> I'd be interested in "comparing notes" -- offline, if it's not of
> general interest.
Cool, I would too.
> Actually, no: my preferred solution is to treat martials arts as
> a _set_ of abilities; the obvious comparison being the existing
Like a keyword?
> cultures.) And I I mentioned before, perhaps even different numbers
> of "disciplines", more useful in their own right, less directly
> focused on immediate personal liberation, often.
Yep. Given the mysticism rule are up for grabs, and I have no idea whats under discussion, I've been pretty much ignoring them as writ for now.
> Any system of martial arts based around Generic Close Combat and
> a handful of augments is, I feel, doomed to tediousity. (Which
isn't
> to say the background colour can't be made suitably exciting, just
> that the system will end up doing nothing to _help_.)
Well, the pure mechanics of the system will not, but because the abilities are always "fuzzy" the player has to put a lot of description into what they want to do. And they don't HAVE to use Close Combat all the time - they can switch to another ability (like Strike of the Dragons Tail, say, at will, with that TN. It's only their starting AP's which are directly governed by CC. Aslo, you can allow certain manouveres toi require the defender use an unusual ability to resist. The fact that the abilities all have the same "weight" in the system means they can be interchanged at will.
> Personally, I dislike this, as it seems to proceed from the basis
> that if martial arts aren't a form of theism, then they bleedin'
> well ought to be. Strikes me as a failure of imagination, and to
The mechanical structure should be like that iof theism, even if the idoelogical cladding is different. I think trying to translate to a world which operates on a different set of premises, and which thus obliges you to break with the relationship between the mechanics themselves and Gloranthas particular rationale of those mechnaics.
> Unless you can make the case that all of the above are best
described
> as 1HP "styles" within a single, "narrow" ability, then I'm not
> buying it. I'm not arguing that there be _no_ transference at all,
Well then, insist that they come to you with a reason before they spend the point to cement the style. Spend and evening down the pub, no; spend 10 years as a slave gladiator, yes. The system makes it mechanically cheap, but that does not mean that you need to make them "cheap" in the game itself. What it represents is that AFTER THE FACT of the learning process, learning how to fight to your level in a new way does not itself require re-learning how to fight (hence, cheap). The styles they have cemented are those they can do weithout improv penalty, is all.
I think that you want the experience points to give you a structure for modelling learning, but they do not do this, they model "impact". I don't think the rules are able to provide a mechanism which gives feedback about the learning process itself, but instead provides a relative post facto measure.
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