The Elfbone Extraction: Combat

[Proto Man]

Strazio Rockwell is going to take over grading of this bout, so please direct all questions or inquiries to him.

We apologize for the delay, but Gilgamesh doesn't have the free time at the moment (and I'm leaving and Dark Link has another fight to grade).

[King Axorn]

Strazio Rockwell is going to take over grading of this bout, so please direct all questions or inquiries to him.

We apologize for the delay, but Gilgamesh doesn't have the free time at the moment (and I'm leaving and Dark Link has another fight to grade).

Alright, thanks!

[Okor]

Sounds good to me. I await your verdict eagerly!

[Strazio Rockwell]

Alright as Proto said I'll be the new judge for this fight!

I'll post my verdict in a day or two as I still need to read through the rest of the thread!

Good luck to all involved and I'll try my best to get this up ASAP.

[Okor]

Thanks Straizo, I really appreciate you doing this.

[Strazio Rockwell]

And without further ado let the judgment begin!

First things first I checked the rules that were decided among yourselves. Every participant kept well within the word limit. I also believe that every time extension was accounted for and approved. The only issue is that Galel did fail to post one round so there will be a minor deduction for that.

Now onto the meat and potates of this fight, I’ll be using a system that is similar if not exactly the same as the other staffers.

Style - How well did you convey the story and add your own “flavor”? Are your word choices appropriate and interesting? Do you make good use of pacing and does your writing flow well? Basically does your writing stand out among its peers?

Grammar - This is the category I’m the most lenient on, considering I’m not an English major. Mainly I’ll be looking for simple spelling errors and other mistakes that could have been avoided with a read-through.

Believability/Realism - This covers how believable the fight was. Do I think your character can actually pull that off? Do you god-mod or is the fight a good give and take interaction? Do you take into account stats/transformations/super moves?

Awesomeness - As a reader did I enjoy reading your writing? Did I feel attached to your character and what he/she was doing? Not so much “Do I want your character to win?” but more do I enjoy reading your character’s (and by extension your) take on the battle.

Each category is graded from 1 to 5, 1 being 'abysmal' and 5 being 'excellent' (note that this does not mean 'perfect'), whereupon the scores are totaled.

Super moves and transformations also offer a .5 score bonus to whoever uses them. In the case of a clashing super move the winner of the clash will receive the bonus.

Here are the individual score cards for team 1 (Axorn, Triest, and Vrell)

Axorn - 12/20

[spoiler]Style - 3/5 Overall you seem to be a very action-oriented writer, which is something I enjoy very much. All three of your posts involved a lot of physical actions and clashing with Okor. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, especially during a fight, but I did think you missed out on some good chances to describe the scene better. All three of your posts were well below the word limit (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing) this gave you ample room to add descriptions of the museum, your opponents, yourself, etc. Your third post did a wonderful job describing Okor’s putrid state, but I felt the entire post ended too early and didn’t progress the fight much.

All-in-all I enjoyed reading your work, but I would take some time and add a bit more beef to it in the form of descriptions.

Grammer - 2.5/5 This is one of your weaker sections. I noticed several spelling errors and punctuation errors within your first paragraph which forced me to stumble right away while reading it.

He then surveyed the seen below him. Two of the thieves had broken in through the glass and one of them was caught in a bear trap, cursing as he tried to remove it. One of them had rotten, battle-worn armor seemingly fused to his body with part of the mans skeleton showing. The other had Axorn pulled out his sword, Dragonsbane, from it's sheath and aimed towards a small gap in the rotten one's armor while the two were distracted with the bear trap.

I noticed spelling punctuation errors and a few run-on or fragmented sentences in your other two posts as well. Most of these could be fixed with a simple read-through.

