[Sarai and Samiel]

In the second round, I brought in Karna to the Gunjin for the first time. In doing so, I broke an unwritten rule- one that I found I quite simply *had* to break if I was going to be at all competitive in the battle. That rule was this:

Do not make a character who is overpowered.

Karna is, quite simply, *****ing broken*. Massive chi reserves, intense martial-arts training, weapons-mastery, and a mastery of an obscure and hideously powerful form of magic? Yeah, that, right there, that’s broken. I excuse it sometimes with her physical humanity, but really, with that kind of power behind you, you can bypass the body limits.

And I still lost to Erdawn- why? Well, not to say that I think I did better than him (I still don’t think I write nearly as good as him or Wyborn at their best) but apparently, it boils down to two things. One, I had Karna calling out the names of her attacks as a mantra. Silvie didn’t like that. Fine, well, some things like that happen. Two, it was still felt that I was spending the whole time playing catch-up to Erdawn. And I was, because even with all that stupidly-broken-overpowered ****, *Karna still wasn’t good enough*. Her mantras gave her away too much, her vulnerability to damage and injury was too great, and there were several points there where Erdawn godmoded- because godmoding is rather a given around here- but I’ll get to that later.

Now, this wouldn’t have been even vaguely an issue, I wouldn’t have needed to play catch-up, but for the Gunjin rule that any two characters battling one another are equal when they are in that battle. Keep that in mind, it may be important later, to misuse some George Carlin.

One other point is that Karna was called more or less the same as my other characters. Of course, the fact is, she is also most of those other characters, because she’s pretty much nearly the only character I *have* who can compete in a place where nearly every fight amounts to a game of one-upmanship on power. I don’t have anyone else with theoretically unlimited power, but all fights are supposed to be equal- and my opponent pretty much invariably exceeds the power of the character I’m using (notable exception being my fight with Repster), so, well, hey, I’m ****ed again. Fine, I deal with it, no big hairy.... right?

Flash forwards to Wyborn’s fight with Nameless. And honestly, I shouldn’t have to explain about this one, it’s on page 1 or 2 of the Gunjin, you can go look it up. It’s called ‘Doing This Right’ or something to that effect. There are some things that that argument really brought my attention around to that have been bothering me off and on for some time, which I will get to in a bit.

Then we have my fight with Metal Man in the 11th NLBFT (third unfinished in a row, we have some kind of bad streak going on until the judges finally pass judgement) that fight with Erdawn in the same round and everything that went on with those two sets of arguments. Metal Man didn’t want to fight like that, and neither did I, but because that’s what this place is usually like, we both went ahead and while I can’t say it wasn’t quite a nice bit of writing and fun to do, it wasn’t what it should have been because we both agree on certain things that we both feel should be a bit different from the local standard in fighting. And there was the whole bit with Lucille and the various possible interperetations of her abilities/powers/method of combat.

Altogether, it’s becoming clear that something really is significantly wrong, and it’s not just a matter of everyone reminiscing about the ‘good old days’. Though, what it is that’s wrong needs a little more analysis to actually reach.

So, I went and reviewed the rules. And here’s what I thought.

Originally Posted by Wyborn

Rules and Guidelines of the Battlefield

These were drawn up by Wyborn and will be reviewed by Joker, who are the who are the two mods of the battlefield at the time of this posting.

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General Guidelines

All right, first off, I'm going to establish what these rules are for. All the important parts are in bold, so if you want to skim through you can. If you see something that catches your eye, though, feel free to read through the entire point.

These rules just act a guideline, and are basically statements of rules of thumb in most cases. In cases where everyone participating is in agreement, these can of course be deviated from. However, if you're ever confused about how to handle something, look here. If you can't find it here and don't know what the protocol is, either contact your opponent or one of the mods (Wyborn before Joker because Joker is a busy man).

Okay. Now, this forum mainly supports two types of topics. These classifications are very broad and encompass a lot of things.

Doing okay so far, but this isn’t actually the rules, just an explanation.

Originally Posted by Wyborn

Types of topics:

1. Battles - this kind of topic is by far the most common, and includes (but is not limited to) the following: direct challenges, open challenges, team battles, free-for-alls, and tournaments. The object of a battle is to defeat your opponent in combat (duh), by way of either beating them into submission, killing them, or, in rare cases, by verdict of a panel of judges. These topics are, of course, a lot more action-packed.

