TEXT: ®
  An e23 Sourcebook for GURPS
  ®
  STEVE JACKSON GAMES
  Stock #37-6713
  Version 1.0 – October 2011
  Written by PHIL MASTERS
  Edited by NIKOLA VRTIS
  Editorial Assistance by JASON “PK” LEVINE
  Illustrated by RICHARD MATHER, ROD REIS, and DAN SMITH
  TM
  
  INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . 3
  Using This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
  Publication History . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
  About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
  1. MARTIAL ARTS IN
  THE 21ST CENTURY . . . 4
  THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY . . . . . .4
  The Fitness Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
  Self-Defense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
  Full-Contact Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
  THE COMING OF
  THE VIRTUAL ARTS . . . . . . . . .5
  Military Training Regimes. . . . . . . 5
  Fast Prototyping in the Dojo. . . . . 6
  The Quest for
  the Ultimate Style. . . . . . . . . . . . 6
  THE STATE OF PLAY IN 2100 . . . . .7
  Fitness, Self-Defense,
  and Show. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
  Combat Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
  Derived Fictional Arts . . . . . . . . . . . 8
  Police and Military Doctrines . . . . 8
  Famous Masters in 2100 . . . . . . . . 9
  The Importance of Mars . . . . . . . . 9
  2. MARTIAL ARTISTS. . . . 10
  ADVANTAGES, DISADVANTAGES,
  AND SKILLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
  Advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
  Perks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
  Cinematic Elements . . . . . . . . . . . 12
  Disadvantages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
  Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
  Retreating in 3D . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
  TECHNIQUES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
  New Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
  NONHUMAN PHYSIOLOGY . . . . . . .15
  3. NEW AND CHANGED
  STYLES . . . . . . . . . . . 18
  STYLE CHOICES IN 2100 . . . . . . .18
  Legal Concerns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
  Off Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
  NEW LENSES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
  Finding a Teacher . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
  NEW STYLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
  ARC-P . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
  Bantu Boxing (Bantujutsu) . . . . . 22
  Battledress Training. . . . . . . . . . . 23
  Cocerdelmi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
  Countermech Training. . . . . . . . . 24
  Il Ballo di Salute . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
  Freefighting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
  Hishôjutsu (“Flight Art”) . . . . . . . 26
  Margaretian Karate . . . . . . . . . . . 26
  Derived Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
  Martian Swordplay . . . . . . . . . . . 28
  Military Zero-G. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
  Remote Sniping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
  Sact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
  Shan Chuan
  (Killer Fist Kung Fu) . . . . . . . 30
  Zhua. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
  Rival “Martian” Styles. . . . . . . . . . 31
  4. NEW WEAPONS
  AND EQUIPMENT . . . . 32
  WEAPONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .32
  Martial Arts and
  GURPS Ultra-Tech. . . . . . . . . 33
  ARMOR AND TRAINING GEAR . . . .34
  SOFTWARE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
  Recreating Lost Styles . . . . . . . . . . 36
  INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
  CONTENTS
  2
  CONTENTS
  GURPS System Design T STEVE JACKSON
  GURPS Line Editor T SEAN PUNCH
  Transhuman Space Line Editor T PHIL MASTERS
  e23 Manager T STEVEN MARSH
  Managing Editor T PHILIP REED
  Art Director T SAMUEL MITSCHKE
  Page Design T PHIL REED and JUSTIN DE WITT
  Production Artist & Indexer T NIKOLA VRTIS
  Prepress Checker T MONICA STEPHENS
  Marketing Director T PAUL CHAPMAN
  Director of Sales T ROSS JEPSON
  GURPS FAQ Maintainer T –––––––
  VICKY “MOLOKH” KOLENKO
  Steve Jackson Games is committed to full support of
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  18957, Austin, TX 78760. Please include a self-addressed,
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  Resources include:
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  Internet.
  Visit
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  on
  the
  World
  Wide
  Web
  at
  www.sjgames.com for errata, updates, Q&A, and much
  more. To discuss GURPS with our staff and your fellow
  gamers, visit our forums at forums.sjgames.com. The web
  page for Transhuman Space: Martial Arts 2100 can be
  found at transhuman.sjgames.com/martialarts2100.
  Bibliographies. Many of our books have extensive bib-
  liographies, and we’re putting them online – with links to
  let you buy the resources that interest you! Go to each
  book’s web page and look for the “Bibliography” link.
  Errata. Everyone makes mistakes, including us – but
  we do our best to fix our errors. Up-to-date errata pages
  for all GURPS releases, including this book, are available
  on our website – see above.
  Rules and statistics in this book are specifically for the
  GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition. Page references that
  begin with B refer to that book, not this one.
  About GURPS
  
  INTRODUCTION
  3
  Martial arts might seem like an irrelevance in the world of
  Transhuman Space. Why spend years training to throw
  slightly more powerful punches when a dozen different high-
  tech weapons are available to do much more damage? Why
  discipline your body and mind when biomods are available to
  enhance the former and nanodrugs can adjust the latter any
  way you want? Why burrow into the subcultures of ancient
  combat forms when you can find a thousand exotic and satis-
  fying memeplexes on the global Web?
  Yet, the martial arts survive for several very good reasons.
  Advanced training provides proven, often satisfying routes to
  discipline and physical fitness, without the expense of other
  methods, the problem of finding a reputable clinic or doctor, or
  the risks to the sense of self that come with quick high-tech self-
  modification. Martial-arts training can teach focused aggression
  and efficient crisis response. High-tech spacecraft, domed off-
  Earth communities, and underwater bases still depend on reli-
  able sealing and somewhat fragile technologies to keep their
  occupants alive; even governments with a tolerant attitude
  toward weaponry tend to restrict the possession of powerful
  sidearms in such places. Moreover, they have the full support of
  the inhabitants, and can enforce the ban with advanced tech-
  nologies. Unarmed combat thus may be the only legal or avail-
  able way of settling violent personal conflicts such locations.
  Furthermore, not all martial arts are concerned with
  unarmed combat, especially as the term is used in GURPS
  Fourth Edition. Many teach how to use the technologies of com-
  bat as precisely and efficiently as possible, so that the develop-
  ment of new technologies inspires the creation of new arts.
  Finally, the martial arts remain popular in the entertain-
  ment business in 2100, as heroes who win through superior
  skill look better than those who depend entirely on technol-
  ogy do. This has created countless job openings for stunt-
  men, fight arrangers, and motion-capture models. These
  jobs are eminently suitable for certain PCs, who may need a
  source of honest income and an excuse to wander the world
  between adventures.
