Ellri

A question for the veteran RPers here on the site !

we can (mostly) sum your entire post into a few words, @ScreenAcne:

Sufficiently suitable character flaws.

Formaroth: Battle for the Throne

Aye. it was interesting. we learned some from the link too.

that's one of the things we like about formaroth... Realism for things like armor, even as magic is mixed in.

Formaroth: Battle for the Throne

we were a bit uncertain exactly ourselves, so we started looking up facts, rather than guessing fully.

Some people who know more than we do about this explaining

Going from what we read there, any sort of edged weapon (axe, sword, etc) are pretty useless against good, quality plate armor. You don't cut through the plate. Spiked or really pointy weapons have a better chance (thrust spears, spike end of a poleaxe, ballistae, heavy crossbows, longbow arrows), but you don't cut the plate with anything non-magical, and since Formaroth lacks enchanted weapons, that's the relevant physics, we think.

A blunt instrument like a maul or a mace might dent the armor and make it rather uncomfortable to wear. Maybe break a few ribs or other bones, but probably won't instantly kill the way a spiked weapon would. Plate armor is designed with curves that make edged blows slide off. Even a spiked weapon needs a lot of force to get around this.

The classic "boob" plate for females with well-defined cleavage work just the opposite way, guiding blows in to where they're most inconvenient to be hit, so that doesn't count.

Should a bladed weapon penetrate the plate, it must already be extremely compromised, so either the wearer is already rather injured, or he will be so shortly afterwards. having a non-moving surface to serve as "anvil" for the strike, like the ground, will help potential penetration. A prone individual wearing plate armor is about as safe as a turtle on its back with severely restricted ability to roll back over.

EDIT(ish): seems even longbows have problems punching through the breastplate part of plate mail.

Formaroth: Battle for the Throne

Just to be a bit picky... On that sheet... We do wonder what a major injury is if a minor injury includes a direct hit by a battleaxe to the torso that cuts through the thickest plate on a suit of heavy plate armor...
Our understanding of physics dictates that such will lead to a rather crushed torso with some fairly inconvenient leakage...

Thinking about the Scope of Rps

Aye. A plot can easily be expanded without breaking. But you have to tie off some branches around the times new ones grow in. If going by the examples above, Robert Jordan failed to do so and had trouble towards the end, whereas GRRM keeps killing major characters, effectively terminating excess branches.

We'd rather have a slightly vague, convoluted plot with lots of entropy to mess around with than a plot that is railroaded along a single, unbranching set of tracks. So long as the main story can be moved forwards even as branches do their stuff.

A question for the veteran RPers here on the site !

Hates in what manner, @Ashevelendar?

Thinking about the Scope of Rps

Sounds sensible, @Shoryu Magami.

Thinking about the Scope of Rps

The biting off more than you can chew issue is particularly common in the larger, well-established universes.

One prime example of this is the World of Darkness setting. We've yet to see a single RP there last more than a few weeks or so. The vast majority we've seen there, permitted characters from all the core settings (vampires, werewolves, changelings, mages, etc...) which in the end meant that few if any characters had much of any reason to interact. Even when it is limited to just one of the core settings, like Vampire: the Masquerade, there's quite a few clans to choose from, which can lead to the same lack of interaction options.

Its all well and nice with a vast setting, but sometimes, smaller ones with clearly defined limits are easier to set up. We ourselves are approaching launch of a massive Star Wars RP, within which we hold rather strict limits on the types of character allowed, simply to make sure that people will interact. In a galaxy as vast as that one, the players will be forced to be primarily upon one or two worlds, despite there being all sorts of other worlds out there too. This again, is to keep them together, where they'll interact.

It has not got a clearly defined end, but that is quite simply because we don't yet know where the characters will take it. We've got several options noted down, but who knows if any of them will be applicable. We've made plenty of mistakes in its execution in the past, as this will be the third time that RP is launched, each time redesigned to take care of the major issues that popped up.

The players, spread out across 3-4 factions, will drive the plot themselves, and however they end up doing stuff, that's where the story will go.

The best rp moments in your life.

Indeed.

When players have set a goal, no matter how suicidal it might be, discouraging them can be nigh impossible.

The best rp moments in your life.

Indeed, @shylarah. Problem comes when nobody is around to pull out that bacon on account of the players going where they really ought not to go.