Throwing Darts

[RogueWarrior]

Does playing darts on a dart board up your throwing skill any?

[Delirium]

This came up recently, as a matter of fact.

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=15934

[RogueWarrior]

Ok... well thanks, but that didn't help me any.

[moab]

It didn't?  Seems pretty clear.

What would you expect to happen in RL?

What would you do if you were LIVING as your character?

Maybe practicing with darts indoors DOES help your character's dart skills?

Whether it does (via code) or not, seems reasonable to RP that it does.

What the thread suggests is:

1. Try it and find out.
2. Find someone in game and ask them IC.

[Armaddict]

Question I ask is...

Do you go to the bar and play darts so that later on, you can throw darts with perfect skill at a moving target?  So that you can throw throwing knives or spears later, based on the experiences you have from throwing darts at a dartboard?  Do you actually base the skill of your dart-tossing by the score you get on the dartboard?  Or the ability of your dart to go straight and perfect enough to actually cause harm to something else?  I'm certainly not going to lob something I throw to kill, but I lob with my darts into the dartboard.

Take all that into account, and realize...Hey, you don't know, but either way, is that the reason your character is playing on a dartboard?  Because if so, that's some shitty practice.

[RogueWarrior]

Yes yes, I know all this... all I'm asking... does it increase your skill... yeah, it would make sense that it would... I'm just asking. A simple yes or no would be great, because if I asked someone IC "Do throwing darts make your stats go up?" I would be looked at like I was completely nuts... Yes or no, all I'm looking for.

[Sanvean]

I think one of the reasons you're getting odd looks is because it's an OOC consideration that shouldn't be affecting play.  Does your character like to play darts?  Then s/he should play darts.  Does your character hate darts with a passion because they got hit in the eye with one as a small child?  Then...probably not so many dart games.

As you're phrasing it, it sounds like the sort of skill question that worries me, like "What skill does dwarf-tossing branch from?"  Because the unspoken part of that sentence is "...because then I know what I should be practicing on." and then we end up with characters trying to power-max Whiran-tossing in order to get dwarf-tossing rather than actually focusing on the role.  Nuff said?

[RogueWarrior]

No no, not what I was asking at all. I have never, in fact, played a throwing character, just don't like them. This is just a conversation me and a friend got into, and I was curious if the dart board was sort of like the training dummy for throwing weapons. If I play a character who uses darts, then naturally he is going to love playing darts, whether it helps skills or not. This was just something I was wondering about, for mere curiousities sake, nothing more, nothing less.

[daedroug]

unfotunatly Rogue it seems that RPI's like this don't like to give out deffinate answers. i personally think it gets to be at the pain in the ass level at times but not much you can do but go with it.

[Agent_137]

a lot of things are better left unsaid for many reasons, i'll list a few:

To prevent spoiling: there's an enjoyment to finding out on your own.

To prevent twinking: More inappropriate code knowledge leads to more people being able to use it to their own advantage instead of actually roleplaying.

Any roleplay questions will be answered or discussed if they don't have a definite answer. Any code questions that are vital to you playing the game will be answered. Most other questions will not be answered because they are not central to the roleplay, which is paramount.

In time, you will come to understand. Many of us have.

[Cuusardo]

unfotunatly Rogue it seems that RPI's like this don't like to give out deffinate answers. i personally think it gets to be at the pain in the ass level at times but not much you can do but go with it.

In muds like this, the focus is on roleplay.  Not stats or skills.

And before you jump down my throat about stats and skills mattering, yes they do to some extent.  Your PC should not revolve around having the best stats or maxed and branched skills.  Stats and skills are roleplay tools, meant to help you develop your character's personality and path through life.

[daedroug]

i completely understand where yer coming from Cuusardo, but i don't know about you but although i play my RP as much as the next guy one thing that is going to pretty much be on the side of my mind is "ok my char right now would take this guy if he could and i have been playing all those darts so i can probably stick a good ole pike in him......but wait do darts even matter to the code? thogh he has been playing a directly related aim based throwing at game does it actually improve the skill because if it doesn't then my char would know it and realize he could never hit him and thus prolly shouldn't try to take him."

[Xygax]

i completely understand where yer coming from Cuusardo, but i don't know about you but although i play my RP as much as the next guy one thing that is going to pretty much be on the side of my mind is "ok my char right now would take this guy if he could and i have been playing all those darts so i can probably stick a good ole pike in him......but wait do darts even matter to the code? thogh he has been playing a directly related aim based throwing at game does it actually improve the skill because if it doesn't then my char would know it and realize he could never hit him and thus prolly shouldn't try to take him."

You don't think a real-life Darts champion would have this same question?  Or questions like it?  "This guy's pissing me off....  I know I throw darts well, but can I actually hit a moving target?  Will it hurt him at all?  What if I choose to throw a knife instead?  Is that different than throwing a dart?"

