with a very small ruleset. (In Reckoners the rules were basically, don't kill PCs without permission, don't do things that defy sense) Players will naturally arbitrate over what happens in combat unless you have a large number of very precise rules (Which is borderline impossible for something as broad as the entire cosmere powersets) so personally I prefer just letting it be narrative combat without having to keep track of numbers, it also helps allow for more natural reactions to things. Take 5e D&D combat, how realistic is it that an unarmoured human could take 20 goblin arrows and still be perfectly fine? Or that they're perfectly fine and able to fight at perfect capacity while they're at 1 hp after having just been hit by the breath attack of a colossal elder dragon, then a stray rock hits their head and they're unconscious/dead?
Narratively you can arbitrarily add things like status conditions where they make sense even if they're not explicit in the rules. Dragon just breathed fire all over you? Probably not going to be able to see perfectly well and snipe things from 600 feet away for a while because you've got really bad sunspots in your eyes/your eyes are burned from their sockets. Got an arrow lodged in your ankle? Probably not going to be running at full speed til you heal up.

Again all of this is personal opinion so feel free to ignore me or seriously disagree.

[Kidpen]

2 minutes ago, Voidus said:

Restrictions are always good but that doesn't have to mean a rigid system of rules, I'm not trying to say that either is intrinsically better but having free-form combat is perfectly possible with a very small ruleset. (In Reckoners the rules were basically, don't kill PCs without permission, don't do things that defy sense) Players will naturally arbitrate over what happens in combat unless you have a large number of very precise rules (Which is borderline impossible for something as broad as the entire cosmere powersets) so personally I prefer just letting it be narrative combat without having to keep track of numbers, it also helps allow for more natural reactions to things. Take 5e D&D combat, how realistic is it that an unarmoured human could take 20 goblin arrows and still be perfectly fine? Or that they're perfectly fine and able to fight at perfect capacity while they're at 1 hp after having just been hit by the breath attack of a colossal elder dragon, then a stray rock hits their head and they're unconscious/dead?
Narratively you can arbitrarily add things like status conditions where they make sense even if they're not explicit in the rules. Dragon just breathed fire all over you? Probably not going to be able to see perfectly well and snipe things from 600 feet away for a while because you've got really bad sunspots in your eyes/your eyes are burned from their sockets. Got an arrow lodged in your ankle? Probably not going to be running at full speed til you heal up.

I can agree to this. I never intended to mean a super rigid set of rules.

Edit: Wait a second... I swear that when I quoted it that last line was not there, but it does not say you edited it... Are you using your magical mod powers Voidus?

Edited April 13, 2018 by Kidpen

[Voidus]

8 minutes ago, Kidpen said:

I can agree to this. I never intended to mean a super rigid set of rules.

Edit: Wait a second... I swear that when I quoted it that last line was not there, but it does not say you edited it... Are you using your magical mod powers Voidus?

It's actually default for me, I have to manually click something when I want it to show I edited it, so I'm mostly using my laziness powers. Or not using them. I'm not sure how laziness powers work.

[The Forgetful Archivist]

My character:

Spoiler

Name: Akrasia

Investiture: Awakener of the 6th Hightning.

Appearance: Garbed in parshendi carapace armor as well as a hodgepodge of colored clothing

including what appears to be Mistcloak dyed a rainbow of different shades and colors.

Physical characteristics: Tan skin and hair dyed a variety of colors, one eye is reminiscent of a goat and the other is like a cat. There are several other animal characteristics as well. Such as some canine fangs, and patches of muskrat hair

Relatives: He has a brother who fell thru a perpendicularity and was never heard from again, other than that he has no relatives of importance.

Home planet: Nathlis

History: Akrasia gained most of his breaths by spiking animals, this had some unintended side effects, namely a primordial instinct that would take hold of him when he feels strong negative emotion (think dark side of the force) When this happens Akrasia loses all control and rampages (thus the name Akrasia) When this happens he is reduced to an animal incapable of thought (for the most part) and becomes uncoordinated and clumsy. While in this state of nature he also loses the capability to awaken. When in this state his skin ripples with color like some sort of cuttlefish, the more breath used in awakening the more in control of his animal side he is.

3

 

Edited April 13, 2018 by The Forgetful Archivist

[+ElephantEarwax]

My guy. 

