Ignacius

It sounds like that influenced the Twilight series... I know Japanese vampires like to eat shit, but even they wouldn't touch that abomination of literature/film. They probably wouldn't mind the sparkling, though... >.>

It sounds like that influenced the Twilight series...

There are trends in those snippets: A penchant for blood, and allusions to unsavory things. Nothing about superpowers given to mortals by ensnaring elementals and somehow becoming half-spirit. Yes, they're referring to vampirism the way vampire bats are referred to. Just as things which consume blood. Why walking trees would drink blood is a question best posed to Square, but none of the FFXIV lore relates to stealing any kind of life force for strength except the Eikons. And even the primals seem to get just as much life and power from crystals as they do from other beings.

Marquis was never once identified as a vampire. His class is just a blatant copy of Samurai and he received his powers through possession of the Lucavi. He has vampire-like qualities/looks, but he isn't one. He inflicted the status effect "Vampire", which could then be spread by that player to other players through attacks. He isn't called a vampire, but those he infected certainly were.

Actually yes, I think there was a T3. As for the jail; I heard that as well- and I also heard that was the reason why the chats were closed. But such was rumor. A lot of people missed the golden age of the Yahoo forums. It's kind of depressing. I ran the Hotel Auroria thread (the Volins thread) for between a year and two years pretty much daily. Generally with about 15 actual players in the room, sometimes more sometimes less. They were good times, though. A mulit-para RPers dream. The death knell for a lot of us came with the posting limit. It must have been sometime in the 90s when the forums dropped from allowing what I think were about 700 characters in a post to about 150. It made setting up a scene almost impossible, and it really ruined the way you could edit your posts and type up the setting you wanted. This was probably six months after I'd ended the Auroria threads, but it's certainly what sent me to MMORPGs full time for my roleplaying needs. But there were some glory days on the forums. I still remember a lot of those threads fondly. We ran a whole Shadowrun campaign without dice rolls, just freestyle RP. You could have Alucard inspired vampires having religious conversations with witch hunting priests. They were great times. Once the line limit was cut to Hell and back, though, that pretty much disappeared. Then there was nothing but T-series fights (God knows that's all you had space for). When you're outside a game and the entire whole of your character and actions has to be written by you (since a game like FFXIV handles a lot of that for us), that text limit was outright murderous. I can't, to this day, figure out why they did it. It wasn't like the people who were doing the most damage on any of the IMers or forums were the ones who typed a lot. But, such as it was. Where are the IM programs now, right?

The easiest way to put this is that there appear to be symbiotic relationships where beings consume aether from other beings, particularly primals, and that's the closest that FFXIV gets to a "vampire." However, this aether is also easily drawn from crystals. Final Fantasy as a whole has some other games with canon vampires (the Marquis Elmdor in Tactics being the first to spring to mind), so if they were going to have blood-sucking vampires in the game, they'd be there. It's possible they exist and haven't been introduced, but they are presently not part of the canon. You'd be on your own and working on a person-to-person basis.

Maybe I'm just being a doofus here, but... why was a GM involved at all? Isn't giving money to people and FCs for houses actually how people get houses? If that's illegal, doesn't that mean that if you don't have a house, you can't get a house? WTF is going on?

I actually only knew you from Wildstar, but the entire experience of any MMORPG breaks down to how much fun you're having with the content. That's why I'll run low level content with my guildies; they're fun to run and everyone else seems to have fun with it. If you aren't enjoying the game, you'll probably burn out eventually. Just make sure you're being allowed to enjoy the game. A lot of guilds out there are very progression-minded and can sometimes forget to have fun with everything else for the people who want to do those things.

