What's the most rules-light you can go for a Street Fighter game...

What's the most rules-light you can go for a Street Fighter game? I'd like something that takes into account different kinds of fighting, but the simplest, the better

EXCEED or BattleCon are both built for that exact reason. I prefer EXCEED, because there is a degree of random elements and plays a lot faster, but BattleCon is really good about controlling your actions and lining up combos. Both are by lvl99games

Just make it entirely narrative. Base the system around what the characters care about and why they're in conflict rather than trying to simulate a fighting game, or even worse, trying to simulate a real street fight. The fighting styles they use in Street Fighter have only the most tenuous connection to the real disciplines they're named after, anyway. Sometimes they have no connection at all.

Risus would work, but it does that for everything.

Savage Worlds would probably work well enough, though it's more rules-medium.

I want to say maybe Strike! Would work?

Whenever a fight happens in the game, the player has to actually play the Street Fighter video game with the GM, or against an AI at an appropriate difficulty setting.

You can go absolute free form. Or maybe a step up from freeform, and play a round of RPS.

Do you want to, though?

Identify what it is that's important about fighting games to you, and we can find the most rules light solution.

BattleCon is a card game, isn't it? Also based entirely on 1v1, if I recall correctly. I mean, you could just freeform everything else, I guess.

Not that it'd be much worse in those regards than Thrash or "Fight! the fighting game RPG"

I support all of these suggestions. I'll add LotW and Fate/FAE to the mix.

This is a pretty fantastic beer and pretzels martial arts RPG?

I adore Legends of the Wulin, but it cannot be described as rules light by any means.

If you want a system with an amazing amount of depth to its martial arts combat, it's perfect, but from the sound of it that's not what the OP is looking for.

>What's the most rules-light you can go for a Street Fighter game?
Actual street fighting. It has no rules.

It's an unplayable mess but has some good ideas

depth and randomness - it's a unique system, but not a very good one; and yes, 'rules medium' is even a stretch...

How do you mean, randomness?

the number of actions you perform each round is...a variable....an unpredictable variable. sure, you can have lots of strategizing and planning within that round; but you can't effectively think ahead multiple rounds.

That adds a degree of randomness, true, but the way the system works your results are generally reliable. Most rolls you'll have a set or two to work with, if you're unlucky you'll get all singles and if you're lucky you might get multiple sets or a triple. I play a lot of LotW, and extreme rolls are very rare, I've only seen a couple of quads in my time and I think only a single five dice set in my entire time playing.

I guess it's just a matter of preference, I love the mechanic of not knowing what I have to work with until the dice are rolled, figuring out the best way to make use of my resources going forward in the fight. It's refreshing, having to adapt and figure it out rather than just sticking to a set gameplan from turn one.

It still helps to have a plan, too, keeping track of your Chi expenditure, knowing when to go all out and when to hold back, but that creates really great conflicts. Knowing that if you spend the Chi for your big attack boost you'll be very light on defences and vulnerable but then rolling a big, juicy set can make it oh so very tempting to take that gamble.

God I love LotW.

>Knowing that if you spend the Chi for your big attack boost you'll be very light on defences and vulnerable but then rolling a big, juicy set can make it oh so very tempting to take that gamble.
Right there. Right there, you nailed it: lotw is a GAMBLING system. It simulates gambling. It uses story as a premise to indulge its players in the 'gambling rush'.
Nothing wrong with that! But that's what it is. It's focus is that feel you get from gambling. 'Narrative' games focus on the storytelling and group participation; 'simulation' games scratch the realism itch. LotW is for the gamblers.
And, sir: LotW is NOT, IN ANY WAY, rules-lite. Again, not necessarily bad; but let us be clear.

I... Wouldn't describe LotW as a gambling game? At all? Well, no more than any other roleplaying system. I was just talking about the risk-reward decision making it presents, which is present in most RPGs.

