Lismore Lands Forum
Documentation => The Rules => Topic started by: Ashtyn on May 04, 2012, 01:30:17 am
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I decided to compile a list of the top things I see people doing when writing their cards that should be avoided.
tl;dr version: Stop doing the listed items that are in bold, please!
I will start out with the most obvious and the greatest cause for a card to not get approved in a timely fashion:
- NOT LISTING THE COST OF YOUR MAGICAL ABILITIES
Seriously, this is what brings 99% of all card approvals to a grinding halt. If you have magic, it must have a cost!. Cost for your magical abilities can be a % from a power pool (call it whatever you like), a number of times during a certain period of time, or specific special conditions that limit the endless usage of a power! Cost is mostly a matter of being fair, so you can't just go on endlessly using your magic without ever getting tired or running out.
If you send in a card with magic that has no cost, I stop reading it right there and won't touch it again until you contact me wondering what's taking so long. :P
That up there is outright violation of our requirements and will cause a card not to be approved. And it shows up so often, it requires its own special place at top of this list. Now going on with the list of stuff that's just a pain to go through:
- Overly-Detailed or Excessive Ability Descriptions
Don't get me wrong, I love detail in what people write, specially in their poses in the RP. But on their character cards, this is a pain to go through with:
Natural Abilities:
She has majestic wings spanning about 12ft, covered in iridescent feathers, because her father was a giant bird and her mother was a winged dragon. Her wings have a very small row of scales at the leading edge, and are quite muscular, and she can envelop people with them for a warm snug birdie wing-hug. She sometimes uses them to take up to the skies with someone else, carrying them in her arms while her wings flap and powerfully lift them into the heavens. Her wings are very sensitive and will cause her great pain if they are wounded, and she depends on them so much that she will kill herself if her wings get cut or broken beyond mending!
I would have prefered if that were writen simply like this:
Natural Abilities:
Flight - Her big, pretty, snuggly wings allow her to fly. She can carry up to one small person with her during flight.
And then, lower, on the Disadvantages section, put the bit about being emotionally dependant on her wings and killing herself if they are damaged. Certain things (such as cost!!) belong right where an ability is written, but other things, specially things that affect a character as a whole, should go in sections of their own (such as the disadvantages).
- "See <elsewhere> for the rest of the information that should be right here"
Here is a classic example of what I mean:
Magical Abilities (optional):
Change/Transform - She can change her form up to twice a day in addition to the energy cost. Forms will be listed at the bottom of the card.
"Forms will be listed at the bottom of the card" ....why? What's wrong with listing them right there? Why break the linear train of thought of the card, putting relevant information spread all over the place?
If you are talking about an ability, get everything about that ability in that section. Don't spread it throughout the card. I'm not a computer; I read cards from top to bottom. GOTO doesn't work with me!
- Joke Abilities
Jokes in character cards don't bring a smile to my face. They make me angry because it's a waste of my time. And I don't mean the cute stuff like "I'm a tiger. I rar!", or if you want to write things in an irreverent way, no, I mean the utterly time-wasting pointless garbage some people think is fun to put in their cards, such as this precious gem:
Magical Abilities (optional):
Magic Shaping: DUMB_WIZARD can weave his magic at will to transcend elements and do more with it than normal magic could. He can for example conjure fire at will, water, or a soft breeze, or he can turn all the water of the world into fire and ruin everybody's day. Nah just kidding I know that's not allowed.
*long low rumbling growl while the fox fights the urge to kill* ...don't put junk in the cards, please.
- Improperly Described Attributes
Let's take that precious example above again, and pretend the last bit doesn't exist:
Magical Abilities (optional):
Magic Shaping: DUMB_WIZARD can weave his magic at will to transcend elements and do more with it than normal magic could. He can for example conjure fire at will, water, or a soft breeze.
How do you go about doing it? Do you need to wave your hands about and say "abracadabra!"? Where does the magic manifest itself? Do you require to have one of the elements in question at hand first of all? ....and what's the cost? Where's the freaking cost?!?!
Besides not putting cost on a magical ability, lack of proper description is also a problem that plagues many cards. The example that I see most often without fail is:
Magical Abilities (optional):
I can heal with magic!
