[OSSR] STREET FIGHTER: THE STORYTELLING GAME TURBO

[Koumei]

The music for this review will be old Street Fighter 2 music, such as the awesome opening stuff and of course Guile's theme. The drink will be Glenfiddich single malt, because that's what I have available. It'd probably be more appropriate to make a bunch of fireballs or any of these.

Spoiled for size:

The cover. Serious business.

So, it's 1994. Super Street Fighter II is super popular, SNK aren't that big outside of Japan yet and the only real competition for Street Fighter is, at least in the West, Mortal Kombat 2, which people are trying not to admit isn't a great game and it actually is the novelty value of punching someone's head off.

Oh also White Wolf is popular (amongst roleplayers) I guess. They have Vampire and stuff, looking all stylish and drawing people in, but haven't yet released their D&D-killer Exalted (this is a joke). For that matter, D&D hasn't yet evolved into 3rd edition and set a new standard that will never be reached again. Shit, I'm just in the history phase here and I want to drink.

Anyway, they decided an obvious good idea would be to slam the two together, so that's what we have: Street Fighter (a game all about fighting) as a White Wolf (who claim that fighting is lame and beneath them) RPG. It's not the weirdest thing to happen with Street Fighter characters. That is reserved for either Puzzle Fighter, Gem Fighters Mini Mix, Capcom vs Tecmo, Smash Brothers, or the Street Fighter Movie (your choice).

So here we are... let it begin. First thing first, let's talk about art quality. Now, the cover was... reasonably well done but with weird faces? I mean, it's passable. Our next picture looks like it may have been pencil drawn, it's a picture of Blanka, but it's reasonably good. But then you just get shit like this:



Or this:



This is the typical quality you get. Speaking of quality, the opening fiction takes up several pages and is shit, so you're not getting it. Instead I'm going to skip past that to where they're waffling about what a roleplaying game is, and the example of play, and mention that it's this early that they say you use 10-sided dice. Only page 13 and they already remembered!

Also they have the usual cautionary note about only training martial arts properly and not simply kicking your friends in the face. Note that they haven't released LARP rules for this.


OR HAVE THEY?

We then get a brief description of the characters from the game (as of SF2, not Turbo, so Cammy and T-Hawk but no Gouki, also they use the American names so it's Balrog the boxer, not Mike Bison), and their fighting styles - even Sir Not Appearing In This Book. Also talks about Chi, sensei, glory, honour, teams, what happens when you break "the code" (because every White Wolf game needs some kind of Ten Commandments list where you gradually go down (Humanity) or up (Torment) as you act like more of a shit). Oh and a picture of Chun Li that... I wish I could scan this. Judging by her stance and face, it looks like she's either taking it up the ass or taking a fierce shit. The next picture is of a clothed monkey standing on the head of an enraged Stereotypical Indian man? Oh god, this is White Wolf multiplied by Capcom. I hope that really is supposed to be a clothed monkey and not their idea of a black man.

They discuss the ideas of tournaments, with a promise to cover them in more depth later on, because that's a really big thing - what with most Street Fighter video games having the following plot:

• There is a tournament
• Lord Vega is in some way behind it and has an evil plot

The exception of course being SF3 which has the following plot:

• Fight about it.

That did not need the List code.

We then get some talk about arenas and what they're like, by region. So you get a basic description of the area and one paragraph each on specific arenas in the games (so North America has 4 paragraphs, followed by Guile's Tarmac, Ken's Docks, and Balrog's Strip). By the way, Shadoloo is behind the deforestation of the Amazon. Also I know Cammy is British, but I was not aware that she owned a castle and butler.

Africa

Okay, I'm just going to take a few drinks now to prepare myself for whatever is coming next.

Many strange creatures are rumoured to inhabit the Congo, the deepest and most unexplored portion of the continent. Some people whisper about mutants, perhaps similar to Blanka; others say an intelligent ape lives there, although none believe he is a street fighter.

For the record, Blanka actually learned his powers (and presumably his green skin as well) by observing electric eels. He's not a weird mutant or "what we think people from Brazil are like". He just studied hard to become like an electric eel. And you CAN teach that.

