Interview - Divine Madness Press - Fight! 2nd Edition

Take you Beat-em Characters from the Computer Screen to the Gaming Table with the TTRPG Fight! 2nd Edition.

Today I interview one of the creators of the Tabletop Roleplaying Beat-em Up, Fight! 2nd Edition, Mr Christopher Peter.
We discuss the creation of the game, core mechanics, possible roleplay and combat options available and Fighter (Character) creation.

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Yours Sincerely,

Adam 'Cosy' Powell

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CAST:

Interviewer: Adam 'Cosy' Powell

Guest: Christopher Peter - Divine Madness Press

Sound Design: Adam Powell

Music: Epidemic Sound

Cover Art: www.Wix.com

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Transcript

Unknown Speaker : 0:29

Welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. Today I have the pleasure of talking to Mr. Christopher pizza from divine madness press to discuss fight second edition, the greatest role playing game for telling stories of fighting game characters. Welcome, Christopher. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your history with tabletop role playing games.

Unknown Speaker : 0:51

Thanks, Adam. Thanks for having me today. I am I am an old role player and when I say that, I mean I was playing Dungeons and Dragons back in the 70s So, so I'm one of the first generation and, and I've been playing ever since then. But there was a certain styles of games that definitely started to appeal to me in the early 1980s. I found champions, which is now the hero system. And that really, that really changed the way that I looked at games in terms of my love of comic books and superheroes. But I think also the kinds of role playing games I liked as you know, hero is notoriously high crunch, I guess you would say. And so that's, that's those are the sorts of games that I that I gravitated towards. So fight came about in the 1990s when I was dissatisfied with White Wolf Street Fighter system, I loved the idea of the game, but I did not like the mechanics of it at all. So I decided that I would design my own, and that's, that was a 96 but it took it a while before it actually saw Publication

Unknown Speaker : 2:03

that's fair enough. So you are part of the Divine madness presses that just yourself was the team working on

Unknown Speaker : 2:11

that originally was just myself but Leo Morello, who is has listed as a co author for the second edition came on we met about 10 years ago. Actually I should clarify that because we have not met we we do our work together on two different continents. He's in Argentina, I'm in the US. We've never met formally but we've been working together very well for about a decade now. Wow.

Unknown Speaker : 2:36

It's impressive.

Unknown Speaker : 2:38

Impressive.

Unknown Speaker : 2:40

You've just looking at the credits here. You have some I'm looking at the front cover as well in the the artwork really draws the eye really sets the tone for the tabletop role playing game fight second edition. It was saying you were just as satisfied with white Wall Street Fighter series and the combination is is now fight second edition. Tell us a little bit more about the process of the transition from initial concept to to the game that we can we can purchase now and play now. Sure,

Unknown Speaker : 3:11

absolutely. So fight originally began, as I said as a response to White Wolf Street Fighter, and also a desire on my part to incorporate other characters Street Fighter as a video game was my introduction to the world of fighting games, as I suspect it is for a lot of people. And when I started trying out these other fighting games, and I'll get to a certain a few of them by name a little later on. I was really interested to say I would like to know more about these characters. A lot of the same things that appealed to me about superheroes and comic books appealed to me about fighting game stories. So I wanted to see them. I wanted to see what could I do to make a system that actually emulated the style of combat you saw video games on tabletop role playing front. The initial version that was that I wrote back in 1996. And continued playing for about about five to 10 years after that, it might be worth noting is extraordinarily more complicated than the version that was finally published, which I know for some people is, you know, saying something. It's, it didn't get down to the level of frame rates and video games, but it might as well have been in terms of the level of detail it had, and it was playable, but very, very unwieldy. And it was in 2006, that I was playing. I was playing King of Fighters 2006, conveniently enough, and I was doing some fighting and was thinking to myself, there's got to be a simpler way to do the combat in the game that I that I had designed, and I basically scrapped the whole thing, almost in entirely and started over again. And that work was finally published in 2010. Thanks very much to the to the inspiration and encouragement of Raphael Chandler, who wrote the books of pandemonium, which is a much different sort of game system. And so so it was published in 2010. And it got a decent response. It was a consistent seller. I'm very happy about that. But around 2015, I realised that there were just some things not that needed to be radically redone, but just cleaned up and clarified. And so that's when we started, Leo and I started talking seriously about doing a second edition. I didn't quite realise how long it was going to take us to finally put it together. We thought, you know, we thought eight months we'd be able to bang it out, but was more like three years.