  USING THIS BOOK
  This supplement is concerned with martial arts in the world
  of Transhuman Space in Fourth Edition terms. Using it there-
  fore requires the current edition of GURPS Martial Arts, the
  Basic Set, and the Transhuman Space main book, and prefer-
  ably Transhuman Space: Changing Times for general guid-
  ance on running Transhuman Space games under Fourth
  Edition. The text also makes reference to other Transhuman
  Space supplements, although none of these are mandatory.
  In addition, a couple of the “gun arts” in this supplement
  use techniques and perks that can be found in either GURPS
  High-Tech for Fourth Edition, GURPS Gun Fu, or GURPS
  Tactical Shooting, so access to one of those is required to use
  those styles. A few perks that first appeared in Gun Fu are
  reprinted in Chapter 2 of this supplement for the convenience
  of readers who only have access to High-Tech. In any case,
  Gun Fu is highly recommended to anyone who wants to
  include wilder cinematic gun arts in their Transhuman Space
  campaigns, while Tactical Shooting would be very useful to
  anyone looking to focus on more realistic gunplay.
  PUBLICATION HISTORY
  Several of the styles detailed here, and some parts of the
  background notes, originally appeared in Third Edition form in
  the 2004 Pyramid article “Transhuman Martial Arts,” by Peter V.
  Dell’Orto and Werner H. Hartmann. It’s been a pleasure to bring
  them into line with the new edition. In addition, a number of
  things in this supplement – especially style descriptions and con-
  cepts – previously appeared in Third Edition Transhuman
  Space supplements; these are referenced where appropriate.
  ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  Phil Masters is the Transhuman Space line editor and
  author of Changing Times and other material for the line. In
  addition to a lot of GURPS material dating back to Arabian
  Nights, he has written a number of e23 products, including a
  couple of books for the Dungeon Fantasy series. He lives in
  Britain with his wife and the usual couple of computers, which
  know better than to talk back to him.
  INTRODUCTION
  Additional Material: Peter Dell’Orto, S.A. Fisher, Werner H. Hartmann, David Pulver, Sean Punch, and Hans-Christian Vortisch
  Playtesters: Frederick Brackin, Roger Burton West, Peter Dell’Orto, Shawn Fisher, Leonardo Holschuh, and William Stoddard
  GURPS, Warehouse 23, and the all-seeing pyramid are registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. Transhuman Space, Martial Arts 2100, Pyramid, e23, and the
  names of all products published by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated are registered trademarks or trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, or used under license.
  Transhuman Space: Martial Arts 2100 is copyright © 2011 by Steve Jackson Games Incorporated. All rights reserved.
  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this material via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal,
  and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage
  the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
  You were prizefighting. “Misty Steele,”
  augmented featherweight. Eight fights, I
  made book on five of ’em. Blood matches,
  sweetmeat. Illegal.
  – William Gibson,
  Mona Lisa Overdrive
  
  MARTIAL ARTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
  4
  In the first decades of the third millennium, martial arts
  developed in three distinct directions.
  THE FITNESS ARTS
  The largest, and commercially most successful, of these
  three branches was the amalgamation of various martial-art
  techniques and styles with moves from aerobic and dance
  classes. This resulted in the creation of what would later
  become known as “fitness arts.” Practitioners of these styles
  were (and are) primarily interested in the workout effects of
  their training, wasting little to no thought on self-defense –
  though there were some tragic cases of delusional belief in the
  actual combat value of someone’s chosen style. A related set of
  “arts” were in fact primarily meditative disciplines, teaching
  mental focus and self-control; these could be genuinely useful
  at best, emotionally satisfying at the minimum.
  This all led to the appearance of a plethora of what appeared
  to be new arts and styles, although most of these were simply
  trademarked names for perfectly serviceable but not particu-
  larly coherent or integrated fitness training curricula. Fashions
  in such things came and went, and on occasion, some more
  dedicated students progressed to more serious combat arts, or
  at least seriously competitive sports. Mostly, however, the fit-
  ness arts separated completely from anything recognizable as
  martial arts.
  “He’s catching up!” I thought, “When will the cops get here?”
  “ETA for the nearest patrol team is four minutes,” Yarrow, my
  wearable, responded to my accidental subvocalization. It wasn’t
  information I really wanted. I’d come to this unstable Third Wave
  hole prepared for trouble from interviewees, and I’d factored all
  that into my negotiations and preparations. Then I’d gone for a
  walk at dusk without thinking about random local street hooli-
  gans or lousy police response times. The local cops would proba-
  bly react quite appropriately when they found a rich visitor
  beaten up or dead – assuming that the embassy chose to make a
  fuss, which they would, even though they didn’t like me much.
  But that wouldn’t do me much good right now, and my pursuer
  looked to be too hopped up on dubious nanodrugs to care about
  the future.
  “You can handle this,” said Yarrow. “Remember your
  training.”
  “Training? I took some dance classes!”
  “Classes that we chose quite carefully. And the VR follow-up
  course was designed for this sort of situation. Now, turn and
  focus.”
  The willful thing had borrowed my VR sensei’s voice, so I
  responded automatically. It scanned my pursuer as he approached,
  and helpfully outlined the heavy stick he was hefting in his right
  hand with glowing red lines, which ran up his arm so that his
  wrist was centered.
  “Target, balance, and – kick!” Yarrow commanded, briskly but
  calmly, and my muscle memory cut in. I guess I had the advan-
  tage of surprise, because the stick went flying. The thug looked
  shocked, and the red lines snapped out. Then the thug reached for
  me, and I scrabbled backward, avoiding the hold. An orange cir-
  cle appeared in my vision over his gut, and I kicked for that, con-
  necting again. He gasped, and the target marker flickered,
  triggering an instinctive second kick.
  “Now run!” Yarrow instructed, and I didn’t need telling twice.
  “He’s wearing a box, so forget the groin if he does catch up,”
  Yarrow stated as I ran, “try for the eyes.” But either I’d winded the
  thug enough, or he decided to go find easier meat, because I made
  it to the street where my hotel was located without seeing him
  again. The cops showed up as I reached the door, accepted the
  images that Yarrow sent them, and then took off, probably to find
  a bar somewhere. I staggered back to my room, while Yarrow told
  the mini-bar to pour me a drink.
  Martial arts weave through the histories of conflict and
  recreation, adapting and being adapted as the world turns.