Believability/Realism - 2.5 Your character never really seemed to be on the back-foot in your posts. You also seemed to ignore most of the damage that was afflicted on you, such as several face wounds (which would’ve offered wonderful flavor and descriptions if tapped upon) and slashes dealt to you. Also, and this was a big one, you wrote as if you were mostly immune to heat-based attacks and asides from a little knockback you shrugged them off completely. This makes sense for a Draconian in their home universe, but without a defensive move or anything to mitigate the damage in the Omniverse they would hurt Axorn due to Omniphysics. From a gamey perspective of things it makes it a little bit unfair for your opponents to be able to shrug off some of their moves because of RP elements.

A few times you did say that Okor did return with a slash or parried your attack, but they were never touched on for more than a sentence or two and didn’t seem to have much bearing on Axorn’s physical state.

I do notice that your character does have a reasonably high DEF stat, but part of writing a great fight is that back and forth tug-of-war with your opponent. I never felt that Axorn was behind Okor, but rather on even footing with or above him. In future clashes you could touch upon the fatigue that Axorn was feeling towards the end of the fight or even put him in a rough situation that he barely escapes from, just something that makes it feel like the fight is truly a life-or-death scenario.

Awesomeness - 4/5 I really like Axorn as a character. He seems to have a very refined sense of honor and an air of nobility around him, without being arrogant about it. Your writing was very direct and kept me engaged in the action and you did a good job of describing exactly what was happening between Okor and Axorn during the fight.

The only thing I think you could’ve really improved upon was having a bit more of a dialogue between Axorn and Okor. You have a sweet speech during your second post, but it felt as if it fell upon deaf ears until I started reading Okor’s post. You could have messaged him and the both of you could’ve hashed out some cool dialogue exchanges in both of your posts. Again, this is just a small gripe.[/spoiler]

Triest 15/20

[spoiler]Style - 3.5/5 I enjoy your style of writing, but it does suffer from being a bit sparse on details and descriptions. You do a good job of describing the action scenes and what is actually happening between the characters, there was only a few points where I felt you could’ve described the actions a bit better. The scene with the crashing landspeeder I think you missed a great opportunity to describe the crash in detail, but chose to skip on it.

I also think you could benefit from varying your word choice, you use a lot of very plain words which isn’t horrible but you could paint very vivid imagery if you expanded your word choice/variety a bit.

One of my major gripes is that sometimes you slip into what almost feels like an “instruction manual” format. What I mean by this is when describing scenes you start to list things off as if they were being read from an instruction manual.

Tartaros leaned in with another swing, first from the right before an upward swing. Triest ducked under it, and then leaned to the side to doge the followup swing before backing up into the controls. Turns out pushing a lever causes the whole vehicle to aim straight down. Triest yelped, before climbing to the underside of the vehicle as Tartaros clung onto the controls, putting the lever back into its place, and bringing the entire thing right back up again just before it slammed into the floor of the museum. Triest then poked out from underneath, now with a loaded shotgun, and this time just flat out missed. But he did score a direct hit right into the front of the lander.

This section did a good job showing me what was happening but it read like a step-by-step manual. I’d recommend trying not to cram so much physical action into one paragraph and splitting it up with descriptions or the inner thoughts of Triest.

I also really enjoy the little moments where the narrative voice switches to Triest’s inner voice. They add a nice flavor to your work and give us some insight on the kind of guy that Triest actually is.

Grammar - 4/5 Not much to say here, you did a good job overall. Asides from some run-on sentences, a few spelling errors and tense changes (that could be fixed with a simple read-through before posting) most everything looked solid.

Believability/Realism - 3/5 I loved the hit and run style that Triest used. It felt exactly what a speedy stealthy character would do when faced with a very powerful opponent.

My two grievances lie with the crash itself and your final post. He seemed almost unfazed from crashing what amounts to a flying car while holding onto the outside of it. I felt that at the very least he should have been severely dazed after surviving the crash if not physically banged up. But your second post doesn’t reflect the fatigue shown.

