Wrastlin’
In a dramatic departure from our usual sword and sorcery fare, my group just concluded our first World Wide Wrestling campaign. If you’re not familiar with WWW, it’s one of those Powered by the Apocalypse games that all the hip narrative gaming kids like to talk about. That meant it came complete with playbooks and 2d6 resolutions mechanics and high degrees of narrative agency for players. It even had a novel mechanic called “Break Kayfabe” where you could expose the legit truth on camera (as opposed to approved storylines from “Creative”). It was, in short, an interesting experience. But even if the the weirdness of playing a character who’s playing a character deserves its own journal article, my biggest takeaway wasn’t in the mechanics. It was the flavor text.
I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve seen a pro wrestling match, but it had been a good few years for yours truly. I remembered “power bomb” and “choke slam” from my middle school days, back when Hulk Hogan and the NWO were wrecking house and Ray Mysterio Jr. was flying high. Phrases like “from the top rope” and “give him the chair” had also lingered in my pop culture vocabulary, but that was about it. When I first sat down to roll up my WWW superstar, I didn’t know an Irish whip from a camel clutch. They were nothing but evocative phrases without a mental image attached. Fortunately the game came with some handy visual aids to assuage my ignorance.
At the back of the WWW playtest PDF, there’s a nice set of illustration depicting wrestling moves. These sequences are all about five steps long, and show examples of maneuvers that build into a “big spot.” I had great fun stringing these ridiculous techniques together, working into progressively more elaborate combinations as I became more familiar with the names. It was a bit awkward at first, and we stumbled over our descriptions in the “umm…and then…I guess I could” kind of way. But by the time we fought our climatic battle at Spookgasm: October Slam 2021, we were rattling off moves fast and furious, throwing a lockup into shoot-the-ropes into leapfrog into a moonsault.
If you’ve ever narrated a fight scene as a GM, you may begin to see the utility. In the same way that those fun adjective cheat sheets can help GMs pepper their combats with more interesting descriptions, pulling inspiration from established combat styles can expand a table’s collective imaginary. Pro wrestling is just one example (and one that I’ve often seen employed at D&D sessions). Proper fencing terminology can apply just as easily (“I parried in quarte and riposted, then we locked together corps-a-corps”). So can jiu jitsu moves. So can MMA fighting, or HEMA manuals, or whatever the crap it is they do in DBZ. So long as the other players at the table are familiar, all of these can help a group understand exactly what you’re imagining when you say, “I attack with my sword.” And more to the point, this brand of description can be a lot more interesting than, “I hit it for 19 slashing.”
Question of the day then! What IRL combat techniques do you draw on in your combat descriptions? Do you have any handy visual aids to share with the rest of us? Post ’em if you’ve got ’em! With any luck, we can expand our collective combat vocabulary down in today’s comments.
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Pugilist is definitely in my top ten of favourite characters in your comic. ^_^ She can kick mammals like nobody’s business, and doesn’t need to take names.
I started this comic thinking Fighter and Thief would be the main characters. Now Magus and Pug are out here like, “Naw, we got this.”
Speaking strictly for myself, Magus and Pugilist are a bit more relatable. ^^;
Crazy and dumb moreso than murderhobo and unlucky? I think I fall into that category as well, lol.
I see Magus as simpleminded and impulsive, but with some very kind sides to her character. You can’t trust her with a mouse or a hedgehog, but she always seems eager to find and share happiness.
As for Pugilist… As silly as she can be, I have mad respect for her. From her very first appearance, she’s been bucking the stereotype and kicking butt. She isn’t letting the hand fate and genetics dealt her determine her course for her.
Wht are Pug’s and Monk’s ring names? Is monk a heel or a jobber?
Monk is a jobber, poor bastard. He goes by “Li’l Fist Stunner.”
As for Pugilist, I’m not sure if there’s a Spanish translation for “Godzilla,” but I’m pretty sure she’ll find find one.
A literal translate would be “ballena gorila”, apparently.
(‘Gojira’ is a combo of gorilla and whale, if memory serves, so I just ran that through google translate.)