Unknown Speaker : 5:52

In US,

Unknown Speaker : 5:53

well, we've mentioned it a couple of times,

Unknown Speaker : 5:55

where can where can people get get the game itself if they want to go into purchase a copy for themselves and maybe sort of joining the community that is sort of built up around the game now in its newest iteration.

Unknown Speaker : 6:09

Yeah, the the game is available through through one bookshelf drive thru RPG that's drive thru RPG calm, and it is available both in PDF format and in print on demand format. That is the only place in which the second edition is sold. print on demand if the first edition is available on Lulu, but frankly, I don't know why you would do that if the second edition was available. And as far as the conversation goes, the best place to join in on the conversation is on our Discord server which is listed as fight the fighting game RPG. And there's a there's a pretty lively community of especially a few system experts that honestly kind of put me to shame as the game designer and the way that they're able to work the system. It's very impressive. So in that there like I said, it's a pretty lively community. There. We do have a divine madness press Facebook page and divine madness press at WordPress dot WordPress calm also, but most of the conversation these days is taking place on Discord.

Unknown Speaker : 7:12

Yeah, I've sort of jumped in on the discord and sort of followed it and as you say there's a wealth of information and very supportive people on there. Links to the discord and other sites mentioned will be listed in the description below of this podcast. So we've sort of discussed how the game was created and how you've moved into the second edition Why don't we sort of touch on the game itself and why don't you take us through some of the core principles and mechanics and and how people can sort of get into the game

Unknown Speaker : 7:43

okay. Characters and fight are have a lot of detail to them. But the reason for that has a lot to do with their special moves, which is one of the defining characteristics of characters in fight similar again to a superhero. game. Every character has entirely distinctive moves that they design, rather than designing superpower is that as an effects based superhero game, you're designing an effects based special move to describe how that move interacts with the mechanics of combat so whether the weather the movie brings the fighter into the air or whether it's a ranged attack, or if it's a throw. And there's there's over 100 different elements that can make up a particular characters moves. So the the advantage of what that provides is that each character that you design is going to fight differently than every other character. And the interaction of those moves is really what people seem to find really interesting about about combat in fight. As far as the combat system itself goes, when a character every turn, a character is going to be rolling for initiative, but at the same time that they're rolling for initiative. They're also rolling for control to see how many have control over themselves and over the battlefield they have at that moment, which is going to determine what moves they can do on that turn. So a character might be a fast character who can strike first. But if their control is lousy, they may only get off a basic punch or a kick. Likewise, a character who might have a slower initiative, if they have really high control might still be able to attack even though they're they're not going first might still have more options available at their disposal. That creates this, this environment in which fighters are constantly adjusting what they can do based on the circumstances of turn to turn. And that combined with positioning, you can play on a battle mat. You don't have to play on a battle mat. But the positioning allows you to say certain moves operate better or only at certain ranges from the opponent. And I really does create a tactical environment that People tell me really does feel like a fighting game. So I'm pretty happy with the way it plays in that regard. But it makes sense to talk about special moves. And it makes sense to talk about combat, because the game is called fight after all. But one of the things that that people are also interested in is, is there a role playing game there amongst all of this? Is there an opportunity to tell stories and go on adventures? And the answer is, yes, of course. That's what I designed it for. I will say that the the skill system is is much less detailed than the combat system. It is it's a fairly straightforward d 10 plus skill over over difficulty level sort of system. But it's intended to get you through the kinds of adventures you're going to tell which frankly, are about getting to the fight scenes. So that's where that's where the focus is placed with that But I designed a role playing game when I've run it, I always run it as a role playing game. But I do know that that the dream of every indie RPG designer is to design a game that people actually play in and I know that it's not always realised. I'm quite content to know that there are some people who will get together with their butts, they'll make characters and they'll just run a fighting tournament just as if they were sitting down to play a video game instead. They won't be any story to it or, or skill rolls or anything. They'll just set up tournament tears and throw down like a board game. And I'm excited that that works just as well.