Next post will start on the rules, which at least seem workable and are less bad, I'd say, than any other Combat System White Wolf has ever cared to produce. Also less bad than Ninjas & Superspies, so there is that. I'll let you sit and wonder as to how they address the issue of ~4 players in a game based on 1-on-1 combat!

In the meantime, have some pictures that are better quality, and that suggest what would happen if this stayed a strong line all the way through to the SVC/CVS games:

[Josh_Kablack]

I. Thank you so much for attempting this one.

II. Your chronology of SF2 characters is not 100% precise. The WW game book has the characters from SUPER Street Fighter II: The New Challengers -- which introduced Cammy, Fei Long, DeeJay, and T. Hawk and Dan. SUPER was the Fourth game in the Street Fighter II line, and followed Street Fighter II TURBO Hyper Fighting. (Which had only the 12 characters from the prior Street Fighter II game (Championship Edition). But it's an easy mistake to make as the fifth game in the Street Fighter II series was SUPER Street Fighter II TURBO aka SUPER TURBO aka {long string of adjectives} Street Fighter II with a twist of lemon. That one introduced Akuma as a "secret" boss, and I don't recall Akuma being mentioned at all in the core book for the WW game.

[Ancient History]

Takes notes for own fighting game.

[Koumei]

I. Thank you so much for attempting this one.

II. Your chronology of SF2 characters is not 100% precise. The WW game book has the characters from SUPER Street Fighter II: The New Challengers -- which introduced Cammy, Fei Long, DeeJay, and T. Hawk and Dan.

Wait, Dan was in Super?

and followed Street Fighter II TURBO Hyper Fighting.

When I said "Turbo isn't out yet", I meant Super Turbo, yeah. I wasn't referring to the non-Super line of about thirty title variants.

You are correct about Akuma/Gouki: this game pre-dates Super Turbo, which means they miss out in a couple of key things: Gouki/Akuma being a character, Ansatsuken/Dark Shotokan/True Shotokan being a martial art, and of course the motherfucking Super Gauge. Note that fighting games did exist with a Super Gauge at that point (hi, SNK!), but not Street Fighter games.

If anyone were to make a modern version (as opposed to the 20th Anniversary compilation some fans put together, which is just a compilation with editing), then including a Super Gauge would be one of the first requirements. At least for Super Moves - the other uses some games have would be optional, but busting out a Shinku Hadouken would not be.

[Josh_Kablack]

wait, Dan was in Super

Nope. That one was my memory going senile.

[Koumei]

So, the basic system/rules:

First up, this is basically The White Wolf System. Obviously each one is different in its own way, but has a basic core in the sense of what your Attributes are called and how you determine a dice pool and so on.

1. They give the table for what Difficulties denote (as in, the TN on the die), but they say the default is 6 unless something specifically says otherwise. They also warn the ST against setting it to 2 ("you may as well forego rolling") or 10 ("it is close to impossible - the chances of success are the same as those of botching").

2. Speaking of which, it does the thing where 1s cancel successes and if 1s outnumber successes it's a botch. You know, the shitty one. Though when I get to the combat section, there'll at least be good news there.

3. Unless you're doing an Extended or Contested test, one hit is all you need to succeed, even if it is a "marginal success".

4. Yes, they still do the thing where it says a character with a Skill at 5 dots is "Outstanding" and is possibly the best in the world and doesn't mention that it's your total dice pool that matters, not your skill rating. But they always do that.

5. If your dice pool equals or exceeds the listed Difficulty, you can choose to auto-succeed with 1 basic success (instead of rolling). Also you can spend 1 WP for 1 auto success, whether you're rolling or not.

So... character creation. Right at the start, you choose a concept and a fighting style. Okay, not a bad move. Being "A Sambo wrestler" or "a mystic fire-breathing Indian" is probably a bigger difference on your character than "having been bitten by a Toreador" or "Being born beneath a Waning Moon".

