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Old 12-19-2018, 07:29 AM   #1
Icelander
 
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Default Looking for Help with Vovinam Martial Art Style

I'm going to be featuring characters who've learned the Vovinam style from Vietnam in an upcoming campaign.

How would I write it up?

If it matters, there might be two lineages of the style in play. One where the student learned in Hanoi, in the 1940s, from the original founder, Nguyễn Lộc, and another where the the instructor learned in Saigon in the 1960s, from Grandmaster Lê Sáng and several others, before emigrating to Houston in 1976 and opening a school there.

I figure that there are similarities with Burmese thaing, Banshay and maybe Krabi Krabong, as well as Burmese, Cambodian, Laotian and Thai kickboxing. The grappling aspect seems to teach both Judo and Wrestling skills, at least if one studies the traditional wrestling parts, which makes it possibly similar to Bando naban. I don't know if GURPS Martial Arts write-ups for various silat forms are useful for inspiration, as silat is a very broad grouping of styles, and the Chinese influences might well be more important.

What I'm primarily wondering about are the armed parts. I think that I can do the Karate, Judo and Wrestling parts well enough, but I haven't decided whether the armed skills should be fencing skills or not. Krabi Krabong and some silat styles, using similar weapons, use Main-Gauche and Smallsword or Saber for sticks, knives and sabers.

Would it be wrong to model the armed parts of Vovinam with fencing skills?
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Old 12-19-2018, 10:21 AM   #2
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Default Re: Looking for Help with Vovinam Martial Art Style

To my eye, the unarmed curriculum seems to be derived largely from Japanese and Korean karate styles contemporary to Nguyễn Lộc's initial period of training in the late 1930s, with scattered material from jujutsu and Northern Chinese systems. The predilection for flying scissor takedowns is the only thing plainly from neither of those two influences, and may show the influence of silat or something natively Vietnamese. Scholarship and practice of Vietnamese martial arts predating Viet Vovinam, from which it is supposedly partially derived, is really thin on the ground: I suspect an analogy to Korean martial arts, where the claim to have been synthesized from both foreign and native components is almost surely more of a political thing playing on patriotism than anything historically verifiable.

I can't say I've ever seen or heard of Vovinam being practiced in a manner that would justify purchase of the full combat version of the skill, rather than (most commonly) Art or (quite rarely) Sport, and I don't think Vovinam schools teach anything recognizably like the Indochinese kickboxing styles.

No comment on the armed curriculum: I don't have the expertise, beyond noting that I'd either stat out the armed portion as a separate art or arts in GURPS terms or stick them in Optional Skills to match what the book does with Chinese and Japanese styles that traditionally contain both armed and unarmed material.

Mechanically, I think Akijutsu+Taekwondo+Wushu would be a good place to start trimming from, plus either Technique Adaptation (Scissors Hold defaults from Judo) and Scissors Hold or allowing a Using Your Legs version of a Sacrifice Throw. (The scissor takedown seems poorly represented by the book's Scissors Hold to me, being more of a single-motion, one-instant throw that relies partially on momentum and either succeeds or fails in an instant rather than being possible to use in the methodical 'first establish hold, then throw with it' way enabled by Scissors Hold. But I'm not sure what else Scissors Hold could possibly be meant to represent.)

Last edited by Toptomcat; 12-19-2018 at 10:40 AM.
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Old 01-24-2019, 03:57 PM   #3
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Default Re: Looking for Help with Vovinam Martial Art Style

Quote:
Originally Posted by Toptomcat View Post
To my eye, the unarmed curriculum seems to be derived largely from Japanese and Korean karate styles contemporary to Nguyễn Lộc's initial period of training in the late 1930s, with scattered material from jujutsu and Northern Chinese systems. The predilection for flying scissor takedowns is the only thing plainly from neither of those two influences, and may show the influence of silat or something natively Vietnamese. Scholarship and practice of Vietnamese martial arts predating Viet Vovinam, from which it is supposedly partially derived, is really thin on the ground: I suspect an analogy to Korean martial arts, where the claim to have been synthesized from both foreign and native components is almost surely more of a political thing playing on patriotism than anything historically verifiable.

I can't say I've ever seen or heard of Vovinam being practiced in a manner that would justify purchase of the full combat version of the skill, rather than (most commonly) Art or (quite rarely) Sport, and I don't think Vovinam schools teach anything recognizably like the Indochinese kickboxing styles.

No comment on the armed curriculum: I don't have the expertise, beyond noting that I'd either stat out the armed portion as a separate art or arts in GURPS terms or stick them in Optional Skills to match what the book does with Chinese and Japanese styles that traditionally contain both armed and unarmed material.
Interesting.

I didn't even consider that Japanese styles might have been popular in 1930s colonial Vietnam.

I'll be featuring a family of Vietnamese who moved to Houston in 1976 in the campaign. The oldest lineage holder is deceased when the campaign is set, but his son and several grandsons are NPCs.

It's actually okay that Vovinam is usually practised as an Art, as the sole PC to study it in the campaign is doing so as exercise and for mental health reasons, looking more for the discipline, philosophy and wisdom of the teacher than any useful combat benefits.

On the other hand, more or less any style of martial art can be practiced in a pragmatic version and the fact that at least one grandson raised in the style is currently serving in the US Army Special Forces means that at least one character trained in the style also knows modern military combatives.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Toptomcat View Post
Mechanically, I think Akijutsu+Taekwondo+Wushu would be a good place to start trimming from, plus either Technique Adaptation (Scissors Hold defaults from Judo) and Scissors Hold or allowing a Using Your Legs version of a Sacrifice Throw. (The scissor takedown seems poorly represented by the book's Scissors Hold to me, being more of a single-motion, one-instant throw that relies partially on momentum and either succeeds or fails in an instant rather than being possible to use in the methodical 'first establish hold, then throw with it' way enabled by Scissors Hold. But I'm not sure what else Scissors Hold could possibly be meant to represent.)
As Vovinam is primarily an Art style, as you say, I think it's reasonable to model the scissor takedown as an All-Out Attack (Double), allowing the grapple and throw in the same turn.
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