  This has been as true in the hundred years leading up to 2100
  as in any earlier period.
  CHAPTER ONE
  MARTIAL ARTS
  IN THE 21ST
  CENTURY
  THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY
  
  MARTIAL ARTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
  5
  SELF-DEFENSE
  The second major branch of martial-arts evolution was
  somewhat classical: self-defense. Especially in areas with a
  strong tradition of strict gun control, many citizens felt the
  need to learn some ways to protect themselves against physi-
  cal violence. As in the latter half of the 20th century, most
  dojos drew paying customers by offering a variety of quick
  and dirty (or often just quick) self-defense courses. These in
  turn were derived from certain techniques of the dojo’s
  “main” martial arts (often some form of Karate, Jujutsu, Tae
  Kwon Do, Hapkido, Escrima, Muay Thai, or Wing Chun, with
  the Self-Defense lens from GURPS Martial Arts, p. 145).
  Serious practitioners of traditional martial arts still existed,
  and often made their living by teaching those self-defense
  courses, but new styles of any significance were not devel-
  oped in this environment.
  FULL-CONTACT SPORTS
  Invention and creativity of a sort, however, could be found
  in the third important area of martial-arts development in the
  early 21st century: full-contact blood sports. Born out of the
  Muay Thai and mixed martial arts bouts of the 1990s, such
  “meatfights” became popular all over the globe up to 2020 and
  in the early years of the subsequent decade – even if they were
  still illegal in many areas. Since many fighters in those days
  came from a criminal and/or streetfighting background, the
  “creativity” shown in their fights was of a rather primal and
  brutal sort, thus keeping the lessons from those tournaments
  out of any “real” dojo for decades to come.
  Some of those techniques came full circle during the 2020s,
  2030s, and 2040s, when civil unrest and wars in various parts
  of the world – but especially in Central Africa – saw the rein-
  troduction of those brutal fighting maneuvers to the urban bat-
  tlefields of the 21st century. Close combat skills were still
  largely irrelevant in real warfare, but in unstable insurgency
  situations, undisciplined street fights, and the personal
  entourages of thuggish warlords, a willingness and ability to
  batter opponents to a pulp with bare hands could be a real
  advantage. Meanwhile, even when global politics grew a little
  more stable and law enforcement grew more experienced at
  suppressing illegal contests, the meatfights survived, right up
  to 2100, with skill still serving some purpose alongside raw
  toughness and appropriate biomods.
  Less brutal noncontact and minimal-contact combat sports
  were still around at this time, and some were quite popular.
  However, they mostly hadn’t changed or developed much since
  the 20th century. They would later fade away almost entirely;
  see Combat Sports (pp. 7-8).
  Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, more sophisticated
  military organizations were beginning to make their own
  contributions to the development of martial arts in a broader
  sense. In wealthy, advanced countries, armies increasingly
  sought to substitute high technology and advanced training
  for numbers and raw firepower. In extreme cases, these sys-
  tems of training went beyond simple skill instruction to a
  structured formality comparable to almost any martial art.
  Behind this lay an even more fundamental development,
  again emerging from new technologies; refinements in AI
  and virtual reality now permitted whole new ways of develop-
  ing, teaching, and adapting systems of skill.
  Then, between 2040 and 2080, dozens of new styles
  seemed to appear all across the solar system, though only a
  handful of them were really successful. The obvious triggers
  for this were radical, often technologically driven develop-
  ments in society, especially manned space travel, the colo-
  nization
  of
  deadly
  environments
  with
  nonstandard
  gravitation, and life in small, pressurized habitats. Indeed,
  many of these new styles were born out of social and politi-
  cal unrest, mainly on Mars and beyond. The Ares conspiracy,
  the appearance of the Duncanites, and the bloody history of
  the Martian Triads are the most widely known of these points
  of conflict.
  MILITARY
  TRAINING REGIMES
  Perfectly logically, the first people to apply new technologies
  to the arts of violence were the military, who had both the need
  and the budget. Intensive analysis by staff officers with access to
  hours of recordings of combat situations and computer model-
  ing of tactical problems produced specific and complex – often
  too specific and complex – proposals for systems of training.
  With virtual reality now the norm in military training, these pro-
  posals could be implemented and refined within weeks or even
  days – and modified just as quickly if they proved imperfect.
  THE COMING OF
  THE VIRTUAL ARTS
  People used to ask me how
  I became a combat artist and
  why I’m called the Artificial
  Kid. People stopped asking
  such prying questions after
  I ruthlessly beat them up.
  – Bruce Sterling,
  The Artificial Kid
  
  The stress for some troops could sometimes be considerable,
  but the best-trained “virtual veterans” became experts in a star-
  tling range of problem-solving methods.
  FAST PROTOTYPING
  IN THE DOJO
  The civilian world wasn’t too far behind the military – and
  the most committed teachers and combat scholars brought a
  great deal of ingenuity to the topic. Not only could virtual real-
  ity model all manner of combat situations and facilitate train-
  ing, modern somatic modeling software could actually analyze
  skill use down at the level of individual muscles and joints.
  In short, martial arts moved into the realm of computer-
  aided design. Specialist software allowed whole martial-arts
  styles to be designed and redesigned in virtual space before
  being tested in action, and AI aides could talk the tester-stylists
  through the process of learning and deploying the new ideas.
  Traditionalist martial-arts masters might disdain this “hasty
  and fantastical” approach – many of the systems developed this
  way proved to be ineffective, inefficient, or just unremarkable
  – but over time, some genuinely new and interesting ideas
  came out of the VR dojos.
  Hence, although many of the styles developed to deal with
  new extraterrestrial environments were created by people who
  were on the spot, working through old-fashioned, painful trial
  and error, others came from either keen army training special-
  ists or interested martial-arts masters working with VR pro-
  grammers and biomechanics experts. Furthermore, the
  analysis software made cross-fertilization between new styles
  and ideas significantly simpler to manage. For a while, the
  solar system seemed to be experiencing a golden age of mar-
  tial-arts development.
  MARTIAL ARTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
  6
  The culmination of the VR analysis trend, around the
  2080s, was a serious and systematic attempt to formulate
  the “perfect style.” Actually, there were several separate
  attempts, but they all had a lot in common. The pattern
  was to apply the best computers and software available to
  the largest possible set of recordings of real combat –
  thousands of hours at minimum. This equipment ana-
  lyzed what worked and what didn’t, mapped that onto
  actual tactics via physiology and weapon-expert systems,
  and fine-tuned the resulting style using simulated VR
  combat. It ultimately exploited teaching technology
  (including mnemotropic drugs, VR, and the young sci-
  ence of memetics) to generate a maximally effective
  teaching regime.
