Dev DIARY #3 - PULP NON-FICTION
Switching engines was a giant setback, but absolutely produced a better game in the end. No regrets. Here’s why…
Let’s talk about COMBAT! A martial arts game would not be a martial arts game without combat, but why did it matter so much to me how the combat played out?
CRAWL. WALK. RUN. FLY.
I knew right from the beginning the overall flavor I was looking for in combat —> ACTION!. The whole premise of the game was to keep the kids team thinking of how to use their martial arts in various situations; keeping them engaged and using real techniques. The combat initially was entirely narrated by me when it came to what was happening in the fight. It helped that the kids all trained so they knew moves to try out. Putting this into a rule-set was the real challenge. The simplicity of the engine and the action economy at the time allowed me to flush out the combat and generate lists of techniques based on categories we use in fighting called, pillars. These consist of striking, kicking, throwing, and joint locks/chokes, a.k.a. submissions.
This was an extensive learning experience for myself, as it caused me to think about the martial arts I had been doing for over 20 years in new ways which helped refine and restructure my own curricula when teaching. A good example of this is what we call sweeps in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. They do not really do damage, so having them as ‘attacks’ became empty. Why would a player do a sweep if it does not do damage? This mutated into a deeper line of thinking of when, where, and why we use sweeps in the first place. Without getting into boring details, it came down to finding how to fit such a pivotal real world technique into the combat cycle, while not making the game boring, or so drowned in minutiae that it took 15 to 20 minutes for each player to take their turn. Few people like waiting for what seems like hours until it is time for them to take their turn, and this causes disengagement from the battle, and the game at large. It allows openings for players to pull out their phones and/or start cross talking at the table about work, life, etc and causing distractions for the player whose trying to take their turn. Keeping players engaged and invested even when it is not their turn was yet another goal for the combat, one that will never be perfect, but would be met with several challenges.
To keep the pacing was a primary goal, but before that was depth of combat. Martial arts, specifically hand-to-hand combat in this case, is so much more than, a punch, a kick. How to capture the intricacies and variation in styles and techniques must, in my opinion, be paramount to a martial arts centric RPG. Similarly flat would be a tank RPG one action - FIRE! Personal taste steered me away from the typical blandness of combat in the RPGs I had played, and flavorless combat was the antithesis of what I feel is necessary in a game like this. Avoiding the:
Player: “I swing my sword.”
GM: “Roll to see if you hit.”
Player: “I hit.”
GM: “Roll damage.”
The early version of Fists & Fiends was full of life and action but it was pulpy. High character hit points and even higher enemy hit points (more on this in another post) which made it harder for characters to kill a bad guy, and definitely harder for them to die. While this gives players a power fantasy it fails to offer the edge of your seat, dangerous, gritty, and utterly chaotic reality of combat. Wuxia, a term in China which classifies a style of film or story where the characters perform martial arts combat, but they are augmented by magical powers like flight, extended jumps, crazy acrobatics, extreme resilience to damage, and more. See ‘Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon’ for a mainstream pop-culture reference here.
POLAR OPPOSITES & DIRTY BOXING
The attraction of YZE based games, and why I used them as inspiration is: the low hit points, high stakes, anything can happen style play that induces anxiety around the table. That any given hit could be the first, and the last. The concept of damage going directly to a character’s attributes was also very appealing. Rather than an arbitrary hit point score, damage that causes a character or NPC to have a reduced likelihood of success as a result of their damage is indicative of reality, symbolizing the reduced effectiveness on has as we are being beaten up. All of this as well as the extensive critical injuries tables were definite selling points for a new and dirtier style of fighting that I wanted to capture with Fists & Fiends. All of that is why I switched direction a couple years ago and never looked back.
Coming Up Next…
Roll for…fighting techniques (weapons). “Say what now?!?! I can’t choose my characters techniques?” Why this is an important feature baked into the game. Up next. Stay hooked.
