Dear staff and Members

Adding realism to RPs are generally difficult to do. It usually results in one of two things: a stat based system or a player based system.

With a stat based system it’s much easier to manage to and maintain. It’s clear and concise, allowing for little power-playing or abuse, it just limits the player’s ability to Role-Play in some cases, especially when it comes to individual advantages and disadvantages. Stat based systems are usually applied so that it works well for average characters, but hinders characters who are above average (aka, enhanced abilities/skills) and helps weaker characters (such as those with little strength or slow speed). It’s usually not a favorable system, but it’s a good system to utilize when there are a lot of people on the site or a lot of characters in play.

With a player based system it’s harder to manage and keep track of, but it allows players more freedoms with their RPing. This system is faulty though because it allows plenty of chances for people to abuse their abilities and god-mod, but it can be adapted to each individual character. The main thing with this though is that it’s limited to what the player knows. Since everyone knows different things or has higher or lower understandings of things it becomes difficult to judge if something is acceptable or not. These systems are usually for sites with lower member count and fewer characters in play.

Ever wonder why most big sites usually have some kind of stat or number based system for things? It’s because they have a lot of members and usually a lot of members means that you have a lot of characters in play. The staff on bigger sites are also much bigger, but they’re still human and there are still more members than staff. That creates the problem of how battles can be judged because there are so many battles going on with so many different characters that all have different abilities and tactics. It’s much easier to use a stat based system because then it’s clear who’s at fault and who isn’t.

On smaller sites you don’t see a lot of stat based systems because the number of staff at hand and members are balanced out so it’s not too much of a hassle to go through the battles and read them all one by one and examine each character’s strengths and weaknesses to see if someone did something wrong. It’s more work, but it’s not too much work that the staff will be overwhelmed.

Personally, I hate stat based systems, but I don’t the mind the one here. To be honest, the one that’s implanted here still gives everyone a lot of freedoms. Most sites that I’ve seen that use stat based systems use it pretty heavily and it’s more of a drag to RP, which is why I never join them. It’s a drag to RP because the system allows for little creativity. It’s a pretty cut and dry way of fighting and the only real fun is doing social RPs. It’s either that or they have too many rules and it’s too confusing for a new member to understand and the staff and members get annoyed with having to explain how the system works. At least here it’s pretty simple and slight adjustments can be made as needed, depending on the situation.

I come from a history of RP sites that use the later method, but that’s probably because the sites I’m on aren’t very big. (And I’m actually a member of staff on some of those sites, so I do know that it takes a lot of effort for the staff to even bother checking RPs considering the many other things they have to do.) Our sites were pretty small so we didn’t mind going over a thread when someone asked us to and when we held events that involved battles we didn’t mind modding them either because they were only a few we had to look over and we were already familiar with some of the characters, the others we weren’t familiar with we could look up to review the battle. One mod could moderate three or four battles, since there were really never any more than two or three at a time on the whole site that didn’t already have someone on staff fighting in it. We didn’t really need to devote anyone to a specific job as RP/Battle Mod. We had more mods focused on creation, plot, or behind the scenes stuff.

But here… imagine the Hunger Games alone. I know most of the fighting that does take place is usually going to be in the Hunger Games, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some skirmishes here and there outside of the Games. The Hunger Games have at least 24 characters all trying to kill each other. Now, imagine if there was no stat based system and it was player based, and say that 20 out of those 24 characters are in a fight at the same time, which is pretty possible since it’s easier to kill someone when there are other people trying to kill the same person. So, you have one thread with five people in it where it’s two against three, another thread with two people where it’s one on one, another thread with six people and it’s one against five, let’s stop here for now. That’s already difficult to keep up with, and that’s only what, 13 people so far? And that’s only in the Hunger Games. What about the other fights in other areas that arise from time to time?

