Brawling

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

I expect the people defending my country to fight just as dirty as they have to, BEFORE the other guy gets there, so no problem on this side. But I don't imagine they were teaching you Brawling - I think it was real UC.

I don't know -- one of the tricks we learned was to put a rock in a boot sock as an improvised cosh. ("Use a clean sock, though, because if the sentry smells you coming, there he is with his AK-47, and there you are with your dirty sock!") Basically, I think they taught us "dirty fighting" -- eye gouges, finger breaks, expedient weapons, garottes, some knife fighting, etc.

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

I think the mismatch of expectations is that I am thinking of Brawling as NOT really a serious combat skill - just a dominance game, in a world which is itself a game. If you really want to hurt somebody, bring a weapon. (Heinlein, paraphrased: "Force is the last refuge of the incompetent. The competent will use force sooner.")

That makes a whole lot of sense, and in that respect, I will (gracefully, I hope) concede you both the point and the talent... ;-)

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Furniture fighting: Is any of that real? For instance, while you oomph a chair over your head, aren't you begging to get kicked anywhere from the waist down?

I've seen chairs thrown during brawls, but I don't believe I've ever seen anyone try to actually HIT someone with a chair, unless maybe he could sneak up behind the victim in all the confusion. Broken bottles and the like, those I've seen. All those cinematic barroom brawls in the Westerns were just that -- cinematic. Furniture doesn't really work like that (if it broke that easily, you wouldn't be able to sit in it on the first place).

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

Furniture fighting: Is any of that real? For instance, while you oomph a chair over your head, aren't you begging to get kicked anywhere from the waist down?

What JLV wrote: most furniture doesn't readily break apart as seen on TV.

Actually hitting someone with a solid wieldable chair would probably be in that "I'm trying to kill you" category that fortunately rarely happens outside actual lethal combat. It's like in GURPS improvised weapons - a wooden chair might do as much damage as a club, but it's also not designed as a weapon, is big and heavy and so is probably a big DX penalty and not efficient and two-handed etc, so yeah, come up from behind or only chair-attack someone incompetent, in a bad position, and/or drunk.

(Drunk "combat" is something else. A friend and I were just walking at night when we saw a drunk guy get chased out of bar into the street by an also-tipsy mob of angry patrons, and he found a giant empty 6-inch wide flexy plastic pipe in the back of a pickup truck and proceeded to wield it as a giant zero-damage flail with a reach of 3 or 4 yards, and got the whole mob to flee from his mighty street-sweeping swings that hit nothing... definitely that pre-fist-fight level of violence, though.)

[JLV]

Now that's just funny right there; I don't care who you are! ;-)

But also very much on point -- and it agrees with what Steve said elsewhere about how he views the "Brawling" talent.

[ak_aramis]

The only barfight I've been involved was over right quick. No blows struck, and only one grab.

Was a no booze strip club. My friends and I were in kilts, with swords. "barkeep"/owner told us to keep them sheathed.
Some Idiot grabbed a dancer. When she screamed, we stood up, drew steel, and told him to let her go. He wet himself, and fled.
The owner told us to show up armed any time we want, provided we are willing to repeat if needed. Never happened again while we were there...
(one of the guys was dating one of the dancers. Which is why we went there. we went after color guard practice for the pipe and drum band.)

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

You've obviously never hit someone with a chair Steve. If you had, you'd know you do it from behind! It's highly effective by the way.

In the recent Australia-Philippines basketball match a chair was used as a thrown weapon. Range was good but it didn't seem to do much damage.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha

It's true in any training to do violence, the default human condition is not to kill/maim at the first provocation

I understand this is the main reason the army still trains with bayonets: it's a good way to get soldiers to let go of this tendency.

someone who is willing and able to immediately break your finger if you poke him in the chest wins that Brawl before you even knew you were in a fight.

This is a tactics vs strategy conflict. Tactically you want to escalate immediately. But one of your strategic objective is not being arrested for aggravated assault. Conflicts like this are part of what makes role-playing fun so don't try to write them out: whatever system you have should result in players fretting over whether they made the right decisions about escalation.

[DouglasCole]

My overall opinion is that mostly humans break the same way. We're pretty good grapplers and middling punchers, and have a regrettable tendency to fall down when kicking due to that "only two legs" problem.

