Darth

Arena Chat Thread

@DLL

I understand that being told something along the lines of "hurr durr you're shit because you use guns" is grating, but here's the thing: that's not what I'm saying, so while I agree that it's entirely unfair for someone to have that attitude, I don't think it has much of anything to do with what I've been saying in my posts. I've never dismissed guns as an entertaining and legitimate tool for characters to use, all I've said -- for the entirety of my posts -- is that, given the way they operate, they're not fair for mild powers play. So, while I sympathize with people getting shat on just because they like playing with firearms, that's not really what's happening in my posts. I don't possess or promote that attitude. Never have.

Is it possible to have a mild powered gun fight? Yes. Is it possible to gear and tool two mild powered characters specifically to have some kind of running gun-fight? Sure. Both of these things are entirely possible. I would even encourage people to do so, if that's what they want to do.

That's not how we dictate when something is or isn't fair, though. It's not a question of possibility or probability. I come from a community that cohered strongly around tournaments, so I'll use that as an example, but you can apply the same reasoning to entire communities:

Let's say I'm running a mild-poweres tournament. Thirty-odd people submit character profiles for the event. Chances are, I already have a fair gauge of where the community plays at, and now I have access to their profiles. If I look through them and I see that 28 out of 32 characters are in no way, shape, or form equipped to reasonably deal with gunfire, then I can draw the conclusion that firearms wouldn't be a fair inclusion for the tier of power the tournament is playing at. When I said "reasonably deal with", what I'm really looking at is how much of an advantage the firearm will provide, and in mild powers, a firearm is really an ability-set that can fire projectiles without a cooldown or prep, so it's a little too advantageous. It'd be like someone's profile saying they can shoot 200mph fireballs every turn for ten turns in a row. I wouldn't think that's acceptable at mild powers any more than I would consider firearms balanced.

The same thing goes for communities at a macro level, and that's where the issue comes from: most characters in that community might not be equipped to reasonably deal with firearms at that level of power. That doesn't mean it's not possible to gear a character specifically for that purpose. It doesn't mean that you can't make it work. When you're discussing if something is fair or balanced, it's more a question of how it's going to function against most characters, not against a few who fit into a specific niche. In the majority of communities I've seen where mild powers is de rigueur for fighting, the characters aren't really built to handle a gun-fight. They're built, as you said, to handle a magic-duel-street-brawl sort of rumble.

Every tier of power is like that. Once you go high enough in power, most of the characters in lower tiers become more or less inconsequential. On the reverse, the lower in power you go, the more effective certain powers and pieces of equipment are.

Again, it's not that firearms are impossible to use at mild powers, it's that they're going to be too much of an advantage against a majority of characters, at least in a specific community. So while I can appreciate that people are a little tired of the condescendingly dismissive attitude that they get from some people, I also don't think it has much bearing on what I'm saying because there's been nothing insulting in my arguments, and it's not systemic abuse for people who play at a specific tier of power to disallow items that give too much of an advantage at that tier.

If two people get together and said "We're going to have a mild powers gunfight" and they set-up their characters for it, or if someone wanted to run a tournament where it was mild powers + guns under the premise that participating characters are designed for that niche, then more power to them. I'd support the latter -- I pretty much support any tournament that's run with an eye for detail. Both of those things are well and good, but it doesn't change the fact that people have valid, understandable reasons for keeping firearms outside of mild powers.

On that note, even though I'm busy with my own project: if someone does want to run a tournament centered around characters who are designed to fit the mild powers niche with the addition of gunplay in order to let people play with the idea, I'd be up for helping hammer out the rules and/or provide some brainstorming on what kind of characters could work in that niche. Just because I think firearms are inbalanced for most mild powers characters doesn't mean I'm not happy to see someone play with the specific niche where they can work. I'm basically all-for any kind of competitive event provided it's operated properly.

Arena Chat Thread

Whatever you say, sunshine.

Arena Chat Thread

@Darth This kind of logic is exactly why this god damned pillar of "guns r bad" has remained standing for so long.

@LeeRoy

I never made that argument. I have literally never once said that guns are bad. I said that guns are unbalanced in mild powers. My logic has nothing to do with why people think "guns are bad." My logic has to do with why guns aren't used in mild powers, but are considered completely acceptable at any power level beyond that.

hat convention is fucking stupid.

