We have 2 characters in my game that are looking to try parkour in my game, as a martial art. (which is kinda how Mr. Bell describes it. The art of getting away.)
What I am thinking is having +1 or 2 to gymnastics +2 to maximum range for jumping and/or falling tests (may become 2 powers) +3 position in foot chases

for maneuvers I was thinking a check fall ( retest before you make a big fall take better)
Acrobatic climb, use gymnastics instead of climb to get round buildings.

Not to put too fine a point on it but uh, while the term 'art' may apply to Parkour, the term 'martial' kinda doesn't. It doesn't really relate to fighting or war at all.

Not to say you couldn't manufacture some sort of quality for it, seems like you're rather on the right track.

Parkour is already in the book. it's a spec for Gymnastics. but I can't see why tha GM wouldn't allow to pay his players lot's of karma for another meter in jumping

My GM and I have been tossing a similar concept around. What we've come up with is +1 to gymnastic dodge, +1 to agility to determine max jumping distance, +1 to climging tests without a rope and reduce falling distance by 2 metres before determining falling damage. I hadn't thought of new manouvers to go with the style though. I like your check fall manouver and I'll suggest it to my GM

Martial Arts are, in part, designed to prevent fighting from happening in the first place.

Parkour takes this to the primary point: "Get away from attackers by any means necessary."

Even without the Quality or Martial Art portion, however, it's a damn scary thing to see what someone can do with it. One of the first PCs in my game had it, and the old saying about "You only have to outrun the Dwarf" doesn't work if the Dwarf in question ignores things like walls, fences, stairways, doors...

The fact that it is good for avoiding combat by virtue of making you highly mobile does not in any way make it a martial art. That would be like calling sprinting a martial art because it lets you run away quickly.

Ignores doors?

Not really, no, except perhaps in the sense of having techniques for preemptive strikes (and thus ending up without anyone to fight against).

~J

While I can understand, perhaps, wanting to use the martial arts rules (with their special ability to modify existing rules) in order to try and recreate parkour in a game, I still dislike calling it a "martial art." It's running and jumping, not attacking. There's nothing innately martial about it, any more than there's anything innately martial about the Athletics skill group.

If you like the idea of characters being able to further modify their running and jumping -- which can already get pretty awesome with Adept powers, cyberware, bioware, or some mixture of them -- then I'm all for it. Mobility comes up so rarely in games that I think it's a shame (as several of my favorite characters are built around this sort of thing)...if you're aware of just how inhumanly fit these rules can make your PC's, knock yourself out, I guess.

What, all this talk, and nobody's statting THIS up?

Martial Art style. (parkata urbatsu, parkour, freerunning)
Options: +1 gymnastics tests(including gymdodge), +1 to Dodge tests(like kung fu, its generic, because moving is how you avoid getting shot too), +1 dice infiltration tests(like ninjutsu, except scrabbling your way up walls, ledges and crap helps break into places), or -1 threshold to physical tests involving movement.

Unlike most martial arts, its not intended to use a mix of block/parry+dodge in full defense, just dodge and gymdodge, because its not an offensive style. Note that it also lacks a +1dv unarmed choice, too. As for the last bonus: Climbing uses a threshold. Running jumps use a threshold. It seemed appropriate - however, I'm not sure the wording is appropriate, and I'm open to suggestions for a more fitting last bonus.

New Maneuver to supplement Prone Fighting
Quick Stand: You may stand up as a Free action.
(I was always dissappointed the martial arts maneuvers let you fight while prone, but not get up)

Viola, enjoy.

In our case we were trying to match what current era (admittedly highly trained) mundanes are capable of right now with what is probably the most accurate system in game to model it with. Keep in mind that there are several styles of martial arts that have become so stylized as to make them arguably no more martial than parkour is for the average user. (I'm looking at you Tai-Chi) Many others while practical for sports are very impractical for real world combat beyond the very basic strikes and the physical fitness gained through the training. The best example of this is North America's most popular martial art, Tae Kwon Do.

Where'd that '-1 Threshold' come outta left field? That's 3 dice for… basically anything

Shooting a person is a physical task that involve me moving my finger

Plus there's already a +1 Gymnastics bonus. Weird.

Anyway, as devil's advocate, are we also going to start allowing Martial Arts for other things? How about Spike's vehicle martial arts from Cowboy Bebop? I bet plenty of riggers wouldn't mind squeezing a few more +1 DP onto their builds for no reason. The way to be more Parkour-y is to raise your Gymnastics and Running skills, spec Parkour (a ridiculously-broad spec, if the GM's not careful), and train up your Agi/Str/Bod.

I see you've never been brought to your knees in a fraction of a second by a Tai Chi practitioner. Pity. It's true that martial arts are highly stylized until practiced and modified by Green Berets or the like, but they're all useful for fighting. If you want to make Parkour a martial art in your game, go for it (I wouldn't).

Sorry, i -meant- to say 'physical skills tied to physical attributes', kind of like enhanced articulation, which makes it -far- more balanced, because you basically can't use it for anything combat related.

