MUSH Guide Part Five

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Welcome to the MUSH Survival Guide! This guide is tailored around Dream Chasers MUSH, but much of this advice can be applied for any MU* centered around roleplay, though many parts will be entirely subjective.

This guide also contains text and advice from many people, as this is something anyone can add advice or update. If you run across something that confused you that you wish to put in this guide to help others, or something you know more about and want to clarify, put it in here!

Here's the chapters so you can skip ahead as necessary:

Chapter 1: Into the Wilderness - How to connect and log on to Dream Chasers MUSH.

Chapter 2: Crowded Street Corner - Wherein basic mechanics of communication are described.

Chapter 3: You'll Never Be Alone No Matter Where You Go - How to be a good guest, what to expect for the application process, and how to construct a well-rounded character.

Chapter 4: Wings - Where we discuss the ins and outs of roleplay, obtaining roleplay, and the tricks behind scene-planning.

Chapter 5: Stage of Death - Navigating the Gunslinger system, combat RP advice, and other goodies. You are here!

Stage of Death

So, it's finally happened. Words are thrown, consequences catch up, or you're just not sure you can play nice with someone at the other end of their ARM, or your ready spell. Or vice versa. It's time for the Gunslinger combat system.

Gunslinger is a way to do combat that allows you and everyone else a way that keeps track of who did what, as well as add an element of chance and a neutral arbiter for what happens with moves and attacks.

In a big scene, this can mean all the difference, especially when reading through several poses of text.

Here's the thing: combat through Gunslinger is optional, as some fight scenes may be better done entirely through poses, especially between players who have something specific in mind. However, you're going to likely be in a Gunslinger battle sooner or later, so this guide will help you smooth out that potential learning curve so you can have some fun!

Combat 101

In this section we're going to walk through a combat scenario with our NPCs Juan and Tia.

Part 1: Pose Order, Attacks, and Combat Reactions

Pose/action order becomes a little more rigid during combat. Make sure you don't take actions any more often than all of your opponents collectively. The general rule is for everyone fighting each other to have one turn each +round (excluding +bosses, but more on that later).

The most basic example is two characters: in this case, we'll call them Juan and Tia.

"Buttface!" Tia yells at Juan, swiping his sandwich right off his table to take a giant bite from it. 
Juan bolts up from his seat, knocking it over with a loud clatter, and slings a punch at Tia. "Them's fightin' words you no-good elf!"

Juan is attacking Tia, so he's going first.

GS: Juan has attacked Tia with That's My Sandwich! Punch!

Tia has to react to Juan's attack. Checking the +queue, she sees this:

------------------------------< 1: That's My Sandwich! Punch >-------------------------------
Attacker: Juan    |Threat: Low    |Tier: Free  |Type: Technique
Flags: Reserve

This tells her a few things about the attack. The attacker is Juan, of course. It's a low threat attack, which means that the Power Level (PL) attached to it is low, so it probably won't do a lot of damage (depending on her stats and reaction of course!). This has a tier of Free, which means that it's an attack that Juan whipped up on the fly using Gunslinger's Free Attack parameters and thus it has a limited range of tags (more on this later).

It's also a Technique attack, which will use in part Juan's Technique stat for determining its output; Tia might want to refer to her own stats to see how much this might affect her (see the section on statistics in Gunslinger for more detail on how this works).

And finally, it has the tag Reserve. This will give Juan some FP but it won't affect Tia in any way. A player might want to store up FP for a later move using options like Reserve.

Tia can either +evade, +guard, or +charge. These do different things; see the Reactions section for details. There is also +accept, for cases when you want to accept a buff or healing spell, or want to eat the full damage of an attack with no upsides in return.

In order to figure out what she will do, Tia can check her +health, her +stats, or her attack list using +attacks.

Tia is ICLY busy stuffing her face with the sandwich, so the player decides that Tia should react with a +charge. This will give her more FP for the next round at the cost of eating the full damage of the attack. She types the command:

+charge 1

When you react, you specify which attack you're reacting to by their number, hence her use of '1' above. She only has Juan's attack in her queue. A character who is bossing may have multiple attacks in their queue, but we don't need to worry about that now.