  This approach was by no means a total failure; it pro-
  duced some useful synthetic styles and some formidable
  martial artists. However, it didn’t actually render all pre-
  vious martial-arts study redundant, despite the hopes of
  its proponents. For a start, the styles it generated were
  often difficult, occasionally verging on being impossible
  to learn properly. To become as effective as the experts, a
  student had to master a significant set of techniques
  (though not too many – inefficient moves were deliber-
  ately eliminated, after all). He had to internalize them,
  instinctively triggering the optimum response to any
  given move by an opponent. The high-tech training
  regimes were supposed to resolve this problem; instead,
  they made learning the styles expensive and stressful.
  Furthermore, soon after most of these “ultimate”
  styles were developed, rival trainers began developing
  counters to them, designed to exploit the gaps left by their
  single-minded devotion to efficiency and to trigger
  responses that left the fighter open to specific follow-up
  attacks. This was nicknamed the “rock-paper-scissors”
  problem: A given approach could often be defeated by a
  specific counter-pattern that in turn could be defeated by
  other styles that weren’t better, just different. An arms race
  developed, only to be abandoned by most protagonists
  who recognized that it would never end.
  That brought up the simple question of what these
  styles were for. They were too hard and expensive for
  casual students seeking simple self-defense skills and
  cheap fitness training, and too brutal for many sporting
  contests; students found it difficult to break the habits
  hammered into them by training when contest rules
  treated them as fouls. Military forces might see some use
  for them, but armies were mostly in the business of using
  high-tech weapons, and the best martial-arts styles still
  offered little protection against a bullet fired from a
  cheap handgun by a semi-trained shooter.
  Nonetheless, elements of the various “ultimate” styles
  developed during this period survive to 2100, and there
  remains a tantalizing and not entirely crazy possibility –
  at least in the eyes of martial-arts fans – that a true ulti-
  mate style exists somewhere, presumably known only to
  a few reclusive experts. “Ultimate Combat,” as detailed in
  Martial Arts (p. 144), would be a valid basis for this. In
  the fairly realistic setting of a Transhuman Space cam-
  paign, the style probably would not include cinematic
  skills and perks (or the need for Trained by a Master), but
  it might permit some Unusual Training perks to give
  access to some of those. However, many of the styles
  developed in the 2080s included some weapons training –
  computer analysis confirmed that, yes, weapons are dead-
  lier than bare hands – so this hypothetical style might
  include some weapons skills, too.
  At a lower level of intensity, some dojos have incorpo-
  rated ideas from this period into their own training regimes,
  particularly for military and unlimited combat-sports use.
  Styles that may have added some new ideas in this period
  (which could mean dropping combat art or sports skills)
  include Jeet Kune Do and Tae Kwon Do. One new style that
  owes something to the process is Cocerdelmi (p. 24), which
  was optimized for use against opponents in body armor.
  The Quest for the Ultimate Style
  
  That golden age didn’t last very long. The scope for new
  inventions proved finite, although the tools remained available
  and effective. Still, at the dawn of the 22nd century, the martial
  arts are evolving almost as rapidly and confusingly as most
  other fields of human endeavor. Some old forms and applica-
  tions have gone out of date, to be preserved only by a handful
  of traditionalists and historians – but VR and slink recording
  technologies allow such skills to be preserved much more reli-
  ably and meticulously than once was the case. Meanwhile, new
  forms, meeting the needs of new technologies and new envi-
  ronments (or just new fash-
  ions), do continue to appear,
  sometimes developing through
  fast
  prototyping,
  spreading
  through a subculture, and fad-
  ing into obscurity or mutating
  beyond recognition, all in the
  space of a couple of years.
  Styles that take advantage of
  new biomods, or the unique
  abilities of some bioroids, and
  even
  cybershells,
  are
  also
  developing. One or two styles
  have even been designed for
  uplifted animals; see Canine
  Police Combat in Transhuman
  Mysteries. The fact that some
  styles
  persist
  largely
  unchanged is a tribute to their
  memetic strength – or to their
  timeless usefulness.
  In addition, many styles
  created in the 20th century
  have evolved in new and sur-
  prising ways in the 21st. For
  example, a handful of instruc-
  tors staying true to Bruce Lee’s concept of Jeet Kune Do (see
  Martial Arts, pp. 164-165) are turning it into a rather differ-
  ent style to accommodate biomods and variable gravity.
  FITNESS, SELF-DEFENSE,
  AND SHOW
  In 2100, the fitness arts have almost completely vanished.
  Thanks to modern biomods, citizens of Fourth and Fifth
  Wave nations no longer have any great desire for them, and
  those living in poorer areas of the world usually have more
  urgent needs. Anyone old-school or poor enough to maintain
  their fitness the antiquated way can usually find a well-
  designed training regime, perhaps with extensive AI support,
  without having to piggyback on the forms and traditions of
  the combat arts.
  Martial arts as arts, like many forms of T’ai Chi and kata
  demonstrations in karate, however, are alive and kicking.
  Likewise, dojos that teach martial arts for self-defense still exist,
  although they are more common on Mars and in Third and
  Fourth Wave nations than in the secure and wealthy Fifth Wave
  areas of Earth. Martial arts are still something that the average
  civilian has seen demonstrated and maybe considered studying.
  COMBAT SPORTS
  Classical martial-arts tournaments in styles like boxing or
  kickboxing went the same way as almost all other spectator
  sports when confronted with upgraded, uplifted, or biomodi-
  fied contenders. It was just too hard to maintain the illusion of
  fairness or a balanced set of rules and restrictions, let alone an
  ethos of sporting amateurism.
  Meanwhile, contests of combat
  that allow for and incorporate
  such modifications are widely
  prevalent. They often combine the
  conventions of a sporting tourna-
  ment with the atmosphere of a
  trade show, as the creators and
  vendors of different biomods and
  bioroid designs compete with
  each other to demonstrate the
  superiority of their current mod-
  els. At the least reputable – and
  least legal – end of the scale are
  the deadly bloodsport fights that
  can be found almost anywhere in
  the solar system – if you know
  who to ask and don’t look like a
  cop. Even these have some of the
  trade-show aspect, though, as
  black clinics want to make sales,
  too. These various contests pro-
  vide the entertainment demanded
  by most armchair fight fans, who
  can
  convince
  themselves
  that
  modern medicine (or the use of
  bioroids) make the injuries involved impermanent and thus
  morally acceptable.
