Oh, why is this?
RWBY & RT General Discussion Thread (V1)
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this is the tumblr post (with my responses)
in this I gave a few things in regards to my take on the 1 trait rule
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"Idea 1 - having Faunus have only 1 trait makes them different visually from pretty much any other Beastkin race in media. This helps having a clear difference between a RWBY character and other characters who might have a similar part. Though I will admit that I am pretty sure not all catgirls for example in other series have tails, there is still a vast majority that do. Thus someone like Blake for example stands out amongst decades worth of other catsgirls by simply only having ears.
Idea 2 - the racism in the worldbuilding. Faunus are, biologically speaking, not really different from humans. The only difference is the animal trait. Having one trait instead of 2 or 3 makes it visually clearer how close humans and faunus are. In a sense, people being discrminated against simply for having a tail or different ears is rather similar to how people in our world disciminate against others simply for the color of their skin. Having multiple traits might dillute this.
Idea 3 - rigging 3D models, especially back at the biggining 10 years ago. Putting 1 extra part is far simpler than having multiple and trying to balance all the parts and make them work. A clear example of tech limitations is the simplicity of the parts we did see back at Beacon. Any faunus we saw had very simple parts. Horns, tails, or classic Ears On Top Of Head. Simple, kind of easy to rig, that kind of stuff. We didn't get a winged faunus until Yuma, and we didn't get faunus with traits that overide a human trait till the side material (books for apig nose and dnd for I think wolf legs or something) and didn't see one onscreen until Fiona with her ears.
Now as for your feeling on 1 trait being limiting, again I can't really agree. It's no more limiting than following any other kind of design rule (such as Monty wanting characters to have pockets so cosplayers had pockets). Think of it this way, think of a faunus oc you might want to make. What animal do they pull from? Let's say a crocodile or alligator. With the 1-trait rule in effect you have 3 options. You can go for the chompers like the assasin Tock who had a croc's bite. Or....you could go for a tail. A hunk of muscle the character can lashout with and do damage. The character could have scales. A natural defence outside of just having aura. Now take these options, but remove the 1 trait rule. Now you load yourself with more options. Teeth and Tail but no scales? Teeth and scales but no tail? Scales and Tail but not the teeth? All 3? And if you have more than 1 trait you also have to figure out how to balance that design. How much of the body has scales? How big is the tail? How is their posture? How do the multitude of traits effect their clothes? Does this character look more beast than human? And finally "Could this be feasibly rigged by the team in the alloted time?" Going back to by 3rd idea point this is what I was getting at. Slapping 1 limb on a model is a lot easier than putting multiple things on when you have shoestring budget and only a week or 2 to make it. But back to making a character and setting aside budgets, having 1 trait actually makes you think about what trait you want to use. What trait best suits the design? What can a character do with their trait? What inspiration is there from their source allusion? How does it effect their silhouette. To be blunt anyone can slap ears and a tail on a character and go "tada, a catgirl!" but to make a character more than their traits and instead have those traits feed into and elevate the design takes thought, and through a "limitation" like only being able to pick 1 trait can show how a character designer can make a limitation work for them instead of against them."
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in this I gave a few things in regards to my take on the 1 trait rule
----
"Idea 1 - having Faunus have only 1 trait makes them different visually from pretty much any other Beastkin race in media. This helps having a clear difference between a RWBY character and other characters who might have a similar part. Though I will admit that I am pretty sure not all catgirls for example in other series have tails, there is still a vast majority that do. Thus someone like Blake for example stands out amongst decades worth of other catsgirls by simply only having ears.
Idea 2 - the racism in the worldbuilding. Faunus are, biologically speaking, not really different from humans. The only difference is the animal trait. Having one trait instead of 2 or 3 makes it visually clearer how close humans and faunus are. In a sense, people being discrminated against simply for having a tail or different ears is rather similar to how people in our world disciminate against others simply for the color of their skin. Having multiple traits might dillute this.