You'll never know how good you are at killing people (or throwing things at them in the heat of violence in an effort to injure them) until you try it.

-- X

[daedroug]

::sigh::i give up

[LoD]

::sigh::i give up

Don't give up.  Understand.

Everyone replying to this thread is trying to get you to understand the concept instead of giving you a simple answer, because understanding the concept will help answer many other questions for you down the road.

Let's say a kid asked you, "If I steal this candy bar, will anyone stop me?"

If you just "answer their question" and say, "Yes.", that's not good.

You need to teach that kid why stealing is wrong, the value of honesty, how to work for what you want, how to save money, proper ways to conduct trade, the consequences of breaking the law and why laws are important to the world.

The same principle applies here.  We don't want to just answer your question.  We want to teach you the concepts that allow you to understand why you wouldn't have to ask that question in the first place.

-LoD

[Ritley]

You'll never know how good you are at killing people until you try it.

-- X

This keeps making me laugh...

[Tarx]

Indeed!

[Cuusardo]

I'm with Xygax on this one.

[jmordetsky]

Here is a real life example.

I started boxing 8 months ago. Nothing crazy, bag work some lessons, some parring, etc etc

I'd wager to say I'm getting pretty good.

The other day, I was walking to the gym and there was some crazy drunk guy in the streets yelling at...well...no one.

At that point I said to myself, I wonder if this nut job took a swipe at me, if having been boxing for the last 8 months, I would be any good in an actual street fight? I haven't been in a real fight since college.

A lot goes on in a street fight that doesn't happen in a boxing ring. People kick, knee, claw bite.  I thought about this heavily.

The guy continued shouting and I continued on my way. But I couldn't help but think, I really just *don't* know. I could be in 15 boxing matches and win them all, but a street fight is a different scenario.

Granted, I know I can throw a punch. I know I can duck a jab, but the only way I'm ever going to know if boxing translate that into a real life combat situations is to go get into a street fight.

Throwing darts at a dart board is very similar. If was the Bar Darts champion of Kentucky, would I feel very confident about going head to head with a master Ninja in a shuriken match? Probably not.

If you want to be good at throwing knives at people in game. Go throw knives at people. Find someone to teach you to throw knives.

If you want to be good at throwing darts at a dartboard, do that.

One may translate to the other, or it may not. You won't know until you try.



Now, then. That said - I think constantly fighting in a tavern should have an effect on your ability to fight in hand to hand combat. Should you become a hand to hand master by tavern brawling? No...but you should be better then Sam from the atrium who weaves.

I also think that throwing darts at a dart board five days a week for a year should give me a significant boost in my ability to chuck a dart at a Templar's head. Should I be a ninja master who can tag someone's eye socket from 3 rooms away with a serpent hilted throwing knife? Probably not...But I should have decently trainined hand eye cooridination and should be a reasonable shot with a dart.

If I did either of these things consistently and didn't see a mild improvement in a real life skill....IE.... I practiced either of these related things for years and was still no better at them, or their related skills then say, Sam at the Atrium who had been weaving for same period of time, it would feel unrealistic and I would be reminded that I am playing a game and the rules of that game do not always match up to the rules I would expect in real life.



Some times the fact that the coded rules in arm do not match the coded rules of RL is for good char, sometimes it's not. Regardless, more often then not, finding out is the fun.




Now then, (oh yes there is more) I WISH there was a way to practice certain skills without having to attack NPCs.

When I think about throwing knives, I think about a scene from gangs of new york, where the protagonist heads down to an abandoned section of town and tosses a knife at a board until he gets tired.

I wish that, and things of it's nature were possible in arm, (and they are, but only in certain scenarios. For example I can toss a knife at a sparring dummy, or a person, but not a tree. Etc.

[daedroug]

I WISH there was a way to practice certain skills without having to attack NPCs.

When I think about throwing knives, I think about a scene from gangs of new york, where the protagonist heads down to an abandoned section of town and tosses a knife at a board until he gets tired.

I wish that, and things of it's nature were possible in arm, (and they are, but only in certain scenarios. For example I can toss a knife at a sparring dummy, or a person, but not a tree. Etc.

exactly that would be good ( althoguht #1 people get cranky when you use a dagger to fight with a dummy let alone throw them at it and #2 it seems that the dummys are a little to restricted for the general populace.)

[Maybe42or54]

If only.. Training skills wasn't so taboo.

We would have things you could practice throw on, archery ranges, sparring dummies, etc.. but instead they tell you to "use a pc."

Which is all fine and dandy, but not every person likes to Practice Nin(sp?) Jitsu on a living person more than they practice by themselves, getting the moves just right to make them better for that person.