I actually do agree with the OP, and in more ways than one. I know how it feels when people aren't really thinking about the situation in real terms. Maybe a Hyur can take on a Roegadyn in a fistfight (in game terms, it makes sense, though that's a bit of a logical leap) but a fully armed and armored bouncer against a drunk naked guy? That's the sort of thing that becomes a war crime. And if you're naked and drunk, and you come face to face with a fully armed and armored military soldier, would you REALLY be fearless? The reason I say that it's probably even more pervasive than that is because there are so many other factors people ignore. Ignacius, for example, tends to leave the members of law enforcement alone. It doesn't matter that he's not afraid of them, if they put a price on his head and drive him out of town, that's a huge problem for his business. And that would be better than being locked up and his assets seized, which is also possible. At the same time, law enforcement doesn't want to come up against him. Ignacius might make them "disappear" if he can get away with it, and he can do other things to them. Attack their families. Use his political connections to undermine the unit. He can arm more thugs clandestinely and set the whole city to light without getting caught. So both sides tend to keep from overly annoying the other. That's rare. Many criminals seem to treat the law like Power Ranger putties they can just knock over, and most law enforcement seems to treat criminals the same way back. They're both incredibly dangerous groups in contention with each other who really should be a lot more wary of being so up front. I think there probably should be a lot more wariness and fear in players, since a bit of respect between characters can go a long way to fostering better RP than barside throw-downs.

This. This is pretty much the source of RPer disagreements and drama. As soon as a RPer has evidence that another RPer has done something "bad" they don't even question it. I have seen this over and over and over again throughout my years of RPing. People will talk about it in a private channel they have with their friends or guild chat. They are free to gossip about any number of things that might actually be untrue if they had only dared to talk to the person for clarification. And it's so universal too! Who HASN'T gossiped to their friends or guild at some point? It's the difference between: Ember slams her hammer down on RPer A. (In a private channel) RPer A: omg! I am fighting at the Grindstone and Ember is godmodding! Or Ember slams her hammer down on RPer A. (In a whisper) RPer A: "Hey! I don't understand the way you worded your post. Can you please clarify?" Although to be fair to Ember in subject A, she's not godmodding, she's autoing. I do agree that you talk to the person before you talk to your guildies about that person. RPers improve with education, and Ember may be new and not even understand that an "auto" isn't referring to her auto-attack function. Though I don't think it's a matter of understanding on the part of RPer A at that point. The person would have to say, "Hey Ember, that's an auto attack. You can't simply write my character being hit. However, you can try to hit her." But then, that's something that ought to have been handled already by the time a roleplayer starts getting into combat. Hopefully, Ember would have met some mentor that didn't titter behind her back and blacklist her who could explain how this works. At least I like to think there are still a lot of mentors out there. Honest question: What is the difference between godmodding and "auto-ing"? They're sort of opposites of each other. An auto is any action which "automatically" succeeds. Like when you have a hammer which you swing and hit someone without giving them a chance to dodge. The hammer and swinging is perfectly fine, it just assumes the other character eats it. Godmodding is using a trait or action which, by its nature, cannot be defeated. The classic example is the man who can eat that hammer without a scratch. However, it's more common that people have electrified weapons that can't be blocked, killing the entire room with poison that nobody could have known he left there, etc. It's essentially something which is immune to any action. In a way, they're opposites because autoing implies that something succeeds no matter what, and godmodding implies that no matter what, nothing succeeds. They're both technically etiquette violations and it's fine to allow someone to do it if that's part of your story, but in open RP, they're both pretty much forbidden.

This. This is pretty much the source of RPer disagreements and drama. As soon as a RPer has evidence that another RPer has done something "bad" they don't even question it. I have seen this over and over and over again throughout my years of RPing. People will talk about it in a private channel they have with their friends or guild chat. They are free to gossip about any number of things that might actually be untrue if they had only dared to talk to the person for clarification. And it's so universal too! Who HASN'T gossiped to their friends or guild at some point? It's the difference between: Ember slams her hammer down on RPer A. (In a private channel) RPer A: omg! I am fighting at the Grindstone and Ember is godmodding! Or Ember slams her hammer down on RPer A. (In a whisper) RPer A: "Hey! I don't understand the way you worded your post. Can you please clarify?" Although to be fair to Ember in subject A, she's not godmodding, she's autoing. I do agree that you talk to the person before you talk to your guildies about that person. RPers improve with education, and Ember may be new and not even understand that an "auto" isn't referring to her auto-attack function. Though I don't think it's a matter of understanding on the part of RPer A at that point. The person would have to say, "Hey Ember, that's an auto attack. You can't simply write my character being hit. However, you can try to hit her." But then, that's something that ought to have been handled already by the time a roleplayer starts getting into combat. Hopefully, Ember would have met some mentor that didn't titter behind her back and blacklist her who could explain how this works. At least I like to think there are still a lot of mentors out there.

