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Which game or system do you (or would you) use to run a martial arts (as in, East Asian, unarmed martial arts)-focused game, with or without supernatural elements, and why?

Incidentally, does anyone know whether there's ever been a functional, expanded unarmed martial arts sub-system for BRP in print? I've considered hacking the MRQII Combat Style rules to do it, but if there's a good published system out there that anyone knows of, it might do in a pinch.

There hasn't been too much new martial arts stuff outside the big yellow book. But here are a couple links. The first one sounds more rulesy, while the second sounds more world-oriented. They're both on my "pick up pretty soon" list.

http://basicroleplaying.com/showthread.php/1889-DRAGON-LINES-Guardians-of-the-Forbidden-City

http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=6549

Probably Feng Shui. Just locking down time frames or zaniness depending on exactly what sort of martial arts I was looking for.

For all my beefs with MDC, I thought that the SDC system in Ninjas and Superspies worked awesomely for martial arts-y stuff.

I also took part in the playtesting of a game called Fight! (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=79179&filters=0_0_0_0&manufacturers_id=2803) which sought to model fighting games. It was a really, really crunchy system.

RPGObjects (http://www.rpgobjects.com) also has a Modern^20 (http://www.rpgobjects.com/index.php?c=m20) ruleset based loosely on the d20 Modern SRD with its own rather detailed Martial Arts (http://www.rpgobjects.com/index.php?c=product&p_id=331) supplement that, while cool-looking on paper, I've never gotten to play. Cursed gaming groups that don't want to try out new things...

Palladium's Ninjas & Superspies works for me.  Hong Kong Action Theatre was pretty fun chopsocky.  If you like rules light gonzo you can't beat Feng Shui.

N&SS blends well with psionics and magic too.  A GM I knew ran a N&SS campaign in a futuristic psionic world without guns.  It was quite cool and I would love to replicate it one day.

I'll chime in a third time for Ninja's and Superspies, although I think my own game system is more interesting for martial arts.

Fourth one for Ninjas & Superspies :)

I haven't played it as a standalone system, but it looked pretty good. It defines alot of different martial arts styles in alot of detail, along with different level advancement. Perhaps more interesting in terms of choice of moves etc. in combat, while I've only played Feng Shui like twice but its more about the fu powers. Both would let you create a wide variety of different characters, Feng Shui through reskinning various things while N&S you'd have to plug in whatever other Palladium books you own.

I should also mention Heroic Golden Turbulence as possibly of interest. Its a freerpg that's gone to oblivion but still findable on the Wayback Machine (as a series of webpages though, not pdf). Fairly simple; it has a weird dice pool system where you get successes of different colours.

http://web.archive.org/web/20001008120637/www-personal.monash.edu.au/~sbeattie/HGT/hgt1.htm (http://web.archive.org/web/20001008120637/www-personal.monash.edu.au/~sbeattie/HGT/hgt1.htm)

There was also a Street Fighter RPG from White Wolf awhile back that might be adaptable to something useful ...;)

BSJ, NS is kind of about the powers as well. In typical Palladium style, the choices aren't equal at all. I've let my resident power gamer play a martial artist in heroes unlimited and nightbane several times. Even at 1st level, there are ways to get outrageous direct HP damage or automatic throws over +20 all the time. If I let him start with a few levels, it's nothing for him to trash nightbane (though there are plenty of characters and martial artists in that game that couldnt fight their way out of a paperbag).

Quote from: The Butcher;448628Incidentally, does anyone know whether there's ever been a functional, expanded unarmed martial arts sub-system for BRP in print? I've considered hacking the MRQII Combat Style rules to do it, but if there's a good published system out there that anyone knows of, it might do in a pinch.

Howabout Dragon Lines (http://shop.cubicle7store.com/Dragon-Lines-SALE-PRICE)?
I bought a copy a while back but immediately loaned it to a friend... and... I need to get it back... so I can't say much about it, but the reviews I've read were good.

I like Ninjas and Superspies, too. When I'm figuring out what I want a character's martial arts to do in GURPS or Hero, I sometimes look back to N&S for guidelines.

I dearly love Hong Kong Action Theater!. Its sister game, Swords of the Middle Kingdom, takes the same general mechanics and strips away the "actor playing a character" gimmick. We played a very satisfying campaign ripping off Zu, Warriors of the Magic Mountain.

