... Winning.

Winning a fight. One of the most important things for the majority of roleplayers.

What? It’s not about winning, it’s about having fun? Who said that? Most roleplayers? Oh, right. And you believe that? Could I interest you in some farmland in the Everglades? No? Dang.

But at least let me dispell this myth that roleplayers do not care if they win or lose a fight. They do care, usually more than most pvpers. For several reasons.

First, roleplayers have egos that rival any pvper’s. They also tend to exagerate. So, if they win a fight in character, odds are, they will draw it out. Where in a pvp fight, people get dbed, clone, and return in a minute or two, (or respawn at the space station), in a roleplay fight, the winner usually does some fun stuff to the loser – no, not teabagging, please! Roleplayers are mature! They don’t do such stuff!

Instead they do stuff like cutting their name, symbol or room number into the enemy’s back. Or cut off a limb or two. Or set them afire. Or blind them. Or scar them. Or do any other disgusting thing you can think of, since it’s in character, and their character is usually a badass nasty criminal with a cruel side.

Of course, that alone would hurt someone’s ego plenty, but then, we’re roleplaying here, so that sort of stuff is supposed to have consequences – if someone cuts their name into your back, you are supposed to write it into your bio. Needless to say, such are the things that make winning very important for many roleplayers.

Speaking of consequences, the holy grail for many, those too add a great incentive to win a fight – for if you lose, you might have to leave the planet, the galaxy, permadeath, or – even worse! - admit your character is weaker than the other.

Finally, in character background itself „forces“ many players to win every fight – after all, if you are badass mando jedi emperor’s hand sith lord master chef, you’re not supposed to lose a duel with some gutterpunk spicehead. That does not really look nice in your bio. If you are Han’s big brother, force-sensitive god’s gift to all things piloting, then losing out to some dinky TIE pilot in your uber freighter (modded to look like a mon calamari cruiser) simply can’t happen, since it would break character. If you’re the most evil and powerful crime syndicate, controlling entire planets and stormtrooper legions as well as the rebel alliance’s finest, getting wiped by a bunch of pirates is unacceptable.

See? It’s not just the player’s ego that forces them to win, it’s roleplay continuity itself. The gutterpunk that just knocked your sithlord out, and the TIE pilot that shot down your supership are just bad roleplayers if they don’t lose to your uber-power.

But but but... one cannot win everytime! Right! So, what do roleplayers do when they lose?

Easy, they whine. First, anyone who beat a roleplayer that plays an uberwarrior is obviously not a roleplayer but a pvper. So the roleplayer did not really lose, you see? For, the pvper spent all the time pvping, and got all that nice gear, which he should not have anyway, seeing as he did not write the background for it!. On the other hand, the roleplayer’s super uber ultra powered laser and lightsaber resistant armor (vulnerable to a spoon made from mud from a secret place on Tralus – after all, every good character has a weakness!) taken from the EU simply cannot be equalled in game. So, the fight was unfair to begin with!
Same for space – even when we’re talking two identical ships, identical parts, it’s still not fair and not in character, for, you see, if you actually spend time flying, and fighting in your ship then you are not roleplaying! It’s just logical that such evil people who actually spend time in space in character should lose to the dedicated roleplayers who write stories how they spend time in space and outrun ISDs, in between running a criminal empire and pursuing the ways of the force. Really!

What’s that? Unfair? Yes, I said so, it’s completely unfair that anyone who flies a lot and spends a lot of time on his or her ship should dare to beat someone who does not but roleplays a pilot much better, running a criminal Empire on the ground and pursuing the ways of the force in his spare time, and... huh? You mean it’s unfair that some roleplayer actually expect that people lose to them just because they say so? The nerve! Would you really have someone with the finest background, who wrote in his history and diary that he ist he best pilot, lose to some fresh faced TIE pilot just because the TIE Pilot actually flies better and the self-styled ace never learned the difference between a starter ship and a heavy starter ship? That TIE Pilot did not even write „best pilot ever“ in his bio, so how can he be better???!

But anyway, to avoid losing – and as was demonstrated, losing would be breaking character for our uber character, so to save roleplay immersion we need to win – there are several ways.

What? Learning how to play? Heathen! Go away! Crawl under a rock and die! No roleplayer ever has to learn anything but to write! Piloting, fighting, planning – all is optional, all is less than the one true sign of a great roleplayer, writing!

The first way to win all the time is simple: Never fight. Tell people who want to attack your character for insulting them and killing their pet nuna that their character would not dare attack a powerful sithjedimandalorian with half the galaxy at his back, and ignore them. Bonus points if you can get them labelled as ooc grievers and banned from your hang out.

The second way to always win is to refuse duels, and emote. Make sure you are smart enough to not simply avoid all hits and attacks – even if your character should actually avoid all attacks, since that’s what his bio states – but take hits and wounds, emote out how your character suffers – simply never get really beaten, always keep „barely“ fighting until the enemy finally realises it can’t beat you, or your friends arrive, and you can use the common sense tactic to win.

The common sense tactic is the third way to always win. Persuade the enemy that due to numbers, skills, force sensitivity, raw power or experience they simply have to lose or they’d be powergaming.

If this does not work – say, if your character is alone, and the stormtroopers refuse to acknowledge that your sithlord would simply think them dead – guilt them into losing. Make them understand that a loss would be a small thing for them, but a big thing, a game quitter, a catastrophe for you! Show them the amount of history your character has, and make them understand that you’d have to permadeath if you lose. If they still refuse they are no roleplayers, for no real roleplayer would ever force someone into permadeath! Besides, if they are roleplayers, they’d not care about winning!

If all does not work, break the scene up, walk away, and remain unbeaten.

If you actually, by some mistake, get into a fight and end up beaten, blame lag, jedi, George Bush, game mechanics, the other for exploiting, SOE, Star Wars, whatever works, as long as you can claim that „if it had been a real star warsy fight, my character would have won“.

For that’s what counts for a great lot of roleplayers – winning.