A Grindstone for Mages?

[Oli!]

So this idea came up in RP today.

 

The Grindstone, as of now, is purely technical fighting. No flashy-flashy boom-boom to be found on tournament grounds. Of course, this leaves the other half of the class system out of the loop, unless they happen to double up as fist-fighters or blade-wielders or anything else that involves physical punishment to the face. That got me wondering whether or not people on the more mystical side of things would want a similar type of competition for their characters.

 

I have no idea how many people are or would be interested in this sort of thing. For all I know, there could already be something similar in place, or there isn't enough people to make something like this work. If some interest does end up being shown, I'd have to do a lot of brainstorming, since any ideas are purely preliminary at the moment. I'd also probably have to track down some of the people more familiar with the inner workings of the Grindstone in order to make something happen.

 

So, let's start with an interest check. Would anyone want to see something like this, and if so, do they have any ideas for it?

[Steel Wolf]

Speaking as a potential spectator to such an event, I'd absolutely love if a magical Grindstone was a thing. It seems like immolating or freezing people in a controlled pit fighter environment would be challenging to pull off, but...hey. Who knows?

 

Steel herself has the barest inkling of aetheric ability, so she'd watch. Probably awestruck. And maybe drink whilst doing so.

[DreamedReality]

To be clear. I am not going to say that this is a -bad- idea and that it shouldn't be done.

 

However there are some wildly different ideas regarding: approaches/base ability/and base potential between the mages I've come across. Some effectively casting Roe sized ice prisons with a flick of the wrist to those needing to channel to cast a basic fireball. Some play around with elemental resistances/weaknesses while others do not. So finding an agreeable system to sort of bring them around to more or less a common level might be difficult.

 

Then there is taking the hits/moderating spells to be 'non-lethal'. While in physical combat it's very easy to tell when someone is goin' too far and going for those truly debilitating or deadly shots. Magic? Eh. Could get tricky.

 

You maybe could do a tournament where mages compete but don't actually fight -each other.- Some sort of aetherical gymnastics course if you will?

[Oli!]

To be clear. I am not going to say that this is a -bad- idea and that it shouldn't be done.

 

However there are some wildly different ideas regarding: approaches/base ability/and base potential between the mages I've come across. Some effectively casting Roe sized ice prisons with a flick of the wrist to those needing to channel to cast a basic fireball. Some play around with elemental resistances/weaknesses while others do not. So finding an agreeable system to sort of bring them around to more or less a common level might be difficult.

 

Then there is taking the hits/moderating spells to be 'non-lethal'. While in physical combat it's very easy to tell when someone is goin' too far and going for those truly debilitating or deadly shots. Magic? Eh. Could get tricky.

 

You maybe could do a tournament where mages compete but don't actually fight -each other.- Some sort of aetherical gymnastics course if you will?

 

 

I was thinking about that sort of problem, and the solution that I came up with was including some sort of objective other than "KO the other guy." Maybe something more clever, like "destroy this thing they're protecting," or "knock this guy off these platforms onto the floor." One of the more developed ideas I had was somewhat reminiscent of one-on-one pro-bending with nothing but ring-knockouts. Manawards / Protection Spells would probably be a thing too, to prevent people from getting auto-fried.

 

As for skill-levels, that would probably be the sort of thing that would have to be balanced by a roll-system, like what the Grindstone does at the moment. There are fighters of varying talents there as well, and (as far as I can tell) the roll system they use hasn't drawn too many serious complaints.

 

At least not public ones, anyway.

[Kage]

I think Jacques' point is very valid. One of the first things that would come up is almost dictating how magic combat would work. How long for casts. How "powerful"? CaN someone get hit by a fireball, have it hurt but it doesn't mean instant whatever degree burns? There's so many opinions with magic that it would be a little hard to do it without a large amount of communication and probably compromise.

[Steel Wolf]

Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots for mages.

 

Lemme elaborate.

 

I'm not sure how one would have procured the tech (tossing this at the wall to see what sticks here), but what if the objective wasn't to have the mages cast at each other but take down the opposing enemy's construct of some kind? Sort of like a Yu Gi Oh! board with less bad hair and more actual spells.

[Oli!]

I think Jacques' point is very valid. One of the first things that would come up is almost dictating how magic combat would work. How long for casts. How "powerful"? CaN someone get hit by a fireball, have it hurt but it doesn't mean instant whatever degree burns? There's so many opinions with magic that it would be a little hard to do it without a large amount of communication and probably compromise.

 

 

Casts would probably be one "turn" similar to standard combat, just for the sake of keeping things moving since fights have a tendency to take a while. For managing power, I suppose something like "these wards will nerf your boom-boom to [convenient fraction] of their power for the sake of not killing each other." That, compared with some clever objective that doesn't involve simply burninating the other person could make for something clever.

