Combat FAQ's

How do I get into Combat?"

It's easy to get into Combat. Pick a fight in a bar on Unification day, try to collect pay from a person most reluctant, get between an Alliance officer and his quarry or catch the attention of a Reaver and the chances are you are going to end up in a fight. On SerentyMUSH this how you get into Combat - it's any situation where you have a need to hit, shoot or otherwise cause someone a passle of purposeful harm.

it is also not something to be taken lightly as this can cause actual harm to your character; your character can end up bruised, badly broken and even dead.

"What is a judge, and when should a Judge be called in?"

As in real life, Combat may easily and often does become a heated situation. So the first thing to do is to make sure there's a neutral third party to actually manage the scene. That person is called a Judge. If the plotling is being run by one of the MUSH staff, that Administrator may take up the role or ask another Administrator to help. Any other time, when in the play of the game a situation arises where there's a chance that damage might be done a building or structure, any non-player character and most importantly, any player character, a Judge MUST be called in to oversee and mange the combat. This includes plots or storylines being presented by another player.

"How do you call a judge?"

Calling in a Judge to help is right easy; just type "plus-judge". Please don't do use this command more than once every five minutes, unless you want the Judge to show up powerfully annoyed. Which might not be in your own best interest.

"What's a Timestop, what is pose order, and what do they have to do with combat?"

Combat can get quite complicated. There are often many questions being asked, many poses being made, and there are the cold out of character calculations that need to be done to deterimine if someone gets hit, how badly do they get hurt and what happens in the overall flow of the combat until one side wins and the other loses. There are two important tools to help in this situation:

A Timestop is a device used by a Judge to help control a very chaotic scene. The first thing it creates is a Pose Order; a tally of each character involved in the scene. The order of the listing is the order in which each person may submit their action pose, and it maintains a marker to keep track of whose pose it currently is. A timestop also puts a virtual shield around the stuation, making sure no one can join in or otherwise interrupt the combat without the Judge's permission.

For smaller or less complex fights the MUSH actually tracks each person in a particular room. Typing the word "order" will bring up this list, which can also be used to manage a group's posing order. This nicely works for any situation, not just combat.

Pose Order is very important in a combat scene. Maintaing a regular listing of who can pose when prevents a combat from far too easily falling into complete chaos as everyone fights for the Judge's attention. It's a good tool for planning too ... if you have questions about the scene, you should ask the Judge well before it's your turn to pose. If there's some manner of task resolution that needs to be done, that should be done about two people ahead of your turn, so you have time to incorporate the results into your pose. Last, you should always start a first draft of your pose before the order gets to you, to keep things from bogging down.

There is normally no skipping pose order. However, if you are idle for more than seven minutes without a pose, your turn may be skipped. Thus, please be respectful of others and announce before going away from the scener.

"Do you always have to hit to hurt someone?"

• • can someone else answer this? **

"What else should I remember about Combat?"

During combat or any other similar event, there is often a massive amount of information to be passed out to and received by all. It is important we maintain respectful silence until spoken to. In most cases, a channel for chat will be utilized for use open use. Please keep out-of-character chatter to a minimum in the timestop/event zone.

Last, remember that this is a game ... combat can be very stressful, but it should never be not fun.