Ok, I've drawn up the sketches of the skill system, the combat system is pretty good as is the damage system. The magic won't be all that much problem. I should be ready to go and put it all together. Or not.

In the end the problem to really do well turns out to be the same as before - the abilities.

A quick briefing on Ygg. I'm building it relatively traditional simulationist style, but try to avoid the standard pitfals of the trade. Sounds like a fantasy heartbreaker, but hopefully I've got enough insights into how to make the rules thought through enough to be quite a different beast from AD&D. (Check the old stuff on Ygg if you're interested in how whether Ygg is a fantasy heartbreaker or not has been debated).

Anyway, it will have a seperate combat system since combat is a big deal. I'm looking for simple and fast mechanics which still yield "reasonable" results. The magic also has it's own chapter, since it's unique enough to require special treatment. Again check old stuff to see what the magic looks like. In regards to the skill system, it'll probably end up looking a lot like the latest skill system ideas I discussed here.

Anyway, I won't have any separate skill. The stats are supposed to be "average skill rating" to use for skill rolls. A gross simplification, but it's not important enough for the gameplay to warrant the extra effort in character creation. Although I'm probably gonna add rules on how to get skill bonuses by claiming the character is trained, but that's a different subject.

The important thing to remember is that skills are downplayed. Weapon combat rating is actually a stat. My philosophy behind this is that a) skills don't need to be exact since they don't have much importance as far as "success" in the average adventure is concerned and b) the best treatment of skills usually appear in skill-less systems. Games with extended skill systems usually render the character handicapped is a skill is attempted that isn't explicitly choosen. Anyway it's something I want to get away from.

Enter the abilities. The abilities cover the few specialized skills which actually have impact on the chance of success. For example a skill to give extra damage in combat, or a skill to sneak. D&D's class abilities are examples of this approach. I believe they're called 'feats' in AD&D 3rd ed? I don't have AD&D so I can't check (no please don't ask me why I don't use AD&D, I already answered that a million times), not that it matters much anyway.

The first question is probably "why are they needed?".

Well, aside from being skills which are of interest as far as the ability of the character is concerned, it's a way to introduce flavour into the game. They were especially thought to be used to solve the problem of introducing Martial Arts into Yggdrasil (I took my time to get to subject of this posting, didn't I?)

To explain why Yggdrasil should have martial arts, let me tell you a little about what I want from Yggdrasil.

Originally, when I first began to work on a fantasy rpg I didn't have much originality. That was like 10 years ago. At that time I basically made a combat system which was supposed to go with a rather standard skill system. About the only good thing about that system was that it had fun combat effects. I remember the only game testing I did with the combat system... one guy got hit in the back with a war hammer and the system nicely pointed out how his ribs were now broken and his right lung was punctured. Another guy got his arm cut off.

(It's not a system I'd even consider using nowadays, but considering it only took 2 rolls to get the results without complex maths and no cheating using critical table to roll on it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It was still 100% standard fare though. Another fantasy heartbreaker).

Anyway like I said, it wasn't much. In practice I wasn't trying to play that. I GM'ed Rolemaster, DoD (Swedish BRP variant) and my mod:ed version of AD&D 2nd ed.

It was bearable but nothing more. Although I loved the genre I couldn't stand playing it with other GM's. Or ok, I actually played a little AD&D 2nd and also some Rolemaster. But both were painful affairs. At best you felt that you had a miniature which you moved around killing monsters rather than playing an RPG.

Gee I'm getting lengthy. Hope you all don't mind.

Anyway, what got me pushed in the right direction was a comic. One day I was re-reading "New Mutant's Asgard Adventure" (the first one) and I thought: "Heck, this setting is much cooler than the adventures I play in AD&D or any other FRPG, why don't I make a world based on the feeling from this story?"

Despite that revelation I didn't have any real clear direction on where to go. I knew a few details and filled in some of the gaps with ideas of my own. I saw from the start that this baby wasn't gonna fly put into some of the systems I've GM'd because I'd have to cut away a lot of the best stuff to fit it.

I was originally pondering on how to make the combat system work. I wanted some game where you actually didn't have to wear the opponent down. Something were weapons hurt but which still kind of worked for a fantasy setting. I tried modified versions of combat systems from the many rpgs I had, but none really worked for me.

