[X] My Assistant

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[James McMurray]

I also never liked style specilizations, as there's not really a lot of times when they won't apply, especially if your players know their martial arts enough to pick something that's well rounded.

[Perssek]

I´m having the same Doubts & problems as most people who came here searching for maneuvers - most of my players are martial arts praticants (aikido, one of them is a 3rd dan black-belt, and I practiced judo since I was 3 years old till my mid-twenties), and they constantly ask me about how to do this or that in the game.

Usually, I let them do whatever manuever they want - as long as it´s appropriate for the Unamed Combat specialization they chose (muay thai, karate, white crane kung fu, whatever), with a dice pool modifier for the manuever difficulty (always negative).

[PBTHHHHT]

Ugh, I just view Unarmed combat as unarmed combat. You train for it, no specializations. It makes life and bookeeping easier that way. And yes, I've done martial arts and still do, and I've done a few different styles. But, if a person is skilled in unarmed combat, then they are skilled in the unarmed combat. Any maneuver will be more of a cinematic and flavour for the game, but I won't bog it down with any arguments about how this style is better than that or why that martial arts is better than another in circumstances.

[Perssek]

Oh, but there´s no bookeeping - as we have a good idea what every style do, anyone with only Unarmed Combat can just punch, ram or kick, while others with the martial arts specialization can do a lot of other stuff (+1/-1 to dice pool depending on what). And yes, my game is VERY cinematic, and the players like it that way, so nobody is harmed (except for the people on the business end of a clenched fist). But nobody argues on which style is better - EVERYBODY knows that drunken praying monkey kung fu is the best style of all!

[Shrike30]

IIRC, the specializations of Unarmed Combat are Cyber-Implants, Martial Arts, Subdual Combat, and Parrying. The easiest house-rule for this (and the least change from what's in the book) is to replace "Martial Arts" with "Attacking," and if the player is a student of a particular martial art, you rename "Unarmed Combat" to that art.

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(and now, I pull some of the "focuses" of a couple of martial arts out of my ass)

Let's take Joe Runner, for a moment. Joe Runner has Unarmed Combat at 4, with the Martial Arts specialization. This doesn't really reflect what he's trained to do very well, and there's an awful lot of room left in there for debate over what, exactly, he's able to apply the bonus to. So, we use the house rule I just mentioned:

Let's say, for example, Joe's training is in Aikido. That'd give him Aikido 4 (Subdual Combat +2). Or, his training could be in Tai Chi, which could be expressed as Tai Chi 4 (Parrying +2). Or maybe he was trained in a more aggressive art, like Kung Fu... his skill would be expressed as Kung Fu 4 (Striking +2). If he's an aggressive metalhead, he may even have found an old German ex-military 'borg instructor, and learned the art of Eisenpanzer, which would be best expressed as Eisenpanzer 4 (Cyber-weapons +2).

[Rotbart van Dain...]

If you are referring to Gunnm/Battle Angle Alita, you mean 'Panzerkunst' ..which is martian.

[Shrike30]

*shrug* I know about enough German to figure out a cool-sounding martial art name like "Iron Panther" (that is, very little). If there's going to be heavily augmented and internally armed people in the future, someone is going to develop a martial art for them.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Iron Panther = Eisenpanther (sounds like a KungFu flick.)
Eisenpanzer = Iron Tank (sounds like... Steampunk?)

Actual renaming of a skill isn't necessary, though... names are mostly relevant ingame.

[Perssek]