No you can't. Let's forget for a moment that there's a point just above talking about the cost of a power. Let's pretend this person wrote:
Magical Abilities (optional):
I can heal with magic twice a day!
Ok, twice a day. It's an acceptable cost. But you didn't describe your ability at all. You can heal with magic? What kind of wounds can you heal? Do you require anything special such as a foccus or a gesture or words? Nevermind that, what severety of wound can you heal to begin with?
Second to "magic healing", the thing I most often see with insufficient description is shapeshifting. We have a pretty big paragreaph explaining how shapeshifting should be written if you're going to go that route. Please read the CHARACTER CREATION GUIDELINES http://sculptyworks.com/lismore/index.php?topic=24.0 (http://sculptyworks.com/lismore/index.php?topic=24.0).
- Exotic Character Card Formats
Since the beginning we've had people use character cards they wrote in whatever way they felt more comfortable with, or the really lazy ones just hand us cards written for some other RP sim elsewhere.
There's no rule against doing this, really, but I'm starting to think there should be, because some of the card formats we get look more like COBOL code than something a person should be reading!
Our character card format was developed to hopefully encompass all relevant fields for writing a character for Lismore, and they are designed to facilitate reading of the cards. When people write things in different formats, it's likely to make me groan because I have to go about figuring what goes where; in one case once when Nova was helping me process cards, we came upon one he said was completely unintelligible. I thought he was being overly dramatic, then I took a look at the card and couldn't make heads or tails of it.
Our character card format is not arbitrary. A lot of thought went behind it when it was re-designed from the original ones we used when we first opened the sim (and other sims have been copying us ever since). Please use it.
- Too Much Magic
While some people get carried away with writing on their cards and make everything extremely detailed and well explained, some do that when listing their magical abilities. There is such thing as too much magic, folks. Do you really need 5 different variations of what's essentially a fireball that you can shoot at different levels of intensity?
Magic is the number one reason why card approval breaks down. The more you have of it, the more likely you will be 1) overpowered and/or 2) make a mistake (like forgetting to list the freaking cost of your spell!! GAHH!!). Keep your magic simple, and streamlined. You don't need 12 variations of the same thing. Write it once and allow for on-the-fly adaptation of it.
- Too Much Description
Some people like to write. Some people REALLY like to write. I'm not talking about the occasional "add a bit of flare to the text", I'm talking about some cases where people's character cards encompass multiple notecards. It's not fair of anyone to expect to monopolize the staff's attention by making them read a novel (in once case someone once wrote so much in one card, he split it into three notecards).
...also...
- Notecards Linked Inside a Character Card
I truly hate when people do this. Please don't put notecards inside your notecard. We regard character cards as a single file. The moment someone expects you to open up a linked notecard to read extra information, we go back to the GOTO issue.
The space is there; use it. I would rather you have a lenghty ONE CARD than a card that requires other cards.
Not only that, but because of SL's limitations, notecard links break down when copying&pasting notecard contents, which is essential in the character approval process.
And finally....
- Disadvantages That Every Normal Person Has
The Disadvantages section is for unique quirks of your character. Something that everybody else is by default succeptible to don't count.
Examples of disadvantages that everybody else has by default are:
-Mortality/killable: Everybody is killable by default. But more specifically, people tend to write this as "my character will die if stabbed int he heart". Well, so will everybody else by default. So unless you come from a race that normally wouldn't die from a stab to the heart, this disadvantage only shows how unimaginative you are. :P
There are countless variations of this, but it's what I see most often: Mortal. Being mortal is not a disadvantage unless your race is normally not mortal! But even more absurd is when people point out what specifically kills them (like the heart example above).
-Needing air/water/food to live: Once again, unless your kind doesn't normally need any of these things, these aren't valid disadvantages because everybody by default needs to breathe/drink/eat.
-Vulnerability to being stabbed/cut: And again: Unless your kind isn't normally affected by these things, it doesn't count.
If you are an elf, for example, and your kind doesn't normally grow old and die, but you do, then aging and dying of old age are valid disadvantages. But if you are a normal human, then this doesn't count.
