Welcome, one and all, to Ragnarok.
Here's a quick TL;DR so you can decide if you want to read everything below. Characters have magic weapons that operate along a certain theme/concept, what it is is up to you. Battle royale among these wielders of weapons, basically a tournament among OP characters. Yes you can be "overpowered" in the conventional sense, I encourage it, as it's all about exploiting the system and your abilities as best you can to maximize a chance at victory. Winner essentially becomes a god. You can fight your other competitors for the victory, or try and do something like challenge the Game Master instead of going for the battle royale option; the endings you reach depend on your choices. You can kill characters without their RPer's permission, as is necessary for anything with a battle royale premise.
Questions? Read below. Still have questions? Ask me.
Thousands of years ago, generations before recorded history, great civilizations advancing farther than the modern world today fought for world domination. In an attempt to achieve an advantage over the others, the nations turned to the divine beings to grant them weapons. The Gods obliged, warning them that they would pay for it in a future generation. These weapons, aside from having immense power, were directly linked to their wielder's soul. The mortals foolishly took this immortal power and, upon realizing its uncontrollability, were destroyed by it.
Now, civilization has been rebuilt. The modern world has risen. These times were long forgotten, blown away by the test of time and memory.
But the weapons survived. Although scattered across the world, a mysterious entity gathered all of the current wielders of these weapons in the town of Haven. Although they may seem like normal weapons with the disappearance of magic, this mysterious entity created a special dimension, known as Ragnarok, during which these weapons regain their power and magic. The dimension does not disappear until a weapon has been destroyed, and with it, the life of its wielder.
Able to call upon the darkness of Ragnarok at his will, the cruel battle royale between the wielders of divine power begins.
The characters made will be wielders of "weapons" and participants in the battle royale. Your goal in this is simple: win the battle royale by killing all other weapon wielders. Of course, it may be a bit more nuanced than that. You're free to challenge the Game Master of Ragnarok, or any of the other NPCs. You'll "win" if you kill the other competitors, but maybe you can reach a good end for everyone under different conditions. Or maybe you'll just end up destroying the world, it all depends on what you do.
That said, I've got plans sketched out for just about any action you can take, so what sort of plot and ending is reached does depend entirely on you guys. I have no intention of leading down a specific path, carve out whatever choice you like. Below is a rundown of how things work in-RP, as well as a character sheet so you can get an idea of how it all works.
Below are the basics for this. If there's something you don't understand, ask. If there's something you can exploit, do it.
This has two sections. "Mechanics" and "Regulations". Mechanics are the rules of the in-RP world and cannot be broken, because they're just how the game works. Regulations are recommendations made by the Game Master for you to follow in-character. You can break Regulations if you decide you want to, but there may be consequences. Then again, there may not be. It is up to you.
Do not create an alliance with more than two people. Alliance is defined as "fighting together". Nonaggression pacts can be made in any amount.
Do not kill more than one person in a single instance of Ragnarok.
Do not destroy the city.
Do not destroy an area of effect larger than the city.
Do not impose on other universes or dimensions.
Do not attempt to stay hidden for all the war.
Do not attempt to harm, in any way (physical, conceptual, mental, etc) another competitor outside of Ragnarok.
Do not look for the Game Master outside of Ragnarok.
Do not contact law enforcement. Do not contact governmental agencies. Do not contact authority figures.
Do not inform non-competitors of anything regarding Ragnarok or the Weapons.
Do not kill non-competitors.
Do not bring non-competitors into anything regarding Ragnarok or the Weapons.
Do not attempt to become God.
Do not utilize the power of love.
Do not utilize the power of friendship.
Do not attempt to bring back the dead.
Do not violate the law during Ragnarok. The exception is murder.
Do not destroy property during Ragnarok.
Do not attempt to live the rest of your life in Ragnarok.
It is again worth noting that the above Regulations are recommendations, however the way in which the plot plays out depends on your own choices. It might be that following all regulations will necessarily lead to a bad end. Maybe a good end can only be reached by breaking a specific regulation in a certain way. Or maybe this is a lie and you should just follow them all. Up to you.
Everyone can make one character. One.
Character standards are gonna be relatively low. I'll put it right out there. The weapon's the important part. This means I won't force you to have incredibly detailed characters and backstories, they can be plain and relatively simple. Of course, if you want to write a nuanced character, please do. That said, this is still in the Advanced section, so I do expect proper use of English and a propensity away from one-liners and similarly short pieces. Relatively low does not mean "bad", it means I don't need you to pour all your effort into the character; I'd rather that go into the weapon, as that's what you're using to fight.
