Board Thread:Off Topic/@comment-29646689-20180509021733/@comment-26877467-20180510160131

Random Forum Fight is an elegantly simple game. However, it's effectiveness rests entirely upon the players. Since it's a fight, you have several options to do when you post:


 * Attack - You attempt to inflict damage onto another player.


 * Defend - You make an attack directed at you less effective or ineffective.


 * Take damage - You acknowledge an attack that someone used on you and apply limitations for you to cleverly work around.


 * Prepare - you set up for an attack or a defense, or make yourself more powerful against other attacks.


 * Quip - You make a joke.


 * Self Destruct - You attack yourself.


 * Diplomacy - You attempt to defuse the fight using nonviolent measures.
 * Summon - You summon an entity to enhance the fight.


 * Move - You move.


 * Heal - You remove limitations for a player to work around.

But since players of the game are in full control, they can abuse the freedom of the game and exclusively attack and defend. Some people will refuse to take any damage, and some attacks are too powerful for anyone to impose a challenge on themselves by taking damage. Some people spam heal. And attacks can get launched so often that it's impossible to react to them all, making some get ignored.

Additionally, something that annoys me is when people use attacks on "everybody." For instance, when players lazily "throw knives at everybody" then maybe one or two posts after that will talk about knives, if they're lucky. If you're gonna make an attack, explicitly list all the players it's targeted at.

A player can launch an attack for another player to defend from. If the attacker gets to determine the effectiveness of the attack, then they could make it ridiculously effective. If the defender gets to detemine the effect, then they could make it have no negative effect. If a third party, like a GM, were to determine the effect, the game would run much slower, and the GM could abandon the game. And if the attacker and the defender had to agree on a reasonable attack, then that would take time and threads would fill up with debates about attacks rather than an actual fight. What about a different third party, like another player? Such as, the next player to see the attack determines the effectiveness of it. However, they may not have been paying attention to what was going on with the attacker or the defender so they could overlook an important detail.

Right now, we're playing where the defender determines the effect of the attack, and attacks are being dodged, deflected, and absorbed, as expected.

But what if you incorporate a plot? To make every post be read and reviewed, and bad posts thrown out? Well, this actually seems to be working pretty well, but this solution makes other problems arise in its place. The plot can easily get convoluted as players try to pull it in several different directions. This can be solved with communication across players, to get a general idea of where the story should go from there. But with a large amount of players, sometimes they all won't be present for these valubale discussions. Additionally, the plot can get very complex and confusing, which can ward off new players since they can't understand it or don't want to make it any more complex with the addition of yet another character (also the summary of the previous chapters on RFF wiki is only 50% comprehensible).

Something that would annoy me if I did play SAFF would be the reliance on external material. Using characters, items, or places from games, movies, books, or shows. Some external material is fine, like the amount on the Creators page, but taking a look at the Anticreators page, nearly everything is from something and next to nothing is original (except for that guy with 7 octotrigintillion HP, he's original and still dumb).