Note: Edited 30 March 2015 to include GB's Analysis Paralysis article
In a prior post I laid out the thought process that would guide future styles I was creating for funsies. Since I was basing my styles off of written manuals, I had decided that Primary Skills would be all combat skills presented in the manuals, ostensibly because all troops undergoing training would be exposed to them and they'd have picked up at least Dabbler level skill. Primary Techniques were going to be signature moves for the style - Head Stomp for LINE, for instance - and things that maximized the style's main skills in terms of effect (or just got repeated attention). Optional Skills were going to be for things that got really brief mention, and optional Techniques were the "lower percentage" moves employed in the style.
This was roughly in line with the guidance GURPS Martial Arts gives for "Components of a Style" on p. 141. I think I may have front loaded some of my stuff, though, since I was figuring "Primary" for "It's in the book".
Author Feedback
I was fortunate in that Peter V. Dell'Orto, of GURPS Martial Arts authorship, chimed in on his MCMAP, where I had expressed confusion on the Optional skills of the style being things laid out in the MCMAP manual right from the beginning. In his experience, MCMAP stylists they'd interviewed, advancement in MCMAP was governed by your unarmed skills being put to the test, rather than in addition to the weapon skills. Evidently these were still trained (separately), but didn't govern in the Corp's eyes how well trained in the style you were. This seems unusual to me as the military tends to stick to their reference documents, but if someone has direct interview with a stylist, I will cede the point.Basically, his advice was that instead of focusing on "what is in the book" to determine Primary and Optional skills (etc), I should instead consider "What would be continually trained?" What this means for my styles is that I may have to interpret what the essential elements of the style in question really are.
It's also worth mention that it appears many of these "styles" of Military Combatives weren't practiced or trained in any coordinated way. Once the Cold War kicks in, it really falls to the wayside. Who needs a knife in a nuke fight?
Publications still come out, of course (just got a slick original copy of the US Army's Combatives manual from 1971 - check eBay, they're currently going cheap), but they sound like they're generally ignored. I recall someone describing the 1992 Army manual as "yet another close combat manual that nobody actually used", but I cannot recall where I saw that, unfortunately.
So nothing earth-shaking; just have yet another improvement in how I approach any future styles I log up here.
Styles: Two elements - Mechanics and Roleplay
As I've perused American Combatives manuals, I've noticed broad similarities between eras and branches. This isn't surprising, as the authors are trying to achieve the same goals and have the same broad limitations to work with. This isn't to say they all read like the same book, since they definitely don't; you can see a shift in thought as the decades go by. Mechanically, they tend to be based on mostly the same skills, with a slant towards fighting completely unarmed. Again, this makes sense because that was the core objective of Combatives. They may use different Techniques, but there's still plenty of overlap - it's usually a good idea to deploy your knife against your enemy's throat, and both LINE and 1992 Army explain this.As I mentioned in a previous post, sometimes roleplayers really like details that set things apart from each other. For some players, a katana can't just be a bastardsword. Others want their spear and polearms to be discreet skills. These are just the mechanical differences in how we tell our story.
It's not what you do, it's how you do it!
When you take a style, you have to have points in its core skills. For something like French Smallsword - the Common Method - you have Smallsword and a few related skills like Smallsword Art. Were I to create a spinoff style for someone who studied under Sir William Hope's New Method, they too would have Smallsword (though you could argue that some Salle's only teach Art or Sport variations). Their Techniques, in GURPS parlance, would also be quite similar. However, there is a distinct difference between the theories of the Common Method and Hope's New Method. Some can't be easily represented in game - the emphasis on High Second guard for Hope, vice the Common Method's Quarte or Tierce. Other differences can, though, through combat maneuvers available to pretty much any fighter. For instance, a student of the Common Method would typically offend with All Out Attack (Long) to fly out in a lunge, while students of the New
Method would never (ideally) do such a thing (probably relying on a Defensive Attack, if memory serves me).Similarly, while LINE and 1992 Army Combatives both display Knife skills and value aiming for the throat, the character and general feel of the Army manual is that of Deceptive Attack, vice LINE's Committed (Determined).
In Huang Bo Nien's Xingyi style, the player can still Retreat on a defense, even though they don't get the bonus with Brawling like pure stylists do with Karate. What a "good" roleplayer may try to do instead is to turn the Retreat into a Slip, to roleplay the style's emphasis on aggressive forward motion. This excellent post by +Douglas Cole may offer some insight into capitalizing on it.
What I mean to say is that, even when two "styles" use the same skills or even the same weapons, you can still do a good bit of differentiation by outlining maneuvers or Extra Effort options stylists would tend to use. The myriad ryu of Kenjutsu could be brought to life this way, for one instance.
To tie in with the words of a very experienced GURPS GM over at Gaming Ballistic, focusing your style's "cannon" combat maneuvers can help avoid analysis paralysis. I know I can be guilty of this. I tend to make "dumber" foes take risker actions or cowardly ones fight defensively for good characterization, but I'm always worried I'll bore my players with the same actions over and over.
Unfortunately, this may imply that a player's options are limited by their style more than they are enhanced. Roleplaying psychomotor tendencies that have been drilled into a stylist probably doesn't have as much appeal as having the full spread of combat options before you. You could maybe create some mechanical incentive for using these Maneuvers; a limited form of Luck, perhaps, or just Good Roleplay Rewards (however your group does it). It's just a storytelling technique, and doesn't need to be serious business.
At least with Techniques you can buy them up!
Closing
So I've gotten some adjustments on what it means to be a Primary skill vs. just an Optional one, from one of the Martial Arts authors. This better informs future styles. Additionally, I think of combat maneuvers as being just as important of a mechanics-story bridge in a style as the skills and "cannon" weapons they use, so I may put something into embellishing them in future posts.Cheers!
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