The final post was cool, the stealth character was caught and pinned by the brute and was about to be gutted. Very classic cat vs mouse scene where the mouse is able to escape through pure cunning and scrappiness. My problem with the scene is that all he does thrash about and somehow manages to break free. I know you wrote that it was due to Tartaros feeling the effects of his accumulated injuries, but that felt a bit boring and kind of undermined the whole dynamic between you two. I would’ve much preferred to have Triest think of a way out rather than get lucky. Maybe he grabbed a nearby pipe? Or slipped away by dislocating his own shoulder? Just something other than he thrashed about and got lucky.

All in all great job, not many people play stealthy guerilla tactic fighters and I think that is one of the coolest ways to fight. Just remember just because you suffer an injury in your post doesn’t mean that you’re out of the fight. In fact injuries and setbacks are some of the best ways to add depth and that crucial “tug-of-war” feeling that great fights have.

Awesomeness - 4.5/5 Triest is a fun character to read. He’s not the super macho man brawler or the super dark brooding anti-hero. I think this site lacks the light-hearted scrappers and Triest seems to fit the bill perfectly. He’s not afraid to run if the situation gets sketchy, but he won’t abandon his friends. All-in-all I think you do a wonderful job portraying him and I look forward to seeing more of your work.[/spoiler]

Erik Vrell - 13.5/20

[spoiler]Style - 2.5/5 You do a decent job of describing what your character is doing and feeling, but I get a sense of tunnel vision when I read your work. Everything you write is very much centered around Erik, most of your sentences start with He did this or Erik did this etc... This leads to a sense of blindness to the rest of the battle. Taking a moment to have Erik observe the area around him and describe details of the battle would’ve helped you immensely. I also think that breaking your writing into more digestible paragraphs would help you as well, your last post would benefit from this the most. Generally every paragraph should cover one idea or serve one purpose, but you seem to tack on as much as you can with each paragraph where half of it could be separated and subsequently expanded upon into its own thought/paragraph.

Ultimately I feel as though the major thing lacking is focus. Yes I know you’re fighting, but how does Erik feel about running into an incredibly skilled psychic? Scared? Excited? You touch upon it slightly, but don’t expand upon it much past the first post. Taking time to add focus and clarity to each paragraph would improve your reading quite a bit.

Grammar - 3.5/5 Overall not bad, most things looked solid. The biggest two things were fragmented sentences and grammar involving quotation marks. There were a few run-on sentences that you should have turned into two separate sentences, but nothing too horrible.

Believability/Realism - 4.5/5 This was your strongest category. You captured that feeling of back and forth with Galel very well and the ending of your third post was unexpected, but well done. I think the mental battle with his was very well done, albeit short-lived. Eating a super move as destructive as Galel’s would put anyone into a bind and you did a good job describing that. Overall there wouldn’t be much improvement here except I felt that Erik didn’t use every tool in his arsenal, which in a life-or-death fight seems to be a poor idea. This is a very small problem, an overall you did a wonderful job.

Awesomeness - 3/5 I didn’t get a good feel for who Erik was or what he was feeling. I knew he was a well-trained psychic, but beyond that I didn’t get much of a feeling for his personality. I think some dialogue or inner monologue would alleviate this issue and give the reader a better chance to get to know Erik.

The scene where he jumps from the first floor to the ground floor to shatter Galel’s shield was really cool. Using the environment and such to outwit your opponent is always fun to read and I think that was the high point of your writing.[/spoiler]

Here are the individual scorecards for Team 2 (Okor, Galel Baraz, Tartaros)

Okor - 17.5/20

[spoiler]Style - 4.5/5 Man the descriptions, the nasty diseased descriptions. This is certainly your strongest point, you do a good job painting a stellar picture. Not much to pick on here.

Grammar - 5/5 I didn’t notice very many errors, good job! Nothing really shook me or took me from the reading experience.