Idea 3 - rigging 3D models, especially back at the biggining 10 years ago. Putting 1 extra part is far simpler than having multiple and trying to balance all the parts and make them work. A clear example of tech limitations is the simplicity of the parts we did see back at Beacon. Any faunus we saw had very simple parts. Horns, tails, or classic Ears On Top Of Head. Simple, kind of easy to rig, that kind of stuff. We didn't get a winged faunus until Yuma, and we didn't get faunus with traits that overide a human trait till the side material (books for apig nose and dnd for I think wolf legs or something) and didn't see one onscreen until Fiona with her ears.
Now as for your feeling on 1 trait being limiting, again I can't really agree. It's no more limiting than following any other kind of design rule (such as Monty wanting characters to have pockets so cosplayers had pockets). Think of it this way, think of a faunus oc you might want to make. What animal do they pull from? Let's say a crocodile or alligator. With the 1-trait rule in effect you have 3 options. You can go for the chompers like the assasin Tock who had a croc's bite. Or....you could go for a tail. A hunk of muscle the character can lashout with and do damage. The character could have scales. A natural defence outside of just having aura. Now take these options, but remove the 1 trait rule. Now you load yourself with more options. Teeth and Tail but no scales? Teeth and scales but no tail? Scales and Tail but not the teeth? All 3? And if you have more than 1 trait you also have to figure out how to balance that design. How much of the body has scales? How big is the tail? How is their posture? How do the multitude of traits effect their clothes? Does this character look more beast than human? And finally "Could this be feasibly rigged by the team in the alloted time?" Going back to by 3rd idea point this is what I was getting at. Slapping 1 limb on a model is a lot easier than putting multiple things on when you have shoestring budget and only a week or 2 to make it. But back to making a character and setting aside budgets, having 1 trait actually makes you think about what trait you want to use. What trait best suits the design? What can a character do with their trait? What inspiration is there from their source allusion? How does it effect their silhouette. To be blunt anyone can slap ears and a tail on a character and go "tada, a catgirl!" but to make a character more than their traits and instead have those traits feed into and elevate the design takes thought, and through a "limitation" like only being able to pick 1 trait can show how a character designer can make a limitation work for them instead of against them."
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Interesting takes.
I can sort of see where you are coming from with 1 even if I would still prefer more traits.
On 2, I get where you are coming from, but also feel that said argument is kind of offputting as it basically implies bigotry makes more sense the more different someone is from you.
3: Yeah totes fair.
I sort of get your cosplay argument but would note people can make some pretty amazing cosplays. The "It helps in design by helping define the character" is a pretty good argument though.
Well it is kind of true, the more different something is, the easier it is to label it "other" and treat it differently than how you would treat someone who looks more like you. From skin color or pointy ears, to extra limbs, to looking totally like something else. It sucks, but sadly that is how people tend to act......at least when humanity is having trouble getting it's act together. We can do great things together, but some people have to move past surface level appearences first.
For the cosplay, it has been a long time since I've looked at the old image of Monty's Rules for making characters, but I am pretty sure having pockets for the sake of cosplayers was part of it.
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Anyway, speaking of cosplay, can you imagine how different RWBY would be if we never had that initial Genderbent Torchwick cosplay?
Matrix Dragon
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Matrix Dragon
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I do wish they'd gone with the 'learn from this' with more continuing two or three character arcs for the episodes, not just one. It would flow better, I suspect. But that would also require tighter planning and possibly longer episodes, and V1 and 2 really weren't at that stage yet
*nods* very true
but while we don't get character centered episodes really, they have done decently with character arcs at the very least.
*thinks for a moment, goes to look at beacon era run times*
so v1 is about.....4 and half anime episodes worth of run time (24 minutes on average)
v2 is like 6 episodes worth....
V3 is almost 7 and a half worth.
So in all Beacon is worth 18 or so episodes worth of 24 minute run times.
so with hindsite.......if they had the budget and time to make 24 minute episodes, but in the end they still had they same total run time.....what would be the best way to go about giving us character focused episodes while still mainting the important plot stuff (Torchwick's theivery of all the dust, the white fang being part of the scheme, Cinder's Nefarious Plans)......
that would be the main thing for actual proper rewrites to think about, I'd say >.>
but while we don't get character centered episodes really, they have done decently with character arcs at the very least.
