Beat-up/Fighing Games RPGs

anyone have this one?

rpgobjects.com/index.php?c=product&p_id=331

Ninjas & Superspies.

Totally broken mechanics. So house rule it heavily and you'll have tons of fun.

I'm looking for RPGs that do martial arts styles well. Stuff like countering the opponents Leaping Tiger style with the Desert Scorpion style or whatever.

I think Feng Shui does that.

That's good in general for combat, actually. The gritty, realistic rules about injury and "I want to stab him in the spine" or whatever are neat.

There are also actually realistic rules about combat styles. It has plenty of material about Wuxia and Chambara and stuff, but not all of it is.

Actually a lot of it is realistic stuff. Like how you represent the "better than no training, but still not completely combat effective" exercise oriented or self defense oriented styles some people learn, or how you can be totally jacked up from having basically a fraud teach you bullshit. Even some technically military styles are kind of gimped, although not all. Some of them are just "economical" and have plenty of practical "yeah, you stomp on his head/genitals" focus, and techniques for improving your efficiency at "targeted attack EYES/GROIN/INSERT DIRTY, LETHAL TARGET HERE. (Throat is popular. The commando styles naturally favor "so yeah, you sneak up and slit his throat or stab him in the Kidney".)

Ninjas & Superspies does that but it doesn't do it well. It does it horribly in fact.

Yeah, I ran FIGHT! recently... it's not bad, but it gets a little too crunchy for combat - I just ended up fudging things on the fly. There's a decent system in there, it just needs to be decluttered.

There is the Ki Combat Skill/Basic Quality clusterfuck, not enough pre-made Special/Super Moves.

The main combat system is kinda fucked up...

Anyway, some tried to decluttered it?

The fact that there are technically three different kinds of combat doesn't really help... And yeah, I might have a stab at shovelling out the cruft when I've got the time.

You prefer the Default Combat or the Dramatic?

And Btw, why three types or defense? Four, if you count Ki.

I went for a simplified version of Default, because then I wouldn't have to remember other stuff. I tried a few Thug fights, with delinquent girls throwing yo-yos with razor blades on them, as well as shit like steamrollers and tanks... y'know, the usual.

What you changed? Or removed?

I didn't use many of the qualities Super Moves had... or any of them, because that just seemed like too much bookkeeping. I also kept forgetting to include the Timer Dice, mainly because fights were over in a few rounds anyway. I also fudged how Super Moves could be used, because again, way too much shit for me to remember.

I do honestly like what FIGHT! is going for and its metagame for character progression is amazing, but it's too damn hung up on being simulationist. Like I said, if you threw out half of what's in the books, maybe make it more of a storygame thing, then you'd have something really solid.

I feel like Fate Accelerated could be hacked about to do this. Accelerated uses Approaches instead of skills. The default approaches are: Careful, Clever, Flashy, Forceful, Quick, and Sneaky. So you see how you could take two or three of those and combine them into a Martial Art. Like my Tiger Style is Forceful, Quick, and Sneaky, while your Crane Style is Careful, Clever, and Quick.

Hmmm... I can see it. Fighting games are pretty much 80% narrative, if you think about it.

A few years back, Exalted released a one-off book called Shards of the Exalted dream, which detailed a bunch of different settings.

One of those settings was called Burn Legend and used an entirely different combat system. Think of it kind of like an extensive Rock, Scissors, Paper system - there were a dozen or so different styles, and each style had twenty or so different types of attacks and defenses. Each attack and defense had a variety of tags.

One player plays an attack, the other player (or ST) plays a defense.

So like, a leaping kick might deal 5 damage and bypass any sort of low block, but it's vulnerable to a high block or high counter.

Or maybe you play an attack that can automatically bypass any block, but you take 2 points of damage and any counter used against it adds 3 damage.

I ran a couple of campaigns using it and it was pretty fun.

I think Fate Core/Accelerated is too much narrative...

Possibly, but it would allow for more cinematic fights, rather than just "I hit you, you hit me." Of course, if you want to go that way, you could also just play Risus or Wushu and get rid of most mechanics other than narrating.

>Shard of The Exalted Dream

This books is fucking hard to found. But, i have it.

Fate Core is shit for anything "cinematic", really.

And Accelerated isn't better.

I disagree, but I know there won't be a constructive conversation out of it, so I'll let it go with that.

Legends of the Wulin does this very well, on top of having the best combat system of any RPG I've ever played. The rules can seem a bit arcane, especially with the appalling editing of the core book, but once you get it running smoothly the system is utterly sublime.

>>Swap out existing system for something else

Slightly off topic, but this reminds me of an old idea I had a few years back while talking with a friend, that I hadn't remembered till now.

Seeing as how so much is done on computers these days, what if instead of rolling a die to simulate the success/failure of skill based things, instead one played a short mini-game on a computer program representing that skill?

IE your monk has to dodge a bullet or something. Instead of rolling for reflex save or whatever, you boot up a short reaction-test mini-game, with the difficulty level of the mini-game based on the difficulty of the roll. Same for dexterity or any other "skill" stats, and such. Take the randomness out of combat while still keeping it an imagination based game.

I could probably write a quick game/program like that, curious if anyone thinks it would make for an interesting session/campaign.

I think you should at least try it out a few times, and let us know how it went.

LotW actually has an entire subsystem for this, Laughs and Fears.

The system uses two sorts of Kung fu style, Internal and External. Internal is active special abilities, External is your core fighting style.

External fighting styles have a set of Laughs and Fears, narrative cues which give you a bonus or penalty when they apply.

Just taking the first External in the core book, Blossom Harvest, as an example- It's described as a style of the common man, strong and enduring. It Laughs at overly complicated styles, smashing apart their intricacies with raw strength, and also Laughs at disadvantageous terrain or being outnumbered.

However, it Fears fighters who are reactive, its honest and direct power easy to circumvent and redirect, and as a style of the common man it Fears the supernatural.

It might not seem like much, but in play laughs and fears add a nice bit of extra depth to a combat encounter, where considering your own Laughs and your opponents Fears can be a deciding factor in a fight.

Huh... neat.

LotW is all around awesome, despite the bad editing and Secret Arts being sorta impenetrable. It's my favourite action RPG system by far.

persona4 arena is literally one night and an hour out of 4? years of non fighting game plot.

>this has been bugging me for 3 days now.

I would use the Fate Fractal. The core character is built to cover the adventuring side of the game while their Fighting Style/Techniques/Special Moves are covered by a separate sheet.

Strike! does this too, and it would be my recommendation if you don't insist on Fighting Game mechanical trappings.

Btw, how the fuck you made a character in "Strike!"?

Assuming I parsed your question correctly...

In Strike!, you've got your "normal" character making process, and the optional "tactical combat" step.

Normal character making is picking 10 skills, 2 complications and 2 tricks (either by combining a "class" with a background, or going through a survey with 10 questions about your character).

Combat side is picking a Class (they are mostly pretty generic like Summoner, Martial Artist, Buddies, etc.) and a Role (Striker/Defender/Controller/Blaster/Leader), then picking from the available abilities.

Optionally there may be feats and kits.

It's pretty easy, got a game going with absolute newbies in an hour.

bump

...

Damn it, Roll, at least TRY to be professional!

Hm. Strike! You say?

To the Google!