For all intents and purposes, every character has an equal amount of skill, physical strength, and speed in a fight. This isn't a matter of the fight itself, it's a matter of who has the best weapon and can use it the best.
Ragnarok occurs at a random time every day and lasts until an individual dies. All humans and animals who are not competitors vanish during Ragnarok; the rest of the city remains normal.
You pick a weapon, a name, a description, and either a theme or concept it operates on. Weapons don't need to be legitimate "weapons". A mirror or ring or toy or something is fine. Your OC and weapon functionally share the same soul, so if the two halves get separated from one another (ie your weapon breaks), you die. Don't let your weapon break.
You're allowed for an innate passive magical ability of the weapon, two skills which go along the same theme, and a Last Resort, the "ultimate skill" of the weapon. Skills and Last Resort must be non-passive. Skills can only be used up to 5 times a battle due to energy cost, and Last Resorts may only be used once due to their status as a Last Resort. If magical energy is somehow replenished in battle, the skill use meter will refill but the Last Resort one will not.
In battle, anything marked as "instantaneous" happens faster than something at the speed of light, which in turn happens faster than physical blows that aren't at the speed of light, and so on.
I'll be blunt about this next part: This is a contest of who can design the most broken character, but with style. The only things outright banned are things like Demonbane and similar concepts, and exceedingly vague stuff that lets you cop-out of everything (ie "this lets him change fate". Yeah, that's helpful.). If something seems too broken somehow then it might be prohibited, but otherwise just try and be as abusive as you can. You can loophole and exploit the flaws in my system all you want, but all the information needed for the loophole to work must be there, you can't add stuff in ex post facto.
Stats are on a scale from E to A, with E being 10, D being 20, and so on. There are also half-steps you can use, for instance C Plus or B Minus would be a 35. The lowest a stat can be is 5. The highest one can be is 50. You can't put ranges (D-B), just put the highest point in that range. Max stat total value is 150.
There are two additional rankings called A Plus (51-100), and EX (101 or higher). Both are inaccessible in your initial profile, but you can reach them through things like Growth Potential.
Here's what each does:
Magical Energy: The "power" of your weapon. IE, if attacks clash, who wins out. This doesn't affect indirect clashes unless specified in one of the attack descriptions. For the most part, non-attack "effects" (IE inducing mental interference) will require the you have a higher ME than the target, so you can imprint your magic onto them. There might be exceptions, but those are up to you to find.
Durability: Material strength of the weapon. If Magical Energy is the magical attack and defense, this is the physical. Something with a durability of 20 or more than an oncoming attack's power (ME or Durability depending on the kind of attack) will not take any damage. This only applies to attacks, and not mental interference or things like that. Further, if there is a gap in Durability of 25 or more and two weapons physically clash, the weaker one will necessarily break. If the gap is 20 then two exchanged blows will be needed before it breaks, if 15 then four, if 10 then eight, and if 5 then 16. Weapons cannot be destroyed by non-weapon related things (ie a rock or something), but this doesn't mean that any weapon can cut through every non-magical substance. For all intents and purposes, a weapon's material strength is beyond that of anything non-magical, but if your weapon is something like a feather, then even with the material strength of Durability Rank A, the force needed to make it break something like a rock is still obscene, if not ridiculous. Basically just be rational when dealing with non-magical stuff.
Growth Potential: Potential for power to increase as battles go on. This is the reason it can be dumb to try and hide and let everyone else kill each other. Its effect is a direct function of how many people your character has killed. For every character you kill, add the numerical value of your GP stat multiplied by .8 (rounded to the nearest multiple of five) to your base stats, allocated as you see fit. If the character killed has killed other characters, multiply the number by 1.5 to the x, where "x" is the number of people the deceased character had killed. IE, if Zach kills Emiri and Hiroki, and then Kei kills Zach, then Kei would get 2.25 times his usual amount. No stat boosts may be given to Growth Potential.
Range: Exponential scale of range for a weapon's effect. If it's a plain old sword, it'd be E, but if it shoots laser beams then how far can the laser beams go? E means it barely affects an area around you, A means you can snipe things as you please. Keep in mind this is solely the max potential range of the weapon; if you don't give yourself the capabilities to exercise that range, it's your own fault. If someone's out of your range and you're in theirs you'd best move somewhere else. Here's an approximate scale for use, though these are general guidelines and specifics will be decided by the mods.
5: Limited exclusively to the user
10: About a 2-3 meter radius from the user.
20: About an 8 meter radius.
30: About a 50 meter radius.