[Rindan]

A common problem with skills is that there is no sane way to practice them.  If you practice backstab only when you need it, you are going to be a very shitty assassin unless you also double as a hunter.  I am pretty sure no assassin in history got good practicing on humans.  I am sure most had a dummies and sparring partners that they practiced over and over and over on.  The same goes with throwing things.  To be honest, I imagine most people that get so awesome they can throw a throwing knife and kill someone did it by throwing it a lot of inanimate objects.

In my ideal world, any idiot can decide to start throwing daggers at a dart board.  Given enough time they would become pretty good at it.  The same goes for fighting in bars, shooting arrows, backstabbing, and a lot of other combat skills.  Last I heard using backstabbing in sparring was discouraged.  Honestly, I am curious as to what a 'realistic' way of practicing is short of crossing your fingers and hoping and an imm decides to up your backstabbing skills because you practice on virtual training dummies.

[Salt Merchant]

I wouldn't be surprised if, in Zalanthas, where human life is cheap, some ruthless assassin practised backstabbing on a stable of slaves, visiting the market as needed to replace them.

[Rindan]

I wouldn't be surprised if, in Zalanthas, where human life is cheap, some ruthless assassin practised backstabbing on a stable of slaves, visiting the market as needed to replace them.

Human life isn't that cheap.  It is a hell of a lot easier to lining up the blow on a living human and not him them and training hitting a dummy at full force, then it is to go through a couple slaves each training session.  There might very well be cheap slaves, but they are not that cheap.  Maybe as a treat an assassin who has finished his training would be given a slave to kill, but it sure as hell wouldn't be an every day occurance, even for the richest of orginizations.

[Salt Merchant]

Human life isn't that cheap.

I'm not sure what a typical slave sells for. But the assassin wouldn't be killing a slave with every strike, especially if he's using a blunted blade (training weapon) and is still reasonably inept at backstabbing.

Sure, it wouldn't be cheap, keeping the slave fed and occasionally buying a new one. I don't think it would be out of the realm of affordability for one person though. Maybe the slave would even survive the training process, it just gets around the natural IC outrage a sparring partner would feel when you suddenly tried to skewer his brain via an eyeball. The slave has no say in the matter.

[Stroker]

I'm not sure what a typical slave sells for. But the assassin wouldn't be killing a slave with every strike, especially if he's using a blunted blade (training weapon) and is still reasonably inept at backstabbing.

Sure, it wouldn't be cheap, keeping the slave fed and occasionally buying a new one. I don't think it would be out of the realm of affordability for one person though. Maybe the slave would even survive the training process, it just gets around the natural IC outrage a sparring partner would feel when you suddenly tried to skewer his brain via an eyeball. The slave has no say in the matter.

Unless the slave is mentally ill and remains securely subdued at all times, eventually s/he will realize that their master plans on killing them and devise a means of retaliation.

Semper Pax,

Dirr

[Larrath]

Many human slaves are cheap.
However, cheap slaves usually get less-than-perfect training.  And slaves without insanely good conditioning wouldn't just stand there as you're trying to put a longknife through their kidney.

A good cost estimate for slaves with this training could be, say, around three or four thousand 'sids per one slave.  And you can't practice the exact stabbing and twisting motions with a blunt weapon, just like you can't practice archery by shooting wooden shafts with no arrowheads, as the balance would be way off.

Now, assuming you don't have access to magick, let's say you can get two successful backstabs on each slave before they die from blood loss and internal damage.  If you really suck at backstabbing but are a physician and the slave is strong, maybe three or four stabs.
Let's also say that a good practice session only requires a single slave, and that you practice rarely, say three times a week (eleven days).

This means that the minimum amount you're going to spend during a single week (RL day) of backstab training is 9,000-12,000 'sids.

In other words, you'll be paying almost 1,000 'sids per successful backstab attempt.

You're gonna need a lot of money if you want to use slaves to get your backstab skill anywhere decent.  In fact, you'd be much better off using only a fifth of the money (let's say that's around 15,000 'sid) to hire the best damned assassin in the entire world of Zalanthan and have them personally teach you how to do a backstab.

[Cuusardo]

If you are a commoner, and not a member of a merchant family, you can pretty much forget about buying a slave, let alone a number of slaves.

[Salt Merchant]

And you can't practice the exact stabbing and twisting motions with a blunt weapon (...)

So you can practise warrior-style killing maneuvers with blunted weapons but not assassin-style for some reason? Hmm.

Anyhow, I've always hated those threads that devolve into two or three people arguing back and forth, so I'll leave it at that. Maybe it would cost an arm and a leg to do, I don't know.

[Maybe42or54]

Anyone can swing a weapon and be a warrior.
Few can kill someone with a single stab, or two, or four.