Unknown Speaker : 11:39

Yeah, I mean it, it seems to fit both styles of play really well. I'm sort of having a look through the the qualities and the weakness and all that sort of the side of the skills and things like that and it's, it's easy to manipulate and use that Theatre of the mind and really get the directors sort of cushy through into role playing if that's what if that's what your group wants, or as you say, into the the core sort of fighting game, which is great. And I noticed in the back of the book if people are picking this up for the first time you want to try it out, you've got some example characters at the back as well.

Unknown Speaker : 12:12

Yes, those that there are two of those characters were designed by a Leo and I. And those are the characters that are on the cover of the book, I they've sort of become our our ikonics for all of you is actually only 10 characters used in the art throughout the book. But we we developed whole character sheets and stories around those characters because we wanted a consistency to the art. But aside from those two iconic characters, there are eight other characters that were designed with Laos, help by backers that are high level S rank backers who had the opportunity to come up with their own concept to give us a visual of design of their character and we help them build a character, which frankly are far more there. Much different types that I would have designed and I think that's great because it highlights a lot of different approaches to character building. But it's and it does allow you to if you if you had the book and you would read enough of the combat system to feel comfortable, you could grab those characters from the back of the book and get playing right away.

Unknown Speaker : 13:20

One question you we've mentioned this sort of, sort of tactical fighter, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear and that sort of style combat is there something for people that are less Street Fighter and more, say anime Naruto and is there a something incorporated in the book for those types of players?

Unknown Speaker : 13:41

Yes, as a matter of fact, there is the the main combat system was designed specifically to emulate fighting games. But there are two combat subsystems one, called the fog thrashing system is for when you have fighter level characters, that is to say PC level characters who are supposed to from From the beginning of the campaign are intended to be the best martial artists in the world. But if they're going up against normals or lesser opponents, there's a system to show how, how powerful they are by being able to wipe out large numbers of foes. And I've used this in my games for all sorts of things that I'll have my characters take on a whole army of soldiers. I've had martial artists fighting attack helicopters and main battle tanks and all sorts of crazy stuff. And I know people have used that particular subsystem to instead generate more of a instead of a street fighter, a more of a final fighter Streets of Rage, kind of storytelling as well. But the thing you specifically asked me about Adam was was more of an anime approach to combat that's the other subsystem the dramatic combat system, which simplifies the combat simplifies the the initiative process takes out a lot of the More detailed driven tactics of the main combat system and replaces it with more narrative elements. First of all, less of an emphasis on on tactical minutia, but also an opportunity to get bombed bonuses by describing over the top stunts and the life that you would see an animate combat scenes. And it's entirely possible to run a campaign using just that combat system. In fact, we for the first edition we we released an expansion called Shonan, that included a lot of rules and guidelines if you wanted to use the fight system to run a shown in style campaign and that that that PDF is fully compatible with the second edition of the game as well. So even though the game was definitely designed to emulate fighting games and fighting game characters, as long as you are willing to do a fairly combat focused anime game is that I can think of quite a few animals I would not use Fight for but if you were to use Naruto or Dragon Ball Jojo Fist of the North Star any of those would fit in just fine using the dramatic combat system

Unknown Speaker : 16:14

Absolutely. You mentioned there a release or extra part for shown in for first edition of fight Have you got anything coming up for second edition to expand the fantastic work you've you've done putting this role playing game together so far.

