First post, thoughts on Eastern martial arts

[Calder]

First off, I have to give major props to Brian and Jake!  I recently converted my d20 campaign to TROS, and it's been nowhere but up. (ben_lehman is one of my players, and mentioned the conversion in a post of his.  I'm going to have to add my two cents to that one.)  Gritty, blood-spattered combat and character-driven games have always been close to my heart, and I couldn't ask for more from the combat system, and the spiritual attributes.  And the sorcery ain't 'alf bad either.  I've been watching the forum for a while, but this is my first post.  So I've got a lot to talk about, and I'm curious fer some feedback.

First, I've seen alot of posts regarding TFOB, and what's going to be in it.  Mass combat is high on my personal lists (more of my thoughts on that later), and some questions about whether or not Eastern martial ways were going to be included.  Well, Ben might have mentioned this in his earlier post, but I've been learning Eastern martial arts for going on most of my life now (although I keep learning how much I still suck. ;), and I've been a long-time aficionado of Eastern maritial texts (Like the Art of War, the Romance of Three Kingdoms, and A Book of Five Rings).  So obviously, I'm biased in favor of seeing this kind of material presented.

However...  And this seems to be a legitimate concern for a lot of people, I'm not looking for some kind of mystical "kewl powerz" scenario.  In my opinion, the already existing sorcery rules could simply be tweaked a little to allow for Crouching Tiger-style wire antics, along with amazing Chi powers, puffs of smoke, walking on water, all that...  Other than that, most Eastern combat forms could easily be analogous to similar Western combat arts, with a few tweaks to add flavor.  For example:

Katana/Jian (Taichi broadsword)/Sabre : Cut and Thrust
Nodachi/Two-handed Jian : Longsword/Greatsword
Bo/Naginata : Pole arms
Nunchaku/Kamas : Mass weapons
Two sabres/Butterfly swords : Case of Rapiers (with Cut instead of Thrust)

So on so forth...  Not a whole lot has to be done (except perhaps add or subtract a few maneuvers, or add to the difficulty to add a bit of difference.)  Doppelhanders and rapiers would probably remain solidly a Western convention...:)  Unarmed martial arts could be a bit trickier.  The first thing I would suggest, is give Pugilism access to more maneuvers in general.  The sparring I've done (regardless of the particular art in question) leads me to believe feinting, countering and such things definitely are present even when you don't have weapons.  You could argue that this unbalances Pugilism, but I don't think so.  You'd still have to have the required proficiency level to use these manuevers, and if you have a guy with level 5 Pugilism and a guy with level 5 cut and thrust and a broadsword, I don't care if the first guy now has access to counters and feints.  My money's still on the guy with the sword.  And while it might seem like Wrestling is getting left in the dust, I think that balances out considering most drawn-out hand-to-hand fights will end up on the ground eventually.  And once that happens, your wrestling proficiency is about the only important thing.  Honestly, just doing that would probably be enough to model Eastern martial arts in TROS.  If you wanted a finer level of detail, you could change the maneuver and cost lists around to reflect different unarmed combat styles.  I've done that with a short list of a generic 'hard' style and and generic 'soft' style.  Also, because it seemed necessary, I made an adapted counter table for unarmed combat.  But all of these are simple tweaks to the system, and could be used only if there was a need in the campaign for such rules.

So that's what I've got to say about that.  Interested to hear what you guys think. :)

[arxhon]

Hi Calder,

Welcome to the Riddle of Steel forum on The Forge!

Eastern Martial arts has been bandied about quite a bit here. It hasn't come up in a while, though. I'd love to see your input on the subject.

The biggest thread recently is here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=5315

My view on the subject is to write unarmed martial arts up like weapon proficiencies are done currently, but with additional maneuvers like Hook, Feint, Stop Short, Double Strike, et al. So for (a very poor) example, a hard martial art, called say, Crouching Dragon, could have Feint, Bind and Strike, Thrust, Counter and Parry, and default to grappling at -3 or something.

