MA campaigns and your experience

[AlonzoTheGurpsPlayer]

Hello everybody, I haven't GMed since early 2012 and I have been thinking about running a Martial Arts campaign. The plot I want to try is that the PCs either represent a real world style, or even their own style if they can make one up that isn't too outlandish, and they fight other people around the world.

For example, one player who is representing say, Taekwondo, might go to the middle east and fight one of the worlds best wrestlers in a close to no rules contest. Or maybe someone representing Boxing (I know it's not usually considered a martial art, but I would allow it) might fight someone from Brazil representing Capoeira or BJJ.

Now, what I have a problem with is redundancy. I want to make all the fights exciting and not seem the same, so I wanted some suggestions on how to do this. I was thinking that traveling around the world would represent it's own adventure but I still want to focus on finding the world's toughest fighter in a sense. I would like to know what you guys have done in MA or any other kind of campaign to keep combat exciting.


So again, I am open to suggestions, and the point limit is 150 points with 75 points in disadvantages. If you guys think a higher point limit with cinematic skills and techniques allowed would make it better, I might allow it. If armed styles being allowed and some leeway being used with unarmed against armed would also changes things for like say range and different tactics having to be used might make things change, I might also allow that.

TL;DR: I need help on making my MA campaign not too redundant in combat.

[Incard]

I think that this idea of your could serve as the platform that a game could be built upon. Perhaps the players each have something at stake in this global Street Fighter type tournament. If it is just a series of one-on-one MMA fights, the novelty of learning the rules may fade after a few hours of gaming.

[Mailanka]

My experience:

I prefer a more cinematic approach. I think realistic martial arts can work (particularly in a tournament setting), but particularly in a modern setting, people want the more mystical arts to DO something, plus they want their characters flashy. I have a good experience with Chambara rules.

I highly recommend signature moves. They speed up play, allow for complex moves without slowing things down, and can help define characters. Also, the act of coming up with them will help create a sense of the "strategy" of the character. In Cherry Blossom Rain, all my samurai fight very differently and focus on very different strategies, despite all using the same weapon and effectively the same sets of skills. A lot of that variety revolves around technique, attributes, advantages and perks, and is defined well in signature moves.

I also have a few house rules regarding evaluate, defensive attacks, ripostes and beats, but they're probably not pertinent to your situation.

EDIT: Oh, and to my surprise, I have found that fights are never boring. I can't really articulate why that is, though.

[Keiko]

Signature Moves?

[AlonzoTheGurpsPlayer]

Originally Posted by Incard

I think that this idea of your could serve as the platform that a game could be built upon. Perhaps the players each have something at stake in this global Street Fighter type tournament. If it is just a series of one-on-one MMA fights, the novelty of learning the rules may fade after a few hours of gaming.

I like this suggestion, and with Mailanka suggesting signature moves and mystical stuff I think I can use both of these to allow more roleplaying. I also came up with another idea, how about these people fight for things like money and valuable things and to protect say families, how about they fight to see who fights in a intergalactic tournament which will allow even more diversity with different races and therefore different martial arts

[trooper6]

I was in a MA campaign run by whswhs (Fencing), and in an Arena game on rpol. I think the key to making it full of rp goodness...is having players who are interested in lots of rp goodness. If the players are into rp, then there will be RP.

This also is a part of how to make combat exciting for RP types. Combat strategy has to be a part of the characterization.

So for example, I decided my fencer--Overconfident, Self-Esteem Issues hidden by Arrogance--would do lots of Committed Attacks...and would not ever retreat...sideslip? slip? yes. Retreat? Not if he could at all help it. So it became interesting for me to think about my characterization and how that would manifest in combat. So all of the combats became not only about the fight itself, but also about a way of exploring my character's morality, personality, etc.

In the Arena game, which was not at all about RP'ing, I had lots and lots of fun exploring how my character's personality would manifest in the different combats. From warning a foe about a trap to waiting until a foe stood up again before attacking...or whatever.

As a method actor player, I could still find interest in combat after combat by making sure that combat and character are linked.

