Review of GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling

[Gef]

The weekend before I started my current campaign, Technical Grappling came out. Since I conceived this campaign specifically to teach the combat system to new players, I decided to incorporate the new supplement from the beginning, rather than change downstream. I now feel qualified to review it not only on the basis of how it reads, but how it plays. Short version: It’s a net positive, because the system really works, but the drawback is that the material by nature is harder to DESCRIBE than to USE. I found it intimidating at first, but after actually gaming a few scenes with it, I found it easy to assimilate, certainly no more difficult than the combat system in general, in part because it organically extends concepts already present in that system.

The proof of this pudding for me is that I’ve seen grappling used more in 2 months than in 2 previous decades of GURPS, often at players’ instigation, and that when it was used, I and my players were better able to visualize the action than ever before. My impression of grappling under basic rules is that while it’s been critically important to melee fighters in the real world, it is a disadvantaged tactic in the game: While I’m grabbing you, you’re hitting me for damage. After I grab you, I can put you in an arm lock or something for modest damage, but in the same period of time, I’ve been damaged twice, and to a greater degree. Martial Arts introduced the concept of an armed grapple with weapon skill, but with the requirement that you drop your shield to hold that weapon with both hands, it seemed like a losing proposition as well. Technical Grappling makes a couple of things more clear: That grappling gets you a situational advantage that you can exploit to hurt the other guy more, and more often, and that this is especially true in weapon combat. Along the way, it makes rules for grappling more consistent with those of combat in general.

The book itself is 51 pages dense with crunch, organized in favor of reference rather than presentation. As someone with little real-world experience of grappling sports, I found this especially daunting. It contributed to a first impression of massive complexity that is not present in actual play. Fortunately, I persevered, and after the first pass, I had enough sense of the overall framework to read it again for understanding. The core concept is very simple indeed:

When you hit with a grappling attack, roll damage (thrust-based). This isn’t “real” damage but more like potential damage. Technically, it measures how firm a grip you got, but you can use that firm grip to break someone’s arm, hence potential damage. You can use it for other things, too, as the name that the author has chosen for this special type of damage makes clear: Control Points. My players have come to understand that if their characters can’t seem to land solid blows on their foes, then what they really need are some control points to improve the odds.

Of the rest of the book, half consists of special cases of this basic concept. In a game other than GURPS, many of those cases wouldn’t be necessary, but this system has to model what happens when hobbits grapple giants, or when an uplifted octopus grapples a bioroid with enhanced strength. About 10% of the page count is devoted to how different kinds of weapons affect grappling (flexible versus rigid, edged versus blunt, etc.). In practice, many situations won’t involve special cases, and of those that do, they’ll involve only one or two. My own campaign emphasizes these, as I have fantasy world that makes gladiators of races like centaurs and scorpion-men. The rules are robust enough to handle these cases plausibly.

Chapter 1 introduces the basic concept and many more besides, like the idea that if someone grabs you, their weight (with gear) affects your encumbrance, and your weight affects theirs. It’s all good stuff, but let me restate that it’s not organized for presentation, there’s no step-by-step process of how to game out a grappling attempt, although I understand that the current Pyramid issue has several examples.

Note: The author, Douglas Cole, has addressed my complaint in an article that serves well as the introduction missing from the book: http://gamingballistic.blogspot.com/...ng-basics.html

Since that hadn't been written yet, my solution was to read it multiple thrice, and having done so, let me level my criticisms here. All that’s right with the book flows from the concepts presented in chapter 1, and all that’s disappointing flows from the implementation thereof.

When you grab a foe and get control points, you can spend ‘em to inflict damage, or pain, or influence contests, like a contest of strength to force them to the ground. So far, so good. Until you spend them, they have a persistent effect: They penalize your foe’s DX and ST. That’s good too, except that melee damage is a derived statistic from ST, right? And defenses are derived from DX. Normally, you do the deriving in advance, one time, but with effective attribute scores fluctuating in a grappling situation, you may have to do it several times in a combat that represents only a few seconds of game time. And if you grab a foe in different places, then he may have different penalties for each limb. Of course, there’s a method to the derivation that could be brought forward into the general rule, but this brings me to gripe number two:

