Over on the SJGames Forums, Gigerman posted a link to this video:

 

And wondered what the first two strikes and responses would be represented in GURPS.

Kromm suggested that it was likely a Riposte or Counterattack… and those are good choices.

However, if it’s Fiore, it’s grappling. So naturally we want to know how to do it using the grappling rules. Naturally.

Note: the title of the piece is “Modified Sweep,” but in reality, this is just an already-explicit version of Shoving People Around from Martial Arts.

Unarmed Victory

At least two ways to look at the first one. Most of these assume that there’s a Rapid Strike involved on one side or both.

Standard Sequence

One of the more straight-forward takes on this is to just use the standard sequence.

Dagger attacks. Unarmed does a Grappling Parry (from FDG or TG) of the arm, or simply a Judo Parry which allows parrying weapons.

Now it’s Unarmed’s turn, and they execute a follow-up grapple to control the arm (the original Fiore plate shows the Dagger being disarmed as well…more on that later), and a punch to the face as part of a grapple-face punch Combination (a practiced form of Rapid Strike found in GURPS Martial Arts)

If you have Judo, you are not penalized facing weapons,

Wait for It…

With the first one, where the unarmed fighter gets the better of the dagger fighter, to me it seems very much like the Dagger fighter starts in high guard (fine, no problems there), but that the Unarmed fighter (wisely) starts off having both Evaluated and executed a Wait.

The Wait triggers on the step into C by Dagger.

Unarmed then executes a Combination, which is a form of Rapid Strike. The first is a grapple of Dagger’s Arm; once this succeeds, a punch to the face follows.

This is very straightforward, and explains both the one-sided nature of the event (Dagger steps in, and then Unarmed ‘parries’ and counters before Dagger can do anything).

It also allows a character with Brawling or Wrestling to not suffer many penalties defending against the dagger strike, because they’re not defending. They’re attacking. If you have studied a striking skill plus Wrestling or Sumo Wrestling (basically “not Judo”) then this is going to be your go-to on this.

Dagger Counters

The second video clip shows the Dagger guy getting the better of the exchange.

Boring Rapid Strike

The most basic way to adjudicate this is that this is actually just a Rapid Strike by Dagger.

Dagger steps in to do a Rapid Strike for two attacks. The first attack meets a two-handed parry by Unarmed, but the second attack is just a successful stab to the torso.

This presumes that the spinning around of Unarmed is incidental to everything, and that such things are below GURPS’ resolution.

Might be true…but I’m the grappling guy, so we’re going to mechanize this.

Technical Grappling and Change Position

One of the things introduced in Technical Grappling was the concept of relative facing. That’s like a mini facing that you take with you, so that you can have folks (say) prone, but one fighter has the other’s back, which means the advantaged person is in the rear “arc” of the disadvantaged person, but a third party three yards away might technically be in the front (or side or rear) “hex” of both grappling fighters.

The key bit is that there’s a maneuver or attack option that takes the place of a step in many cases that allows one fighter to force the other to change arc. In the video, you see it as Dagger pushes on the arm of Unarmed, spinning them around.

This is explicitly “Shoving People Around” from Martial Arts. One of the results if you win the Quick Contest described on p. 118 is to spin them around so their back is to you. Well, well. There you go.

If you win, you may move behind him (your facing
changes), spin him to put his back to you (his facing
changes), or force him to take a step in any direction with
you – all without letting go.

The Force Position Change option in Technical Grappling changes things up a bit, making this an attack roll and requiring overcoming a penalty to rotate them further. If you want to do that, go ahead and say something like “if you win, you can rotate them to the side arc, win by 4 and you get them all the way around.” I’ll admit I didn’t notice this option in Shoving People Around when I wrote TG, and I personally like “you win, rotate them as much as you like” for simplicity and having victory mean something.

