Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Martial Arts in the Project Jade Serenity Supers/Technothriller Campaign

Icelander · 02-01-2017, 06:28 PM

This thread is for discussion and my attempts to glean free research assistance related to martial arts for various characters in our Supers/technothriller campaign, Project Jade Serenity.

The initial questions were related to the sayagi (Grand Master) who taught my character Kachin Bando. SGM Than Yamaguchi was the senior NCO at Project Jade Serenity. Other questions I've had relate to the combatives training of prospective villain CW2 Raul Vargas. The newest questions are about martial arts for a HSI agent who was born in San Jose, CA in 1982 and happens to be an amateur martial artist and a SEAL born in Lubbock, TX, 1989, ditto.

SGM Than Yamaguchi

This relates to background for my player character in Project Jade Serenity. The game is set in the current day and character, Mackenzie Chase Taylor (b. 1978; Luverne, Alabama), is a former ODA 7216 operator who spent most of his career in A Co/2 Bn/7th SFG(A) and whose military service lasted from 1997-2011 (until his dishonourable discharge amd incarceration in Fort Leavenworth).

For reasons that should be obvious, Chase Taylor is an avid martial artist as well as a tactical shooter, and in addition to some basic military hand-to-hand training, I want him to be a dedicated student of Kachin Bando in specific and Burmese thaing in general. In order to do that, I'm planning to flesh out the backstory of a senior Green Beret NCO who acted as SGT Taylor's mentor and Kachin Bando saya from ca 1999 onwards.

The reason I'm adamant that my PC has to have had a mentor who taught him the comparatively rare Kachin Bando, rather than just stating he trained in the more common style of ABA Bando, has to do with mechanically representing the character's intended fighting style. ABA Bando, while a lot more widespread in the US than Kachin Bando, unfortunately uses Judo as the primary grappling skill.

This makes ABA Bando, as far as GURPS rules go, very unsuitable for the fighting tactics I plan on for the character, i.e. aggressive, brutal, close-in hurting; heavily featuring trapping and locking, follow-up strikes on trapped or locked limbs, hammer fists, elbow strikes and knee strikes from the clinch. No circling for position, probing attacks or feinting, just hard force-on-force strikes into the line of attacks with Aggressive Parry and Jam and following that up with full-power grappling and striking combinations.

This is the domain of styles with the primary skills of Karate and Wrestling, especially with the rules from GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling in effect. Wing Chun, Krav Maga and, yes, Kachin Bando. The description of ABA Bando in GURPS Martial Arts is in line with what I want, but the mechanical representation I get if I take the style as-is would be subpar.

Mechnically, the Judo skill is good for mobile stylists who use Retreat, Sideslip and Slip heavily (incompatible with Aggressive Parry), seek to Evade in preference to engaging at trapping and locking distance and plan to use Judo Throw or Sweep to put opponents on the ground without following them down for a fight-finishing lock or some ground-and-pound.

Wrestling is clearly superior to Judo when it comes to grappling for damage or to aid striking. As an example, spending 16 points on Wrestling gives Trained ST +30% for DX+4 and the Fast Progression on all grappling and lock techniques. Spending the same 16 points on Judo gives Trained ST +0% for DX+3 and the Slow Progression.

Yes, Judo has a lot of other benefits, but the point is, someone who plans to fight using Aggressive Parry and Jam as his Active Defences, who already has Karate for defence against weapons, rarely Evades and would rather Arm Lock + Throw from Lock than use All-Out (Defence) + Judo Throw is not really someone who gets a lot of use out of the mechanical effects of Judo skill. Therefore, ABA Bando is not really suitable for the character as written.* Kachin Bando, however, is mechanically a perfect fit for the fighting style I envision.

As background to explain as exotic a fighting style as Kachin Bando for a prosaic 18B Weapon Sergeant from Alabama, I decided to write into his backstory a senior NCO mentor who had trained in Bando from childhood and was a Bando saya.

I imagined that the NCO mentor was the child of a female Burmese immigrant, ideally Kachin/Jingpaw, who had been brought back by a US serviceman as a war bride from CBI in WWII. The marriage brought in-laws and the close family of the bride managed to emigrate to the US as well, perhaps with assistance from a friendly general officer.