How much control you get in a grapple depends partly on native strength and partly on your skill in the application thereof. In short, high skill gives you a bonus, much as Karate skill gives a bonus to punching damage. That’s dandy. However, Wrestling skill gives no direct bonus to the damage (control point) roll; instead it gives a bonus to the ST score used to derive thrust-based damage. This bonus adds to the effective ST of the limb or combination of limbs used to grapple: Base ST for grappling with both hands, half that for grappling with one hand, 20% extra for grappling with both legs, and a formula involving square roots for other cases. For a fantasy race with many limbs (and big jaws), who might grapple with Wrestling or with a weapon skill yielding different bonuses, the potential combinations can fill a page, all neatly calculated in advance…until someone grapples that character and requires a re-calculation.

The good news is, the full potential complexity I just described is rarely seen in actual play, and when it is, a little hand-waving and guestimating is good enough. If certain situations come up a lot, it’s easy to come up with a simplifying house rule, and the author hinted at some suggestions to come in the Designer’s Notes.

[Gef]

Chapter 2 is all about armed grappling, and the most useful part of the whole book, in my humble opinion, is the flavor text introducing this chapter. It shows clearly that grappling is not just for the wrestling mat, that it is very useful for armed fighters seeking situational modifiers to help bypass their foes’ defenses. The book as a whole dives right into its subject matter without explicitly defining what real-world actions constitute a “grapple” in game terms, and likewise this chapter fails to define an armed grapple, but it describes it well enough to infer that grappling is more than graspin. The big change here is that you can now perform an armed grapple with a weapon held in one hand. As a consequence, you roll damage (control points) based on half your ST, but you get a bonus from using a weapon instead of bare hands, so it works out about the same for normal human ST ranges.

Chapter 3 is the cool stuff, combat. The organization of chapters is 1) grappling general concepts, 2) important subcategory of grappling with weapons, and 3) actual grappling combat. Like I said, the book is not organized for presentation. You need to get to chapter 3 before you find out what chapters 1 and 2 are for. Grabbing is pretty straight-forward and defenses work against it just as they would against any other attack, so this chapter is mainly about what happens after that. This is where the control point mechanic shines. First, it introduces some granularity. That always increases complexity, but in this case, you get a lot of bang for the complexity buck, mainly because the control point roll parallels the general case of damage rolls. Breaking free is now an attack with a damage roll of its own; subtract that from your opponent’s control, and if it takes his control to zero, you’re free. If not, his hold is still weaker. Here’s a very significant change: he can attack again to improve control. Ideally, if you do nothing effective to stop him, he can pile up enough control points to make you all but helpless, then force you into a disadvantageous position with your back to him, then free up his hands by trapping you with some other limb or part of a limb, and then wail away unopposed. If you can imagine a grappling situation, you can probably model it with these rules, step-by-step. It’s not necessarily easy to defeat a foe with grappling, but it follows the general pattern of GURPS combat: Once you get in a good lick, you have the upper hand, and the next one is easier.

Once you grapple someone, you can basically do two things: hurt them or move them. For hurting them, you spend control points to set bounds on damage. If you can grab and smash (or grab and stab), you can spend the control points directly as bonus damage. This can be a big deal when fighting a foe in heavy armor, the kind who thinks he can All-Out Attack with impunity. Maybe you only inflict 1d/imp with your stiletto, but suppose you have 6 control points on that armored knight? Now you can inflict 1d+6/imp! Of course, “spending” control points means you lose them, so you may prefer an arm lock. You still spend control to cause damage in this case (technically, to set an upper bound on a damage roll, or the level of Pain affliction), but it’s a free action, so you can “attack” to get more control points even as you’re spending the ones so far accumulated.

When it comes to moving a foe you’ve grappled, there’s a catch: Grapples go both ways, and he can move you, too! However, unless he gets a grip of his own, he does so without the benefit of control points. Still, if he’s huge (the hobbit-grabs-giant example), it may not matter. GURPS combat between expert warriors involves tactics that reduce a foe’s otherwise-reliable high defenses, tactics like deceptive attacks. The benefit of using a grapple to move a foe is alike in kind, to put him in a facing or posture in which his defenses are penalized, and hopefully to keep him there, so that the remainder of the combat is a one-sided affair in your favor.

