My attempt here is to present a basic guideline for emote fighting. These rules apply to all manner of fights. The same principles hold true for mud wrestling as for a duel with the One Power. This is not the most comprehensive text ever written on the subject, I am sure. There are also people better at presenting the material. Light knows there are much better emote fighters out there than myself. But, one does not have to be a blademaster to know the rules. Learning and practicing these principles will make you a better emote fighter in specific and a better RPer overall.
Artistic descriptions are nice. They make the emotes more interesting and fun. They are not necessary for good combat emotes, however. If your emote is filled with a poetry that brings your audience to tears over the beauty of it yet your opponent cannot tell from your emote just exactly what the heck you are trying to do, then it is not a good combat emote. Get comfortable with the basic principles before you try to get fancy. A good combat emote will be a good combat emote regardless of whether you follow the minimalist example of Strunk and White in Elements of Style or if you use Lovecraftian adjective soup. If you do go in for the artistic descriptions, they will be appreciated much more if the actions in the emote are reasonable and easily understood.
Back to top.This is something that is often overlooked, but very important. Is your character naturally slow and clumsy, or perhaps agile and dexterous enough to do a handstand while wielding his sword with his feet? How much training has he had, RP'd or assumed? These things matter. If someone makes a hard, fast thrust for your gut, you need to know if your character is quick enough to just parry it. Maybe he is not. Maybe he is not practiced enough to be quick, or just naturally not agile. He may have to back up to give himself time to parry. If he parries at all, that is. He may be slow and clumsy and untrained to the point that he just gets skewered. Maybe he realizes that he is too slow with a sword and attempts to use the One Power instead. How well versed is he with the One Power? This becomes an important question. Maybe he is one of the older members of the Black Tower and Saidin comes to him without thought or hesitation. Or maybe he is a raw recruit and while he is slowly fumbling for the source, attempting to seize Saidin, he is run through. Knowing your character's strengths and weaknesses is very important in conflictive RP.
Back to top.Knowing something about your opponent is incredibly useful. For example, your opponent feints a thrust towards your head, then changes direction at the last instant to slash downward across your chest. Are you fooled? Your own level of experience comes into play here, as well, but you have to compare the two which you cannot do without knowing something of your opponent's background and skill level. Maybe he is just some hotshot trainee who wrapped his hands around his first sword hilt only a few days ago. If you are an ICly competent swordsman, you will probably see the feint for what it is long before he even changes direction. Maybe he is a veteran warder, fully trained and bonded and on top of that a Blademaster. In this case the feint may be so convincing that you stand open-mouthed watching blood pour from your chest wondering exactly what happened and why you don't have a sword stuck in your face, instead.
This does not just apply to swords. It is very applicable to the One Power, as well. For instance, you feel something trying to slip between you and your connection to the One Power. It is very important who is trying to shield you. Maybe it is an Aes Sedai working alone. If you are reasonably trained and not unduly weak and she is not Nynaeve, it is not very likely that she will shield you. If she is the leader of a circle of six, you're probably going to be helping Ekain* out in the Tower library.
Now that we have established how important it is to know something of your opponent, how do you find out? Ask. It is generally best to get the questions out of the way before the conflict emotes start, so as not to interrupt the flow of the RP. Explain politely why you need to know and answer any similar questions about you that your oppenent may have. If you can not get a satisfactory answer out of them or if they give you the run around, ask their GL if he or she is availabe. Imms are not the only ones to turn to in these situations. If neither GL is available, try to get a veteran mort from your opponent's guild. Do not ask for a ruling on whether or not you are stronger or better trained, just explain your situation and ask if they would mind telling you how strong and experienced your opponent is. Do not ask if they are stronger than you, or better than you, just how experienced and craft your emote based upon that information. If, after you obtain the information, you are still unsure how you would stack up against someone of your opponent's ability level, ask a veteran member of your guild for his opinion.
