Another OSP In The Bag...
...and while it was quite a fun event, a couple of niggling problems continue to play about my head.
Which, incidentally, is also what a large number of blows did at the Tarantulas event this weekend.
The following is a slight rant on my favourite larp subject - the gerontocracy inherent in live roleplay systems of any age. I couldn't say this to anyone who matters as it would just be taken as my being picky and pedantic which, in all truth, it is. I have therefore saved it for the one place I can say whatever I want. If you believe you might find what I have to say offensive, I'm giving you the opportunity to switch off now.
After three years of fighting with daggers, I have received advice of all types from all manner of people about how I should improve my technique. Hit and run, go for the legs, fortune favours the bold, don't charge a line, take hits to deal them and just about everything in between, from both the great and good and those who I am not remotely interested in listening to. I have tried them all, and run into no-effects, global hit creatures and enchanted crush/fatal/harm/paralysis/decay/mage bolt/sharpbluntsharp up my @$$ on many, many occasions. In fact, during a short amount of downtime discussion over the weekend, I realised with some shock and dismay that Rhinyn has personally dropped a grand total of three things in three years. A wraith (which required someone with a gribbly weapon to finish it off), a Jackal archer who never saw me coming, and a skeleton who then remembered he was immune to sharp and stood up again. Everything else has had time to turn round and respond with one of the above selection of nasty calls.
I don't know what game all those people who offered me advice were playing, but I believe the LT uses the Lorien Role Playing Rules v2 as standard (at least until after the Gathering), which seems to dictate that monsters with locational hits are too weak to give a typical PC party a challenge.
Take Rhinyn fighting against the monsters this weekend (not that he'd be seen dead at a Tarantulas event - for the express reason that he would be seen dead the moment after he turned up). Say he manages to ninj one - is never seen coming from out of the darkness and piles into its back triumphantly. Just about every monster this weekend, without going into stats, would have thought "OUCH!", turned round and hit him, causing him to roll with the blow...in which time the next one would come in requiring roleplaying of a strike in another location, and another, and another. Before he knew it, his four hits per location would be in danger of falling to zero and he would either be running for his life or dropped like a pile of laundry being carried by someone who has just won the lottery. None of the myriads of advice on fighting technique would help me there, with the exception of the most wonderfully patronising little suggestion from a healer (who will remain unnamed) one day: "Couldn't you try to get hit less?"
There is a way that works. There is a way in which a daggerboy can do very well indeed.
In those said three years of fighting with daggers, I have learnt what the refs will allow unnamed spod X to get away with and what they won't. Typically, your average ref will allow three strikes per second - that's a little faster than you can say "crisps" over and over again. When I have strayed up to four, and even four and a half, strikes per second, the refs have pulled me over to the side and asked me to slow the blows down slightly. I have done so, and am now quite good at keeping bursts of any more than two strikes at or below the three per second limit. Refs don't complain when I strike at three per second, so I assume this is the unwritten rule about what is allowed.
Sorry, what unnamed spod X is allowed.
Many, many times this weekend, I watched the famous and renowned tarantula faction daggerboys, and found out why they can drop things I can only dream of. As refs watched them, they piled in at five or six strikes per second and minced the crap out of things, as the refs watched on and thereby gave their tacet acceptance of. I have watched many well known and renowned people pile in at four and a half strikes per second and get away with it. I have listened to people saying how they managed to drop this, that or the other with knives or claws by simply piling in and not stopping swinging, regardless of the fact that they were doing so at four strikes per second or above (hell, I watched them do it). Why are they allowed to do this and I am not?
Wait until you've been in the system for ten years then swing at six strikes per second. That's what works - as long as you're known by people, you can get away with murder. This is why nothing I pile into at three strikes per second falls over - the monsters are designed for accomplished daggerboys who strike at a speed way in excess of what I am permitted to at this stage in my LT career, while my face isn't known as one who is "alright". I could strike that fast. I could ignore the first two blows per location "because I'm taking them on the armour", ignoring the fact that being hit with a sword on softish leather armour (even if it's spethial +1 armour) hurts and would make you react. I'd get pulled up for fast hits and poor roleplay before you could say "twink".
I may as well resign myself to playing a scout in a system that doesn't require them, and actually running away whenever anything turns up. I won't be able to hurt it so I might as well go stretcher-bear for the healers for the next seven years. If Rhin survives that long, I might be known by enough people that I can "get inside and shiv it like a bitch" at a speed that will allow "it" to drop before I do.