Somehow I imagined Gunslinger would be the jobber, not Monk. Or he’d be the guy who parachutes into the ring.
I imagine Gunslinger got released right as he was called up by creative.
I don’t have any combat style advice, but I CAN tell you that I unintentionally made Pug in Pathfinder 2e. (Wasn’t thinking of her until the character was done.)
It’s a kobold Swashbuckler with the Fencing style (so panache comes from Deception checks, mostly feints) with enough Monk/Martial Artist to use unarmed strikes and get Stumbling Stance, a fighting style that involves flailing around so the enemy underestimates you and gives openings. (It also gives bonus damage against flat-footed foes.) By the end, it can feint and make two attacks as a SINGLE action (thanks to Stumbling Stance’s flurry of blows upgrade). I chose kobold for the Cringe ability (a reaction that reduces damage from being crit by looking pitiful) and Grovel (which lets you feint at range). It also gets the ability to make foes less accurate with feint, and to Intimidate for free whenever it gets a kill. Overall, the character is a kobold who goes around looking weak and then pummels the snout off of anyone who falls for it.
I’m actually playing this character in a campaign (Abomination Vaults) and literally the second thing it did was crit something on a finisher and do like 40 damage at Level 1. A bit of a glass cannon so far, but it’s been fun.
You have no idea how happy it makes me to know that Pug is somewhere out there in the multiverse cracking skulls.
You’d think Fighter would prefer the small-sized mud wrestling racket instead.
Give him 20 gp and he’ll get the bucket.
It’s not explicitly a combat or fighting technique, but in PF when I use my Size-Changer Vanara build, I often describe its transformation from a small 45 pound Baboon to a 360 pound Vanara like the scene from Men In Black where the roach-alien lifts its hands to its head and peels the human-skin from itself, revealing a monstrous creature many times greater in size. This describes Gruesome Shapechanger and Startling Shapechange. From there he just punches and fights like any other monkey.
For transformations in general (since I prefer playing shapechangers), I really try to play up the grotesqueness of the changes, usually leaning on Animorphs-cover style descriptions.
Actually, for that Vanara build, I usually run it as a Brawler so it can punch, and when I use Outslug Style with it, I try to describe it as if I’m an Out-boxer, swinging and dodging, moving constantly, which is what it’s designed for. I lean on Muhammad Ali fights for how I fight.
I never picked up boxing as a kid, and I know very little about the sport. Is there a good place to get the basics? I suspect it would be helpful next time I roll up a monk.
I like the youtube channel “Modern Martial Artist”, which covers a lot of the Boxing greats, describing in simple ways how they pulled off the feats they did. It’s definitely worth a watch.
Will give ’em a look. Cheers!
This is close enough to a “combat” technique: actual tactics. It can be sweet when the players know some and get to show them off: they describe how they set up the ambush or the unfair (in their favor) firepower advantage, then the GM describes how the enemies fail to it.
Maybe not the same one over and over again – if they’re doing that, then perhaps reduce the combat to a narrative because the outcome is foreordained (and that is appropriate in some cases) – but if they can adapt tactics to different situations, let them. Ambushing a squad of kobolds is a different story than taking advantage of a giant’s blind spots, and both are entirely different from seizing the supply caravan that would have kept the evil overlord’s army fed, reducing them to feral berserkers who eventually prey on each other as the only source of meat around – leaving a greatly reduced number to clean up, who are mostly low on HP to boot.
Do you mean military tactics? I don’t quite get how “we ambush them” or “we seize the supply caravan” paints the sort of mental image I’m thinking about when I imagine fightin’ moves.
Probably not what you were thinking of by IRL combat techniques, but Flying Circus threw in a table of aerial maneuvers to describe combat sequences with. Sadly too many to fit illustrations in the book, but looking them up was a bunch of fun.