When checking how plausible such a background really was, I found a US instructor in Kachin Bando, Phil Dunlap, who claims to have learned the style from his grandfather, who studied Kachin Bando in Burma during WWII. I furthermore found that our own Peter V. Dell'Orto knows Phil Dunlap and has trained with him. I therefore have some questions of the forumites and I especially hope that Peter will give me the benefit of his personal experience of Burmese thaing and even specifically of studying under a US-born saya whose grandfather from Burma taught him exotic Kachin Bando.

1) Where in the USA should the American saya be raised? That is, what are good locations to assume that a family of Burmese emigrants to the USA would move after WWII?

2) If the Burmese grandfather in question was a Kachin Ranger in his late 40s who emigrates to seek a new life near his young daughter and her American husband, what kind of work might he find in the US?

3) Assuming no extraordinary resources or connections for the returning American serviceman or his Burmese-American in-laws in the post-war years, I am assuming that even if the grandfather was a gifted and dedicated martial artist, making a living from teaching an exotic martial art that isn't Japanese to Mad Men era Americans would be extremely improbable. Am I too pessimistic? Were 50s Americans perhaps less parochial than I assume (and/or the modern popularity of a wide range of exotic martial arts as hobbies began earlier than I thought)?

4) From both a roleplaying and mechanical standpoint, how would Kachin Bando combine with military hand-to-hand / combatives taught in the Special Forces? What military-sanctioned techniques, tactics and maneuver selection would a Kachin Bando stylist be likely to concur with and what aspects of US Army combatives training would a Kachin Bando stylist denigrate or disagree with?

4a) The Military HTH styles that the NCO saya would have been exposed to, studied and taught would primarily be the US Army Combatives set forth in the FM 21-150 (1992) and the LINE system as taught in SFQC between 1998-2007. He'd also have been familiar with many students of Matt Larsen's hand-to-hand methods from the 75th Ranger Regiment (the methods which eventually formed the basis for the US Army's MACP) and read Larsen's 2002 version of FM 3-25.150 (Combatives) with care. Maybe he even had a friendly sparring match or two with Larsen sometime in the years between 1989-2001, if and when the 7th SFG and the 1 Bn or 2 Bn/75th Ranger Regiment were stationed in close proximity, or maybe while assigned to training duties at John F. Kennedy SWCS or while attending a course at Ft. Benning.
When my hypothetical Green Beret saya gets the chance to be the NCOIC of combatives training for an intake of recruits going through SFQC, which of these military HTH styles will he teach and how will they be modified through his Kachin Bando experience, philosophy and preferences?

4b) What about weapon skills? What melee weapon skills best suit a Kachin Bando stylist who learns the style from a WII veteran of guerilla fighting in the Burmese hills? Are batons emphasised? Knives, kukris or machetes? Other weapons?

4c) Would a Kachin Bando stylist favour a saber-grip or a reversed grip when fighting an armed opponent in earnest with a knife? What about for sentry removal?

4d) Does traditional Kachin Bando teach any armed grappling techniques? As a consequence of how skills are broken up in GURPS, anyone who has a decent melee weapon skill and Wrestling (Arm Lock) can be quite good at using his weapon to get someone in an Arm Lock. Would doing this suit a Kachin Bando stylist?

5) Does anyone have any suggestions for bits of wisdom my character could have learnt from his saya? Imagine a grizzled training NCO whose philosophy on living, fighting and dying is shaped by his Burmese Jingpaw grandfather, complete with traditional Kachin Bando teachings and animist forms, but whose profession has trained him to be brutally pragmatic about the business of violence. What kind of lessons did he impart about the modern battlefield and developing a warrior ethos with strong foundations in personal and familial identity, but still flexible enough to adapt to tactical realities?

*Note that he has 1 point in Judo from military HTH training and already plans to have skill 12 in Savoir-Faire (Dojo). He could therefore theoretically take ABA Bando and just spend all his points on Karate and the optional skill of Wrestling. I just don't want to have the character's backstory state that he is a serious grappler and devoted student of a given fighting style, but then spend the points on everything but the primary grappling skill of my favoured style.

