Ye Olde Role-Play Combat Guide

[Kyng]

Combat in role-playing games can make it very fun, but in turn can also be a strong indicator of who can adjust to this new setting well, and who cannot respectively. During my time on YCM in this section, I’ve encouraged the notion of Role-Playing with Combat, as I find it diversifies how a RP works as well as opens floodgates of opportunities for the players involved in it.

However, I have also noted that there are players who are either unsure of how to RP in a combat environment, or are unsure if the action they have put-forth is, in fact, God-Modding and Power-Playing or not. As such, I have written this article in hopes to provide clarity in this particular area of RPing, and in doing so help those who simply are confused.

Creating your Combatant, or, How to Make a Champion:
The first rule of creating a character with combat abilities is, as similarly mentioned in the character creation guide, perfection is the bane of a good character. Don't create a warrior with a sword that can cleave dimensions into halves whilst shield the wielder from all incoming damage. That does not make good story writing, whatsoever. Usually it will be inappropriate to the setting and will get your character outright rejected.

The best thing about creating a combatant is seeking the diversity of fighting styles available - but remember to keep them in ties with what would be reasonable for the role-play. A pre-industrial fantasy setting will likely not have much of a shining on gun-based weaponry, for example. However even with this in mind, your options are more than likely more varied than the colours of the rainbow.

However, I will mention this brief here as it is further discussed below, but a character without weakness is a bad character. Yes, it makes sense that you want to sell your character to the host as best as you can, with as many good features shining like a white-toothed smile. But more often than not, a host will want a more relatable character, a character with flaws. A character with weakness is a strong character.

With this discussed, we now need to address how combat is actually handled in character.
 
Combat in Role-playing Games, or, How to Write like a Champion:
Combat in RPs are another means to create interaction with players. It can be used to create, or settle conflicts between the players and the setting, or between the players themselves. It can also be used to open opportunities in the plot, as well as serve as explosive closing acts to particular sagas in a Role-play’s story.

Combat can be neatly branched into two subsections. Firstly, Player versus Environment (PvE) combat, which is a commonly used practise whereby NPC characters are placed before the Players acting as their opposition in this situation. Secondly, Player versus Environment (PvP) combat, which specifically focusses on having players themselves combat their characters against each other. Unsurprisingly, this is also where many issues can spout from.

While both can coincide, and clash, these two categories are the principle way of dividing Role-play combat. With this in mind, we’ll now look into those particular categories in further detail, in particular why players have issues here:
 
1 – Player versus Environment:
As mentioned prior, Player versus Environment focusses having Characters combat NPCs who serve as their counterfoil in a particular instance. However and rightfully so, members understand the context behind a particular enemy and, if significant enough, will be hesitant to even react against said enemy’s intent. As NPCs are often controlled by the host at the time, players do not want to risk ruining story they may put in place with these NPCs; this article seeks to defeat this by offering three classifications to clarify this.
 
A: Low-Priority NPCs – An NPC is of low priority if the plot surrounding them is somewhat unimportant. Usually they are placed into this instance of combat specifically for players to show off their character’s combat prowess. A low-priority NPC is as valued to the RP as a pebble on the floor. Therefore, when dealing with these Low-Priority NPCs, there is little to no need to worry about rule-breaking, since their demise is likely to be desired by the plot. Do not God-Mod, because that makes terrible role-play. Since these NPCs are less characters and more props, it would not be considered Power-Playing to control them: they'd end up dead one way or another.
 
Examples of such NPCs might include lesser minions, mooks, grunts, beasts, etc.
 
B: Medium-Priority NPCs – An NPC is of medium priority if the plot surrounding them is significant enough. Their presence has been made important enough to not be ignored, and their threat is plot-driving at this point. Odds are though that they're not going to show up again in the story. Players could easily confuse this with High-Priority NPCs, but a good indicator is how the host would convey them. They are their own characters, so manipulating their action would be Power-Playing.
 
Examples of such might include a bigger, larger mook, a mini-boss, etc.
 
C: High-Priority NPCs – An NPC is of high priority if the plot surrounding them is clearly important. Their context should not be ignored, and their threat is very much plot-driving at this point. However, one must consider if the Plot wants these characters to be a challenge, or perhaps will reappear later in the RP. With this in mind, players feel stumped, not knowing how to react. A remedy for this, which I’ve dubbed the Hypothetical Instance for the sake of this article, must be used here. Not only will it show you have a great deal of respect for the plot and this character who the plot favours, but it will also open interactivity between players to further develop upon a character’s attack.