Is that an aerial combat game? Because if so, I’m flashing back pretty hard to my Crimson Skies days:
https://www.amazon.com/Crimson-Skies-Game-Aerial-Combat/dp/1555603742
And looking at that price, I’m super annoyed with myself for getting rid of the old box set. :/
In college I got top marks in Fencing and flat-out failed a Defensive MMA class–giving me just enough half-remembered terms to describe Nat.20s and Crit. Fails in terms florid enough to make Edgar Rice Burroughs roll his eyes. Among my favorites are a) the adjudication that a character’s lost eye (the result of a Critical Hit/Miss Deck) was caused by his crossbow misfiring and ramming his specialty sight into his eye, and b) a Greek-themed character taking a level in Monk by “brushing up on his pankration moves.” Now every hit by the priest of Heracles is potentially an elbow smash, knee-strike, or leg-sweep.
Attached is a link to the color commentary from an adventure where the biggest threat (essentially an iron golem) was fought by the Greek cleric while the rest of the party pursued the main objectives. I pre-rolled the fight results as a stage hazard, then ad-libbed the interactions as the PCs either did or didn’t affect the outcome each round. (In the end, the heroes still won, but there’s never a guarantee in my pregenerated NPC brawls.) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NIvFEXvYPJQhwcjknm0zq9OYTn-UyPuh/view?usp=sharing
Ha! I always flash on my high school Iliad class with this word. “The painful art of boxing” indeed.
Thanks for linking! Very nice bit of technique there, laying down the color commentary up front so that you can steer the encounter around it.
Thank you! High praise, indeed.
In the end, the fight wrapped up a couple of rounds early thanks to timely PC intervention (it’s tough to scratch a giant golem, but every little bit helps). Most of the most colorful descriptions still made it into my description of the fray somewhere. No one was outright killed by the falling debris, and the pugilist survived his plunge into the depths of the next dungeon level.
Ripping a person spine with a lettuce leaf 😀
Exalted is a silly game.
Wait! You can actually do that on Exalted? DIdn’t knew that 😀
Bro. You can do ANYTHING in exalted.
So tell me what to roll if my character is GMing “blades in the dark” while playing a lute on fire with his teeth while doing tumbles 😛
Add a point of trauma to your character sheet.
So it’s funny you mention the intersection that is Table Top and Pro Wrestling. I was thinking about enemies, and remembered one from the old Dragon Warrior games… and decided to put some pop culture spin on it.
“From the darkened hall, you hear heavy footfalls and the jingling of copious amounts of small metal objects. In the light, you can see the light gleaming off the colossal figure’s golden skin, the outline of its perfectly sculpted form gleaming in the darkness. All around, you begin to hear cheering from a phantom crowd.
In all of its unmistakable blinged out glory, a Treasure Golem has stepped out to battle you.”
I figured a golem made of gold is a pretty classic RPG enemy, but I wanted the personality to match. So… give the Gold Golem some crazy bling, the body of Adonis, and the showboating + move set of a pro wrestler? Best enemy ever.
Treasure golems are immune to all damage, spells, and effects when they spend their turn posing and showboating. They have high CMB and CMD, but aren’t as resistant to damage as other golems. …of course, the golem itself is treasure, so how bad do you guys want to wreck it?
Naw man. That’s all enemies:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/villainous-monologue
Solid combo of traits and personality on the treasure golem though. Makes me wonder if it’s an encounter that cannot be “won.” You only continue beating on this indestructible thing, with every 100 damage giving your a roll on a treasure table. It’s still talking smack when you finally leave, but it’s slightly smaller on account of all the lost body weight / treasure.
Well, when you destroy a wonder for mere money, art thou truly winning?
I can just picture someone saying that to Fighter.
“Um. Yeah? I’m rich now?”
I have, more than once, been asked ‘Are you ok?’ when I go a little too far in describing how I attack. Particularly memorable was when I made the entire table shudder when my investigator, after getting punched in the face by a mind-controlled man, needed a way to down him nonlethally, but her only weapon was a crossbow, which isn’t exactly nonlethal. So she stepped up, puller her arm back, then swung it down and up- you can probably imagine where the crossbow’s end struck that evoked that particular reaction. The attack crit, though, so who’s laughing now?
Certainly not your victim.