(07-25-2014, 08:05 PM)Ckayah Tia Wrote:Huh. The MUD I used to play on had a sort of half and half solution for those sorts of things. They were called duels, and if anything big was on the table, they'd follow a fairly standard format.(07-24-2014, 01:53 PM)FreelanceWizard Wrote:That sort of thing is exactly why we stuck to freeform combat on AmberMUSH. The philosophy was "we're writing collaborative fiction, so if we can't agree on an outcome, write something else".(07-24-2014, 01:33 PM)C Wrote: When I started roleplaying online, I played in MUSHes that only used freeform combat, and I tend to prefer that.
(...)
I don't care for RNG based combat because the combat systems tend to be pretty simplistic and don't cover the sorts of things C'kayah does - he uses poisons, he fights dirty, etc.
Ah, MUSHes. I remember (not exactly fondly) being a wizard on a WoD MUSH and adjudicating multi-hour and sometimes multi-day timestops
Each person would have three posts each. The starter, then the next person would essentially defend and attack, back, forth, back, and the ending post. There would be three judges. Those judges would vote. The one that got the most votes would win.
It had an interesting effect on combative rp -- namely, the person who won the most naturally became feared icly. Only others who had similar win rates would act tough around them. Adversely, unless you entered in to the whole duel-thing, your character couldn't really rp as being a fighter of any kind without essentially being laughed at. Either you dueled, or you weren't taken seriously if you played a combative character.
It was never really my thing, but one benefit of the system was that people played fair or they didn't get votes. Some judges would be less likely to vote for you if, during the duel, you didn't allow your character to take the damage from the other guy's attacks.
Some people even went so far as to go for DD - death duels. IE, whoever wins, lives. Whoever loses, dies. Which is fine, and all, but because of the ooc factor of it, even if your character is there watching any interference is sorta. . .frowned upon. I once had to have my character essentially sitting on her hands and watch her leader die because I was afraid of ooc repercussions for a very ic action (and, well, me being me, it's not like I would have been adverse to my character getting smote for interfering, but the culture of that particular game was err, not very open to such things and that particular fight was a Big Deal -- so I didn't do anything at all).
Hell, wars between nations would have battles determined by the dueling system, though not terribly frequently. It was definitely a very pervasive system.
Nothing will ever be perfect, but it's a system that definitely has its pros to go along with its cons.
As for me, I prefer the figure-things-out ahead of time approach with people I'm unfamiliar with.
If I've been rping with you extensively for over a year? Ehhh, let the rp happen as it will. Auto-hits and all.