I'm sure there are more things that annoy me when I see them, but these are the most recurring ones I can think of.
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...I knew I was forgetting something. Add this to the list:
- The Use of Absolute Terms in Attributes
We see this all the time in cards, and while it might seem like the tiniest matter of semantics, it's a big deal specially when some people take things they write in their cards to the letter:
Magic Sword of Magic: This sword is able to block any attack.
or
Fangs of the Demon: He can bite and tear through any clothing and armor with his fangs, also able to chomp down meat in record time.
or
Super Mind: She can shield her mind from any form of mind reading or telepathy or mental attacks. She can also broadcast her thoughts to any targets within 10 meters of her.
See what these all have in common? The use of the adjecive any implies lack of conditions for the attributes to work. Take that literally, and your character as an invincible unstoppable unconditional ability. That's a big no-no. I don't like to see the word any in a card unless it's something acting against the character (like "vulnerable to any kind of fire damage", for example).
And that is because in Lismore we have no invincible characters. We don't like invincible characters. You must always account for the possibility that your stuff will not work against something, you must always account for the possibility that there might be exceptions to the norm, that this demon you are fighting might be able to overcome the holy magic attack you wrote in your weapons saying it causes extra damage on demons.
More often than not, people use any as a broad term, nothing more, to indicate any one thing they choose, but that's far too vague. And we do get the occasional 'rule lawyer' who will point out that his card says his sword can block any form of magical attack, and that includes the special magic that nobody had ever seen or known of before from this special creature nobody ever met before that they are fighting for the first time!
And the use of an absolute term in your attributes potentially negates anyone else's attributes. Wanna see what happens when the guy with the sword that can't be blocked by any weapon fights the guy with the sword that can block any weapons? http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v614/Bealzabuth/DramaLlama.jpg
Also the use of the word any in your favor makes everything overpowered. So don't use any unless it's in your disadvantages; and even there, be careful with it!
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- In Engrish!
I don't expect perfect grammatics, I don't expect flawless text with proper punctuation and no typos whatsoever. But I expect character cards to be written in "good enough" english!
Spell-checkers exist all over the internet (and I think some viewers have them built-in), so there is no excuse whatsoever for the constant mispelling of words. One typo here and there, no problem! I make them too! (read up on this thread and you'll see at least 3!). But consistently misspelled words say "I have no idea how to write this" (or worse: "I don't care"). You're trying to join a TEXT BASED RP and your writing skills are less than those of a 4th grader?! (for our non-U.S. players, by that grade in school people should have learned to properly read and write)
In the past I had to outright refuse cards that I outright couldn't understand, but I spent some time trying to decipher those with less-than-nice english on them, but I'm not going to do that anymore. If you write this...
Magical Items (optional):
Cast Blast: Shi though 5 discs in 5 alternal directions hinting these whitch stand for damg thats liek been hit wiht a dining plate. 5% mana
...or this...
Natural Abilities: very strong can pick people up with both hands can tense up and make muscles harder during daytime hes weaker than night full moon makes his abilities double night time only
...I won't approve it.
Sorry, we have standards, and one's ability to communicate through their typing is the most important thing around here.
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Magic has always presented a bit of a problem for me, psychologically speaking, because it is by definition something which exceeds reality, and in some ways I have a very down to earth and detail oriented mind.
The problem with magic in Lismore is that it's not strictly defined and there are practically speaking no rules saying what magic can and can't achieve.
In the real world powers are very strictly limited by "physical principles" or "laws of nature" which define what is and is not possible, and we, for the most part understand these things. If Superman picked up a mountain or an ice berg and held it up over his head... it would collapse under it's own weight and bury him under chunks of rock or ice - the material simply isn't strong enough to be lifted in that fashion. In our world Superman would be limited the laws of nature.
If superman has super strength and laser vision you'd have to explain in a thermodynamically reasonable manner where the energy came from, how it was stored and produced. And how he avoided breaking his bones with his own strength. And these limitations would inevitably limit his abilities.
In Lismore the universe simply isn't specified with this degree of precision. If I write up a large flying animal such as a dragon, I am not required to specify the tensile strength of his wings, the energy requirement of flight, or the strength to weight ratio of his bones. These things are assumed. They're "magic." More or less.