*thinks for a moment, goes to look at beacon era run times*
so v1 is about.....4 and half anime episodes worth of run time (24 minutes on average)
v2 is like 6 episodes worth....
V3 is almost 7 and a half worth.
So in all Beacon is worth 18 or so episodes worth of 24 minute run times.
so with hindsite.......if they had the budget and time to make 24 minute episodes, but in the end they still had they same total run time.....what would be the best way to go about giving us character focused episodes while still mainting the important plot stuff (Torchwick's theivery of all the dust, the white fang being part of the scheme, Cinder's Nefarious Plans)......
that would be the main thing for actual proper rewrites to think about, I'd say >.>
I more meant it felt like you were justifying that stance rather than explaining it if that makes sense.
I never denied that???
Definitely some interesting potential there, though I think some people would have whined about Roman being gone as he was a fan favourite.
There is potential down that path but I also do agree that there was not enough money or time.
I tend to think they could have been done well if handled correctly and some were trimmed to be shorter to allow for others. But I am unsure these would have landed well regardless given the time and long term goals so (Waves hand vaguely)
But then they wouldn't be ragging on women for daring to disagree with men and having RWBY hate each other and lose fights that men win for 'reasons' XD
I tend to default to what I always think should have happened.
Jaundice should have been trimmed down and allowed for a small Blake & Yang centric storyline on the side with them approaching Velvet, discussing some prejudice and suggesting Yang's deduced Blake is a Faunus but will leave it alone. ALso I feel Jaune either should have learned/realized Pyrrha helped him.
With the dance I'd just cut the Neptune and Weiss stuff as it really only served Jaune and didn't even work that well for him and instead maybe have JNPR get to go on their mission and an episode be about that?
Well well well, if this isn't relevant to some recent discussions.
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that post that’s like, fandom’s obsession with viewing characters as only relatable or shippable or defendable has ruined media literacy in being able to view characters through the lens of themes or…
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Reminds me of the dumbasses who complained that Volume 9 was being cliche and unoriginal by having Ruby play chess against the Red Prince. That game was very literally not CHESS! We've seen chess pieces and chess boards in RWBY and heard people mention chess, that board game the Red Prince was playing was very explicetly not fucking chess you absolute dumbasses!
- Chess uses a square game board, the prince's gameboard was hexagonal.
- Chess uses a completely flat game board, the prince's game board has elevated terrain that could either be there to restrict movement options or influence the outcome of battles over a space*.
- Chess has a bunch of different pieces that can move in different ways, the prince's game only had pawns.
- Paws in chess can only move directly forward, the pawns in the prince's game could seemingly move in any direction like the King in chess.
- Chess has it so that each player can only move one unit on their turn and that a player MUST move a unit to end their turn, in the prince's game not only can the players move all of their pawns on the same turn but they can seemingly also choose to have some or all of their pawns stay where they are if they believe that moving would be a disadvantage.
- Chess has 16 pieces for each player for a total of 32 pieces while the prince's game Ruby has 33 pieces while the Red Prince seems to have 40. As a result Ruby's white formation is noticably unordered compared to the Red Prince having enough pieces to form a solid block. Yet another case of him cheating like a motherfucker I suppose. Either way 33 pieces per player or (more likely) 40 pieces per player is way more than in chess.
- Chess has a binary (or trinary) win/lose/draw conclusion based on which side captures a special King piece first. The prince's game is won by scoring points based on how many of your own pieces you can move to the other side of the board.
- Potential unwritten rule*: In chess whenever a piece moves into an enemy piece's space they automatically take it out. It's possible that the Red Prince's game is also supposed to work like that and that it being possible for attackers to lose a fight at all was plain cheating, but another way to interpret the game is that the Red Prince was only cheating by having all the enemy pieces lose every fight, basically rigging the dice vs making an illegal move. If the latter case is true then the prince's game would also be very different from chess in that you'd probably need dice and possibly rules for flanking/terrain modifiers or something to replicate the game in real life, since actual game pieces can't fight under their own power and win or lose fights.
