Why the Omniverse Has Rules

[Omni]

I agree. I enjoy stats within a site like this where they are only used as a guide. I like that I can write Illidan as fast and powerful but weak to hits and yet that has no overall effect on how the fight will be graded. It creates another ability to characterise without worrying about min/maxing like other RPGs do. I think everything else is well balanced and written so that fights actually matter and you can't have people turtling or wiping out a 'weaker' opponent with one attack.

My only bugbear with the system is the amount of detail I have to put in when creating a move. I understand why this is required but I put off making moves as long as possible because I have to think of about eleven different things every time and I always forget about three and it feels like I'm writing an essay.

I've been in the Move Creation Workshop thread to iron out some moves for Koola and Ebonywood, who's been a big help, has pointed out I still technically need to include a few more aspects around my moves. I suppose my issue is that a reasonable person would see what I'm going for (if you followed DBZ I guess) but I still have to go through the effort of prescribing exactly how every part of the move works. BUT not everyone has watched DBZ or they might remember it differently or if it's not specified then it could technically be open for abuse (not that I would, but it could be).

As I said, I understand the why. I just don't like it. /whinge

This is something I'm painfully aware of, and I actively try to improve. I actually thought of writing move 'templates' but I think it would maks the move descriptions way longer than they need to be by listing every as a separate sentence like. "Enel fires a ball. It is around the size of a basketball. It flies about as fast as a bullet. It takes five seconds to charge up." That's already kind of a problem. Whereas I try to write mine out as"Enel takes five seconds to charge up a basketball-sized attack, which flies about as fast as a bullet." for brevity. It pains me when we ask people to add extra detail to a move like "how long does it take?" and it just gets slapped onto the end as a separate sentence like that, which is why I often end up just rewriting the move for them. I'm not so anal that I'm gonna ask everyone "please write it out more succinctly" when the approval process is already so arduous so often, but it does pain me to see these three-paragraph moves about a fireball or something.

As it stands, I think the checklist we use is probably the best way to do things. For 90% of moves, the extra detail we ask for is already listed on there somewhere (half the time the missing detail, and the most important IMO, is "how fast is this attack?"). For more complex moves, it's difficult to make a set checklist without listing every possible move.

Sometimes staffers ask for details I wouldn't see as necessary, like the range on a ranged attack (unless stated otherwise, I assume it flies basically until it hits something, like a bullet). A solution I was thinking about would be to basically write a set of assumptions for different attack types. Like, "unless stated otherwise, ranged attacks fly at around the speed of a thrown object." and the like.