Technical Grappling – a review

To quote from his conclusion:

Shall I rate the book with X out of Y stars? That doesn’t seem a helpful approach. Let me say instead that this book is highly useful if you have a campaign that fits any of these descriptions:
1) It uses styles from martial arts
2) It features close range combat gamed out turn-by-turn
3) It features any player characters who are supposed to be highly skilled in close combat
4) It challenges player characters with animals or bestial monsters or aliens
It also fairly useful to a GM who uses more of a minimalist, narrative style to run the occasional fight as it crops up, if that GM has little personal experience with grappling arts to base the narration upon.

His primary criticism was really organizational in a way, as it took him a while to get through it enough to realize that it seemed more complex than it played, I think:

The main issue with Technical Grappling isn’t its useability, but the challenge of wrapping your head around it in the first place, if grappling sports are foreign. But it’s a lot easier than a course in Gracie Jiu-Jutsu, I’d reckon. The secondary issue is that business I mentioned about fluctuating ST scores, and to some extent DX. These are manageable if you know the system: 2 levels of DX is a level of parry/block, and 4 levels of DX is a level of Dodge. Likewise 4 levels of ST is a die of swing damage, and 8 levels of ST is a die of thrust damage, at least in the human range, and in the super-human range, 10 levels of ST is a die of damage either way. Keep these system elements in mind and use them to estimate modifiers in play; don’t pause the action to consult tables or calculators, and you’ll find that Technical Grappling enhances your combat scenes without bogging them down.

Read the whole thing, and then go buy the book if you haven’t already (can’t blame me for the gratuitous plug, can you?).

And thanks to Gef for taking the time to actually write something down. Like it or hate it, it’s good to hear feedback!

Edited to Add: The poster munin chimed in with some helpful negative feedback about the structure and presentation of the document. Blog posts will follow. Oh, yes.