yoshua171

An Ideal World - Bleach

Just going to tag some peeps right off the bat: @Kalas @Ganryu @MysT3CH @LostBrotherGrimm

An Ideal World - Bleach

In short this is a thread meant to divine what those Bleach fans on the Guild would prefer in regards to a Bleach RP. To start it off I'll give several question as well as the basic end goal of this thread, and any that may follow it.

Thread Goal: Gaining an increased understanding of the Guild's Bleach Community.
Overall Purpose: The creation of a Bleach RP that, with few exceptions, will suit the community mentioned above.

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Questions and Answers

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Herein will be questions that need answering, as well as those that have been answered--by either myself or through discussion among others. Later on this will become the RP's FAQ.

Q: Will the RP include canon characters--playable or otherwise?
A: No it will not, the RP will be decidedly AU with mention of the canon characters being either minimal or non-existent.

Q: Would people like to be able to create unique histories and their own lore (royal families, factions, races) at some point in the RP?
A: ????

Q: Would people like to have the chance to lead their own Arcs later in the RP?
A: ????

Q: As Bleach is a verse centered around conflict between factions and inviduals, it stands to reason that an RP based on it will also be as such. The question is, what races do people prefer to be playable? Shinigami, Arrancar, Quincy, Spiritually Aware Humans, etc etc.
A: ????

Q: Would people prefer the story's villain faction to be playable, or ought they be controlled by the GMs entirely--or is a middle ground best?
A: ????

Q: Should there be a limit to how many characters a player can make?
A: ????

Q: ????
A: ????

An Ideal World - Bleach

In short this is a thread meant to divine what those Bleach fans on the Guild would prefer in regards to a Bleach RP. To start it off I'll give several question as well as the basic end goal of this thread, and any that may follow it.

Thread Goal: Gaining an increased understanding of the Guild's Bleach Community.
Overall Purpose: The creation of a Bleach RP that, with few exceptions, will suit the community mentioned above.

---

Questions and Answers

---

Herein will be questions that need answering, as well as those that have been answered--by either myself or through discussion among others. Later on this will become the RP's FAQ.

Q: Will the RP include canon characters--playable or otherwise?
A: No it will not, the RP will be decidedly AU with mention of the canon characters being either minimal or non-existent.

Q: Would people like to be able to create unique histories and their own lore (royal families, factions, races) at some point in the RP?
A: ????

Q: Would people like to have the chance to lead their own Arcs later in the RP?
A: ????

Q: As Bleach is a verse centered around conflict between factions and inviduals, it stands to reason that an RP based on it will also be as such. The question is, what races do people prefer to be playable? Shinigami, Arrancar, Quincy, Spiritually Aware Humans, etc etc.
A: ????

Q: Would people prefer the story's villain faction to be playable, or ought they be controlled by the GMs entirely--or is a middle ground best?
A: ????

Q: Should there be a limit to how many characters a player can make?
A: ????

Q: ????
A: ????

A Patchwork World [Worldbuilding and Exploration]

For anyone who has yet to post, do you perhaps need any assistance in setting something up? I'm here to help :)

Bleach: Reborn

@Blackbeard Ah. I do see your point and I understand your intentions. I will make one comment in regards to your assessment of me: Yes it's more like a game than a movie to me. However, it's like an RPG MMO, and people like to RP their characters in those, create guilds, stories, etc etc.

Nonetheless, we seem to have conflicting views on the subject and while we could probably go on and on about it (I know I could), I see myself becoming frustrated with the debate, not because of anyone else, but because i know myself. So I think I'll just back out.

Two last things though before I leave you to it.

One, I am a RPer as are all of you, and more often than not RP is a shortened version of Roleplaying, as you well know, but this is often a short form of Roleplaying game. Those are the roots of what we're doing. So the original nature of things is more in line with a game than it is a movie. Also, I get excited to see what my character will do as well as to see how people will respond to those actions. That is to say I enjoy writing my characters as they often surprise me despite my having created them. It's not so much that I have a conflict between being a reader and being a writer, so much as it is that I RP because that's what RPing IS. It is reading other people's responses to your writing and then responding in kind.

Secondly, I did say I wasn't good at explaining my point and in the process of failing to explain it I learned something from the responses to it. Namely, how better to explain it. The question was never really an ego thing such as "How could your character possibly beat mine??" but more along the lines of "How could anyone know how another character will act when faced against someone else that they've never fought before. How can you believably predict that dynamic and then decide who ought to win?" The answer is you can't. At the end of the day you're making the decision based entirely off of character development and plot (which I understand and wish you luck on as i would any other), but also happens to be something I don't agree with.

It's the equivalent of Ichigo...

spoilers

...winning against Ulquiorra out of nowhere with his Hollow transformation for the plot...

...when he clearly was outclassed, outgunned, and utterly dwarfed by him in power/skill/experience. It's not believable. I'm not saying that's how it will turn out all the time, or even most of the time, but that's my reasoning and it's also one of the big reasons I dislike predetermining, well, anything in a RP unless it's far off and the event isn't affected by the actions of players aside from certain adjustments.

Regardless, I wish this the best as it's nice to see a Bleach RP gaining some traction on the Guild again. unfortunately, and sadly for me, it seems it's not quite my cup of tea ^^;

Anywho, ciao~

Bleach: Reborn

<Snipped quote by yoshua171>
... at which point you're working out the outcome beforehand anyway. :P

@Raineh Daze

Nope, not the same thing actually. I can explain if you're interesting, if not I'll just leave it at that for the sake of simplicity haha.

Bleach: Reborn

Edit: To address your statement, too often the battle dissolves into a dick measuring contest, where one (usually the loser) does something incredible, then the other one ups them, then, because neither wants to lose, and there really is no limit to what you can do in writing, the battle becomes more and more ridiculous.

