Yay Violence!

Character drama is fun. Character drama that turns into physical fights is even better. Be it a wartime battle or a prom dress squabble, fight threads are some of the most fun you’ll ever have reading or writing in RPs.

This document is divided into two sections: Rules of Engagement (etiquette and the OOC side of fight threads) and Bring it On (tips on the mechanics of writing fights and action)



Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves:
Just because you’re in a fight doesn’t mean someone has to be killed or maimed. Now granted, these things can be a whole lot of fun. However, if you’re planning to inflict permanent damage on another character, it just might be a good idea to ask the character’s player if that’s okay. Not every player is okay killing off their character or giving them a permanent limp, disfigurement or lack of limbs.
Communication between players is the best way to keep fight threads fun and free of OOC drama llamas. Which leads me to my next point….


Don’t Follow Through:
Read these two passages and see if you can spot the difference:

“Sally punched Bob in the face so hard that she broke his nose. He had it coming, the ass-hat”

“Sally threw a punch at Bob’s face with all her strength. She wanted to break his nose, the ass-hat.”

Sally’s actions and intentions stay the same in each sentence: she’s really angry at Bob and is trying to break his nose with a punch. But the second sentence leaves the amount of damage open for Bob’s player to decide. The punch might actually break something, give him a bloody nose or Bob might dodge the punch completely.

Now, some of your RP partners might be just fine with you declaring that you just broke their character’s nose. Fantabulous! Just remember that not everyone is going to be okay with it. When it doubt, err on the side of caution. Leave your actions open-ended or ask for permission in advance.


We’re Only Human:
People in fights get hurt. Seems like an obvious statement. But it’s very easy to fall into the trap of having your character walk away from a fight without a scratch. After all, isn’t it cool to play a really skilled fighter? And sometimes your own competitive nature creeps in and really wants to win, almost as much as Bob or Sally.

To be honest, it’s more interesting when both characters are allowed to succeed and fail in their efforts to clean someone’s clock. It’s also more realistic: unless you’re Smaug the dragon fighting baby Bambi, your character will probably take a few knocks and be foiled at least once.

Don’t abuse the open-ended attack. Maybe Bob really is good enough to dodge Sally’s punch. But maybe Bob’s had a lot to drink tonight or is running on three hours of sleep. His reflexes probably aren’t that hot. Your character’s responses to being attacked should reflect their IC skills and conditions, not an OOC desire to win

(Also don’t forget that humans aren’t the only squishy ones around. A wizard, vampire and even Smaug the dragon can and should be able to get hurt)




Choose Your Weapon:
It’s helpful for all participating members to establish what their characters are bringing into the fight. On one level this is things like weapons and armor, but your character also brings knowledge and skills to a fight. You can equip two characters with the exact same weapons and armor, but if one is mild-mannered kindergarten teacher who has never held a weapon in his life and the other character is a professional kick-boxer, who’s your money on? (although it would be kind of awesome to see a mild-mannered kindergarten teacher moonlighting as a professional kick-boxer).

Establishing exactly what skills and weapons your character has at the start can also help fend off that temptation from pulling out a bazooka under your jacket and running up buildings. Keep your responses realistic to what your character has and knows.

Also: not everyone and their mother is a martial arts master/sixth-degree blackbelt. Just saying.


Combo Time:
There’s nothing more impressive than an eight-part combo attack, right? A stab, a feint, another stab, kick, body slam and oh, by the way, I dodged your attack.

Yikes.

If you put too much action in a single post, it’s going to be awfully tough for the other people to respond. Think dialog-splicing is bad? Continually sticking too much action in one post can lead to fight splicing—think five fights all going on in one thread between the same people. Yikes, indeed.

Keep it simple. A good rule of thumb is have your character react to the last attack directed at them and then give them one attack move. In other words, one defensive and one offensive move per post (or less, if you feel so inclined). You can always show off your character’s wicked kick-boxing move in the next post.


Move Your Feet!:
Here’s a really handy trick if you aren’t sure what your character’s next move should be. Stand up and act it out. You might feel silly at the time, but moving around can help you generate ideas and get a better handle on how exactly your character will be moving (which will help you write it out).

If your character is skilled in a specific style of fighting, you can also search Youtube for video clips of tournaments and moves.


Fire, Aim, Ready!:
You get slapped across the face with a fish.

How much time to you have to react? To notice that the fish is a very rare sort of trout, or that one fin is slightly bigger than the other? To muse about those childhood days when your father chased you around the house with severed fish heads?

It’s easy to embellish a fight scene. And many times, it’s with the best intentions: adding in more description is always better right? Wrong. Description is good, but too much buries the action and is unrealistic for your character to notice, anyway.

Think about it this way. If you wrote about the step-by-step actions and thoughts of your character for a day, how long would it be? What if the time was cut down to an hour? Ten minutes? Ten seconds?

Action posts happen over a very short period of time. There’s not as much time for them to act or think. Your normal post length might shrink in fight threads. Don’t panic. It’s for the better: your posts will be both more realistic and you’ll keep the fight snappy and quick. Try and make fighting posts an exercise in economical writing. How much detail can you get into 100 words? In 50? In 10?


Break it Up:
Staying on the theme of keeping it short, your paragraphs will be easier and faster to read broken up. This isn’t just me speculating: there have been studies done on ideal paragraph length for reading online.

One or two sentences. Three if you have a really short sentence or sentence fragment like I just did.

Big blocks of unbroken text take a lot longer to read than the same amount of text broken up into short paragraphs. By breaking up your text, you’ll making yourself a better writer and keeping the fight thread face-paced.



To Sum Up:
Fight threads are some seriously fun times. If you haven't tried it, do it. If you have, do some more.

To get the most out of your fight threads, talk with your RP partner about the rules of engagement, remember to keep skills/weapons realistic, keep your posts concise and if you get stuck, act it out!

Now get out there and get in some fights.