You get 7/5/3 for Attributes. Was that the norm back in the day? At any rate if you primarily use energy attacks you're going 5/3/7 because Mental stats are used for Chi stuff (Wits for speed, Intelligence for damage. You learn this at page fucking 126) but you still want Stamina to Soak. If you are a physical fighter you want 7/3/5 because you use Physical stats for your attacks, but you want Wits and Perception for priority tie-breakers (more on that later, but again, they take their fucking time telling you this). The takeaway from this is that whereas most WW games have a lot of investigation and politicking and socialisation, and combat can be entirely bypassed with "I use Mind Control. I roll three successes, I automatically win.", this game... less so. Okay so you probably DO have some investigation stuff? But that's a side dish to your combat. And your combat is combat, not mind control magic.

Here's my suggestion: cut the Social tab entirely. You have 7 and 5 dots and you decide whether you're more Physical or Mental. The social side of the game will come up with sufficiently low frequency that everyone can just roleplay it, like they want you to anyway.

Oh also, while you can't start with anything higher than 5, the game does specifically say you can train them up beyond that with XP. So that's cool.

Abilities are 9/7/4, with the following sets of six each, pretty sure that's smaller than normal:
-Talents: Alertness, Interrogation, Intimidation, Insight, Streetwise, Subterfuge
-Skills: Blind Fighting, Drive, Leadership, Security, Stealth, Survival
-Knowledges: Arena, Computer, Investigation, Medicine, Mysteries, Style Lore

Note that you do not just have Dodge or Brawl or Martial Arts or whatever here. That gets its own entire special thing, as it probably should.

You get 5 Background points to distribute between: Allies, Animal Companion (I do not recall this being a thing in Street Fighter - were they thinking of Samurai Showdown perhaps?), Arena, Backing, Contacts, Fame, Manager, Resources, Sensei, and Staff. You could probably do the WW crossover thing and just have Relics or Rituals or Horoscope or whatever and nobody would blink.

You then get 8 Technique points to distribute between Punching, Kicking, Grappling, Blocking, Athletics and Focus. These are used for your dice pools in combat, and also determine what moves you can learn.

Then you get 7 points to spend on learning moves. It's not enough, but to be honest, nothing here is enough. They give write-ups on a bunch of the characters from the games and it's crazy how much XP was needed to make them.

After this you just get your Glory and Honour (both types of "Renown"), which is a case of having 2 in one of them and 1 in the other or maybe having 3 in one and 0 in the other(choices!) and 10 Health Levels (no Wound penalties, also you can use freebies and XP to increase this, all the way to a maximum of 20. I can hear Frank swearing at them from here, and I'm on the other side of the planet and typing this before he can possibly read it). For the record, most fighting games would be best represented entirely through Soak and damage scaling, not through getting more HP - even in games where some characters actually do have more or less HP, it's still represented by the same health bar and they lose a larger or smaller % of that bar from different attacks.

Also you get your starting Willpower and Chi, which are determined by your Style.

This has been a boring (and also irritating!) section. Next post will cover Renown and Styles, and maybe actually get into the mechanics of combat - the important part of the game.

For the record, if ever I'm pulled into an oWoD game again, I'm going to ask to play a Street Fighter. Just because I think WW fans deserve to be reminded that this is a thing.

And here's something to add some colour to an otherwise dry post:

[Mask_De_H]

Mechanically, I still think SFRPG is one of the best WW games and it sure as shit is the best WW game I've played that didn't get me laid.

There was a shovelware Exalted product which had an updated version of the SFRPG, but IP scrubbed and simplified a bit. Only worthwhile thing in the book.

[icyshadowlord]

Wait, this actually was a thing? Damn, I missed out on so much being born in the backwater village of Europe called Finland.

[Koumei]

RENOWN
So you have two types of this. Honour is your "If it runs out you're an NPC" thing. Also at the end of each combat you roll your permanent Honour (it does the thing where you need to load up 10 Temporary points to convert to 1 permanent gain, you don't have a pool of Honour points that you spend), and each hit lets you replenish one WP or Chi.

Glory is your fame, so it determines how much of a big-shot you are (and thus, your treatment). Obviously you will also get challenged more when everyone knows you're awesome.

There is a massive chart for actions that can affect your ratings, and it's at an angle just to piss people off! So you get things like "Not striking a Dizzied opponent: +1 Honour and +1 Glory", "Striking a Dizzied opponent: -1 Honour", "Using a Firearm in a tournament: -1 Permanent Honour and Glory".

