Whether it is one's own life, status, honor, loved ones, or a belief, fighting is all about the desire to protect.

Hi all.  I've been toying with the idea of a game based on martial arts tournaments and fighting competitions in general.  The main inspiration is shounen and seinen fighting manga like Tenjho Tenge, Naruto, Ikki Tousen, and Bleach, as well as fighting games such as Tekken and King of Fighters.

In the game, player characters are fighters.  They solve their problems by fighting.  Whether they love fighting or hate it, they are drawn into it.  They have a desire to test their strength, whether as a path to enlightenment, power, or the ability to protect something they care about.  No problem can't be solved by fighting it out.  In fact, most problems can only be solved by fighting it out.  The most exciting parts of the game will be combat.  Yes, there can be meaningful character development outside of combat, but most revelations and dramatic moments will probably come in the heat of battle.  I plan to have the mechanics for things going on outside of battle directly influence what goes on inside, so the other bits are really only there to make the next fight more interesting and dramatic.

One of, if not the most, important genre conventions (besides everything being solved by fighting) is that true strength is equated with the desire to protect something important.  Relationships, ideals, and convictions are as important as combat techniques--at the very least, they provide the inspiration to work harder to develop those more powerful techniques.  I want to model this in a narrativist way, because so much of the genre is about deciding how far a fighter is willing to go for what he believes in, not an exact blow by blow mapping out of a fight.

But every time I try and develop mechanics, I run into the same issue.  I don't want overly detailed combat mechanics to get in the way of the drama escalating between two opponents, but since the main focus of the game is these battles, combat shouldn't be quick and dirty.  There should still be engaging and tactically meaningful options, and players should feel like their character's special techniques and fighting style are genuinely theirs and not the same as every other guy's, both mechanically and narratively.

So, I know I'm not giving much to work with, but does anyone have any ideas for a direction to head mechanically for the premise I've presented?  A blow-by-blow isn't really important, but I think documenting the turning of the tide of battle is--measuring who has control of the fight in a general sense.  But like I said, I'm struggling to come up with a core combat mechanic that emphasizes narrative control but still keeps the fight interesting mechanically and allows for meaningful difference between characters based on style.  I think some of the re-roll mechanics of Trollbabe are really interesting, in that they allow for relationships and things like unexpected allies or half-forgotten memories to have direct impact on the conflict, while also escalating it.  Or maybe I'm completely off and am thinking about this too conventionally.  I'm not sure if I've provided enough information, so please let me know if I can tell you anything else about the idea...Thanks.

In particular, I'd like to work out some kind of mechanic where Advantage is built up, spent, and passed back and forth between characters, allowing the players to control the pacing, momentum, and flow of battle.  Maybe the tactical aspect could come from when you decide to unleash all of the Advantage in one decisive blow, or choosing to let it build up in hopes of stealing it and using it against the opponent, etc.

I'd also like to explore a triangular fighting style relationship, based on, say, Force/Precision/Speed.  Almost like rock/paper/scissors, but not as absolute (meaning, playing a Precison move against a Force move would just give a bonus, not guarantee victory).

This looks like a solid design goal, with a clear focus and some creative ideas.  I think you've got a good idea of what you want, but I'm going to reiterate it to see if I understand it.  You want:

All conflict resolved by fighting.
A strong narrative influence over the outcome of the fight - wanting it more conferrs a tangible advantage.
Japanese Manga colour elements.

Clearly the stand-out game of this type is Contenders.  Indeed, I think you'll find it hard to make your game do something that Contenders doesn't do better - it just covers the genre so well.  If you haven't checked it out, I suggest you do so immediately.  Where you can distinguish your game is in some of the things you mention - unique "special moves", and a Japanese, martial arts, flavour.

