How would you run a fighting game campaign?

> MMORPG board game

>A fighting game campaign?, in a medium vastly dominated by focus on combat?, unthinkable!

There's a system for exactly this purpose. It's called "Fight! The Fighting Game RPG".
mediafire.com/view/bqj3vak363enc3n/Fight!.pdf
mediafire.com/view/j6y8kz6s5xw9djy/Fight!_Round_2.pdf

To wit, the game encourages the tropes you typically see in 2D or 3D fighters:
>Outlandish characters
>Specific techniques and playstyles
>A willingness to throw down at the drop of a hat

I can endorse Fight!. It's one of those systems where character creation is a bunch of fun without missing out on gameplay being fun too.

I'd LOVE to run a game inspired by the King of Fighters Series. The premise is pretty basic but it allows you to throw all sorts of crazy shit along the way (sudden bosses, the underdog jumps in out of now fuckin where, that one AI- err Team that cheats a fucking lot, the riot of blood, suddenly Goose Hogarts, etc etc)
Problem is huh, the game isnt that well known and even if I did find players, I guarenfukketee you 2 of them will make !NotRyu or AkumaMatata

How to double half circle pls.

Sounds like Battlecon

What theme would you go for? Something in the vein of Orochi, NESTS, Ash or the current arc?

That sounds almost exactly like Battlecon, except there's more emphasis on spacing and priority instead of hard counters.

I'd use Turbo Dice as a system.

>AkumaMatata
Especially since he already exists.

>probably not a pedophile
it's rare to read a compliment in these

Yeah Fight! is actually really good. A damn shame it's not talked about more.

The main complaints I hear about Fight!:
>The book formatting is ass
>The game gets REALLY meta about playing fighting games (you're not levelling the character, you're leveling the player playing the character)

The formatting is undeniably pretty bad, yeah, but the meta-part is honestly as prevailent as you want to make it. The book makes it very clear that the meta approach isn't ideal for every campaign and gives both a meta and non-meta justification for most mechanics. Hell, you could run a game almost entirely without the vidya feel using Dramatic Combat, even if that removes (in my opinion) one of the system's greatest strengths.

using the FIGHT! system, but with lots of dramatic combat and/or thug thrashing unless everybody is good with squaring off in 1v1 pvp encounters.

The Gods impose extremely stringent rules on ritual combat. Deviating from this incurs their wrath. Apply this to card battles, fighting games ect.

That's just the plot of Mortal Kombat.

Ever since that bastard Mortal Kombat Quest QM have put the concept in my head, I've been looking for ways to run it. I even went as far as to autistically try and make a homebrew system for it.

For now, Feng Shui seems to win out, but I'm always on the lookout for systems.

In my free time, I'm just collecting fighting game power ideas and tinkering with worldbuilding/NPCs

For now I have a
>modern setting that is the mix of Tekken, Street Fighter, and King of Fighters
>a mythical setting that is like Mortal Kombat Outworld, or Makai from Darkstalkers
>A Post-Magical-Apoc that is like Mad max + Guilty Gear + and BlazBlue

Maybe I'll mash the last two together, or just delete everything and try to forget about it.
Pic sorta related

I have a half arsed idea to modify Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate, that other than the fluff is open source, to run a Tenjou Tengue style campgain. PCs are admitted to a fighting/combat high school and have to deal with tournaments and existing power struggles between bully gangs etc

Forgot pic.

Pathfinder
Use the 3pp supplements Path of War (and expansion) and Spheres of Might
Slightly different systems to them but overall give a range of video game feeling options including recharge specials and hyper meters

>pathfinder for anything
no

Omg begone 3.PF fag. Please never OP, never ever consider d20 for fighting games.

There's several games that are specifically built from the ground up to emulate fighting games tropes and mechanis, like Strike! and Burn Legend, without having to bolt them onto d20.
Literally the only reason to use Pathfinder is if you're so terminally lazy you can't be assed to learn any other system.

Shinobigami with last man standing scenario type. That's more of a one-shot game though.

Curse you OP, now I don't know if I should let this thread die, or there is someone who wants to indulge me in discussing what a fighting game campaign should absolutely have.

Say your piece, user.