Also Shadoloo operatives are more or less without Honour, so Lord Vega doesn't have to worry about the penalties for repeatedly using attacks against which his foes have an inherent weakness.



STYLES!
Note to self: don't include a picture of AJ Styles

Okay, so here are all the styles in the core rules: Capoeira, Kabaddi (Dhyana Buddhism/Yoga), Kung Fu (all of them as one art), Native American Wrestling, Sambo, Shotokan Karate, Special Forces Training, Sumo, Western Kickboxing, Wu Shu.

That is fucking pitiful. They should at least cover every single Style represented by the cast of characters. Ideally you would have Judo or Jujutsu or Aikido. Maybe fucking Ninjutsu, is that so hard? Yes they're covered in later books, but they are staples of martial arts. Yes, Muay Thai and Boxing wait for later books despite having characters (miniboss characters but still) who use them. Fuck, why did they not just have "Kick Boxing" and let that cover Muay Thai AND Western?

Capoeira gives 2 Chi, 5 WP, and has a pretty limited moveset - some decent kicks, flippy shit, zero blocks, the headbutt and bite (which I think might be more of a "This is Blanka" thing), and the air roll attack Blanka uses. Note: it doesn't specifically let you channel electricity, that's a move anyone can learn if they have enough Focus.

Kabaddi gives 5 Chi, 2 WP, and is Dhalsim. No punches, one kick... in fact very limited in everything except Focus (gets heaps of them, often with a discount in the cost). Yes, it does teach you the Yoga Flame, Yoga Teleport, and Extendible Limbs. It's a Zen thing.

Kung Fu is the style of Fei Long, aka Bruce Lee. He might have been the most boring character before Alpha, and it's altogether possible he was still more boring than any introduced in that. Or in 3 maybe. Anyway, 4 Chi, 3 WP, and a wide variety of punches, kicks and focus techniques, losing out on grabbing and athletics. Blocking isn't too bad. I mean, when you bundle all Kung Fu variants together, you're going to get a grab-bag like that. No, they don't have a move for grabbing your bag. You might be thinking of Phoenix Eye in Ninjas & Superspies (TM).

Native American Wrestling (T-Hawk). Chi 3, WP 4, no Blocking moves, only one Kick, more punches than you'd think, loads of grabs, and a bit of athletics and focus stuff. It's slightly less "pure wrestling" than Sambo, and according to the T-Hawk character, that seems accurate.

Sambo is... sorry, not Sambo, Sanbo.

Sanbo boxes

Sanbo is a type of origami box. Sambo on the other hand, does not appear in this book, but it's what Zangief does, and it's an actual wrestling form taught in Russia. No it's not a one-off typo, they repeatedly call it Sanbo. Anyway it's 1 Chi, 6 WP, and is almost only Grab attacks. 8 is the maximum for any stat, by the way, and Zangief has 7 in Strength, Stamina and Grab.

Shotokan Karate is... okay, in the US version, it's what Ryu and Ken practice, and then Akuma uses Dark Shotokan and Ryu dabbles in it, hence occasionally transforming into Evil Ryu. In Japan, they all study Ansatsuken ("Assassin's Fist"), a killing art, and Ryu and Ken have both been taught a "softer" version of it, adapting it to a less lethal style designed for self-perfection. Gouki flat-out uses regular Ansatsuken, and sometimes Ryu's "killing intent" is awoken and he fights all out. What I'm saying is, this has nothing to do with Karate and everything to do with "Ryu and Ken Clone" characters.



Special Forces Training is the catch-all term used for the training of characters like Guile and Cammy. As such they learn no blocking or focus moves, the only athletics move is Cannon Drill, but they have a bunch of punches, kicks and grabs. BASICS!

Cammy has Dex and App 6. Chun-Li only has App 5 (but Dex 7). Writer's preferences showing?

Sumo Wrestling! Yes, three types of wrestling made it in, although this one has literally one Grab move. It actually doesn't grant many moves in general. Did you know E Honda had Str 6 Dex 5 Sta 7? Neither did I! ...he also has Appearance 3. Writer confirmed as a chubby chaser?

