Schradinger

Swordfight

MelonHead said
How exactly are you guys dealing with posting order?

You post after the guy you first posted after, unless someone new joins and posts between you, then you post after the new guy.

Swordfight

I'm not sure... Just look at the first set of posts to see where you're at in the order.

Swordfight

Geez this guy was dense, and not in the "harhar he's an idiot" kind of way. It felt like David's feet were hitting a brick wall when they slammed into his abdomen, but thankfully it was a brick wall that only weighed a buck sixty-ish and was currently free-floating in the air. That meant David's superior mass and velocity would launch Meats across a fair portion of the room, though he didn't expect that to keep him out of the fight for any longer than it took to get back in combat range. The hook at his knee was unexpected, but also not an issue. It was only halfway to its target when feet met abs, and grazed the top of his shin as the compact little muscleman was sent on his way. The force of the kick halted David's forward momentum and launched him skyward just enough to allow him to get his feet back under him before landing.

With the immediate threat removed, and a handy new weapon embedded in the post beside him, David placed a hand on the hilt of the large blade as he regarded his opponent. "Hey, you there with the muscles. I think you forgot something." As he spoke, he gripped the handle hard and wrenched it out of the post with almost as little trouble as Meats would have had, standing it on its tip in front of himself and holding the pommel in his right hand, his left forearm crossing over the right wrist in a casual rest posture. "Want it back?"

Throughout it all, his instincts were keeping tabs on the other occupants of the room around him, and while none of them were yet close enough to engage him, there was a new player in the mix, a man of refined yet gothic tastes. Tall dark and broody appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and immediately ripped the throat out of the pretty elf lady. That was too bad. He would have liked to get to know her. Oh well. There were other pretty elf ladies, he was sure.

Swordfight

Excellent response! Good work. :) Though keep in mind that something that seems blatantly obvious in slow motion when you're reading an action wouldn't always be blatantly obvious when seeing it happen in real-time.

Swordfight

As long as it doesn't break the rules or laws of physics, go for it. :)

Swordfight

Not to mention the fact that my carefully laid out three post trap that should be impossible to avoid at this point was circumvented and nullified by an illegal move. That stings a bit... Having all that effort and planning negated by what essentially amounts to a cheat code (rewinding time to get out of a situation you couldn't get out of otherwise).

Point is, I lose a lot more if you don't edit the post than you lose if you do. :(

Swordfight

That sill leaves entire posts open to being completely re-written. Take yours as an example. You wrote an action, then I created a response to that action, then you altered the action you initiated, without any prior indication that you would do so, which then will force me to completely re-write the action I took because the circumstances that led to it no longer apply/exist. Basically, you altered things so far back that almost my entire post becomes useless and voided.

If you write something as a definite event, without using an if statement, that should be exactly how that event happens unless it's physically interrupted by another writer. You were probably trying to create a scenario that was easily variable, but when you used definitive statements like "Meats did this, then followed up with this" and didn't use an if qualifier, you cemented those actions into the story, and they could only be altered by actual physical interruption from me. This is the exact reason we're doing this. To bush off our dueling skills and learn from our mistakes.

So I'd really appreciate it if you could edit the post. I understand that you don't want to lose what you wrote, but it's a difficult post to understand in the first place (im having a hard time wrapping my head around that first move and the narration towards the end) and it IS technically not legal. And the only way for us to improve is to fix our mistakes. That, and I'm a little OCD about my fights. I hate having useless posts cluttering them up, and that's essentially what our previous two posts are right now.

Perdo Wastes - NMV

"It would seem."

Arty echoed the Clockwork Man's statement as he fell into step behind him and the apparently now allied warrior, a hint of disappointment in his tone. All that fighting, and he hadn't even gotten to kill one enemy. In his opinion, guns should be a tactical option to use on occasion, not the primary means of combat via slinging lead, plasma, depleted uranium, various other forms of energy, or what have you at the other guy and hoping it took him down. Combat should be an art, not a turkey shoot. Oh well. There was always next time.

He followed the two up into the top level of the tower once again, this time without his weapons drawn, and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning casually against a pillar while he waited for the explanation he'd been promised. On a whim, he decided to pull his mask off and hang it on his belt, breathing for the first time the unpurified air of a world that was not his own. His tongue darted back and forth across his lips, as if tasting something he wasn't quite sure about. "Tastes kinda chalky."

Swordfight

Vordak said
Well, IMHO, the former leans more towards the natural course of action, as one often alters their actions in order to outsmart their opponent. On the other hand, taking actions only according to the 'if' statements made prior offers strict moderation and overall less dodgy posts.

That's just it. If we use the former method, I could essentially re-write my entire last post to the point that I never actually jumped at all, then you could re-write your current post completely to do something else that wasn't originally thought of, and the fight would never get beyond the first attack, with every post being retconned by the next. It's a terrible way to conduct a fight. In my view, using the "no changes unless interrupted or using an if statement" method makes for much cleaner duels that have a better flow to them, without as much hassle regarding the legality of move alterations, and that's the method I'd prefer to use (especially since it's also the closest to what I first learned).

The idea that an opponent can completely take back everything in their last post in order to respond in a way that they originally couldn't and gain an advantage they would never have had just makes me cringe, and seems overall extremely dodgy. It's like fighting someone who can rewind time and try again every time they make a mistake.

All that said, I'm going to exercise my co-thread-starter privileges and enact the "no alterations unless interrupted or using an if statement" rule. Vordak, would you be willing to edit your post with that in mind? It just seems the most logical way to go, and I'd be asking the same thing even if it wasn't my character that was involved. So it's not just because I don't want to get cut in half, because I wouldn't anyway. ;)

Swordfight

GreivousKhan said
As a side note, you can't technically cut post actions at all unless, A, the person used an 'If' statement.B, the action is literally impossible to complete due to preconceived assumptions no longer being true, which is kind of like a If statement in itself.

If that's true, then Vordak wouldn't be able to change anything in his previous post that would have happened before my feet hit his chest.

So we've got two schools of thought on the issue. One that says anything in the previous post can be altered, and one that says it can only be altered if it was written with an "if" statement or you're interrupted by your opponent. Anybody got a link to somewhere that would tell us which is more commonly accepted?