Martial Arts RPGs

The Boulder is conflicted about being in this blog...

Last night, while just sitting around the living room with the family, my daughter puts on an episode from Avatar – The Last Airbender. I didn’t think anything of it, as we all like the show. But, apparently the discussion about who in our family was what character (I ended up being The Boulder, a Pro-Wrestler Earthbender) sparked something in my subconscious, and I found myself thinking about Martial Arts RPGs on my drive to work today.

Despite the source of the inspiration of this line of thought, I didn’t start thinking about my planned Avatar RPG. Instead, my brain went to White Wolf’s old Street Fighter Storyteller Game. I have the three main books, purchased from a used book store about fifteen years ago. For a short while I was obsessed with it. Street Fighter has long been my favorite series of fighting games, with Alpha 2 being my top favorite.

I remember my main character I made for that game. His

name was Billy Lo (kudos if you can tell me where I got that one), and he was a young Chinese kid who wore baggy jeans, Chuck Taylors and a sleeveless white t-shirt with a smiley-face on the front. He knew Kung Fu, and fought in a style similar to Fei Long (the Bruce Lee clone from the game). I wrote a short vignette once where Billy fought a Muay Thai fighter named Sampim (named after an Army buddy of mine who was from Thailand).

Over the years, my interest in this genre of RPGs has waxed and waned. I will have short periods (like today) where I become interested again. I've downloaded free MA RPGs, and even tried to get a game of something going. But, I've never been successful. The closest I've come to playing one is playing a Monk in a D&D game. Not quite the same, but it'll do in a pinch, I suppose.

I wish they made Street Fighter games for the Xbox.

Little known Tom fact: On many forums and other places around the ‘Net, I use the name “Gotetsu” (or variations thereof). This name was originally derived from the history of Street Fighter. Goutetsu (I misspelled it at first, and it stuck) was the master who taught Gouken and Gouki. Gouki killed Goutetsu, and became Akuma. Gouken went on to teach Ken and Ryu, before he, too, was killed by Gouki/Akuma.

I used Gotetsu in my friend’s long-running L5R campaign. Hida Gotetsu of the Crab Clan is one of the coolest characters that I have ever played.