If I were a butt kicker player, the combat would probably be enough by itself. If I were a Tactician, I think that as long as the combats had interesting tactical challenges (Pits! Traps! etc.) that would help for that.
For the Storyteller, you'll want some sort of overarching narrative (which could be supplied by the players themselves...for example, my Arena fighter had a couple of motivations that could spin into narrative: he wanted to earn enough money to buy his own pirate ship so he could fight the Megalans and free Araterre, and he wanted to represent Araterre well so that he could gain sympathy for his homeland while diminishing people's attitude towards Megalos). If you had some some sort of story-ish hook, or some sort of thing (money) that players could use to craft their own narrative, that would also be fine. I find interesting non-combatant NPCs are helpful here.

MA tournaments may feature combat, but they can still have all the elements that please all of the different types of players that Robin Laws talks about.

I ran a Traveller game that had one adventure that featured an MA tournament. Of course each of the contestants was sponsored by various larger political factions so the tournament was a proxy political war. Enter the PCs. Of course someone wants to hire them fight for Faction A, and it becomes really important that Faction B's fighter not win. During the tournament, the observant PCs learned a lot about galactic politics. But they were also confronted with some mysteries and some moral conundrums (do they cheat?) There was a great moment when they decided to spike the water bottle of the Imperial Naval Contestant with performance enhancing drugs and then calling for a drug test. The contestant tested positive and that was a great blow to the honor of the Imperial Navy and caused a lot of ripples. There was blackmail, fighting, increasing tensions among fans of different factions that threatened to boil over into riots.

Good times! The tournament was all fighting...but the fighting was an ends in and of itself, but also a means to illuminate something about the wider galactic politics, and also about the character of individual combatants, including the PCs.

Interestingly, the Pilot PC got to the Final match of the tournament (mostly through lots of cheating on the part of the other PCs)...and he declared that he would not allow any cheating for the final match (one, the observation had gotten too hot, but also because he wanted to win fair and square and was never comfortable with the cheating). The other players thought he was crazy and there was some great rp around that situation. In the end, he went in without cheating...and lost! But then the more...morally flexible PCs leaked a recording of the sponsor of the winner attempting to bribe the PCs into throwing the fight, thus undermining any political advantage the winner's faction gained by it.

It was really fun...but that was because we had great RPers, designing the combatants fighting style as an extension of character, and having the combatants express larger story.

[whswhs]

Further to trooper6's comments, one of the things I did in Salle d'Armes was to have the campaign set in a fencing academy. Many sessions included a scene of training, in which the player characters practiced some specific move against each other. This helped the players gain more familiarity with the different moves and how they worked, and it made the personality of their master important.

Bill Stoddard

[AlonzoTheGurpsPlayer]

Originally Posted by trooper6

I was in a MA campaign run by whswhs (Fencing), and in an Arena game on rpol. I think the key to making it full of rp goodness...is having players who are interested in lots of rp goodness. If the players are into rp, then there will be RP.

This also is a part of how to make combat exciting for RP types. Combat strategy has to be a part of the characterization.

So for example, I decided my fencer--Overconfident, Self-Esteem Issues hidden by Arrogance--would do lots of Committed Attacks...and would not ever retreat...sideslip? slip? yes. Retreat? Not if he could at all help it. So it became interesting for me to think about my characterization and how that would manifest in combat. So all of the combats became not only about the fight itself, but also about a way of exploring my character's morality, personality, etc.

In the Arena game, which was not at all about RP'ing, I had lots and lots of fun exploring how my character's personality would manifest in the different combats. From warning a foe about a trap to waiting until a foe stood up again before attacking...or whatever.

As a method actor player, I could still find interest in combat after combat by making sure that combat and character are linked.

If I were a butt kicker player, the combat would probably be enough by itself. If I were a Tactician, I think that as long as the combats had interesting tactical challenges (Pits! Traps! etc.) that would help for that.
For the Storyteller, you'll want some sort of overarching narrative (which could be supplied by the players themselves...for example, my Arena fighter had a couple of motivations that could spin into narrative: he wanted to earn enough money to buy his own pirate ship so he could fight the Megalans and free Araterre, and he wanted to represent Araterre well so that he could gain sympathy for his homeland while diminishing people's attitude towards Megalos). If you had some some sort of story-ish hook, or some sort of thing (money) that players could use to craft their own narrative, that would also be fine. I find interesting non-combatant NPCs are helpful here.