This is just one way a battle can go, another, would be one does something the other sees as unfair, they argue, and one gets so frustrated they either quit or stall.

Predetermining the winner is by no means a perfect solution, but it is one solution.

@Crimson Raven

Ah, yeah I have seen this happen before as well. Often some easy measures of certain skills (in bleach: Hoho, Hakuda(hand to hand combat) Zanpakuto(ability to wield it, rather than its abilities), reiatsu/reiryoku, and Kido tend to help with that a lot.

Having a measuring stick that's the same for everyone helps figure out who is good at what and assist in making sure that someone who has better swordsmanship than someone else wins in a sword clash (barring special circumstances and tactics) helps. That way you can objectively go “Oh, your character is faster than mine, alright, so I won't be blitzing them or vanishing from sight unless it's an ability or I trick them with clever footwork and obstacles.” Etc etc etc. So on and so forth.

I've always gotten more bored having to take fights seriously, especially as half the time it turns into someone churning out a wall of text trying to cover the next several moves in a fight that reads something like:

Do X
If X Succeeds, Do Y
If Y Succeeds, Do Z else Do A
Else Do Z a different way OR A

With so many conditions that it's never clear what the hell is going on and replying posts have to navigate a damn flowchart and then end up looking the same... whilst being an unreadable rat's nest that has gone from past tense to various forms of future.

If you know who's going to win, then you can focus on making it... well, readable. And have both players working towards the same outcome rather than two different victories. It's not hard to work together.

@Raineh Daze

Yeah, this often happens when someone--foolishly--tries to do one hundred things in the same post OR, conversely, tries to cover any possible action with a beneficial reaction (one that benefits them to be specific). It's not a good move and it is often far more intelligent (and saves time) to keep your responses relatively simple, or at least without too many "what ifs."

Not only is having too many clunky and breaks immersion, but there is no possible way to cover all possible actions of your opponent, there just isn't. I know this from experience, also because people try to do that to me all the time and every single time they do it, it fails and blows up in their faces (because I like attacking from oblique angles, so to speak. If you give me two options, I'm more likely to make a third, fourth, and fifth option and take one of those instead).

Bleach: Reborn

@yoshua171
Hello, hello, I think I know you :P

@Crimson Raven

You do you do! Lol haha. I was in the Fairy Tail RP for awhile. Phoenix Wing I believe?

I had the enchanter (of sorts).

@Rin One other thing to add to my previous point. Maybe a bet isn't the best thing to compare this to.

It's more like this:

Fighting someone is a risk and just like in real life, if there is no pay off or no positive thing to gain from taking that risk, then what's the point of taking the risk? The answer is there really isn't a point in doing so. Why would you do something risky if the only thing you got out of it was crushing failure, getting hurt, dying, etc etc.

The only counterpoint I can think of is that you might learn from your mistakes(provided you survive, as combat in Bleach tends to be fatal for the losing party), which can make for good character development (in both real life and in a RP), but that's not my problem. If my character loses, that's fine. I just want the chance to let the fight and the interaction in that fight decide that loss, rather than a third party or a conversation prior. Regardless, I'm a late comer and it seems like people in the previous thread are essentially for that rule so my complaints/points are probably just arguing against a foregone conclusion.

Bleach: Reborn

At the end of the day I care more about the uncertainty of it which creates a certain tension and I enjoy the development that takes place during that combat. Plus the "winning," feeling, for me, is more along the lines of "Yes, my tactics payed off :D"

I'd be less inclined to really care about a fight if nothing was on the line. It's just like how making a bet is virtually meaningless unless there's actually something you're betting for. I don't know. I'm weird. I'm also bad at explaining this because it's not really a logical thing, not entirely at least.

EDIT: The best way I can think of to say it is this:

It's not about who wins or loses, it's about the quality of the fight and if the two people enjoy it. I happen to enjoy the fight more if I don't know who wins. Otherwise my throwing in so much effort into it doesn't really feel terribly meaningful.

More often than not whomever wins a fight, unless it's one of those things that is judged by a 3rd party (which I've seen work negatively too...blah. I've RPed too long xD), I'll commend their efforts, congratulate them, and say "Well fought," or a similar phrase *shrugs*

If that fails to properly explain, then "To each their own," I guess.

Bleach: Reborn

@Blackbeard Sorry to @mention you three times in the last few hours, but here I go again.

So I'm scrolling through the conversations and ideas presented in the previous thread (which is what revealed the existence of this thread to me) and I noticed the "predetermined," fight conclusion thing. So um, I know I am biased towards fights that aren't predetermined, but I have to ask the following:

How do you intend to determine who wins the fight?

This is one of the problems I've seen with predetermined failures or wins is that the fight starts playing out and it reaches a point wherein it becomes either very murky as to which individual ought to win, or one person ends up being an underdog and being able to win against a stronger opponent due to skillful positioning and exploiting someone's weaknesses.

How do you accurately decide what character can beat another character and then make it feel somewhat realistic (or rather believable) if one person appears to clearly have the advantage, but they are slated to lose?

Also gotta say that having fights be predetermined is something that bothers me as I enjoy the uncertainty of not knowing who comes out on top. While I do enjoy winning, it's really more about the tension created between the two RPers and thus their characters that not knowing who will win produces. I don't know, just some food for thought. Even if I opt out of joining, I figured it was a question worth asking. Also, apologies if you answered a similar question/concern in the previous thread and my asking this proves pointless (as I admit I'm not finished reading through that thread just yet--though I am doing so now).

So yeah. That haha ^^; *rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, unsure of how to end his post. Ends it awkwardly*