Purgament 2020 The Law of the Land

[SikstaSlathalin]

1) One character to rule them all- You may pick only one player from the characters list and control it.


2) Each battle will last five rounds, which equals 10 total posts (5 to each combatant). This has been decided as a sufficient amount of posts based on the duration of the tournament and time constraints. If each post is given 3 days to reply (72 hours) x 10 posts (5/combatant) each tournament round could potentially last for a month (30 days). We do not wish for the tournament (which is traditionally four rounds) to last longer than four months. Please note that once your opponent posts, you have 72 hours to post a reply. If you will be unable to get your post up in time, you must contact the judge for your thread to be granted an extension. Please note that if you ask for an extension and we see you around posting in Downtown or other parts of the forum, the judge reserves the right to revoke the extension.


3) The decision of the judges is generally considered final. However, judges are people too, and sometimes they may miss something in their assessment. If you feel that you were judged unfairly, you may submit a polite and detailed request for the judges to reconsider their decision (including why you feel the decision should be reconsidered in as much detail as you can manage), but you will only be allowed to do this once in the tournament in order to prevent all players from doing this continuously.

This appeal process will be called a “Judge’s Review”, and as stated, each player will be allotted one for the entire Rumble, so use it wisely. Also, bear in mind that just because you call for a Judge’s Review, does not mean the judges are under any obligation to reverse their decision. The judges may decided to uphold their decision or overturn it, based on the Review. Also, you are under no obligation to use your one Judge’s Review, as no Review may be called for in your opinion. The judges for the Rumble will be drawn from both Staff and Members and will be listed before the Rumble begins.

The appeal process, will be followed with the input of two other judges besides the original judging (3 in total). The winner will be the one selected by the total scores.


4) Battles will be judged based on the following criteria and their respective subcategories:

Writing Style
Effectiveness of Combat
Control of the Field

Note: You can see the detailed descriptions of these criteria and how they will be judged in the Purgament- Judgement Section


5) You must read and follow the instructions of the judge in the first post of the Battle. Failure to do so will result in an automatic disqualification.

Battle Rules for the Rumble:

- Regarding controlling another player’s character:
In this Rumble we are going to regard one of the basic rules of the arena and say that the rule remains, which means that other players cannot write your character’s reactions to their character’s action, but, you, as a player, must react appropriately and believably, even if it negatively impacts your character in a way you cannot realistically avoid.

Keeping that in mind, there is an obligation for both players to acknowledge and address effects of the other character’s actions and the environmental effects upon their own character. That is why it should be understood that if your character would be affected by the actions of his/her opponent, or by the environment, that the player will not avoid this responsibility and will act out and/or respond to the the effects on his/her character accordingly.

Any player who does not demonstrate the ability to do so will lose points in the judging.

Breaking this rule by directly writing another player’s characters actions/reactions will also result in a loss of points in the judging process.

- You cannot interfere with other battles:
If you are not involved in the fight, do not post within the Battle thread for any reason.

- There is a post length minimum:
All Battle posts must be at least three lines in length. While speed is important, opponents need some level of depth so they are able to react to a scene effectively.

- You only have one “full action” per post in the Rumble:
Each round shall be defined by a single post from each character. Each post will consist of a single “full action” from each character. A “full action” is defined as an action and a reaction on the character’s part. The “action” is something that the character does on their own initiative, whether it be attack, or healing, or defense, or whatever. A “reaction” is something that the character does in reaction to the other character’s actions. Therefore a “full action” consists of two parts: an “action” and a “reaction”.

Since there will be one “full action” per round, that will go for every attack that has effect in more than one way, and of course, the opponent has the ability to interrupt or evade the attack, so it can be handled (for example, if a person “heals”, the other person can react to this by performing an attack).

For the first post in a given combat, one combatant will “get the initiative”. Because the first post does not have a post to “react” to, instead of “losing” half of the full action (because there’s nobody to react to on the first post), the initial poster will have two “actions” which they can set up however they choose.

An “action” or “reaction” are composed of the exact same options:
Movement (sufficient enough to gain strategic advantage, or full evasion)
Attack (full effect)
Defense (full effect)
Healing (full effect)
Etc.

If used as “actions” these moves have the potential to have their effects altered, reduced or negated if the other character decides to utilize their “reaction” in order to counter, interrupt, or otherwise evade the effect of the original character’s action. Therefore the “final effect” of each character’s actions cannot be fully determined until the other character has had a chance to react to the original character’s actions.

- Act courteously towards other players when participating in the Rumble:
While your character is allowed to be a “dirty fighter”, you as a player are not allowed to be rude or disrespectful to the other player.

In Tournament Battles, if you have a problem with your opponent or how the fight is progressing, please contact the Battle's Judge or a Moderator.

Flaming or causing drama during a Tournament is grounds for disqualification. You will be warned if such an infraction is deemed to have taken place. If you continue to engage in this behavior after the warning, you will be disqualified. If you forfeit a match, this is a permanent decision and your opponent will be awarded an automatic 'win'.

Malicious intent, this is a new one for this year after seeing some stuff that happened in the last one. While helping other players is welcomed, if it appears you are doing so out of malicious intent by giving insider info against someone or helping solely to "get back" at someone you don't like or lost to you will be asked to stop and potentially disqualified if you are still a contestant at the time.