02-01-2017, 06:28 PM	#1
Icelander Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Iceland*	Martial Arts in the Project Jade Serenity Supers/Technothriller Campaign This thread is for discussion and my attempts to glean free research assistance related to martial arts for various characters in our Supers/technothriller campaign, Project Jade Serenity. The initial questions were related to the sayagi (Grand Master) who taught my character Kachin Bando. SGM Than Yamaguchi was the senior NCO at Project Jade Serenity. Other questions I've had relate to the combatives training of prospective villain CW2 Raul Vargas. The newest questions are about martial arts for a HSI agent who was born in San Jose, CA in 1982 and happens to be an amateur martial artist and a SEAL born in Lubbock, TX, 1989, ditto. SGM Than Yamaguchi This relates to background for my player character in Project Jade Serenity. The game is set in the current day and character, Mackenzie Chase Taylor (b. 1978; Luverne, Alabama), is a former ODA 7216 operator who spent most of his career in A Co/2 Bn/7th SFG(A) and whose military service lasted from 1997-2011 (until his dishonourable discharge amd incarceration in Fort Leavenworth). For reasons that should be obvious, Chase Taylor is an avid martial artist as well as a tactical shooter, and in addition to some basic military hand-to-hand training, I want him to be a dedicated student of Kachin Bando in specific and Burmese thaing in general. In order to do that, I'm planning to flesh out the backstory of a senior Green Beret NCO who acted as SGT Taylor's mentor and Kachin Bando saya from ca 1999 onwards. The reason I'm adamant that my PC has to have had a mentor who taught him the comparatively rare Kachin Bando, rather than just stating he trained in the more common style of ABA Bando, has to do with mechanically representing the character's intended fighting style. ABA Bando, while a lot more widespread in the US than Kachin Bando, unfortunately uses Judo as the primary grappling skill. This makes ABA Bando, as far as GURPS rules go, very unsuitable for the fighting tactics I plan on for the character, i.e. aggressive, brutal, close-in hurting; heavily featuring trapping and locking, follow-up strikes on trapped or locked limbs, hammer fists, elbow strikes and knee strikes from the clinch. No circling for position, probing attacks or feinting, just hard force-on-force strikes into the line of attacks with Aggressive Parry and Jam and following that up with full-power grappling and striking combinations. This is the domain of styles with the primary skills of Karate and Wrestling, especially with the rules from GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling in effect. Wing Chun, Krav Maga and, yes, Kachin Bando. The description of ABA Bando in GURPS Martial Arts is in line with what I want, but the mechanical representation I get if I take the style as-is would be subpar. Mechnically, the Judo skill is good for mobile stylists who use Retreat, Sideslip and Slip heavily (incompatible with Aggressive Parry), seek to Evade in preference to engaging at trapping and locking distance and plan to use Judo Throw or Sweep to put opponents on the ground without following them down for a fight-finishing lock or some ground-and-pound. Wrestling is clearly superior to Judo when it comes to grappling for damage or to aid striking. As an example, spending 16 points on Wrestling gives Trained ST +30% for DX+4 and the Fast Progression on all grappling and lock techniques. Spending the same 16 points on Judo gives Trained ST +0% for DX+3 and the Slow Progression. Yes, Judo has a lot of other benefits, but the point is, someone who plans to fight using Aggressive Parry and Jam as his Active Defences, who already has Karate for defence against weapons, rarely Evades and would rather Arm Lock + Throw from Lock than use All-Out (Defence) + Judo Throw is not really someone who gets a lot of use out of the mechanical effects of Judo skill. Therefore, ABA Bando is not really suitable for the character as written.* Kachin Bando, however, is mechanically a perfect fit for the fighting style I envision. As background to explain as exotic a fighting style as Kachin Bando for a prosaic 18B Weapon Sergeant from Alabama, I decided to write into his backstory a senior NCO mentor who had trained in Bando from childhood and was a Bando saya. I imagined that the NCO mentor was the child of a female Burmese immigrant, ideally Kachin/Jingpaw, who had been brought back by a US serviceman as a war bride from CBI in WWII. The marriage brought in-laws and the close family of the bride managed to emigrate to the US as well, perhaps with assistance from a friendly general officer. When checking how plausible such a background really was, I found a US instructor in Kachin Bando, Phil Dunlap, who claims to have learned the style from his grandfather, who studied Kachin Bando in Burma during WWII. I furthermore found that our own Peter V. Dell'Orto knows Phil Dunlap and has trained with him. I therefore have some questions of the forumites and I especially hope that Peter will give me the benefit of his personal experience of Burmese thaing and even specifically of studying under a US-born saya whose grandfather from Burma taught him exotic Kachin Bando. 