Believability/Realism - 3.5/5 So this one was a hard one to judge considering your character. You have survival and due to the physiology of a plague marine you do not feel pain. That being said having your chest cavity blown open is still a massive injury that was only survivable due to your survival power. You said that his body had a hard time keeping him alive, but this didn’t seem to translate into reduced combat effectiveness. Okor was still able to beat Axorn back despite this massive injury, with relative ease. I would’ve liked to see it be more a struggle to disengage from the draconian. All-in-all you did a decent job and that was my only major gripe.

Awesomeness - 4/5 Okor is a cool character, the patient warrior who wins by slowly trudging forth and crushing through oposition with dogged persistence. His laboured dialogue is a nice touch, one that I enjoyed reading. I felt like as a reader you got a good grasp on Okor, the touch back to Barbaros and his transformation to a marine puts everything into a nice frame and gives you good sense of depth for the character. Great job.

Bonus - .5 for using a transformation[/spoiler]
Galel Baraz - 11/20

[spoiler]Style - 3/5 I feel like you could have done so much more had you added more content to your posts and not missed out on the final round. (Disclaimer the style category won’t take the missing third post into account, just what you’ve written) I feel like the psychic duel with Erik was a missed opportunity for some very cool interaction and prose. Also expanding word variety might not be a bad idea, I noticed repetition in a few spots that kinda pulled me from the writing. Overall there weren’t too many issues, I just felt as if there wasn’t much there to grab me as a reader.

Grammar - 2.5/5 The two big issues I found were run-on sentences and tense changes, with the latter being more severe. Often times you started in past tense and switched to present tense towards the end of the post.

Erik grinned, leaping and striking at Galel with all his might. His Psy-Blades, potent weapons capable of passing through physical barriers, found no purchase from the barrier of energy surrounding his foe. The Sorcerer laughed, lashing out with his sword. "Show me! Show me everything!" Galel shouts as Erik leaps back, scowling with confusion. "Surprised?" Galel chuckles, stepping forward and drawing his Plasma Pistol. "Good." He says, squeezing the trigger. The weapon lights up, magnetic coils flaring brightly as energy courses through them. Milliseconds later, a ball of supercompressed superheated gas rushes from the barrel of the gun. Erik's eyes widen in horror, his hands reflexively extending as he projects a square of Psychic force in front of him.

This tense change was pretty jarring and made me stumble a few times while reading it. I would take the time to decide upon the tense you want to use and make sure you stick with it. Also there were a few sentences where you tried to cram a lot of information into them and they turned into run-ons, break things up into their own thoughts and that would help immensly.

Overall I didn’t notice any spelling errors or anything else beyond those two errors mentioned.

Believability/Realism - 3/5 I felt like you did a much better job of give and take in your second post than you did in your first. Erik scored some solid hits and you were put on the back foot until you popped your super move. In the first paragraph you were nigh-untouchable, beating Erik in the mental game (despite having matching TEC scores). I understand that you have foresight and that should give you an advantage, but the hits that Erik did score seemed to have no effect on you despite your low DEF. The second post did a good give and take with Erik stabbing through Galel’s arm and I felt that of the two your second was much stronger overall.

Awesomeness - 3/5 Due to the short nature of your posts I felt as if I wasn’t allowed to get a good peak at Galel’s twisted mind. I know he’s an insane sorcerer, but beyond that small description I don’t know much about him. The dialogue felt good, but there was no interaction between you and Erik asides from exchanging blows. I think shedding some light onto Galel’s thoughts and past would’ve been a good addition. Perhaps telling the reader about what he thinks of his opponent or his thoughts on the current state of the battle? Is he cold and tactical or psychotic and deranged?

Bonus - .5 for using an uncontested super move
Penalty - -1 for failing to post during one of the rounds[/spoiler]
Tartaros - 13.5/20

[spoiler]Style - 3/5 I think you would benefit from adding more meat to your posts. Nothing really reached out and grabbed me until your final post. I felt like you painted a good picture, especially in the first two paragraphs. Not much to say beyond that.