As worded, the -intent- is clear, but the wording is terrible, and I'm too lazy to think of something better.

I'll see you that, and raise you this thread, which is pretty similiar, and was generally met with approval.

The point is that a -1 threashhold is the same as 3 extra dice, which is 3 times the bonus you get otherwise. So why would you ever pick anything over this? And even at just a +1 bonus, it is better than the other options, because it covers all those other skills you list.

Yeah, the Threshold part is the bit that I care about. I don't like the use of Threshold-shifting for anything in SR4, really. The rare places it does show up, it's messy (like the Control Rig).

My understanding was that Tai-Chi was practiced in two very different ways. There are those that teach it as an exercise form with no more effective combat training than aerobics, and those that teach it as a meaningful partial art.

I believe the defining trait of a martial art is the ability to win a fight unarmed. It is true many martial arts include maneuvers for avoiding combat but they also include maneuvers for winning. Parkour is very effective at escaping, well etiquette is very effective at convincing people not to kill you, shall we call that a martial art too. Come on people, we are not playing exalted here. Qualitys to represent the more outlandish parquore maneuvers, would be fine, but its not a martial art.

PS for those of you not familiar with exalted some examples
Mortal martial arts, anything a human in the real world can do.
Terrestrial martial arts, “terrible assent driven beast style”. Think an adept with parkor jumping 10 meters in the air and landing on your head.
Celestial martial arts, “dreaming pearl cortisan style”. Etiquette as a martial art, social bonuses as well as kill armored soldiers with your frilly clothes, fan, piece of paper sash or silk scarf (and I mean stab with the silk scarf, not using it as a garot)
Sidereal martial “systreen poxes of contagion style”. Medicine as a martial art, use of biowarfar agents on a personal hand to hand combat level, in combat time, and punch somebody into health within a combat round

Sorry, there should have been an ephasis on the word average. I'm fully aware that the movements in Tai Chi make up an extermely dangerous martial art, but it's very much a lifetime style, and most people who train in Tai Chi aren't learning it to be deadly warriors.

Which book is this in?

SR4, SR4(a), take your pick. "Parkour" is listed as a specialization of the Gymnastics skill -- perhaps the broadest, much like when "Martial Arts" is listed as a specialization of Unarmed Combat.

Excellent. I didn't see that when I read through that section.

Windows. Or, if you're large enough, and/or the building has a cheap interior redesign, walls. (A Troll or Dwarf can easily make his own doorway easily if all he has to go through is some drywall. Less easy but still possible for large Humans or Orks.)

Also, if you've seen some Freerunner/Parkour movies, you might have seen windows above doorways that are used. I've seen them in some places, but can't for the life of me understand why they're there.

Heh. You are missing out on the more dangerous half of the close-range martial arts. You know, the one with swords.

Not everyone used to have air conditioning, CanRay. Otherwise, no idea.

I find it a bit strange this notion that parkour isn't a martial art, wasn't some of the founding of its practice developed during war time France for use by its military?

Martial arts literally meaning arts of war, correct? So if SR has this many different ways of fighting, like matrix and astral and so forth, I would think there would be some reasonable room for different ways for it to be artful. But I suppose if it warrants extras, which would have some precedent with other forms getting bonuses, or if it is fine just being a specialization.

Personally, I wouldn't really know, the only book I have is the SR4A. I think I would default to specialization with the resources I have since I don't have the examples from other books to draw a shared format from.

[insert joke about a faster way to retreat, here]

In all honesty, I've absolutely never, ever, heard that. Parkour is "free running," which is basically running around a city doing BMX and skateboard tricks without the bike or skateboard. People practice it to jump down off low roofs, leap through windows, vault over urban obstacles, and look cool doing it.

I think maybe you're thinking of Savate.

I think the notion of having special qualities for other skills could add a lot to the game (note that there are already some qualities that do this), and it would be interesting to see the equivalent of martial arts maneuvers for things like running, driving, etc.

But the version presented here seems overpowered, especially the option to replace climbing with gymnastics. Plus, it's like having special qualities to make a face better - it's piling on more dice in an area that can already get, perhaps, a bit too high. I mean, you have synthcardium, enhanced articulation, Neo-EPO, the natural athlete quality, kid stealth/satyr legs, and lots and lots of adept powers, and that's not an all-inclusive list.

On the French connection...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour#History

Savate has been around since at least the 1800s. I'm not how useful it'd be a military combat style.

Just because it is developed by/for or used by the military doesn't make it a martial art. Military uses rope climbing and wall climbing and running through tires as part of its training, but that doesn't make any of those martial arts.

As others have said, it is already an option for specialization, and as glyph pointed out, there are already tons of other places to get bonuses to gymnastics/running/climbing.

Ah, found out that they're called a "Transom", and "Transom windows which could be opened to provide cross-ventilation while maintaining security and privacy (due to their small size and height above floor level) were a common feature of office buildings and apartments before air conditioning became common." - Wikipedia