Fantastic Dungeon Grappling and Change Position

Talk about sub-resolution. Even so…I think this can easily be subsumed into Frog March. If you win, it says you can take a step or change facing to any direction. I see no reason why this isn’t applicable to the foe. If you win, point ’em where you want. That’s a nice outcome, and consistent with how Shoving People Around is written anyway, and Frog March is a variant of Shoving People Around.

Challenges with Timing

One of the fun things about GURPS is that it can (and does) model things at “real life combat speed.” Things can (and do!) happen pretty fast after all that circling and evaluating and probing.

Even so…the exchange of dagger attack, defense, and counter happens well within two seconds, possibly even within one. Slowing it down to 1/4 speed, it looks like it barely bridges two seconds, so we’ll use that.

Step 1: Attack is Blocked

The first thing that happens is that the initial (or potential) stab to the head by Dagger is interrupted. This might be as simple as a two-handed Brawling Parry, or it could be what it looks like to me, a Grabbing Parry that establishes contact but little else.

If this happens as Dagger takes his turn…fine. But it’s now Unarmed’s turn.

If this happens because Unarmed has a Wait trigger off of Dagger’s step, it’s also now Unarmed’s turn…though technically it’s his previous turn which is what a Wait does.

Step 2: Unarmed’s Bad Day

In either case, it’s Unarmed’s turn to act. It looks like Unarmed tries to push against the upraised hand of Dagger, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Dagger doesn’t react to it. This is likely what a failed grappling attack to try and develop the grapple looks like. With that resolved but unsuccessful, it moves on to Dagger’s turn. Now that Dagger and Unarmed have both gone, one second have elapsed.

In the case of Waitus Interruptus,  it’s a harder sell. We presumed that Unarmed has the grapple-punch combination but it’s not even attempted. It’s entirely possible that this is to facilitate the demonstration of the counter-technique in the video to keep it clean. It’s possible that we presume the strike is thrown and hits, even, but not enough to do Dagger in. In ANY case, Dagger retains their dagger and control of their arm, and Unarmed’s right arm, that either could, would, or did strike at Dagger’s face, is “available.”

In all cases, not enough control points were scored by Unarmed to limit Dagger’s options. It’s either Dagger’s turn again (on Turn 2), or having not incapacitated Dagger during the Wait, Dagger gets to finish their turn.

Step 3: Dagger for the Win

In this case, either Dagger is operating off of a fresh start on Turn 2, or after taking a step, they now are in their own Turn 1 having not done anything but declare and execute their step.

So they rapid strike. The first one is the Change Position attack from above. It is clearly successful.

The second step is the knife to the back, which is also clearly successful. If the GM declares this a run-around attack (started in the front, ended in the back) then Unarmed is at -2 to defend. If the GM says this is the textbook definition of an attack from the rear hex, as Mr Miagi would say, “no can defend.”

Personally, I’d say -2. The defender is cooperating for the purposes of the demo, but there’s nothing from preventing him from stepping away from Dagger as he’s spun (Retreating Dodge), as there’s no restraint being applied.

Parting Shot

The tricksy part of this stuff is the move in the counter that rotates the Unarmed combatant in a circle. That’s actually already in Martial Arts, but unless you read it carefully on p. 118 you might have missed it. I did for the better part of a decade.

I was honestly expecting to have to sweat a bit finding something in Fantastic Dungeon Grappling that applied, because we were deliberately high-level about things. But is all that’s really required is to acknowledge “Frog March can rotate them as well as you,” and that’s a simple GM-interpretation issue. The language doesn’t even have to be bent that hard.

Technical Grappling overcomplicates it, but allows it as an attack followed by a Quick Contest. To me, the move is really best executed borrowing from Sweep. Same shoving people, but no grapple is assumed  – though you can certainly do it with one, either simply leveraging DX penalties or spending CP for added impetus.

So there we go. Plenty of ways to execute this, but that particular move is Shoving People Around, Martial Arts p. 118, done as an attack – in this case part of a Rapid Strike.