Battlefield Rules and Guidelines

[Galefore]

As repster said, patience is taught by the gunjin. Geez, I waited for months between certain people's posts, and those people who have had the fortune to fight Joker have so much patience...

Anyway, this place taught ME, a haughty little twelve-year old at the time of my joining, to be a bit more patient.

[t3hDarkness]

How do we ask ask for reader critique, or is that improper?

[Galefore]

At the end of the battle, you can ask for a judge to help you decide on the winner, and depending on who you ask, you will be amply criticized. As for basic critique from the readers, as far as I know, it's just fine for a reader to point out his opinion as long as he does it constructively and not in a way that disrupts the general flow of the battle. Does that answer your question?

[Galefore]

(Reposted for reference and kicks. Also, to get it out of the Suspension of Disbelief topic.)

I dug up Joker's old rules from the archive, perhaps these should go in here too. If not, just delete the post. I personally found the second part useful.

THE RULES OF THE GUNJIN (BATTLEFIELD) FORUM OF VGF

Composed by Joker: Moderator of the Gunjin (Battlefield)

Compiled, sorted, edited, and displayed by Link the Survivor: Moderator of the Gunjin

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Lets start with the basics. The rules of the battlefield are normally limited to these basic guidelines:

1. The best way to understand how to battle is to do some reading first. Look into a few battles and shuffle through the first few pages to get a feel for how most battle text formats go.

2 Understand a few basic rules:

A) Cheapness- I'm going to explain this one first since it seems to be the most controversial. Anyone else is welcomed to add their "two cents." Since you created your character only you can determine his level of strength, speed, and dexterity. But with this in mind many of our younger warriors here tend to make their characters seem like almighty gods. No one wants to fight an unbeatable character. Therefore, your best bet is that when your writting attacks for your character try and keep it as reasonable as possible. Next, acknowledge the damage dealt to you by your opponent. Never just shrug it off like a flea bite unless you have just cause to do so. Never continuously heal your character more than a total of 3 times. Small things like stopping massive blood loss, sealing up overly sized wounds that threaten to expose vital organ parts, and your all around full body heal. If you're going to heal your character back to full power, you must realize that most other warriors will allow it to happen only once if that.

B) Transforming- A lot of warriors who post in these boards have characters that can transform into higher states of being. This is permitted in mostly all battles unless special rules stipulate otherwise. The thing to remember when having your character convert to his or her greater form is to always carry over any damage that your warrior sustained before their transformation.

C) Time/Patience – Another Rule is to be patient when waiting for a reply. This is a message board as you know, so battles may lag on for quite some time. But if the time is used wisely and the writer isn’t rushed to just throw some piece of half/cheap attack together, then your patientce is usually rewarded with a decent post of sorts. Note (this depends on the warrior whom you’re battling) The length of post doesn’t have to be long, but never be afraid to write long descriptive attacks and counters. The battles that attact the least attention are usually the ones that have one or three sentence attack like ie. "I take sword and swipe you, I swipe you hard, you fall down and start to hurt because my sword swipe was hard and it hurt you."

Or "I throw daggers but you dodge them and then I pull out my sword and slice at you but then you dodge that one too. Unnamed Warrior: That’s it , this is over NOW!! Then I do the Super Dooper Whooopie Special and kill you as I stare at you die from me killing you!" Complete with the nice little Out Of Character that they leave you at the end of their god awful post 'ooc: This is my characters most powerful it can destroy anything!' Instead you want to go for a more all around descriptive exciting post that will draw the readers attention and make the battle that much more fun and easier to visualize.

D) Next is the small rule of over role-playing, if you're going to control the actions or dialogue of your opponents' character be sure to make them not seem like bumbling idiots. Be fairly honest when dealing with other peoples characters, because one of the biggest mistakes to make is doing something like taking the character of Wyborn and in your post make him seem like a fluffy pink bunny loving sissy girl.

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Addition composed by Brett:

Here are a few things you might want to consider to get your character developed and a bit better known...

1. After a few battles, take a look at your fighting style, see how you like it, make little tweaks (Don't do like me, where I totally revamp my character appearance and all, I can't stick with one form of battle style, I find it boring) and use a character that's easier for you.

2. Make a list of attacks you have, while you may not have many special attacks, if any have overly complicated names you could end up spelling them hundreds of different ways, or if you have complex incantations your character speaks, it would be good to write those down, too. It's reference material.

3. Add attacks every so often to keep your fighting fresh, I don't think anyone here likes to see a fighter who attacks with the exact same attacks every battle. If you can, every one or two battles, create a new technique to blow your next opponent away with your creativity.