It's not stupid, you've just decided that somehow I hate guns and that's a carte blanche to ignore the entire premise of my argument, which is entirely based on whether or not something is fair and balanced for play in mild powers.

A human with a gun is not equivalent to a mild-powered character, they may have a similar damage potential.

You're right, they're not an equivalent: they're more powerful, and they have a great deal more damage potential. Any character that can potentially kill you from 500 feet in a single post without a single prep or cooldown being activated isn't in mild powers. That's more powerful than what mild powers allows, which is why the convention exists. In mild powers, you're not going to have a character that can potentially kill someone at long range on post two because that plainly supersedes the limits of the tier. As a general rule, things that go above and beyond a tier of power usually aren't allowed in that tier. That's rather the point of the whole notion.

At this point I see you won't move on your stance, because you're too ingrained in this belief.

I don't have any reason to change my belief, you've provided zero evidence or reasoning to explain how guns are balanced and fair to fight against in mild powers, whereas I defined what I considered to be "mild powers" several pages ago and have since explained exactly why they're not balanced OR fair -- and you even agreed! That's what's funny: I give three reasons for why a gun is unbalanced in this context and you agree that all three are true, but then you proceed to ignore the information as if it has no bearing on the situation.

And no, I'm not "ingrained" in the belief. I've been fighting almost exclusively at mild powers for my entire time as roleplayer, from 2007 to now. If I really thought guns were capable of being fair and balanced, I would have discovered it at some point in nine years of fighting across a half-dozen different communities. I've run tournaments that have quadruple the number of people in them as the entire ranking board of Arena. Do you really think that, in a nine year run as both a fighter and an administrator, that I've never examined the issue, or that I've never developed any kind of first-hand experience in play-testing the idea?

I mean, give us some credit: I didn't spend all nine years making "super tite" jokes and posting Trailer Park Boys gifs.

Only most of those nine years were spent making those jokes and I didn't watch Trailer Park Boys until 2010.

EDIT::

I get the argument against firearms in Street Fighter-level lowbie fights - there's a reason no serious military force makes use of non-firearm infantry weapons in a primary capacity anymore. A man with a rifle is going to be in a better spot to win a fight than a man with anything introduced before rifles existed. I totally understand wanting to avoid the headache of dealing with guns in a dispowered/low-power setting, and in fact generally agree with the logic as proper firearms use is a game-winner at those levels.

@DLL

The last line is what I've been saying the entire time. We're using different terminology, but it's essentially the same claim.

Arena Chat Thread

@Fallenreaper While that's true, the difference between a mage and someone with a Glock 17c is that the mage probably has to wait on preps/cooldowns between their spells, but the person with the Glock can fire their gun for seventeen posts in a row if they only fire one round per post. No cooldown, no wait, no preps.

That's what I mean by no drawbacks. My character can't punch you in the face with lightning for seventeen posts in a row, but someone with a pistol and an extended mag can spend every post slinging lead if they want, and the pistol's like to do way more damage at a much greater distance. That's where the disparity comes in (for mild powers).

That's also why I like magitech/future-tech weapons for mild powers. You can have a laser gun that is reasonably balanced, or a spell-gun ala Outlaw Star. You still get the same aesthetic, but none of the issues.

Arena Chat Thread

@LeeRoy

1: Impossible to dodge? Yes.

Everything after this is immaterial to my point, honestly. Whether or not you can survive it doesn't matter. I'm not talking about whether or not someone can survive a gunshot. I'm not talking about whether or not someone can hide behind cover and avoid being shot. Not really - these are factors, but they aren't the core of the argument. I'm talking about whether or not the weapon is fair at a specific level of character power, and the answer is no. The fact that, again, we have outliers of survival, or scenarios where we avoid being shot don't alter the argument at all. It doesn't change the fact that a firearm is a) more or less impossible to react to without prior notice, b) has no drawbacks and c) is capable of enormous damage at tremendous range. By addressing each of these things singly, you effectively ignore the entire reason why guns are an issue: because they represent a multi-layered problem that most mild powered characters cannot reasonably fight against. "Surviving" and "fighting against" are not the same thing.

The issue isn't solely that "guns kill people." Swords kill people. Knives kill people. Fire kills people. Nearly everything you find in mild powers can kill someone.