In short the Red Prince's board game is absolutely nothing like chess beyond being a board game and the complaint that CRWBY were being cliche and unoriginal by having a chess game is absolutely stupid since they instead either dug up some really obscure game or more likely created their own completely original board game (one that actually looks quite fun to play if played as an actual board game instead of Dynasty Warriors).
Seriously, who looks at this and says "Oh yeah that's totally chess mate"?
The reach on this one is incredible. Glad someone argued against it even if it seems to be against a brick wall.
Excellent post and breakdown, well said!
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Thanks. And breaking it down like that helped me make more sense of the game. A big part of the reason the game seemed off is because Ruby had far too few pieces, so her formation was off. Examining the scene closely and then coloring in the board game concept art I can safely conclude that each player is meant to have 40 pieces for a total of 80 on the game board.
The shape of the board also helps prevent the "you can move all your pieces on your turn" rule from being a game breaker. Because of the hexagonal layout the pieces get further away from each other on the sides. Since they can only move one space per turn and there's more spaces to cover to on the sides only the central pieces can engage each other right away, all the other pieces require a lot more turns to get into position to attack so the first player advantage can't be used for a Zerg Rush.
Also by the rules as written Ruby should not have been able to attack the Red Prince on her first turn, since even the central pieces still have one empty space to cross before they can engage the enemy. It looks like an ideal strategy for Ruby in a strict by the rules game might have been to keep the central pieces in place and then shuffle her other pieces forward to set up a strong counter for when the Red Prince moved his pieces forward.
I suppose that's another point for the Unwritten Rule interpretation of the game. Unlike regular chess where you move into a space to take a piece this might be more like if you move your piece to a space adjacent to an enemy piece then battle ensues and either simple or complicated factors determine which piece wins. In the Ever After the pieces just fight it out in a normal brawl, as a board game you could use a coin flip, dice rolls, or flanking rules like in Hnefatafl or Go to determine which pawn wins.
Also the elevation changes are not shown on this top down view but the elevated portions of the board are 4 spaces wide, meaning that the "gate" between the elevated portions is exactly as wide as the pawn formations each side starts with. That's a point for the elevated portions being obstacles I suppose. It could be there to make it harder to sneak your pawns around the enemy pawns for easy points. Breaking off a few pawns for flanking attempts to sneak around the back still seems like a valid strategy but it would be harder if you're not able to use the full space of the board.
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Haha. Thank's, I'm flattered. Though in hindsight I noticed that I forgot the end row on the White Pawns. Since I had to go back and redo it anyway I did the whole thing properly this time, though the height elevation coloring is a bit awkward due to the shapes of the board. Made it too much of a hassle to properly paint them in.
After careful observation of Fang's concept art and double checking with the episode to make sure things fit this is what I've come up with.
The White Side occupies one slice of the board, the red the other and there are two neutral territories in the middle where the elevated sections are shaped a little differently. Probably because they don't have those gate/goal sections in them that the players have.
Dark blue is used to represent what I've called Tier 4, aka the tallest spaces on the board. Then lighter blue for Tier 3, even lighter for Tier 2 and a lightish purple for Tier 1. The Red and White Sides have 8 flat spaces (Tier 0 if you will) at the back of their side, set up in two rows that are 4 spaces wide.
Not sure if you need to get your pieces to the very end of the board to score points or if you get points as long as you get your pieces into the "goal" zone between the elevated sections. Considering how the prince presented the game as having simple rules I'm assuming the former, though maybe the goal zone is set up like that so that you can count points based on how many pawns are inside the goal zone (and the game assumes that you won't be able to get more than 8 pieces to the goal alive).
Also thought on the elevated sections. Looking at the board like this makes it obvious how much they restrict the space you have available of the map if they're truly meant to be spaces that you can't move into. But there's not much point to them if you can just move your pieces freely onto them.
So I came up with a compromise solution. What if you can move your pieces onto a Tier that's taller than it's current space, but your pawn has to be next to the elevated section and you have to call out your intention to move the piece there during your turn but won't actually be able to move the piece until your next turn, in essence requiring 2 move actions to climb 1 Tier. It would make sense if you can climb down from a higher tier to a lower tier with just 1 move action though.
