So ever since I had access to the internet I’ve become a really big nerd in the sense that I’d do nerdy things. Role Play Fighting was one that was extremely fun and actually turned into my first game built with a group of people. So basically it is forming statements that describe actions that are enclosed in brackets, colons, or any other kind of symbol really. The way I recall doing it::
Say Jon and I are in a chat room.
Tommy types: ::runs over to Jon and swings his right fist at his jaw::
Jon can dodge by typing ::dodge::
Or I can hit him by typing ::hit::
Now there are rules that are usually set in place before you start such as minimum amount of words per attack and how many times you have to hit before you defeat/kill you opponent. Killing is up to the fighter, its generally considered an asshole thing to do. But there is more to it than just attacking and declaring a hit or a dodge. You also have to compensate for the environment you invent along the way.
Example:
Jon and I are in a chat room again:
Jon: ::Runs over to Tommy, performing a roundhouse kick to his chest:::
Tommy: ::Block::
Jon: ::Hit::
Tommy: ::Catches his foot and uses it to throw him through the wall::
Tommy: ::Hit::
Jon: ::Evade::
See now, what happened here was that I blocked a kick (because I typed block before he did) and then I used his foot to throw him through a wall. I declared a hit before he declared an evade so I not only achieve a hit but I have to now walk into the other room to perform another attack. Or Jon has to come into the same room I am to perform an attack on me. So it can get very interesting depending on who is fighting but there are some flaws. One; You have to be an efficient typer. Two; There can be disagreements on spelling and its always better to have a ref there to be sure the rules agreed upon were followed. Three: one person becomes dominate by simple being the better typer/writer.
All of these flaws, and a few other minor ones, were noted and from that a group of friends that would use AOL Instant Messenger to enjoy this Role Play Fighting created a Dragon Ball Z Fan-Fiction Manually Operated Role Play Intensive Multi User Dungeon. Yes, DBZ Fan-Fic MORPIMUD. That is what I call it now but what we called it then was DBZ RPG because of the RPG elements that were present in the design. We removed the element of the game of “who can type faster” but kept the general format of typing your attacks into colons and or asterixs or slashes. We created mathematical equations for each attack be it a special energy attack, a physical attack or a mixture of both. You had a collection of stats such as Energy, Physical Strength, Intelligence, Stamina, Speed, Physical Defense and Energy Defense. You added all of this up to get your total “Power Level” and after every fight you’d earn more points to distribute to your character as well as money in which you could use to purchase items or special training. Training was important and it happened on a weekly basis. You train for a week and you earn points, so technically you don’t have to fight but if you want to be competitive then you pretty much have to. You could purchase items to assist you in battle, in training or even during Journeys. Journeys were used to find the Dragon Balls and were nothing special. Basically it was simulated dice rolls to see if you found anything and if you did find something they determined what you found. If you are familiar with Dragon Ball Z you know if you find all seven Dragon Balls you are granted a wish(Three if you are on Namek). We had limits though, such as you could only wish for so much stat increase and money to ensure the game didn’t get thrown too much out of balance but it wasn’t very common to attain all seven Dragon Balls so it never became an issue. The Dragon Balls were awesome to keep the members fighting for purpose because if you win a battle you can either have mercy, kill, or steal an item. So if you had a Dragon Ball you would probably not be killed, instead you’d lose a Dragon Ball. In the world of DBZ death is handled differently. You don’t stop playing, your character survives in another world. You can still train and fight in that world, but only with people that were also in that world. Everything we did in terms of design decisions were taken back to the DBZ series so since we were all really big DBZ fans we already had all the research and knowledge required.
Surprisingly the game worked and it worked well. There wasn’t really any balance issues but before it ended we were talking about adding bounties to add another element to motivate people to fight. We did test it a bit before allowing other people to join but that didn’t take very long at all. Since it was a fan-fiction game we also took the members and wrote Sagas. So yes the narrative was mainly taken from the show Dragon Ball Z but we made up our own DBZ world with our own Sagas and stories to tell. We had our own NPCs and even allowed every single member to take part in the story and to have their own personal back-story. I know I’m probably missing a few elements of the DBZ Fan-Fic MORPIMUD in here but essentially that is it. It was operated through instant messenger services and JavaScript chat rooms. It was hosted on Angel Fire though we used the blank HTML editor box to make each page. It had a wide variety of classes with special abilities, a large list of items that were used in different ways, a list of planets and locations for the members to travel to, and even gave members the chance to customize their own attacks and weapons. I’m honestly surprised it worked so smoothly but I think a lot of it is the fact it seems that DBZ can be so easily translated into a RPG type game. There are still some websites similar to the one we ran but after a search through them I honestly have to say the one we operated was much more detailed and allowed the users to do more.
It had one flaw that effectively breaks the game. It was Manually Operated and that limits how many players you can have. Even with half a dozen “Refs” (Or Game Masters) we struggled to keep the website updated to allow everyone to battle frequently. While it was fun, I can’t imagine how insane the immersion factor would have been if it was made into a game that didn’t require GMs. We already had members logged into the chat rooms during all hours of the day from all over the country but we simply did not have the time to operate it even when I used visual basic to make a battle calculator for the refs.
Funny Addition: I did a research on my old handle I used for this game, which was Rancid Reaper. I found a “History Lesson” from a game that was apparently adapted from our design. http://www.angelfire.com/rpg/dragonswish/History.htm
It is not by any means an accurate description of what actually had taken place. Manatoba and I founded it, Naeo and Haven jumped on board after that and the rest of the description is plain garbage leaving out other people that contributed to the game and giving credit to those who I don’t even recognize. Regardless of how grossly inaccurate it is…it brings back memories and makes me laugh. I use the handles because I don’t know if they want me to use their actual names. I’ve known many of them most of my life and still talk to one fairly frequently(I am actually talking to one as I type this). One is currently in Iraq and another I can’t get in contact with for the life of me.
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