What comes to mind from the genres you mention is that each character has something to gain from the tournament - something they hope to get by winning - and something to lose - something that they hold dear that is placed in danger by their involvement.  Contenders (again) does this really well.  What you want to avoid is a strictly mechanical approach - you get -1 if your opponent brings up your troubled past, but +1 if you invoke your special reason for wanting to win.  I think a good way to get a more narrative focus is to allow players to bring trouble on themselves for a mechanical bonus in the fight.  Flashbacks and training montages could be a cool way to achieve this: Here are a couple of ideas of how to do this:

If the fight is going badly, the player can call up a memory of something that's motivating them - their mother telling them "if you don't win, our village is doomed!" or "This little girl's life hangs in the balance." The player gets a bonus from this scene - but each one needs to be more dramatic than the last.  It's similar to DitV "escalation", in that you raise the stakes for a better chance of winning, but bigger consequences if you lose.  You'd need to make sure that the players actually cared about this stuff in some way, otherwise it's just free points.

Idea two:

A SotC type thing, where the GM (if your game has one) or otherwise other players can "bribe" the player with bonus points, in exchange for accepting negative thins, like the death of a family member, or maybe some mean taunting before the fight.  This would be harder to impliment, but would make for more thematic gameplay, I think, becasue it contains the inherant choice "what would you do to win?"

In terms of actual fighting mechanics, I think a Rock paper scissors type of thing, combined with personalised "special moves" is a cool way to go.  For colour, have you considered tying the different types of attack to "Elements" rather than to some kind of "real life" factor? Japanese philosophy had five elements (Earth, Fire, Water, Wind, Void), and it'd be cool if, say, Fire moves were strong against Earth but weak against Water, and so on.  Also, you could have cool "Combo moves", so like, a move that combined Fire and Wind would be extra strong, while a combination of Water and Fire would be weaker (but maybe could do unexpected things?).  I'd save "Void" for extra cool attacks, maybe they have to be powered by personal motivation, but they're strong against all elements, and can be combined well with any?

I think "scripted" combat would work well with this kind of mechanic.  The players lay down cards that say what their next few moves will be, and reveal them simultaneously, so you might get one player who does his "Flowing Water Dodge" while the other player does "Inferno Fists", and then on the next card one player "Powers Up" while the other does "Healing Wind", and so on.  Each character would have a limited "hand" of moves that they can do, so the strategy of the game is feeling out what the other character can do, and timing your attacks to hit them while their defences are weak.

Don't be afraid of complicated rules.  If your game is about combat, then the combat rules should be very detailed.  I hope these ideas are useful to you.  Feel free to discard them as you choose. 

Cheers,

Simon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_elements_%28Japanese%29

That's the wikipedia article on the five elements.  I think you might find it very useful in describing both the physical and emotional aspects of your game.  The elements are tied to different emotional states, which pretty obviously lends itself to narrativist combat.

Hope it's helpful.

Thanks for the replies.  I just skimmed them now, but I'll post more substantially in the morning.  Just as a quick note, originally I was going to use a five element system: earth, fire, air, water, and heaven.  In theory I like it, since they can represent different combat modes or styles.  I might return to the idea, depending on how the core combat mechanic works out!

You may already be familiar with this thread, but I think some of the ideas there might be useful:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=22649.0

i would make a base system then, start adding martial arts an d there various styles, remember, all across the world, there are martial art origins. every major landmass has given birth to at least a handfull of ma styles. english has boxing, germans are known piticalarly for there pole arm techniques, and fencings. french frencing had be around for ages. italy and greece share some of the more advanced wrestling styles. the native americans have a style simplely known as warpath. Bruce Lee gave birth to Jeet Kune Do, although heavily inspired by eastern styles. africa has the longest running history of martial arts, and is thought to be the birthplace of all martial arts.

the rest you can find. wikipedia is pretty complete

Hi Simon,

Does sacrifice get close to what you want? Like players could write down issues and then sacrifice them to some degree for their cause. Like if they do one move, they wont be able to till their fathers field tomorrow. If they do another, their girlfriend will think they are a dirty fighter, and if they do another, the onlooking innocent crowd could get hurt. By sacrificing them to do a move, a character could be saying the innocent onlookers getting hurt is less important than the prize money needed for the orphanage. For example.

Wide aim there. How'd it go?