That's not at all what we're discussing. This is: Ignoring intent due to the writing posted, regardless of understanding. ESPECIALLY if you're acknowledging the articulation wasn't there, but are punishing them for it anyway. And since you're very staunchly anti-OOC communication, you won't even allow for the discussion to clarify by the sounds of it (Edited for snarky tone) it's possible the other person would have no idea what they did "wrong." You're, in effect, saying that you can treat anyone however you like so long as you, the writer, can find holes in their post, regardless of what the character intent is. After all, if they're not a good writer, it's their fault! Fine, we can discuss that. I'm not sure what the problem is. The entire discussion arose because someone bothered to use the conditional and future tense in an action and we've had people outright say they laugh behind their backs at it. I'm not sure why you'd think that using someone's poor writing to escape an attack is completely unacceptable but using someone's poor writing to escape someone's poor come-on line isn't. This is RP; we are what we write. I've already said multiple times I don't mind talking about this OOC, but quite frankly this situation that you're using as a template for your argument is simply not common to me. I can write exactly what I mean without too much effort and I haven't run into anyone who's engaged me this way that didn't lose by making a mistake. And I've certainly made mistakes and not cried myself to sleep over it. Most often, mistakes aren't made; I've had better outcomes than dice battles pretty much throughout. The fact is, if someone's not a good writer, it really is their fault. And if they wrote a post that their character took a swing at another character without properly balancing themselves for anything else, that's what they wrote and may completely make sense in character. You can't backtrack every time something happens that you didn't like any more than you can undo a dice roll that didn't go your way or undo something that you said because it didn't come out the way you wanted it to. I'm not sure why the double standard, but I can operate with or without it. To say that it's not RP because someone doesn't write combat well is like saying someone's not RPing because their suave character can't drop a slick pick-up line. It's definitely roleplaying. If you don't like it and wouldn't ever do it, that's your prerogative. But I have done it, and not done it, and I've been able to enjoy and thrive in both environments. I'd never disparage one or the other simply because I personally dislike it.

So this was my example. Kage Kiryuu would throw himself at the ground and then tackle the others' feet in an attempt to make him stumble. Personally, I would write this and not even think twice about it (and also prefer to write it in these two possible ways). Kage Kiryuu threw himself at the ground with the aim of tackling the others' feet in an attempt to make him stumble. Kage Kiryuu throws himself at the ground, aiming to tackle the others' feet in an attempt to make him stumble. I'm curious, and since you seem to have far more experience with the possible reasoning, why would you prefer the opening post example over the other two if we stick with the format? Or, what makes it more preferable to the others? For me, there's still ways for the other to 'interrupt' the aim and Kage's throwing of his body. Attempting to catch him mid-air, kicking him etc. I'm sorry, but I fail to see what your point is. If you dislike the topic or see no reason then to say "It is what it is," then I also fail to see what value you have to the discussion and why you choose to stay. In the more general sense, the courtesy sense, it was because if someone comes off the sidelines and tackles Kage sideways, or if his target moves and his legs aren't there anymore relatively early in the motion, etc. It gives you, your opponent, and the bouncer at the bar the option of interfering without autoing anything or breaking the syntax. If there's no one to stop you throwing yourself at the ground, it's not strictly necessary, but if someone wants to grab you and yell, "He's not worth it!" he'd likely have to do so before Kage actually dove. At least, that's the purpose behind the old convention. You can use all sorts of wording; I personally try to be a lot more open and friendly so I wouldn't devil the details at all if someone did interrupt him after the fact. It does look funny if someone grabs Kage off the floor, already entangled with trying to grab some legs and dealing with whatever is coming his way (I'm assuming Kage's version of Ziggy isn't taking being tackled lying down, so to speak). It's also worth pointing out that using the conditional at that point, especially today, implies someone probably ought to do something. That's where you get people "would"ing up to the bar and "woulding" a glass of wine. In a way, you get the sense that the person wants to be interrupted. That's why I don't recommend it for general RP. Generally, if Kage's in a fight and no one's stopping him, by the format, he should dive at the legs and would tackle Ziggy, putting the dive in the present tense and giving the tackling of Ziggy (poor Ziggy) the conditional. That way, Ziggy's character knows what's coming and can probably surmise that Kage's arms are spreading out, he intends to hit him in the midsection, etc. It gives him a lot more idea of what's going on, even if it actually doesn't go on unless he's hit. Now, personally, I don't mind the others either, though personally I think the wording is a little weird. The first just gives your opponent the ability to get out of the way before the tackle without breaking syntax, but also gives other people the chance to tell Kage that Ziggy is the indestructible Yor, Hunter from the Future, etc. It's more inclusive. So that's why the format of your first response might actually be the best from a mechanical sense, simply because more people can respond to it (and you might actually avoid the confrontation altogether if it's a problem). Me personally, I would say use whichever seems best for your situation, but what you're doing without thinking is using an old-school form in probably the most polite way possible. I wouldn't let anyone tell you you're doing it wrong. I think it's probably a better idea especially if it's the first thing happening in combat (giving everyone a fair shake to disengage without having to OOCly tell someone it's coming) than the other two. But none of those three fail to get the point across. The only forms that are taboo are autoattacks (i.e. "Kage dives at Ziggy and tackles him by the legs"). Placing the conditional future early is just an invitation to people to react before the shit hits the fan, essentially. It's considered good RP etiquette to provide as many people the opportunity, especially early.

