Which books for a 90's Fighting Video-Game/Beat'em Up style of game?

[Calliban]

I plan on running a very specific campaign, the kind of campaign one truly needs the power of GURPS.

I plan on running a campaign based on some old manga from the 80's, specifically the Youthful Delinquency genre, but with some inspiration from 90's 2d fighting games and beat'em-ups. Basically, my game will be about Japanese preschoolers high schoolers that are also over-the-top martial artists with some minor supernatural powers, something like the early YuYu Hakusho, Ranma, the older video-games in the Street Fighter, Final Fight, Streets of Rage and King of Fighters Franchises, or even the more venerable Kunio-kun/River City series.

I want the PCs to be very decent martial artists with access to some minor special powers, i.e. flaming fists, bursts of fast movement, stomping the ground to create mini-earthquakes... the kind of special power you would see in a fighting video game or in a low-powered anime back in the 80's and early 90's.

I already own the 4e core books and Martial Arts. I also own Powers and Supers, which I think may be needed, and I've heard there are some cool stuff that can be done by using things like Sorcery, elemental magic, and imbuements... and here is the part I need your help!

Which books and web-books would help me to create this kind of game? Any specific guidelines for this video-game-y cinematic game? Also, the is any way to integrate the existing supernatural skills in Martial Arts with those new options? Anything I should keep an eye for, or potential problems with my premises?

[Anders]

Action 3: Furious Fists and Martial Arts should carry you a long way.

[AlexanderHowl]

I would keep to Basic, Martial Arts, and Powers. In general though, remember that the average human preschooler has ST-4 [-40], DX-3 [-60], IQ-3 [-60], SM-2, and Social Stigma (Young Child) [-10], for a grand total of -170 CP (-125 CP after Patron (Parents, more than 200% character total; 15-) [45] is applied). Social Stigma (Young Child) is a variation of Social Stigma (Valuable Property), as adults will usually bother them with questions and/or call the authorities if they see the child alone and will likely never take them serious.

In general, a 150 CP preschooler is a superhero among their peers. Of course, I know a young woman who when she was 4 years old would pick me up, and I weighed 250 lbs at the time, so superhero level preschoolers are not unknown, they are just quite rare. A 250 CP preschooler is probably as powerful as you would want, unless you are doing a PS238 game, where some of the kids are M-scale threats.

[Gef]

I'd check out Power-Ups 1: Imbuements. For the minor elemental effects you describe, Imbuements might be a better fit than opening up Powers at an arbitrary threshold. I mean, if you think that 20 points sounds like a reasonable cut-off for "minor" powers, that still gets you a 5d Toxic Attack (could be a Follow-Up to a punch, or could be a visible Jet of "negative energy") without thinking hard about limitations to lower the level cost and squeeze out even more dmage.

[Varyon]

One thing that may need clearing up - do you actually mean preschoolers (age 5 and under), or, as implied by the references, do you mean teenagers? The characters of the manga you've mentioned are typically high school students, sometimes middle school students.

[Calliban]

Originally Posted by Varyon

One thing that may need clearing up - do you actually mean preschoolers (age 5 and under), or, as implied by the references, do you mean teenagers? The characters of the manga you've mentioned are typically high school students, sometimes middle school students.

OH! Yes, highschoolers! The autocorrector strikes once again.

[Anders]

Although five-year olds with martial arts powers is a terrifying idea.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anders

Although five-year olds with martial arts powers is a terrifying idea.

Absolutely; without the correction, I'd have been tempted to suggest GURPS Horror.

To add something of substance, I'd suggest capping damaging abilities and the like to a certain amount of damage or effect rather than points. As noted, you can have a rather devastating attack for a fairly small number of points, and can eke out even more damage with appropriate Limitations. Offhand, for melee abilities, I'd suggest a limit of around 150% of unarmed damage for general-purpose abilities, around 200% for those sufficiently limited as to be unlikely to be used more than once per encounter on average, and around 300% for those sufficiently limited as to be unlikely to be used more than once per session on average. For ranged abilities (like Ryu's hadouken), I'd drop these to 100%, 150%, and 200%, respectively.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anders

Although five-year olds with martial arts powers is a terrifying idea.

On Dragonball Z Super Goten and Trunks are 6 and 7 respectively. I'm sure their merged form wouldn't have any trouble destroying a planet.

[Hide]

If you are talking about KOF, GURPS Chinese Elemental Powers would be useful to you. It features stuff like power block/dodge/parry, magic as powers and so on. For example, you could design an "Ura 108 Shiki Orochinagi" from "storm of fire" (in the book).