DragonFist has always been my favorite iteration of 2nd ed. D&D.

I like Feng Shui a lot. I feel like it's tied a little more tightly to the world of Shadowfist than most folks do, but that suits me. I love Shadowfist, too.

I liked Ninja Hero a lot and would scatter ninjas through my Justice Inc. games.

I like Qin, but it's its own thing. I wouldn't call it a go-to game.

I still haven't comletely figured out how to play Weapons of the Gods. Sort of. Not really. I can't recomment it.

Fudge has a few different martial arts rules. None are completely awesome.

If folks wanted to play a game off the shelf that used martial arts, I'd probably go with HKAT!. If they wanted to o a campaign involving a particular vision of martial arts, from a movie or something, I'd probably go with Hero. If they wanted to play kinda beer and pretzels with kung fu references, I'd go with Ninjas and Superspies or DragonFist. You can't go wrong with any of those.

Quote from: Simlasa;448752Howabout Dragon Lines (http://shop.cubicle7store.com/Dragon-Lines-SALE-PRICE)?
I bought a copy a while back but immediately loaned it to a friend... and... I need to get it back... so I can't say much about it, but the reviews I've read were good.

Do you have a link to a solid review? It sounds promising.

Quote from: Cranewings;448748BSJ, NS is kind of about the powers as well. In typical Palladium style, the choices aren't equal at all. I've let my resident power gamer play a martial artist in heroes unlimited and nightbane several times. Even at 1st level, there are ways to get outrageous direct HP damage or automatic throws over +20 all the time. If I let him start with a few levels, it's nothing for him to trash nightbane (though there are plenty of characters and martial artists in that game that couldnt fight their way out of a paperbag).

Heya Cranewings. What I was trying to say with my 'powers' comment, which I did badly, was that N&S has sort of a framework of moves anyone can use, spelled out in a fair bit of detail - e.g. you choose to parry, dodge, multiple dodge, throw etc, and then on strikes you then have various damages based on whether your making a one-finger attack, double fist punch, kick etc.
Compare that to Feng Shui and I think the combat moves aren't described in as much detail, except  for a few fu powers you pick, and the GM is kind of expected to improvise more when the PCs try to do something outside the box. (That was my impression, anyway).

Sort of like comparing 3E D&D and 4E, where one has a bigger list of combat actions anyone can do (disarm, trip, grapple, feint, etc), while the other just describes your main options with a powers list that you pick from.

Though you're right, N&S does have powers as well.

You know, I never liked that different moves do different amounts of damage. I usually let people do damage equal to there best non-restricted move. There isn't a reason in NS to mix it up for most characters- they can just spam their turning kick over and over.

Damage per move would make more sense if the moves interacted with each other or had other properties. Sense all you do is pick one, it's shitty that there is always a best one.

Quote from: Cranewings;448764You know, I never liked that different moves do different amounts of damage. I usually let people do damage equal to there best non-restricted move. There isn't a reason in NS to mix it up for most characters- they can just spam their turning kick over and over.

I always suffered the same situation as a GM. That is why for MRQ2 it is assumed that any and every part of the body could be used for unarmed fighting; concatenating the previously different skills and damage dice into single values.

You can model specific types of martial arts in MRQ2 by limiting each style to a certain subset of Combat Manoeuvres. So you could wire techniques like Trip and Disarm to Aikido-like styles, or Sunder and Bash to hard forms like Karate for example. More mystical abilities can be modelled using Heroic Abilities powered by Ki (Magic Points) and only taught to those who have proven themselves to their Sensai (mentor), School (cult) or succeeded in a significant quest (maybe like Musashi's warrior pilgrimage).

Thus not only is MRQ2 easy to hack for a Martial Arts campaign, but the combat is fun too - being able to defeat foes and break limbs without necessarily needing to kill them.

Quote from: stu2000;448754DragonFist has always been my favorite iteration of 2nd ed. D&D.

I only heard of this after it was long out of print. Do you have a link to a review or overview of some sort?

Well the MRQ2 hack is interesting.

On the palladium damage thing ...I haven't seen the book in years but...yep it probably would be better if you weren't just using the same move over and over.  