GURPS

>1.No turn system
Anyone who played Feng Shui, Exalted, or 13th Sea (not sure about the last one) has systems where every action takes different amount of time.
Timing has always been a very crutial part of fighting games. For example, a fast, light damaging jab that is easy to hit, vs a strong, full-body that you have to recover your balance after

>2.Fluctuating Defense Value for the attacker based on the type of attack
Having a fixed AC like in D&D does not do fighting games justice. A lot of time the players have to decide to sacrifice defense for a good offense, making themselves vulnerable

>3.Fluctuating penalties and advantages for both defender and attacker based on the form of defense
Continuing #2, in a game, you risk different amount if you either hit and they block it. Or if they avoid it completely, making you hit air. Some games also have parries, that counterattack specific moves.
On the other hand it is usually easier to block a move than trying to completely avoid it, and parry is also not without risk

>4.System of Special Attacks
In martial arts movies, different level of mastery is always a major theme. A drunken kung-fu master has a lot more or better moves than a dozen average drunken kung-fu warrior.

>5.Balancing Weapons
Somehow a monk who does animal kung fu unarmed, has to be as effective as a commando with a kombat knife, and they have to be able to fight each other without the monk bleeding to death

These are the things that come from the top of my head. Maybe no 3. is overcomplicating things in the name of an authentic experience, and no 5, can be overlooked by the suspenison of disbelief, but I'm adamant about the others

Oh, you're talking mechanically. I thought you meant plot and campaign structure.

I can talk a little about that too.

One of the easiest is just to take the "big tournament that everyone wants to win for one reason or the other" plot and make the players come up with reasons why.

The other is the McGuffin that everyone wants. Or at least a group wants and others want them not to have, and thus the hunt occurs. This is more like an Indiana Jones-esque chasing trough exotic locations, with lots of fighting

The more rare one is the Apocalypse. Something happens with the world -preferably trough the campaign- that makes the world go pretty crapsack, and warrior overlords rise. Almost like Fist of the North Star.

There is also playing Yakuza, or Hong Kong Triad. Good gun-free enviroment, and a history of hand-to-hand combat, sprinkled in with eastern mysticism.

Would The Warriors work out?

>genuine street fighting
>peculiar barbaric group culture
Not enough mystical powers for my taste, but aside from that, absolutely

Not him, but settings like the Warriors, Final Fight, Streets of Rage etc work fine. They mostly get by not explaining the absence of firearms because the world they're in doesn't emphasize them. No need to get bogged down with the why of it because that's not what the scenario is about.

A character having a gun is a gimmick unto itself.

You're welcome, friend

I'd say the Orochi Saga simply becouse of the crazy amount of shit happening in every team plus the crazy shit happening in the background.
Funny enough, Yamazaki team is exactly how I picture a player party: One chill player, the deranged murderhobo and the jumpy wizard who ocassionally murderhobos. And they all despise each other but keep on truckin'
Also, Orochi saga had THE best music of the whole franchise

index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=40

Wuxia is basically like this, with Mortal Kombat being wuxia filtered through silly 1990’s comic books.

So you prefer the ancient mythological prophecy trying to end the world instead of a criminal megacorp attempting to institute a new world order via genetics and high technology or some poof using a time loop to fuck over his dad?

Orochi Saga starts with Spam Priest aka Goenitz, and if that fucker is in, might as well throw Rugal in, maybe Goose as a "hidden boss".
NESTS saga gave us lots of cool shit but it never quite reached the 90's over-the-topness

A proper fighting game campaign should have personalized storylines for every fighter whether hero or villain. Each storyline inevitably intersects with other storylines and each intersection should be an opportunity for a fight. Stories should not advance unless a fight is involved.

It kinda goes without saying. It goes back to that point in : you have to be willing to fight at the drop of a hat, because that's what fighting game characters do.

