So, I was debating whether to post this, but seeing as I keep coming back to it in my head (and inspired by BoxCrayonTale’s project to retro clone the World of Darkness, I figured I would make my own topic to use as an idea board. Anyway...
Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game was released by White Wolf in 1994, and used the same system as their then current World of Darkness products. While the concept of the creators of Vampire: The Masquerade making an arcade fighting game into a tabletop game seemed weird (and still gets confused looks from people to this day), from reading reviews and articles, and speaking with people that have played the game (sometimes in campaigns that lasted years), the system seemed to work very well… once you got accustomed to it. The combat system is rather interesting. To mimic the arcade game, combat takes place on a grid. Each character has a chosen martial arts style that the player can spend experience on to learn new techniques, and the techniques are chosen during each Round of combat secretly. Characters then act in order from lowest initiative to highest, with faster characters able to interrupt actions.
The original game has been out of print for 25 years (though there is the fan-made ‘20th Anniversary Edition’ released a few years ago). And the combat system inspired Burn Legend, an alternate setting for Exalted.
Purpose:
The concept of a “retro clone” (I use that loosely here) would be not to recreate a 100% authentic version of the original game, but to take the elements of what worked, take some of the streamlining that occurred in Burn Legend, and design an alternate version of the Storytelling System that captures that same feel as the original game.
For now, I am calling it "World Warrior" until something better comes along.
Goals:
• Rewrite the rule system for copyright reasons
• Create a new default setting, and possibly a starting city with adventure ideas, characters, etc.
• Create a system to build martial arts styles and techniques and use this to rebuild all the styles and techniques from the ground up (rather than port over said items wholesale from SF).
• Begin with a handful of techniques and build 2 styles for in-house play test purposes. Increase to 5 styles. Repeat. Final draft should have 10-20 styles.
Other Ideas to Think About:
D6 Dice Pools? Convert the dice pool from D10 to D6, both to distance the game from the Storyteller System (since there is no SRD) and because its easier to acquire D6’s than D10’s. [This isn’t something set in stone, but it IS something that I keep coming back to. For now I plan to continue forward with it being a D10 system as not to fully remove it from being a Storyteller retro clone.
Lore Sheets? Design Lore Sheets (Story Sheets?) as an addition to the game, as done in previous games Weapons of the Gods and Legends of the Wulin. Instead of acting as character knowledge and have redundant generic sheets included, each Lore Sheet would be for personal story arcs. It would still include knowledge on various specific subjects (persons, places, things, organizations, etc) but the point of them would be to have players invest in their characters and find cool things they want to do, but connecting with the setting.
Campaign World Concept
The core idea behind the game is capturing the feel of arcade fighting games from the early 90’s. I would expand this to also cover beat-em-up’s like Final Fight. The World would not be a 100% accurate depiction of our world, but rather the kind of alternate history-type world that seemed to exist in those games at the time.
Some immediate ideas:
• Corporations that have their own private military forces, and are (usually) up to no good. (Robocop, Killer Instinct)
• Dystopian cities with massive amounts of gangs, ninja clans, and martial arts masters (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Final Fight, Double Dragon, etc)
• The reason for the explosion in martial arts is due to the banning of firearms. This led to an increase in people learning martial arts. Eventually, tournaments began to be held everywhere, and businesses profited from the increased tourism.
• Rival martial arts schools having wars in the streets, martial artists seeking legendary masters and ancient styles and techniques, cults attempting to wipe out their enemies, etc.
Martial arts styles, organizations, etc will be fictional. This is because I don’t want to have to do a pile of research on real world styles (which would probably be picked apart anyway by practicing members). The styles can also reflect the world better, and be tied into various cultures, characters, and help to flesh out the World.
Obviously, as I continue to slowly work on this, elements above will change or be discarded. I will continue to post as I tackle each section and work through how the system will proceed. For right now, I just wanted to throw this out there and see if anyone has any thoughts.