  Quite how immoral some such contests really are is in fact a
  divisive issue in 2100, reflecting larger ethical questions. In soci-
  eties where bioroids are regarded as property – or as abomina-
  tions – the idea of matching them in no-holds-barred combat
  may hardly look problematic, especially if they have been
  designed and trained for the purpose, perhaps seeming eager for
  the fight. In places where they are seen as fully sapient beings
  with all the rights that implies, the idea of “brainwashing” them
  for combat is seen as appalling, and bioroid meatfights are
  despised as the morally corrupting pathology of debased soci-
  eties. In other places, beings with full citizenship voluntarily
  engage in almost-lethal combat, trusting modern medicine and
  advanced biomods to keep them alive and intact in the end.
  Sometimes, this is legal; sometimes, it is banned as an affront to
  human dignity and a misuse of medical ingenuity. In banned
  locations, it is widely considered as mere barbaric pit-fighting
  with a layer of feeble excuses, its participants clearly in need of
  psychological therapy. Of course, where such things are banned,
  some people watch illicit broadcasts and recordings, or take hol-
  idays to places where the laws are more relaxed.
  MARTIAL ARTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
  7
  THE STATE OF PLAY IN 2100
  
  It’s possible to hold combat contests entirely in virtual reality,
  of course, and some such contests have their fans – but they
  aren’t as widespread as might be expected. To start with, there’s
  the simple feeling that VR just isn’t the same as reality, and that
  VR combat is somehow “cheating” or lacks an “edge.” Certainly,
  the feedback through a VR suit doesn’t convey some of the detail
  of real combat, and even interface implants and the best soft-
  ware have trouble with the complexities of balance, action and
  reaction, and physical pain. Suits capable of transmitting dam-
  aging levels of impact force, or implants capable of inducing
  serious pain, are generally unpopular and carry unavoidable
  risks. They are actively illegal in some places, but without them,
  virtual combat isn’t truly realistic. Even when underground vir-
  tual arenas use such technologies (which are also sometimes
  relied on for quick-and-dirty military training), audiences are
  often cynical about the whole subject. People who want to see
  bloodsports tend to insist on real blood – and sometimes on
  slinky records to prove that the loser was really hurt. This adds
  to the sleazy image of the whole business.
  Some combat sports employ cybershell combatants – some-
  times humanoid shells, but more often specially designed
  shells that tend to look like bad cartoons of military RATS
  designs with garish embellishments. It’s hard to ban these –
  sapient beings are never harmed in these contests, after all –
  but some free SAIs regard them as being in extreme bad taste.
  They do attract a lot of enthusiasm from the organic chauvin-
  ist end of the market, which likes to see AI-controlled shells
  being smashed up.
  To further add to the difficulties, some recordings or slink
  experiences are actually carefully constructed dramas – “no
  organic beings were harmed during the making of this InVid.”
  Violence in the media remains a live issue in 2100, with access
  controls in more restrictive societies and parental censorware
  locked in unending struggle with the ingenuity of those who
  want their fix of violent entertainment or are willing to supply
  it. In general, “genuinely fake” material is hard to ban, at least
  when it refrains from tipping into what society in general
  regards as outright violence-porn (mostly depictions of uncon-
  trolled violence against defenseless victims with a high subjec-
  tivity level). Even so, responsible parents, guardians, and
  personal AIs try to monitor for unhealthy levels of enthusiasm
  for such stuff – definitions of “unhealthy” also being debated,
  of course. Meanwhile, ingeniously sleazy vendors employ
  memeticists to spread the belief that some recordings aren’t
  actually fake, whatever the tags may say, giving them the added
  thrill of the secretly illicit.
  POLICE AND MILITARY
  DOCTRINES
  Virtually all professional law-enforcement person-
  nel – be they on Earth or beyond – can be expected to
  have some form of hand-to-hand combat training, if
  only a simple art with the Police lens (Martial Arts,
  pp. 144-145). In Fourth and Fifth Wave areas, the effi-
  ciency of VR-based training has shifted such skills
  from being an option to being the norm, for serious
  professionals – while cops in troubled Third Wave
  regions are more likely to need to be effective street-
  fighters, even if their schooling is less formal. Training
  often integrates close combat with the use of assorted
  “sublethal” ranged weapons, to the point that the
  Police lens might very well add assorted Beam
  Weapons or Guns skills or Liquid Projector (Sprayer),
  and possibly the associated Fast-Draw skills and
  Retain Weapon techniques. Shield skill is also appro-
  priate for some cops with riot control training, and
  Shortsword works with both old-fashioned batons
  and stun wands (see p. 33). The use of arm-mounted
  weapon pods and the need to deal with cybershells
  with integral weapons has reduced the attention paid
  to disarming techniques, especially as recognition
  pads in weapon handgrips make it impossible to use
  an opponent’s gun after taking it off him. In turn, this
  has led to slightly less emphasis on weapon retention.
  Traditional martial arts are less commonplace in
  military organizations – except for those that also per-
  form some kind of police function. Although most
  forces teach advanced melee techniques to a few
  units, many Fifth Wave armies have largely aban-
  doned the idea of human special-operations or infil-
  tration/recon units in favor of cybershell and
  microbot solutions to those requirements. In addition,
  during downtime, most units engage in extensive VR-
  based training in multiple skills, which may include
  basic or even quite advanced unarmed combat.
  MARTIAL ARTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
  8
  Derived Fictional Arts
  The software aides available to martial-arts students in 2100
  open up many possibilities, not all of them very sensible. Some
  such programs can analyze recordings of fighters in action, usu-
  ally to deduce what styles and forms they may have studied. Suf-
  ficiently detailed analysis of a large enough body of recordings
  can reverse engineer an entire style and help work out how to
  recreate it from scratch. Applied to historical recordings, this has
  enabled teachers to recreate “lost” styles from the 20th century,
  and to explain the secrets of deceased combat experts. Applied to
  other recordings, the results are plain bizarre.
  Specifically, some fans of various popular media properties
  that happen to include a lot of combat have fed their favorite
  recordings to martial-arts analysis programs, forcing them to
  “recreate” the styles used by fictional characters. As the actors
  were usually following the guidance of professional fight
  arrangers, whose objective was to make the scenes look good
  rather than to show genuinely effective combat skills (which
  would, after all, often have been dangerous to other actors), these
  “derived styles” are invariably pretty useless, being much heavier
  on Art versions of skills than on really useful training. Nonethe-
  less, dedicated fans will go to the trouble of learning them, and
  are sometimes tragically deluded enough to try using them in real
  life-and-death situations.