Combat used to be the most boring part of playing frpgs. Basically it would degenerate into "wait for my turn to roll, miss or grind my opponent down a little". There was no dynamic, nothing was really happening and I could never get into it.

Anyway, then by pure accident I played a game of Advanced Heroquest and WHAM! there it was. Quick as hell and you could feel that if your character was strong he MASHED. If he was skilled he dodged and hit. No more the feeling that everyone becomes the same in combat. No longer degererating into a die roller in combat. Combat was quick and over fast, and it seemed so open and customizable.

New hope and new inspiration. Actual work commenced and I produced an almost complete system and started on the world. To sum up what happened, I had no idea what I wanted for the world except that the cool stuff I had thought out should somehow fit in. I was under the delusion that I had to make a detailed world, because that was supposedly the key to success. It was hard and quickly the cool things got outcrowded by the filler material.
I rewrote stuff and rewrote. It wasn't until I understood that the best world has only a loose story and background I solved my problems with the world. Without the shackles of filler material I could expand on it and although little is written down I feel I have a solid feeling of the world now.

The system? Oh I had it all figured out I thought, until I got here, to the Forge. Without getting into detail, I feel the same problem as with the world had happened to the game system. It had accumulated filler material which killed it's original idea.

Besides, in developing the background I had absorbed a lot more ideas than the original Asgard one. A lot was from Japanese manga and video frpgs. There was a refreshing take on fantasy in those stories. They had a flavour I wanted to incorporate somehow, but how?

I had also had had the chance to play some Earthdawn. The huge whiff factor in that game made it most annoying to play, something I definately now knew I wanted to avoid, but there was another thing as well...

Earthdawn has it's own brand of feats. For people not familiar with Earthdawn, the short version is that all characters have are magical adepts which they use to power their skill feats so that they become magical.

Anyway, I was playing a warrior and I thought: hey I have everything I need here to make him a martial artist without a weapon. That would be cool.

Said and done, I pumped points into that. As the game progressed however, I understood it was getting increasingly more stupid to fight barehanded despite the game having "feats" for unarmed combat. In the end I was carrying a big mother of a two handed sword which dealt immense amounts of damage. Probably 3 to 4 times the damage I would deal unarmed. Considering the armour works by being subtracted from the damage given I had no choice. The opponents were naturally wearing armour. If I had been using unarmed combat I'd only hurt them if I was incredibly lucky whereas with the big mother of a sword I was killing people left and right. Since I'm no fan of sitting and rolling dice and missing or doing no damage ad infinitum I resigned to the facts and got the sword.

Anyway, this was certainly something I wanted to avoid in my system. No matter what, you should be able to fight well even barehanded. Basically "style" should not matter.

So anyway, to solve this problem I thought I'd introduce special abilities in form of bare handed martial arts moves. Maybe I'd have to introduce something like "Chi" (something I felt would detract from the fantasy feeling), but I could survive that.

It felt like it could work. I would balance the magical weapons and stuff the warrior could use with chi powers and strikes for the bare handed martial artist.

This initially seemed like a good idea, but in actual execution it started running into problems.

The first problem was "how are special abilities aquired?". It seemed simple, just buy them just as you would to increase stats or other special skills (regardless of how that procedure worked, though levels or other means).

However, I quickly realized this held a problem. If A is a martial artist and needs to use x points to aquire special abilities and increase stats and B is an ordinary type who have the same amount of points to increase stats only (or only have a few special abilities in comparison with the martial artist), then B's gonna rocket in stats quickly. It seemed like hell to balance.

Aside from that obvious problem, other questions arose like: "How does one make it feel like martial arts? How do you get the feeling of the manga and the frpgs"

Actually, the latter is a more important question so let's look at it.

First of all, it's a little imprecise. The martial arts in manga goes from being little different from super powers, to realistic fighting techniques. Just look at fighting games and how different they can be in terms of power. Compare Street Fighter and Tekken or Virtual Fighter for example.

Obviously there has to be a level of realism set (and for my game I felt that at approximately Samurai Shodown level sans special abilities would be pretty good) first.