With less intrinsic magic, or "spells" the problem is even worse, there is more or less no limit on our imaginations (beyond what Ash thinks is reasonable). There's no reason at all why I can't think up a spell that casts a fireball or a freezing ray or disintegration or throwing people backwards or forwards in time or space, and attempt to justify it. There's nothing that says "this kind of magic would work" while "this other kind obviously wouldn't."
Game designers and fantasists have long struggled with this question, and a lot of the time end up inventing systems or theories of magic, often quite elaborate ones. I liked Larry Niven's series "The Magic Goes Away" where excessive use of magic in a particular place would use up all the manna there and end up creating a magical dead zone, for instance.
Or Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time where males and females access completely different kinds of magical power, with different rules and spells and objects.
Or even Advanced Dungeons and Dragons which clearly lays out what a magic user can and cannot accomplish.
The point of an overall magical system is as much to limit and shape what magic can't do, as what it can. In the same way as laws of nature shape what we can and can't do in the real world.
Imagine if all magical power flowed from the Goddess, so if you used it to do anything she didn't like then there would be consequences... Bang! An instant shaping and limitation of magical ability based on one simple rule.
For the most part in my personal relationship with magic I like to think about a rule that I call Balance. Essentially, I think, magic is a force that seeks Balance. Hence magical excess of any kind in any direction must tend to correct itself over time.
It's a lot like Karma, hell, maybe it is Karma. I just tend to feel that magic should tend to seek a moral and physical balance with itself. Those who tend towards violence and oppression and subjugation through magic use will tend to find their own magic and actions coming back to oppose them.
Buddhist theory says that to oppose evil directly is to give it strength - a clear demonstration of Balance. Go off crusading and building and fighting and improving the universe and doing magical Good Good Good... and I think you find the evil and resistance to your efforts will increase in proportion, and the centre cannot hold, things fall apart.
In line with these ideas when I tend to think about magic I normally think of it as a power that must contain the elements of its own destruction. Its like a double edged sword - it cuts both ways. So its strength must also be its weakness.
Take... oh, for example, a magician with the ability to cast freezing spells. How can this ability to cause cold contain its own downfall "naturally" in a way that maintains Balance? Well, say with every cold spell some of the heat she nullifies is transferred back to her? So if she casts the spell too often she'll overheat, suffer from heat stroke, and maybe even cook herself. It's a spell which is self limiting by its own nature.
My attempts at magical design in Lismore have all been healers and psychics. But that doesn't rule out the principle of Balance, simply because they are doing things which are either non-physical, or "good." A simple application of Balance to a healer would be that they have to take some or all of the pain or disease or damage into their own body in order to heal. The idea I used was that if a healer can give out magical energy then it follows that this energy might be -taken.- The giving nature of their talent may make them vulnerable to magical vampires who drain the healer of their vitality in order to fuel their own spells. And it's almost a given that healers can't heal themselves...
With psychics the more or less traditional application of Balance is that seeing and knowing the unseen also makes you visible and known to the unseen world and it's denizens. To be psychic or clairvoyant or telepathic is to be vulnerable to haunting and posession and mind control and insanity.
In writing about Lismore and The Wilds I've often found I've had to gloss over or "forget" about certain instances of magic and magical characters which were just too big, too blatant, or just never did fit with any kind of continuity of story. I don't generally have a lot of truck with magic myself, and when I do it is generally some kind of an application of the Principle of Balance. Nothing is ever lost, what goes around comes around. To fight against someone is to strengthen them, to destroy them is to set them free. There is a Balance, and the more you try to grasp it and control it and bend it to your will the more it will control your destiny.
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- Unverifiable / unaccountable procedures or requirements
This is a tricky one, because some variations of it are perfectly fine, and the principle is fine, and the intentions are fine too, but it amounts to the fact that it's an unverifiable status. Like in this example....
Voodoo Powers: BillyWitchdoctor's powers depend on him staying in good terms with the spirits that help him. For that, he must sacrifice a chicken every night before sleep, or else he's incapable of casting any of his magic until he does so.
