Guide to Combat RP
Hello! I am Coffee and this is my guide to CRP. This is based on my personal preferences, experience with nearly ten years of CRP, and can be incorporated with the roll system you see in F&F and most other Roleplay Servers.
Getting Started
Entirely new to combat RP? That is completely fine. You don’t need to have CRP’d before or be adept at CRP to read and understand this guide, as it is specifically for teaching CRP and improving the quality of already-existing CRP.
Hello! I am Coffee and this is my guide to CRP. This is based on my personal preferences, experience with nearly ten years of CRP, and can be incorporated with the roll system you see in F&F and most other Roleplay Servers.
Getting Started
Entirely new to combat RP? That is completely fine. You don’t need to have CRP’d before or be adept at CRP to read and understand this guide, as it is specifically for teaching CRP and improving the quality of already-existing CRP.
Section 1 - Understanding Your Weapon
The first step to CRP is understanding what you’re using, how it works, and the movements that align with it. You’ll need to look at what your character uses the most often and go from there. If you’re interested in CRP and do so often, it would be good to look into your weapon of choice. It may seem over the top to research what your weapon does, when it actually helps improve your quality of CRP and Roleplay all together. Here are three examples from poor to high quality of understanding your weapon.
Poor Quality - He held the weapon and swung it.
Medium Quality - He gripped the handle of the sword and swung it vertically.
High Quality - He held the grip of the weapon, a hand near the pommel, swinging the blade in a vertical slash from left to right.
The more descriptive you are included with how well you know your weapon, improves your overall CRP quality and performance. Such makes a large difference in whether you’re in the classification of a poor, average, or high quality CRP’er. Thus, it is recommended that you look up your weapon of choice and its parts. If you are fighting with your fists, you need to think of whether your character knows hand-on-hand combat, whether they are new at it or practiced, and so forth. This will be included in a later section of the guide.
Section 2 - You are not invincible.
The title of this one may sound odd - but it is true! You are not invincible. No character played is actually invincible or unable to be hurt entirely, as that would make things quite unbalanced and unfair, along with not being realistic. You’ll need to understand that your character was not born knowing how to fight, wield weapons, or magic. They do not suddenly enter the world and understand how to fight as a brand new character. These things should be exclusively learned through RP! Anything is achievable by simply working on it and practicing in RP. It is highly, highly recommended to start your character as not knowing how to fight and build and gain experience as you go through RP. When you create your character, you may state their backstory as you wish, though, in my personal opinion (just my own) you shouldn’t add combat to your backstory unless you are actually experienced OOC! It is much more fun to start out new and gain experience and learn as you go, whether this be by yourself or from a mentor in RP.
Another crucial part of learning CRP, and RP in general, is understanding that your character is not invincible. Your character can be hit, harmed, wounded, and should be! These are all parts of gaining experience and an interesting story. These all become part of who your character is. This leads us to my next section.
Section 3 - The Importance of Balance
Within roleplay, especially CRP, it is very important that balance is maintained and kept for the fairness of yourself and other players. This means understanding that your character will and should get hit when applicable and you shouldn’t brush off the consequences of your actions. It also means you should react accordingly when hit. Here is an example:
Prompt: The creature rears up, its frame reaching over eight feet tall, and begins towards Alaric, cornering him so he has nowhere to go. It slashes towards his chest area!
Bad Example of Response: Alaric hits the creature back with his sword.
Good Example of Response: Alaric’s chestplate is slashed - leaving tears within the material and ripping skin below it, though thankfully, not going too deep. The man grimaces in pain. He holds the grip of his sword and swings left to right, aiming to harm the creature.
As you can see, one of them is very vague, showing no response to even being injured despite a roll likely declaring he is hit, and he shows no physical reaction to being harmed. This takes immersion from roleplay quite a bit and doesn’t make it seem as if there are any consequences to allowing himself to be backed into a corner. The other is more descriptive, immersive, and expressive and explains the outcome quite a bit better. You should hold yourself to the second in terms of how descriptive you are with your responses. Do a reactive emote! Show and express exactly what happened to your character from the situation they are in. This is highly, highly recommended and something that many do not do.
