Street Fighter Special Maneuvers -- An Expanded List

I've nearly covered the preliminaries for my house styles list for Street Fighter, but before moving forward I need to set out one more basic piece of information: the list of special maneuvers.

Our main Street Fighter run lasted roughly from the game's release in 1994 until 2003. The bulk of this covered three campaigns, and I still have copious notes. In that time, we added a lot of additional special maneuvers and martial arts styles to the game. What I'm working on now is in many ways little more than a reorganization and clarification of those materials, though of course it is influenced by the other gaming (and thinking about gaming) that I've done since. 

A few years ago, I put together a working table of all the special maneuvers we were using in a single table. That document will be a starting point for the martial arts style project. 

Street Fighter Special Maneuvers (pdf)

I use a lot of shorthand in the maneuver list to make it possible to squeeze all the information into the table format. Some clarifications can be found here. 

These are both "living" documents, which I'll be updating as we progress.

Martial Arts Design for Street Fighter The Storytelling Game: Core Philosophy

Here are the basic assumptions, principles, and guidelines I'll be following to develop the new martial arts list for Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game. These are in no particular order, and probably aren't complete, but they're an indication of where my thinking lies right now.

Inspiration, not simulation: Many of these styles are inspired by real martial arts, but I won't be attempting to model real martial arts in any particularly rigorous way. I'm more interested in a fantastic version of a style that captures something unique about it than I am in detailed, real world accuracy. In the real world, glima, an Icelandic belt-wrestling folkstyle, has a number of restrictions on posture and movement. In the street fighter world, that form of glima exists as a highly ritualized version of the contest, but as used in the street fighter circuit it is a style that combines fierce throws with rune-based chi powers, the icy breath of the north wind, viking berserker rage, and techniques for immediately returning to a standing position if knocked prone.


Account for video game interpretations: That said, I'd like to be able to account for all the video game characters, and video game interpretations of the martial arts will heavily influence the style lists. In the street fighter universe, yoga is a martial art, and Dhalsim is its most famous practitioner. My first stop for representing some styles will be the street fighter video games, but other quality fighting games have a lot to contribute. To that end, I'll take inspiration from SNK games like the Fatal Fury, Art of Fighting, King of Fighters, and Samurai Showdown series. I'll also leave room for inspiration from Tekken and Virtua Fighter.


Look for patterns, and interpret them:This applies to the video game as well. There is a rough correspondence in the video game between Japanese martial arts and the use of hadouken style projectile attacks. It isn't a perfect fit, but it is a tendency. Of the kung fu stylists, only Chun Li has a real projectile attack. That's interesting, and I'll be building it into the style designs on some level. I'll also be looking for similar kinds of patters wherever I can find them.


Styles do not need to be balanced: Game balance won't be a primary issue when designing the styles. Players choose a martial art for their character based on a number of factors, only one of which is the effectiveness of its actual combat maneuvers. The aesthetics of the style are also an important influence. I won't be particularly worried about making sure that all styles have an equal number of maneuvers, for example. I will be trying to ensure that every style has some top-level special maneuvers. This way, if we're using our "multiple styles" rules, there will be some reason to top out in a style to get access to its highest level maneuvers.


Uniqueness, not effects-based design: There's been plenty of talk on blogs and forums about the value of glorious idiosyncrasies when it comes to powers, and I think this approach is the most true to the spirit of the original street fighter rpg. The alternative is a thoroughly effects-based design, which I've pushed the system toward in the past. It's time to pull back from that. An effects-based system can certainly be used to construct a wide variety of unique maneuvers, but they're all built from essentially the same set of core options. Street fighter maneuvers (and by extension, styles) certainly do have shared features, but I will be erring on the side of introducing uniqueness rather than systematicity when it comes to filling in the style lists.

Character Creation

Character creation follows the standard point values, with a few additions and clarifications. This is a summary -- refer to Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game for the default rules.

Assign Starting Points

• Attributes: 7/5/3
• Abilities: 9/7/4
• Backgrounds: 5
• Techniques: 8
• Styles: 5
• Special Maneuvers: 7
• Willpower and Chi: Determined by primary Style (highest level style, or select a primary if more than one style is tied)
• Freebie Points: 18

During this first stage of character creation, Abilities and Techniques cannot exceed a rating of 3 and Attributes cannot exceed a rating of 5.

Freebie Points
Characters begin with a few more freebie points than in the default rules. However, these points are also spent at a slightly different rate. One problem raised by the default core rules is that freebie point costs and XP costs are different. This creates breakpoints during character creation that can be mostly removed by unifying the costs.

