rpanons | You sound fat

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If it's your character going solo and fighting NPCs that you control, then yes, I agree with the advice about reading other action scenes. Use active verbs, don't do long drawn out descriptions about how cool this flip is, etc.

But if it's a fight scene with another player's character, these are the golden rules:

1. DECIDE THE OUTCOME IN ADVANCE. "I just want to play it by ear" is actually code for "I want my character to win but it sounds rude if I just come out and say it." Decide who wins or loses, or if it ends with a draw or interruption, otherwise it will turn into a dick-measuring contest of which character is more powerful/awesome.

2. Don't write the outcome of your actions. For example, "He throws a punch at Joe's face" is preferred to "He slams his fist into Joe's jaw, shattering it instantly and knocking him to the ground. Then he picks Joe up and swings him around by the ankle like a mighty helicopter." That's godmodding, and if you do it, you're an asshole.

*2a. If you're afraid this will make your tag too short, ask the other player OOCly if it's okay for you to do X. That way you won't embarrass yourself if what your character would have tried would never have been able to happen (i.e. Joe's jaw was actually made of solid titanium because of an accident when he was a child that replaced all of his bones with an indestructible metal frame).

3. Take some hits. Dodging now and again is fine and dandy, but if your character is constantly dodging attacks and not suffering any repercussions, that's a different form of godmodding, and you're still an asshole. Even if your character is the one slated to win the fight, at least give the other player the satisfaction of feeling like their character wasn't completely and hopelessly wrecked for the sake of your ego.

Hope that helps! Fight scenes are tough to write, but they're a lot of fun too.

this anon is totally right, particularly about 2 and 3 and godmoding. I've had people popping up lately who just don't seem to grasp that writing out how far across the room they knocked my character is godmoding to the extreme.

I've been complimented on my fight scenes, and I don't know that I have any great secrets behind them other than 1. not godmoding, 2. knowing where both parties are and how their bodies are moving, and 3. doing more than one thing per tag.

it takes practice to be able to write your character's reaction first, then decide based on where their body is compared to their opponent, how they would recover momentum and follow through with their own move, but it can be done. for example, if mine is right-handed and fighting with a sword, he would move to his left to carry through with a strike. does he end up beside or behind his opponent? oh shit his opponent blocked, now mine has to either block or take the hit, how do I want to do this? Do I go entertaining or IC or can I find a way to combine them?

and really, if your character is from any kind of ridiculous OTT canon where fighting involves punching people into the moon, don't fret too much about "realistic" fighting moves. Know your charater's moveset, and even if he/she has to adapt it to fighting someone from a different canon with a totally different style of fighting, they will still more or less use their own moveset, not a real mma-style fight.

ironically enough, i think people working out how things are going to go in advance is contributing to the uptick in godmoding.

i've been in fight threads where one party has tagged with how far they've knocked the other character across the room...because we worked it all out behind the scenes, and it fit better with the flow of the scene if it was in the attacker's tag rather than the defender's. meanwhile, people who are newer to the hobby see that, and decide it's clearly okay to decide on the outcome themselves, because they're not making the connection that there's ooc communication they're not seeing.

Do newbies actually read other people's threads?

"I just want to play it by ear" is actually code for "I want my character to win but it sounds rude if I just come out and say it."

what

no

Not all the time, but at least half the time. 'We'll see how it goes' is fine if you're having a fight thread for which the fun is mucking about doing crazy fight stuff, but if the outcome matters? AYRT is right.

You sound fat

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DA