Hey, everybody! So, I've been working for a while on putting together a game based on the fighting game genre - something that mixes the best parts of Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, King of Fighters, and so on. I looked at a lot of settings over the last year, but when I found Genesys it felt like the kind of rules I'd been looking for in all the homebrew campaigns I've ever patchworked together.

UPDATE: v.1.0 Now Available

Changelog:

ver. 1.0 7/10/19

• Completed package! With cover art and everything. The cover art is by me, everything inside is from other game art.
• Character Archetypes
  • Changed "The Enhanced" to "The Machine" and made it a cyborg character, removing gene mods. They weren't a bad idea, but just didn't wind up fitting the way I wanted them to.
• Skills
  • Changed the "Weapons" FX skill to "Gadgets" to better reflect what the skill does. If you want a melee weapon, you build it as a special move. If you want a ranged weapon, you buy it as equipment.
  • Added "Ranged" combat skill so you can buy and wield guns.
• Talents
  • Cleaned up the Talent list. New stuff from SotB has been added, some talents I didn't feel would get much use in this kind of campaign world got axed.
• Special Moves
  • Changed the Anti-Air move quality to show how it can be used with the Counterattack maneuver.
  • Added language explaining how to use special moves to create melee weapon attacks.
• Added chapters for Combat, FX (re: magic), and Equipment.

ver. 0.75 9/16/18

• Character Archetypes
  • Changed "Strategist" starting Characteristics and special ability.
• Talents
  • Added new talents for Intelligence-based fighters - Anticipate Attack, Combat Analysis, and Outwit.
  • Renamed "Focus Attack" to "EX Attack."
  • Trimmed a lot of fat; reduced number of talents to those most setting-appropriate.
• Added the Special Moves chapter
  • Added "Basic Moves" all fighters receive for free
  • Added "Special Moves you can buy with XP
  • Added rules for creating new Special Moves
• Added the Super Moves chapter
  • Based on "Heroic Abilities;" added setting-specific move effects.
  • Added rules for upgrading Super Moves with ability points.

Did a quick skim, and seems like it could be quite interesting. I like that your career doesn't actually impact how you fight, though I'm not sure what kind of impact having the extra four career skills will have on the XP progression (likely 0, since everyone gets them). However I did notice that in the "The Showoff" archetype, their "Force of Personality" trait references the "Personality"..pretty sure you meant for that to be their Presence, instead?

On 9/1/2018 at 7:44 PM, RyuujinKatsuya said:

Did a quick skim, and seems like it could be quite interesting. I like that your career doesn't actually impact how you fight, though I'm not sure what kind of impact having the extra four career skills will have on the XP progression (likely 0, since everyone gets them). However I did notice that in the "The Showoff" archetype, their "Force of Personality" trait references the "Personality"..pretty sure you meant for that to be their Presence, instead?

I did mean Presence, yeah. Thanks for the catch.

I'm also being generous with skills, because I'm anticipating most XP will want to be spent on other things. With the structure I'm currently planning, "Special Moves" replace weapons, which would then cost XP instead of money (because I can't figure out how buying a tiger uppercut with cash makes sense). That means I'm going to be bumping starting XP once I work out what the moves will cost so a character can begin with a few to start, and I don't want them to feel stretched thin down the road as they gain XP during play so they get more skills to start.

I expect it will all balance out in the long run. I don't mind if they're better than average at a couple more things out the gate, because they're going to have a lot more than skills to spend XP on over time.

1 minute ago, Lightshear said:

I did mean Presence, yeah. Thanks for the catch.

I'm also being generous with skills, because I'm anticipating most XP will want to be spent on other things. With the structure I'm currently planning, "Special Moves" replace weapons, which would then cost XP instead of money (because I can't figure out how buying a tiger uppercut with cash makes sense). That means I'm going to be bumping starting XP once I work out what the moves will cost so a character can begin with a few to start, and I don't want them to feel stretched thin down the road as they gain XP during play so they get more skills to start.

I expect it will all balance out in the long run. I don't mind if they're better than average at a couple more things out the gate, because they're going to have a lot more than skills to spend XP on over time.

Is each special move going to be a unique ability? If so, I'd base it on the Attack magic action, and have its XP cost be partly defined by its difficulty. And also let them either a) spend extra XP to make the move less difficult (or not, you have Signature Move as a talent) or b) have some super-high XP cost to add part of the effect WITHOUT increasing difficulty. If you want cash to be a necessary thing, you could say that some specific fighting styles act as implements for your Special Moves, or some replace the standard equipment (so that your Ryu-expy isn't shafted because he's wearing a gi versus M. Bison's leather armor equivalent).

On 9/2/2018 at 10:57 PM, RyuujinKatsuya said:

Is each special move going to be a unique ability? If so, I'd base it on the Attack magic action, and have its XP cost be partly defined by its difficulty. And also let them either a) spend extra XP to make the move less difficult (or not, you have Signature Move as a talent) or b) have some super-high XP cost to add part of the effect WITHOUT increasing difficulty. If you want cash to be a necessary thing, you could say that some specific fighting styles act as implements for your Special Moves, or some replace the standard equipment (so that your Ryu-expy isn't shafted because he's wearing a gi versus M. Bison's leather armor equivalent).

