SKS Intermission: Kung Fu Fighting

 So this week I wasn't up to running another session ofr Smoke Kisses Sky, instead we had two kung fu fights dispersed in an evening of hanging out.

FIGHT ONE: FIRST BLOOD

The first fight between Tanya (played by me), the cyborg with a grappling hook prosthetic and Jane Doe (played by Alice), a women with the secret art of behaving as Solider from TF2 happened on Denver Main Street, in it's pedestrian section with the cute little coffee shops and hot topics and such. Then the two warriors lock eyes and Jane Doe says, 

    "Prepare to die, I have killed 50 men in the last hour."
    Tanya looks down with a steely gaze and responds "I have killed 100 men in the last 10 minutes, and you will be next." then swings free her dao.

I forgot to mention that Denver is on fire. Riots, panic, ninjas, robots, ninja-robots with complicated familiar relationships with the previous two, but let's not get into it, this isn't about them.

Jane Doe rocket jumps first swinging her trusty shovel, and what follows is blur of arial combat. Grabs, counter-grabs, hook shots pulling into things, kissing on either the mouth or lips, rocket jumps pushing away, the battle ascends up a lamp post and a tree. At one moment Tanya tries to grab Jane Doe with her hair as long as chain, but she parries with toes like cleavers that deflect the hair in a shower of sparks. Another was Tanya backflipping while holding Jane Doe, ramming her face into the ground. However, Jane Doe was able to reach fast enough to catch the projectile flying towards her, by which I mean earth. Then Tanya sieses the oppertunity and slices Jane to ribbons, who explodes into video game gore and actual literal blood, all over the cyborg.

Satisified with the results, we went and did some other things until I got curious about how the game would feel with d12 kungfu dice.

FIGHT TWO: REMATCH

Years later in Neo-Denver, which again on fire. Atop a skyscrapper lock eyes and Tanya says,

    "Impossible, how are you alive?"
    "I respawned."

Then the immidately went to combat. Tanya attempted to throw Jane off a building, which led into another arial brawl with grabs, kisses, rocket jumps and grapple shots. The details here are a bit murky but Tanya was on the back foot this fight, gets pierced in the forehead with a left pinky as powerful as a spearhead, then trying get away from disasterous cleave kick by grapple hooking to throw of the aim, but this unfortunatly caused her arm to fly off. She hangs here loosely as Jane Doe falls throught the air and flames of Neo-Denver dance on the surface of the glass.

Tanya

• Can become light enough to stand on an egg.
• Warbody:
• Reclining Moon Blade
• Hair as chain
• Lips as cleaver
• Feet as hammers
• Clockwork Lockwork School
• 1.Grappling Hook
• 2. Grappling Hook
• 3. Backflip
• 4. Grab
• 5. Spray
• 6. Kiss on Mouth

Jane Doe

• Reacts quickly enough to catch strikes or projectiles
• Warbody:
• Shovel
• Hammer Legs
• Cleaver Toes
• Spearhead Left Pinky Finger
• School of the Burning Tower Photograph
• 1. Rocket Jump
• 2. Land on Head
• 3. Grab
• 4. Climb
• 5. Take Picture
• 6. Kiss on Lips

Rules We Made Up On The Spot

One was that strikes could be spent to do any technique instead of a strike. This was declared after Jane Doeattempted to use a Strike to kick away Tanya's hair, and that was the only time that came up.

My grappling hook technique went through several revisions through the fight. First I had one "shoot grappling hook" and one "reel grappling hook" technique, which felt kinda wierd so we simplified to two "grappling hook"s. Then that felt two powerful at the skyscraper fight, so I changed that to two "shoot/reel grappling hook"s which didn't have the wierd edge cases of the first.

Jane Doe gained more video game powers as the fight continued.

Closing Thoughts

This was a lot of fun, and achieves the goal of creating dynamic fight scenes. Aside from choosing techniques and trying to come up with schools, it's pretty easy to pick up and play. I'm thinking of writing up some technique lists to keep in my back pocket for when I would want to get people to play some kung fu as a sort of party game.