Okay, so let me emphasize the point here. The object of a battle is to defeat your opponent in combat. This is stated in the Gunjin rules. This makes sense. So, as nice as it is to say that you’re really writing combat to have an enjoyable writing exercise, that is against the guideline/rule of the Gunjin to do. Honestly, I no longer think it makes sense to think of the combat as simply a cooperative writing experience- it’s a cooperative competitive writing experience, and we really should be admitting that a lot more. Just because winning is also the goal doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with not winning. There’s another point on this that I want to get back to later, but we’ll get to that, as I just said, later.

Originally Posted by Wyborn

2. RP Topics - short for "role-playing", these topics have a different focus from battles in that they aren't oriented around killing the other participants...usually. RP topics are also called "story topics", but they can apply to a lot of different things: writer-controlled story topics, inns/lounges/hotels, and...actually, that's all I can think of. RP topics are usually focused around telling a story or interactions between characters, or both.

Those are the two types of topics. Pretty simple, right? Sure. Sometimes RP Topics can be really battle-heavy (this is often the case, in fact), but in general the difference between Battle topics and Story topics are exactly that.

Again.... no big worries here. This is just fine.

Originally Posted by Wyborn

These are some general rules that apply to both kinds of topics:

1. You can use any kind of character you want. I mean that, too - most people make up their own characters, but you can use a character from an anime, a cartoon, a videogame, a book...whatever you want. We're equal opportunity people here. The only stipulation is this: You can't use other people's original characters. Ever. Ever. I know, that should go without saying, but I have to say it.

We don’t seem to have been having any problems with this. Admittedly, I am one of the first to groan when someone brings in a character who is for all intents and purposes some copyrighted character only a different color and with some powers changed and the author’s personality, because that to me speaks of a lack of imagination, but hey, to each their own. Some people *really really like* pre-extant characters, and while I don’t much like the use of them, I don’t see where I have a place to say someone can’t do that because it’s unimaginative. Because chances are either they’re okay with it being unimaginative, or they aren’t actually using that character from laziness.

Originally Posted by Wyborn

2. Respect the other writers. I know that sounds very broad, and it is, but I have some particular points to make here. Respect is pretty simple in and of itself, and despite the nature of the place you should be courteous to other writers when you're not in-character. The only really important thing here is If you write someone else's character as doing something (and it's a perfectly acceptable practice), make sure that it's not something that doesn't make sense for that character. To make an example here, if you are fighting someone who's character is a giant, hideous ogre, you would not have them shy away when you pull a pocket knife on them. If they're fearless, don' make them into cowards. If they're smart, don't make them seem like idiots. In fact, Never make your opponent look like an incompetent moron.

This.... actually gets to be a major problem. Largely because of the two different perspectives on the way of battling around here. The way I, and some others see it, when you have a post where one character simply doesn’t do anything and you as the person who came up with that character (i.e., their author) know they would have done something (a chronic problem in dealing with posts like Inferno’s- which aren’t so much bad in that regard as based way too heavily on chat-style battling to work well in a BBS battle), and they don’t, you’re already starting to edge into ‘bunnying’. The very strong penchant around here for one character to simply pound another until you switch posters and then things go the other way entirely until you switch again smacks very heavily of ‘bunnying’ to me, which is part of why I often post like I do, with a number of minor exchanges and then one major attack whose results I largely leave up to my opponent. This can also be a major problem because it’s very easy, if your opponent is not completely understanding of your writing method or simply doesn’t like that way of writing, to wind up getting your ass handed to you when it shouldn’t have been simply because you don’t want to take the risk of saying that, for instance, you broke your opponent’s bones when their bones are gelationous/harder than you thought/nonextant/indestructible/etcetera. Again... more on this later.

Originally Posted by Wyborn

3. Don't act uuber-powerful compared to everyone around you. I cannot stress this enough. In a battle this is very important, but it's even moreso for story topics because it can really upset the balance that the topic author is trying to set. I'll get into this in more detail in the topic-specific rules.

Re: the last sentence of that: So will I.

Originally Posted by Wyborn

4. If your character can transform, he should carry over damage into his other forms. This means that if your leg is cut off and you turn into a werewolf, either that leg should still be missing or you should have some loss of energy that represents it.

This only makes sense. No worries there, I don’t think anyone’s been skimping on this one.