On the example above, the player could say the character will make it a point of sacrificing a chicken every night, but it's a requirement that's very difficult to keep in check. Is the player going to RP that at least once every time they RP, before logging off as that would be his character's 'going to sleep' time? Are we to assume he can practice this procedure every night except if he's put in jail or out at sea with no chickens around (in which case, the requirement would only count against the character in situations where he has no access to chickens, which works against its value as a cost for his powers).
There are countless variations of this but the basic idea is the same: The character can only not do it under special circumstances.
We would prefer to see costs that can be verified on the spot. For example, on the same case, it would be much better if written as such:
Voodoo Powers: BillyWitchdoctor's powers depend on him staying in good terms with the spirits that help him. For that, he must sacrifice a chicken every time he's about to invoke the help of the spirits to use his magic.
The "I must do this every day" type of cost is Ok, but we prefer when people use a more on-the-spot approach.
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- Including Abilities/Powers/Skills/Items in the background story section (and expecting them to count)
This doesn't happen often but when it does, it drives some of our admins up the walls:
Some people describe skills or powers or items or abilities in their Background Story part of the character card, without making any mention of it on the appropriate sections in the card, and then when something happens, and they want to use that skill and someone checks on it and finds out they don't have said skill listed under their SKILLS, they point to their background story....
The information on your Background Story section is the story of your character. You can list all kinds of stuff there, but if you want your character to be able to use what you listed there as an active attribute of their character, you need to put it under the appropriate section. For example....
Character Name:
SomeFox
(you know who you are!)
_________________________________________________
Character Age:
23
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Species:
Fox
_________________________________________________
Natural Abilities:
Fox stuffs, like enhanced sense of smell and hearing. And a powerful bite
_________________________________________________
Fighting Abilities:
Can fight with his claws and teeth! Average brawler skill level.
_________________________________________________
Equipment:
Some clothing, a few silver coins, 10ft of rope, a tent
_________________________________________________
Magical Items (optional):
_________________________________________________
Magical Abilities (optional):
_________________________________________________
Skills:
Dancer, hunter, beer brewer, some carpentry skill
_________________________________________________
Disadvantages:
Afraid of spiders, afraid of heights, faints if he smells sewer or rotting flesh or other strong noxious smells
_________________________________________________
Background Story:
This fox came from the mainland to explore the islands of Lismore. He adapted quickly to the life in the islands and came to call it his home. Originally son of a merchant the fox got tired of his father's business, and went traveling the world and learning local customs and languages, and in his travels to the orient he learned martial arts and calligraphy, but never stayed in one place for too long to call it home until he arrived to Lismore and settled in the woods where he prefers to camp in the woods than to take home in the populated areas.
_________________________________________________
There's at least 4 skills listed there, but there's no mention of them whatsoever in the... let's see... THE SKILLS SECTION OF THE CARD! ...and the skills mentioned there aren't even vaguely implied in the character's background story.
So, the rule on attributes mentioned in the Background Story but not mentioned in the proper areas of the card is that your character can have experienced those situations, but that doesn't mean your character can produce them.
For example, I attended a few capoeira classes, but I'm totally incapable of pulling off any of the moves. I could put in my card that I attended a few capoeira classes, but if time comes to use it for real, nope, not gonna happen.
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- Ghosts:
...don't write a ghost. Ash will not approve a ghost. :P
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- Shadow Powers:
Invariably, people will write shadow powers as a form of invisibility or teleportation, both which are in our list of restricted/banned abilities.
Like...
Shadow Step: Shadowmonger is able to stand on a shadow, and disappear, appearing anywhere else where a shadow is being cast.
or
Hiding in Shadows: Shadowmonger is able to stand on a shadow and become invisible!
...nevermind invisibility like that isn't allowed, the real big problem with this kind of ability in SL is that it's extremely subjective! SL does not have proper shadows. Only those with supercomputers can use SL shadows without the lag of the ages crippling them, and even then, shadows can be anywhere depending on how you have your day cycle settings. Lighting/shading is not uniform throughout SL, so it can't be used as a reliable condition for a power.
And that folks, is why 99% of all "shadow powers" don't get approved.