40: Just about anything in the "area", IE a given neighborhood, the school grounds, a shopping mall, or something of that nature.
50: If the circle is a city, area of effect with a radius equal to half that of the city's.
Precision/Accuracy: Two purposes. First is a "tiebreaker" if two equally magically powerful blasts or physical attacks or whatever clash, which one comes out on top. In this case, the damage of the winning attack is equal to one-fifth what its power would be otherwise. Second is a more arbitrary scale like that of range, which determines how precise you can be. If you're just swinging a sword around, this doesn't need to be too high. If you're using a bow, you want your arrows to hit their mark, so make this higher. To be more explicit, if the distance between two people on the range scale is greater than one party's Precision, then the difference between the two stats (Range and Precision) is placed over the range stat, and that becomes the likelihood of it missing. For instance, if Sena has a Range of B (40) and a Precision of C (30), and she fires at Takeshi who is at a range of 40 away from her, it is within her range, but the chance of the attack missing will be 10/40, or 25%. This applies to literally anything and everything, if you have a sword with a range of E (10) but a precision of E Minus (5), then about half of your attacks will flat-out miss. With a sword. Don't be dumb about this.
Note: This can be a lot to take in, so feel free to ask questions. I assure you that it's not as complex as it seems in practice, and you'll be given opportunities to get a handle on the system before you have to fight "for real".
The battle system works on the principle of "simultaneous action".
So, first, what is an action?
Every action you have a character take is reliant upon two things: their will, and the effect of the action. If you want to throw a punch, you need to will it, and then the effect of your fist moving to achieve a "punch" is actualized. That's the premise of the system.
How this is treated in terms of time is as follows:
For anything that is not a passive effect or instantaneous skill/Last Resort, the will and action are treated as occurring one after the other. For instantaneous skills and Last Resorts, will and action are simultaneous. For passives, the effect's naturally already in place. If you have a passive effect that paralyzes everyone within your range, then whenever someone's in your range (unless they have a higher Magical Power) they'll be paralyzed before they can even activate an instantaneous skill.
Let's say you have a skill that shoots a beam of light. You will the skill to activate, then the light beam shoots at your opponent. They're technically concurrent and not simultaneous, but because of the speed of light relative to human perception, the time difference between you willing the skill to activate and the light reaching your opponent is incredibly small.
When you take an action, your opponent is allowed to act simultaneously to you. Say that you throw a punch. In their response to your post, your opponent can duck to dodge said punch; the duck is treated as happening at the same time as the punch. This would mean:
-Character A posts punching at B-
-B posts dodging the punch-
Works perfectly fine. Both actions are treated as taking equal amounts of time, as they both require "will a physical motion, then the physical motion occurs". Every physical motion is treated as equal. Punching takes the same time as dodging takes the same time as ducking and jumping and etc. Taking two steps forward takes the same time as taking one step forward and punching.
The same applies for skills. If your opponent uses an instantaneous skill, you can use one at the same time, and both skills activate.
-Character A uses Skill One-
-Character B uses Skill One-
In that example, both characters use their skills at the same time. They aren't dodging or anything like that in that action. But let's say the actions aren't the same. Let's say Character A's skill shoots a beam of light, and this happens:
-Character A uses Beam Skill-
-Character B ducks to dodge the beam-
See, that rather obviously won't work. The wills happen at the same time, meaning A thinks "I want to activate my beam" at the same time as B thinks "I want to duck". After that though, there's the effects. One is a speed of light action, one is a physical human action. If B had a passive that let him move at the speed of light or something though, then dodging like that is perfectly allowable.
Another example, say you activate an instantaneous skill that kills your opponent, and your opponent activates a skill that will shoot a beam of light that'll kill you. Both skills will be fatal when they connect. However, the instantaneous skill will be a fraction of a fraction of a second faster, right? That means the person with the beam skill will be killed before the person with the instantaneous skill. And, once someone dies, Ragnarok automatically ends and magic ceases to exist, so that beam will never reach its target in that case.
Also, speaking of Ragnarok ending: When Ragnarok comes to an end, all wounds, unless they are "cursed wounds" or similarly unusual, are automatically healed, and all surviving competitors are returned to peak condition.
An easier way to conceptualize this is through a concept of "turns". Something like:
Turn 1: A punches
Turn 1: B dodges
Turn 2: A shoots beam of light skill
Turn 2: B shoots beam of light skill
Means that A's punch is dodged, then both characters use their beam skills at the same time, and they may or may not clash depending on where they're aimed.
Now, here's an issue: retconning past actions. Let's say this happens.
