Making a kung-fu style in Lone Wolf Fists PART DUEX

Development of Lone Wolf Fists has resulted in a complete game available at drivethrurpg in pdf form

Yeah it’s a plug. But hey; you can play LWF now! So that’s somethin’!

Now that I’m on the other side of not only making all of the styles I originally envisioned but ALSO co-creating a bunch with backers, I have an even more refined idea of how to make functional styles for the game. So I present you with the emergent step 4:

Step 4: Benchmark

So we’ve got a lot of skeletal Techniques and inspiration from the proceeding steps, and that leaves us with this need to link THIS style (whichever one we’re working on) to the greater body of styles which compose the tactical arena of the game.

Here’s what we’ve got, and what they’re close to in the existing techniques:

Kai shout: scream big, pushes and scares motherfuckers. Breaks stuff

Benchmark: Most of the element-controllers share similarity with this move. A close analog exists in the Unearthly Gift style’s Psychic Shockwave Technique.

Invisible energy shield: deflects ranged attacks, energy, environmental effect

Benchmark: Creature of the sands stance makes you categorically immune to a type of energy/elemental attack, so that’s the clear benchmark here

Power puke: energy-projectile, no limbs required

Benchmark: Naraka’s Fury is my default energy-blast technique, so well use that as the basis of comparison here

Power stream: Kamehameha if you use 2 hands, but you can do it with 1 hand and risk losing control of it

Benchmark: Turtle-crushing tsunami is the current standard for kamehameha-like

Boring power thing: Cheap, boosts power, maybe also a grab

Benchmark: Throat-crushing grasp is a good one here. I think there’s a few grabs in other styles I’ll look at as well

Swole AF: Boost your Effortless Power, gives you Ferocity, makes you just huge as shit

Benchmark: This one is pretty innovative. There’s a soft rule from the techniques that grant Ferocity that every 2 Ferocity is worth roughly 1 Effort, though. So that’s useful

Jaw-Breaking Kick

Gut-Buster Punch

Bone-Ripper Grip

Bullet-Catching Finger

Benchmarks: Almost every style has a “bedrock” of 3-5 one-die attacks, defenses and tricks that fill up their Novice tier of Techniques., I’ll use those here, no need to reinvent the wheel unless inspiration strikes

Fist of God: Just a big motherfuckin’ punch

Benchmarks: Most of the “big booms” core around a large single attack and a “fallout” effect that hits a bigger area, and a high-level skill-booster. This is going to follow that general trend. Again, there’s really no need to reinvent the wheel here; the raw functionality of that capability is really enough to carry even a very straightforward supreme tech.

…

Let’s take a few examples so I can show you how this process works

Power Puke

Let’s begin with our benchmark move:

Naraka’s Fury

Attack

Requires: (Arm or Weapon, Awakened Hell Chakra)

Cost: 12

Rank: 3

Facing: 6-9

Effect: You unleash a throbbing neon beam of thundering

evil at the foe. It moves in a straight line, splitting earth and

stone and destroying anything in its path. It reaches the

length of a Field, striking any foe in an Area it passes over.

Enemies struck take an additional 3d10 Physical

Aggravation as their fragile mortal bodies are dissolved.

Skill: Spirit

Keywords: Energy, Ranged, Unholy

The first advantage PP is going to have over it’s forebear is that it won’t require a sword. This tells me that it needs to either be more expensive or weaker. There’s also no specific reason for it to be tied to the Hell chakra; so any chakra would probably do, giving it another advantage. It also probably doesn’t need to be unholy, so we can omit that.

Because I don’t like disrupting costs, my default for balancing a tech like this would be to lower it’s facings. Bumping it down to 0-3 would remove the default offensive advantage. You could also remove the Skill boost if you’re feeling particularly sadistic, which will make it exclusively a combat option.

If I wanted an easier balance, I would simply omit the additional Aggravation generated by the original attack, which helps to bring this one into line with it power-wise quite nicely.

The issue with all of these changes are that I’m not giving this move a lot of identity. Its balanced, both on paper and in play, and it does grant a distinct tactical option, so that’s enough to justify it in my eyes. But I would vastly prefer that it have some unique thing that belongs wholly to it, and here we have to deviate from thinking about the move numerically and begin to think about it creatively.

Let’s feed ourselves a little inspiration:

Man, I love Broly’s big, wavy blast at the end. That’s like the ideal one, uncontrolled, destructive, visually impressive. Actually Broly is a great kernel for this style in general:

Something that leaps out to me as appealing and distinct when it comes to this mouth-blast is how powerful it is. It’s direct and scary and a huge deal if it hits; like some kind of jaw-mounted bazooka. I want to capture that feeling with the design, which means we’re going to need to get creative.