I view pugilism as a kind of fist-fighting or brawling that you would see between two western opponents who haven't received the kind of training that the eastern practitioners would.

I agree that there may be a need for an adapted Counter table.

[Brian Leybourne]

I just wanted to echo the welcome. It's always good to see new faces around here, and hear about folks ongoing campaigns and thoughts on house rules and such.

And you're absolutely right of course, TROS already models combat excellently and all that's required is a few name changes and maybe maneuver shuffling and it can cope pretty well with EMA, Russian martial arts, Capoeira, just about anything you can come up with.

I'm just waiting for (and dreading) the inevitable East versus West war that is bound to happen here at some point. It's bubbled along a little in the past, but never quite reached boiling temperature.

Brian.

[Salamander]

I am dreading the same thing Brian. I just hope that if it does come up it is as a mature and scholarly debate.

[Jake Norwood]

EMA is crap and everyone that wears pajamas and fights suckz so f*ck all you posers.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

:-D

Jake

ps For those of you that are new, that was a joke.

[Brian Leybourne]

EMA is crap and everyone that wears pajamas and fights suckz so f*ck all you posers.

Oh yeah? Well at least Katanas are folded, like, four million times and are wicked sharp and a ninja could kick your ass any day and I get a funny feeling in my pants when I think of geisha girls, and...

Etc. It's bound to happen.

Sigh :-)

Brian.

[Eamon Voss]

EMA is crap and everyone that wears pajamas and fights suckz so f*ck all you posers.

Oh yeah?  WMA are just book-work that have never been tested on 1337 battlefields like what the ninja do in the reel wurld.  i do buku-idiotica which claims that it can take full power hitz without defending, so i know wot i am talking about.  i bought a ninja kitana at a game con once and mi kitana has maximum qi and was folding 18 quadrillion times and can slice thru a tank no prob. did you no that a single ninja could have killed every knight in existence.  this one ninja flipped out and killed all the pirates i read it on the web so it must be true!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.
Sigh...
.
I'm waiting for it to happen as well.  I practice EMA, but I don't buy the hype.  Afterall, if the stuff is so miraculously effective, then why didn't China and Japan (the places usually thought of as being the only places in the Orient to do martial arts) conquer more than just China?

Sigh.  It never ends.

[Lance D. Allen]

To answer honestly? The same reason the european nations didn't conquer the middle east and asia... Because even with badassical martial artists, the mass of the ground troops are half-trained peasants, or mercs who care more for money than the fight. Your WMA practitioners and EMA practioners were not in the majority, nor were their high-quality weapons.

[arxhon]

Bah! They both was filled to overflowing with pansies! I mean, look at the Mongols! They pwned large portions of both continents! And everything between! And they didn't even have guns or laser beams or anything lame like that! They were just a bunch of loonies on horses! China had to build a OMFG big wall to keep them away!

One Mongol could pwn 1000 l33t ninjas and 1000 lamer knights! At once! With his eyes closed! And Sleeping!!!!!!@1

:-)

[r_callen221]

lol, you guys with your posts. I love it.

Charles

[Calder]

Man.  Well, that just walked the knife's edge of intelligent dialogue and then teetered once, and plunged screaming into the misty abyss.  Pansy boy knights laughing at my stylish silk pajamas, eh? I'll show you when I bust out my sooper-kewl CHI powerz and fry all your metal encased asses. ;)

*sigh*  Anyhoo, I thought I might include some of the things I've written so far, to see what people think.  I mentioned this in my first post, it's just a maneuver list for a generic 'hard' style and a generic 'soft' style.  And I'm really not trying to say anything definitive about EMA or any specific art.  These are lists I made off the top of my head drawing on what training I've had in both flavors of EMA.  And...  Because it seemed necessary, I'm also throwing in this unarmed combat counter table.