- Certain abilities that are not allowed or are restricted:
Before, there was a list of abilities here. This year, we’re going to defer to the limits outlined in the initial rule about manipulation of other characters through “mind-control” or some other means:

- Illusions, mind-control, and guaranteed hit spells/attacks/effects will be allowed, as long as they work according to the first rule which states:
“Players cannot write another character’s reactions to their character’s actions, but, both players must react appropriately and believably, even if it negatively impacts your character in a way you cannot realistically avoid.”

- For guaranteed-hit attacks:
Even if you cannot dodge a projectile, this does not mean you need to suffer the effects of it as intended by the opponent. For example, if I have a magic rock of guaranteed-hitting, and I throw this rock at you, the rock is going to hit you. But, depending on what you do to meet that attack, there are a variety of ways to avoid taking damage or negative effects of that rock. You could bat it away with you blade, you could block it with your shield, you could simply deflect the rock with a telekinetic wave and so on. The point is, there are ways to avoid negative consequences, even if an attack is guaranteed to hit, provided there is an appropriate and believable response/reaction to it that reasonably negates its intended effect.

- Regarding Mind-Control or Manipulation:
If you wish to “mind-control” a character within the bounds of this rule, you would be making something more similar to a “strong suggestion” for what you would like that character to do, but you cannot force a character to react as you intend. It is up to the other player to either come up with a way to resist, dispel, deflect, or otherwise nullify or mitigate the effects of your suggestion, or fall prey to this suggestion for a limited amount of time. So in practice, the mind-control spells would work as “suggestions” rather than fully controlled outcomes by the character making them.

- Regarding Poison Effects, Regeneration, Mind-Control, or any ability that persists for more than one round:
There are two kinds of these abilities: Passive abilities which have an effect each round without character intervention, and Active abilities which have an effect which requires the direct action of the character to maintain it.

An example of a Passive Ability is the poison effect in the Round 1 ~N~ vs. Jacogos [J - Wattz] , as an example. This is a “passive effect” which acts without any further intervention from Dr. Waye. So he is “freed up” to take another action. This ability acts on Uai without Dr. Waye needing to “act” further to maintain it.

An example of an Active Ability, is a “vampiric drain,” as it is typically described. The vampire character must actively “drain” the other character each round it is in effect, so that vampire must “use” an action to “maintain” its effect, essentially tying down that vampire and limiting what they can do (or it should) besides the drain.

- Abilities or effects which are “total” or “complete” are not allowed:
You cannot “knock out” a character, or “kill them” instantly with an attack. Your fight with them will go the full five rounds unless for some reason they voluntarily quit, or die of their own accord.

This applies to healing, and other effects also. Any passive/active healing/drain/poison/etc abilities should not ever do a “complete effect” in one round (or even in two rounds). They should make it a little more possible to “keep going” but not to heal completely; or they should have a partial effect on a character, but not one that cannot be resisted, or minimized, or dealt with in some fashion.

- Regarding abilities which have “multiple effects”:
Let us consider our drain attack again. Should the “healing”, which is considered a “move” in the battle (aka attack per round) have an additional effect besides healing, for example, some kind of a vampire skill that can drain lifeforce out of the enemy, we will consider it as a full attack per round, but because it has two simultaneous effects, both effects will be reduced by half, or divided by the numbers of simultaneous effects it has. This maintains a fair and equitable balance of power for attacks which have a singular effect, versus attacks/moves which are accomplishing two or more effects in the same “action”.

- Regarding Projectiles:
Characters may use projectile attacks the same as any other attack. They may not use an unreasonable amount of projectiles (for example, 300 bullets per second). However, the projectile attacks should be able to be as effective as any other kind of attack.

Characters should indicate how many projectiles or how many total attacks can be made with their projectile weapon. For certain weapons or forms of attack, such as crossbows, guns, or spells, if the character can easily bring enough "ammunition" to the fight to attack in each post, that should be acceptable. If however, the character could not reasonably bring enough ammunition to a single fight to do so, or the attacks are considered too over-powered (examples include spells which are powerful enough to be unbalancing, or weapons which have an unbalancing amount of destructive capability, such as a rocket launcher or plasma cannon) then the character's capacity to make a certain number of attacks with this projectile weapon should be limited every bit as much as any other kind of attack whether melee or something else.

The power of the projectile attack is ultimately what matters more than anything else. We cannot set an arbitrary amount of projectile attacks because not all projectiles are the same. Some will have to be more limited because they are more powerful, some will be allowed to be in greater amounts because they are less powerful. For example, an attack of three darts is not the same as an attack of three explosive bullet rounds, unless the darts have some kind of balancing factor like a strong fast-acting poison or some other balancing effect.

- Regarding Death:
We are not interested in making the Rumble into Mortal Kombat. Characters shouldn't necessarily have to die in the end, and therefore they wouldn't be forced to use all five posts they have per round to kill each other. This enlarges the kind of combat from a one-dimensional killing match to allowing for a variety of different possible matches to take place, with many more colorful and diverse outcomes.

Without the burden of “the final blow” that you bear in mind always, this time, you will be able to take the time to develop not only your moves, but your psychological effects of your moves on your characters, which will allow a rich and interesting writing for the judges to take notice of.


Don’t forget that the rumble, is, after all, a writing contest. We want to see you bring your inspiration and emotions into this with your words. The moves and attacks are important since this is a fighting scene played by you, but we need to be able to see how you fit yourself within giving situation and how do you use your skills to write your battles.