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ThiagoMartell
2012-07-29, 05:05 AM
I'm a big fan of this game, one of my favorite roleplaying games ever. The combat system is so well done, it catches the feel of a Street Fighter match so well and the whole 'Hong Kong movie' feel to it's elements is amazing. It's just so much fun.

I find it funny that this game was probably more popular in Brazil than it was in the US. You see, SF StG was released here a long time after it was released in the US (around 2000? 1999? something like that) and they used official Capcom art in the book instead of the White Wolf illustrations (most of the custom WW stuff sucked hard).

It's curious how little information Capcom Japan gave to the designers, to the point where I wonder if Capcom Japan was even involved in the project. The background info in SF StG is mostly wrong when we take into account the official SF storyline, with some really weird stuff that mostly belongs in superhero comics (like the origin of the Sonic Boom).

Still, love the game and I'm starting a new campaign using this system soon, focusing on an Age of Apocalypse-like story, based on what would happen if Bison did take over Ryu's body in SF Alpha 3.

Anyone else has fond memories of this game?

Also, does anyone know of a homebrew Super Move rule that doesn't suck?
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EDIT: OK, people don't seem to know much about the game, so I'll explain the basics.
Atmosphere and Storytelling: The game uses flavor text very well to create atmosphere, as usual for Storyteller. You can tell plenty of stories in SF, but it is usually related to crimes (and Shadaloo), sci-fi (and Shadaloo), mystic secrets (and Shadaloo) and tournaments (and... Shadaloo). Shadaloo is the main antagonist, but it's easy to do more personal stories and not focus a lot on it (kinda like Pentex in Werewolf).
As common in Storyteller, there is kind of a noir feel to the game. It's hard to achieve complete victory against Shadaloo, so there is almost a feel of hopelessness. The fact that the World Warriors have actual stats doesn't usually help - you know your character has no chance against M. Bison (on a sidenot, Balrog is a wimp and a well built beginner character can beat him with a bit of luck).
The game gets a lot of inspiration from 80s martial arts movies and Honk Kong cinema as a whole. It was the beginning of the 90s - the martial arts craze was still fading slowly.
Every Storyteller game has it's factions - vampire clans, werewolf tribes, mage traditions, you name it. Street Fighter is no different - characters are divided by their fighting style. Funnily enough, many fighting styles that are popular now were not back then (say, Tae Kwon Do) so they are not present in the game. The game's version of Jujutsu is laughably inaccurate. They even called Ryu and Ken's style Shotokan Karate (not their fault - it's what Capcom of America called it) instead of Ansatsuken.
Not surprisingly, Bruce Lee's Jeet Kune Do is the One Style To Rule Them All. Not only does it get the best maneuvers in the game, it's the only style that can learn any maneuver (by paying 1 extra power point for it).

Combat System: You know how in Storyteller you usually need 4 rolls to solve one attack (roll to hit, roll to dodge, roll for damage, roll for soak), each with a firstful of dice? Forget that. In Street Fighter, there is only one roll per attack and you won't be rolling a lot of dice for it. There is no "to hit" roll - all attacks kind of autohit if you're in range. Instead, there is a Speed factor to all attacks (determined by Dexterity, the maneuver's modifier and other misc modifiers). The slower character starts acting first and the faster character can interrupt his action at any moment. If you interrupt a punch with a Backflip Kick, for example, you'll end up out of range and the slower character won't be able to hit you. If you interrupt any attack with a foot sweep or other maneuver that cause knockdown, the slower character won't be able to hit you, he'll just spend the round getting up.
When an attack does hit, it's time for damage.
Damage is calculated by adding Strenght (for physical maneuvers - mystical stuff like a Hadoken uses Intelligence) + Technique (Punch, Kick, Grab, Athletics or Focus - there is also a Block technique, but it deals no damage, and weapon techniques but those are mostly for villains) + Maneuver modifier (never gets higher than +7) - target's Stamina (plus Block, if he is blocking).
Example
Ken has Strenght 5 and Punch 6. He hits Zangief with a Dragon Punch (+6 damage modifier). Zangief has Stamina 7. So Ken rolls 5+6+6-7=10 damage dice against Zangief. If Zangief blocked, he'd add his 4 points in Block to his Soak, reducing damage to 6.
Whenever an attack hits for more damage than your Stamina, you become dizzy, performing no actions for a whole turn.

Tactics: Street Fighter is at the same time a highly tactical game and not. It's easy to build your character whichever way you want and not lag behind. It's a lot more rewarding to build an organic character, because as most Storyteller games, SF is not combat-only. There are going to be situations where a purely combat-focused character is going to be useless.
The tactical side makes SF a hard game to narrate. The Storyteller must familiarize himself with the NPCs so as to make the fights challenging. Some of the World Warriors are hard to play with (Dhalsim and Fei Long spring to mind), since they play range/Speed games. Some are easy - Blanka is very straight forward and so is Ken, for example. For tha players, knowing tactics for their PCs is easy - but the storyteller must deal with lots of different characters, so it gets complicated fast.
I particularly enjoy being a storyteller in this game for this very reason.