Unknown Speaker : 16:31

Thank you, we actually do have a lot so some of which are It's already in the works that we want to get out as soon as possible. Right now we are working on a I want to say a short PDF but every time we revise it, it gets longer so so I won't say how long it is yet but we are going to release a PDF that is just a collection of pre made special moves. And it's it's looking at pretty long right now in terms of the number of moves. So and that's, that's, that's where we're going to restrict the book to is we're not going to we're not going to pad it with anything else. And we want to get that out ideally by the end of the year. So that people who might be a little intimidated by the special move creation system, which is, I think the heftiest part of the whole book could instead say well, I just want to be able to throw a dragon punch in a fireball and just grab those those off of the page and be able to throw a character together. But beyond that, we want to go one step further to an actual release of what we're calling the button masher edition of the rules, which would simplify the character generation all the way across the board. To use archetypes for generating characters quickly. Take an archetype grab some moves from the special move PDF, throw them together, your characters done, and then simplify a few of the the things Tactical knobs and dials of the main combat system so that players could play something that still is capturing the tactical focus of the main combat system. But perhaps without all of the without all of the effects turned on. those are those are our primary two. We also are looking at producing a few other things we have in mind, we want to do a round three, which would be another collection of optional rules like round two was for the first edition. We have a couple of people who are interested in doing some campaign settings and a couple of short expansions one about how to do better boss fights. And another one about how to emulate Smash Brothers style combat in the fight system, which is something people have asked about.

Unknown Speaker : 18:49

Yeah, absolutely. The popularity of that solid game coming on. I'm not surprised you you mentioned a number of times there sort of the the ability to create fighters is Is there anyone that you You wanted to sit down and create as a fighter within the system and you've just not got round to that.

Unknown Speaker : 19:06

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot. There's many, many fighters. So for one thing I could say, just give me the entire King of Fighters roster, which is what about 70 or so. And I would like I started that, but I only managed to get through about 10. It's, it's, it's, it's a lot of work to do. To do it, it's very easy to throw together a version of a character, it's a lot of work to make one that really has the bells and whistles. Exactly. But another character that is that is on my list, that sort of a Grail problem is actually a really obscure character that that maybe maybe listeners haven't heard of. It's from the game chaos code, which is came out about five years ago and is a very old school 2d fighting game. And if you're if you're a fan of Old King of Fighters, I recommend chaos code. But one of the characters is a bouncer named Ray. And he has one of the most complicated multi part move chains out one of the most complicated multi part move chains I have ever seen in a fighting game. And I am confident that the fight system can do it. I just have to sit down to work the problem but that's, that's, that's a character I want to I want to see if I can make that happen.

Unknown Speaker : 20:27

Sounds good. Sounds good. And you mentioned there sort of a couple of licences is is there in the future, the hope of maybe drawing in an official licence or you just trying to keep this neutral and for everybody.

Unknown Speaker : 20:42

That's, um, that's, that's a discussion in progress. If you're talking about dream gigs, then I would if I had the opportunity to do the, I would say,

Unknown Speaker : 20:51

I would take a dream right now.

Unknown Speaker : 20:54

The King of Fighters would be that would be the DRI as it turns out, a Leo and I are both giant King of Fighters fans. And I love the the the world the speed that they both the parts stories that have progressive chapters the character designs for me it's it's very much up there on equal par with Street Fighter is what I would consider the archetype of what a what a fighting game story should be. In fact, in a lot of ways I think it's superior to Street Fighter, but I don't know is that I would ever, you know be able to secure something like that a little bit more down to earth. I have had a conversation with level 99 games who are the producers of the battle con board game and in their world of Indian setting and and we have talked about doing a supplement that would detail the characters from that setting. I've also thought about making it approach to to blacklist games and their street masters board game about possibly translating those characters as well. Those are from the board game world but that actually makes them considerably more accessible.

Unknown Speaker : 22:03

I hope that all sort of falls into places as as as I say you've put out some premium content the artwork The, the structure of the system, the variation for virtually any type of role playing or sort of fighting game enthusiasts can

Unknown Speaker : 22:22

definitely be found

Unknown Speaker : 22:24

within the pages of the PDF,

Unknown Speaker : 22:26

as you mentioned before, available on Drive Thru rpg.com. For someone that that's scanning, say drive thru RPG or sees on a friend's PDF or something, what advice would you give to newer players and newer directors about how to get in and start a game with their friends or or online?

Unknown Speaker : 22:52

That's a great question and I'm wondering if I can restrict myself to one piece of advice

Unknown Speaker : 23:00

I'm willing to allow you to expand. Great.

Unknown Speaker : 23:05

The first edition was about 240 pages long. When writing the second edition, I knew that it would be longer and I imagined that it would be it would start to get up to 280 300 pages. It wasn't until the book went to layout that I realised that I had produced a 400 page monster. And I know where the RPG marketplace is right now and that, well, people enjoy that kind of thing in terms of value for their money. Such texts are often really intimidating to say, well, this looks like it would be a really good game, but I don't know that I would ever get anybody to play it and I recognise that and I feel if you if you have that sort of feeling about it, but what I try to tell people is that despite the intimidating length of the book that the game itself is pretty straightforward at its core. And that don't try to take all of it in at once. It is very much a toolkit, there are a lot of options in there that are not necessary to play the game. And the game is very robust in terms of you want to bend something to say I think I'd like it this way a little bit better, it's not gonna break. I've tried it, it takes it takes some effort to actually break the system. So I would tell brand new players that try to make a simple character don't jump into an arc scheme and say I want to try to you know, replicate this character with all of these weird bombs on the field and teleportation just try to make you know make Ryu from Street Fighter you know, and and how and make a second character and then go through the the first part of the combat chapter which provides provides a whole outline at the beginning of the combat chapter of what around looks like and just play through a fight. Just don't worry about it. getting any of the rules wrong, just play it out. And that, that sort of getting into the water as it were, take some of the shock value of all of the all of everything else. And then from there, allow yourself the freedom to add a little bit more, add a little bit more and and take the book in pieces rather than trying to say, All right, I'm gonna start at page one, and I'm not going to do anything until I get to page 400. It's, it's a lot of stuff in there that does not need to be digested right away.

Unknown Speaker : 25:32

I mean, you certainly help players out of skip to page 362. And there's a whole appendix that helps that is designed for the character generation guidelines to really help new players or even current and experienced players or put characters together. There's box text here for for explaining sort of simple or simplifying certain aspects and allowing that as you say, the freedom to incorporate and remove things as possible. So there is definitely definitely something for for the new player and new director at the back of the book. I notice you've got example thugs and and people like that. So if you don't want to maybe use characters are they a good option to throw in?

Unknown Speaker : 26:16

Absolutely. The the appendices in the back have example characters example special moves, example thugs. So right there you you have all the pieces that you don't even have to design right away if you don't want to. But as you pointed out, there's also an appendix that contains all of the information needed for character generation. There is another appendix that contains all of the pot if you're using the full combat system, all of the possible modifiers for each part of the combat turn. So that if you are if you're one of the players that says I only want to play if I'm playing all the rules, right, well, then all of those details are there. I will fully concede that when I'm running a game, I'm occasionally looking at those in case I missed something Which is often, but that's the whole point, I missed these things and the game doesn't fall apart. It still works, it still works well. So I we tried to provide those dependencies and then also textbook boxes throughout the rules. There's a one of them special moves chapter that gives a shortened list of about 20 elements to say, just use these when designing your first special moves because these are the easiest to get used to. And the character generation chapter we tried to put out boxes that would prevent new players from falling into design traps of choosing things that were inefficient. So we tried to do as much hand holding as possible to get people comfortable.

Unknown Speaker : 27:44

Yeah, absolutely. And also, if you ever get stuck the godsend of a glossary, because there are terms in here that may be unfamiliar to new players or players have other role playing games and the glossary is a godsend, I have to say it spells out each term and allows you to take that time to soak that information and then refer back to your for character creation or fighter creation, as you sort of step through, which is great. So typically, what dice Do you need to play this game? What's the sort of the basic setup for the two players?