Western Kickboxing is what Dee Jay does, and it is a form of boxing that allows for kicking, developed in Western countries. As the name implies. Mostly punches and kicks. As the name implies.

Wu Shu makes an appearance, because that's what Chun Li uses. Not much in the way of Blocking, Grabbing or Punching, but a good number of Athletics and Focus options and heaps of Kicks.

Now, despite all this, there are a number of universal moves that are available to any Style to learn, just some get specific discounts. On the universal list there are 9 punches (plus 3 automatic starting ones everyone gets), 10 kicks (plus 3 automatic starting ones everyone gets), 13 Grabs (plus one basic "Grab someone" designed more for just holding someone still, that everyone egets), 8 Athletics moves (plus "move", which everyone has - this is moving around), 6 Blocks (plus the one basic Block everyone gets), and 11 Focus moves. Anybody can figure out a Fireball with enough Focus, it's just that Yoga and Shotokan spend fewer points to learn it.

Your punches and kicks are of course:
Jab, Strong, Fierce
Short, Forward, Roundhouse

Go ahead and call them X, Y, Z and A, B, C

Next post I'm going to actually talk about the combat system and how that works. And ways in which it does actually work! I will then go back a chapter to point out some of the more entertaining/interesting/stupid special moves, and yes, they gave lists of moves before explaining how it works, because of course they fucking did.

That's all for another post, so here's some R. Mika (who doesn't appear until some time during the Zero/Alpha series) to tide people over.

[maglag]

Great review so far!

[Red_Rob]

I was going to say maybe you should spoiler some of those images, but really when you read a Koumei review you know what you are getting into.

[Ancient History]

...can't throw stones, I did worse on the Dominion Tank Police OSSR.

[Mask_De_H]

The funniest thing I remember about Glory/Honor rules was they were about half genre enforcement (no knife/gun/stick to a fistfight, this was before anyone cared about Sodom or Eagle or Rolento) and half scrub bullshit (no attacking a Dizzied opponent, no move spam, no turtling)

[DSMatticus]

I haven't read a single word of this review yet and I'm already enjoying it.

EDIT:

For the record, Blanka actually learned his powers (and presumably his green skin as well) by observing electric eels. He's not a weird mutant or "what we think people from Brazil are like". He just studied hard to become like an electric eel. And you CAN teach that.

I want that to be true too much to risk googling it.

[Koumei]

FIGHT!


Here is some combat in action.

Okay, so here's what your typical attack might look like:

Jab
Prerequisites: None
Power Points: Any 0 (Free)
The attacker makes a quick punch to the face of their opponent.
System: -
Cost: -
Speed: +2
Damage: -1
Move: +0

Here's what all that means: the move has no prerequisites (which are listed as Ratings in the different Forms (Punching, Kicking etc) as well as other moves, they don't require Attribute investments, also holy shit is this starting to look like an early draft of Exalted Charms), and everyone can learn it by spending 0 PP. Other moves might have Prereqs of Kick ** Ath * Jump and PP of Wu Shu 2, Any 3 - in that case, the move would be learnable to anybody for 3 PP (the "spend these to learn moves" points), or 2 PP for those who do Wu Shu, and to learn it you'd need the Jump move and at least 2 dots in Kicking and one dot in Athletics.

It has no special rules - anything like "This is an Aerial Move" or "This causes Knockdown" or special ranges and AoE things fits in System. It costs nothing to use - other attacks might mention a Willpower or Chi expenditure. It doesn't reduce your movement (or give you bonus movement) to use it (so before attacking you can move up to your Athletics rating in hexes - yes, they use battlemaps IN A WHITE WOLF GAME), and when you roll damage, it will be Strength - 1 (Jab is very weak). But for Speed, this is where we get into the in-depth of the core system:

At the start of a round, each participant secretly selects one move. You're supposed to write them on little cards, and place your card face-down, making a note of your Dexterity + the move's innate Speed (so a Dex 3 character would Jab at Speed 5). Focus moves use a different stat instead of Dex, see previous post. They then declare Speed, a tie resulting in comparing Wits, and a tie in THAT resulting in comparing Perception. If that's a tie, you do a roll off.

