[9th Division] Sparing Rules and Tips

~What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease.~

Rules Of Battle

Sparring Rules and Tips
Rules
1 - You are allowed to make a maximum of three main actions in a post. This will typically be one defensive or counter move and then a single attack or a combination of attacks, one supporting the other.

2 – You are not allowed to control any aspect of the enemy’s actions; either by writing what they do or forcing them to do something. If they don’t say they did something, they didn’t do it. No attacks can ever hit the opponent with 100% accuracy.

3 – You are not allowed to use kidou above your rank, according to the Kidou Chambers.

4 – Remember to be respectful to your opponent. Flaming can only lead to ill-feelings and an unsuccessful spar. If you see inconsistencies or problems with the other person’s post, speak to them calmly first. If you still can’t resolve matters, ask senior officers for advice.

5 – Have fun! Sparring is a great way of both practicing your writing skills while interacting with someone else. Make the most of the opportunity.

Guidelines
Sparring is one aspect of RPing. RPing is an aspect of writing and there is never a singular correct way of writing. The key is a three-step process generally; Firstly, to let your creativity take control, then to try and picture in your mind what you are doing. Lastly, you take that idea and you put it in to words.

Sparring is writing so you should be as generous with your words as you want, being as descriptive as you feel is necessary to get your point across.

In this section, I’m going to give some advice of what I consider when I write a spar post to give you ideas of what to put in your posts.

What you should try and include:



1 – Your Character
Considering your character is probably the most important aspect of a spar post. Your character is the person you use when you RP and the point of RP is taking on that character’s traits and personality and applying those to the scenario your character finds themselves in.

While not directly essential to the actual competitive aspect of the spar, writing combat can draw a lot out of your character the more you use them. Are there possibly events they fight in that cause flashbacks of their past? Maybe of their death? Perhaps they have a particular dislike for the enemy they are facing and this gives them a greater resolve to fight.

Furthermore, perhaps they become angrier when they are injured or are unsuccessful in damaging the opponent. Does this cause them to redouble their focus or become more careless or wild with their attacks?

2 – Your Style
Consider your fighting style. You’ve written the strengths and weaknesses of your character but there is more to writing a spar than knowing that you are good at kidou and weak at zanjutsu etc. There is a far greater depth to combat than just a general overview of your prowess in the four main shinigami arts.

If you use kidou, is that focus on hadou or bakudou? Do you focus on utilising low-level spells like Byakurai but powered higher than usual? Or maybe rely on the brute force of the higher-level spells? Do you combine spells, perhaps using a bakudou spell to trap the enemy and then blast them with hadou or perhaps just unleash waves of destructive hadou to crush the enemy?

Zanjutsu or hakuda… Do you focus on powerful strikes or maybe short, sharp strikes? Perhaps you combine them? Are you an extremely mobile fighter? Do you flip and fly everywhere or just slide and sidestep to evade attacks? Or perhaps you don’t even bother to move, utilising your body or weapon to block incoming attacks?

Hohou is the art of footwork, including the flashstep aka Shunpo. For a fighter, this is one of the most important aspects of their fighting style, providing a foundation off which the other three aspects of shinigami combat then are built. Is your character very light on their feet? Do they use flashstep a lot to evade or get close to the enemy? Do they have good balance and precise movements to traverse difficult terrain with ease?

And then you combine all the four together to form your character’s fighting style, perhaps even giving rise to specific techniques. This is discussed more in the Battle Tactics section.

3 – Your Surroundings
Use those words! Describe your surroundings. What can you see? Hear? Feel? Does it remind your character of anything? Do they like it? Does it compliment their fighting style? Not only does it give your character more personality by their observation skills and thoughts, it also makes your writing far more professional and readable if it flows like a proper piece of prose writing, beyond just the mere actions like ‘X used Hadou 90: Black Coffin!’.

