This is kind of a ramble, so bear with me if you want to read.
I was thinking earlier about my various non-D&D characters and how they're similar and different.
The main similarity between many of them is a distaste for combat.
My first character, Callisto (VtM, Toreador), cowered in a phone booth rather than fight - and when she finally had to fight, had no weapon and ended up using the phone cord and receiver to defend herself.
Faline (CtD, Pooka) only fought when she was defending someone she liked - and then she wasn't vicious. To be completely honest, the only reason she ever did any damage is that the ST couldn't make a good soak roll to save his - or, indeed, in most cases, the NPC's - life.
Oriana (Amber) was a fighter - often when she should probably have turned tail or called for help. Stubborn, independent, impetuous, brawler - those all applied to her. She didn't go out of her way for a fight, but if she was provoked, she didn't step out of the way of one, either.
Sophia (Amber) - well, it didn't come up before the game went belly-up... but I'm pretty sure she'd only fight if it was necessary and/or unavoidable. She was extremely patient, so she wouldn't be one to be provoked easily - but I can see her being efficient to the best of her abilities in battle.
Maggie (Amber) seems to be of the school of, "I carry a weapon, and I know how to use it. Don't provoke me into using it on a human being, please. I don't want to deal with those complications."
And then there's Diana (Amber), who got me started on this track. Diana much prefers to avoid fights like the plague. She can fight - she's not that great at it, but she can do it - she just feels that escaping is a much simpler solution.
At some point I'd like to play another combat-oriented character, because that really was entertaining. I just run into the problem of needing to trust the GM's combat-running skills.
See, I don't know a lot of stuff about fighting. And when I get in a situation with someone that does - I get in over my head very quickly, because knowledge of basic foil fencing and some random pro wrestling move names and what they look like really doesn't help much if someone knows what they're talking about. I had one player tell me he was doing something like a half-Nelson on someone - and he then had to explain to me what the bloody hell he was trying to do. And that was a player I was GMing.
I just don't have an interest in the technical details of fighting, so I haven't learned them. I really don't want to have to learn them, but if I'm in a very slow-posting situation, I probably will. It's fast posting and face to face where I'm going to run into trouble.
So... those are my concerns about combat... posted by sandrayln at 6:31:00 PM
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Monday, April 26, 2004
I just finished cleaning up this blog somewhat.
The next set of goals are to update my links into active characters, inactive characters, and other links, and to catch up on Game WISHes some time before Friday. posted by sandrayln at 12:42:00 AM
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