That reminds me of a game I had considered doing based on Guilty Gear/Blazblue.
>Humanity develops reality-warping magic, but they don't have the processing power to move fast enough with it. Mage Circle forms, they develop Angels, hyper-competent humanoids of perfect appearance without individual willpower, to handle the minutae of magic Surprise, surprise, they're Mary-Sue tier badasses. The mightiest of them, Michael, is so strong he could fight one on everyone else if he needed to. Humans want Angel-like powers, but attempts to straight-up recreate them in a human leads to disasters.
>A 'fertile' Angel given the name Lilith is made, but she's more interested in Michael than any human. The Mage Circle that created her added safeguards to prevent abuse- she can't get pregnant unless she desires it, which pretty much means not at all, because Michael-senpai lacks the ability to give her children.
>Samael appears: He's the prototype for Angels, and like Fredrick, he's bent on killing the FUCK out of Angels, this time because they're a threat to him. He was a golden boy in the Mage's Circle, and saw 'true power' during his transformation. He wants to recreate the event and ascend to godhood, and since he's a powerful mage and Angel, he can do some fucking wicked shit, like exploit Lilith and turn her into a Yandere for Michael, then promising him to her in exchange for her cooperation.
>Since Samael and Lilith pull double categorization as humans, Michael can't kill them. He can beat the everloving fuck out of them and seal them away, though. Lilith is branded a failure, and the male version created too late to couple with her is released, the now-perfected framework used to make him used to create a female as well. When the non-Mage Circle humans find out that a successful pair of magically capable humans have been created, they freak out and assume the Mages are planning on replacing the whole world with angel-likes.
The PCs appear, and do what PCs do.

Eh, now that I think about it, maybe Michael needs to be toned down. He would be sort of the Hakumen of the cast. Maybe he was strong enough to take on Samael AND Lilith in a pinch, but took a lot of permanent damage trying to take them alive.
Presumably, the PCs would be human, but perhaps the nature of magic would allow them to carry special equipment that gives them super arts? Like Magic in GG or Ars Magus in BB?

Pic related

Really fighting game campaigns are just normal campaigns that emphasize characters facing Named opponents in 1v1 duels barring campaigns based off team focused games like KoF after clearing out the mooks and every character know kung-fu

For inspiration for a Fighting Game themed campaign check out MK9, MKX, SFV, and Tekken 7's story modes

The general crux of most fighting games that aren't GG/BB/Skullgirls is "tournament with the best fighters in the world is secretly a front for an evil despot/organization seeking power to rule or destroy the world, and the players make of that what they will." That's an old standby that will never go away.

You could also do what Soul Calibur did and have the entire mythos surrounding the setting be a legendary weapon/artifact or two that is shrouded in mystery but aimed for by anyone important, so characters wander the world chasing down leads that point them to the artifact or their destined rival battle. It's not organized like a tournament, but it's still a globe-hopping adventure where you cross wits and fists/weapons with memorable characters.

Yomi does this, but it would take some doing to make it work for an RPG

Regular 52-card deck modified. Regular cards are Attack, Block, Throw, or Dodge. Block beats attack (and you get your card back plus draw another), Throw beats Block, Attack Beats Throw, Dodge is a Block but you get a single counter-attack instead of drawing a card.

Face cards are signature moves, Jokers are weird. Attacks have speed to determine priority, plus some combo mechanics.

It works for fighting games really well. Most of the higher-level fighting game concepts translate over. Pokes, hitconfirm, mixups, a few characters can even vortex. Battlecon is cool too but is really a card game about fighting, whereas Yomi is a fighting game with cards.

>Battlecon is cool too but is really a card game about fighting, whereas Yomi is a fighting game with cards.
I'd put that the other way around. Yomi is raw RPS mindgames and a reflection of combos, but BattleCON is more about spacing, pacing, individual special attacks (literally, you're making a unique attack with every turn) and more prominent character gimmicks - see pic related.

I've toyed with using Wild Talents for something like this.
Since I needed a system that could handle basically whatever special moves players could come up with.
Plus the One Role System seems to the feel of a fighting game rather than a turn based system
Plus plus fighting game characters tend to just be superheroes anyway so going with a system that was designed around that seemed appropriate

Maybe 20 years ago but times are changing, just look at the games I mentioned

Sure the the franchises started out based around tournaments but in the past few years the stories of the games have left that particular trope behind

Tekken 7 is an all out war between two megacorps, SFV has a plot that wouldn't be out of place in a G.I. Joe cartoon, and MKX is about stopping an Elder God from wiping out all life, and even older games had their lore steadily moving away from tournaments

The tournament has a place in campaigns based on fighting games but you should by no means limit yourself to that

"Globe-spanning tournament" is the "you all meet in a tavern" of fighting games.

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> Striking red hair
> suspenders
> tie
> midriff
> gloves