Grammar - 4/5 Just a few run on sentences that you stitched together with commas were my only issue. Other then that great job!

Believability/Realism - 3.5/5 No big complaints here you did a good job of taking some hits while handing them out. My only issue is that you didn’t seem to feel much fatigue until the end of the last post. You ate a shotgun to the face and several other brutal injuries, but seemed to more or less shrug them off. I understand that survival lets you survive grievous wounds, but it doesn’t stop you from being affected by them. It seemed like your opponents were mainly knocking you around but not doing any substantial damage. It felt as though you were an unstoppable beefcake and the injuries were more minor setbacks than anything.

Awesomeness - 3/5 Similar to Galel I felt as if I never got a good grasp on who Tartaros was. The dialogue was nice and it gave me the feeling of a rough brawler type, but beyond that there wasn’t much to go from. As a reader i’d like to see more of Tartaros’s inner thoughts and observations. Was he annoyed at Triest? Angry? Or did he enjoy the game of cat and mouse? You touched upon it a little bit in the beginning of your third post, but it didn’t feel too substantial.[/spoiler]


Team 1’s overall score - 40.5/60

Team 2’s overall score - 42/60

This means Team 2 is the winner! Congratulations!

Due to the sudden appearance of law enforcement, including one very pissed off space marine no one is able to execute another player. Team 2 can escape with the “artefact” in tow. Team 1 can choose to escape as well if they wish, but will have a harder time getting away.

I expect both teams to have a rough time getting away, considering this museum heist is happening on the first tier and everyone involved is heavily injured.

Okor, Galel, and Tartaros will now have bounties placed by the Empire and pending investigation Axorn, Triest, and Erik will also have bounties placed upon them.

Damage takes into account story elements and your overall score. For instance Okor scored very well and that will mitigate the damage he takes, but due to having his chest blown open he will still receive a large amount of damage.

Damage

Axorn - 6
Triest - 7
Erik - 10

Okor - 8
Galel - 10
Tartaros - 7

Final Word - This was a very fun and amazing fight and a tough one to grade! Please take all constructive criticism in stride and know that I had a very fun time reading everyone’s posts. I also recommend posting in the participation bonus thread once this thread is closed out so you all can receive that delicious OM bonus.

[Okor]

Thanks for judging Straizo! I'll endeavour to have a post up in the morning!

[Triest]

Not bad for my first combat round on this site. 2nd highest score! Thanks for judging and the feedback! I will try as always to work on my writing, in particular to avoid the step-by-step thing you mentioned. I'll try to work on adding more details and descriptions as well, which currently seems to be my bane. Traditionally I have been very to the point with my writing, but perhaps I can work on that. I'll figure it out.

It's actually rare that someone takes the time to grade something like this. Most of my time that I've spent roleplaying, most don't have anything to say about my writing. I appreciate that you took the time to actually give some feedback so that I can identify where my strengths and weaknesses are. Thanks again!

On a different note, I guess that the changeling didn't manage to stop a bounty being placed, but maybe he bought them 30 seconds to run?

[Okor]

Evidently. I had a great time writing with all of you, and I'm just waiting on Tartar to get back to me so I can finish up my final post.

Sadly Galel is dead to the world, so we can't do much with them. I'm planning on having them go out in a blaze of glory and warpfire.

[Erik Vrell]

So what happens now that the fight is over?

[Erik Vrell]

Sorry to double post but are we able to do whatever now? ( ie. Join a new thread or start your own etc.)

[Tartaros]

You just go ahead and join/start a new thread, if I recall correctly.

[Strazio Rockwell]

Sorry to double post but are we able to do whatever now? ( ie. Join a new thread or start your own etc.)

You're allowed to start your own thread, just remember that you still have to escape or talk your way out of being captured by the local law enforcement.

[Triest]

Just to confirm, the combat thread at this point is essentially closed now right?

[Okor]

It is, yes.