1) Where in the USA should the American saya be raised? That is, what are good locations to assume that a family of Burmese emigrants to the USA would move after WWII? 2) If the Burmese grandfather in question was a Kachin Ranger in his late 40s who emigrates to seek a new life near his young daughter and her American husband, what kind of work might he find in the US? 3) Assuming no extraordinary resources or connections for the returning American serviceman or his Burmese-American in-laws in the post-war years, I am assuming that even if the grandfather was a gifted and dedicated martial artist, making a living from teaching an exotic martial art that isn't Japanese to Mad Men era Americans would be extremely improbable. Am I too pessimistic? Were 50s Americans perhaps less parochial than I assume (and/or the modern popularity of a wide range of exotic martial arts as hobbies began earlier than I thought)? 4) From both a roleplaying and mechanical standpoint, how would Kachin Bando combine with military hand-to-hand / combatives taught in the Special Forces? What military-sanctioned techniques, tactics and maneuver selection would a Kachin Bando stylist be likely to concur with and what aspects of US Army combatives training would a Kachin Bando stylist denigrate or disagree with? 4a) The Military HTH styles that the NCO saya would have been exposed to, studied and taught would primarily be the US Army Combatives set forth in the FM 21-150 (1992) and the LINE system as taught in SFQC between 1998-2007. He'd also have been familiar with many students of Matt Larsen's hand-to-hand methods from the 75th Ranger Regiment (the methods which eventually formed the basis for the US Army's MACP) and read Larsen's 2002 version of FM 3-25.150 (Combatives) with care. Maybe he even had a friendly sparring match or two with Larsen sometime in the years between 1989-2001, if and when the 7th SFG and the 1 Bn or 2 Bn/75th Ranger Regiment were stationed in close proximity, or maybe while assigned to training duties at John F. Kennedy SWCS or while attending a course at Ft. Benning. When my hypothetical Green Beret saya gets the chance to be the NCOIC of combatives training for an intake of recruits going through SFQC, which of these military HTH styles will he teach and how will they be modified through his Kachin Bando experience, philosophy and preferences? 4b) What about weapon skills? What melee weapon skills best suit a Kachin Bando stylist who learns the style from a WII veteran of guerilla fighting in the Burmese hills? Are batons emphasised? Knives, kukris or machetes? Other weapons? 4c) Would a Kachin Bando stylist favour a saber-grip or a reversed grip when fighting an armed opponent in earnest with a knife? What about for sentry removal? 4d) Does traditional Kachin Bando teach any armed grappling techniques? As a consequence of how skills are broken up in GURPS, anyone who has a decent melee weapon skill and Wrestling (Arm Lock) can be quite good at using his weapon to get someone in an Arm Lock. Would doing this suit a Kachin Bando stylist? 5) Does anyone have any suggestions for bits of wisdom my character could have learnt from his saya? Imagine a grizzled training NCO whose philosophy on living, fighting and dying is shaped by his Burmese Jingpaw grandfather, complete with traditional Kachin Bando teachings and animist forms, but whose profession has trained him to be brutally pragmatic about the business of violence. What kind of lessons did he impart about the modern battlefield and developing a warrior ethos with strong foundations in personal and familial identity, but still flexible enough to adapt to tactical realities? Note that he has 1 point in Judo from military HTH training and already plans to have skill 12 in Savoir-Faire (Dojo). He could therefore theoretically take ABA Bando and just spend all his points on Karate and the optional* skill of Wrestling. I just don't want to have the character's backstory state that he is a serious grappler and devoted student of a given fighting style, but then spend the points on everything but the primary grappling skill of my favoured style. __________________ Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 03-28-2017 at 04:27 AM.