The new XP costs will be described in a later post. At this point, it is sufficient to note that the freebie point costs listed below match up to the XP costs.

As in the core rules, you can exceed a rating of 3 in Abilities and Techniques using freebie points.

When spending freebie points, use the following point costs in place of the costs in the core book (p. 39).

• Attributes: 6 per dot (12 per dot past 5?)
  
• Abilities: 1 per dot, 2 per dot past 5
  
• Backgrounds: 1 per dot
  
• Techniques: 1 per level of the desired rating, paid for at each increase (e.g., one point for a new technique at 1, two points to raise a 1 to a 2, three points to raise a 2 to a 3, etc.)
  
• Styles: 2 per dot
  
• Power Points: 1 per dot
  
• Chi: 3 per dot
  
• Willpower: 3 per dot
  
• Health: 4 per dot
  

There are two important notes worth considering at this point. First, Backgrounds can only be bought during character creation. Second, a long-term decision about attribute totals needs to be made during character creation. Points added to attributes during character creation determine the maximum pool of attribute points the character can have in a particular category. The default is 15 (the equivalent of a 5/5/5 attribute outlay). Only if freebie points are spend to increase attributes during character creation can this maximum total be increased: a character who spends 6 freebie points to add 1 physical attribute during character creation can potentially reach a total of 16 attribute points, and so on.

This is a draft based on a discussion we had last night. I've made a couple changes after thinking about things a bit: first, we originally considered the "frontloading" of attributes to be sufficiently restrictive that raising them past 5 wouldn't need to cost more. After thinking about it a bit more, I'm not convinced that it's enough, so I've suggested an extra cost to go past 5. (I'm not sure what this cost should be, but I think it's preferable to keep attributes from jumping past 5 immediately, and increasing the cost should help here by making the jump more of a commitment.)

Street Fighter House Rules: Overview

This is part one of a series of posts where I'll review the current state of our house rules. We're preparing for a new Street Fighter campaign, and these are the rules changes we'll be making. In this post, I'll give a little bit of context. Then I'll move on to specific cases.

Rulebooks:

• Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game
• Secrets of the Shadoloo

Only these two books will be core. We'll be using the base combat rules and special maneuvers from this book, as well as the base character creation rules. We'll be changing how XP is awarded and spent and making changes to the martial arts styles and maneuver lists, but unless otherwise noted, these books form the core rules set. None of the other published supplements will be used.

Changes:
Briefly, here are some of the changes we'll be making.

• Glory and Honor: We won't be using these. They don't work in long term play. The numbers simply don't add up when characters enter regular tournaments, especially when the characters face each other in tournament matches. They break down in the case of NPC villains, as well, who can't succeed in tournament play because they have no way of regaining Chi and Willpower. The only positive outcome we've noticed in play is that honor does make the decision of whether or not to hit a dizzied opponent a real decision. This doesn't match up with how the video game works, but it is generally good in the RPG because of the length of the health track.
  
• Recovering Willpower and Chi: Without Glory and Honor, we'll need another way to regain spent Willpower and Chi. We'll be using a simple method. If you win a fight, you can immediately roll your permanent score in Willpower and in Chi. You regain a number of points equal to your successes. We can then simply add other conditions that allow for a roll to regain points: not striking a dizzied opponent would be one, for example, that would allow you to make this roll in the middle of a fight. Spending a round showing off / posing might be another. In a later post, I'll draft a list of conditions that allow for Will/Chi recovery rolls.
  
• Multiple Styles: We'll be using the "multiple styles" rules I mentioned in my last post.
  
• Styles and Maneuver Lists: We'll be replacing the style lists from the core book. Some styles will go (Kabaddi and Native American Wrestling, I'm looking at you) and be replaced by other styles (Yoga, for example, replaces Kabaddi). In addition, we'll be taking a "style proliferation" approach. Having a large number of styles with relatively small maneuver lists works well with the multiple styles rules and allows for a lot of great character customization.
  
• Freebie Point and XP Streamlining: The XP system needs an overhaul. We've used it for years, and if there's one thing that needs simplification and improvements, it's that. I'll outline our current changes soon.
  

That isn't all we'll be house ruling, but it covers the core issues. We'll also be working with the combo rules clarifications and updated maneuver tables (and other rules notes) from our "Street Fighter Revision" project from 2003 (at the time of this writing, these files are still available here).