[RPG]: GURPS Martial Arts, reviewed by Rev_Pee_Kitty (5/5)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13331.phtml

Reverend Pee Kitty's Summary:

An enjoyable and comprehensive book, covering everything from unarmed combat to knights dueling on the battlefield. A wealth of advice and history coexists with crunchy rules, which are easily adjusted from gritty realism to outright wuxia.

Go to the full review for more information.

[C.W.Richeson]

Thanks for the review, Reverend Pee Kitty!

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.

[buzz]

How did your playtest of this product go? What was awesome about the book when used at the table?

[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!

[Spectral Knight]

Originally Posted by C.W.Richeson

Thanks for the review, Reverend Pee Kitty!

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 own an earlier edition of this book. It's definitely crunchy, but if your campaign is more combat-oriented, it's worth its weight in gold. It's also great for inspiration: Spacer Kung-Fu inspired the fighting arts used by a spacefaring independent culture in a homebrewed sci-fi game I played in the past.

[nanoboy]

Originally Posted by Spectral Knight

I own an earlier edition of this book. It's definitely crunchy, but if your campaign is more combat-oriented, it's worth its weight in gold. It's also great for inspiration: Spacer Kung-Fu inspired the fighting arts used by a spacefaring independent culture in a homebrewed sci-fi game I played in the past.

The new edition is almost completely different. If you thought that the old Martial Arts book was good, then you'll be prepared to kill for the new version. It's a complete rewrite, and it's totally awesome.

[OldSam]

Overall a really nice review!
But...
I think you should sometimes be a bit more accurate with your quotes!
(seems you were a little too enthusiastic )

One thing that I noticed - you wrote:
"Did you know that most ninja were members of the samurai clan?"

In fact this is not written in the book - at least I didn't read it. I think you refer to p.13 where it is said "...that several samurai clans were verifiably ninja or had members with ninja-like skills."
Different statement: Some or maybe many but not most of the ninja!
(Would be really hard to find evidence for such a statement... )

And you wrote: "In fact, shuriken were known as a samurai weapon more than anything"...also a dangerous quote I'd say...

The text-statement that "...authors have also wrongly designated weapons often used by samurai - such as the shuriken and kusarigama - 'ninja weapons' - ..."
does not automatically lead to the conclusion that these were known a lot... Actually I would argue the other way around that it is maybe more likely that they were not known very much because in fact several authors did not know about them and wrote wrong stuff...
Though it is of course correct what is written in the book that they were 'many' samurai using these weapons. Unfortunately there is no statement or given source that tells us how many samurai really used this weapons in relation to the standard-weapons like katana, naginata, yari etc. (which is probably hard to say).

[Rev_Pee_Kitty]

Originally Posted by C.W.Richeson

Thanks for the review, Reverend Pee Kitty!

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.

Sean answered this in his way, so let me approach the answer from a different direction by saying that, in many ways, the "crunch" can be used in a fairly non-crunchy manner. Let me explain...

Many of the new combat rules and all of the techniques can serve as nothing more than a silent reference sheet for the GM. Rather than trying to actively throw them into the mix, you can just wait until one of your players says something like, "Okay, he's on the ground? I'm going to boot him in the head as hard as I can." That's when you can pull out Martial Arts and use the rules for a Stamp Kick. Many of the combat options are very FAQ-like -- for example, the rules on how being grappled affects your defense. Like much of GURPS Campaigns, it can serve as a reference in the middle of combat for situations that (A) happen to come up during the course of combat and aren't handled in detail in GURPS Campaigns or (B) involve one of your players wanting to try something new and crazy that GURPS Martial Arts happens to cover. None of the above requires actually learning a bunch of new rules and forcing everyone to become familiar with them -- it's all just using the rules as they're needed.

(And if one player finds that s/he uses a given Technique a few times after learning that it's possible, that player may just want to put some points into it as a signature move and use it even more. This builds comfort with the concept a little bit at a time.)

Now, you should arguably only use Styles for someone who wants to build a serious martial artist. Having 1 point in Two-Handed Sword does not necessarily mean the character needs to learn all of Longsword Fighting. That being said, I've used Styles with "casual fighter" characters as a tool for giving them some suggested tactics in combat and ideas for what skills to take. For example, in my current game, one player wanted to know Tae Kwon Do. She didn't want a black belt or anything -- she just wanted a little bit of combat effectiveness. After pulling out GURPS Martial Arts and letting her read the Style writeup for TKD, she (A) had an idea for how a TKD fighter would fight and (B) knew what traits she'd take if she were building a serious, dedicated TKD practitioner. Since she wasn't, of course, she just took Karate skill and the Kicking technique, for a form of "TKD Lite".

It's important to understand that you're only offered additional OPTIONS with this book. It's important to decide which ones you're most comfortable using in your game. It is possible to pick and choose every single section in the book -- there's nothing that can't be skipped over without hurting the stuff you do want to add. You could decide that your players will love styles and the new weapons, but will hate techniques, and that you'll use only two or three of the new combat rules, for example. That's perfectly valid and easy to implement.

[Rev_Pee_Kitty]

Originally Posted by buzz

How did your playtest of this product go? What was awesome about the book when used at the table?

I mentioned some of this in the review -- essentially, everyone loved the fact that there was basically nothing they could do in melee combat that the book didn't already cover. "Okay, with my Power Blow I rolled... whoa, that's a great damage roll! Can I cut through BOTH his legs?" My response: "Let me just turn to that page... ah, here we go. 'Extreme Dismemberment'. Here's what you need to roll to carry the swing through to his second leg."

The rules for Styles made it easy for players to build PCs with martial training. We used the rules in a WWII-era game, and one player knew Judo and Jujutsu. She listed all of the techniques for both styles on her sheet, and used that as a reference for what she was trained in in combat. (And, as she was a great roleplayer, she'd even try less effective Judo (which is a sport more than a combat style) moves in combat when it seemed appropriate, since that's what her character was primarily trained in.)

I have yet to run an outright "Martial Arts Game" with these rules. Instead, I've just been using them as needed to flesh out characters and make rulings in combat. For example, in my last game session, we pulled this book out when a bad guy fell and one player asked, "Hey, did they update Stamp Kick to the new edition? Because I want to boot this guy in the head, hard!"

(I do plan on running a few dedicated martial arts adventures at Hallowcon next month, so I'll probably come back to this thread and comment on how it went. The theme this year is pirates, so whoever runs cold steel through the most pirate hearts will be the winner each time. Arrrrr. <grin>)

[Asen_G]

Originally Posted by OldSam

And you wrote: "In fact, shuriken were known as a samurai weapon more than anything"...also a dangerous quote I'd say...

The text-statement that "...authors have also wrongly designated weapons often used by samurai - such as the shuriken and kusarigama - 'ninja weapons' - ..."
does not automatically lead to the conclusion that these were known a lot... Actually I would argue the other way around that it is maybe more likely that they were not known very much because in fact several authors did not know about them and wrote wrong stuff...
Though it is of course correct what is written in the book that they were 'many' samurai using these weapons. Unfortunately there is no statement or given source that tells us how many samurai really used this weapons in relation to the standard-weapons like katana, naginata, yari etc. (which is probably hard to say).

Actually, here is a link that states clearly samourai were using shuriken-jutsu, since it is studied in the oldest bu-jutsu school. It is just that ninja made more use of them, because on the battlefield, a bushi would prefer using a bow and arrows (and would have themreadily available), but for secrete operations, shuriken are definitely better, I'd imagine.
I expect the book to be a good one, if the author found this kind of informartion, but alas, I haven't got it yet!