  In a few cases, dedicated but not totally delusional students
  have recognized the limitations of such styles, and sought to con-
  vert them into something more useful, switching the Art skills to
  functional combat versions. This can work in principle, but tends
  to produce something that annoys serious fans of the source
  material by being less faithful and more brutal – and still not that
  useful in a real fight.
  See p. 27 for some examples of derived styles.
  
  Likewise, armies with human or bioroid troops in serious com-
  bat roles still need to teach aggression and cheap, low-tech
  methods to maintain fitness. Thus, basic martial-arts classes
  are still found, with or without the use of VR.
  The Military lens (Martial Arts, p. 144) may be appropriate,
  but knife-fighting is seen as rather archaic at best, and the
  near-total disappearance of the bayonet makes Spear skill
  superfluous. The amount of body armor available on all sides,
  and less fastidiousness about killing than among police, means
  that serious military combat training is largely about high-tech
  weapons. Most or all of the shooting styles described in
  GURPS Tactical Shooting survive somewhere on Earth in
  2100, although the number of armies who still choose to
  deploy mostly human front-line forces and can afford to
  employ sophisticated training regimes is steadily shrinking.
  In fact, some weapon-training regimes have become refined
  and formalized to the point where they resemble old-school
  martial arts in flavor – although once again, in the most
  advanced armies, even light weapons handling is becoming
  primarily the province of cybershells. (Controlling those shells
  can be something of an art in itself, though; see Remote
  Sniping, p. 29.) The extent to which high-end military AIs with
  full decision-making capability have to be trained rather than
  programmed to use their weapons complicates things; some
  military systems are actually experts in something not unlike
  martial-arts styles.
  THE IMPORTANCE OF MARS
  The human colonies on Mars are widely and quite accurately
  perceived as being important to martial-arts study and develop-
  ment in 2100, as explained in In the Well (p. 61). Tight weapons
  control in domed communities, the strong Chinese tradition of
  martial-arts study (including very practical forms among the
  Triads who have expanded so enthusiastically to Rust China),
  and the options opened up by lower gravity have combined to
  produce something of a renaissance in combat arts on Mars.
  The media in the rest of the system have latched onto this, tak-
  ing the traditional Chinese idea of the martial-arts hero and sug-
  gesting that most such people are found on the Red Planet these
  days. For once, the media isn’t too far off the truth here; it’s been
  estimated that between 10% and 25% of the adult population of
  Mars has some kind of formal martial-arts training – although
  not many of them are obsessive adepts or enigmatic experts.
  Furthermore, Mars has helped keep traditional unarmed
  and low-tech combat arts dynamic and innovative. It has given
  the media a hook on which to hang periodic martial-arts fash-
  ions. It has also provided a new environment in which martial-
  arts teachers have been obliged to adapt and refine their skills
  rather than just parroting tradition. Statistically, with its much
  larger population, Earth still has many more skilled martial
  artists than Mars – but Mars arguably has the most interesting
  martial-arts scene.
  MARTIAL ARTS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
  9
  Martin Ballantine: The creator of ARC-P (p. 22) retired
  from the US Army decades ago. Following a moderately
  successful civilian career in various branches of VR devel-
  opment and some rejuvenation treatments, he is living in
  an Eloi community in California, taking occasional consul-
  tancy work in VR design over the Web. Periodically, dedi-
  cated students of the style he formulated track him down
  and approach him in search of advanced training, despite
  his own repeated comments that he was a VR designer, not
  a warrior. He was originally amused by this, but is now
  merely irritated. Two of these people are the subjects of
  restraining orders from the local court.
  Anthony Proudhomme: The official inheritor of the
  mantle of leadership in the Bantujutsu community (pp. 22-
  23) is still active and still giving lessons – for high fees.
  Even aside from his unpopularity with some of his uncle’s
  more obsessive followers, he isn’t universally highly rated
  in the martial-arts community; his competition record is
  skimpy at best, after all. Nevertheless, it’s not always wise
  to discuss this in public; some of his followers are touchy
  and capable, and Bantujutsu isn’t a gentle style.
  Paul Sayama: The creator of Hishôjutsu (p. 26) retired
  some years ago to a moderately substantial estate near
  Lake Candor, on Mars, where he lives on royalties from his
  past writings and occasionally contributes to new instruc-
  tional InVids to keep his hand in. He is not a recluse, but
  he guards his privacy. His staff AIs insist firmly that he no
  longer takes pupils, but rumors abound in the martial-arts
  world about youngsters who’ve impressed him enough.
  These are probably just fan fictions.
  Sylvia Vigil: The founder of Margaret Station’s Dancing
  Crane Studios (see High Frontier, p. 103) doesn’t claim to
  be a martial-arts mistress (she’d certainly wince at “mas-
  ter”). She likewise has played no part in recent develop-
  ments in the martial arts on the station, such as the
  creation of Margaretian Karate (pp. 26-28). Despite her
  current health problems, she retains much from her
  decades of experience; she could be expected to perform
  respectably in a sporting contest, and could look after her-
  self in a street fight. Still, anyone approaching her in
  search of “combat secrets” will be briskly directed to the
  Studios’ numerous full-time teachers.
  Master Xiao-Yue Zhang: While there are inevitably
  many arguments about who is the best martial artist in
  any region, most knowledgeable insiders give the title on
  Mars to Master (never “Mistress”) Zhang (see In the Well,
  p. 61). Deported from Earth in the 2080s as a subversive
  element, Zhang is a fierce feminist in a still rather tradi-
  tionalist, sexist milieu; most of her students are female,
  although her prejudices aren’t absolute. She’s hard to
  locate and harder to impress. Despite being over 50
  (which shows in her gray hair), she is still in formidable
  condition. Even experts in the field are uncertain of her
  full capabilities. She must know (and probably helped
  invent) Zhua (p. 31). She presumably knows at least
  enough about Hishôjutsu to be able to counter it. She also
  is believed to have studied more than one traditional
  kung fu style before she came to Mars. It’s possible that
  she is one of the true masters of Jeet Kune Do, adapting
  it to new conditions.
  Famous Masters in 2100
  
  The first round of the contest was based on a random draw,
  conducted five minutes before the first fight; the organizers reck-
  oned that this added excitement. The big display screen on the
  end wall of the station’s main chamber showed an abstract whirl
  of color – pure show, of course – and then displayed a list. At the
  top, it read: CARLOTTA STEINE vs. GERARD LAM’RIE.