The slower character then gets to move and, when they finish moving, attack. Except at any point the other player can shout "OBJECTION!" and interrupt. They can choose to just wait and see what the other person does, but they can also jump in and go first. You can even interrupt between "declaring they're attacking" and "making the attack" (which isn't stated by the "step by step explanation of how it works", but covered in the example).

You have to move then attack (or attack without moving, or move without attacking), not the other way round, and unused movement is wasted - some moves allow a spring attack, but they are not the standard, and that is specifically to avoid cases of someone waiting for the enemy to almost use their movement up advancing, then interrupt to pinball off them and land out of range. You can of course just move out of range and forfeit the attack you were going to do, but that won't achieve much.

When the interrupt ends, the other character can resume their turn, able to keep moving (if they have movement left) and attack (if relevant). Yes, a battle between six people could have five interrupts. Actually ten... I'll get to that later.

This is the core of it, and I like it. It more or less covers the Priority system (where certain characters and moves hit first when both of them launch "simultaneous" attacks), it makes your movement and positioning somewhat important, there are benefits for winning Initiative without being as crazy as WW usually does... it works pretty well for modelling a fighting game.

Now, it's worth noting something: if you activate a move and they're in range? You hit. Roll damage. Accuracy is not a thing any more, you go straight to damage.

Damage is your Strength (or whatever I said determines the power of Focus moves in a previous post) + your rating in that technique (so a punch is Strength + Punch) + the damage modifier of the attack itself (so Strength 4 Punch 2 with the Jab is 4 + 2 - 1 = 5), minus your opponent's Stamina (holy shit, soak built into your damage roll! Exalted DID learn from this!), you roll those dice and all hits are subtracted as lost health levels.

That's right. One roll to determine the attack, damage and soak. It's amazing, I love it. Pity the damage only scales 1:1 rather than the triangular thing used by Shadowrun, but whatevs, you can buy extra Health Levels so they handle it that way. Note that you always get at least one die regardless of Soak.

Incidentally, if you use a Block move (before your opponent hits you), you add your Block rating to your Stamina for the purpose of Soak, unless it's an Unblockable move (like all Grabs). Blocks also give you +2 Speed on your next turn, prevent Knockdown (except by attacks that ignore Blocking), and can be used as an Abort:

If a move (probably always defensive) can be used as an Abort, then you can choose to use that instead of the card you originally drew. Obviously you do this before using your move, you don't get to do both. This can change your speed (and indeed, Blocking has a Speed bonus) and thus can change the order... you can interrupt someone who interrupted you. This is the bit about a six-way fight possibly having ten interrupts per round. But that's unlikely. It obviously gets cumbersome if you have a lot of interrupts, hence you REALLY want to group people into multiple 1-on-1 fights, but overall it's okay.

Anyway, to Abort you have to spend 1 WP (much like spending WP to change your action in most WW games), so constantly going all-out but switching to defence is of limited value.

If a single attack does more health levels than your opponent's Stamina, then they are Dizzied - on the next turn they can just stand there and let you hit them. But you can't be Dizzied for two turns in a row, so there's no true Stunlock there. And see the bit about losing Honour for hitting Dizzied people in tournaments (and gaining Honour for not attacking Dizzied people in tournaments... and gaining Glory for spending a turn posing and taunting - such as while your foe is Dizzied). If someone loses all their Health Levels, they are knocked out, and this lasts "As long as is appropriate. Don't keep people out of action too long, otherwise they get bored and lose interest in the game."

Holy shit, some actual good advice there. What is going on here? I am so surprised that I am going to have to break the text up with a picture of how Cammy has evolved over the generations.


You're welcome.

Also, Death happens on a basis of when it seems right for the game/story, so there's no hard actual rule for it. And you know, for Street Fighter that's kind of appropriate? You can get taken from a sliver of HP to KOed by machinegun fire (X-Men vs Street Fighter at least), and that is just a non-lethal knockout. Crazy things happen, death probably can be kept to "as benefits the scenario". Normally I want proper rules on it to save arguments, dickery and so on, but they do kind of fill the same space as Marvel heroes, who clearly work on narrative survival mechanics.


