What is close fighting?

Yes, it is two people sizing eachother up, waiting for the opponent to falter.
Yes, it is also blocking and striking.
And yes, it is also people slugging it out against each other, with no martial arts-style care for tactics.

It is also mixes between those.

Anyone who claims that real fighting do not include all those things have only met certain kinds of opponents.

I really like WoD Combat and the Streetfighter Storytelling game ... but really, the jump-moves performed in the Classic Streetfighter II games, for instance are not very realistic(especially not Chun Li's ... ) ... except perhaps the dropkicks.

Practically, there are so many ways to define close fighting in rpgs, of which some is opposing.
I really like the detail in WoD Combat, but there may be faults in it ... so i'm now attempting to sort things out ...

Bad war...



In reality I'm not sure how easy it would be to simulate that kind of grappling, gripping, kicking, biting, stabbing, stampeding, shoving, slobbering mess. Confusion rules, completely randomly fluctuating penalties, round by round changes in number of enemies, chance of slipping with every move, trampling..?

Hmmm...how about

Initiative: to model the chaotic back-and-forth
Hit Points:  to model how good you are at managing to stay alive in such a melee, including your ability to take a hit, but also your ability to size up the enemy, avoid blows, seize opportunities, et cetera.



(I know, I know...)

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;644397Hmmm...how about

Initiative: to model the chaotic back-and-forth
Hit Points:  to model how good you are at managing to stay alive in such a melee, including your ability to take a hit, but also your ability to size up the enemy, avoid blows, seize opportunities, et cetera.



(I know, I know...)

We could go crazy and add some kind of singular "to-hit" roll to represent your ability to land a telling blow.

And some kind of "armor class" to represent your ability to avoid injury due to armor and agility.

But seriously modeling "realistic combat" is basically impossible and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of crap.

The best you can hope for is a fun and enjoyable system.

Quote from: Piestrio;644399But seriously modeling "realistic combat" is basically impossible and anyone who tells you otherwise is full of crap.

The best you can hope for is a fun and enjoyable system.

Well, the picture The Traveller posted was pretty telling ...

The problem is that i'm quite fed up with people that have studied martial arts saying "that is not how fighting is done", so i wanted somehow to take different styles of fighting into account ....
And thus, the advice i get is "skip the details you think is good, use the same as always have been used, and give up any ideas in that direction, because it is impossible to both make it realistic enough, and detailed enough, and simple enough".

Did you notice the "enough" there?

Check out GURPS with the Martial Arts supplement. Nicely detailed fighting goodness there, both realistic and cinematic.

Quote from: Catelf;644409Well, the picture The Traveller posted was pretty telling ...

The problem is that i'm quite fed up with people that have studied martial arts saying "that is not how fighting is done", so i wanted somehow to take different styles of fighting into account ....
And thus, the advice i get is "skip the details you think is good, use the same as always have been used, and give up any ideas in that direction, because it is impossible to both make it realistic enough, and detailed enough, and simple enough".

Did you notice the "enough" there?

Well then, try working out your ideas. Work on the core and build out from there. Iterate and improve.

Are you talking about the kind of savage dense melee in the picture or generalised rules for combat? In the former there's room for some elaboration, in the latter it's been done differently for every RPG out there, and there are thousands of RPGs.

Quote from: The Traveller;644392Bad war...

In reality I'm not sure how easy it would be to simulate that kind of grappling, gripping, kicking, biting, stabbing, stampeding, shoving, slobbering mess. Confusion rules, completely randomly fluctuating penalties, round by round changes in number of enemies, chance of slipping with every move, trampling..?

Well I'm put in mind of Tunnels and Trolls system which is wholly abstract bucket of dice, comparing both sides, without modelling individual hits.

I think nWoD is said to be similar, but I'm going on hearsay there.

Quote from: The Traveller;644421Are you talking about the kind of savage dense melee in the picture or generalised rules for combat? In the former there's room for some elaboration, in the latter it's been done differently for every RPG out there, and there are thousands of RPGs.

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;644875Well I'm put in mind of Tunnels and Trolls system which is wholly abstract bucket of dice, comparing both sides, without modelling individual hits.

I think nWoD is said to be similar, but I'm going on hearsay there.

It is possible, right now i care so little about nWoD that i won't even doublecheck in the rulebook i have ....
See, i'm aiming for something .... far more visual, like WoD Combat, which were practically the combat rules for StreetFighter Storytelling Game (which had a lot of specified combat moves, including movement), but highly condensed and revised to fit in the world (and rules) of WoD.

One may compare it to the rules for weapons that somtimes are used, but in this case there are modifiers to strength, speed, and even move for each maneuver, + any other special things that it may have.

What do you mean close fighting?
To me that is floor work, grappling and sticking hands
Or armed it's knives.

