Cabaret Chicks on Ice, the Sequel!

Ah, yes. Cabaret Chicks on Ice.

The joke-title for GURPS Low-Tech for quite a while on the SJG Forums.

Recently, since it seems like forever (but only seems that way) since my manuscript went into the queue in production and saw the rough PDF go around, I’ve been going crazy waiting for the Big Damn Ogre to get out of the way. -)

It’s my own fault. I pledged too.

But to pass the time, I’ve been leaking content here and there. Mostly nothing too revealing. I don’t want to overstep my bounds, nor give away too much from the book. It’s a book covering a lot of rules, and if you give away the rules, you give away the game.

Still, I did reveal one or two more concrete hints, such as a discussion on whether the damage from throws and locks was too high relative to the ease of obtaining a grapple.

I also posted something that was in an original draft, and then cut, because, well, it doesn’t have much to do with grappling.

The Secret Diaries of Technical Grappling• The generic penalty for kicking (-2) assumes a torso level kick – presumably the lower torso. Instead, you may kick anything at SM-4 and lower at no penalty, and each SM higher at an additional -1. Kicking to the head is thus -4, while stomping a grounded foe is not penalized!

One of the OTHER reasons this didn’t work is that SM does not equal height, which was how I was treating it. Still, what this does is say for human-sized critters, you can do whatever you want at knee level and down at no penalty to DX, from hips to knees at -1, abdomen and groin at -2, chest at -3, and head at -4.

This was even there in the first place to give a counter and reason to not grapple: avoiding being curb-stomped.

There is also some commentary about stability, but that is in terms of “if you are in an unstable posture, and someone’s exerting control over you, you’re easier to take down.”

And another rule, fun for people who really want to get to the point:

Impaling
Weapons capable of impaling damage can also be used to
control an opponent. If an impaling object is left inside a foe
(either voluntarily or by getting stuck, see Picks, p. B405), it is
considered to have inflicted CP equal to basic damage. These CP
may not be spent, but impart active and referred control, and
definitely allow actions such as Shoving People Around (p. 00)
and Force Posture Change (p. 00)! You may also use Inflicting
More Pain with Locks (p. 00): Roll a Quick Contest of Trained ST
vs. HT, adding half the original injury as a bonus to your Trained
ST. Apply pain using the full margin of victory!

Edit: Since people are visiting this page again, I thought I’d expand the hint to include the entire thing, just to show a bit more about what’s under the hood. 


But for those not familiar, here was the playtest announcement for the book:

GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling puts the current grappling rules in an arm bar until they bang on your desk in submission! The supplement introduces a few new rules that allow grappling to be treated as a continuum of control rather than being “grappled” and “not grappled,” and seeks to find pressure points in the rules for posture and position.

It explains how to model increasing control over an opponent, a different approach to grappling with different parts of the body, and a completely new top-to-bottom take on grappling with weapons. It adds new perks and techniques where appropriate, and revisits existing rules to ensure compatibility with the new ones!

Why pimp the book when there’s really no telling when it will come out (again: Big. Damn. Ogre)? It’s come up a few times on the forums recently, so I was in a TG frame of mind.

What’s going to be in it?

• A bunch of stuff on strength and how it impacts grappling ability/skill
• New variable-effect rules so you can achieve a sucky grapple, or a great one. 
• Lots of detail on posture and position; it’s important in real-world grappling, and it’s important in the new rules
• An entire chapter on grappling with weapons
• it revisits, where appropriate, virtually everything in the Basic Set and GURPS Martial Arts to make sure it’s compatible
• Includes some lenses and styles. Including styles for snakes, cats, dogs, and bears.

Added: I posted another leak  for some rules on disarming. They’re not much of a rules extension from the current ones, but take the same principles and make them cover more stuff.