Unknown Speaker : 28:23

So the the dice that are used are the D four d 68, d 10, d 12. No d 20s. And there are occasions that get down to a D two, those are pretty infrequent. I would say that the overwhelming majority of roles are going to be D six and D eight, with a decent number of D 10s. So you're rolling two dice for initiative, one die for for initiative and one die for control. You're only using one die to roll the hit. You're only using one die for damage. There are no even though it's Initiating control while I said you're rolling two days, that's that's technically two separate roles, there is no role in the game that is more than one guy. So that's that that keeps that the, the averages discernible. And it's not one where the it's going to be very swingy. In fact, that was very much by design that it was supposed to be for the tactically minded be able to ascertain what is the likelihood of me being able to pull this off without having to worry about the vicissitudes of a D 20. Suddenly, like, Oh, I need an 11. Well, you got a three You know, when you when you when you're dealing with D eights and D 10s. That's a lot easier to manage. But there's still enough of a range of numbers going on there that if you say I have a D 10 for my initiative, and you have a D six, that there's not necessarily a guarantee that you're going to win that initiative rolls in since the full range of one to 10 and verses one to six. So those are those are the days there's no one No funky dice. No dice pools, no weird interpretations of the dice. It's pretty pretty old school in that way. It

Unknown Speaker : 30:10

Yeah, absolutely and makes it so accessible most people have a nice one sir. So gaming dice maybe too, so definitely an easy game to sort of get into. The interesting mechanic that I really like is how the rounds are controlled with respect to time. The way that time is is taken down to add different tension and drama to the game.

Unknown Speaker : 30:35

Yeah, so time is conducted while the combat system itself is run by turns around, the time in the game is not counted up. Third round, fourth round fifth round, rather, it is under normal conditions. It's counted down from 99 and each turn there's a time roll at the end of the round to see how much time has passed. And fighters even have some control over that if they want. I few players take advantage of that until it becomes really tactically important near the end. But you can actually speed up or slow down the time of the game with with with this expendable resource that characters have called fighting spirit. But the idea of this is not only to emulate a very common element of video fighting games, but also to create a tension in the story for the director to say, well, when this timer reaches zero, the fights going to end and something is going to happen something is going to require this fight to end and and as the timer gets down, that becomes more interesting for the director to think about is the island suddenly going to blow up is, is one of them going to be sucked away to another dimension are they suddenly going to be mobbed by 100 soldiers we're going to put an end to the fight. And it creates new possibilities if even the director doesn't know if he's going to have to invoke this. Now I will say that most fights Don't go the 99 I have had fights go, that was the full 99. But I would say that it usually doesn't get down to below about 50 or so for most fights, but it's there. It's a possibility and you can work it into the system. You can game the system in that regard if you want to. Absolutely, yeah,

Unknown Speaker : 32:18

it's just another string to the bow as it were, uh, you mentioned something there fighting spirit, are you able to expand on that a little bit more and how that plays into the system? Yeah, the the particular

Unknown Speaker : 32:30

expendable resource that all characters have is fighting spirit. And this is distinguished from their life bar. life bar is the term we use for hitpoints or health or what have you. And so when your life bar is zero, your character is defeated. And what defeated means depends on the needs of the story. And it depends on the kind of game you're playing. If you're if you're doing something that is more in the vein of Street Fighter than defeat, it's probably means you're unconscious or unable to wounded to fight. If you're using defeated in the terms of more and more Mortal Kombat sort of setting then characters might be dying. Though I will also point out that if you really want your fatalities I have official rules for fatalities in round two and those are also compatible with second edition. But fighting spirit is is the is the water that flows for through the fight, any die roll a character makes accepting damage because I didn't want fighting spirit to impact damage, but every other role initiative control to hit the defences of a character, certain moves that you want to do all require fighting spirit. And the amount of fighting spirit character has the amount that they can spend depends on their power level, which is essentially, in its simplest terms, the level of a character, but I might say something more about that in a moment. So fighting spirit is is used to increase your chances of getting the successes that you need, but it doesn't increase it. by a simple arithmetic addition. So in other words, by spending three fighting spear to my initiative, I'm not adding three because that would throw the the the discernment of averages off. So instead what it does is it increases your die size. So if I spend three fighting spirit and I normally would have a D six for initiative, then I boost that up three die sizes to d a d 10. d 12, for initiative. By that I'm vastly increasing my chances of getting initiative. But the spectre of a one is still out there. Large Exactly. So, but fighting spirit is something that it often comes down to in a fight of making sure that you can control the fight enough to get your opponent's to lose all their fighting spirit first, because once that resource is gone, then they can't modify their roles anymore, and they're subject just to how the dice fall. Where is he With the person with fighting spirit can still control that to a degree. I always tell players when they're learning the combat system that if you have any fighting spirit left at the end of the fight, then you didn't do it right that you you should definitely be making sure that it all gets expended before it's done. And I know, right? Exactly, exactly. And narratively, that's what that's supposed to represent. As well as that they are that I have gone all out. I've put everything in this and when fighting spirit is zero, then they're exhausted. I got nothing left. I don't know what I'm going to do now. So I've seen some players who will use fighting spirit and just every die roll they make, they will spend the maximum amount they can to try to ensure that they they succeed. And when I'm game mastering, I when I'm when I'm the director, I tend to be a bit more cagey with it and I try to outlast my PCs, a bit in the fighting spirit department. Sometimes they succeed sometimes they fail. But that's another I hate to keep pumping gadgets, but it's another layer in which the tactical element of the game can come into play, where you're playing a sort of psychological game with your opponents of how quickly do you want to use this resource because it's not it doesn't come back easily during a fight. And that's, that's similar to the concept of Yomi. And, and competitive fighting video games, where part of it is not just your knowledge of your character and your reflexes, but being able to play the head game with your opponent as well. And fighting spirit is supposed to take that into account.

