What is Dueling?
Dueling is interactive combat through literary means of expression. This combat is fought with a character, which you as a Duelist create. Dueling Characters are always very detailed, personalized and interesting … fused with special abilities, amazing powers, and an emotion-packed history. You can expect long, detailed paragraphs that truly immerse everyone in the fight… making it a highly involved and enjoyable experience. Physical and emotional description help take fights between two warrior's to a whole new level… attacks, counter-attacks, spells and curses… twists and turns, regeneration and transformation. All of these are just a few examples of what you'll find in your average duel. Generally a duel is judged on two criteria: that of the description and creativity within battle. Both players are expected to judge based on the other post the effects of their own attacks and the effects of other attacks.
Description is a must in any battle and in every style. You must describe your character, your surroundings, your attacks, etc. so that in essence you are painting a picture of the battle for your opponent. If your description is inadequate, your opponent may become confused as to what is happening or what has happened. And when confusion arises, anger and argument usually follow. As another general rule, Description = Power. But, you also have to find a happy medium between under-describing something and over-describing it. Creativity is an integral part of dueling, both while in battle and while creating a character. In battle you should make creative situations arise, not just the old power struggle, and you should also give creative entrances for your character, not you walk in and tell the guy that you have been searching for him. Make someone want to read what you post to see what inventive things you can come up with. As a typical rule, Creativity = More Power. Originality is the key to dueling. Your characters should be creations of your own, but if you want to make Goku and give the Kamehameha and Spirit Bomb as his attacks and Super Saiyajin as his transformation, you can. But, you must do some very excellent Dueling to have yourself taken seriously as a Role-Player. Not to mention that if your character does something that is not usually seen in dueling or a form of media it makes the duel much more interesting. See, as a general rule, Originality = Even More Power.
And another of the power gauges recently introduced, somewhat, is the Story = More Power, too. This is where consistency from duel to duel comes into play. A storyline for your character is very important and can grant you favor in a judged battle, or just make your posts better. Keep this one in mind when dueling. Quality is more necessary than quantity. If you can write an amazing post in only three paragraphs, but your opponent writes a mediocre post in four pages, then you have done better; as a general rule, Quality is much better than Quantity. On the subject of Power, no one is more or less powerful than anyone else, though attacks that are better described and more original can be more powerful than others. The only thing that measures your character's power is your ability to write. If you want to have a typical human fighting against uber-powerful demons and aliens, then, by all means, do.
Dueling Styles
In dueling there are many styles, and many variations of each style, I will touch on the three most widely used general styles, and attempt to include one or two variations of each. As your dueling experience increases you will most likely develop your own personal style.
Open Style
The Open Style of dueling revolves around as little Moding, or use of your opponent's character, as possible. It involves your character throwing attacks and your opponent deciding what damage they do and whether or not they hit. As an opponent, you should never dodge every attack or have no attack affect your character, this is very bad dueling and falls into the category of God-Moding, which is a huge no-no in dueling. There are two main branches of this style, I will describe each. The first, I will call True, the second, Semi-True.
True: Auto hits, or the allowance of small, insignificant attacks, are not used. In this style your only job is to describe your character's attacks being initiated and your character's thoughts/feelings. Your opponent decides whether or not the attack hits and what damage is done by it. If you use a special attack, your opponent should check your bio for the effects of that attack and decide which are taken and which are not. Opponents should avoid God-Moding.
Semi-True: Auto hits are used in this style. You can run in and pummel your opponent's defenses before pushing back and launching a larger attack at them. Just be sure to describe it all well, and again, opponents should avoid God-Moding - be sure to check with your opponent before hand to allow this. Generally if both fighters use Semi-True, then auto hits are to be expected.
Closed Style
The Closed Style of dueling is based upon you writing whether or not attacks hit and on how large a scale the damage of the attack is. You should not ignore your opponent's abilities to block, evade, counter-attack, attack, etc. for this is also considered God-Moding. If using this style, you must describe, in full detail, every attack and what affects each one has, even something as simple as a kick to the stomach can be the turning point of the battle for either fighter. Your job, as an opponent, is to return the favor of your enemy's attacks back at them, or find some tactical flaw in their attacks to exploit, and then take full advantage of it. There are two styles of this I will touch on, I will call them Generic, and An Eye for An Eye.