2 - Player versus Player (PvP)
This term is very well known and straightforward: this refers to combat between players, more specifically their characters. This also happens to be where most, if not all the issues stem from regarding combat because of one simple detail: no-one wants their character to lose. Of course, it is note-worthy that a character that never loses is a God-Modded Character, and thus rule-breaking in essence, and so to remedy this are a number of notions you might consider putting into practise:
 
A: Accept Defeat – Role-plays are good if a player can take a break from reality, and immerse themselves into their character and play their role, but when it comes to PvP, players forget to recognize that it is their character fighting and not them; that it is their character in the situation at hand and not them, and that it is their character who may taste defeat and not them. People simply do not like the taste of defeat in any shape or form. Sometimes it is the more mature role-players who, beforehand, give the win to another player instead of create an uncomfortable situation inside IC. Bear in mind the words of Paul Brown: "You can learn a line from a win and a book from a defeat."
 
B: A Strong Application has Weakness – While a player is trying to figuratively sell their character to a GM it is rare to see applications that boast anything less than positives about their characters. While this might be seen as a good thing on face value, a stronger GM will appreciate a player purposefully shooting their app in the foot, and this is especially true in a combat-heavy RP. Why is this, perhaps? To be able to build up your own character, and then take him down a notch shows a greater ability in evaluation than simply designing the best character your mind can conjure. Not only this, but weaknesses serve as gifts to GMs, allowing them to potentially exploit them, thus developing the plot. Better apps are humbled by weakness.
 
Remedies: Hypothesis, or, What could happen
"Rather than post what your character does, you post what your character could do."

Using a hypothetical post means that your post contains words, such as “could, should, may, potentially, etc.” in a way that allows your post to be countered by another player, erasing the sins of God-Modding and Power-Playing from occurring. You give your combat partner a chance to reply, while at the same time painting a canvas for them as to how your character has acted.

In your post, you might also not simply going to state what your character does, but you also state the advantages and disadvantages that face your character for doing so. By doing this, you are creating a powerful atmosphere of humility in your character's combat, balancing your character in regard to each other combatant.

Strengths:
+ Gives the second party an aided canvas to write with.
+ Enables third party combatants to join and disrupt what has occurred seamlessly.
+ Does not rely on external consultation, hastening the rate of posts.

Weaknesses:
- Combat can drag on excessively.
- The terminology used can become tedious and/or awkward to use.
- Not as much, or any OoC discussion is encouraged.

Remedies: External Pre-planning, or, Scripted Fighting
"OoC Discussion for precisely guided combat."

Quite simply the case of using the OoC what it is for - out of character discussion. You discuss with your combat partner what possibilities you have and wish to take in the battle. In this discussion you could choose who would be the winner with your partner, alongside other various things - who'd execute what move, at what time, and who would respond with which counter, etc.

Furthermore this will, naturally, create OoC activity which is never a bad thing. By allowing you to explain your post in greater depth outside of the IC you will be participating in the discussion of the Role-play on the whole, and thus increase your activity across both the IC and OoC Boards.

Strengths:
+ Increases activity outside of the IC thread.
+ Allows victors to be pre-decided, making such less awkward to wrestle for within the story.
+ Combat is not dragged on as an end is pre-determined.

Weaknesses:
- Combat can drag on excessively.
- Relies on a second party to co-operate which may not be an option.
- A likely reduced post count contributing to the IC thread

Remedies: Single-Post Combat, or, One Hit KO
"One post for one fight."

Taking the latter, and bringing it to full effect, the parties involved would write out combat together in one single large post. By doing this naturally a post count would be vastly reduced, however the combat itself wouldn't disrupt the flow of the story which works in this methods' favour.
 
A very good way to do this, if all parties involved are online, is to use online document editors like Google Docs, or, if you are not comfortable with sharing your Gmail with other YCMembers, I have listed below some no-login-required options for temporary documents which you can then copy and save or post.

• Firepad: http://www.firepad.io/ (Just click the +Private Pad button in top right corner, copy URL to share)
• CollabEdit: http://collabedit.com/ (This one doesn't allow font formatting and stuff and doesn't look as good)

Using the above, the parties involved can mutually work and write a combat story in one, simple, easy post.

Strengths:
+ Wraps combat into one, single post.
+ Allows victors to be pre-decided, making such less awkward to wrestle for within the story.
+ Encourages working together with fellow role-players.

Weaknesses:
- Post count is significantly hindered.
- If excessively large, may disrupt the rate of the role-play.
- Heavily relies on secondary party member.

A Conclusion:
I hope the following article has served you to better understand how to deal with Combat in RPs. Remember the remedies here, because not only do they make you come across as a better and more respectful Role-player as a whole, but they will also help you increase your word count and make your posts larger and, on face value, more impressive on the whole.