The issue is that guns are capable of doing so with enough efficiency, with enough damage, and at a significant enough range to tip the scales significantly in favor of the person who's using the gun, and with no draw-backs for them. That's the reason they're a problem. Again: it's not a question of survival. It's a question of "Can someone reasonably defend against this?" It's a question of "How much of an advantage does this give me in a fight?"

The entire reason we have tiers of character power is to avoid a situation where one character has too much of an advantage. So, by an extension of that, if a gun gives a character such a significant advantage in mild powers, the conclusion would be that it isn't fair. We allow and disallow certain supernatural powers and certain weapons based on whether or not they give an undue advantage, that's how we define the differences between one tier of power or another.

That's it. I'm just outlining why guns are so potent weapons in the context of mild powers, and it's that potency that sees them disbarred so often. It's because they're powerful enough to make the fight one-sided, and that, again, runs contrary to the entire notion of having tiers of power.

You acknowledged every point I made in my post: impossible to dodge, easy to use, no drawbacks, and capable of enormous damage from afar. All of those things combined are simply too much of an advantage in mild powers. That's why they're disbarred. It's not a survival issue. It's a balance/fairness issue. Always has been. I'm not going to argue that people can survive gunshot wounds, because that really doesn't have much of anything to do with the point I'm making.

EDIT:: Again, we're talking purely LOW/MILD POWERED. As DLL referenced, guns are completely and totally fine at higher levels of power where a character can reasonably account for them. That's what balance comes down to -- can a character reasonably account for it? At the lower scales of power, the answer is really no. Not inasmuch as a fight is concerned.

Arena Chat Thread

It's not an argument about whether or not a character can survive a gun-shot -- not entirely. Being run through with a sword is as liable to put a damper on your day as being shot, in terms of whether or not you're about to shuffle off the mortal coil due to fatal wounds.

The issues with firearms IN MILD POWERS are threefold:

1) The ability to attack at range at speeds that are, by and large, going to be impossible or nearly impossible to dodge or accommodate. See: a 125 grain .308 Winchester travels at 3,100 ft/s. If someone is 100 feet away, you have .03 seconds react with a meaningful defense, be it a dodge or a block. At mild powers, that's not likely to happen.

2) No particular draw-backs or means of mitigating the weapon's use. This is especially an issue with automatic weapons. If I have a Glock 17c, it doesn't matter if I miss my first shot. I have sixteen others. At least with a bow or crossbow, I have to re-nock and draw. With a firearm, that action is removed entirely until you have to change your magazine. If I have 17 rounds loaded, I have, effectively, 17 attempts to hit you. No cooldown, no preps or charges required.

3) The capacity for enormous tissue damage. Sure, you can find outliers who survive getting shot. You can even find soldiers who might continue to fight in some circumstances. But you know what you find a lot more of? People who died. Millions of them. Tens of millions, from WW1 onward. Even if a person can survive, that's not really the question. The question is: what kind of damage am I doing? The answer varies, but usually falls into the area of "a fucking lot." The next question is "How hard is it for me to do this damage?" and the answer is "Not very."

So what you have is: a weapon capable of striking from a considerable distance, capable of doing enormous amounts of trauma/damage, that has no draw-backs to its use. It's essentially stronger than any supernatural power a character might have at mild powers, but has zero limiting factors other than how many bullets and how talented the character is at shooting. And let's be real: the former is a minor issue, and the latter is probably non-existent when every character is essentially proficient at their chosen form of combat. The reason people disallow guns in mild powers isn't solely because of the fatality of the weapon. A sword is fatal, but I can't hit you with a sword seventeen times from 100 feet away at 3,100 ft/s in mild powers.

The question isn't "Can someone survive it?" The question is"Can someone reasonably defend against it?"

Again, this is purely for MILD POWERS. There's absolutely zero reason to disbar guns from higher tiers of power. Guns are actually one of the reasons I will play at higher tiers, because otherwise they see so little use. My Kindred vampire uses guns, and used to get shot all the time. My Shadowrun character, as previously described, will gladly run face-first into gunfire. But these characters are meant to be played at a level where firearms aren't game-changers.

Arena Chat Thread

Guns are definitely an issue for a lot of characters in the mild powers tier (re: using the definition I posted previously, for specific reference purposes). However, it depends on where in the tier the character is, too. A character at the upper end of the tier can probably deal with them. Once you hit sort of that point where a character can conceivably cross over from one tier to the next, guns become very much standard "tools of the trade" in that they're useful, but not game-changing. At that point, they're no longer much of an issue at all.