GolemsVoice
2012-07-29, 06:51 AM
Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me there's a game that's based of the Street Fighters series of videogames, and it uses WW's storyteller system? Hell yeah!

erikun
2012-07-29, 07:03 AM
I remember seeing this in Half Price Books, but didn't pick it up. Does it actually use the Storyteller system (d10 dice pools) or is it more like the WW Swords & Sorcery line, being basically a d20 system?

ThiagoMartell
2012-07-29, 07:39 AM
Wait, wait, wait. You're telling me there's a game that's based of the Street Fighters series of videogames, and it uses WW's storyteller system? Hell yeah!
Yes, there is. :smallsmile:


I remember seeing this in Half Price Books, but didn't pick it up. Does it actually use the Storyteller system (d10 dice pools) or is it more like the WW Swords & Sorcery line, being basically a d20 system?
It uses the Storyteller system, with d10 dice pools.
The rules are somewhat simplified at some points, more specific for combat (it uses a hexgrid, for example) and it uses Health as opposed to Vitality. Health starts at 10 for player characters (I've seen NPCs with a lot less, like 4) and goes up to 20.

Craft (Cheese)
2012-07-29, 07:56 AM
Does it have a morality mechanic?

ThiagoMartell
2012-07-29, 08:00 AM
Does it have a morality mechanic?

More or less. It uses a renown mechanic, like Werewolf, with Glory and Honor. Honor is kind of the moral compass in the game - heroes have it high, villains have it low. You use Honor to recover Chi.

The Glyphstone
2012-07-29, 09:10 AM
But no Morality/Humanity/Harmony meter, or is that function rolled in to the Honor chart?

ThiagoMartell
2012-07-29, 09:19 AM
But no Morality/Humanity/Harmony meter, or is that function rolled in to the Honor chart?

There is no Morality/Humanity/Harmony. Honor is somewhat like that, but it's different. For example, there is a maneuver that makes a character angry. To resist it, you use Honor. You gain honor by suffering wounds for helping people and you lose Honor for stuff like using weapons or hitting your opponent while he is dizzy. It is a karma meter of sorts, I guess.

GolemsVoice
2012-07-29, 11:29 AM
What kind of stories do you tell there? I mean, Street Fighter is a great game, but it's not THAT story-heavy.

Is it mostly like normal stories (i.e. police detective investigates evil company) but instead of shootouts, you try to hadouken each other's heads off?

Hiro Protagonest
2012-07-29, 05:16 PM
...A Street Fighter game that uses White Wolf's storytelling system?

Sounds suspiciously like Burn Legend. Which is a new system introduced in Shards of the Exalted Dream, with only tangential relations to actual Exalted.

TheEmerged
2012-07-29, 06:47 PM
I used to have all the books for this. I ended up getting rid of them at the same time as my BattleTech & Aberrant collections, and for the same reason - shelf space. At some point, how much shelf space can I dedicate to a game I'd never been able to convince the other players to play (or, in BattleTech's case, hadn't been able to for years).

There was some definite power creep in the later books. I pretty much use this system as my personal benchmark for defining power creep. One of the later books for example added a martial art that essentially allowed you to learn any move in the game, just at a slightly higher cost. The later books were bad for giving powers that totally outbalanced the earlier material but gave the characters weaknesses out of combat... that didn't usually matter.


What kind of stories do you tell there? I mean, Street Fighter is a great game, but it's not THAT story-heavy.

Is it mostly like normal stories (i.e. police detective investigates evil company) but instead of shootouts, you try to hadouken each other's heads off?

I can't say from practice with this system, but I ran a couple of campaigns in the same genre in a different system (HERO in its Ninja Hero paradign). It's pretty much modern adventure where your characters are "slightly above human", and the tournaments are generally window dressing / your cover for being there. But instead of saying the mafia/yakuza/evil multinational company, you say Shadowloo.

ThiagoMartell
2012-07-29, 11:42 PM
What kind of stories do you tell there? I mean, Street Fighter is a great game, but it's not THAT story-heavy.

Is it mostly like normal stories (i.e. police detective investigates evil company) but instead of shootouts, you try to hadouken each other's heads off?