MA tournaments may feature combat, but they can still have all the elements that please all of the different types of players that Robin Laws talks about.

I ran a Traveller game that had one adventure that featured an MA tournament. Of course each of the contestants was sponsored by various larger political factions so the tournament was a proxy political war. Enter the PCs. Of course someone wants to hire them fight for Faction A, and it becomes really important that Faction B's fighter not win. During the tournament, the observant PCs learned a lot about galactic politics. But they were also confronted with some mysteries and some moral conundrums (do they cheat?) There was a great moment when they decided to spike the water bottle of the Imperial Naval Contestant with performance enhancing drugs and then calling for a drug test. The contestant tested positive and that was a great blow to the honor of the Imperial Navy and caused a lot of ripples. There was blackmail, fighting, increasing tensions among fans of different factions that threatened to boil over into riots.

Good times! The tournament was all fighting...but the fighting was an ends in and of itself, but also a means to illuminate something about the wider galactic politics, and also about the character of individual combatants, including the PCs.

Interestingly, the Pilot PC got to the Final match of the tournament (mostly through lots of cheating on the part of the other PCs)...and he declared that he would not allow any cheating for the final match (one, the observation had gotten too hot, but also because he wanted to win fair and square and was never comfortable with the cheating). The other players thought he was crazy and there was some great rp around that situation. In the end, he went in without cheating...and lost! But then the more...morally flexible PCs leaked a recording of the sponsor of the winner attempting to bribe the PCs into throwing the fight, thus undermining any political advantage the winner's faction gained by it.

It was really fun...but that was because we had great RPers, designing the combatants fighting style as an extension of character, and having the combatants express larger story.

I really like this, it's not even funny how much I'm thinking about this. I don't really have any Storytellers in my group, but we have had some great roleplaying before. I do think this cheating and moral questions thing will work and I changed the concept so that its a group representing country or a martial art now. For example there can be a team Brazil and they have say some Capoeristas and BJJers but they might have conflicting issues if one of my PCs decide to wanna be Brazil. Or there could be a group of Freestyle wrestlers but there can be conflicting issues due to say an Afghanistan native and a American ex soldier being on the team traveling the world. The purpose of the tournament is to show what martial art is best and I was thinking maybe later on there could be some intergalactic or interplanetary competition too

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Keiko

Signature Moves?

A signature move is a description of an action that doesn't take longer than a turn. For example, a rapid-strike Feint-and-attack, or a deceptive targeted all-out-attack for the eye, and so on.

The idea is to take your listed skills and damage values, think your way through some of the more complex mechanics of how your attack will look, write it all down (never seems longer than a paragraph), noting the actual skill values and damage inflicted. And then give it a name and a bit of a description.

In actual gameplay, all you have to do is glance at your paper with signature moves and you'll know all the details to how your complex action works. Very good for getting GURPS noobs into some rather detailed GURPS combat without scaring the pants off of them.

Example:

Dance of the Crane: Yoshiro steps to one side and makes two deceptive, dual weapon defensive attacks with his blades (14/14). Opponent defends at -4, and Yoshiro deals 1d+3 cut/1d+2 cut, both out to a reach of 1. Yoshiro defends at +1 (15) and may retreat (generally choosing a side-slip for +1 more). He often sacrifices this for a riposte (-2 (13) for -2) for a more lethal, focused attack.

This is from an NPC so it has less detail as its for my personal use. This is derived from Yoshiro's Broadsword -20 (Dual Weapon Attack-20) and Shortsword-20 (Dual Weapon Attack-20). It applies a -1 because it's a dual weapon attack, and an additional -3 from a deceptive attack. He normally deals 1d+5 damage with his katana and 1d+4 with his wazikashi, but these are lowered due to it being a defensive attack. And, of course, the defensive attack grants him +1 to his defense (which starts at 14).

But we don't have to come up with all this crap in the middle of a session. I just look, see Dance of the Crane, and use it. Complexity simplified.

[Flyndaran]

Perfect idea for those of us that tend to panic and lock up when rushed to decide.