Turn 1: A activates beam of light skill to kill B
Turn 1: B activates instantaneous skill to kill A
In this case, the beam reaches A before the punch reaches B, so A gets hit by the beam unless he has some passive to save him or something similar. But let's say after that post by B, A's roleplayer tries to post:
Turn 1: A activates his instantaneous protection skill at the same time as B's skill
See, that won't work. Why? Because A already locked himself into punching during Turn 1. A can't activate two skills at the same time, and A's roleplayer can't say "I want to change from doing my beam of light in turn 1 to doing my protection," as that's a retcon. When you post a character doing an action, they're locked into it from their point of view. If you say A's punching, then A's going to try to punch. No changing that after it's been posted.
Now, this does mean the person who is "reaction", in this case B, has an advantage, because they "know" OOC what A is going to do before they have to post while A goes in blind. This is mitigated partially by the secrecy of weapon apps and the like, but it's also meant to be a deterrent to charging into battle blindly.
Also, let's say we've got something like this:
-A shoots beam skill-
-B shoots beam skill, then punches A-
In that B post, he did two actions. The skill, and the punch. The skill was simultaneous to A's skill, naturally, but the punch came after. That means that A can now act simultaneously to B, which would allow something like:
-A shoots beam skill-
-B shoots beam skill, then punches A-
-A shoots beam skill again-
Where A shoots the beam skill simultaneously to B's punch.
That does raise the question: What sort of actions can be done simultaneously? For this, use logic. You can simultaneously throw two punches, or jump and punch, or something of that ilk pretty easily. In other words, you can do physical actions simultaneously as long as it's physically possible. You cannot however activate two skills simultaneously, or do a skill and physical action in the same time span (unless the physical action is the skill itself).
This might seem difficult to conceptualize, so feel free to ask questions if there's something you don't get. Also, don't worry if you feel like you're going to die in the first battle if you misunderstood something: one of the NPCs has a means by which you can "practice" battling, which also serves as a way to get info on your competitors, but more on that when we start.
This will largely be based on map locations. That said, here's the map of Haven:
Bonus points to anyone who knows what map that's from.
Anyway, the different locations specified on the map are the Map Locations. Whenever you post with your character, please post the following at the top: [Name of Character, Sub-location, Map location]. A sub-location is anywhere within the Map location. For instance, your character's house in the Residential District, or a shopping mall in the Shopping District.
So, for instance: [Angela Messmann, Messmann Residence's Living Room, Residential District A]. This way it's easier to keep track of where everyone is, and prevent them from jumping across town in one post. Maybe you don't want to say where your character is, that's fine. Just put [Name of Character, ???, ???], but in that case you do have to PM me where they are. If you do this, then other people can't "just so happen" to show up at the exact place where you are, so I recommend doing this when in Ragnarok especially. If you do this though, then you might not want to give away your location by including certain details, for instance if I don't say where Angela is, but in the post I say she walked into a shopping mall, that completely defeats the purpose.
You cannot be in a place that is not one of the map locations, unless you are in transit between locations.
When you want to move locations, just say your character's moving locations. You can either say where they're going, or PM it to me to keep it a secret.
I will repeat that I recommend keeping your character's exact location a secret in Ragnarok. This way, you can search for other people while they search for you, and potentially get in the first strike in a battle.
If your character is in a position/location where they will be able to see another character, whether through sight or a passive detection ability or something, I will PM you to let you know.
This really comes down to just applying logic. If you suddenly appear five feet away from another character and attack them, use logic. Would they really have not noticed someone walking straight toward them until they were five feet away? If you do something like this, your post will either be invalidated, or we'll say your post did happen and give your opponent time to react. In other words, in the five seconds it took your character to walk up to the opponent, the opponent killed you five times over.
If I PMed you about a character's location because you can see them though, then you have permission to start a fight so no need to worry. If I didn't and you're worried about this, then the easiest way to be safe is just to PM me before starting a fight.
If you have any questions about that bit, feel free to ask. I know this seems really rules-y, but it's the best way to make this as fair a combat system and reliant on the weapons as possible.
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Appearance:
Personality:
Backstory:
Theme Song (Optional):
ANYTHING BELOW THIS POINT IS NOT APPED NORMALLY, BUT RATHER PMED TO ME. This way, people can't metagame by knowing others' abilities ahead of time
Weapon name:
Weapon Appearance:
Weapon's magical ability:
Magical Power:
Durability:
Growth potential:
Range:
Precision/Accuracy:
Weapon Abilities (Two skills):
Last Resort:
If you're theoretically interested, or have any questions about how this will work out, let me know. Thanks all!