Back to top.This is something else that is often not taken into account in emote fighting. Read the room description. If you have to run, knowing where the exits are is essential. But that is not the only reason to know your surroundings. If you are in a tavern with immaculately cleaned hardwood floors, you would appear ridiculous to your audience if you tried to kick dirt in your opponent's face. Chairs and tables are good for makeshift shields or bunkers. If you are in a cramped hallway, slashes become more difficult, forcing your attacks to tend towards thrusts. A quarterstaff would be more of a liability than a weapon in a tight passage. In a thickly wooded area, trees are excellent things to duck behind to avoid all manner of attacks. Basically, your surroundings should have a strong impact on your attacks and defenses. Reflecting this in your emotes will not only make your emotes more realistic, but will also make the scene easier for your audience to visualize. Additionally, since most people do not add such things, it will impress people. Because it is so rarely done, adding the basic little things that should be the norm makes you appear to be going an extra step or two.
Back to top.This could be retitled Don't Do Impossible Things. Things like not rolling backwards with a large weapon in each hand and coming up on your feet in a perfect defensive position are sort of obvious. Some others are less obvious, but equally unrealistic. An example is parrying a two-handed sword with a rapier. It can be done, but not a straight on parry. It has to be more of a parry that gives under the force of the blow and guides it aside. Parrying hard and straight with a rapier or dagger against a two handed sword is most likely going to break the lighter weapon or cause it to be knocked from your hand. Conversely, the seven pound greatsword cannot match the quickness of the rapier. Instantly reversing the direction of a hard slash with a greatsword is just as silly as an untrained wilder channeling a half dozen weaves of balefire at once, just not as spectacular.
Something that fits vaguely into this category is throwing daggers. They perform some amazing feats in movies and under the big top at the circus. That pretty much covers the places where they are deadly missiles. Take a throwing knife out into the back yard some time and set up a target. Won't take you long to find out that a dagger is not best used as a ranged weapon. It takes incredible amounts of practice to be able to time the rotation so that the pointy end hits the target. Even knife artists at circuses just learn what distance from the target leads to a point first hit and stick to that distance. My advice is do not use them as an attack you expect to succeed. They are decent for buying time while you retreat, I suppose, but little else. The odds of them hitting point-first during the chaos of battle are pretty low.
An element of the superwarder syndrome that is often overlooked is taking hits just so as not to appear to be a superwarder, yet not being adversely affected by the wounds. A deep puncture wound to a calf or thigh or shoulder is a serious injury, even if it misses any arteries or veins. So is a shallow slice across the breadth of the chest. The void allows someone to ignore pain. It does not allow severed muscles to function. Nor does it protect one from loss of blood. Bleeding from half a dozen minor cuts should, at the very least, slow a swordsman's reactions.
There are too many different examples to cover them all here. My advice is to pause a moment before you hit enter on that emote. Take a little time to read back through it and reality check the actions. Pay special attention to any collisions and ask yourself if it is plausible that no breakage was caused or if a weapon should break or even be jarred loose from your hand. Also, examine any sudden changes in direction. Think about the momentum involved and how easy or difficult it would be to overcome. This takes a little longer, but it leads to better emotes.
Back to top.There is a phenomenon in emote fighting that is sometimes referred to as the teleporting sword. An example of this effect is when someone ends one emote with the tip of his sword buried in the ground off to his right side, yet uses it in the next emote to parry a downward slash to his head without ever emoting any of the movement in between. In essense the sword just magically teleports from one position to the other. Depending on the personality of your opponent the results of you doing this could vary from a polite request for clarification to loud and rude ridicule of you on every possible channel and forum. Do not do it. Always begin your emote in the same position you finished your last one. The audience should be able to easily visualize your movements from one emote to the next. If you finish one move with your sword held above your head, you should begin the next one with it held above your head. Sure, this may leave you wide open for an attack. That is the entire point. If continuity is not maintained, then it becomes impossible to maneuver your opponent into a position where he cannot defend or for him to do the same to you. Strategy becomes meaningless and the fight impossible to resolve.
