Many of you probably remember how back in your favorite 80s martial arts films the hero was only able to kick ass after he went through a two minute training montage with funky pseudo asian music blared in the background and an asian mentor. Examples of this would be Bloodsport, Kickboxer, and The Karate Kid.

I decided that in order to enhance SRs 80s-ness I should write a SR3 rule for training montages. My aim was to keep the rule fun but not too powerful, so give me your comments.

Training Montage:

If your character needs to become more powerful in many different ways within a shorter time frame you will need a training montage.

A training montage offers a reduced karma cost and time investment for a character who needs to perfect many different skills and attributes at once. It's only a "good deal" if you are improving many things at once.

A montage costs the following amount of karma: (karma cost of most expensive skill or attribute improvement) + (average karma cost of all other skill or attribute improvements)

A montage uses the same formula for time with "time" replacing the term "karma cost" in the above equation.

In order to be able to execute a training montage two conditions must be met:

1.) A character must have an appropriate level "Asian Mentor" contact. (See below.)

2.) The player of the character must pick and play appropriate training montage 80s music and, for at least two minutes, must physically act out his or her character training and improving with the music playing in the background. The montage does not take effect until the player has succeeded in making the other players present giggle.


Asian Mentor Contact

The Asian Mentor Contact costs the same as any other normal SR3 contact. However, you need an Asian Mentor to be able to perform a training montage. The usefulness of the montage depends on the level of your Asian Mentor contact. A level 1 Asian Mentor contact allows you make a training montage for the purpose of raising skills or attributes up to a limit of level 3. A level 2 Asian Mentor contact allows you to make a training montage for the purpose of raising skills or attributes up to a limit of level 6. A level 3 Asian Mentor contact allows you to raise skills or attributes as high as you want during a training montage but the drawback of the level 3 Asian Mentor is that if he gets abducted your character has no choice but to attempt a rescue and the GM is required to torture you with ninjas in the commission of your rescue. ("IZUMO!!!" - American Ninja 3.)

Great idea, except I would rule that the Mentor need not be Asian. After all, the training montages in the Rocky films are perhaps the most famous montages in film history, yet Rocky's trainer is white.

Speaking of Rocky, someone should compile a list of good montage songs, one of which is "Gonna Fly Now" from the film's soundtrack. The list should also include "Montage" from Team America: World Police, and this is why:

That team America song is really not that funny.

Thank you for this brilliant idea. Threads like this one keep me on this forum.

you've got to be kidding me.

I would impose the following restrictions on training montages:

May not raise Mental Attributes, only Physical

May only raise Combat or Physical Skills. May not raise Social (Except Ettiquettes), Technical, or Vehicle skills.

The only Combat skills that may be raised are unarmed combat, melee weapons, improvised and/or aerodynamic throwing weapons, and Archery. Firearms, crossobws, energy weapons, any weapon employing the Gunnery skill are out!

Super Secret TechniquesTM require a Rating 3 Mentor, and multiply the Karma cost by 1.25 (round all fractions up) per technique earned (and require the expenditure of 1 Karma point for every use). These Super Secret Techniques may be learned as Physical Adept powers instead(though not metamagic), assuming you have power points to spend...

So if I have a chinese dude sitting around I could learn 11 different skills from 0 to 6 for only 64 Karma? I mean the highest skill would be 32 karma (31.5 rounded up supposing you have a 6 in the attribute governing the skills you wish to raise) plus the average of the rest of the skills, which would be 320/10=32 so 32+32=64 karma for 11 skills. Unless I really fucked my math up some where thats pretty ridiculous.

Hey and with the optional side kick rules you could cut that in half.

Give me a break.

But the side kick would have to be killed by the nemisis of the runner at the beginning of the campaign. In a very dramatic way. Like the runner is distracted by the pay data nd the security guard they thought was dead sits up an shoots sparky in the back with his ally spirit created dikoted slivergun. Making the runner want to train harder.

But only if he has sex with it.

With his dead sidekick?

No the Dikoted AVS ally spirit. The Necrophilia would just be RP at that point for an extra karma point.

Ok, so we are down to 32 karama for 11 skills from 0 to 6 if joe runner has sex with a dikoted ally spirit AVS after a guard dramatically kills sparky, then trains with some asian guy. And if he he also has sex with sparkys corps hell get a bonus karma point for RPing? Sounds like a plan, can I have more then one sidekick at character creation?

No, only one at a time. But you can get more Side Kicks through RP to use in future Montages.

Side Kicks cost 10 karma earned through RP only so you need to keep track of where your karma comes from. (known as the munchkin clause) You can only have one Side Kick at a time and they musy have a name that ends in 'y' Sparky, Dorky etc.

But thats more paper work and makes the rules overly complicated. What we need is a more stream lined rule set that captures the essence of the rule, but a lot less restrictive.

SO I suggest at character creation, pick any movie, book, comic book etc character you want, make them how youd like them to be. I mean Wolverine never used gatlin gun, but you never know when your runner may need one, so tack on heavy weapons 6 for good measure. Then you just say you had Sparky, but he died, you raped his corps an now you are going to get revenge. We'll cut out the whole karma system, the skill training time and all those surperfluous rules slowing the game down.

Actually make it even easier and just say you have all skills at 6.

Can I still rape Sparky?

I dont see why not, but thats just me.

Good, because I dont want to see any roles that limit my corps rapeing abilities.

Oh, Domino remember this from the lounge?