The games are very story-heavy, actually. Specially Alpha 3. However, Alpha 3 didn't even exist at the game the RPG was released.
The game has heavy influence from Honk Kong cop movies and those martial arts movies from the 80s. Stuff like Bruce Lee being hired by Interpol and things like that (which fits Street Fighter - Chun Li is an Interpol agent, Charlie is from US Military intelligence, Fei Long is a Bruce Lee clone, Guy and Ryu are always walking the earth, etc).
The game sets Street Fighting as an underground fighting circuit. There are two layers to the game - the tournaments and the stories around the tournaments. There is incentive to play characters that are warriors first and everything else second (guys that mostly care about the tournament) or people that use the tournament for other means (policemen, government agents, guys looking for revenge, etc). The Street Fighter circuit is connected to Shadaloo (one of the best things about the brazilian version is that it uses correct names... the US version for some reason calls it Shadoloo), so there are many undercover agents trying to get to Bison.
Adventure structure is usually like this:
1- Travel to X place for a tournament
2- See the World Warrior that is there promoting the tournament, be in awe of him/her, act like a fangirl for a few moments
3- Deal with problem Y, usually Shadaloo related, while trying to be in shape for the tournament
4- Fight in the tournament and try to win
Starting characters are not popular enough to fight solo, so they fight as teams.
I'll add more about the game rules to the OP, since people don't seem to be familiar with them.

GolemsVoice
2012-07-30, 04:31 AM
Sounds interesting, if a little, well, focused.

ThiagoMartell
2012-07-30, 06:14 AM
Sounds interesting, if a little, well, focused.

That's the story structure for the published adventures, most groups end up with vastly different stories. Like any Storyteller game, SF is vastly character driven. Since the styles are not organizations per se, I'd say it's the most character driven Storyteller game.
I've had plenty of Street Fighter campaigns, the first one was pretty standard tournaments + fighting Shadaloo, the second one was played with canon SF characters and was more tournament based with some character development, the third one was years long and completely character driven. It included raiding an underground temple filled with snake-people, stopping a mad scientist from bombing a soccer stadium in London during a Machester vs Arsenal match, attending to a marriage... in El Dorado, convincing the personification of elemental water that humankind deserved a second chance... god, that campaign was awesome. The last battle was specially cool - our team was chasing our nemesis, he and his goons took over a train in Europe, we raided the train and discovered he had plans of blowing the train along with the US embassy to trigger a war. Every other wagon, we met one of his lieutanants. So one character would stay behind fighting the bad guy, while the others would go on, since we were in a timer. The final battle was between two player characters and the big bad, atop the train.
Man, I could go on talking about that campaign for hours, so let's just say it was pretty cool. :smallsmile:

Roderick_BR
2012-07-30, 03:33 PM
Just to add more content, an example of "high level" characters. The World Warriors have dozens of skill almost filled all the way up to 5 points, and many of them have stats ABOVE 5. One of the strongest attacks you can get is Zangief's Spining Pile Driver. His strength is 8, his fighting skill is 8, and the maneuver adds 8 points to the attack. If he reaches you, you'll be soaking 24 dice of damage. Good luck.

And as was pointed out, these are the ones that can barely have a chance against Bison himself. Custom characters starts a lot less powerful, and need a lot of adventuring to catch up.

I got the books too, but my group never got to actually play it, sadly.

Glimbur
2012-07-30, 03:53 PM
Street Fighter is pretty sweet. I ran a number of one shots and everyone picked up the combat system quickly. They had fun. I also had fun running it, which is important.

I only ran with four players at a time, as I feared the combat might bog down with too many participants. I suppose, in retrospect, it shouldn't be much worse than D&D 3.5, which I have run with 6, but the possibility of interrupts made me leery.

ThiagoMartell
2012-07-31, 09:21 AM
Just to add more content, an example of "high level" characters. The World Warriors have dozens of skill almost filled all the way up to 5 points, and many of them have stats ABOVE 5. One of the strongest attacks you can get is Zangief's Spining Pile Driver. His strength is 8, his fighting skill is 8, and the maneuver adds 8 points to the attack. If he reaches you, you'll be soaking 24 dice of damage. Good luck.


Nitpick: Zangief has Strenght 7, Grappling 7 and Spinning Pile Driver does +7 damage. 21 damage, which is still a lot (the combat maneuver cards only go up to 20). Then, with Dexterity 2 and focus on grappling, it's hard to get hit by him when you know what you're doing.

Roderick_BR
2012-08-02, 03:53 PM
Nitpick: Zangief has Strenght 7, Grappling 7 and Spinning Pile Driver does +7 damage. 21 damage, which is still a lot (the combat maneuver cards only go up to 20). Then, with Dexterity 2 and focus on grappling, it's hard to get hit by him when you know what you're doing.
I absolutly have no idea where I get those 8's from. I need to re-read the book.
And I know, he's slow, just like in the videogame. Just saying he has a devastating attack that few newly made characters can match. 21 is still nothing to scoff at if he reaches you, specially if he does a combo.

ThiagoMartell
2012-08-02, 04:49 PM
I absolutly have no idea where I get those 8's from. I need to re-read the book.
And I know, he's slow, just like in the videogame. Just saying he has a devastating attack that few newly made characters can match. 21 is still nothing to scoff at if he reaches you, specially if he does a combo.

Yeah, 21 is ridiculous damage. It's pretty much a sure dizzy... and then he gets to hit you for 21 damage again. :smalltongue: