fighting game-inspired narrative system

[justin1083]

Hi Everyone.  This is my first time posting here.  I'm trying to design a narrativist game based on fighting games/shows such as Street Fighter, King of Fighters, Naruto, and Tekken.  Or even Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon, since I'm more concerned with the story of the fighters and their motivations, rather than whether they battle with fists, swords, cards, or cute monsters.

I'm thinking that each story arc will revolve around a specific tournament, with players taking the role of entrants.  They'll build a pool of dice that represents control of the fight (called Advantage) by describing how they incorporate various styles and techniques (called Traits) into the battle.  For example, Ryu could describe how he used his trait "Hadoken: 4" against his opponent, and add 4 dice to his Advantage pool.  Each Trait can only add to Advantage once per battle.  So Ryu could use the Hadoken as many times as he wanted, but would only gain the 4 dice once.

In a nutshell, fighters bid Advantage when they describe their actions, and roll a number of six-sided dice equal to their bid to determine the winner.  A success is a 4, 5, or 6.  The winner keeps the dice they bid, and the loser loses them.  When one side is reduced to zero Advantage, they lose the fight.  For example:

Ryu and Ken are fighting.  Ryu has 8 Advantage, and Ken has 5.  Ryu describes his Hurricane Kick attack, and bids 4 of his 8 Advantage.  Ken decides to use a Hadoken to knock his friend out of the air, but is more cautious and bids only 3 dice.  Ryu gets 2 successes, but Ken only gets 1.  Ken loses the 3 dice he bid, bringing him down to 2 Advantage.  Ryu remains at 6.

I want the game to really focus on what motivates each fighter, and how winning or losing key battles can change them deeply.  I want to use a Truth and Sin mechanic to represent this.  Each fighter will choose a Truth, and acting according to his Truth can earn him Fighting Spirit, an expendable resource that can be used to influence the dice.  Fighting Spirit can prevent you from losing dice when you lose a bid, among other things.  For example, the Truth of Protection, which is based around protecting something or someone important to you, might look like this, with numbers representing the amount of Fighting Spirit you gain for each action:

Truth of Protection
   1: The thing you fight to protect is in a dangerous situation with you.
   3: Going out of your way to protect your important thing.
   5: Risking your life for the thing you protect.
        10: Putting yourself in the path of certain death for the thing you protect.

Sin is linked to Truth.  When you act against your Truth, you gain Sin, and after reaching a certain amount, you lose your sense of why you fight, and can no longer use Fighting Spirit, which greatly diminishes your ability in battle.  The counterpart for protection might be:

Sin of Protection
   1: Putting anything before protecting your important thing.
   2: The thing you protect comes to harm.
   5: Losing the thing most precious to you.

This is still in the initial stages...I'd like to also have mechanics to represent youe relationships to other fighters, your secrets, etc.  But right now I'm looking for tropes of the genre that I should try and emulate/represent, feedback or thoughts on the Truth/Sin mechanic, or thoughts on how to best represent the genre with a narrative system in general.  I don't want this to be too long so I didn't post much detail, but if anyone has questions about other aspects of the system feel free to ask.  Thanks!

[Filip Luszczyk]

Welcome to The Forge, Justin!

I've been toying with some similar ideas over the last years, although I've been aiming at a gamist design, with the whole motivations stuff secondary to tactical combats.

Also, I remember doing a mock Ryu vs. Ken conflict with DitV mechanics once - needles to say, your proposed combat mechanics remind me of that simulation, and something in these lines should certainly be enough if you don't want to highlight the tactical elements but still want the specific abilities represented somehow.