Well, if you'd like to not even debate your unfair generalization of the point, then go forth and feel confident in your resolution. It doesn't do much especially for the conversation's topic at the moment, though. What is there to debate? Ignoring someone's character, that character's history and abilities, on the pretext of outwriting someone isn't roleplaying, it's posturing yourself based on your education. There's been plenty of excellent RP had with people who aren't great writers, and declaring that their attacks fail because the writer did a poor job of stating something is working the meta so hard that I can't believe we're even having to discuss why that isn't a fun or fair thing to do. That's why I called it dick measuring earlier: That sort of RP doesn't serve to engage or tell stories, it exists to reinforce egos and showcase talent with words. If it works for you, that's splendid, because it means you found people who enjoy writing the same way you do. There's people who also think using Oddjob is perfectly fair, or that Smash should only be played on Final Destination with no items. If I wrote my criminal poorly, and no one believed me or took me seriously, that's my fault. If I can't also write combat well, that's also my fault if I use combat well. If I couldn't, it may have limited the amount of people I could play with because I might have retconned and blisted anyone who wouldn't fight outside those terms. I, however, can do it. Regardless of what you think of people who would use it, it's a proven commodity and has worked for a great many roleplayers. In the same thread where people are insulting people behind their back for using "would" too often, I'd say poor writing during combat isn't proportionally worse. If you find nothing of value in it at all, that's fine. It would hardly seem fair to call people who are taking cues in combat from wording to not be roleplaying, but if you insist on it, then there really is nothing to debate. You've already disenfranchised the entire concept.

