Welcome to Gaia! ::

So wait, your character puts herself in the path of swords, fire, axes, and all sorts of dangerous s**t just to d**k around? Though she is undead so I guess that kind of makes sense...

but let me tell you about prestige...

My old character...Sieg. His hand to hand skills, and this isn't being arrogant so excuse me if it sounds like it, his hand to hand skills were widely thought to be pretty damn good. I won most fights. I was one of the first people, if not the first person to use technical mixed martial arts.

However, it was all bullshit.

Winning those fights at the end of the day, wasn't that enjoyable for me, and damn sure wasn't fun for the people I beat.

I don't know man, I mean if this is working for you, I'm not gonna try to change you...

but I will say I've gotten a lot more interest in people wanting to play with me, now that I am like I am.

I sure as hell had fun logic cornering people into submission. Cause winning is fun. If you don't like winning, you're not an Ecstuffuan!

She is very self-confident, and danger does not phase her in the slightest. In fact, all it does is make her horny. She's an undead construct with no reason to exist anymore, so her solution is to ******** s**t up enough so that she has a cause to fight for again. In the meantime, might as well use the advantage of living forever to screw with the living. She has some more personal motives as well, but as far as anyone meeting her is concerned, she wants to either kill you, maim you, ******** you, be ******** by you, or ******** with you, in any number of combinations of those things.

OOC, I consider this sort of like a Pokemon gym badge. I am a newcomer on Gaia, I am trying to prove myself.

That's the ole HoH charm.

I don't think my character is overpowered. I think she is strong, because I designed her to be, but certainly not so overwhelming that it is impossible to stand up to her. However, since I am trying to win, I don't make these weaknesses public if I can help it (even though I was sort of forced to recently), leaving the opponent to figure out by trial and error what they are, which is kinda what happens in a real conflict too.

Roleplaying is always about storytelling because that's what roleplaying IS. The fact that a tournament is a competition doesn't change that.

Roleplaying is collaborative. Competitions are.. competitive. You have to be able to reconcile the two concepts in order to really succeed as a fighter, and what that means is that you have to put the desire to win second to the desire to play your character properly. This is hard for some people, because they define competitiveness as wanting to win. I define it as wanting a challenge, ergo entering competitions is easy for me.

It also means that you have to constantly be aware of fair-play, and communicate with your opponent. I'm not saying you're always going to clarify the situation to move things forward or come to an acceptable compromise, but that, just like any other roleplaying situation, you have to be willing to work with your opponent for the simple fact that if you don't.. all you're going to do is butt heads and in the end that's not really fun for anyone involved. Even if you win.. you still come out looking like s**t. So you're the lesser of two shits. Congrats.

You can win every fight you have, but no one's going to think you're a good fighter if you compromise roleplaying or fair play to do it.

When I enter a tournament, I do it to find a challenge and, obviously, with the intent to succeed. But I don't let that desire to succeed supersede my values as a sportsman, or my roleplaying. At the end of the day, playing my character properly always comes first - winning comes second. I'd sooner lose a fight fairly than win it by playing like a douche, although I'll be the first to admit that if someone tries to fight me like a shitheel, I'll respond in kind.

But I don't enjoy it. I don't like it, and it's not how I prefer to play. I prefer to play fairly, and to do what makes sense for my character to do in a fight. If that means he might get his teeth kicked in, then.. well, sour grapes for him, 'cause that's what'll happen.

tldr; you're still roleplaying, and roleplaying is collaborative. I'm not saying you have to work out what is "cool" to do in the fight with your opponent, but you have to reconcile the collaborative and competitive aspects and be willing to give as much as you take when the time is appropriate. Most people don't do this.. and that's why most people fail as fighters.

You may not have taken the time to read my fights in full, the one with Slash or the one with Fierach just now, but I am, for all my competitive rhetoric, trying to cooperate and reward my opponent when he has outsmarted me. But neither opponent has returned the favor, so I am thrust into the conundrum of having to either also become a loldodging jerkoff or continue to eat their damage and be graded poorly because I took too much damage while my opponent was bleeding slightly from a cut eyebrow or whatever.