Let’s pack a lot of “oomph” into the hit, and keep it’s low accuracy. That’ll help it to feel inelegant and easy to dodge, but heavy and dangerous as well. We’re going to zero in on the effect and give it a “mortar” aspect, like so:

Effect: This fiery blast of raw Prana vomits out from the mouth; clumsy and brutal, it explodes on impact in a thunderous shockwave. Hits one target at (Achieved Rank+1) and explodes, damaging the surrounding Area at (Technique Rank).

We’ll add Destructive to it’s Keywords to really drive home it’s impact. That gives us this:

Power Puke

Attack

Requires: (Any Awakened Chakra)

Cost: 12

Rank: 3

Facing:0-3

Skill: N/A

Keywords: Energy, Ranged, Destructive

Note that we’re keeping an aspect of the first Technique’s long-range environment destruction, further increasing their parity and justifying its cost. We’ve also added something unprecedented with “Technique Rank +1”; this shouldn’t be too much of a balance issue, because we’re not straying far from the overall effectiveness of our benchmark Technique. Removing the versatility of the skill boost should make up for this (if anything, it probably over-balances it, but I maintain its better to over than under-balance).

We’ll follow a similar procedure for the remaining skeletal Techniques, and then we’ve just got to fill in any gaps.

…

Step 5: The Style’s Style

We’re back to considering the aesthetic of the style in this step. But, importantly, we’re considering it’s aesthetic in terms of its unique strategic advantages. In other words, we want the style to look and feel different because it’s doing something unique here. We’ve left ourselves some room for new ideas in the Form, and in a single Novice and Master Technique.

That’s actually probably enough.

I don’t think it’s wise to go TOO experimental with a style. For the most part, styles should be broadly comparable, because minor difference feel big in play, and because people often choose new Techniques based on aesthetic and not strategic considerations and we don’t want to handicap anyone unduly for following this method (nor over-reward anyone for the opposite).

Mind you, there is SOME inescapable handicap to ignoring optimization in Technique selection, just as there’s an unavoidable (and desirable!) advantage in selecting one’s Techniques intelligently. What we want is for the overall power curve not to bow so far in either direction that a meeting between the extremes is a foregone conclusion; otherwise, we sacrifice the emergent circumstance of the fight on the altar of metagaming, and I’ll be goddamned if style should not on occasion triumph over substance.

I’m meandering, but the point I’m making is at least related to the topic; style. The aesthetic not just in description but in gameplay differentiation. I recommend you keep it a rare spice, but I would require of yourself that you use this spice each time you make a new style. It keeps you from growing stagnant and it gives your new style a justification for its existence that reaches beyond the merely differentiated; it makes it a work of art, YOUR art, and that is the sole reason that you should craft a new style.

It also of course makes any linear explanation of this process essentially impossible; I can’t describe for you why I draw the inspiration I do from the stuff that gets my gears turning, nor would I ever recommend attempting to replicate it. Each spark is unique, and YOUR sparks are untouchable to me, so I’m not really certain how to tell you how to game-ify them.

I can show you a bit, though. Perhaps that will serve where explanation fails.

The Form

The Form is where you lay down the raw essence of a style; it’s thesis, if you will. When I think about this style, I think about big, muscly punching, bestial yelling, power radiating off of flexing muscles; this is all very visual, I get a very “Asura’s Wrath” vibe off the entire affair.

Which tells me that I want to capture that raw fury that the image above conveys. So something fury-based is on the list. I also want that “I don’t care how much I injure myself, as long as I get to kick your ass” element, so something trading health for damage or attacks. I also want the enemy to feel like they’re on the receiving end of a raw ass whuppin’, so doubling down on attacks and offense at the cost of defense feels in-theme. Here’s my fist attempt:

Form: Wrath Eruption Sutra

Flesh-Immolating Drive: Suffer 1d10 damage to add 1d10 damage to an attack that has struck the enemy. Each time you damage the enemy, you may invoke a number of dice up to your Degree.

I Am The Weapon: Facing 8-9, + 1 to an Attack

No Mercy: Suffer 1d10 damage: You may attack an additional time with a 1-die Set. you may use this power as many times as you wish per round, limited only by your own masochism

Right away, this form grabs your face and slams it over and over into a cinder block. Whoever takes this is dedicating themselves to the berserk; there are no defensive options, but you get an unrivaled suite of offensive moves. The self-damaging aspect keeps them in check and allows you to take measured risks, without precluding the possibility of total self-burnout to achieve extreme levels of ass-kicking. Finally, the use of dice rather than set numbers keeps it from being discretely calculable (admittedly you can still get a range, but the extremes have you trading health levels for the smallest factions of enemy damage and that’s a calculus that will make it resistant to prudent consideration but vulnerable to passionate deployment)

Let’s keep it rolling.

