[TheOneRonin]

Originally Posted by Peter V. Dell'Orto

Mostly because the specific styles I looked at to inform the writeup of Escrima focused mostly on sticks and knives. Had I had room (and more pages, and more research!) I'd have included FMA unarmed styles, too.

Truth. You only have so much room in a book, and you need to make sure you represent the most popular stuff out there. Plus, do you really have the time and space to represent 15 different styles that all get the same techniques and perks?

In my experience, the Pekiti and Balintawak were very heavily stick and knife focused. The Modern Arnis balances weapon and empty hand components more equally, and we incorporate a lot of standing grapples/grabs, hence the inclusion of Judo in required skills.

Almost no arts lack some kind of cinematic stories - are you sure there are no stories of people doing amazing knockout strikes, casual crippling strikes, shrugging off strikes, etc.? I'd be truly surprised. Even modern sport styles get that kind of exaggeration attached to them.

Oh, there are. I was building this style primarily for the games my group and I run, which are fairly realistic and non-cinematic. But it does make sense to round out the style with all relevant components. Let me think on it and I'll try to come up with some fitting ones.

Also, it seems low on Knife techniques. If knife is taught equally with the other parts of the style, it seems odd that there are no particular techniques ascribed to its use. Not even slicing at the arms, which seems odd for a FMA style.

Absolutely! I had a bunch of knife techniques in my notes, but it looks like they didn't completely copy over. I'll update the main post with the Knife stuff here shortly.

Also, it's Arm or Wrist Lock, not Arm/Hand Lock. Finally, you need to describe its tactics in GURPS terms, so a non-martial artist can know what kind of maneuvers to take to play a suntukan stylist in a distinctive but accurate way.

Gotcha. Forgot we houseruled Arm and Wrist lock into a single technique. And I'll put up the GURPS tactics sometime today when I have some more time.

Thanks a ton for the feedback, Peter. I really appreciate getting your take on it, especially since you wrote much of the Martial Arts book.