4 – Your Enemy
A spar is a battle between two (or more) people. You should interact with them, both by speech that they will respond to and in terms of how your character feels about them. Do they have a particular distaste for their enemy’s appearance or attitudes? Does your character think themselves superior or even insignificant to the enemy? Describe your enemy as your character sees them. Get into your character’s head and write what they’d feel when facing off against this person.

5 – Your Thoughts
Throughout the combat, your character should have a series of thought processes but how they think is determined by their personality. Do they fear failure or just seek the pleasure of battle? Do they try and calculate the enemy’s next actions and evaluate what they’ve seen so far or do they just resolve to try harder? There are so many possible things that your character could think in that position. Just try and imagine how your character would feel at that point…and then write it.

6 – Battle Tactics
In many cases, tactics can outclass simple greater strength. While people have a core set of skills and abilities, it’s more important ‘how’ they use these on the battlefield and apply it to the terrain they are on. What might work in one place may falter in another.

The key to winning a spar is to use everything at your disposal; your strengths combined together against the combination of the enemy’s weaknesses as well as the terrain.

If the enemy’s range is shorter, stay out of it and assault with longer range weapons. If the enemy is powerful but slower, strike fast and hard before withdrawing. If the enemy is faster, draw them in or trap them, locking down their movements by driving them into a corner.

Combining the four disciplines gives rise to techniques to enhance the effectiveness of basic attacks. This could be using a Seki spell to momentarily knock the opponent off their stride before immediately following in with a powerful hakuda or zanjutsu strike. A kick to drive the enemy away can be followed immediately by a close-range Shakkahou to blast the enemy backwards.

7 – Taking Damage
In a spar, you will almost certainly take damage. Consider your opponent’s moves, your situation and your capabilities impartially and think whether you could possibly do anything to evade or block the attack. You will almost always have some means of reducing damage even if you have to be hit so think hard how to stop attacks that will hinder your fighting style later while sacrificing things you could do without, like an arm if you’re primarily a kidou user or a leg if you’re not usually that mobile anyway.

The Sequence of a Spar post:
When writing a spar post, I find it’s generally built around three core parts; the Receive, the Preparation and the Counter. You can add the aspects from above in there to flesh out the post but this is what my posts generally consist of when stripped down to the essentials. This generally applies to a post following the opening attack of the spar.

The Receive
It always helps to write what the enemy did in their post, both to clarify it to yourself in your own mind and to confirm with the opponent that you know what they did. This section generally consists of writing what the enemy did in your own words and then include how that affected you, whether you were struck, dodged or blocked.

You then also assess your injuries and perhaps patch yourself up while reflecting on what just happened.

The Preparation
This is the part where you prepare for your counterattack. This consists of weighing up your remaining strength against theirs, considering your options and then moving to put the actions into place. This is probably the section where you can fit in most of the aspects I’ve talked about above.

The Counter
This is the part that you should focus on the most. Your attack should be well-described with as much detail as you think is appropriate. Utilise the terrain, use your tactics, your character’s strengths, while considering whether you are exposing yourself to the enemy’s own counterattack. Winning the actual fight can often rely heavily on thinking a step or two ahead of the opponent and making preparations to cause the maximum amount of damage you cause while minimising the damage you take.

Overview:
The RPing threads in the 9th Division are designed off the layouts of RP-dedicated websites in which you fully take on the role of your character and actually play through sequences of their life beyond just the missions and sparring but also what they get up to from day to day.

This is the opportunity for you to explore you character far more fully, examining how they live their daily lives and interact with the others around them when not forced to work together in combat situations. This can link in to their spars or missions that they’ve just carried out such as how they feel about the results.

In this area, you are advised to put a lot of thought and effort in to each post, being as detailed and descriptive as you can and therefore write at least a few paragraphs with each one. Examine your character’s thoughts, feelings, their current emotions and have that affected by…well pretty much anything. Imagine you are that person and play out what would happen.
Rules:
1 - Stay in character the whole time. This is the most important thing.
2 - Stick to the main forum rules and don’t GM anyone else.
3 - Post at least three paragraphs.
4 - Check your spelling and grammar before hitting Post.
5 - RP threads are open to members from any Division.
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