Back to top.This category is not about telling the audience how cool you look as the wind blows through your hair. It is about clearly and accurately describing your movements, whether they be attacks or parries or whatnot. No one really cares that the light glints off your blade if you do not tell them which direction it is slashing from. Describe where your attack is coming from and what you are trying to accomplish with it. In channeling, do not just assume that someone knows what a tightly twisted weave of earth and fire does, describe what the intent of the weave is. Do not just say that the weave tries to touch the person's head, explain that it'll leave nothing but a bloody stump if it does touch. Also, try to avoid the teleporting sword syndrome. Your movement in your current emote should start from where it ended in the last one. Do not go from standing totally at rest and not grasping to tossing fireballs with nothing in between. If you do something, put it in the emote. Grasp before you weave. If your sword is way back over your head, emote lowering it before you perform a low thrust at someone. The more fully you describe your actions, the better they are for your audience to understand and respond to. In essense, you make the whole RP better by more accurately depicting your own actions.
Although this is a grey area, it does belong in the section on clarity of description. Avoid using words such as "you" or "your" in your combat emotes, especially if there is an audience. This is good advice in any public RP, but especially conflictual RP. This is the kind of RP most likely to be protested and sent to council. When reading the logs, it is much less confusing to the judges if the word "you" is avoided. Naturally, this means the descriptive parts of the emotes. If you speak, that spoken part of the emote is obviously not subject to that rule.
Back to top.In MUD or MUSH RP there is a concept known by various names. Some common names are munchkinism, powergaming and closed emoting. These are just different names for the same thing. It is emoting an action that directly causes something to happen to your opponent without them having an opportunity to respond. For example, "Jobob stabs Mary Sue through the heart." is a closed emote. Your emotes should be more open ended, like "Jobob stabs at Mary Sue, aiming for her heart." The first just kills her with no room for her to respond at all. The second allows for a reaction from her. The general rule of thumb is do not emote anything actually happening to your opponent. It is up to them to emote what happens to them as a result of your attack. This can be really frustrating when someone time and again comes up with physically impossible defenses against your attacks, but you should resist the temptation to ever close the emote on them.
Recently, someone suggested to me that it is all right to close a channeling emote on someone who can not channel. The reasoning was that the person has no legitimate way of defending against the One Power. Neither does a blind parapalegic have a chance of defending against a sword stroke. The same rule applies. Do not close the emote. For one thing, just because you do not see a defense against a move does not mean that no defense exists. That person you are trying to wrap in flows of Air may have a buddy standing by that can channel and is ready to slice your incoming weave. There are a number of things that could happen, especially if there are muliple opponents. BUT, even if there is no possible way the person can avoid the weave, it is still proper RP etiquette to leave the emote open. Nothing will cause criticism of your RP more quickly than using closed emotes.
Of course, there is an exception to the rule. If you have your opponent's permission, you may close an emote on him or her. The entire reason that it is considered bad form to close an emote is because it circumvents your opponent's consent. If the person OOCly grants permission to close the emote, then the problem with the emote being closed is removed.
Although attack emotes should never be closed, defensive emotes almost have to be closed. It completes the circuit. The attack opens, then the defense closes. If the defense is not closed, the fight becomes silly. Without including the success or failure of your parry or dodge, there is no resolution. If you emote that you attempt to parry an attack, you should include whether that attempt failed or succeeded. If you do not, if you leave the decision to your opponent, you force him to either miss you or break the rule about attack emotes never being closed. With that said, this defensive emote should still be closed as little as possible and should do no direct harm to your opponent in a closed manner. For example, your parry should block the incoming slash. That should be the extent of the control you exercise over your opponent's weapon. You should not emote that you parry in such a manner that it sweeps your opponent's blade well to the side leaving you a huge opening for your own attack. Part of the parry can even be open, as long as you make certain that you clearly state whether or not your opponent's attack succeeded. An example: "Joe brings his blade across his body, held vertically, to block the incoming slash hard with a loud ring of metal on metal, attempting to knock his opponent's blade well to the side." As you should be able to see, the parry itself is closed, successfully defending against the blow, but the rest of the emote is open, an "attempt" to push aside the blade. This is a grey area that it is hard to fully explain in just this short guide. The best way to become comfortable with this concept is to practice. Sparring a lot is truly the only way to become good at emote fighting.
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