That decided on, how do we make it martial arts. If we look at old games, we can point to Champions where you compose your art from different moves, or games like Shadowrun where you have one grappling martial art and one kickboxing martial art and that's about it. Neither seem very appropriate to evoke the feeling of manga.

More interesting is to look at indie-rpgs. I remember Trash because it was one of the first "video fighting game rpgs" I looked at. Its approach is one of the "create your martial arts"-approach and as such is actually only a detailed variant of Champion's system.

Recently two rpgs dealing with the manga martial arts theme surfaced here on the Forge. One was "video fighting game"-inspired and the other "video frpg"-inspired. The former being Last Stand and the latter Slayer Of Dragon.

Both games provide ready-made special moves and are in this respect rather more easily accesible to novice players. Last Stand combines two descriptors to form a unique martial art whereas Slayer Of Dragon uses tables of pre-made moves which the player can choose from, the more skilled in the particular category of moves, the more to moves the character will be able to use.

The approach used in Last Stand is interesting because of it actually generating unique styles. Unfortunately, the styles seem more applicable in a fighting game than a fantasy rpg. If we look at video frpgs, each character has a completely distinct style of fighting. Last Stand naturally only uses unarmed combat, and extending that to weapon combat seems like a difficult task however.

How does one generate distinct enough techniques while keeping the the balance? And what about characters who don't have martial arts as their primary power. Possibly a similar approach could be used for them, making a character creating technique reminicient of multi-classing, but at the same time very different. Issues to raise are about balance and such matters. Otherwise this is an interesting venue to search though. Imagine composing your fantasy character by two or three keywords to create a unique look and fighting style as well as skill profile. It doesn't sound too bad. They question is if it's actually possible to make somethig like that balance. Last Stand is so much more limited in scope. As far as balance is considered, a fantasy rpg is quite a different beast.

Over to Slayer of Dragon instead.

Immediately when looking at the rules for the game I felt "hey this has the feeling I want to evoke!". When it comes to getting the feeling of manga style frpgs, the game nails it down very well. It's not all that surprising since it seems deliberately patterned after classics like Suikoden and Final Fantasy.

However, with that also comes a weakness. Not a weakness for the game itself, but weakness if it is to be lifted out and used in other systems. The moves are all nice and evocatively named, this is one of the game's strengths, but also a weakness. Because ultimately these lists also give it the feeling of a "one adventure" game.

Let me try to make myself a little more clear. Look at Suikoden I and Suikoden II or compare two of different Final Fantasy games.

First of all moves are not the same, the magic is also different.

Why? Because once you got through a game you'd seen all the new cool moves. And those special moves where also linked to certain characters and part of their special characteristics.

So basically I feel that player Slayer of Dragon will be like playing Suikoden I over and over again. There won't be a chance to play Suikoden II because the legacy of the moves. The moves are the same.

Now, for Slayer of Dragon this isn't a problem. The game is larger than life, manga frpg. It fits perfectly well.

However, for me who actually flirting with "realistic"* fantasy, that's a problem. A new campaign needs to feel like a NEW campaign in every sense. There shouldn't be any need to overlook that some things are constant which in real life would be different.

(* with realistic, I only mean that it's pretending to make a consistent portrayal of the game world. In playing Suikoden for example we can excuse inconsistencies in power level of characters and monsters, the infinite number of monsters in the wilderness and so on, because we know this is brought on by the medium, much like there are certain typical ways of showing key abilities and such in movies. What I mean is that beyond those inconsistencies found in paper rpgs I do not wish to add things which are legacies of the inspirational stories/games I'm using)

Basically, I feel the move lists, the great strength of the game is ironically what keeps me from using a similar approach.

Aside from the discussion of actual techniques, there is also the matter of combat system.

As far as I am concerned, I have no room for detailed combat resolution. Detailed combat usually requires combat tactical decisions. Although this can be enjoyable (and in Last Stand it's naturally essential as it's based on fighting game), it's slows down combat and many times punishes players who aren't willing to get into the guts of the combat system.