  “New one on me – what’ve I got here?” Carlotta asked her
  trainer. He defocused, and a splash of text played across his glasses.
  “Yeah, he’s pretty new to the game. He’s from Ottawa,” he read.
  “Unofficial word is that he worked protection for the Macbride
  family up there . . .”
  “Is he human?” Carlotta interrupted.
  Her trainer paused, reading more. “Mostly. Far as anyone
  knows. And the refs are straight in this place.”
  “Then he didn’t bodyguard for the Macbrides,” Carlotta stated
  flatly. “They use an all-’roid team. They can’t trust real humans.”
  “Whatever you say. But he’s definitely had Shan Chuan
  training. Used it in both his recorded fights so far. Two wins, by
  the way.”
  “In zero-G?”
  “That’s what the software says.”
  Carlotta grinned. “Lessons in leverage coming right up.”
  The “ring” was roughly spherical, of course, with as large a
  diameter as permitted by the configuration of the soda-can station
  – rented by the organizers through an innocuous-looking blind
  trust, flagged as being for unspecified “industrial” use. The sphere
  was defined by a couple of dozen posts, hastily glued at the best
  points the set-up team could find and linked by a lattice of carbon
  nanotube webbing, stretched taut but still capable of providing a
  little bounce.
  Lam’rie entered the ring, and for a moment, Carlotta won-
  dered if he’d somehow spoofed the weight-class check. He would
  certainly have been much taller than her, standing upright under
  gravity. But when she looked again, she realized how thin he was.
  Tweaked muscles, she thought.
  He dropped into a freefighter’s launch pose at his start point,
  and she mirrored the motion and pushed herself into focus. Shan
  Chuan fighters took a pride in their lack of subtlety, but it was a
  smart kind of unsubtlety – and they fought hard. Even winning
  a fight against one could leave you with a hefty medical bill and
  a few boring weeks in therapy, if you weren’t careful.
  The bell sounded, and both fighters launched themselves at
  each other.
  The martial-arts styles discussed in this supplement prima-
  rily use the standard GURPS rules with the additional features
  and details given in GURPS Martial Arts. However, this chap-
  ter covers a few additional concerns.
  MARTIAL ARTISTS
  10
  See Changing Times for further notes on character creation
  in this setting.
  ADVANTAGES
  Many traits can give a martial artist a potent edge, if used
  right in the right setting. See Martial Arts (pp. 42-49) for more
  general guidance, but note that advanced technology makes it
  rather easier to acquire some advantages without cinematic
  levels of training or bizarre special exercises.
  Claws
  see p. B42
  As suggested in Martial Arts (p. 57), Karate skill can give its
  damage bonus to claws as well as to ordinary punches and kicks.
  ADVANTAGES,
  DISADVANTAGES, AND SKILLS
  CHAPTER TWO
  MARTIAL
  ARTISTS
  “If they must make war,” these
  young men thought, “why in thunder
  don’t they do it like sensible men?”
  – H.G. Wells,
  “The Land Ironclads”
  
  Enhanced Defenses
  see p. B51
  While these are technically considered cinematic, fighters
  with combat training and technologically boosted nervous sys-
  tems – and especially with Enhanced Time Sense (see below) –
  can treat one or two levels of these advantages as quite realistic.
  Enhanced Time Sense
  see p. B52
  AIs and the recipients of Brain Booster nanosymbionts have
  this. They therefore enjoy most of the combat advantages dis-
  cussed in Martial Arts (p. 44). However, fighters in noncine-
  matic games still can’t dodge beam weapons or use Bullet
  Time, and can only dodge sniper shots that they could perceive
  at least a fraction of a second before they arrive (probably
  requiring a Per roll at -5 or worse).
  Gunslinger
  see p. B58
  In cinematic games, this gives users of firearms-
  based styles access to their cinematic features, just
  as Trained by a Master and Weapon Master do for
  melee skills. See High-Tech (p. 249) and Gun Fu
  (pp. 15-16) for appropriate additional benefits for
  this advantage.
  High Pain Threshold
  see p. B59
  Military VR training systems are designed to
  inure troops to shock and stress. Only a minority
  gain this advantage as a result – and that may
  require levels of “distress simulation” that most civi-
  lized nations consider unacceptable, even in military
  training – but it is possible.
  Modular Abilities
  see p. B71
  This advantage is standard among AIs, in the form of the
  Computer Brain version with the Skills and Languages Only
  limitation. This cannot be used to gain techniques or Style
  Perks. In theory, techniques might be possible, but the difficul-
  ties of programming skill software to interact so closely with
  another skill are prohibitive in practice. As the Limited
  Integration limitation is also standard, infomorphs can’t usu-
  ally use Modular Abilities to become effective martial artists,
  although high DX and a large skill slot can make for fairly good
  programmed combat skills in a pinch. Still, Modular Abilities
  can have its uses in combat; see Brawl-Aide (p. 35).
  Striker
  see p. B88
  It’s quite easy for biomods or genetic engineering to give
  someone a Striker of some sort, although most people in 2100
  consider such things rather crass, silly, or antisocial. Strikers
  can usually be used with Brawling or Karate skills, and get the
  damage bonuses for high skill. However, the GM may rule that
  a rare and bizarre sort of Striker doesn’t combine well with
  such skills, especially if they were learned as part of a tradi-
  tional martial art that assumes standard human physiology.
  A spectacular set of horns curling forward from the back of his
  head aren’t much use to a karate fighter who has mastered a
  string of classical kicking and punching kata!
  In such cases, the GM may still rule that the Striker can be
  used with the skill – but only given special training, repre-
  sented by a perk (akin to Biting Mastery).
  Trained by a Master and Weapon Master
  see p. B93 and p. B99
  These are the definitive features of a cinematic martial
  artist, and should only be permitted in unusually cinematic
  Transhuman Space campaigns.
  PERKS
  Perks marked * are cinematic, and require Gunslinger,
  Trained by a Master, or Weapon Master as a prerequisite. (See
  p. 12 for discussion of why these cinematic advantages are cov-
  ered in this book.) Those marked † require specialization by
  skill, weapon, etc., as noted.