 

Regarding Robots: I might look into a way to see if this can work as well. It sounds a bit complex, but this is just the brainstorming stage, so there might be a way to make it work, or at least take parts from it for something new!

[Verad]

Of course, differences in presumed ability are the case in the Grindstone as well. You have people portraying experts with Limit Breaks as part of their repertoire and total incompetents fighting in the same patch of dirt. It's the system that equalizes things more than anything else; come up with a similar setup for a magic-based Grindstone and the problem of power difference isn't one.

[Warren Castille]

Two things that came to mind:

 

First, while the martial Grindstone is a test of physical prowess (and sort of thriving on the Any Given Sunday mentality - Every night is anyone's night) it's a different world of complexity when you add magic into things. TVtropes browsers might be directed to Linear Warrios, Quadratic Wizards and I dare not link it because then I'll never finish this post.

 

Magery is a lot more difficult to nuance. As has been mentioned there's plenty of folks willing to just flick their wrist and launch flares, or quick-cast every spell with pinpoint accuracy. It can be quite difficult to reason that a newly-practicing thaumaturge would be able to out-ward or out-spellcast a hardened wizard.

 

...but, if this is a Grindstone spin-off, it doesn't matter because the dice don't lie. Just like the mostly awesome Omnislash-from-Advent-Children-ripoff can miss if they roll like dirt against a housewife with a frying pan, the most powerful mage attempting to rip a lesser moon from the heavens can be dispelled by a kid with a scar and a wand if the numbers say so.

 

I don't have the character foundation to do it, but if the wizards want to fight, I say let them fight. Just don't try to take the current Grindstone timeslot. Them's fightin' words.

[Berrod Armstrong]

Two things that came to mind:

 

First, while the martial Grindstone is a test of physical prowess (and sort of thriving on the Any Given Sunday mentality - Every night is anyone's night) it's a different world of complexity when you add magic into things. TVtropes browsers might be directed to Linear Warrios, Quadratic Wizards and I dare not link it because then I'll never finish this post.

 

Magery is a lot more difficult to nuance. As has been mentioned there's plenty of folks willing to just flick their wrist and launch flares, or quick-cast every spell with pinpoint accuracy. It can be quite difficult to reason that a newly-practicing thaumaturge would be able to out-ward or out-spellcast a hardened wizard.

 

...but, if this is a Grindstone spin-off, it doesn't matter because the dice don't lie. Just like the mostly awesome Omnislash-from-Advent-Children-ripoff can miss if they roll like dirt against a housewife with a frying pan, the most powerful mage attempting to rip a lesser moon from the heavens can be dispelled by a kid with a scar and a wand if the numbers say so.

 

I don't have the character foundation to do it, but if the wizards want to fight, I say let them fight. Just don't try to take the current Grindstone timeslot. Them's fightin' words.

^

[Avalt Laguz]

<----------- Interested :moogle:

[Oli!]

Two things that came to mind:

 

First, while the martial Grindstone is a test of physical prowess (and sort of thriving on the Any Given Sunday mentality - Every night is anyone's night) it's a different world of complexity when you add magic into things. TVtropes browsers might be directed to Linear Warrios, Quadratic Wizards and I dare not link it because then I'll never finish this post.

 

Magery is a lot more difficult to nuance. As has been mentioned there's plenty of folks willing to just flick their wrist and launch flares, or quick-cast every spell with pinpoint accuracy. It can be quite difficult to reason that a newly-practicing thaumaturge would be able to out-ward or out-spellcast a hardened wizard.

 

...but, if this is a Grindstone spin-off, it doesn't matter because the dice don't lie. Just like the mostly awesome Omnislash-from-Advent-Children-ripoff can miss if they roll like dirt against a housewife with a frying pan, the most powerful mage attempting to rip a lesser moon from the heavens can be dispelled by a kid with a scar and a wand if the numbers say so.

 

I don't have the character foundation to do it, but if the wizards want to fight, I say let them fight. Just don't try to take the current Grindstone timeslot. Them's fightin' words.

 

 

I haven't mastered quantum superposition yet, so I unfortunately cannot take the Grindstone's timeslot...Yet.

 

I'll probably post a call for good times if a sizable amount of people indicate that they'd participate so that I can figure out a good time for something like this.

 

What's the Grindstone's secondary day? I know that the main event is on Friday, but once upon a time there was another one on Thursday, and then I think that I read somewhere that it was moved to Wednesday, but I have no idea.

[Warren Castille]

There used to be an event on Wednesdays, but I've never been present for it. I think it's a relic of two or three managing bodies ago.