And yes, it isn't rules light. I don't think anyone in the thread has claimed otherwise.

Hey uh, are you the WoD dude from that other thread? Your shitty arguments remind me of him.

'gambling game' is not a bad thing, user. LotW is totally gambling, as you yourself described - the fun comes from the unpredictability and the hoped for results, not from planning, or playing a role, or from achieving in-game results, etc etc. And that's fine! Different games do different things - no one game can do ALL the things I just described, nor should it.
Oh, and this is a rules lite thread, so...it is good you came in, because OP is asking about fightan gaems, but lotw ain't lite.

Hey, uh, are you drunk? Or are we actually supposed to know what you are talking about?

I completely disagree with your assessment. LotW is a wonderfully narrative focused game that puts combat at the center of its storytelling. The risk and reward mechanic is just a single minor factor of that which you're blowing far out of proportion, while ignoring the role it takes in pretty much every game out there.

>Actual street fighting. It has no rules.
Dude, the first rule of street fight club is that you don't talk about street fight club.

You're getting awfully damned defensive about something you yourself expounded, user - and, again, there is nothing wrong with a game that emphasizes the 'gambling-anticipation-rush' feeling. Moar games will be doing this as time goes on. Your misgivings about the term are a simple reaction you are having to the negative connotations western society places upon the word 'gamble'.
THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH A GAME EMPHASIZING THAT COOL FEELING THAT GAMBLING CONVEYS.
I've read your posts, you've gone into great detail; and your most excited prose was this:

"Knowing that if you spend the Chi for your big attack boost you'll be very light on defences and vulnerable but then rolling a big, juicy set can make it oh so very tempting to take that gamble.

God I love LotW."

Now, every reader can feel the emotion there, the love. It comes from that gambling rush, and there's nothing wrong with it! That IS excitement, it is real and true. And moreover it is reliable and common to nearly all of us. It is a good thing, properly disciplined.

And of course all games have a certain gambling aspect, that goes without saying. But the randomness and unpredictability of the next round of action is what sets lotw apart as a game emphasizing the random, the unpredictable, and the gambling predicated by the random unpredictableness.

You're fixating on a single part of my post and acting as if it's the entirety of the system. I'm not even sure what more to say, you seem bizarrely obsessed.

Pst, anyone who wants an actual account of how the system works rather than strangely twisted ramblings might enjoy the post chain over at

Awful lotta butthurt, user. Why are you denying? What's with the backpedalling? I'm not slagging your oh so precious system, I am merely defining it's appeal so that people might understand. Disingenuously attacking my post as 'strangely twisted' without addressing my points is weak, user. It's clear I've somehow hurt your feelings; but this is wrong, since I AM NOT ATTACKING YOUR PRECIOUS SYSTEM. But you can't seem to understand that. You are too overcome by your liking of your game to be objective.
Oh, and yer still shilling yer NOT lite game in a lite game thread: once people read your posts in that other thread, they will understand....

More exasperation, frankly. It's hard to know how to react when someone latches onto a single throwaway comment and refuses to let go.

>he thinks I haven't played his game
Come on! Don't play the 'hounded nobility' card, user. I've played the game; I've watched the game be played; I've run the game; I've read the godawful book, user! I know this game too!!
And you blatantly lying about the game's appeal is...what? What the fuck are you doing it for?? Just because it hurts your sensibilities to admit that you like gambling? Well, sorry yer not superior to the rest of us dirty humans, user! You like gambling too! How dirty!!!
You admitted yourself that you derive pleasure from not knowing your next round's resources, and working with the dice to come up with some sort of survive/win strategy to take you into the next round. That is the pleasure of 'gambling', a natural pleasure, a universal pleasure; not a thing to be ashamed of: all games do this to an extent, as you yourself stated.
Is your precious game too high-falutin' to be sullied by 'common' pleasures?

Ah, so I was right, then. You can't do objective. Fair enuf.