That's just generally good advice. If you do, though, talking about it OOC is probably a good idea. THIS. THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. It is possible to talk to strangers OOCly and come to an agreement/compromise instead of doing tense gymnastics. Whether John Doe stabbed Berrod in the heart ten years ago or if he's woulding into the sun, a quick discussion between John and Berrod's players can make things flow well with each one sticking to their style/tense. If John and Berrod don't want to communicate, then...then they're not going to gain much by roleplaying with each other. That seems a bit harsh. I get along fine with plenty of people who started out trying to kill a character of mine for some reason, mostly without asking. I always found it somewhat... I don't know, unprofessional I guess is a good word, to seem to drop character as soon as conflict reared up and start making some kind of OOC script. I certainly didn't need it to get into trouble. I mean, if my character, Heaven forbid, calls someone a rank amateur in the course of a conversation, and that character decides to take a swing at him, I'd feel it a bit rich at that point to then pause the whole scene to OOC out with the character how we were going to handle it. I prefer OOC to be the last refuge when things aren't working. I'm more than willing to talk it out if someone really wants to, but I'd never assume I need to start making demands on how this combat should go or end up, especially since I might just as easily not end up in combat. Or that we'd end up in combat with something else. RP can go a million different ways, and I'd rather keep my options open on that front than to start locking up mechanics. That may be different for other players, but I try to be flexible to keep the RP going as best I can so that we don't get bogged down in OOC. Again, that's a personal preference rather than a piece of practical advice; you all should know what you're capable of performing ICly as far as how to manipulate a scene. Still, I don't think it's good policy to say that people can't hash out combat ICly without predetermining it OOC without having anything to RP about. The richness of your RP proliferates by the amount of people you can effectively RP with, I find. On the note of seeming unprofessional...I can't really be bothered with anything close to the pretense of being professional when I'm sitting in my boxers** playing pretend on the internet. I do agree that the last part of my statement -is- a bit harsh, because I too, have met a few strangers and bounced off good fight scenes with them without OOC communication. I attribute that, however, to how open I tend to be regarding the other player's writing, and my love for rolling with the punches (and getting my character bloodied). Regarding 'pausing a scene ooc' -- it's not a movie, it's not running and then STOP. There's always a pause between posts, and if part of that pause involves me whispering the other guy to ask if his punch is coming faster than my character's position affords him to block, then so be it! It can only help the scene for me, not harm it. If the other person reacts unfavorably to this, then I know that this is someone I don't want to invest any time in. I don't make demands on how the combat should go. I don't script anything (most times...! Sometimes there's an idea another roleplayer and I are bursting to deal with and we plan and play). I simply clarify things that may or may not happen, sometimes ask what the other player would like to see, and at times ask their permission to allow this to happen. I have done roleplay combat with a few of people on here, they know how it goes, and I would like to think that it's a very comfortable process (when undertaken) that only results in a clearer, more enjoyable depiction of conflict/combat. Nothing's locked up. Everything is open. Communication is not a sudden lockdown onto one path. It's just...communication! It can serve many purposes. I do not think it's mandatory at all for people to have to work things out OOC rather than hash it out IC. I do that, a lot! However, I believe if someone is -incapable- of or unwilling to do so when the need arises, then there's a problem. If the richness of my RP proliferates by the amount of people I can effectively RP with, I think that what I've been saying and doing has some definite merit! I do understand the quoted view on things (and can relate to it on some level), but as it works one way, so does it work the other. It's always good to be open to the idea of having to communicate with a stranger instead of wrestling with prose. Your characters may be fighting, but as writers you're supposed to be working together to build a scene that is enjoyable for you both. Sometimes that may involve working with each other's odd tense preferences! Sometimes. In the end, to each his own, always. **Berrod's player usually sits in a towel because he is lazy trash who doesn't like to get dressed when he's at home Certainly that, and a lot of what I'm saying comes from two very distinct points: 1. I'm a relatively old and involved active-format RPer. This stuff was ground into my head at 13 in a Dragonstrike chronicle being played on a BBS (which dates me). 2. Also at a young age, I started running the RP. My personal style doing this is to run it from a character, adding outbound elements from the perspective of within the group. I ran my YIM thread probably between 15 and 16, and that's colored a lot of my perception. I was counted on, pretty early, to be the guy that made sure everyone had fun. So I've got a pretty wide breadth of RP styles in my background at the same time I've also had to be able to adapt to new players and make them feel welcome. At the same time, whenever I had to go OOC to explain something, the flow of RP would simply crash. Things can't move forward when you're working things out. So it's always behooved me to be descriptive and outline future consequences for actions even in cases where others might not warrant it. For me, it was a way to also provide description. Swinging a sword with the intent to cut off someone's head is a lot different than swinging a sword at shoulder height, of course. So for me, it's been so deeply ingrained in my style and is so natural for what I do that it feels strange not to do it. In Kage's original example, in my personal opinion, the form is good. You'd want to dive at someone as if you intend to tackle them, because although you might not actually tackle them, that denotes a very particular and descriptive action as opposed to just diving at someone's legs. I mean, you can infer that it's in a tackling motion, but you may want to dive between them, come up like a football player and aim for the chin, roll through and try to end up on the other side. That's endemic to the form, but I also find that it's good for the way I write. It saves you from having to OOC out what will happen or even what it will look like. People get a very distinct picture. And I know professionalism isn't the best word for it, but it's the best I can come up with. I pride myself on the RP experiences people who play with me get and, for better or worse, I take it very seriously. On the plus side, it's meant I've got a lot of experience working things out in-character that even ten years ago I'd have worked out OOC. I can provide people ways out, talk them out of combat, give them ways to stop injured and not kill them, made them feel camaraderie, all without stopping the RP flow. I mean, I might be on my computer in my pajamas, but it's kind of the same feeling you get when you're tanking a primal and everyone in the party points out how good you did. Of course, you'll get more props as a good RPer than a good party tank... I always prefer the method that causes the least stops. I can ask or tell the other character what I need to, or I can include that in the original post, and I tend to opt for the latter. Given my background, that works well for me and seems to elicit the most enjoyment from whoever I'm playing with. I feel like if you're OOC bouncing ideas off each other and executing them, that's RP for the benefit mostly of everyone else. If I give the person enough to work with on my end that he has fun, that's also RP for the benefit of him. It's personal opinion at this point, of course, but I've always used the format because I think it's more fun for the other player to bounce things off of without having to plan. I wouldn't recommend the format for that reason, though. You have to manage a lot of scenes to camouflage DMing like that without godmodding. I like the effect, though. It feels more like giving the other person things to do and getting them back rather than doing a lot of interior planning. I've done both, and I feel like that the IC method can make one of the most tense and sometimes un-enjoyable parts of random RP, character-on-character combat, feel fun, free-flowing, and satisfying for the actual participants. I dislike how most character combat turns into a knot-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach confrontations, especially when you're starting to talk to someone OOC (even if it's entirely cordial). I mean, that's my personal take on it. Otherwise, the format I think is highly useful in combat, but it's an older formality. If you know how to apply it, though, it can be an exceptionally useful story driving tool.