Which, incidentally, is also what a large number of blows did at the Tarantulas event this weekend.
The following is a slight rant on my favourite larp subject - the gerontocracy inherent in live roleplay systems of any age. I couldn't say this to anyone who matters as it would just be taken as my being picky and pedantic which, in all truth, it is. I have therefore saved it for the one place I can say whatever I want. If you believe you might find what I have to say offensive, I'm giving you the opportunity to switch off now.
After three years of fighting with daggers, I have received advice of all types from all manner of people about how I should improve my technique. Hit and run, go for the legs, fortune favours the bold, don't charge a line, take hits to deal them and just about everything in between, from both the great and good and those who I am not remotely interested in listening to. I have tried them all, and run into no-effects, global hit creatures and enchanted crush/fatal/harm/paralysis/decay/mage bolt/sharpbluntsharp up my @$$ on many, many occasions. In fact, during a short amount of downtime discussion over the weekend, I realised with some shock and dismay that Rhinyn has personally dropped a grand total of three things in three years. A wraith (which required someone with a gribbly weapon to finish it off), a Jackal archer who never saw me coming, and a skeleton who then remembered he was immune to sharp and stood up again. Everything else has had time to turn round and respond with one of the above selection of nasty calls.
I don't know what game all those people who offered me advice were playing, but I believe the LT uses the Lorien Role Playing Rules v2 as standard (at least until after the Gathering), which seems to dictate that monsters with locational hits are too weak to give a typical PC party a challenge.
Take Rhinyn fighting against the monsters this weekend (not that he'd be seen dead at a Tarantulas event - for the express reason that he would be seen dead the moment after he turned up). Say he manages to ninj one - is never seen coming from out of the darkness and piles into its back triumphantly. Just about every monster this weekend, without going into stats, would have thought "OUCH!", turned round and hit him, causing him to roll with the blow...in which time the next one would come in requiring roleplaying of a strike in another location, and another, and another. Before he knew it, his four hits per location would be in danger of falling to zero and he would either be running for his life or dropped like a pile of laundry being carried by someone who has just won the lottery. None of the myriads of advice on fighting technique would help me there, with the exception of the most wonderfully patronising little suggestion from a healer (who will remain unnamed) one day: "Couldn't you try to get hit less?"
There is a way that works. There is a way in which a daggerboy can do very well indeed.
In those said three years of fighting with daggers, I have learnt what the refs will allow unnamed spod X to get away with and what they won't. Typically, your average ref will allow three strikes per second - that's a little faster than you can say "crisps" over and over again. When I have strayed up to four, and even four and a half, strikes per second, the refs have pulled me over to the side and asked me to slow the blows down slightly. I have done so, and am now quite good at keeping bursts of any more than two strikes at or below the three per second limit. Refs don't complain when I strike at three per second, so I assume this is the unwritten rule about what is allowed.
Sorry, what unnamed spod X is allowed.
Many, many times this weekend, I watched the famous and renowned tarantula faction daggerboys, and found out why they can drop things I can only dream of. As refs watched them, they piled in at five or six strikes per second and minced the crap out of things, as the refs watched on and thereby gave their tacet acceptance of. I have watched many well known and renowned people pile in at four and a half strikes per second and get away with it. I have listened to people saying how they managed to drop this, that or the other with knives or claws by simply piling in and not stopping swinging, regardless of the fact that they were doing so at four strikes per second or above (hell, I watched them do it). Why are they allowed to do this and I am not?
Wait until you've been in the system for ten years then swing at six strikes per second. That's what works - as long as you're known by people, you can get away with murder. This is why nothing I pile into at three strikes per second falls over - the monsters are designed for accomplished daggerboys who strike at a speed way in excess of what I am permitted to at this stage in my LT career, while my face isn't known as one who is "alright". I could strike that fast. I could ignore the first two blows per location "because I'm taking them on the armour", ignoring the fact that being hit with a sword on softish leather armour (even if it's spethial +1 armour) hurts and would make you react. I'd get pulled up for fast hits and poor roleplay before you could say "twink".
I may as well resign myself to playing a scout in a system that doesn't require them, and actually running away whenever anything turns up. I won't be able to hurt it so I might as well go stretcher-bear for the healers for the next seven years. If Rhin survives that long, I might be known by enough people that I can "get inside and shiv it like a bitch" at a speed that will allow "it" to drop before I do.