(09-21-2015, 10:21 AM)Warren Castille Wrote: Are you looking at the roleplay as a completed log and story? Or is each post technically it's own mini scene in the scheme of telling a narrative? There's nothing at all wrong with "Ignacius drew his sword and tried to cut off Ziggy's head" because until we see what Ziggy does (until we come back from commercial break, or turn the page, or whatever device of conveying drama you choose to reference) we as readers don't know what's going to happen.
Maybe so, but the problem is that I'm not writing Ziggy's character. Â And Ziggy's player can take my sentence and say, "You're swinging at Ziggy's head, you can't back out now."
And, technically speaking, he'd be absolutely correct. Â I did not say Ignacius would try to swing at Ziggy's head in that example ("would" being a conditional word that assumes his head is readily available for separation) I said he tried to swing at Ziggy's head.
While we might all know what I intended, that hardly would be an issue to the head's owner. Â What's at issue is that Ignacius was locked into an action, despite the reaction.
And in the past, if Ignacius drew his sword and tried to cut off Ziggy's head, in your example, Ziggy has already not had his head cut off. Â Otherwise, that wouldn't make much sense. Â It's essentially the difference between writing a short story by yourself (where action is all predetermined) and RP (which is, technically speaking, happening in the present with conditions abounding).
Of course, with your friends or relatively apologetic and forgiving company, intent is fine. Â Then all this is meaningless, literally everything. Â You could write everything in the future tense with mispelled words and completely not get your point across until you throw in a lot of OOC explanation. Â If people are inclined to just let it all roll, there's nothing to worry about.
Open RP is just not a place where you're going to run into universally agreeable company. Â Ziggy's certainly going to argue with his potential decapitation.