Literally, they fill the same space.

Oh and here is what a Botch does: the move fails, and next turn you have -2 to your Speed.

This from the company that typically has writeups of "You might use this ability to (vaguely do a thing). Success could result in (some vague benefit). On a botch you (three paragraphs detailing the penalties you suffer, permanent flaws gained, and story repercussions as you tear your own arm off, wreck your car and kill your auntie on a Linguistics check)".

I am pleasantly surprised. It's like a different company made it. And you can understand someone overextending and being delayed because they land awkwardly after missing with their Rainbow Peach Press.


If there were any justice in this world, there'd be an update that has stats for Rainbow Mika

You also have your Aerial moves (most notably they make you immune to sweeps and Crouching attacks until after your attack is resolved), Crouching moves (immune to Aerial attacks unless specified otherwise), Combos (they get their own section - think Street Fighter, not Exalted... obviously. Also don't think Mortal Kombat), Multi-Hit moves (roll damage (subtracting Soak of course) multiple times, but don't add the damage together for the purpose of Dizzying), Sustained Holds (if it deals damage, you can keep it locked on for up to your Grab rating in turns - end of each turn, they get to attempt to escape via Contested Strength. Each time you win, they lose their action. If you swap to a different move, you let them go but still auto-hit because they skipped their turn), Knockdown (if you knock someone down after their turn, they are -2 Speed next turn. If you knock them down before their turn, they lose a turn. Has to actually deal damage, negated by Blocking unless it's an unblockable move).

So there are a bunch of special rules there that can apply generically, but also individual special moves will have things like "Despite not being a Grab, you have to enter your opponent's hex as though it were one" or "Knocks the foe back X hexes" and so on.

So that ends the chapter on the bit I like, as opposed to the pointless Social Attributes and pitiful starting values and stuff. Later we'll look at some moves that are worth discussing, and whatever else. But for now, SUPLEX CITY.

[Longes]

Shotokan Karate

Shotokan Karate is an actual modern style of karate, arguably the most well known one today.

[Koumei]

It's probably well-known because of Street Fighter. However, it isn't a particularly special variety of karate with special moves or an unusual style that sets it apart from other karate styles.

[erik]

I hope Suplex City is detailed as an actual location. I'm tempted to make such a place in Nexus where people perform a suplex socially like a handshake. Maybe it's a moon colony.

[Longes]

It's probably well-known because of Street Fighter. However, it isn't a particularly special variety of karate with special moves or an unusual style that sets it apart from other karate styles.

It's well-known because its creator worked really hard on popularizing karate and opened a shit ton of clubs all over Japan. But yes, it doesn't involve fireballs or flying uppercuts.

[Mask_De_H]

There is a fan-expansion that I think includes R. Mika, Koumei.

[Koumei]

But yes, it doesn't involve fireballs or flying uppercuts.

No shit. But it's very similar to most forms of karate. Like, tae kwon do is a form of karate (a Korean form), and can basically be folded into "Generic Karate", but it is still more different (in that it has a lot of kicking and a bit more of a "be the stronger guy" focus). Kenpo is a form of karate (with "main Japanese", Okinawan and Hawaiian forms), and can basically be folded into "Generic Karate", but is still less conventional (in that it focuses on using your knees and elbows more in striking your opponent's body, while using kicks and palm strikes against joints - dislocate your foe's knee and you've probably won the fight). Even fucking "National Karate Association" karate has a lot of unconventional stuff in it (borrowing from judo (which of course is younger than karate) and straight-up going into street fighting elements with "If someone grabs you from behind, reach back and crush their plums to make them let go").

What I'm saying is there's no need to say "Shotokan Karate" and not just "Any fucking form of Karate whatsoever" if you aren't going to include multiple varieties. Especially if you're not going for something that sets itself apart from karate or is linked to a different nationality.

Anyway, let's move on and talk about combos.


Relevant


Less relevant

The combo system is short and simple. Like your mom. You buy a combo with freebies or XP, and you make it out of moves you have. It can be two or three. Not one, because it's a combo, and no more than three because A) It'd get one-sided and unwieldy, and B) 98-hit super combos didn't exist yet in Street Fighter. Did Killer Instinct exist then? It had stupid massive Ultra Combos.

