The Official Dueling Guide

[Sheog the Mad]

The Basic Rules of Dueling

 

Do not disrespect your opponent: What this means, is to treat them not as a hostile writer, but as another character in your narrative that is worthy of your respect. This is an over-encompassing ideal that sets the stage of this RP. Under this umbrella are further rules

 

Do Not God Mod: This is another umbrella term, which means do not make yourself a mary-sue or a gary-stu. In the context of a duel, you are not the god of the scenario. For example, if you are an apprentice, you do not have the lightsaber skill of a master. Posting far too many attacks for your power level is another example of god-modding.

 

• Posting attacks your opponent cannot mitigate or defend against is another example of God Modding, or internalized attacks as will be outlined later.

 

• Unmitigatable Attacks are Unacceptable: Attacking your opponent by collapsing the entire room around them in a sphere of death. Attacking from every angle simultaneously.

 

• On Internalized Attacks: These can be taken literally, you CANNOT under any circumstance use the force to pull on your opponent’s internal organs. Or post your lightsaber actually hitting. Or directly ripping into someone’s mind. Those things are forbidden directly. You can attempt to open someone else’s mind to the force, and it is on them to let you do so or make up a legitimate defense.

 

• Every Attack you make must be defendable by your opponent: It cannot be internalized or overpowered. You cannot, for example, whip out a concussion missile and shoot your opponent in the face and laugh because there is no way for them to escape the detonation zone.

  • Do Not Make Closed Attacks: What constitutes a closed attack is as follows; (and is not an exhaustive list, but only the flavor of it so that you may avoid doing so) posting an attack on the opponent AS WELL AS the outcome of that attack. If I were to swing a lightsaber at your face, I should post that, NOT that it strikes and takes out your pretty jaw and your pearly whites. Don’t throw a grenade and have it also explode in your post, this removes the narrative ability of your opponent; maybe they wanted to toss the grenade out an airlock, or smother it in the heroism of a sacrificial NPC, or a variety of other things. Do not, for example throw a grenade, bring it to your enemy with the force and then hold it there making its detonation unavoidable. This allows your opponent to make a defense against your attack and take the damage themselves in the way THEY see fit.

 

• After a duel, you should discuss the outcome, and don’t demean the enemy in death.

 

On Taking Damage: Part of respecting your opponent is in the respect of their attacks. If you simply block every attack because you’re an uber-jedi who is an invincible god, you will get a smackdown. You do not have to take damage from EVERY attack, but a good rule of thumb is to take one to two hits per round. Damage can be taken in a variety of ways, but it should always be meaningful and doesn’t have to be debilitating or fatal. Damage should be carried over in your further posts of narrative. (Ask yourself this; If you’ve taken a shot to the leg and then it proceeds to not at all interfere with your movement, concentration, etc, have you really TAKEN damage at all?)

 

• Physical Damage: Taking a scoring hit from a lightsaber or blaster
  • Be sure to balance this out with your own survivability, overdoing it can be a trap has you bleeding out by the end of the duel.
  • At some point during a duel, you SHOULD be taking some form of physical damage, otherwise it’s a feel-bad moment for your opponent and you aren’t truly respecting their ability to HARM you.

 

• The Displacement of Good Positioning: You planned on attacking head on, now you can’t. It ought to screw up your plans a bit, and you ought to speak to that in your narrative, or it really isn’t taking damage.

 

• Loss of Set-up Attacks: You had planned on lambasting your opponent from a leftward swipe with a telekinetic attack or lightsaber blow, but now you cannot. Now, this implies the following: Set up your attacks beforehand. You cannot just say, oops now my force storm won’t work, if you didn’t speak to a force storm in a previous post, or else you aren’t taking any damage.

 

• Loss or Damage to NPCs (This is specific to classes that use these in their arsenal): Your favorite Mandalorian squaddie just lost a leg or something, now he can’t shoot as well or be as mobile.

 

• Loss of Weapons or Armor: Getting your blaster cut in half by a lightsaber, or a piece of your armor being slagged, or a weapons system becoming inoperable. This should be meaningful to your player or narrative. (Oh no, I just lost the ability to play music in my helmet, is not meaningful damage. Think instead of losing multispectral readout from your HUD, or nightvision, or something that indicates actual harm from your opponent’s attacks.)

 

On Attacking: Set up your attacks, you should be hinting at those to come throughout the duel, because you cannot pull out force powers like party tricks, there is always a setup, a buildup.  Give them life and meaning, it helps those who are reading it, because this is a story with two writers. If you’re going to swing a lightsaber at a person’s throat, don’t just say that, give meaning behind it, indicate your character knows what they’re doing, and your opponent and mod will find it easier to give the attack weight

 

• Example: “Terra cut at Ar-Pharazon’s chest with her lightsaber” turns into “Terra threw her full might into the blow she aimed at Ar-Pharazon’s chest, hoping to drive her sword deep into his black heart”
  • See? Much easier to respect and gives the attack some character.

 

• On Thermal Detonators and Disrupters or anything that will kill the opponent if it touches them: Generally, don’t use these, they aren’t banned per say, but how can someone respectfully defend against your attack if they insta-die if it touches them? Typically such items are used only for inspiring movement from an opponent in a fortified position.  

 

• On Mental Attacks: Some attacks may be considered “undodgable” in a physical sense, such as some mental-based attacks (Like Force Insanity, or Malacia, or a variety of mental attacks that exist in Star Wars Canon). These can be “resisted” through the narrative of the defender in the same way that one may dodge a blaster bold or a thrown grenade. Like all attacks, the defender has the prerogative on what kind of damage they actually take from a mental-based attack.

 

On Tactics: Setting up attacks, movement patterns, and diversifying your attacks are especially important. If you swing a lightsaber at your opponent’s face again and again, you have become predictable and boring. If your only arsenal is in the swing of a lightsaber, vary it up, add in some leaps, some diagonals, try to get the high ground. Always discuss the layout of the battleground with your opponent, don’t just go “I now have the high ground good luck idiot, or gotcha you’re in a chokepoint now this is Thermopylae now” there should be a consensus and give and take. Setting up the taking and giving of ground is important to narrative and to those reading the story.

 

On Equipment: You can only fight with what is on your Character Sheet in the databank. Don't be tossing out random secret weapons, tactical nukes, exploding ships, a fleet of Star Destroyers, etc. It should be in line with your class. 

 

On the Basics of Writing and Narrative: This is a story written by two authors. You should both write like you are the protagonist and make the story interesting. No one wants to read a sterile instruction manual of combat. Give your emotions and your thoughts some layout, it will help the readers and the mods take an interest. At the end of the day, you can throw out a million attacks and still lose because reading it was a slog for everyone. We have all types of writing advisors here, seek us out on Discord, set up conversations and advice. We have all read great stories, and we want to read yours.

 

Other Assorted Rules

 

The Three Day Rule: Try not to take longer than three days to post a response to your opponent. After this time has run out, they can legally kill you. We discourage people actually doing this because of hurt feelings, so talk about it if you have a family emergency or work stress or depression. Everyone is understanding.

 

Moderator Rulings

 

For Mod Rulings: Every Duel is ruled on by a Moderator with the assistance of an Advisor (from the Admin/Mod Team) to determine the winner. Mods take the following things into account:

 

• Were both opponents respectful to each other?
• Were all attacks accounted for properly and was the damage taken appropriate and respectful?
• Did anyone God-Mod?
• Were the tactics sound for both sides?
• Was the story good to read for both sides?

 

What determines their giving the win to one side or another will be discussed with another mod or admin who will also be reading the duel, as to minimize blindspots and hurt feelings.