The staff obviously has to keep track of these threads to make sure no one does something illegal, but in order to that they have to take into consideration each character’s history, personality, appearance, age, and skills. You might think they only have to pay attention to skills, but you’re wrong. If a character is normally very strong, but has always been afraid to use his strength because he’s harmed so many people by it by accident he’s not going to willingly go in and use it to kill everyone he can just because he’s fighting for his life. You’re going to say ‘But the Hunger Games changes people’, but that’s not 100% true. Just because you’re in a sick game fighting for your life doesn’t mean you’re going to loose all of your morals and habits. Smoking three or four packs a day is a bad habit that could kill you, but just because it’s bad and you’ve just been told if you don’t stop you’re going to die means you are. You’re going to try maybe, but it’s hard. It’s not going to happen overnight. Same thing with the Hunger Games. You may be inclined to start killing people in order to live, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to become a cold-blooded killer overnight. Then there’s the matter of your appearance… What if a girl who’s only 4 ft tall and weighs like 70 pounds posts that she’s pinning a guy who’s 6 ft tall and at least 150 lbs down? Is that possible considering how small she is? The guy is taller than her and twice her weight, how is she pinning him down? A lot of factors come in to play when you leave it up for the players to determine if they injured someone, let alone kill them. That’s why stat based systems are usually used for big sites.

Then there’s also the matter that what you and I know about the physics of the world is very limited. Most people who RP are generally teens, perhaps young adults and a couple of pre-teens (I’ve never really been on a RP site where anyone’s actually in their late twenties or anything). That being said, most of us will all have a pretty basic knowledge of things work in real life—theories based on what we know from experience, what we read about, what we’ve been taught, what hear and see happen to other people, and of course, from movies. The only thing we can really be 100% sure about and understand is when we personally experience because then writing it is much easier and we can draw off of our own experiences to make it more realistic. Everything else, even if we read about it from a textbook or learn about it from an expert, we can only really guess about. {This you can clearly see between posts from everyone who’s posted here who all have different understandings of how the world works, if you’d like some examples.}

I myself have never had broken bones or any serious injuries like that. The most I’ve ever gotten are bruises—and that’s from being stupid and not paying attention what I’m doing so it’s only small bruises. So if I tried to RP about broken bones or even a sprain or burn, I have no idea where to start. I just draw off of what I think I know and how I interpret something I read off of wikipedia or a medical site, I’d likely RP that I’m feeling excruciating pain but asides from that… I have no idea what else to put. I’d be winging it and hoping it doesn’t sound too outrageous. Now, someone else who has had a broken bone before will be able to RP it pretty convincingly. So, you leave it up to players and say one of them actually knows a lot about medical procedures because their family is involved with it so they get firsthand experience with it, more than you or I at any rate, and you barely know a thing and the other player they’re fighting has little more than a first-aid knowledge of it, who’s right? If you say that the medical player is right the first-aid player is going to say that you’re showing favoritism. If you say that you’re right the medical player is going to go dig up facts that prove they’re right because they know they’re right and they know there’s plenty of evidence to prove it, what then? This creates a whole new problem altogether. What first started off as a simple ‘Can you check this fight? I don’t think he should be able to recover from that attack, but he insists that he can.’ turns into a ‘I’m right, you’re wrong because I say so.’ fight that will more or less cause more problems all over the site because human nature is to lash out when you’ve been wronged.

Anyway, moving on since I think I’ve overstressed how difficult it is to manage large sites, you have to keep in mind something else that none of you seemed to bring up. The site is based off of a trilogy that takes place in the future. The story doesn’t say how many years later it is from our current timeframe, but it’s likely to be several years in the future, maybe even centuries considering that humankind is reduced to the occupation of one land mass—the Americas. In addition to that, there are several advances in technology. I know that in today’s world gene experimentation is still undergoing research and yielding some results here and there, but for the most part it’s not being explored too in depth (or so we’re told) because of moral ethics, so something like the creation or mutation of a species on a wide-scale basis is probably not happening right now. But in the books it apparently is quite common and doesn’t bring up issues. (Then again, I could be wrong considering I’ve only read the first two books.) The Districts aren’t as advanced as the Capitol, we all know that, but we also know that the Capitol is capable of many things. They have a highly advanced study of science, seeing as they can create entirely new species that will do exactly as they wish, as seen with the jabberjays and tracker jackers, hell they even do it for fun considering the Hunger Games are for fun. There’s also the matter of the alterations of their body, Katniss has, on several accounts, noted that she’s worried the Capitol will do something strange with her like give her claws or whiskers like a cat, and so forth. She also notes how strange the Capitol citizens are with their appearance. I know there are things with hair dyes, tattoos, and so forth, but the way she talks gives me the impression that it’s something more than just that. The Capitol people don’t just look different, they’re exotic. And these are only fractions of what the Capitol can do seeing as the story is told from the perspective of a person who knows next to nothing about the Capitol itself.