Section 4 - Understanding your skill level
As mentioned earlier, it is important to gauge your skill level within your character and roleplay accordingly. Not every single person within the world is incredibly skillful, strong, and overpowered. In fact, you definitely should not be unless you are both skilled at CRP and your character has a backstory and/or experience with combat for some time and has worked to get where they are. It is highly recommended to roleplay as a new individual at combat if you are one. This both adds more immersion and is more realistic.
Example of a character just starting combat: Alaric held the grip of the sword in a wobbly manner, attempting to gain his balance. His feet were unsure, his grip unsteady as he aimed to swipe the practice sword across his opponents chest.
Example of a skilled character: Alaric held the grip of the sword with a practiced hand, grip steady and sure. His gaze was alert, studying the opponent's movements. He sliced outwards, from lower-right to higher-left - putting strength behind his swing.
There is NOTHING wrong with being new!
There is a kind of notion in CRP that everyone must be strong, able-bodied, and suited for combat when realistically this is nowhere near the case. Some characters should absolutely be not good at combat, some should be new to it and still learning. You do not need to be a huge, muscled Chad with god-like capabilities. If your character is not good at combat there are ways to go about this - such as gaining magic rather than physically fighting, being a healer, or bringing able-bodied friends. In fact, a skinny, wobbly individual who tries and fails at combat is much more interesting than someone who is made to be overpowered immediately and has no learning curve.
Section 5 - Quality of Roleplay
When you think of someone who is a “Good Roleplayer” you typically think about someone who puts time and effort into their roleplay, making it dynamic, interesting, and fun. This also applies to CRP. When you emote, you want people to be immersed in what you are doing and saying instead of rushing through all of it. This includes quite a few things you need to think of each time you CRP.
Being Descriptive- Being descriptive is extremely important to good RP. It immerses you more than simple, vague sentences and allows you to see the situation in a clearer light. This applies for CRP and normal RP.
Example of a descriptive emote: As they entered the clearing - the group could note that it was a bright, clear day. The sun shone down between the trees, casting rays of light around them. The grass was a bright, healthy green.
Example of a non descriptive emote: They walked into the clearing on a sunny day.
Example of a descriptive combat emote: Spotting the man who had caused so much harm, Linus straightened his back and approached the figure. Weapon already drawn, he held the grip two-handedly, before suddenly turning into a horizontal cleave with the sword, aiming to hit his torso!
Example of a non descriptive combat emote: He saw the man who made him angry and walked up, swinging at him.
It makes quite a bit of difference to add detail and context to your emotes. Stating their expression, body language, and detailed descriptions of what they’re doing. It is the difference between lower and higher quality of roleplay.
Paying Attention- It is important to watch and read over each emote that happens and respond accordingly. Much of the time I noticed that people do not read every emote, or respond to every emote; and it is good etiquette to make sure you’re responding - whether it be a GM or another player.
Ask Questions- If you’re new at roleplay and/or CRP, it’s okay! There is nothing wrong with being new or not understanding. The best course of action is to simply ask how to do something, whether it be the person you’re rping with or a staff member. Simply message them or talk in local chat and say “Hey, I don’t understand (so and so) can you tell me how to do it?” or “Hey, I’m new and don’t understand what that means or how to do that.” I know for certain that the vast majority would be willing to teach and aid you!
Stop moving!- Another part of RP etiquette is to remain still whilst RP is happening and stand as your character would stand. I understand that it may be tempting to sprint or jump around, but it can be very distracting and not immersive to others. Whilst RP is in session, I recommend staying still and RPing, or going elsewhere if you’re unable to stay still. This is referred to as “Moving OOCly” which means moving your character around whilst RP is happening. This is VERY important not to do when in a situation with a GM, an event - or combat in general with another player. It can make things upsetting or unfair to others if you’re moving around without emoting it, or run away without emoting it. If you want to move, emote, and allow the other players or the GM time to reply to it accordingly. Otherwise stay still unless you emote!
PRACTICE! The real way to improve your CRP is to practice. Ask for advice from others, try out more detailed emotes, and make sure you’re following RP etiquette. In time you will get better and better.
I may add to this guide but I am too tired now.
I may add to this guide but I am too tired now.