As I'm not seeing the combat as the primary focus of the game (defeating monsters and exploring the mysteries of the land is), I don't feel like forcing that onto players who don't want it.
(Defeating monsters does not necessarily mean to use the combat system and roll enough to kill it)

I wanted something flexible and graphic, and I think I have it in the current draft. However it's good for general combat, but what about martial arts?

One of the key points of AHQ (and thus Ygg too) is that it uses a single roll against the static defense of the opponent to check if you hit. Because of that I've consistently done away with any actions that could work like "block" or "parry". Introducing such things would take away one of the great things about the system.

Last Stand naturally uses "blocks" and "parries". Unlike Ygg it tracks individual attacks. Ygg only defines what happened after the dice has been rolled and not before. Slayer Of Dragon on the other hand, while using a AHQ type of resisted roll still has blocks as such as special moves. This is not surprising considering this usage is common in video frpgs.

Already here we're seeing how Ygg is diverging and probably has a hard time solving things the same way as these two games.

Back to my original plans for Ygg, it was to create abilities like "Piercing Strike" (chi move which decreased the armor rating rolled against) and "Amplify Damage" (here if you got hit and got damage, the actual damage was doubled because this chi move would injure the internal organs so that it outwardly looked a lot less dangerous that it actually was) and so on. Each of these were more like abilities to do damage rather than special moves in themselves. The actual moves had to be thought out by the player.

This fitted pretty nicely with how Ygg worked in the beginning.

But Slayer Of Dragon got me thinking. It immediately evoked the feeling I wanted. Meteor Strike... hmm I could see that. Just like I was reluctant to give up my magic to a freer system because I thought the average player wouldn't be able to come up with cool enough spells, the same thing could be said of the combat system. Meteor Strike.. cool name, you could imagine the effect, but would a player come up with something like that playing Ygg? I don't think so. Before reading Slayer of Dragon I wouldn't have thought of describing my move like that no matter how free it was. Despite me playing lots of video frpgs. In the end we're not used to that freedom, just like we're not used to have demonic magic like the one I intend for Ygg.

In the end what we'll end up with if we don't know better is something a whole lot less than it could be.

This is something that troubles me a lot more than the balance issues I stated in the beginning of this text.

I think in the ideal case each character would have their own unique martial arts (and magical arts). Ygg's combat not being technique based, special techniques could be declared after the dice is rolled.

"Oh I rolled 10, that's good enough to let me do my signature technique, the Infernal Blood Sword Reaper! Take this!"

That would seem nice enough, granted that there was a nice way to make unique techniques. The obvious solution would be to let the players themselves create these moves, but I fear that would work against one of my primary design goals, which is keeping character creation lightweight and not requiring previous knowledge of the game. (And obviously if players create their own moves they might not have inspiration to make good one's as mentioned before).

An idea I'm toying with, but which might be hell to carry out in practice, would be to do a little like the Last Stand derived idea for character creation mentioned.

Basically you'd roll or select a few keywords from a couple of lists. Each keyword would be one effect. The more keywords the harder the technique to perform and learn.

So our "Infernal Blood Sword Reaper" might consist of "Infernal" "Blood" "Sword" and "Reaper" each of these having it's distinct addition to the effect of the move. Actually you could have a requirement that the basic technique begins with two keywords and more powerful techniques are built up by adding more words.(Incidentally this would be consistent with video game technique names)

So before learning "Infernal Blood Sword Reaper" you learned "Sword Reaper" and then "Blood Sword Reaper" before you learned the "ultimate" :) technique of "Infernal Blood Sword Reaper".

An advantage of such a scheme would be that a player could vary the power of his/her character to avoid revealing the true power. And the same could be done with the GM's NPCs for some really neat story twists.

Besides the issue of whether it's practical or not, the question if the focus in this way shifts too much towards martial arts is also a valid one. Of course, the naming scheme could also be used for other professions so that they are about stealth and other abilities but it is not as straightforward.

Ok, that was pretty much what I've been thinking about. This stuff only took me like 3 hours to write.

Now, why the heck do I mail this? Well I hope those of you who have worked with implementing martial arts in games could share your design philosophies and how you came to choose the particular mechanics you did. It would also be interesting to know in what directions you think those mechanics could be explanded and altered.