Generic: In this style you exploit tactical faults in innovative ways and try to turn an opponent's attack around so that it also affects them. Take full advantage of your surroundings and whatever your opponent tries to do, every step they take can spell death for them. You can mod your opponent's character to a reasonable extent. Always ask your opponent for what a character would say in a similar situation before you have your enemy speak. Also, do not include your opponent's feelings in your post, you do not know them. Unless discussed with your opponent, their character should not perform any transformations or special attacks.
An Eye for An Eye: This style is for those who want to abandon the ideals of win and loss, and forget the concepts of life and death. In this style, any damage you deal to your opponent should be dealt in an equal to lesser-equal or greater (for the more daring) amount to your character. So, if you break your opponent's arm, maybe you end up puncturing your lung and only have two minutes or so left to live and then in two minutes (not in real time, but in a dueling timer that you include in your posts) your character will die. The same general rules that apply to Generic Closed Style also apply to this style.
Hybrid
The Hybrid Style of dueling is almost identical to the Semi-True Open Style, but with some of the Generic Closed Style added to it. In this all the rules of Semi-True, excluding the one about not Moding your opponent in any way, apply. So, essentially this is a blend of Moding your opponent and still leaving large attacks open-ended. There are two styles of this, I will call them Hybrid-Open, and Hybrid-Closed.
Hybrid-Open: This style is more towards the Open Style than the closed Style; it involves as little Moding as possible and always leaves large scale attacks open-ended.
Hybrid-Closed: This style is more geared towards the Closed Style, with blend of Moding that keeps the battle interesting and sometimes allows the declaration that an attack has hit, but not the damage or affects of said attack.
In open style dueling, God Moding is typically when a duelist will not allow his character to be hit by the other, using the fact that they can not hit the other in their post to an unfair advantage. God Moding in closed style dueling is a different. As you are allowed to both attack and decide on the consequences of the attack, it allows greater shades of attacks/combinations to be in the fight. However, God Moding occurs when one duelist will inflict damage in his posts without letting the other duelist's character inflict hits on his. God Moding in the default hybrid style of dueling is when you never are willing to accept that you sustain any damage from the attacks. Another point here is simple "Moding" of characters in the hybrid and closed styles. This is in the forms of using the opponent's characters to speak/act. These are allowed, but only if you ask your opponent first, to overview what you have done with their creation. Of course, a duelist can ask you to change something at any time, if he is not happy with what you have written, if it is worthy of changing i.e. killing innocents, personality changes, etc. Lesser details such as a move to the side to avoid a blow are not considered worthy. In some duels, it is obvious one writer may be superior to the other by a long way. This does not give the better duelist an excuse to god mode. He should allow an even match to continue until both sides agree (or a Mod is asked to step in) and end the match suitably. In a duel it is generally left to both duelist's to decide who has the upper hand and deserves to win (this is done through the description, creativity and justification system through a basis of mutual consensus, you are advised to have regular OOC contact with your opponent). However in some cases, both sides may feel they have the upper hand. If this occurs, then either player may ask a third party to become involved, where they will look at the battle and decide what the outcome should be.
More on Dueling:
The typical duel can last from half a week to anything over a month depending on the numbers involved, the depth of the posts, and the activity of all the duelist's involved. In all fifteen IC posts in a fight is seen as a 'quick exchange', twenty-five posts is seen as a 'decent length' and over forty posts is seen as an 'epic'. So, how do you decide which direction things are heading? Generally a duel is judged on two criteria, that of description, and creativity. Each shall be described below. Behind them is a facet called Justification Whether you're fighting in Closed, Open or Hybrid style (see Dueling Introduction below if you do not understand what these systems mean), you will encounter these factors. This knowledge will help you decipher whether what your opponent did was fair, and basically help you to understand the mechanics of Dueling in itself. Winning involves applying descriptive elements to your post such as flow, grammar, use of imagery, construction, etc.