The format's pretty good for total strangers, but as many have intimated here, it's an old-fashioned courtesy. It used to be a requirement, but now it's normally a sign someone's kind of old fashioned and cares about the form from education. It's definitely good to use from my experience, but a lot of RPers not five or ten years younger than me might not have even heard of it until they see someone using it and wonder WTF they're talking about.

Well, if you'd like to not even debate your unfair generalization of the point, then go forth and feel confident in your resolution. It doesn't do much especially for the conversation's topic at the moment, though.

Or, you know, don't pick fights with strangers. That's just generally good advice. If you do, though, talking about it OOC is probably a good idea. Nono. That's where the future conditional comes in. OOC communication isn't really needed unless youre going to do something potentially damaging or violating Uh...you really should communicate ooc with someone you don't know before randomly attacking them. Future conditional doesn't exempt you from this simple common courtesy that can avoid so much drama. First, most of us aren't randomly attacking anyone; most of us deserve being attacked at some point in the course of the RP. Second, it doesn't necessarily require OOC communication if you've got an understanding of how this works. That's originally why it became the de facto standard. I mean, you may find you have to drop to OOC for every conflict, but dealing with anyone else particularly well schooled in how this works, I rarely have had to over the last decade or so.

Or, you know, don't pick fights with strangers. I know a thing or two about fighting strangers, or asking strangers to fight for other people's amusement. None of it comes down to picking apart their language to find loopholes and paint them into a corner to get them to lose. I've had to fight strangers with everything from dice to writing skills and back. I'd never tell anyone that good RP can't be had by a style and that it's not worth it to bother learning it. I've had a few very public and entertaining fights based on nothing but that one particular method. I wouldn't presume it's worthy of scorn simply because you don't like it. It's far from the method of active RP combat I like the least. There are plenty of dice systems I find far more sterile than that.

Que? Everything else you said makes sense, except that this is a writing style not a format. No, it's definitely a format (though you'd be forgiven for not seeing the description, that was pages back). This format was specifically developed for text combat without using rolls and such in active RP media, and was specifically used for contested actions. That's why I don't recommend using: Ignacius would raise the glass to his lips, intending to drink it. That's assuming someone's going to contest my beer swigging, which is either desperate or not particularly smart. That's why I said if you're not using it, you're not worried about what would happen as the consequences unfold. The consequences of me drinking something aren't immediately an issue for everyone else unless I'm drinking some kind of magic exploding suicide potion (in which case, I might use the format). It's fairly noticeable when someone starts including the conditional that often and what for. You don't even have to necessarily use it for that, but it's a LOT easier that way. It means not having to crash the flow to OOC for things that you might otherwise need to crash to OOC for.