[Mercurias]

The magical Grindstone, I believe, was actually more of a Grindstone event where the ban on magic was lifted and people could do what they liked. 

To be frank, I'd be very cautious about running a spellcasting Grindstone. :I'm not saying this to try and be mean-spirited, but I've seen a lot of magic-using characters who tend to go overboard with the power trips and break lore. 

 

Like the time in the Grindstone where someone was glowing and actually tried to fire a spell at someone that was a Dragonball Kamehameha in all but name when he got mad at losing.

 

I'd be vary careful to remind people that control is key to avoid, uh, IC craziness.

[Oli!]

The magical Grindstone, I believe, was actually more of a Grindstone event where the ban on magic was lifted and people could do what they liked. 

To be frank, I'd be very cautious about running a spellcasting Grindstone. :I'm not saying this to try and be mean-spirited, but I've seen a lot of magic-using characters who tend to go overboard with the power trips and break lore. 

 

Like the time in the Grindstone where someone was glowing and actually tried to fire a spell at someone that was a Dragonball Kamehameha in all but name when he got mad at losing.

 

I'd be vary careful to remind people that control is key to avoid, uh, IC craziness.

 

 

That would probably be grounds for Eternal Banification, especially considering the Roll Is God. People that enter the regular Grindstone enter with the knowledge that this is so, and it would be the same here as well.

[Dasair]

I'd be interested in this if it was organized well.  *u*  

 

Especially if it were based on rolls.  I would live for the flops that happen, or RPing out the craptastic rolls that ensue.  Because man, how is that not fun or hilarious to have a character all ready to kick some Aetherical butt and then roll a 2?  So much can go wrong with magic, and that is part of why I love casters, so I am totally down for this.

[V'aleera]

Even though I don't play a magically inclined character, I think this is a really cool idea and would be a ton of fun to watch.

[Gharen]

So.. As one of the founding officers of the original Grindstone FC and former overseer, I'll throw my 2gil in. (disclaimer: I am no longer affiliated with, or have anything to do with the Grindstone in it's current form and anything I talk about is regarding the Grindstone as it was before I left.)

 

This was something that people have asked about since almost day one, and have even purposely gone out of their way to have been personally offended about. Cause heaven forbid we were not all inclusive.

 

The fact of the matter was magic was never included as part of it or as even a separate function for several reasons, first of which the grindstone premise was meant for fighters to sharpen skills of a martial nature and meant to be non lethal.

 

Magic no matter how you look at it doesn't have a non lethal "tazer" setting outside of sleep or stun, put simply? fire burns, lightning kills, stone crushes. And, one person's imaginary fireball could be the size of a baseball compared to another persons that leaves craters and scorches earth. With martial weapons there is none of this, "This is my lance, fist, sword, axe." etc. There is no imaginary B.S. to deal with as it is clearly defined.

 

And then you have man power, We ran 2 tourney's a week, I Oversaw every other weds due to work, and because as Roleplayers, we tend to be long winded by nature, it was regularly 5+ hours to get through all the fights. Even at every other week I often wound up Overseeing alone or having to pull in outside assistance if we got more participants than anticipated.

 

These are the primary reasons we never catered to magic users and made it's use in the fights against the rules. The amount of work required to create and maintain a system that was fair, while dealing with the eccentricities of Rper's of all types in not one, but two different events, was simply too much, we had people leave due to burn out over just having to deal with Overseeing one day a week in the events we were having.

 

Now that's all said, we were always fine with someone else running something if they could make it work and no one has been willing to put in the time or effort to do so to date.

[BadDJuJu]

Well this sounds like super fun, though... complicated at the moment.

[DoomsdayClock]

Of course, differences in presumed ability are the case in the Grindstone as well. You have people portraying experts with Limit Breaks as part of their repertoire and total incompetents fighting in the same patch of dirt. It's the system that equalizes things more than anything else; come up with a similar setup for a magic-based Grindstone and the problem of power difference isn't one.

Exactly what I was going to say. Really the answer is to make sure players are mature, and things should work out. When Iron fights in tournaments there is a clear difference in his strength compared to say..Howl. But as players we yield to the will of the dice and make it work.

Most times this means Iron gets his legs destroyed by say....someone like Howl x.x;

[Aaron]

You could always describe in the emote how serious the magic is if it hits.

 

"Red X throws a fireball out his arm in an arc at his enemy, if it hit the target would suffer mild to superficial burns that spanned across a small area"

[W'seckhi Asah]

I wonder if it'd include melee fighters who mesh magic into their styles a la Dark Knight, Red Mage, etcetera? Food for thought. Regardless, I'm interested.