Memo:
To: All boardmembers, Division Heads, CEO Domino

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I would like to inform the share holders and potential investers that Yo-Yo Dyne has worked closely with Domino Dyne to develope new nanotech which increases the crotch strength of our polyester leisure pants. We also added a second pouch to keep the boys from sticking together in warmer climates, like Miami.

Technically a runners role is to rape corps. Or did you mean a rule about the raping, well consensual really sparky cant say no, of corpses?

Edit: curse complicated concepts such as punctuation.

Damn you and your proper spelling, you should know better then that to correct me, Im going to have to... wait they made us leave that game. Ill have to figure out how to get even. Hey you work with dead or close to dead people dont you? I guess thats where you came up with the they cant say no rule, to ease your conscience.

What is this conscience of which you speak?

And maybe some day the EMU will be rolled out and you can be Fish boi once again.

Ninjas PFFT.

We had Neo-Anarchist urban poets PWNAGE!!!!!!!!!

Admin post: Domino, Frag-o, don't totally derail threads, even if you have no interest in them.

I dont think the RAW says anything about a montage being used in that way but the karma gained through RPing it could be used in a future Montage or to pick up a sidekick.

So you are saying I would have to RP the court trial, and make a side kick out of the baliff that takes me back to my cell everyday. Then during sentencing he helps me escape and in the following melee hes killed by the Judgenator. Thus making me want to train hard to get revenage on the Judge?

Do I get a cost reduction if:

+ The monatage takes about 15 minutes
+ I get belittled by my rather frail looking mentor all the way
+ I was Kidnapped by my government and foreced to train as an Assasin
+ My Mentor is from a remote part of Korea
+ And has orders to kill me if I fail
+ Can dodge bullets and walk over water

Oh and how much Karma is it worth if I am forced to kiss Kathe Mulgrew (Janeway) during a mission?

He didn't convert to the DBC, it seems.

Oh, they all will.

And on topic...I have no problem with the "montage" skill developer, but I don't think it will ever see the light of day in our campaigns. The fact that you need to have a contact specifically for the montage seems like a pretty big resource pull for a new character.

Well OK, then. That is what I get for skimming the topic. Thanks for the clarifications.

So if I as a new player pick up the Friends Abroad (3 build points) and possibly the Friends in High Places (2 build points), that would be enough of a balance to off set 260 karma later? I would pick friends in high places so he would be a high level shaolin monk or something cool. I mean 5 whole build points is a real investment. A Bad Karma flaw or Hunted flaw would fit well and add more backstory and not bother a new character all that much. I already act like an ass and make my group laugh, so itll be easy to do the montage stuff. And I rarely take a skill over 6, so I think I can handle the higher level skills one point at a time with all the karma Ill save doing a montage at the beginning.

EDIT: A montage in a movie is not the character becoming a superhero over night. Its a way for the director of the movie to show you what that guy is doing then advacing the story ahead in time. In short its a way to keep you from walking out of the theater instead of watching Rocky beat on a side of beef in real time.

As a GM you accomplish the same thing in several ways.

Either the player plays a different character while the rest of the party continues to play, the entire party takes a break while they all train (the whole party plays new characters) or the GM says POOF! its 3 months later, your fixer calls.

In a similar theme, I give extra karma when players have prewritten flashback scenes that they pull out and read at appropriate moments in game. (ie. they have to "flash-back" in character and get karma to represent the insight of a certain memory.) It encourages interesting backgrounds.

For example:

GM: "The villain's thugs toss you roughly into a tiny cell lit only by a single candle. 'Stay here 'til you rot.' they chuckle"

Player: (fishing out his character notes.) "I stare at the candle until it becomes the candle from my eighth birthday party, the day I learned my mother went to the hospital. I can see her in her uniform, on the way to work.... blah blah blah."

Here is an idea.

A Montage may be used to reduce the time required for any test over an hour long to 1 combat turn per hour. This use of the Montage requires that the PC burn 1 point of karma pool.

The reason I say burn instead of spend is so that high-karma deckers cannot abuse this to make absurdly powerful programs . Alternatly, use spend and limit it to one use per catagory of test during the character's lifetime.

A character with the Asian (or Italian for Boxers) Mentor Contact may burn karma pool to incerase skills or attributes at a 1:1 rate. This can be used on any Skill or Attribute because martial arts training makes you good at everything. The mentor is not required to be alive if the character has trained under him before (see Rocky V). If the mentor is dead this is a Flashback Montage.

Since WR often complains about high karma pools this seems like a good solution. It benefits the skilled more than the unskilled, as well. Burning a karma pool point may be economical if raising the skill costs more than 10 or 20 karma but it is wasteful otherwise.

What if my character IS sort of an asian mentor?

Then you can not use a montage but can assist in one.

I've been doing futher reading on the subject of asian mentors. I have encountered a series of books called "The Destroyer" by Richard Sapir and Warren Murphy, published circa 1977 by Pinnacle Books. This series is really mandatory reading on the subject of asian mentors!

Anyway, it made me realize that I should make rules for how you can use an Asian Mentor Flashback to save your bacon in a seemingly intractable situation. It's like the orientalist Deus Ex Machina. For example, let's say that your character falls off a building and faces certain splattering death. In mid fall you have an asian mentor flashback (cued in and out by flute music) and as a result you mentally really get into some passage from the tao te ching, totally relax yourself, and manage to not die upon impact.

Of course, I'd have to think of rules which wouldn't just make the game explode in a mushroom cloud, so I'll post more when I've thought of something.

Actually, The Destroyer series was the basis for Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.

Chun for the win!

The mentor does not have to be asian. Think of the Rocky movies. They include the most famous training montage of all time. The climax of him running up the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum is an iconic momment in film history.