[Torg] martial arts in the cyber-papacy

[Jones Jasyn]

On Sep 29, 2008, at 5:21 PM, Kansas Jim wrote:

> Mark writes:
>
>>           ive been looking at the martial arts system and tweaking  
>> it for my own style of play and i just cant help but want a martial  
>> art for the cyber-papacy.
>>               my thoughts are that this martial art is only  
>> available for the elite church soldiers. and im really thinking of  
>> making it very much like the gun-fu of equilibrium. thoughts on  
>> this anyone? which of the minor/ major abilitys do you think would  
>> be a must for this style and do you think any should be created?

> But that's using just the published rules and nothing else. Many
> people have house ruled that "martial arts" should cover any kind
> of trained, organized fighting style instead of being limited to
> just the fancy, fantastical styles of the Orient (ie, martial arts
> versus Martial Arts). If you want to do something along those lines,
> the more mundane and "realistic" Minor Disciplines are the kinds of
> things that don't have to involve concepts of Ki and could be taught
> as part of a non-fantastical fighting style.

This is France, after all, home of the very popular Parkour martial  
arts style. Parkour was featured in the Bourne movies, Casino Royale,  
Die Hard 4, and the upcoming Mirror's Edge video game (by Ubisoft, a  
French game designer).

Parkour involves jumps, leaps, climbing, and moving very quickly  
around obstacles. A bonus to Acrobatics (+2 for minor Disciplines),  
Climbing, Jumping or other skills such as that would be very  
appropriate.

France also gave rise to Savate, a kickboxing style. Bonuses to damage  
for kicking or bonuses to unarmed combat would be very appropriate.

These are both "Core Earth" styles, so would be available in  
CyberFrance (such as in the Earth zone around Paris). Under the normal  
rules, Cyberpapal characters could learn them, but would be threatened  
by disconnection. The MA skill would also be unavailable in Cyberpapal  
Pure Zones.

As an option, to represent Cyberpapal martial arts, don't use the MA  
skill. Instead, use Unarmed Combat (or other "mundane" skills) and  
allow characters to learn, or buy, minor Disciplines.

The MA skill replaces a number of other skills (unarmed, melee,  
missile, etc.) and represents Ki. Using another skill allows  
Cyberpapal martial artists to have special forms of combat, but  
without the thematic problems Jim noted above. Using another skill  
also makes them weaker than "true" martial artists.

Jasyn Jones
jasynj (at) gmail (dot) com

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Ulysses, Alfred Lord Tennyson