4. Make a list of weaknesses and resistances for your character. This way you hold yourself down so that you don't accidentally make your character immune to a lightning attack when if you'd been following your list you'd normally be unable to move from the attack and be twitching long enough for your opponent to attack again.

5. This is perhaps important, try different types of battlefields. You may find that a junkyard with abundant stray objects to use as weapons is better than a barren desert in which you can use mirages to your advantage.

6. And finally... after you fight a few times, do some sort of character developement so people can get to know your character when he/she is not fighting. This includes the storytopics in which I create and kill many characters and weaken and strengthen their bonds to one another. These can be made fun with a creative mind, or you can simply join a story topic and introduce a character and try to make it like your own sub-plot. These are some advanced tips that I find useful at times.

[Inferno Dragon]

old ruleset FTW! also, I thing both rulesets are perfect as they are, don't change a thing guys!

[Metal Man]

Personally, I still run on some bizarre ancient rules nobody would listen to if they were here--but they generally fit anyway. They just got expanded and one or two of them (both ones forbidding certain things) were whacked out of existence altogether, so the net effect is I generally do less things than most people.

Although, don't hand me indications your character can damage entire planets if you value your sanity.

[Joker]

Click here for my thoughts on the matter

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

I was never very good at this but I'd like to participate. I read all of Wyborn's rules and I want to know if I can use Light Yagami (Death Note) as a character. I'd have to do some improvising to make it work. Kinda make a RP/Battle hybrid. Could I get, I dunno, a thumbs up on this or something...?

[1-up Salesman]

The rules say that you can use anyone you want.

[Metal Man]

Originally Posted by I REALLY HATE POKEMON!

I was never very good at this but I'd like to participate. I read all of Wyborn's rules and I want to know if I can use Light Yagami (Death Note) as a character. I'd have to do some improvising to make it work. Kinda make a RP/Battle hybrid. Could I get, I dunno, a thumbs up on this or something...?

As 1-up said, there is no rule as to who you can or can't use.

...

That said, hands off Light Yagami. He's mine!

[Galefore]

I kind of wonder if you'd be able to utilize him correctly in anything but story format, or if you even have a comprehension of his type of mindset. No offense, but Light is a very well-dimensioned character in terms of development, motive, and intelligence.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Originally Posted by Hiroyuki Sakai

I kind of wonder if you'd be able to utilize him correctly in anything but story format, or if you even have a comprehension of his type of mindset. No offense, but Light is a very well-dimensioned character in terms of development, motive, and intelligence.

Well, true enough but I understand his character enough to draw reasonable conclusions to what he would do, based on what the manga/anime depicts. So anyway, no one seems too opposed to the idea so far...

[Galefore]

OH

I didn't see your username. I'm bad about avatar assessment. There are a couple of people with the same avatar.

Even so, I'll have to see your skillz sometime. I don't believe I've ever witnessed you fight.

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Well, don't get your hopes up, I've merely dabbled in this before. It'll be fun anyway, if only cause I use such a cool character. And MM, you can use Misa Amane

[1-up Salesman]

You could use Elvis for all we care. Because we would enjoy killing him.

[Zaden]

Originally posted by Slife:
1)Stick to a genre -- Don't give your character both magic and technology, for instance. If you have too much to work with, your character could very easily become cheap; it also isn't any fun for you or your opponent if you have an easy answer for any situation (Like in the old Batman TV show where he had the Bat-shark repellent, the Bat-alphabet soup container, et cetera). After your character has settled down and balanced out, a plotted battle can give him more stuff later (such as Fenix did)

2) Give your character a distinctive weapon.

Umm... I kinda made up a character(Pythos) who distinctively does NOT do these things. He can be a little cheap, I guess, but that's not my intention.

On a side note:

The battles that attact the least attention are usually the ones that have one or three sentence attack like ie. "I take sword and swipe you, I swipe you hard, you fall down and start to hurt because my sword swipe was hard and it hurt you."

Or "I throw daggers but you dodge them and then I pull out my sword and slice at you but then you dodge that one too. Unnamed Warrior: That’s it , this is over NOW!! Then I do the Super Dooper Whooopie Special and kill you as I stare at you die from me killing you!" Complete with the nice little Out Of Character that they leave you at the end of their god awful post 'ooc: This is my characters most powerful it can destroy anything!' Instead you want to go for a more all around descriptive exciting post that will draw the readers attention and make the battle that much more fun and easier to visualize.

Thank you, I laughed out loud!