My main character is definitively "mild powers." He's square in the middle of the tier. He has ablative armor designed to withstand gun-shots and slashing attacks, but someone with a .357 Saturday Night Special will end the fight post-haste if they put six in his chest if for no other reason than that they've done so much deep tissue trauma to him that he's going to be hard-pressed to keep fighting. That's assuming his armor holds up after the first two or three shots - if not, he's very likely dead If the opponent is, say, 30 feet away, well -- there's not much hucking or jiving he can do to get out of the way. In the words of the helicopter machine gunner from Full Metal Jacket, you just don't lead 'em as much.

On the other hand, my Shadowrun character can eat a faceful of birdshot and not give a shit. He's at the upper end of the mild powers spectrum or the bottom of the next one depending on how you choose to classify him. He's basically a punch wizard with enormous amounts of damage soak. To him, a gun is a potential danger, but it's something he can fight against. Someone with armor piercing shells could do some damage to him, but something like a .22 is going to bounce off of his skin because he's a (literal) troll.

A lot of characters at mild powers, barring specific power sets or gear, aren't equipped to deal with the speed, range, or potential tissue damage of a gun-shot. You can circumvent a lot of the issues that come with modern firearms by utilizing magitech or future-tech weapons that are specifically designed for that purpose. I've seen a lot of people play "gun-mages" who do exactly that.

Arena Chat Thread

@Fallenreaper Absolutely. If you have a clear vision of what you want to do, and you can express as accurately as possible what it is you expect from people, then it makes running the event a whole lot easier. You want to try and articulate all of your rules and leave as little to interpretation as possible. If you want to run "mild powers" you need to define that, and you need to, say, list everything that you consider explicitly against the definition, or that you think would contribute to poor fights. You want to outline the submission/joining process, how you're going to grade profiles and judge fights, how judge adjudication is handled, etc.

For instance, with my scoring rubric, Sportsmanship is a category. Everyone should get a 0 in it because it's context sensitive: you only see a score in Sportsmanship when you played like an asshole, and the score will always be negative. Someone who makes a repeated habit of getting flagged for shitty sportsmanship in my event will likely find themselves unable to compete the next time it's run (I'm aiming for it to be bi-annual or seasonal, more or less). They get a "season" of play where they don't get to compete so they can take some time to realize that acting like a ponce over playing pretend on the internet is really dumb.

@DLL In order to have a well-run tournament, you really have to know a rules lawyer sort of guy. The guy who knows D&D inside and out and can make ridiculously gimped/specialist characters, or reads all the errata for a war-game. The guy who developed the "tournament rulebook" that everyone copies in my old community is a rules lawyer, and that's why his approach worked for the better part of a decade; he knew what he was doing and he knew what he wanted to accomplish.

And now he's an actual lawyer. So, you know. Learning to make and break rules is in his blood.

A lot of people also decide to run events without realizing how much work it takes. If you can't take time out of your day to grade at least one fight a day, or to communicate with your participants, then you're gonna have a bad time. A super, super bad time. And so will they.

Arena Chat Thread

This is the part where I ramble like a doddering old man about how we used to walk 20 miles in the snow to attend our 32-person mild powers tournament and we were happy to suffer a little bit of frostbite for it.

I want to tap into that level of play again, but running a tournament well takes a lot of people. I'm trying to retool the idea for something a little easier to work with. When I get it finished, I'll probably pop up a link here for people to take a look at.

Arena Chat Thread

@Melonhead That's why I put together a different system. I kept seeing people posting the AL one and it never seemed to work especially well.

EDIT:: Also, like I said earlier, mild powers is usually the easiest way to run a tournament. Obviously, what defines "mild powers" differs, but if you develop a good definition and stick with it, then it's not too big of an issue. Complexity and degree of power aside, there's also the fact that the more a character can do, the more a profile grader has to look through. More chances to miss potential issues, more chances to improperly balance, and so on.

Obviously I'm biased -- I play predominantly at mild powers. On the other hand, I've also done a lot of profile grading for tournaments, and I can definitely say that grading a profile for someone who punches you in the face with fire is way easier than trying to grade the profile of a character that could rightfully be classed as a small scale ecological disaster.