This would explain the point of having 4 different tiers. If you climb onto that Tier 1 section on the outer part of the board you can freely move your piece along the sides of the board without normal pieces being able to attack immediately, but it also won't take much time for another piece to climb up to the same elevation as your piece. On the other hand if you take the time to climb onto the Tier 2 section then your movement is more limited but it's harder to reach you.
And if we assume that climbing up takes 2 move but climbing down takes 1 then you could camp some pieces at the top of a tier 4, even in the neutral zone and have that pawn remain safe, while being able to easily rush past attempts to catch it if the opponent only dedicates a one or two pieces to capturing it.
On the other hand since you've already dedicated your pawn's action for the next turn ahead of time and announced it to your opponent it's risky to climb if the enemy has pieces close enough to attack before you can climb up, since they can attack while your pawn is unable to dodge or retaliate.
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Doesn't mean we can't build an actual game from it.
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The way the game was played was nonsense because the Red Prince was cheating like a motherfucker from beginning to end and Ruby quickly followed suit. The core gameplay seems perfectly functional regardless of how one chooses to interpret the points that the show was fuzzy about.
Exactly. Though one sticky point that's come up is that I've realized that the game board in the show has significantly more tiles than the concept art made by Fang. So I'll have to carefully study screeenshots to get a more accurate view of how the game is supposed to be set up, which is going to be trickier considering all the dramatic angles makes it hard to get a proper grasp of the board layout.
having been watching the "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End" anime and how part of it is Frieren living past the Hero's Party
and it makes me wonder
Let's say Penny remained a robot with a soul and was not killed/destroyed
just imagine her outliving all of her friends.
and it makes me wonder
Let's say Penny remained a robot with a soul and was not killed/destroyed
just imagine her outliving all of her friends.
This is marvelously well thought out, I didn't even consider there being a goal zone, I just thought it was about wiping out the other team, fascinating work!
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Well in practice I suppose the game is going to mostly rely on taking out the enemy pieces, since if you just rush most of your pieces into the goal and end up killing less enemies than you lost then the opponent can just leisurely rack up points after all your pawns are off the board and take back the lead. Unless one plays with a time/turn limit I suppose.
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HUZZA! Finally I'm done! I've gone over Rude, Red and Royal extensively to find good angles to double and triple check and I can now confidently assert that this is the actual layout of the board from the show:
The game isn't actually bigger, the primary diffference is just that the castle sections on the player sides only have 1 tier per space which gives more room for flat space near the player, making the scoring zone bigger. Though with this it's more obvious that you need to go all the way to the end to score points since I don't think "get within 4 spaces of the other player" counts as reaching the other end of the board.
Honestly aside from having that bigger opening near the players there's no difference betweenthe show version and the concept art. And it's a change that makes sense from a practical point of view otherwise the players would have their field of view obstructed by the elevated portions (and in the show Ruby and the Prince would be obstructed from the camera as a more pressing issue).
Also took the opportunity to switch to lines instead of markers, since the markers didn't really work with all the weird shapes of the hexagonal tiles anyway.
The game isn't actually bigger, the primary diffference is just that the castle sections on the player sides only have 1 tier per space which gives more room for flat space near the player, making the scoring zone bigger. Though with this it's more obvious that you need to go all the way to the end to score points since I don't think "get within 4 spaces of the other player" counts as reaching the other end of the board.
Honestly aside from having that bigger opening near the players there's no difference betweenthe show version and the concept art. And it's a change that makes sense from a practical point of view otherwise the players would have their field of view obstructed by the elevated portions (and in the show Ruby and the Prince would be obstructed from the camera as a more pressing issue).
Also took the opportunity to switch to lines instead of markers, since the markers didn't really work with all the weird shapes of the hexagonal tiles anyway.
Amazing work here, this is so in-depth, I really love it, thanks for all your effort researching this!
somone made a post about Ever-Morrow
and it helped me confirm that I can just brush it aside like many other big fan-projects
and it helped me confirm that I can just brush it aside like many other big fan-projects