Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arrgh! Mark!" data-source="post: 2355065" data-attributes="member: 14559">I agree with that first statement, sort of. However, the question was on the nature of avoiding that; I simply provided some suggestions. Note how I said to avoid flowery prose. Then, players tend to think twice about combat in my games - it makes the combat exciting because of two factors - rare and dangerous. I haven't a problem with repetitive combat.Aso for avoiding most film conventions or literary conventions, you might note I actively encourage reading and watching films. Anime has it's own style, and like most art can be done well (My example is Cowboy Bebop) and be done badly. I'm sure we've all seen some pointless, suckful anime. Ninja Ressurection comes to mind. I haven't seen InuYasha, so I can't say as to it's style. I single out Anime because of the original posters mention of it and the subsequent debate. I actively dislike using anime tropes because they promote an extremely illogical combat system (At least, the anime I am intending. You know the sort.) that values obscene manouvers and shouting "Super-Mega-Dragon Cut!" before certain slashes. This can be exciting; it however doesn't fit into the standard fantasy genre. Conan, while his combat sequences are bloody and huge is rarely screaming out "BEEF BONE ATTACK!" or some such. My theory goes that combat is not made exciting through doing it "EXTREME!!!". It's by doing it well, taking in the complexity of realistic combat but also allowing for truly heroic things without valuing something outside of the individual more than the individual. Standard fantasy focuses more on the heroism of the individual, not respect for the ultimate sword-form or some other secret move. The reason why I suggested the Kurosawa classics is that they have the asian tinge that most geeks go cross eyes and love so much and yet have "exciting" combat. Combat is fast and extremely brutal. Not slow with lots of thinking, eye twitching, and muscle bulging - happens every episode and is rarely very exciting in itself. (Note how excitement comes from discovery of secret move, or inter-character plot in most anime, even ones revolving around repetitive violence?)However, were I running or playing in an Anime campaign I would be all too happy to have huge balls of sweat, leaping hundreds of feet in the air, throwing thousands of shuriken per second or pulling off some manover that makes a line of force come from my sword. I'm not an anime hater. I'm just recommending against attempting to use it's combat to allieviate the problem of repetition - Anime combat is (generally) always repetitious.</blockquote>

Verification