As for the Truth/Sin mechanic, I think you should examine Animus rules from Clinton R. Nixon's Paladin, since what you describe is already similar in some ways. One thing I don't think would work well in your presented idea is the fact that there is absolutely no reason for the player to act against his Truth. The rules reward persistency in following the Truth, and penalize acting according to the Sin. As a result, players are motivated to portray their characters in a consistent - and bland - manner, and you wind up with striving to pump up Fighting Spirit just like with Honor and Glory in good old gamist Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game. And since you want the game to facilitate narrativist play and focus on conflicting motivations, you need some hook for the player to consider straying from the pure path worthwile. I think it would be better if Sin also generated Fighting Spirit, but at a cost of adding to some kind of "damnation bar", harming relationships or the like. Or, it could provide some mechanically beneficial resource other than Fighting Spirit (e.g. Aggression, Brutality or Grief), the usage of which would be connected with a similar twist.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with Anime versions of Street Fighter and Fatal Fury - they are a great reference here, and good models for story structure. Your game would certainly benefit from a strict scene structure weaved around "mandatory" bouts, kind of similar to the one from Final Fight (where it is assumed players alternate between fight and fluff scenes). E.g. if the Tournament is the basic unit of play, you can easily determine the exact amount of key combat scenes beforehead, leave plays for some specific amount of out-of-tournament friendly fights, require a specific amount of flashback scenes per player (that could be used e.g. specifically to add and improve relationships), specific amount character development scenes (training montages, highlighting motivations, adding personal color and stuff) and so on. Then you can present it graphically in a form of a physicall board that would look kind of like the tournament screens from arcade games - the "tournament tree" with specific additional scenes attached in specific positions between the bouts. During the play, players would move between the scenes on the board - some proceeding to the higher rounds of Tournament, and others, after being eliminated from the tournament, moving into branches dominated by other kinds of scenes. Possibly, some kind of metagame resource could be used by the players to buy additional scenes out of the structure, framed by the player, or to "jump" over some pre-defined scenes (with the key Tournament fights probably unavoidable, though). Such thingy could help in keeping the story structure together and at the same time would provide some visual stimulation for the group.

All in all, I dig games inspired on this source material, so I'd like to see the project progress. Good luck ;)

[justin1083]

Thanks for the feedback.  As for the scene structure, yes, I definitely want to have some sort of formal way of alternating between training/investigation/expository scenes and actual fights.  I also want to work in some kind of "Destined Battle" mechanic, whereby some battles are unavoidable...even if you get knocked out of the tournament, circumstances will conspire to ensure that the fight occurs in some form or another.  For example, if Vega and Chunli were meant to fight in Round 3 of a tournament but one was elimiated in the prior round, Vega might be sent to assassinate Chunli, so the fight will still occur.  Relationships will probably be key to this kind of thing.

I do think you're right about Truth and Sin...there isn't any motivation to act against your Truth.  That might not be a problem per se, because the genre isn't really about people making the choice between what's important to them or what can give them power in the long run (with some exceptions, of course).  Fighting game characters usually question their beliefs when they lose battles or have something forcibly taken from them.  That said, I do think it's a great idea to have Sin give the same benefits as Fighting Spirit, but maybe easier to get.  That way it could represent Ryu attacking Akuma out of anger and gaining extra power when he found his master murdered, starting him down the road of the Satsui no Hadou.  I want Sin mainly to be gained when you lose an important battle, or win it without holding to your principles, or when other players maniupulate the story to force you into a harmful situation.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya Justin,

I have a question.  When a character loses a fight in a tournament, what do they do then until the tournment is over?

Peace,

-Troy

[justin1083]

Well, the tournament structure can be literal or more symbolic--I mostly want to formalize the back and forth between battle scenes and investigation/exposition scenes.  in theory this switch could even occur mid-battle, if characters take a long pause of some sort.  so not every story would have an actual tournament to be knocked out of.  but if we are talking about an elimination event, my intent would be to have an underlying story that will give characters something to do even if they don't have "official" battles.  For example, while Character A is fighting enemy Character B in the semi-finals, his temmate Character C might be secretly investigating some underground tunnels.  Little does he know that the guardian Character D is standing watch to make sure no one gets to the end of the tunnels.  So, both player characters will have a big fight ahead of them, but only one will officially be part of the tournament.  I want the tournament structure to be the skeleton that a story of mystery and morality is built on.  Does this make sense?

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Yeah, that makes sense.  Let me ask another question.  Do players get only one character, or can they play many?

Peace,

-Troy

[justin1083]

That's actually another thing i've been toying around with.  In one-on-one tournament battles, even if teammates are cheering on the sidelines, most of the time one character is going to be in the spotlight.  I'm not sure if there really needs to be a GM or not, but at the least, I think other players should take control of the opponent(s).  That way the competitive nature of fighting games comes out a little, but with the goal of creating interesting challenges and conflicts for the main player character of the moment, not purely to "beat" him!  I'm trying to clean up the basic mechanics, I'll post more here and hopefully everything will make a little sense.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

That's actually another thing i've been toying around with.  In one-on-one tournament battles, even if teammates are cheering on the sidelines, most of the time one character is going to be in the spotlight.  I'm not sure if there really needs to be a GM or not, but at the least, I think other players should take control of the opponent(s).  That way the competitive nature of fighting games comes out a little, but with the goal of creating interesting challenges and conflicts for the main player character of the moment, not purely to "beat" him!  I'm trying to clean up the basic mechanics, I'll post more here and hopefully everything will make a little sense.

-The thing I want to know is how you would mechancially represent and encourage that in the game?

Peace,

-Troy