Spoiler

A Dyslexic Dysian who lives in the Drominad system. Just kidding I am a returned with a thousand breaths on top of that. From Nalthis dun dun dun. I have godly good looks, I'm not sure exactly yet, but they change. I don't have any memory before my return one year ago, since then I lived in the court of gods buying breath, until I got bored and ran away.

 

[MacThorstenson]

Also, I had an Idea, what if, instead of monitoring specific conflicts, the Unbiased ones chose a thread to watch, and they divided up the RP among them? Also Should we post a few threads to get get some RP started?

 

We need an intro thread and a place to post characters.

IMO, The intro thread should be structured like so:

1. Maybe a bit of RP to start it off.

2. A section describing what this is.

3. A section describing what free form RP is, and a few important definitions, (If we decide to go for this. This section would describe how FFRP is about writing a story and less of beating your enemies into the ground, etc.)

4. A section giving an in depth description of the guild

5. A section with all the rules for combat

6. A section for character creation.

It should contain all those things, not necessarily in that order, or even separate sections, but I needs those things.

Edited April 13, 2018 by MacThorstenson

[Lord Meeker]

3 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

Also, I had an Idea, what if, instead of monitoring specific conflicts, the Unbiased ones chose a thread to watch, and they divided up the RP among them? Also Should we post a few threads to get get some RP started?

 

We need an intro thread and a place to post characters.

IMO, The intro thread should be structured like so:

1. Maybe a bit of RP to start it off.

2. A section describing what this is.

3. A section describing what free form RP is, and a few important definitions, (If we decide to go for this. This section would describe how FFRP is about writing a story and less of beating your enemies into the ground, etc.)

4. A section giving an in depth description of the guild

5. A section with all the rules for combat

6. A section for character creation.

It should contain all those things, not necessarily in that order, or even separate sections, but I needs those things.

This seems like a good idea.

[Grey Knight]

9 minutes ago, MacThorstenson said:

Also, I had an Idea, what if, instead of monitoring specific conflicts, the Unbiased ones chose a thread to watch, and they divided up the RP among them? Also Should we post a few threads to get get some RP started?

 

We need an intro thread and a place to post characters.

IMO, The intro thread should be structured like so:

1. Maybe a bit of RP to start it off.

2. A section describing what this is.

3. A section describing what free form RP is, and a few important definitions, (If we decide to go for this. This section would describe how FFRP is about writing a story and less of beating your enemies into the ground, etc.)

4. A section giving an in depth description of the guild

5. A section with all the rules for combat

6. A section for character creation.

It should contain all those things, not necessarily in that order, or even separate sections, but I needs those things.

I second this as well.

Also, I know that I want to play something from Warhamer 40k. Are non-Cosmere characters banned?

[Lord Meeker]

Welcome to the shard! Have an up vote.

[AonEne]

3 minutes ago, Grey Knight said:

I second this as well.

Also, I know that I want to play something from Warhamer 40k. Are non-Cosmere characters banned?

Welcome! 

And I would assume so, but I haven't read this whole thing (and what I have read is incomprehensible) so I could be wrong. 

[Stormblessed Dolphin]

Well, we have @Kidpen with a dark oculator character..

[Lord Meeker]

1 hour ago, Grey Knight said:

I second this as well.

Also, I know that I want to play something from Warhamer 40k. Are non-Cosmere characters banned?

We'd have to some how work it into a Brandin Sanderson magic system. But kidpens character isnt a cosmere character. They just have to wield a Brandon Sanderson magic. 

[Nohadon]

 

1 hour ago, Grey Knight said:

I second this as well.

Also, I know that I want to play something from Warhamer 40k. Are non-Cosmere characters banned?

they have to be somewhat brandon sanderson related. otherwise this would get too hectic! also lets say if they are non-cosmere but brandon sanderson, that you would have to explain what the powers do or at least provide a link to a coppermind article on it

[Lord Meeker]

@Nohadon He, @Grey Knight, coul possibly make a character from mistborn era 4 we know it exists and it where "Star Wars" tech comes into play. Which would be similar to WH40k

[Voidus]

6 hours ago, Mraize said:

We'd have to some how work it into a Brandin Sanderson magic system. But kidpens character isnt a cosmere character. They just have to wield a Brandon Sanderson magic. 

I should point out that due to Reckoners, pretty much every conceivable superpower is technically a part of a Brandon Sanderson magic system