We all hate buzzer shots. It's an evil of the game that people will wait till the last second to get the last word in before a deadline for a card. That's the nature of people when it comes to Rp'ing. So I was thinking about if there is any way to stop buzzer shots from being effective or a logical way to mitigate their use.
So let's say we set an Rp period for 8 days, now we should chop it up, day 1-3 are round 1, days 3-6 are round 2 7-8 are round 3. Score the Rp like a boxing/MMA match where you award rounds to each person. Don't allow stacking in a round, which is a 72 hour window if somebody fired off really early in the first 2 rounds. Now you give a real incentive to Rp'ing early, because if I'm the only one to Rp for a round, I win it, I'm the only one to Rp for the first two rounds, I win the match. If somebody wants to buzzer shot round 1 or 2, they give me materal to work with for the next round, and now they have to write three Rp's to do three buzzer shots, not just 1 at the end of a promo period.
And a well written buzzer shot can often times be better quality wise then 3 Rp's by your opponent, here's an easy example, I'm fighting someone I don't know, not a lot of history, I do a generic opening Rp, it's not great, the standard "I'm gonna win!" stuff...Then I get off a stack, because they aren't Rp'ing, but stacks tend to suck because you don't have anything to work with, a stack is mostly just a 'gimme something for the effort I'm putting out, effort my opponent has not shown' kind off thing...I value stacks a lot cause I love effort, but others hate writing them/don't care for them, so the value of your stack is always unknown. Then my opponent fires off a great rebuttal an hour before deadline, just a beautiful piece by piece dismantling of my arguments, just makes me look horrible. I scramble and get in a reply like 5 minutes before deadline, but I didn't have time to think things out or make sense of anything, so my Rp sucked, quality wise, I lose the Rp thread and now have a very good chance of losing the match, becuase my opponent took full advantage of what the rules allowed him to do.
By splitting this into rounds, my first Rp and my stack win rounds 1 and 2, and my opponent can't steal the match by never Rp'ing against me until the deadline, it forces him to engage me more then just 1 hour before deadline, makes us have an honest Rp thread, instead of just a sneak attack at the buzzer.
I'm sure there are flaws with this, and I'd love to hear counter-arguements. So agree/debate me in comments!
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The problem is, while you want people to RP first, you don't really get into the meat and potatoes of the battle until both sides of have responded to an RP by the other and by then, that is already usually the second around since the RP base is older. The third round is most important in a good thread because that is when the true war seems to start and they going back and forth. I don't really think it is possible to score a knockout in the first round unless the other person just doesn't respond to the thread but I personally always look at who RPs first when I judge because I feel they have the hardest task of the whole session.
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