Unknown Speaker : 36:34

Absolutely. You mentioned briefly before about power level and and stealing. I believe you wanted to Yeah, go back and talk.

Unknown Speaker : 36:42

So power level is at its simplest the level system of the game. And in that sense, fight is a level based game and I won't deny that it is but and the levels are very restricted. It starts at one and goes to eight and that's it. It doesn't go higher than that. But specifically what I wanted narratively to do with the concept of power level is to accomplish two things. First of all, there's a sort of meta game level to a power level that expresses how comfortable is the player playing this character in a video game? Now, I have to tell you some people don't like that, that metagame level, it's not necessary at all. But I'm just telling you what the design philosophy behind it was. So it power level one characters have very poor defences. They have limited special moves, they have limited fighting spirit, because the first time you ever play a game, you're trying to figure out what is it that I'm supposed to do, you're not really blocking very well. And characters don't really sort of come into their own until about power level three. However, I built the experience system such that it should only be typically two, maybe three sessions at the most before a character should be power level three. It's quite good. possible to go from power level one to two and a single game session. And that again, that was by design, you get your feet wet with the character and then you you start to really pull off some more interesting tricks. But on another level, the second level, the narrative level power level is also supposed to represent the character's realisation of their potential in this story. So at power level one in terms of the story, they have not accessed the full limits of their abilities yet, because the circumstances of the story haven't required them to do that. But as they continue through their adventures, and they continue to see the overarching arc of the plot, they have to bring more and more of themselves to the game, such that at the end, when they finally face the big boss at the end and their power level eight, then they they have a they have realised the fullness of the potential that they have as martial artists and have full access to the to their abilities. It has always been my intention that the ideal for running Fight. And I'll be honest, I haven't had anyone report back to me that this is what they've done yet. So if anyone's listening to this and wants to realise this, for me that would be great is that after a character campaign ended, they've reached power level eight, they fight the big boss it's over. They want to do a sequel campaign that they would keep those same characters but rather than have them at power level eight, they would start over again at power level one, still with the same narrative history that from the previous stories, but now realising their potential in the light of new circumstances.

Unknown Speaker : 39:34

That was the new car.

Unknown Speaker : 39:36

Exactly. And you see this and very much in shown in anime where you can talk about about, you know, the cheetah arc of Dragon Ball, you know, I'm saying that this is the point where they got to the big fight. And then these massively powerful characters are then faced with a new set of villains. And that's why I think it works better to start over again. Now you could keep playing it power. level eight. This is nothing in the rules that even says that you're not supposed to do that. But I think it might be more interesting to give the chance of what if I started the same character over at power level one and develop them a little bit differently, tried a different approach to his moves or even tried different moves all together? Because sometimes that happens in video game sequels. And so that was that was what I wanted to do with it. But it's like I said, so far, no one's reported back to me on that. Transcribed by https://otter.ai