What I’m pointing out from this is that some of the things that happen in the book where we go ‘That’s not likely to happen in real life…’ might actually very well be possible within the setting of the books. Like Haymitch and his Hunger Games. He had his intestines coming out in a bloody mess, asides from whatever else he might have suffered through leading up to that. It’s more than likely that if it were in this world, the way the Hunger Games are ran (from what we know as a participant because we don’t see it from the Gamemaker’s view), he would’ve likely not survived, or if he did he’d have complications, complications that Haymitch doesn’t seem to have at the slightest (and I don’t just mean his drinking problem).

So, that brings up the parts where you get your legs chopped off and win the Hunger Games or that you’re blind and you survive a volcanic eruption and flooding, as well as the possibility of a volcanic eruption melting snow in a 15 mile radius.

First off, the volcano can be more than possible. Remember, the Hunger Games are run by the Gamemakers. They can make anything happen. In the books, it’s pretty clear that the Gamemakers can do whatever they want. They could save a Tribute’s life if they wanted or deliberately kill them or maim them for life. It’s merely a matter of when, why and if. If it’s going to increase viewers, hell yeah they’re going to do it. The Games are merely a source of entertainment, not a bloody, legalized murder field. Remember that. If people actually cared about the legalized murdering that’s part of it the games would have stopped or been petitioned by the time it got to Katniss’ generation considering it’s the 75th Game, 75 years of having the games alongside of the Quarter Quells.

Maybe in real life the volcano would only melt snow in a few miles, if that at all, but in the Hunger Games the Gamemakers could’ve set up the arena so that additional heat is provided to make sure all of that snow melts to create more of a problem for the Tributes. It could simply be a ‘Hey, if they don’t get burned to death by the volcano, they can drown themselves in the melting snow!’ kind of thing because there are too many tributes still alive in the game or they’re just that bored and want to watch the Tributes struggle for their lives. They purposefully burned down part of the arena just to flush out the Tributes and make them fight each other in book 1.

As for getting your legs burned off… and still living. That’s possible if you think about it some. Cutting your legs off would be a worse choice seeing as you’d have to find a way to stop the bleeding and infection and so forth, but if you burn your legs off to that degree… well your nerves are probably going to be damaged beyond repair so you probably can’t even feel your legs or the pain it brings after the first initial burns. Then there’s also the matter that what’s left of your legs could just very well be several layers of charred, burned, and dead skin/muscle/fat or half charred, which could more or less prevent you from dying of blood loss, something you’d have to worry about if you had them cut off. And let’s say you get infected, your body will naturally try to fight it off, but the body has its own systems where it will cut itself off from doing certain things in order to keep you alive. When it comes down to it, all your body cares about is keeping you alive for as long as possible, whether you’re conscious or not, which is also why there are things like adrenaline and endorphins that help ward off pain or give us superhuman strength at times (a very limited amount of time with it’s own drawbacks of course). (Why else do you think humans have evolved and changed so much compared to all the other creatures on Earth?) So it is pretty possible they could’ve survived somehow. You also have to remember that most of these Tributes have lived a life full of starvation and exhaustion. Their bodies are definitely different than yours or mine. Can you imagine trying to live the way they normally live for just a week?

And there’s the blind character part. I’ll say this once: STOP UNDERESTIMATING PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY’RE BLIND! I’ve seen this way too much. On another site I was on (it’s Naruto based by the way) someone made a blind character and gave his little 12 year old, blind guy a lot of abilities like being able to use abilities (jutsus/techniques) too strong for him or making him extremely smart (like giving him a fifty-year old’s experience) and when I told him he had to change it he more or less told me ‘But he’s blind. If I don’t do that he’s going to die.’ My answer is simple ‘Don’t make a blind character expecting to be able to have a lot of advantages then! Deal with it. You can’t give him a lot of special abilities JUST because he’s blind.’ Why? Because in real life if you’re born blind or rendered blind at a young age you learn how to cope with it. Your other senses are much stronger and keener than other peoples. You learn that certain patterns arise and you know things that other people don’t know because they rely too much on eyesight. In all honesty, most of us here follow a ‘If I can’t see it, I don’t believe it.’ because we really do rely on eyesight too much. In total darkness, most of us would just stay wherever the hell we are. Someone who’s blind who has no sense of dark or light will still move and try to find their way around because it’s not any different to them. Just because you’re blind or deaf or mute or missing a leg or arm doesn’t mean you’re helpless and unable to do anything at all. The human body has incredible coping methods.