Anyway, Tia receives as the output from the CSYS:

GS: Tia takes a solid hit from Juan's That's My Sandwich! Punch for 35 hit points!

Now, Tia must pose back. She could retreat, as peace is always an option, but this wouldn't be much of a tutorial. So, Tia will pose getting hit by Juan's attack, how it hits her, and is going to up the ante with a spell.

Tia's face has only the sandwich to protect her from Juan's fist. She is thrown back, crashing through Juan's table. "Your sandwich sucked anyway!" she yells. "Time for you to cool off!" An icicle forms in the air by her hand, and shoots straight at Juan!

Her input would look like (the CSYS will do partial matches so you don't need to type out the whole thing, just as much as is unique):

+attack Juan=ice bullet

And the output would look like:

GS: Tia has attacked Juan with Ice Bullet!

Notice that Juan doesn't pose 'Juan punches Tia's stomach!', nor does Tia pose 'Tia's icicle hits Juan!' Whether or not it hits, as well as the damage, is for the CSYS to decide, and the attacked player gets to decide how that attack registers with them.

Juan then checks what the incoming attack looks like:

------------------------------< 1: Ice Bullet >-------------------------------
Attacker: Tia    |Threat: Moderate    |Tier: Deathblow  |Type: Sorcery
Flags: Cripple

Anyway, Juan's player decides that he is going to defend against her attack with +guard!

+guard 1

And receives as the output:

GS: Juan guards a hit from Tia's Ice Bullet for 62 hit points!
GS: Cripple applied to Juan!

Uh oh! That Cripple effect applied. That will reduce the effectiveness of Juan's Techniques (and his ability to defend against them). He could keep doing what he's doing, opt to use a different attack type, or try to remove the status effect in his next move -- it all depends on what the narrative calls for and/or what the player OOCly wants to do.

But for now, that's a +round! We'll return to Juan and Tia's fight for more details on the system shortly.

Sidebar: Free Attacks

TBA; the art of the free attack

Part 2: Tags

TBA

Part 3: Force Actions and Other Combat Options

TBA

Part 4: Combat Etiquette Basics

TBA

Sidebar: Permission

If you want to do something that may mean you have to assume something in your pose, just page the player for permission first. Also, it's a good idea to just ask in general, especially if what you may do might change a social scene into a combat scene.

In fact, let's rewind this scene to just when Tia steals Juan's sandwich. Juan thinks it'd be funny for him to punch Tia, but that might not be the sort of scene her player was wanting. Thus:

p tia=hey mind if I punch tia
Tia pages: go for it, you goober, she'd love a reason to get in a fight with someone she has a crush on

Permission is great that way.

Part 5: Combat Resolution

TBA

Big Combat

If it's one on three, you need to wait for all three of them to go. Same for vice versa. The three, in that example, are all on the same side, and mixing things up a little that way is generally more fluid, as long as it isn't rude.

Specifically addressing the issue of jumping the queue to get the 'killing blow' on a big boss, it is expected and accepted for those who haven't gone yet to continue attacking the boss after the CSYS says they're down but before they've posed, and boss GMs are best served by doing a final pose that includes everyone's attacks taking it down together, unless there's a clear reason to do otherwise.

In big scenes, try not to only RP between your character and your opponent; if you also banter (or bicker) with your friends, react to them being knocked around (or especially amazing), and so forth, and you'll all have a much more interesting scene.

If everyone in a scene is willing to use consent instead of the CSYS for combat, by all means have at. Just remember the usual rules of engagement, which apply to coded combat as well: don't no-sell your opponent, by which I mean 'pose brushing off their every action as though they're so ineffective as to be unimportant'. Don't pose the effects of your actions, only your actions themselves; it's up to you how you swing your sword, but it's up to your friend how much blood is drawn. Do try to make everyone feel as awesome and empowered as possible.

For an example of how a fight can go, please see: Sample Fight

Types of boss fights (expand on this later):

  • Normal mass combat
  • Timed fight
  • Optional boss

Also expand on QTE, boss actions, tips for bosses, tips for other participants (big scene is big).