LeeRoy

Arena Chat Thread

@Fallenreaper
It's not that I'm trying to argue with any one person here, it's a convention that I'm trying to break apart with actual realism rather than determined realism. Y'know?

I'm tired of seeing an entire lack of Spaghetti Western duels because they think they'll just be over in a single shot. Or organized soldiers in an obscure Middle Eastern city running and gunning against eachother.

It's this lack of an entire section of roleplaying that people don't get to experience because of a convention that is simply WRONG because people don't go about it the RIGHT way.

Edit: Also gun-fu is the tightest shit in the history of shit and the fact that it is literally non-existent in the Arena is the most disappointing thing I've ever seen.

Arena Chat Thread

@Fallenreaper And no, I can't bring this to PMs. This is a legitimate complaint that has ruined an entire portion of roleplaying for me since I joined. I've held in my complaints for damn near two and a half years and now's about the time where I finally settled it.

Arena Chat Thread

@Darth
I understand this series of logic, it's been touted to me time and time again. But it absolutely doesn't change my argument of human level roleplaying. I'm not talking about mid tier, I'm talking about flatline human level combat. Using only real weapons and real human abilities.

Let's break it down piece by piece and try to tear apart this argument that I keep running into every time I bring this up.

1: Impossible to dodge? Yes. Impossible to survive? No. If you can't dodge it, survive it. Where YOU get shot is up to you. Plus, Humans have this keen little ability to move faster than the hand of another human. We do it all the time. Don't dodge the bullet, avoid the line of fire entirely. If you're fighting against a person who HAS a gun, and don't HAVE a gun. You should be prepared to have to dodge and weave, serpentine and roll. Cover is totally up to the game master or players, relying solely on a flat plane where you fight your opponent is stupid. No matter what weapon you're using, a flat plane doesn't really exist in real life. Save for maybe a city street, but even then you've got windows nearby that you could leap into.

Giving the enemy every advantage, giving them what basically equates to a shooting range is stupid and your own fault for agreeing to it anyway.

2: This is true, entirely. I can't argue the sheer ease of using a gun, it's simple to point and click someone dead. People do it all the time, there's literally training programs to show you how to do it better. Though to mitigate this point, please refer to point 1 and 3.

3: Yes, the damage of a bullet is substantial. EVERYONE understands that. However, the damage a human body can survive by simply being durable is just as much as most bullets put out. This has been proven time and time again, with the numerous cases I just listed. And as I stated before, just because people HAVE died to guns before, doesn't mean that they WILL die to guns. No matter how normal a human character IS, they're still more than human. The writer knows what the character does not. A great writer can, yeah, sort of circumvent this. But a competetive writer doesn't want to circumvent this, becasue it means they're going to lose. So instead of just giving them this shooting range where the marksman has the total advantage, you give a REAL battlefield.

This is the thing so often overlooked by writers in the Arena, but never overlooked by action movies and shooter games. An absense of cover is suicide. A realistic amount of cover is, well, realistic.

If you don't want guns to be overpowered, don't LET them be. Don't give them a shooting range with a slow moving target that drops in a single shot.

Give them a setting with a human that can survive a shot or two.

Arena Chat Thread

@Gun I doubt we'll continue that one, I'm probably gonna use a totally different roster for this year than I did for last year. I kinda came to that conclusion while I was on hiatus. I tried to improve my writing by researching through the library, and that worked out pretty decently. I now own a pretty decently sized collection of comics and my character sheets are going to be improved from what they once were.

No longer will I rely on numbers and shit to portray a character's ability, since I've realized that's kinda part of the problem that makes judgements in tournaments a hassle. "This number is bigger than his number, so my number wins." And all that.

The fight with @DLL will be my first experimental foray into this new area of roleplaying for me. Speaking of, I'll have my sheet written up in about two more hours, sorry for the wait.

Arena Chat Thread

It's not luck! It's human durability!

