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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Emberashh" data-source="post: 9511086" data-attributes="member: 7040941">Exactly what it says it's modelling. This misunderstanding is understandable given I don't elaborate on it in the page; Movement in these mechanics do not correspond to speed. Recall that combat takes place on abstracted maps that look like this:[ATTACH=full]386261[/ATTACH][ATTACH=full]386262[/ATTACH]While these grids can be mapped to a non-abstract physical space or landscape, Movement as a mechanic is still based on your ability to shift positions in this abstracted space, not how fast you can physically move at any point. Has to be said realism is completely besides the point. We're emulating cinematic choreography not real combat. That said, the cinematic combat we're specifically emulating isn't actually that far off from real combat dynamics; its actually part of the reason why this choreographical style is so engaging, and still would be if the exaggeration was dialed back. Composure as designed is a way of depicting this connection in gameplay, by divesting physical injury and Lethality from the conventional HP bar. If one loses focus in a fight, you're left open to your opponent taking advantage of you, up to and including being killed, and sometimes, this might happen even with excellent focus. In relation to you questioning Movement losses, you shouldn't be thinking "slower", but "hesitating", which is quite deadly in a fight. This as true in all kinds of real combat as it is in the exaggerated movie combat of John Wick or DND:HAT, both of which were the most direct influences here. I think for most people it clicks when they see the content that would go along with the system, and how easily the system maps to the kind of fights being depicted. While its in the process of being updared given the changes GunFu cross-pollinated over, as an example over in Labyrinthian we have three different Hand to Hand Techniques. Vital Strike, Grapple, and Toss. All three utilize Hit Locations to depict a variety of different things. Vital Strike is pretty easy to understand; a punch, elbow, or kick to a specific body slot, which can include targeting the things "in" those slots. But with Grapple and Toss, we can do a lot more. Headlocks, suplexes or bear hugs, trips, disarms, and so on and so on. These easily map to things we'd see in cinematic combat; John Wick specifically loves weaving these kinds of moves into its exaggerated gunplay. But they also exist in real combat:[MEDIA=youtube]4GoQlvc_H3s:141[/MEDIA]Start around 2:28 for the specific sequence if it starts from the beginning. The actual fight at around 3:00 is also pretty good for showing what Composure represents. The two fighters who get defeated would track to combatants who lost their Composure and took a fatal blow and an incapacitation as a result. I believe this was something I talked about elsewhere, may be the RPG = Improv topic, but the big thing about Composure in particular is that it, and the subsequent Wound and Lethality systems, changes the aesthetic meaning of attacking, defending, and doing damage to each other, and this gets compounded with the idea of the Clash. In this system and Labyrinthian, when an attacker and a defender clash, the difference between their respective damage and defense rolls is not just a number applied against the defenders Composure, but also a numerical guideline to how the Clash between the pair actually pans out "in the fiction". The lower the final damage, the more effective the Defender's efforts, and this influences how we interpret the Attackers efforts, and whatever Techniques or other abilities are used gets incorporated into it. This in the end produces a very distinct gamefeel that, as I've seen playout even with earlier versions, maps very closely to the film choreography being depicted. GunFu hasn't had anyone (afaik, now that I've technically put the core rules out in public) actually sit down to play it other than myself against myself, but it does produce that same effect just as Labyrinthian does for the real people that play it. Plus, as an aside, with Labyrinthian in particular we did give thought to how it might be adapted to depict HEMA and realistic combat in general. The big changes with regards to what we're discussing would have been the change of "Damage" to "Offense", and a new rule that states if you Defend well enough to cause your Clash to go negative, the value is still applied to your Composure; eg, restoring it. These changes aren't particularly intuitive however, and the latter would need further support to justifu. Such a change would have been an increased presence of Composure Saves throughout the system, which is something actially missing from the rules page here. The idea there, as it is in Labyrinthian, is that there is only one Saving Throw, and any ability that calls for it uses your Current Composure to set its DC, alongside a dice roll if applicable. Likewise, your targets when attempting to pass the Save have to use their own Current Composure, either by itself or alongside a dice roll (at the cost of an Action), to do so. This not only outright prevents any sort of yo-yo healing issue, but in the context of a more deliberately realistic system, would synergize well with the Composure restoration of Defense, and be a great basis for providing another avenue of Lethality thats even more directly mapped to real combat. I would have to put thought to it, but I can imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to find similiar solutions for a more realistic take on Gunplay, if the above doesn't already do the trick. But as it happens, I have even less interest in realistic gunplay than I do swordplay, so that idea gets a resounding meh from me. <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="😄" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f604.png" title="Grinning face with smiling eyes    :smile:" data-shortname=":smile:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" />In practice once its learned its not very heavy, especially compared to something like 5e, and much of the weight would be opt-in as your fighting style is essentially customizable in terms of having a lot of options, but no strict need to engage all of them at once. And you wouldn't be able to starting out anyway. Have to earn it first. But even if you want to because thats the sort of character you want to develop, I'm doing a lot to ensure you can easily condense things down in a way that makes it easy to reference. In Labyrinthian, this means suggested abbreviations and the like, ideally such that you could fit the entire system onto your sheet if you wanted to, at least for one type of fighting. The magic system for example already does this. 15 Spells with easily abbreviated effects, and you can do pretty much everything you could with 5e, Ars Magica, and DCC combined, provided your group has agreed to a gametone that will push that far, anyways. Non-magical fighters will need more than just 15 options, but this will involve mixable groupings; an Archer doesn't need all the same things a Sword and Board guy needs, for example. It'd only get unwieldy if you wanted to be a literal master of all combat, but at that point its opt-in and your character has to do a lot to earn that distinction; by the time you do so, there's zero reason you'd still be struggling to balance all of that content. GunFu in comparison is going to be much lighter, as we're only depicting two very focused kinds of semi-grounded combat, as opposed to 4 Big Fantasty umbrellas with a bunch of different subdivisions.</blockquote>

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