However, these elements serve only as minor links that contribute to a rather larger portion of description, which is composing a post that immerses the reader in the environment, characters, emotions and actions that the writer creates. However, description is not about writing the most. It should never be measured in page length, or word count, or anything of the sort. Granted, you cannot get away with writing one short, descriptive paragraph - moderation is the key. You need not stretch out your post unnecessarily, just because you feel it isn't long enough. It's all about writing something worth reading. It is not worth reading an essay on a single punch, littered with flashbacks for 'effect'. The technical elements of description, such as flow, grammar, sentence and paragraph construction, are important. A post that suffers heavily in this area cannot hope to succeed in the next area of description, which is 'composing a post that immerses the reader'. Largely broken flow, grammar and the like will distort the reality of your post. Immersing your reader in the environment is the most important part of description. You need to make things believable, you need to make unreality become reality, and bring everything in your post to life. Imagery is crucial to this. So is a neat balance of words. Pouring out the contents of a thesaurus into your post does not necessarily score you points in description. But in the end, the purpose of description (as well as creativity) comes down to one thing and one thing only… and that is, justification. This will be explained in detail later.
Creativity is a summation of many things. Overall, creative posts are those that display originality and uniqueness in certain aspects of a fight. Creativity is about steering away from cliché's, and doing something unexpected, or cleverly manipulating your environment and battleground. Creativity can even be found in description, in how you write and construct a post. A creative post is NOT hard to measure. You can instantly tell when something creative has been done, because you have not seen it before. Although, being creative is also about making sense, and making something work. If you're going to use a pink umbrella as your weapon, you have to make it work. You can't expect to get points over the other fighter just because you're stupid enough to use a "Pink Umbrella of Bubble Gum Might" against his "Demonic Sword of Soul Consumption". Also, creativity should stem less from your character, and more from the battle at hand. If your character possesses certain advantageous and creative aspects, that's great, and using them is great. But if you really want to go out on a limb, you'll use them in conjunction with other elements of the battle, ones that aren't a part of your character… such as the environment, your opponent, and anything else unexpected. Creativity, like Description, contributes towards the Justification of your attacks and maneuvers throughout a post. By applying strands of creativity into your perhaps controversial attempts to beat your opponent, you soften the blow against criticism. Rationalization, explanation, validation… this is what Justification is about. Justification is that single rule which determines whether or not your post was fair. With skilled use of Justification, you will never be liable to complaints against your posts. Justification is that sheer rule behind which the credibility of your posts is discerned. Nearly everything you do (especially in Closed style), must, on some level, small or large, be justified.
So, we break apart what it comes down to. You cannot beat your opponent (legally) unless your opponent's character is sufficiently weakened. In order to weaken his character, we must damage him via Justified Attacks.
These attacks are justified by use of description and creativity. In order to weaken his character faster, tactics are applied so that his character becomes more vulnerable, and yours more resistant. One thing that must be noted is an absolute disallowance of 'damage jumping'. This is present mainly in Closed Style. Damage Jumping is where you bring your opponent's character from perfect or near perfect health into massive and substantial damage (de-limbing, puncturing massive holes in their bodies, etc) in a single post. In no circumstances should that be allowed. If your opponent has skillfully avoided major damage or you have been incapable of inflicting it, and your character is extremely damaged, that does not give reason for you to bring his character down to your own damage levels in a single post. It must be done gradually. If there are multiple players on both sides, then numbers do come into it (this is only realistic). In a two verses one, the one would have to duel roughly twice as good in all areas to make up the difference. In cases of multiple players, you are allowed to make extra threads for separate battles, which are taking place at the same location to help cut down on the confusion. Also if one side has a NPC army alongside them (can be from a territory that they own), then while they will have an advantage, NPC are generally regarded as very much inferior to an actual player. Nonetheless you should not expect to be able to take them out in one post. The same goes for summons. However on the other hand, NPC forces should not be seen as an excuse to 'god mode'. NPC should be tactically used as tools; not a justification to win outright. If you are involved in a fight, then you are expected to be active. If you do not reply within four days of your opponent's post, then your opponent has a right to make a post doing substantial damage to your character, such as de-limbings, or knocking your character out (thusly removing them permanently from this battle until it is finished). Thus you effectively either forfeit your battle or have a lot of permanent damage inflicted to your character if you do not remain active. The only exception to this rule is if you explain beforehand in the battle thread in an OOC comment that you will be unavailable for a few days due to various problems. If this occurs, then a mod can award anything up to a four day extension; and with the other duelist's permission this extension can be of any length. If you have an important post to make, then you can ask a moderator for a 24 hour post reservation, and provided the reason you give is sound, it will usually be granted. This will stop anyone else but you from replying in the duel during this period. However a post reservation usually has to be a battle changing event...
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