So, I'm trying to think of a way to bring an interesting battle RP back to DV, and I think I may be on to something. The format will be set in individual spars, much like the Matrix RP (for those of you who remember it), but instead of having a typical, storybook theme/background, I've come up with something a little more DV-related.

Lucid Dream combat. We will play out battles as if we are sharing lucid dreams with our opponents. The battlefields will be of our own subconscious, and our abilities will be limited only to our imaginations.

And of course, you're asking yourself: "How the Hell is that ever supposed to work? What's the point of a game where anyone can do whatever they want??"

Well, I've been trying to come up with a way that can throw a loose framework of rules behind the game, that will actually incorporate our own lucid dream / control strengths and weaknesses. What I came up with is pretty crude, of course, but I think it could be an interesting idea - or maybe perfected upon. I took a list of 20 of the most common dream abilities I could think of, and I numbered them from 20-1; 20 being the ability that I'm most accustomed to, and comfortable with - 1 being the one I barely (if ever) have used.


Flight - 17

Telekinesis - 20

Energy Blasts - 14

Fire Manipulation -19

Earth/Landscape Manipulation - 3

Water Manipulation - 2

Air Manipulation - 9

Electricity Manipulation - 1

Gravity Manipulation (non-flight) - 5

Shape-Shifting - 8

Phasing/Intangibility - 11

Summoning People - 7

Summoning Objects - 10

Super human strength - 16

Invulnerability - 15

Super speed - 13

Hand-to-Hand Combat - 18

Firearms - 12

Miscellaneous Magic - 4

Teleportation - 6

So with these stats, whomever I choose to fight is going to have to pit their stats against mine, if the situation ever presents itself, within the RP. However, as with most T1, the object will be to out-maneuver your opponent, and write them into positions that they can't get out of, logically. So, when that can be done, these stats may not play that big a role, which is ideal. But when it comes down to certain, specific situations (an energy blast vs a telekinetic defense, for example), then the stats will come into play.

Now, going even further: along side these types of techniques, there will be a couple of core attributes, that you will also have to rate:

Offensive Control - How good you are with actually making things happen in the dream. How well you impose your will. Offensive control is basically how good your attack strength will be. Whenever you're attacking, your attack strength will be factored in, as to how much damage you might inflict on the opponent. If you're someone who's rather good at 'just doing' things, while lucid, then rank this the highest of the four.

Defensive Control - How good you are with fending off an intense dream, whether standing up to your nightmares or surviving through any other number of harrowing situations. Defensive control will represent how strong your battle defense is - whether or not someone throwing a car at you, when all you can do is block, is still going to hurt you; etc. The higher you rank this, the better you should be (in your actual dreams) at getting your enemies to 'back off', or fending off their attacks.

Awareness - How well you can keep from getting distracted, and stay focused on the dream, your consciousness of it and that you are, ultimately, in control of it. Awareness will guage how well you can handle all of the shit that your opponent is going to be throwing at you, and still remain lucid, and on top of the situation. With low awareness of the dream state, you will start to panic at the danger of battle, thinking it to be an actual life and death situation, rather than a battle that you have nearly complete control of.

Clarity/Stability - How solidified you are, in the dream. The longer (and crazier) you fight, the more your clarity of the dream is going to start waning. Your punches will be missing their targets. You're not going to be able to see things very well. Over time, you may just completely lose your grip on the entire battle (and be forced to forfeit? Not sure, yet. Wanna think of something to do with this concept.) This more or less represents stamina. If you are good at stabilizing your dream, and regularly practice it, give this a high rank. I might throw in a way to gain longevity by doing a stablization technique, during the fight (whch will probably be a set number of posts and cost a turn, leaving you vulnerable to attack. Not quite sure how that might work, yet).

So, in order, I would rank mine:
3
4
1
2

Partcipants would sign in on a thread where they can post their starting stats and something of a short summary of their past lucid dreaming experience. Types of battles they might have fought in, different situations, etc. Links to their dream journals would be encouraged. I'm thinking that, after some time, players might be able to change their stats' numerical orders, as their real lucid dreaming experiences might have changed. Of course, like with the dream journals, we would be going on the honor system, here. This is all in fun, anyway, so there would be no reason for anyone to falsify their abilities for this, I would hope.

Players would call each other out (anyone on Dream Views, that is willing to participate and make a profile), and then RP battle in a no-holds-barred, text-based battle, where pretty much anything can happen. The fighting format would be a lot like the old Matrix RP battles, that were around here, for a while. Basically, T1 Turn-based/Paragraph style. Gotta work a little on how the magic and distance formats might go, as far as paragraph length or whatever, but it's all just an idea, at the moment. The stats will servce as a (loose) backbone, to what is or isn't fair, within the fights. Asking for everyone to just have a little fun, here, and try to play your battles to the stats you chose, to keep things interesting. And this isn't 'character RP', so play yourselves - well, your dream selves, anyway. Act like yourself. If you have problems with certain things, in your lucids, acknowledge them in battle. If you are familiar with any particular dream strengths you have, acknowledge these, too. Also, don't be afraid to try something new. Expand your mind a little, and throw some crazy moves out there. The stats will be there to give us all an idea of how successful your attack or defense will be against the other person.

I think a fun part of this is that it is not only flexing our RP and writing skills, but potentially, our dreaming skills, too. Thinking of ways to get out of the battle situations could very well open ourselves to new techniques and ideas to try, while lucid dreaming. It's another reason I thought it better to keep this as a "play as yourself" battle game, instead of having characters. I'm pretty interested to see whether or not these battles, or the content within them, work their way into our dreams.

As far as the environment, I would say whomever is having a challenge issued to them, has the advantage of picking the environment. The catch is, the battlefield has to be a place that the defender has actually dreamed about (even better, if the place has to be mentioned in the person's journal ). That defender can then completely set up the scene, and mention any obstacles or whatever, during the first post.

Of course, there should also be judges, who will keep track of fight progress, and chime in on any disputes between whether or not a move or reaction was logical, given the stats and situation. Will figure all that out, later. Like I said, this was just an idea. Thought I'd throw it out there, and see what you all thought.