Hard Style Example:

Offensive Maneuvers:
Grapple (2 or 4)
Punch (0)
Kick (0)
Evasive Attack (1)
Double Strike (1)
Bind and Strike (1)
Feint (variable)
Hook (1)
Simultaneous Block/Strike (1)
Stop Short (0)
Toss (0)
Defensive Maneuvers:
Counter (3)
Grapple (2)
Parry (0)

Soft Style Example:

Offensive Maneuvers:
Grapple (2 or 4)
Punch (1)
Kick (1)
Evasive Attack (0)
Bind and Strike (0)
Hook (0)
Simultaneous Block/Strike (0)
Stop Short (0)
Toss (0)
Defensive Maneuvers:
Counter (2)
Grapple (1)
Parry (1)

Martial Arts Counter Table:
1. Punch to IV
2. Punch to XIV
3. Punch to VII
4. Kick to I
5. Punch to XIII
6. Punch to XII
7. Punch to XI
8. Knee to X
9. Grapple
10. Disarm (or if unarmed, treat as Punch to VII)


That's what I've got so far.  Someone did make the arguement for keeping Pugilism the way it is, but I'll still make the case that any street or pit-fighter whose risen to the top is either physically unstoppable or has some finesse, even if he has no "formal" martial training.  

And another quick rant.  I feel the wrestling rules, as they're currently written, are just broken.  Yes, I'll admit that weight has a lot to do with who wins a wrestling match, but I think it's given...well, too much weight...in the current system... (God, I amuse myself :)  I have a friend of mine who's a bit on the heavy side.  And I'm pretty light on the pounds myself, so while we are about the same height, it takes approximately two of me to equal one of my friend, so to speak.  My friend and I once took a look at the TROS wrestling rules and figured that he would have a TN of about 4-5, while I on the other hand would have a TN of about 14...  We found this kind of amusing, considering that my friend and I actually do wrestle from time to time, and I'll still win about half the time, because while I am hideously outweiged, I still have at least comparable muscle strength, and am lighter and quicker.  Ultimately, I think the modifiers should be tied to both weight AND the muscle that weight's made out of.  For just one example off the top of my head, if there were a str requirement in order to 'buy' your positive weight modifiers, so that a 600 pound couch potato won't be able to outwrestle Hercules.

Anyway... Got to stop this short.  Hope to gain some good insights.  Have a good one, everybody! :)

[Bankuei]

I unfortunately haven't had a chance to really play with the grappling rules, but there are certainly some situations where weight plays different roles...

1) Typical grappling
On the ground, grappling for dominant position, to pin- Weight matters

2) Standing grappling
Grab his elbow, grab his wrist, twist, oops, there goes your sword- Skill matters

3) Wrestling on the ground, fighting dirty
Gouge eyes, bite, drive your chin in his solar plexus, twist ankle for break- skill matters.

But hey, I'll play with it first before making rules ideas.

Chris

[Jake Norwood]

And another quick rant. I feel the wrestling rules, as they're currently written, are just broken.

Actually I agree. At the time I wrote the book I knew very little about period wrestling, and only a marginal amount about it in general. Ah, to write TROS now... Ben Moore helped a lot, but we were really just guessing when it came to numbers. Something for TFOB, I suppose.

Jake

[Janne Halmetoja]

I thought about using GURPS Martial Arts as reference guide. For example there is many different kicks, so I think only one kick maneuver is not enough. I try to convert those maneuvers to TROS and we will see how it works.

- Janne -

[tunaman9000]

I recently made a ninja-esque assassin NPC who could DO the whole crouching tiger hidden dragon thing easy...

Vagaries:
Movement 1

That's IT!!! With simple, formalized, maintainable spells, she could practically fly, walk on water, whatever! You simply can't mess with this magic system...even a Movement 1 can guarantee that this fighter is almost unbeatable! I will be making her my next fighter character! The only way the fighter character I faced with her was able to beat her was with psychology, because he knew she was a bloodthirsty wench...

Have fun!