For a game like TFT, I would assume that regardless of style, folks learn the basics. Blend striking with grappling when you can, keep your situational awareness, and be aware of what "win" means.

A lot of Fiori looks an awful lot like Aikido in many respects. Bruce Lee though boxing was the bee's knees, in terms of mobility and punching.

If one reads the Aubrey-Maturin series (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World was the film derived from two titles of a very long series of books), you'll see that in a 19th century "boxing" match there was an awful lot of grappling going on, and that was simply part of it.

Adding tricks or quirks to a general "beat the bejumpus out of someone with your fists" and "twist other guy into pretzel" high-level skill would be a good way to add flavor to a fighter without messing up the granularity level.

If (for example) there were "style quirks" and "style deficiencies" that were basically slight variations, and if you took them in pairs, you might get the flavor you want at no cost in high-level simplicity or forced resolution.

For example

1) Never kicks [-]
2) Really good defenses against punches [+]

Hey, that's boxing.

1) Gets a lot of extra damage from surprise attacks [+]
2) Is easier to defend against because telegraphs [-]

That might be intimidation-brawling in a bar

1) Nearly always kicks, and is really good at it [+]
2) Trained out of grappling, sweeps, or other manipulation [-]

might be sport fighting like Olympic TKD

But all of them could be swept up in an "Unarmed Combat" skill, and you would not be penalized for lack of system mastery if you just said "I can fight folks."

The results of hyper-specialization can be seen in some of the GURPS divisions into Sport/Art/Combat skills, and they cause debate even if they produce a lot of flavor ("why would I EVER take a Sport/Art form?" "Roleplaying!" "Bah! They SUCK!")

Anyway, my non-expert-in-TFT thoughts there. I've always been partial in a prospective GURPSy modification to reduce unarmed skills to Punch, Kick, Grapple, Joint Manipulation and leave the rest to flavor. To go full circle: while styles differ, humans are pretty much the same, and there are more similarities in real fighting stuff than differences, in the main.

[luguvalium]

I like having a Brawling skill at IQ 7, but I think it should be integrated with the Unarmed Combat Skills. Most Maybe the following:

Brawling(1) IQ7 +1 punch, Improvised Weapons (one time use, then they break), Dirty Fighting (once per combat, then an opponent will look out for it ) No DX requirement, No armor restriction.

UC Level 1 (2, or 1 with brawling) IQ9, DX10 - Restricted to Cloth Armor, Use previous UCII description
UC Level 2 (2) IQ10, DX11 - Use previous UCIII description
UC Level 3 (2) IQ11, DX12 - Use previous UCIV description
UC Level 4 (3) IQ12, DX12 - Use previous UCV description

[larsdangly]

Perhaps my favorite thing about the revised Brawling talent posted yesterday is that it is fun and a little quirky. Good games are not just well-written instruction manuals for programing your DVR. They also need to have a little creative spark to them.

[bergec]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

What Lars said. When humans were first getting started, you needed NOT to really damage your adversary for dominance - they were probably related and you'd be killing your own genes, as well as weakening the tribe. It's biology, and not some inherent goodness, that gives us the idea of "fighting fair." We were tribal apes for a long time before some of us became warriors who specialized in fighting strangers.

Rule as written also gives roleplaying options - you can say "I am NOT fighting dirty , even though I could."

If humans always pulled out all the stops, we would all know several people who are missing important bits. One of the important things taught in women's self-defense classes is to LOSE those inhibitions when assaulted, and go straight to a good hard twisting bite and a jab at the eyes or crotch, and I understand that that's sometimes a hard lesson to get across.

I would argue that abhorrence towards violence is more cultural than genetic. Historical accounts of brawling as recent as the 19th century have eye-gouging, biting, and ear-ripping as frequent occurrences. Even within the United States, you'll see very difference attitudes towards violence in Appalachia than you will in Boston. I've read some really interesting essays on how jarring it can be to go from a culture where casual violence is taboo to one where it is routine, or vice versa.

I guess, in a roundabout way, I'm arguing that the distinction of "dirty fighting" doesn't really fit the milieu, as it is a product of a more violence-adverse culture.