[Kromm]

Originally Posted by C.W.Richeson

Would you describe this supplement as being more for folk very comfortable with GURPS? I understand GURPS well enough to play and run it (with most of the bells and whistles left out), but the thought of adding even more crunch is a little intimidating.

I'm the author (well, one of 'em), so there's surely some bias here . . . but from least to most crunchy, with page counts for comparison:

Chapter 1 (History) & Chapter 7 (Campaigns) -- 39 pages total -- Essentially systemless advice. Chapter 1 sets up the real-world background and present-day status of the martial arts, while Chapter 7 explains how to fit martial arts into the campaign, and explores the important decisions that the GM must make for a martial-arts game.

Chapter 5 (Styles) -- 71 pages -- Surprisingly rules-light. It's mostly about the history, tactics, and present-day status of real-world styles. There is a list of style abilities for each style, but that's pure hand-holding; it gives you a no-brainer shopping list for a stylist. Similarly, the tactics are explained in rules terms, but that's more hand-holding; it tells you what moves to try in case you're not sure. It's actively newbie-friendly.

Chapter 2 (Characters) -- 35 pages -- A mixture of newbie-friendly templates and advice on which parts of the Basic Set you'll want to pick and choose from when making a martial-artist PC. It's a little crunchy, I'd be the first to admit, but in many ways it simplifies the Basic Set by isolating the subset of options that are really important, and by offering quick-start templates.

Chapter 3 (Techniques) & Chapter 6 (Weapons and Equipment) -- 57 pages total -- Crunchy for sure, describing stats and rules for specific combat moves and weaponry. None of this gets any more complex than the Basic Set, but I won't lie: it gives you more options to use. If your beef with the GURPS rules is less "these rules are too complex" and more "these rules have too much information overhead," then these chapters won't help. If all you care about is complexity, well, this stuff isn't exactly complicated.

Chapter 4 (Combat) -- 44 pages total -- Complex and highly system-specific. It doubles the length of the combat system, and requires a GM who knows the game well to go in and decide which switches to turn on or off. So far, all of the FAQ-worthy stuff and questions-to-the-author about this book have concerned this chapter. You don't need to use any of this stuff to get value out of the book, but you'll get twice your money's worth out of Chapters 2, 3, 5, and 6 if you do use this stuff.

The remaining 10 pages are the endpapers (title page, ToC, intro, glossary, bibliography, and index). There isn't much to be said here, except that the ToC and index are good, so the book is easy to use as a reference; that there is a glossary, so you won't be in the dark about terminology; and that there is a bibliography, if you consider that an important, systemless value-added item.

Whether it's for you . . . only you can judge. I tried to be honest up there, though!