So what happens is, for a basic combo... let's say you bought "Jump Kick -> Straight Punch -> Shoryuken". Now at any time you could still choose to use any of those moves. However, if you successfully use Jump Kick on one turn, then if you use Straight Punch next turn you get +2 Speed. If that succeeds and you choose Shoryuken next turn, you get +2 Speed to that. So it's easier to chain from one to the next.

That's it. If you do a Jump Kick then anything else, you can still do the Straight Punch later but it doesn't get the boost. If you go Jump Kick -> Shoryuken you don't get the boost. And so on. You have a small inflexible series with a minor (yet useful) benefit.

However you can also pay more points to make it a Dizzying Combo. This is where it can get really good, and where it'd be bad to allow 7-hit combos: if you make it a Dizzying Combo, all moves add their damage together (including Multi-Hit moves as mentioned in the last post) for the purpose of Dizzy. So if your opponent has Stamina 4 and your Jump Kick does 2 damage, they're fine. Next your Straight Punch deals only 1. They're still fine. On the following turn you get them for 2 with the Shoryuken. 2 + 1 + 2 = 5, you have rendered them Dizzy despite no individual move doing more than 4 damage.


This is Dizzy. But she is from Guilty Gear, an "anime fighter", and not Street Fighter. Anime fighters are known for their extended juggling, big flashy effects, bizarre arrays of characters, and bizarre systems that differ from Health Bar, Guard Meter, Super Gauge.

I also want to take a moment to mention Stunts: they exist. Moving onto-

Okay yes, it has a whole paragraph for Stunts, where you can say you're swinging around a lamp-post to kick someone, or jumping onto the roof of the passing taxi or whatever, and mostly what happens is you describe it and the ST decides on the spot what its numbers are and what move type you use, and you've actually declared ahead of time what you're doing because you don't have all these weird Stunt cards, and everyone moves on with their lives. No you don't regain anything by doing this. I am quite happy with how this has worked out. If only future games which will remain Exalted would not feel the need to develop it in the same way as a cancerous growth develops, things would be good.

Also, it has two small sections for different ways to handle mundane fights against a bunch of punks. One is also an optional "If you're lazy/too used to normal WW games" thing. That one is "No map or pre-selecting cards: you say what move you're doing, and this time instead of working out placement you need to roll Dex + Move Type in order to hit" (they do not say net hits add to damage, so adopting this won't let you deal extra damage). At least that is there as a thing in case of a WoD crossover, I guess. I'd prefer a thing explicitly saying that because Street Fighter is all about the fighting that other games only court from time to time, its system overrules the others, with Vampires and shit being limited to the automatic maneuvers.

The other thing for dealing with thugs is "They only get the basic free moves. You can just use the one hand of basic cards for that, whatevs". I am not sure if they are suggesting that all punks try the same move, or if each has to choose a different move and use a different card, or if you do a thing where you have five thugs, you place the Fierce Punch and Straight Kick and Block cards, and then you arbitrarily decide which ones use what (as long as all of the placed cards are in fact assigned).

This post has been dedicated to just tidying up some of the extra side stuff. Because it's worth pointing out but not that exciting. You know how I'm going to make it up to you all.

[Josh_Kablack]

Killer Instinct (original) had a 1994 arcade release, and everyone had Ultras of a few dozen hits, at least 2 of those characters (Cinder, Eyedol) had infinite juggles.

More relevant is that Super Street Fighter had an official 7 hit Combo (Dictator) and an unofficial 8 hit combo (Ken, only vs Zangief) - unofficial because the game's scoring always split it into a "3 hit" then a "5 hit" in the little pop ups.

PS: "gunspike" may be relevant to your interests....although not directly to this particular review.

[OgreBattle]

Any excuse to post Kinu Nishimura artwork is always relevant

[DeadlyReed]

This thread reminded me that some guy compiled an Anniversary Edition of this great game: http://sfrpg.com/2015/09/08/sf20-releas ... y-edition/

[eldarion]

Still loving (and regularly MCing) this game since the Mid-90s.