There was a soldier who had been shot, he was left behind with a gun with like six or eight bullets. They returned later to find that he had killed eight enemy soldiers, and then died. Simply because he survived longer than they could, because he was better at surviving than they were.

It's not luck, it's not happenstance, it's not even cheating! Humans can survive just about anything save for a shot to the heart and cerebral cortex without dropping for a fair stretch of time.

This logic fuels this circlejerk that makes human level roleplaying a joke!

Arena Chat Thread

@ImportantNobody It's exactly that same problematic logic that fuels this circular argument! Just because it CAN happen doesn't mean it's guaranteed. A human CAN survive a gunshot to the head, a human CAN die to a gunshot to the head.

Also, marksmen characters are never untrained in any regard. They're always able to shoot the tits off a maggot from a mile away with a nine mil.

Arena Chat Thread

The debate isn't whether or not your average joe can survive. It's this stupid aversion that literally everyone in the Arena and pretty much every other writing medium has to guns. Though I did honestly make it out to be the former, and I apologize for not being clear what point I was making. I also apologize for the rant, because this isn't actually directed at you @Dazsos. Though your statement did actually arise the frustration in me. I feel as though I'm being an asshole, and again I apologize. Anything from this point onwards isn't directed at you, and I pray you don't interpret it as such.

It's honestly just me venting.

Even the weakest human characters in writings, no matter how normal you want them to seem? They're superhuman. If normal humans HAVE survived gunshots, then why can't the ones who aren't simply normal humans, but important characters survive?

This stupid fucking aversion is the most infuriating mindset I have ever read and it is entirely universal.

Humans have survived shotgun blasts to the face, they've had acid thrown on them and they've performed surgery on themselves. These were all normal human beings. And yet somehow, in the most aggressive community among roleplayers. Save for nation roleplayers, apparently. We shy away from this normalcy and pretend as though a single gunshot is going to be enough to stop our soldier from saving those children from the crazed mass murdererr. We fear that we're going to be judged because:

"Oh well people have died from being shot! People die when they are killed!" It's this totally encapsulated and entirely immovable reasoning that is the biggest reason I HATE ROLEPLAYING AT ANYTHING LESS THAN HIGH TIER.

Because humans are always marked down as these fragile little babies who are to be cherished and protected, instead of the race of incredibly hardy surviving apex beasts that we truly are. No we aren't the strongest, fastest, or even the toughest.

But we can survive anything. That man survived two atomic bombs within a few miles from the drop-zone. Another man had his entire face blown off in combat and is still alive today with a prosthetic face mask. Other men have artificial limbs from being trapped in an explosion's blast radius.

And yet we think that a single gunshot wound is going to drop these characters who can't even really be considered humans?

They're better than humans. They don't make the same kinds of mistakes that we do. Their mistakes lie in the writer over-estimating their ability, rather than mistakes in their own action. They get caught in some loop of logic.

Which is fine, even the greatest humans make mistakes.

All I'm saying is that if human level combat isn't to be considered a fucking joke, then it should at least take into consideration how fucking tough humans actually god damn are.

Sorry for the rant.

Arena Chat Thread

@Dazsos
Are you literally contesting human fortitude when I could go out of my way to list off hundreds of cases of human beings surviving and thriving after being shot?

Don't underestimate a human being when you're trying to kill a human being. That will get you killed.

Edit: To completely drive this point home. Here's a guy who throws your logic out the window. Enjoy.

Arena Chat Thread

@Dazsos Well you've gotta look on the opposite side of things. Humans are notoriously hard to kill, especially the tough ones. A human can be riddled with so many bullet holes that they look like swiss cheese. As long as it doesn't irreparably damage a vital organ, they can keep kicking. And even then.

Humans can survive on half a brain, a single lung, one kidney, half a liver, one kidney, so on and so forth.

Guns are super lethal.
Humans are designed to survive lethal things.

Arena Chat Thread

@DLL I'd say I'm about half finished with his sheet.