Having one value for damage is the simple solution, but it might be more satisfying to mix it up a bit so there's more choices for PCs.  You could mix it up a bit by having them do fights on ball bearings where they can't Kick without falling over or occasionally having them break an arm so they can't double fist punch, but if you wanted to houserule it the other way...Palladium has a fairly wide range of possible damage values for melee weapons (a nonmagical hand weapon might anything from d4 to 4d6 or so IIRC) so the different damage values do work, you could just add some other modifiers to counter-balance the effects.

*kicks - do these ever count as more than one attack? (or is that just the basic HtH: Martial Arts version?): or you could add a penalty to strike/bonus to opponent parry for it being slow.

*one-finger strike: mostly just for using Atemi abilities, leave as is?

*punch: leave as standard attack?

*double-fist punch: maybe using this gives a penalty to parry briefly (compare to paired weapons, which costs you automatic parry completely)

*headbutt: briefly dazed if you fumble; lose next attack/action.

(and I've probably forgotten quite a few completely)

Quote from: Rubio;448786I only heard of this after it was long out of print. Do you have a link to a review or overview of some sort?

No, but let's see what I can find . . .
The blue page has one, but this here is interesting . . .
Someone posted a short description and the rules on Scrib'd. I took a quick look at it, and it doesn't seem like a rewrite or a summary. I think it's the same free pdf I downloaded back in the day. You might just want to take a look at it.

http://www.stargazersworld.com/2008/12/10/scribd-gem-dragon-fist/

GURPS Martial arts. If the game was actually combat focused I would use this.

I am quite unsurprised at the Ninjas & Superspies love. It's my favorite martial arts system as well, and in fact it's the only one I can claim any experience with. Also vying with Rifts for my favorite Palladium game, and like Rifts I have a love/hate thing with it.

I love it because it makes martial arts styles a meaningful choice (e.g. Shaolin Kung Fu is not the same as Ch'a Chu'an or Leopard Style) from a mechanical viewpoint, without getting mired in detail. I hate it because Palladium character generation drives me fucking nuts; also, skills and gear are hopelessly outdated, which makes it fairly difficult to run anything set after the 1980s, and thus it's not ideally suited for the Jason Bourne-ish game I had in mind.

Of course, these are mostly fixable (though updating the tech would require plenty of research), but I'm hoping to find a game the can give me the good (mechanically distinct martial arts styles without Rolemasteresque oodles of crunch), with less of the bad.

Feng Shui and HKAT I'm only vaguely familiar with it. Do they support "my Leopard style is unstoppable! Your Crane style is weak and obsolete!" type play, or do they handle styles abstractly?

I've read praise for GURPS Martial Arts before. Is it of any use for anyone not playing or running GURPS? How adaptable is it to another generic system, e.g. BRP or SW?

Pete, thanks for the suggest MRQII hack. This is fairly close to what I had in mind, and I'll give it serious consideration.

Thank you all!

Quote from: The Butcher;449106Feng Shui and HKAT I'm only vaguely familiar with it. Do they support "my Leopard style is unstoppable! Your Crane style is weak and obsolete!" type play, or do they handle styles abstractly?

They do. FS seems a little more abstract. HKAT! has different moves that do different damage. They're both pretty operatic. FS has you doing all kinds of enhanced stuff. HKAT! has you doing some resource management each round, as though you were choreographing the fight. Which, of course, in that game, you are.

GURPS and Hero can become a handful to keep track of if you aren't familiar with the systems. But as you gain familiarity, they aren't overwhelming.

Both RQ (Ninja) and RoleMaster (Oriental Companion) had fairly decent stabs at a martial arts sytems that sort of made sense. The only thing I recall about RM was that it had its own Martial Arts critical hit tables which were funny, even on the lower critical hit results.

I like how Palladium does it in Ninjas and Superspies/Mystic China.

RPGPundit

Monkey Journey to the West by Newt Newport.

If you don't like cards as a randomiser it's probably not for you but for everyone else it is a simple and fast moving Kung Fu actioner.

Qin is also pretty good, though its not so much "martial arts" as it is "ancient chinese weapons training + wuxia".

RPGPundit

I find Ninjas & Superspies interesting and Mystic China fascinating, but their actual play value has been limited to source material for other games, as I have tries multiple times to get characters generated for the game but never completed the effort.

I had an "Enter the Dragon" inspired game of Spycraft 2.0 called "The Island of Dr. Shang" that worked excellently, and I would like to investigate again soon some day.