It’s likely that being blind you have a better sense of memory because you rely on not only increased senses, but also memory of where things are or were in order to move about effectively. So, the guy Abor (was it?) could have been able to tell where the Cornucopia was and sense that something was amiss. I’m sure there were other forms of life around when the volcano went off and the snow started to flood down on them all. (Not sure, cause I haven’t actually read through these old games.) Animals go quiet or make a lot of noise trying to save themselves. Blind or not, you can tell that something’s wrong then. Someone who’s been hunting might realize this sooner, but so will those who have to rely on other senses like a blind kid. No animals making noise or animals making noises in a strange manner usually mean that something is wrong. First clue that something’s wrong in the area. With that much water coming down it wouldn’t be hard to be able to hear it or at least the damage it’s causing. Second clue that something’s wrong, likely to do with water or some force strong enough to damage the environment. The mind will more or less jump to the conclusion that since its water they need to get to high ground or far enough from is so that the water will be easier to deal with once it reaches them. Where? He might not know what the hell the terrain looks like, but he’s not so stupid as to forget all the walking and climbing he might’ve done. His body got exhausted walking up steep hills or struggling with climbing over rock faces. First inclination is to at least move in that direction, which wouldn’t be too hard to remember seeing as the arena for the games haven’t been said to be something the size of an entire state or anything. He might recall that the Cornucopia is probably the safest bet of anything extremely high for sure and head in a direction that will lead him to higher ground and the Cornucopia itself. There he can debate if he wants to stick with the high ground or go for the Cornucopia. Say the ground gets steeper and steeper and he has to use his hands more often to keep getting higher, he might choose to keep going there. But say he continues on the high ground and he knows the Cornucopia shouldn’t be too far away, but the ground doesn’t seem to be getting higher because it’s not taking any more energy from him to climb thus far. He might veer towards the Cornucopia instead. Thus he saves himself from drowning.

And unless you’re rendered unconscious there is always something you can do. You may not be able to move at all what-so-ever, but there’s the off chance that you might meet another tribute who you could convince to team up for a bit. You’re a tribute that knows a lot about edible plants and insects, another tribute is barely getting by when it comes to scraping together food. If you offer to help him find food in exchange for him keeping you alive, do you really think he’s going to kill you? Heck no. You can’t move, but you can find food, and if you guys get attacked you can be used as a pretty decent human shield. And when he kills everyone else, what can you do? Bite him to death? Easy kill. Or he could just keep you long enough to learn how to find food for himself and then kill you. And you’re going to go ‘Either way you’re going to die, so you might as well have the staff tell them they’re dead.’ but the truth is that you can still plan. Your body might be ‘dead’ so to speak, but your mind isn’t. The Hunger Games isn’t all about brute strength. Haymitch didn’t win by strength. He won because he outsmarted his opponents. You could still very well have a shot at winning.

Half of the fun of being able to participate in the Hunger Games (probably why people here don’t mind having their characters partake in an event where they have something like a 95% chance of dying) is being able to work their way out of a problem and stay alive as long as possible. It’s a challenge for any RPer, for sure, but a fun one. How can you survive? Are you smart enough and lucky enough to find a way to survive despite the odds against you? Can you challenge the games in your own way like Katniss/Peeta/Haymitch did? Can you manage to bend the rules to help you? Can you prove the age old saying of ‘brains over brawns’?

And to be honest… trying to use any kind of system is difficult. Extremely so. And usually when a system is used, it’s after the staff members have argued debated about it several times over, pointing out practically every single thing about it. Trust me… it’s a headache to make a system, and even more of a headache to get enough people to agree that it’ll work. And when it gets turned out… it’s an absolute pain to come up with a new one. It can get extremely frustrating to the point where you just want to give up and let someone else do it (which is hard because if you’re making the system it’s because no one else knows where to start or what to do and asked you to do it because you’re the only one who can make a decent one) or quit being a part of staff altogether. You also have to take into consideration that the staff have actual lives too. They have friends and family outside of this site that they hang out with and spend time with, as well as school with all it’s stressfully fun stuff, and for some, work even.

So, all in all, when it comes down to the realism in the Hunger Games and the system they have set up for it… it’s very well plausible and realistic.


[._.’’ Sorry for such a long post… … … I didn’t realize I had written this much until now… And sorry if I come off as harsh or mean or anything like that. If I did, it’s unintentional. I think I somehow got myself worked over this when I didn’t need to, and well… I was kind of bored… had nothing better to do. >.< Yes, I have no life, forgive me.]

~Mira