We have a Novice and a Master-level Tech left to populate, and once again I want to get artsy with it. If we additionally had a free Expert-level, I’d recommend finding a uniting theme to add cohesion to the style. But since we’ve already got our bases covered, I’d rather see this broken set of moves as an opportunity to think of some novel concepts for the style.

A Brief Note on Keywords

I’d like to take a second to demystify keywords. If I were going to invent a keyword, I would likely have done it at an earlier step. I find it’s best to lead with a concept, THEN make a keyword if it’s called for (like there’s a repeated mechanical novelty which needs a unified cohesive rule at its center to make it more approachable). Two Techs really isn’t enough for a keyword; I would want to have it present at least once per power tier, and ideally more than once. This leads necessarily to a more rules-first style of design, but you’d still have opportunities like these to inject true novelty and I’d recommend taking them. Reference the Unearthly Gift style for some great examples of this; it’s a keyword-first style that nevertheless has some of the most creative and unique powers in the game.

And now back to our regularly scheduled ass kicking

Looking over our Techniques so far, I notice that a recurrent and cool theme is being too tough to need to defend. It reminds me of one of my favorite fights in DBZ (unsurprisingly); the foregone conclusion beat-down between Frieza and Nail.

Haha, wrecked

My favorite bit is when Nail chops him in the neck and it just does nothing. Damn man, that is savage. Clearly we need a move that does that, and it needs a name that drives that point home:

Nice Try

Defense

Requires: (A desire to kill the enemy which outweighs your survival instinct)

Cost: 40

Rank: 5

Facing:0-3

Effect: You don’t bother to dodge or block; attacks break on your invulnerable form. While protected by this persistent defense, if your defense exceeds the opponent’s attack and you would take no damage form it, you may select any attack from this style and immediately launch an attack with it. This out-of-sequence strike otherwise follows all the normal rules for an attack, requiring a Set and any Cost for the Technique.

Skill: Endurance

Keywords: Sustainable

This move doesn’t have the comprehensive defensive protection of moves like Indestructible Master Meditation, so strictly speaking its an inferior defense option. But the ability to reply to attacks is really powerful, because it’s optional and you can select a Technique which hits the enemy where they’re weak. It also acts as scrub-repellent, because if some Nail steps to you with his weak-ass chop and you’re ready for him, you rip off his arm. I wouldn’t consider that a tactically wise decision, but just something doesn’t need to be likely for it to be a possibility, and we’re not engineering circumstance here, merely opportunity.

That leaves our last Novice tech, and it looks like we could use ooooone more “I’m invincible fuck you!” style move to round out that tier. I’ve got just the thing.

Enough!

Defense

Requires: (2 limbs)

Cost: 4

Rank: 1

Facing: 0-3

Effect: After you have suffered more than one attack from the same foe during their action, or while engaged in a Grab that you either did not originate or are currently losing, this Technique allows you to take an out-of-sequence attack with any of your Sets which can throw the enemy.

After the resolution of the triggering attack/state but prior to your opponent’s next action, you may activate this Technique and launch the attack. It is “between” the enemy’s actions.

If your counter-strike hits, it counts as a Throw and doesn’t require you to be Grabbing the foe.

Skill: Agility

Keywords: Throw

This one is an unprecedented Technique (pretty sure? I’m tired, I don’t want to re-read all of my Techniques again). As a result, I pushed up the cost to keep it out of the hands of early round, low-powered characters. It’s low-enough Rank that most defenses should be able to prevent it’s “combo breaker” element, but that means tactically that it’s used to absorb a potentially dangerous attack anyway, so it’s always got a really high utility as a defense. I’d likely not make this Technique at a higher level because it is really powerful and tactically unique

Wrapping up

I haven’t compiled this style yet, but I don’t want to delay releasing this post any longer. The next steps will just be repeating the design techniques from above, mostly benchmarking to reduce my overall workload.

Once it’s first draft is finished, I find an overall review of the style against a few comparable and incomparable styles is called for. This is to make certain that the trade-offs between Techniques at different levels don’t lead to any obvious “no-brainer” tactical moves. If none of those jump out, one last pass to clean up any awkward wording and massage costs will leave me with a finalized style, ready for playtesting.

I hope you’ve enjoyed peaking behind the curtain at how the kung-fu sausage is made. I hope it didn’t leave you too terribly scarred.

Next time; jerking myself off a bunch about how the final game came together, and giving you a reason to justify buying it if you’re on the fence but it’s on your radar. Stay tuned.