I think you can simulate fencing, boxing, Muay thai and general medium range combats quite easily. Close work is much harder.

I have trained at fencing, martial arts, judo and wrestling and the last two are much harder to simulate, largely because of fatigue but also because there is no cadance. In a medium range combat thee is a tempo or cadance to the combat. I attack with an attack sequence or a combo you defend then either you attack or I attack again. Sometimes your defense is itself an attack sometimes not.

Close work doesn't have that.

Quote from: jibbajibba;644923What do you mean close fighting?
To me that is floor work, grappling and sticking hands
Or armed it's knives.

I think you can simulate fencing, boxing, Muay thai and general medium range combats quite easily. Close work is much harder.

I have trained at fencing, martial arts, judo and wrestling and the last two are much harder to simulate, largely because of fatigue but also because there is no cadance. In a medium range combat thee is a tempo or cadance to the combat. I attack with an attack sequence or a combo you defend then either you attack or I attack again. Sometimes your defense is itself an attack sometimes not.

Close work doesn't have that.

This is exactly why nearly all close combat in GURPS is considered "all-out".

Quote from: jibbajibba;644923What do you mean close fighting?
To me that is floor work, grappling and sticking hands
Or armed it's knives.

I think you can simulate fencing, boxing, Muay thai and general medium range combats quite easily. Close work is much harder.

I have trained at fencing, martial arts, judo and wrestling and the last two are much harder to simulate, largely because of fatigue but also because there is no cadance. In a medium range combat thee is a tempo or cadance to the combat. I attack with an attack sequence or a combo you defend then either you attack or I attack again. Sometimes your defense is itself an attack sometimes not.

Close work doesn't have that.

I think that my head may have been a bit absent when i wrote "Close Fighting".
However, you did put your finger on one of the parts that has been troubling me:

Martial arts often seem to build on keeping the distance between attacks and combos, while a wrestler only wants to keep as close as possible.
How do the martial artist's distance-keeping work on a wrestler?
Does it work at all?
The same goes if the martial artist encounters someone who's tactics is to keep close, and slug it out.

Since you have trained both, you may be competent enough to answer, or at least your guessings will be more well-founded than most others here.

Quote from: Catelf;644953I think that my head may have been a bit absent when i wrote "Close Fighting".
However, you did put your finger on one of the parts that has been troubling me:

Martial arts often seem to build on keeping the distance between attacks and combos, while a wrestler only wants to keep as close as possible.
How do the martial artist's distance-keeping work on a wrestler?
Does it work at all?
The same goes if the martial artist encounters someone who's tactics is to keep close, and slug it out.

Since you have trained both, you may be competent enough to answer, or at least your guessings will be more well-founded than most others here.

There are quite a few trained folks on here, a couple of guys have done plenty of sword work.

Most martial arts and I have over the last 30 years stufddied maybe a dozen, are a mix of basics and techniques.
A number of these techniques are to maintain range to be where the style wants it to be. In Muay Thai, you have 3 ranges kicks, punches and elbows/knees. If you are fighting a Jujuitsu guy and you don't want to let them get a grip you use your long range weapons and if they get grapple close you pull out the short range stuff and quickly withdraw.

I recall once years back I was doing Judo and the class was light on folks so I was mated with a big guy, 16 stone, 6 2. I knew if he got hold of me I was done so I broke the judo 'rules' and just parried all his attempts to get a hand grab. Worth saying a lot of martial arts have been altered by rules as they become sports.
In Muay thai you can push kick the legs or do grapples (clinch is fine of course), in judo you can't smack the guy in the face, in boxing you can't knee them in the nads.
MMA kind of removes hte rules so Muay Thai and Jujistsu emerge as dominant styles.
If the jujitsu guy can get into a grapple they usually win. If the Muay Thai guy can land an Elbow or a knee they usually win. Now of course the masters use both styles.
If you can stomach them MMA is good to watch for pure combat. Personally I find it all a little too gladiatorial.

During the very early days of working on my homegrown system, I spent a lot of time research melee combat.

I'd find one source that said X, another that claimed not X. Huge debates over how the modern 'sport' arts don't reflect the reality of real combat. And other endless disagreements.

The one that broke the camel's back for me was the debate between *primary* sources about slashing vs. cutting weapons. The second straw that broke the camel's back was MMA, because if that's what combat looks like- I didn't want it in my games.

Here's what I finally decided for what it's worth.

In the modern world, we have no way of judging fantasy era fighting arts for the simple reason that people don't fight to death with swords anymore (not in the professional numbers required to actually know anything). What we do know about knife and unarmed combat, isn't much fun.

So I just blew over it all and decided to simulate the genre works (both simulation of outcome and simulation of process) that appealed to me. Let others tilt at the windmill of realism. In truth, for those seeking realism I think the more abstract approaches (simple opposed die rolls) work best- for they don't show the flaws.