Or, you know, don't pick fights with strangers. That's just generally good advice. If you do, though, talking about it OOC is probably a good idea. THIS. THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS. It is possible to talk to strangers OOCly and come to an agreement/compromise instead of doing tense gymnastics. Whether John Doe stabbed Berrod in the heart ten years ago or if he's woulding into the sun, a quick discussion between John and Berrod's players can make things flow well with each one sticking to their style/tense. If John and Berrod don't want to communicate, then...then they're not going to gain much by roleplaying with each other. That seems a bit harsh. I get along fine with plenty of people who started out trying to kill a character of mine for some reason, mostly without asking. I always found it somewhat... I don't know, unprofessional I guess is a good word, to seem to drop character as soon as conflict reared up and start making some kind of OOC script. I certainly didn't need it to get into trouble. I mean, if my character, Heaven forbid, calls someone a rank amateur in the course of a conversation, and that character decides to take a swing at him, I'd feel it a bit rich at that point to then pause the whole scene to OOC out with the character how we were going to handle it. I prefer OOC to be the last refuge when things aren't working. I'm more than willing to talk it out if someone really wants to, but I'd never assume I need to start making demands on how this combat should go or end up, especially since I might just as easily not end up in combat. Or that we'd end up in combat with something else. RP can go a million different ways, and I'd rather keep my options open on that front than to start locking up mechanics. That may be different for other players, but I try to be flexible to keep the RP going as best I can so that we don't get bogged down in OOC. Again, that's a personal preference rather than a piece of practical advice; you all should know what you're capable of performing ICly as far as how to manipulate a scene. Still, I don't think it's good policy to say that people can't hash out combat ICly without predetermining it OOC without having anything to RP about. The richness of your RP proliferates by the amount of people you can effectively RP with, I find.

Just going to say again... the is no need[/]. You can. If you really want to. To use the format we're talking about, that's the only time you would need to. I assume if you're not using this format, you aren't as worried about what would happen as the consequences unfold. Though I had thought we were speaking specifically about those using the system to use far more numerous conditional words than were necessary, I suppose it should be reiterated that if you are not using this system, then you are not subject to best practices using it.

Or, you know, don't pick fights with strangers.

Again, the form begins in the present tense with a future conditional. If everything is a conditional, it doesn't make an awful lot of sense. That's not necessarily what you're supposed to do. You write in contestable actions in the future conditional. It's at your discretion to know what's contestable, and that used to be fairly logical. Nobody is going to stop you from eating a bagel, but someone will try to stop you from setting them on fire. Generally speaking, you only need to use that future conditional tense for a consequence of an action that you need to be apparent when you do something. Like if you were eating a bagel, no one cares. If you were eating someone else's bagel that you plucked from the table, that might be different and you might need to say, "....fully intending to consume it in front of him," in your post. I didn't want to add this (again, I really dislike getting on people's cases or snickering behind their backs for how they write), but the idea of someone constantly performing contestable and conditional actions is a sign of someone really wanting attention. It's a bit attention-whorish; there's no reason to think someone is going to interrupt your stroll to the store unless you expect it so there's no reason to "would" anything there. It's only an issue on contestable actions, where your character turns and intends to enter the store after having an argument outside. You want to leave it open for the person to stop you, yell after you, run after you, etc, but they need to know you will go inside the store unless interrupted.

I don't know how off the rails this discussion has become as I write this but this might be an artifact of older players like myself. Way, way back I did table-top RP with a group and we used future tense so that any action might be countered. My character would stagger back and fall. And the other player goes, "my character would try to catch you before you fell." And so forth. This kind of thing made RP take forever (entire weekends) but there was no Internet so what else was there to do? Present tense can be countered. You just have to leave openings for people to react instead if writing everything as a "done deal." I'll admit I didn't get into gaming until after the internet came around, but I've pretty much always used present tense. In table top games, I simply say, "my character tries" or simply ask whether I can do something before doing it. It used to be far more common that things simply evolved as they happened rather than stopping to have an OOC conversation. People in random situations certainly didn't leave openings for people to react. You said what you were doing and what your intentions will be. It was pretty straightforward, and required a lot less scripting. Priorities may have shifted, but that used to certainly be why it was done. Many of us still do it today for much the same reason. Saying you "would" do everything is pretty extreme, but some of us still feel it's better to have the intended consequences on display in the future tense. It may not sound like a book, but the end result gets across a lot of the OOC hoopla within the actual post.