Customer Reviews

Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game (StreetFighter)

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If you can get passed the idea that this is a role-playing game based on a less-than-cerebral video game, you'll find that Street Fighter is not a bad piece of work.

The setting is refreshingly simple: the characters are martial artists competing in a global circuit of underground fighting tournaments. A criminal empire called Shadoloo is up to no good, but since it's run by some of the best fighters in the world, the only way to take them down is to become a superior martial artist and bludgeon some justice into them. This allows players to choose all kinds of melodramatic motivations for their characters, from fighting as a means of self-perfection or good old fashioned revenge. It also allows adventures to focus on the tournaments, or on crime busting, exploration and discovery, or whatever suits your mood.

The publishers faced the difficult task of creating rules that mirror the mechanics of the video game, and have done an admirable job. Choose one of 11 fighting styles, each of which has different special manuevers, and start kicking butt. Character generation is quite easy, and while combat is a slow process, it can be quite fun.

The rules are extremely expandable, allowing for not just kung fu action but space aliens, supernatural monsters, lumbering robots, or whatever weirdness you see fit to add. Creating new styles and manuever is a snap.

There are downsides: the fighting styles need a little tinkering to balance them out. It will take a looooooong time before characters even approach the lethality of the villains. There is no simple way to scale adventure challenges. The rules are built around 10-sided dice, which aren't especially easy to come by. Finally, three of the key Street Fighter game-characters, and their fighting styles, are not included; you'll have to buy another book for them. That's a pretty crass attempt by the publishers to milk some more money out of the product.

Still, this is a quality game. It's a small matter to strip away the video game elements and just go to town with martial arts role playing. Pick this up if you can find a copy at a decent price. You won't be sorry.

White Wolf has been kicking butt since 1990, maybe a few more months than that. Vampire cried to every Goth/emo; Werewolf released our inner angst-driven eco-terrorists; Mage made us think. Changeling... was Changeling. When we found out about the Street Fighter game, we collectively groaned. When we got a chance to playtest... we actually liked it. A lot.

The Storyteller System bases all action between the character's natural potential (Attributes) and their learned skill (Abilities). The Difficulty for an 'average' task is set as 6; roll all the dice provided and for every die you meet or better the Difficulty, you succeed. More dice rolled better than the Difficulty illustrates greater a range of success.

Street Fighter can be played canonical, and even lets the players play one of the staple characters with Storyteller approval. Or you can tone down the over-the-top- and create character's who'd be on par with the disciples in Fight Club. The Crown Jewel is the combat system. Each character uses points to purchase martial art moves such as punches, grapples, and so forth. Or, you can use points to create new moves specific to how you want your character. Wizards of the Coast, the producers of Dungeons & Dragons would attempt something similar, and fail greatly, a few years later with the Tome of the Nine Swords - a noble effort, but there were no aspects allowing for the creation of more and unique moves. Palladium Books came pretty good too, with Ninjas and Superspies, but again there were no rules to customize combat moves.

Note, these Street Fighter rules would "break" a normal World of Darkness chronicle; the street fighters are just passed the power levels of werewolves and most vampires would be toys to them. Wraiths would be safe. Changelings.... are still Changelings.

Street Fighter is quite epic. It is perfect as a beer and pretzels game, though a Storyteller could create a plot line that compels the characters to come together for some reason or another. Just keep in mind - this is a combat-paced game, not intended for deep and resonating catharsis. You fight. It's in the title of the game for crying out loud....

This is a very solid book. The systems in it are very good, built upon and using the Old World of Darkness system, and do everything to make it feel like you're playing Street Fighter on the tabletop. I fully expected it to be a cheesy book full of the most asinine rules and references, but I was pleasantly surprised. I like it so much, I've been spending my time updating it for the modern rules set in the hopes that I'm able to run it some day. If you're a fan of World of Darkness, and of Street Fighter, pick up a copy. You might be as surprised as I was

Awesome fighting action! a must have. Get it no