Many techniques you’d use on a foe you’ve already grappled involve contests of skill or ST (remembering that grappling skills give a bonus to ST for this purpose). This is true of causing damage with a lock, and also true of using a grapple to force some kind of change in position. If you have control points, you can spend them to influence the contest, and if you’ve compromised a foe’s stability (i.e., you have control points on a leg), they count double for pushing him around. A weak man might have to attack several times in order to accumulate an impressive control point total, but having done so, he can do nasty things to a stronger man by spending those points profligately.

One of my players complained that for his Karate-using character, the rules in Technical Grappling seem to make wrestlers overpowered, that a wrestler could grab him and make him weaker, rinse and repeat to make him helpless. I’m not sure I agree, as grab, takedown, and pin can all happen under standard rules. It’s just that they never have, in my experience. In any case, nothing in Technical Grappling makes the karateka easier to grab in the first place, and the control point roll from a human foe is likely to impose -1 or -2 to ST and DX, favorable to the -4 DX under the original rules.

Chapter 4 talks about traits, in other words, how does my character’s weird alien anatomy affect grappling? The biggie here is Constriction Attack, which formerly seemed redundant with Wrestling skill but now confers double control points, a benefit it shares with Trained by a Master. With style perks, Chapter 4 segues into 5, sample grappling-based martial art styles, including some “styles” for animals to represent their natural tactics.

Shall I rate the book with X out of Y stars? That doesn’t seem a helpful approach. Let me say instead that this book is highly useful if you have a campaign that fits any of these descriptions:

1) It uses styles from martial arts

2) It features close range combat gamed out turn-by-turn

3) It features any player characters who are supposed to be highly skilled in close combat

4) It challenges player characters with animals or bestial monsters or aliens

It also fairly useful to a GM who uses more of a minimalist, narrative style to run the occasional fight as it crops up, if that GM has little personal experience with grappling arts to base the narration upon.

In those circumstances, it is useful, and it’s also useable. I needed 3 sessions with big fights to get comfortable with the mechanics, and that was with posting my questions to this forum and getting helpful answers from the author. Now I’m starting to get comfortable with the nuances as well. I have a PC scorpion-man who likes to grab with pincers, then sting; a PC bugbear whose signature is a bear hug, and another PC who likes to hook a big foe by the ankle, shoulder barge, and chop him while he’s down. The important thing is, this has so far been a fun campaign, in large part due to the technical grappling rules.

The main issue with Technical Grappling isn’t its useability, but the challenge of wrapping your head around it in the first place, if grappling sports are foreign. But it’s a lot easier than a course in Gracie Jiu-Jutsu, I’d reckon. The secondary issue is that business I mentioned about fluctuating ST scores, and to some extent DX. These are manageable if you know the system: 2 levels of DX is a level of parry/block, and 4 levels of DX is a level of Dodge. Likewise 4 levels of ST is a die of swing damage, and 8 levels of ST is a die of thrust damage, at least in the human range, and in the super-human range, 10 levels of ST is a die of damage either way. Keep these system elements in mind and use them to estimate modifiers in play; don’t pause the action to consult tables or calculators, and you’ll find that Technical Grappling enhances your combat scenes without bogging them down.

GEF

[DouglasCole]

Thanks for the detailed review!

[munin]

Originally Posted by Gef

… the material by nature is harder to DESCRIBE than to USE. I found it intimidating at first, …

This.

I have to admit, I have tried twice and have been unable to actually read through the supplement (so this post isn't an actual review, more like an AAR) -- army regulations are much easier to read than this supplement. Yet the examples of play I've read on Gaming Ballistic have made sense to me and seemed like fun. I've read those, and the "introduction", and I still can't read through the supplement.

My first experience with the supplement was that I hit that first crunch paragraph telling me to refer to a table in the back of the book. So in the middle of the very first paragraph I stop reading and flip to the back -- the table is mathematically intuitive so I can memorize the numbers easily, but the list of skills and techniques it applies to makes no immediate sense to me (I can't see an easy way to memorize them). The way I play, if I can't memorize it, I basically won't be able (or want) to use it*.

