Grappling with game design

[Capt Spanner]

Hi:

I want to develop a game system. One that I don't believe has been tried before.

The focus is on grappling. In most games grappling combat is difficult and occult. In the system I want to create grappling is the main combat.

There will be rules for hitting people. The game world (which I'm going to keep reasonably quiet about for now) will only have human characters in it.

There are no plans for magic, or anything magic-like at this point. Grappling (standing, and on the floor) is the main focus.

I'm at the background research stage. I've been looking at how other systems handle grappling. If anyone knows of any good systems I'd be willing to hear them.

I'm welcoming comments, suggestions, results of playtesting (once it gets that far) and all other feedback.


Capt Spanner

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Most times I've seen it, it's been as an opposed roll. In nWoD, Armory Reloaded, there's a style (Aikido, I think) that lets you grapple, and then once the grapple is successful, you can start to impose conditions on your opponent, with no additional roll required, until they break the grapple.

[Spiryt]

So, like Judokas&Wrestlers 3.5?

Interesting idea, but I indeed fear that it always be either way to simple, or way too headache guaranteed in PnP.

[gkathellar]

Props to you if you can pull this off, but I think you may run into trouble. In real life, grappling is incredibly intricate stuff, even discounting the million weird qinna and chi sau techniques floating around. To have a system actually focused on grappling, you'd need to design it around all the many, many things a person can do in a grapple, their strengths at each and every one, and so on and so forth. That honestly sounds like a lot of unexciting, low tension bookkeeping to me.

Now, if you want to design a sophisticated unarmed combat system with reasonably intricate grappling rules, that seems more tenable.

[Spiryt]

Props to you if you can pull this off, but I think you may run into trouble. In real life, grappling is incredibly intricate stuff, even discounting the million weird qinna and chi sau techniques floating around. To have a system actually focused on grappling, you'd need to design it around all the many, many things a person can do in a grapple, their strengths at each and every one, and so on and so forth. That honestly sounds like a lot of unexciting, low tension bookkeeping to me.

To be fair, the same is true for striking with any kind of weapon etc.

The thing is that if you streamline it all to "attack 15 damage 4-9" it still works decently, grappling will be tricky at the same time.

[gkathellar]

To be fair, the same is true for striking with any kind of weapon etc.

Absolutely, and I pity anyone who takes on the similar project of trying to create a PnP combat system centered on the intricacies of swordplay in the exactly the same way.

[Capt Spanner]

Perhaps I should be clear about the game world:

I'm a fan of pro-wrestling (yes, the fake scripted stuff) and would like to try to create a tabletop RPG where the tactical moving from hold-to-hold, working on a particular part of the body, brain vs. brawn, strength vs speed can actually be played out. (I'm training as a wrestler, and many of them are also into D&D, so the overlap is bigger than it seems. This also means I actually know what holds, etc...)

If you consider the complexity of a D&D battle, with several magic users, a couple of tanks and support, the situation could be made about as complex as the tactical challenge of maneuvering someone into a hold you want them in. The trade off is the much smaller, much less varied arena. Instead of maneuvering spell-casters you maneuvering your grip, and instead of choosing what spell to cast your choosing what throw to use.

I think the complexity problem can be overcome. Anyway. I'm going to go for posting some early ideas and mechanical concepts sometime this weekend.