Right now I'm thinking of special moves like weapons. In a sci-fi setting you might have laser rifles and lightsabers, in fantasy it's longswords and crossbows, here it's Dragon punches and jump-kicks. The visualization is different, but the mechanics are more or less identical: special moves have a base damage, special qualities, ranges, and so on. You declare what move you're using and roll the attack.

Ki, arcana, and weapons use the magic system, being more free-form in nature. This let's me cover fighters like Ryu or Ken with Ki, Shang Tsung or Quan Chi with arcana, and everything from Rolento's rod and grenades to Sonya's drones to Ivy's whip with the weapons skill.

The only thing I'm really debating right now is whether moves will be pre-built or designed by players. If the former, they'd be exactly like buying weapons from the equipment list (but with XP instead of money). If the latter, they'd start with a base damage and range and have a list of qualities and upgrades you could add during move creation that make them more potent at the cost of more XP.

The first option makes character building way faster, is a little less work for me to design, but leaves characters feeling slightly less unique. I can combat that by requiring them to name their moves and encourage creative descriptions with boost dice in play, but it takes more work at the table.

Having them build custom moves takes a lot longer, might be harder for me to balance, but everybody gets a character that feels like a totally unique fighter.

I'm still debating which way I'll go.

12 hours ago, Lightshear said:

The only thing I'm really debating right now is whether moves will be pre-built or designed by players. If the former, they'd be exactly like buying weapons from the equipment list (but with XP instead of money). If the latter, they'd start with a base damage and range and have a list of qualities and upgrades you could add during move creation that make them more potent at the cost of more XP. 

Por que no los dos? It would be pretty straightforward to convert the item creation rules (p. 197) to a list of attributes for building a special attack. Then just use those rules to build maybe 5 "example" attacks for players who don't want to bother with building their own.

Why not doing it like the Force Powers in SW Force and Destiny ?

You buy a basic power and then you can buy upgrades that modiy the basic power, up to a Mastery upgrade (for some powers only). Change the basic power for a basic moves, that will be pre-built, and let the players buy upgrades from a list to customize it as they want. No need to build a whole tree like in F&D. A list of the upgrades available for each basic movement will be enough. Treat each upgrade as a talent starting at tiers 2, the basic move being rated tier 1 but should cost more in xp to buy.

On 9/4/2018 at 2:25 PM, IndianaWalsh said:

Por que no los dos? It would be pretty straightforward to convert the item creation rules (p. 197) to a list of attributes for building a special attack. Then just use those rules to build maybe 5 "example" attacks for players who don't want to bother with building their own.

I'm going to work on something with this this week. I've started compiling move qualities, getting a sense for what these things can do, and I'll be building some basic moves to see how they all work together. After that, I'll start thinking about how much XP different qualities should add when building custom moves, but I don't think that'll be too hard.

I'll update here when I have enough to share.

On 9/4/2018 at 2:43 PM, WolfRider said:

Why not doing it like the Force Powers in SW Force and Destiny ?

You buy a basic power and then you can buy upgrades that modiy the basic power, up to a Mastery upgrade (for some powers only). Change the basic power for a basic moves, that will be pre-built, and let the players buy upgrades from a list to customize it as they want. No need to build a whole tree like in F&D. A list of the upgrades available for each basic movement will be enough. Treat each upgrade as a talent starting at tiers 2, the basic move being rated tier 1 but should cost more in xp to buy.

I'm planning on using the FP rules as a basis for Super moves. They're going to be bigger and badder and will warrant more specific attention, and using this setup will make them stand apart from your standard combat moves.

New update released! I implemented a lot of what we've been talking about here, along with some Archetype changes and new Talents discussed over on the Reddit. Most importantly: Special Moves and Super Moves are in. I've tentatively got the XP costs for special moves set (Super Moves function like Heroic Abilities, using Ability Points instead) and they're in the range of 10-20 xp each for most of the pre-built ones. I think that feels pretty okay? I'm curious what others think. I'm giving people a bonus 30 xp at character creation that's just for special moves, so you get some basic moves free and will then be able to buy 2-3 special moves to go with those. For my baseline, I wanted to be able to build Ryu and Ken with a shoryuken and t atsumaki at character creation.

Let me know what you think!

I'm back! So, it's been a loooong time, I know, but before I could finish the King of the Streets supplement, I wanted to get SotB and see what might cross over. Then, it was a long period of testing and seeing what worked and what didn't, and now I'm finally ready to share this as I start my home campaign. I even made a cover for the thing featuring NPCs I've been working up for my game.

King of the Streets ver. 1.0

A lot of new things have been added, including chapters on Combat (New maneuvers! Special healing rules!), FX (this world's magic system), and Equipment. Guns are in now, melee weapons are covered by Special Moves, and I'm feeling pretty good about the balance in different kinds of attacks.

If you're interested in a Genesys Fighting Game campaign, give this a look. I'd love to hear any feedback, and I'm always open to suggestions for how to improve.