So now I try to go back to reading, but I'm already starting to think I won't be able to use this, so my heart is no longer in it. And still in the first page I keep hitting fine distinctions and exceptions to rules I barely understand. Eventually, I stop reading and just start skimming, trying to get the feel for the whole system that wasn't provided in an introduction. And that obviously fails, so I give up and play Minecraft.

: )

TG definitely needed an introduction, talking about real-life grappling and how TG was going to model it. But the first chapter especially could also have used a "roadmap" -- an overview of how the material was going to be presented and how the mechanics were going to be introduced.



* Not to pile on, but I had the same problem with The Last Gasp. I like the idea and the mechanic, but trying to remember how many APs each maneuver or action cost is too much trouble. It needs to start with some simple mechanic that's easy to remember (and called out, not buried in endless prose), then add in complexity for specific maneuvers as an option.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by munin

This.

Thanks for the commentary. While I can't go back and re-layout or re-edit the manuscript, I can give certain insights there.

1) The book was tight for wordcount, and as you have accurately portrayed, is very, very tightly packed for content. It's basically 50 pages of solid rules.

2) Putting the tables in the back was a tough call, but what I wanted people to be able to do is print out those two pages and keep them handy. I was only going to get one place to put these items, so it was a choice between "scatter them through the book," which makes them easy to read in context but a page-flipping exercise in play, or the other way, which makes it easier in play. I voted for play.

3) In terms of the skills list in the back, for grappling it's relatively basic: Wrestling is fast, Judo is slow, and so are most weapons. Average stuff includes stick weapons.

What I'd started with was basically "one slow, one average, and one fast" for each of the three striking and grappling skills. The playtesters argued against that successfully, since some of the choices enforced by that split were definitely odd.

In short, objects that are designed to greatly multiply strength use the fast progression, weapons good to grapple with but not explicitly designed that way are average, and everything else is slow.

For striking, everything is slow, except for Brawling, which has a lot of ground-ish techniques in it.

Sumo was going to be average, but that didn't make as much sense in the end as making it "just like wrestling" in the things it got an equivalent ST bonus for in the skill description, and "just like Judo" for everything else.

Judo was a tough call, but the lack of ST bonuses in the skill description made it easy to assign the slow progression.

Nonetheless, and all that aside, thanks for the valuable feedback. I'm sure you've inspired a few future blog posts.

* Not to pile on, but I had the same problem with The Last Gasp. I like the idea and the mechanic, but trying to remember how many APs each maneuver or action cost is too much trouble. It needs to start with some simple mechanic that's easy to remember (and called out, not buried in endless prose), then add in complexity for specific maneuvers as an option.

This one's easier: All-Out and Committed stuff costs 2 AP. Most everything else costs 1. Things where you stand around a lot (Do Nothing, Wait, Evaluate) cost nothing and often allow recovery. Movement costs are complicated, but can be made simpler with a house rule like this one.

[CraigM]

Originally Posted by munin

I have to admit, I have tried twice and have been unable to actually read through the supplement (so this post isn't an actual review, more like an AAR) -- army regulations are much easier to read than this supplement. Yet the examples of play I've read on Gaming Ballistic have made sense to me and seemed like fun. I've read those, and the "introduction", and I still can't read through the supplement.

My first experience with the supplement was that I hit that first crunch paragraph telling me to refer to a table in the back of the book. So in the middle of the very first paragraph I stop reading and flip to the back -- the table is mathematically intuitive so I can memorize the numbers easily, but the list of skills and techniques it applies to makes no immediate sense to me (I can't see an easy way to memorize them). The way I play, if I can't memorize it, I basically won't be able (or want) to use it*.

So now I try to go back to reading, but I'm already starting to think I won't be able to use this, so my heart is no longer in it. And still in the first page I keep hitting fine distinctions and exceptions to rules I barely understand.

[...]

TG definitely needed an introduction, talking about real-life grappling and how TG was going to model it. But the first chapter especially could also have used a "roadmap" -- an overview of how the material was going to be presented and how the mechanics were going to be introduced.

I vigorously endorse this comment; this was exactly my experience when I tried to read TG. There may be some good rules in there, but the presentation of them is intensely opaque. The book seems to be written on the assumption that the reader is already intimately familiar with the TG rules.