1. I really like the idea of success points (or whatever) buying the ability to "do techniques." I'd suggest a rule to bank points (I scored 5, I'm using 4 and banking 1) to build up for a coup de grace later in the combat.

2. I'm going to ... suggest a long list of powers broken into gropus: elemental or animal or tiger/dragon or external/internal or hard/soft or all of the above. If you can pull this off, a shopping list ... maybe even a "chinese menu" with Styles that are Two from Column A and one from Column B.

Long lists of powers aren't for everyone and do indeed make it heavier--but combining reaper, blood, foot, and water in a way that isn't just a more damaging kick might be tough enough to get a handle on.

3. Try to keep the posts shorter--I wound up skimming through part of it--and it was really interesting.

-Marco
[Also: although it isn't up right now--should be up this weekend--JAGS has a Chi Martial Arts book with dozens of special moves. We also created 8 distinct martial arts and really thought about how each would approach tweaks to the combat system. We think our JAGS Chi Book is possibly balanced enough to be played as a war-game (build two warriors and fight--see who wins). We're not sure about this, but we ran 'the tournament' and it was cool. Check it out. ]

Marco wrote: 1. I really like the idea of success points (or whatever) buying the ability to "do techniques." I'd suggest a rule to bank points (I scored 5, I'm using 4 and banking 1) to build up for a coup de grace later in the combat.

Marco wrote: 2. I'm going to ... suggest a long list of powers broken into gropus: elemental or animal or tiger/dragon or external/internal or hard/soft or all of the above. If you can pull this off, a shopping list ... maybe even a "chinese menu" with Styles that are Two from Column A and one from Column B.

Marco wrote: Long lists of powers aren't for everyone and do indeed make it heavier--but combining reaper, blood, foot, and water in a way that isn't just a more damaging kick might be tough enough to get a handle on.

Marco wrote: 3. Try to keep the posts shorter--I wound up skimming through part of it--and it was really interesting.

Your initial post is a little unfocused. Perhaps you could restate your question and give us a little background on the existing setting/system so we have an idea what might fit?

If you like the idea of combining different concepts, the characters could have one or more styles that provide modifiers to the basic moves in the game. Then, when they succeed by a certain amount, they can choose to upgrade the basic moves to something special, based on their style. This would be similar to Final Stand, except the special moves are the result of good rolls, not prior choice. You would just have to make styles and moves that fit your game.

Something that I definitely do not like are laundry lists of moves that have no rhyme or reason. I will not name names, but many games with martial-arts systems feel disjointed and flavorless. If you are serious about incorporating martial arts in Ygg, I would recommend making the rules follow a theme for maximum flavor.

/Grant

Grant wrote: Your initial post is a little unfocused. Perhaps you could restate your question and give us a little background on the existing setting/system so we have an idea what might fit?

Grant wrote: Something that I definitely do not like are laundry lists of moves that have no rhyme or reason. I will not name names, but many games with martial-arts systems feel disjointed and flavorless. If you are serious about incorporating martial arts in Ygg, I would recommend making the rules follow a theme for maximum flavor.

By introducing unarmed attacks, you will be giving the game a manga feeling. Real warriors used real weapons up until Europe became civilized and swords were largely banned.

I recommend writing it up and seeing if it works. For inspiration, I would recommend looking at actual kennings from the sagas.

/Grant

You're sure it's gonna feel overtly manga if the characters can attack monsters hand to hand and do damage? After all AD&D 1st ed had a monk class who did pretty much the same, am I not right?

Wow, long post. Interesting though

I think the simplest way to get what you seem to be getting
at would be to do two things.
1)Seperate combat utility from style, if weapons are better, people will use weapons. I would make everyone (assuming skills, stats are equal) be equally effective in combat, no matter what style they use. Basicly fists and broadswords are all equivilent. (point:Now fists have an advantage, your always armed and you can bring them anywhere)
Maybe make up some rule where you can conduct a limited amount of chi through your hands or a weapon. It's harder with larger weapons though, so as the base damage of the weapon goes up, the chi goes down and the end result is the same. This makes weapons a style choice rather than a utility one.

A way to seperate styles would be to have magic weapons that boost combat effectivness, which WOULD depend on your style. Thus a swordsman gets a magic sword, while a martial artist may get bracers that do the exact same thing mechanically.

