Lesson 4 - Introduction

[Smooth intro music. Zoom in on two badly drawn figures of goblins, taking turns in hitting each other with a stick, accompanied by "thud" and "oof" sounds. Narrator's voice.]

This is an introductory film on how to fight in RPG's, so-called Role-Playing Games. This part in this interesting series focuses especially on fantasy battling, medieval fantasy to be more precise.

This leaves you many nice options on choice of weapons.

You can use sticks. [zoom on the sticks] Sticks are to be found almost everywhere, but not very effective.

Most warriors will have a standard sword [sticks change into swords, "thud" sounds change into "clink" and "clunk"], or some other blade. [One goblin still has a sword, the other one's sword changes into a dagger, katana, kitchen knife, butcher's cleaver…]

You can of course also choose to have any other medieval weapon, [goblins keep on hitting or poking each other with morning stars, flails, spears, halberds, scythes etc.]

Not necessarily with metal parts [clubs, rocks]

Not necessarily inorganic [bones]

Not necessarily dead [One of the goblins suddenly holds a female imp in his head, and hits the other one on the head with it.]

As you all know, some races are typecast as to prefer one kind of weapon.

[One goblins disappears, the other one looks around goblin-like (this means "dumbly"), then gets hit by arrows, coming from the right. Camera zooms out a little bit, then turns to the right, showing an equally badly drawn elf.]

Elves are said to prefer bows, dwarfs are traditionally shown with axes… But, anything goes. Of course not everyone is a warrior, and some creatures will lack the skills or the strength to wield any heavy weapon.

[Again the figures go poof, and are replaced by two new ones. A weary looking bearded man in a robe, staring at the ground, and a cute looking fairy. The fairy suddenly goes berserk and shoots some cloud like thingy in the wizard's (of course he's a wizard, what did you expect?) direction. Accompanied by a "zzzzzzzooooing" like sound effect. The guy awakes, and quickly pulls a beautiful staff from somewhere in his robes. Image stops.]

Many sorcerers, magicians, wizards or whatever you like to call them, have some sort of magic staff which might have some magical powers of itself, which might be used to hit with when magic fails, or might just look pretty and impressive.

[Film continues, and the wizard conjures up a nice bluish shield, which appears with a clear "ping" sound. The two keep on shooting spells at each other and blocking, "whizzing" "buzzing" "bleeping" "wheeeeing" "prrrrring" "tsssss…" … Eh… You get the point. This film's producer was obviously way to generous for the sound department while he should have spent some more time to find a decent artist…]

Ahem… Enough fun. This was probably rather redundant, not to mention useless information, but it looked funny. Now a little more serious.

Let's say you got this RP thingy down. And you feel ready to get into a fight with someone. There are some rules you should keep in mind.

All in fact just going back on that one really important rule I stressed in my previous post:

Thou shalt not act with other people's characters…

Just scroll up again, and read my bad example with Shadowhawk. See how not to do it?

If you do engage in a fight with anyone, you could do it this way though:

Imagine you've been in this tavern…

Yeah, I do know I've got this tavern fetish thing going on, but they are the easiest examples.

I can think of… Ok, I'll try something else…

Eh…

Imagine you're on this quest, and you're out in the open on a very plain, very dull, very boring field. Suddenly a warrior approaches you, and since you are bored, you challenge him for a duel.

You are RP-dude, he is Pinky.

RP-dude: I saw the huge warrior come closer. I felt bored, so I stepped up to him, and took out my glove. When I stood right in front of him, I slapped him in the face with my glove. "Take your weapon… Let's fight…"

(What do you think? Can this be recorded as one of the lamest RP'lines ever? *LOL*)

Pinky:
Pinky didn't even flinch when he felt the glove in his face. He glared down at the fool who dared to defy him. He slowly drew his sword, and spoke in a harsh voice: "Sir, if this is how you greet every traveller you happen to meet, it is about time someone teaches you some manners…"

Ok… So you did it… You got yourself in a fight… But how to get yourself through it? Not to mention out again?

You can't post this:

RP-dude:
I drew my sword as well, and started slowly turning circles around my opponent. I saw an opening in his defense, and I tried my luck. With one mighty swing, I thrust my sword forward. I felt how the steel cut through the warriors armour / flesh / throat / whatever…

You can however post this:

RP-dude:
I drew my sword as well, and started slowly turning circles around my opponent. I saw an opening in his defence, and I tried my luck. With one mighty swing, I thrust my sword forward. Period.

Same as you can not act for others, you can not decide the damage they take. Strange as this may seem, but it is the victim and not the attacker who decides how badly wounded he is.

Pinky can now choose to either post something like

The warrior easily caught the first blow on his shield. He set a few steps back and looked at the circling fool. When the challenger came closer once more, Pinky swung his sword at him.

Or perhaps: Unbelievable as it might seem, he couldn't react soon enough. He did jump back, but he was one second to late. He heard how the steel of the sword cut through his leather armour. Luckily the blow hadn't been hard enough to do any serious damage. This scratch wouldn't prevent him from continue fighting. But it had made him mad…

Pinky might even love some melodrama and go for (Insert lots of exclamation marks, sobbing, bold letters and longwinded moaning at will. I left them out to keep this example short enough. This is overdoing things though…):

His eyes opened wide as he felt the cold steel penetrate his armour and dig its way through his noble heart. He looked shocked, and dropped his sword.

He walked backwards, and forwards, staggered a little to the side, stumbled to the other side, fell down, rose again, touched the wound with his hands and saw the blood flowing heavily. The truth hit him, and under that weight, he did sink to the ground.

(Long aria vowels, going up and down, and down some more, then really high up again, and down… Keep this up for about 10 minutes, then move on to the next word.)

“Is this how it must end then?” he hissed while looking into the clear blue sky.
The mighty Pinky, slain by a mindless fool. Oh, the shame, the humiliation!
He still couldn't believe it, but as he felt the touch of death, he didn't really have a chance. Time for some impressive last words.

“Aaaargh… I'm melting… melting!… What a world…”

And thus (finally, might I add) a great warrior, Pinky, came to his end. But he lived on. People would tell stories about him… Minstrels would…

*Ormelor shoves the annoying character out of the thread. “Yada yada yada… Shut up fool… You're only an example… Damn attention seekers…”*

Don't worry about not being able to get through once though. It is all part of the realism thing that your opponent will indeed try to take some damage. But you'll probably understand that he won't be all that enthusiastic to see his character getting killed right away.

If he refuses to take a hit, but keeps on slashing on you, he's playing a god-character… It's as simple as that. Don't jump into conclusions too fast though. It's not because he manages to block your two first blows with ease that he's power-gaming already…

As I mentioned before (At least I'm quite sure I did mention it somewhere sometime…), it never hurts to agree upon the outcome of the battle in advance. This usually isn't necessary though, as you should be able to somewhat "feel" where your opponent is going.

If you're not sure, an e-mail can work miracles. You could e.g. ask how long the other one would like to see the fight continue, if he's planning to walk away only lightly scratched, instead of being dragged away. If you know this, you can predict that any hit towards your enemy's chest / head will be easily blocked, while perhaps you do have a chance if you just try to hit his arm or something…

Or you can just ask if it is ok for you to wound the other one, so you can look tough, and hard, and rough, and big, and brave and whatever.

Hrm, I think that's pretty much it…

I already told you about NPC's…