As for getting players to make up cool moves, the best way would be to have a large selection of sample charachters. This gives them ideas, and show the way your thinking. Thus, they might think of things like 'meteor strike' ect. (Not sure if you want that one. I remember playing Diablo II and wondering exactly how I was calling meteors when 5 levels underground...)

A problem with relating margin to the 'koolness' of the move and not having banking is that when fighting skilled opponents, such as an end villian or difficult monster, ect, you won't be able to do kool moves, despite this is when they are needed and would look good.

damion wrote:
1)Seperate combat utility from style, if weapons are better, people will use weapons. I would make everyone (assuming skills, stats are equal) be equally effective in combat, no matter what style they use.

damion wrote: Maybe make up some rule where you can conduct a limited amount of chi through your hands or a weapon. It's harder with larger weapons though, so as the base damage of the weapon goes up, the chi goes down and the end result is the same.

As for getting players to make up cool moves, the best way would be to have a large selection of sample charachters. This gives them ideas, and show the way your thinking.

A problem with relating margin to the 'koolness' of the move and not having banking is that when fighting skilled opponents, such as an end villian or difficult monster, ect, you won't be able to do kool moves, despite this is when they are needed and would look good.

Keep the key words idea. I know you rejected something like it (the Chinese menu idea), but how about having a list of words in one column and a list of advantages or effects in the other? Then players just pair things up, keeping chragen fast.

I like the "Inspired Attack" idea. Try and develop that more, it really captures the flavor of some of the fighting animes like...well, Dragon Ball Z stands out in my mind with Saiyan Rage and all that. Of course, you don't want anywhere near DBZ power levels in your game, but the idea is still cool, IMO.

It was said that banking points is a meta mechanic. Not so. My Tai Chi sipu Susanna does this when she pushes hands (Tai Chi equivalent of sparring.) She'll let you apparently advance to a better position, when in actuality, she is subtly redirecting your force so your are more and more off balance or in an otherwise vulnerable position. Then, once you reach a certain point, she counterattacks with a push and send you flying.

Palaskar

Palaskar wrote: Keep the key words idea. I know you rejected something like it (the Chinese menu idea), but how about having a list of words in one column and a list of advantages or effects in the other? Then players just pair things up, keeping chragen fast.

I like the "Inspired Attack" idea. Try and develop that more, it really captures the flavor of some of the fighting animes like...well, Dragon Ball Z stands out in my mind with Saiyan Rage and all that.

It was said that banking points is a meta mechanic. Not so. My Tai Chi sipu Susanna does this when she pushes hands (Tai Chi equivalent of sparring.)

Quote:
I like the "Inspired Attack" idea. Try and develop that more, it really captures the flavor of some of the fighting animes like...well, Dragon Ball Z stands out in my mind with Saiyan Rage and all that.

--I have to beware evoking total anime feeling though. I want my game to be played as a solid alternative to playing AD&D. If I make it too anime I'll have it too niche'd as a manga style game.

It doesn't feel anime to me; rather, it's cinematic to my mind, like some of the fighting animes are cinematic, rather than being anime, like some cinema is. Does that make sense? After all, Pendragon's Passions are really just another flavor of Inspired Attack.

Quote:
It was said that banking points is a meta mechanic. Not so. My Tai Chi sipu Susanna does this when she pushes hands (Tai Chi equivalent of sparring.)

--Point taken. But that banking of point has to be continous, I kind of have to keep saving or use them. If my opponent hits me in between I lose it. So although as you say it could simulate some things, maybe it's not necessary with the "Inspired Attack" idea?

Well, to me they simulate two different things. To me, "banking points" means developing an advantage over an opponent. The "Inspired Attack" is like Pendragon's Passions to me -- you get pushed over the edge, and suddenly you're all kick-ass and take names. Again, this is -cinematic- and not specifically anime (though it does appear in anime a lot.)

Palaskar

I guess I don't think the banking points are quite needed. You should see the mess I'm in already with Riskbreakers, Weird and the Inspirations. :)

Thanks for encouraging me to use the moves, I put them into the game and we'll see where that takes things.