  Style Familiarity
  In general, Style Familiarity functions as described in
  Martial Arts (p. 49), providing access to the style’s other spe-
  cific perks, acquaintance with cultural details particular to the
  style and its schools, a limited Claim to Hospitality with some
  school or instructor (which, in turn, permits easy entrance to
  school facilities, or ensures at least a hearing from the instruc-
  tor), and a reduced defense penalty from feints and deceptive
  attacks when facing another user of the style. Where styles
  represent purely military training regimes – such as ARC-P
  (p. 22), Military Zero-G (p. 28), or many instances of
  Cocerdelmi (p. 24) – or focus primarily on long-range weapons
  – such as Battledress Training (p. 23) or Remote Sniping
  (p. 29) – most of these benefits may not amount to much.
  MARTIAL ARTISTS
  11
  
  Military-trained fighters probably share their teachers’ culture
  anyway; they will have difficulty gaining access to schools on
  military bases where they don’t belong, and firearms don’t lend
  themselves to much feinting. In compensation, stylists may
  automatically be considered to be familiar with any equipment
  (especially weapons) associated with the style or its schools.
  They may also receive +3 to Gesture or Soldier skills to coordi-
  nate tactics with others trained in the same style.
  Style Perks
  Most of these work as described in Martial Arts (pp. 49-52)
  or High-Tech (pp. 249-250), with a few setting-specific details.
  Armorer’s Gift: This can specialize by Beam Weapons or
  Gunner skills as well as by Gun type, for anything man-
  portable (even if it needs power-armor assistance to carry it). It
  can also be specialized in Armoury (Battlesuits), although
  field-stripping a suit of power armor takes at least five minutes
  even with the perk.
  Unusual Training: One version of this that has developed on
  Mars is Combat Jumping. This allows chambara-style jumping
  distances (full distance, not halved) in combat; it is most ben-
  eficial to realistic martial artists under low gravity. Using it
  requires both Acrobatics and Jumping skills at DX or better.
  Also, flashy spacer combatants may have Free-Fall Roll, which
  enables the fighter to train in and use the Roll with Blow tech-
  nique, but only in zero-G.
  Some styles and schools – especially those influenced by the
  2080s quest for an ultimate style (see p. 6) – offer (or claim to
  offer) access to other abilities normally classified as cinematic.
  At the GM’s option, this may be legitimate, at least some of the
  time. Optimized exercise and diet regimens, backed up by
  biotech and TL10 medicine, might indeed give somewhat
  exotic results, from surprising levels of Striking Strength to
  more or less functional Pressure Points skill. In short, things
  often said to be theoretically within human grasp but not prac-
  tically attainable might be quite mundane if your teacher is a
  computer and you have Fifth Wave performance-enhancers.
  Represent this by adding versions of Special Exercises or
  Unusual Training to the relevant style’s perks list.
  The following are new Style Perks used in this book.
  Army of One*
  You can shoot machine guns from the hip and fire shoulder-
  launched missiles while steering a car with the other hand.
  When wielding a heavy weapon with any Artillery or Gunner
  skill – or with the GL, LAW, or LMG specialties of Guns – you
  may ignore any † (two-handed) or M (mounted) note on its ST,
  and all extra crew requirements, as long as you meet the ST
  listed for it in the table. This lets you use it one-handed, sans
  loaders or assistants.
  Cookie Cutter*†
  You can use a full-automatic weapon (optionally, even a
  shotgun!) to cut holes through walls, floors, and ceilings – like
  a jigsaw through plywood. Each magazine emptied creates an
  opening big enough to admit one SM 0 person (or two people
  clinging to each other).
  MARTIAL ARTISTS
  12
  Normally, Transhuman Space games are regarded as
  “realistic,” in the sense that the basic laws of physics are
  respected and “cinematic” features of the GURPS rules
  are not available, definitely including cinematic martial
  arts. Why, then, does this book cover cinematic options
  and styles?
  There are several reasons. First and simplest, it’s per-
  fectly possible to run a cinematic martial-arts game in the
  setting, perhaps emulating the style of various flamboyant
  Japanese SF anime and manga. Many gamers like cine-
  matic stuff, and we’re not going to prohibit it if that’s what
  everyone in a group wants. Mixing the numerous options
  presented by TL10 technology with those of cinematic
  combat makes for a slightly more complex game, and
  advanced technology will probably turn out still to trump
  fancy martial-arts moves a lot of the time, but it can work.
  Second, some of these features may be a bit less cine-
  matic in a game with biotech-enhanced fighters and com-
  bat in different gravity fields. For example, this chapter
  includes martial arts developed for use under Martian
  gravity that include chambara-style leaping around. This
  idea needs to be handled carefully in a generally realistic
  game, but it merits mentioning.
  Third and most important, whether or not they really
  work, the cinematic options associated with a style
  define its mythology and popular image. The martial arts
  have always had legends of special abilities attached to
  them. Admittedly, in 2100, the public is mostly aware of
  the difference between the myths and the brute facts of
  martial-arts combat. While InVid productions often fea-
  ture more outrageous stunts than even the most extreme
  wuxia movies of a century before, popular slinky record-
  ings of bloody meatfights are forced almost by definition
  to present the utmost in realism. (A realism that, if
  rumors are true, results in a small-but-profitable black
  market in “death match” slinkies.) However, even when
  faced with bleeding facts, humans like to believe the
  improbable, so the legends and urban myths about secret
  techniques of classic and modern martial arts are still
  strong and widespread.
  A style said to offer Immovable Stance and Pressure
  Points skills is presumably one noted for calm subtlety,
  while legends that speak of Flying Jump Kicks and Whirl-
  wind Attacks suggest a style noted for flamboyance and
  swashbuckling. (Likewise, styles with no cinematic options
  are clearly seen as brutally practical.) Martial artists who
  get work in the entertainment business will need to know
  what visual effects will be expected in their fight scenes,
  and experts in a style may have to deal with gullible fans
  who assume that they can really do that stuff. Of course,
  even they may sometimes wonder if some of the stories
  may be partly true . . .
  Cinematic Elements
  
  You must specialize by shooting skill. The weapon matters
  less and need not be one that could actually chew through the
  target’s DR or HP. In the movies and InVids, this perk works fine
  with everything from 9mm machine pistols to TL10 assault
  rifles. Cookie Cutter only allows dramatic exits and entries,
  though. You can’t use it to bypass armor or the plot – no
  destroying vault doors in crime stories!
  Cool Under Fire
  You don’t experience “tunnel vision” under fire and can
  quickly update your mental picture of the battlefield. When
  making pop-up attacks (p. B390), you don’t suffer the -2 to hit
  if the target is no further away in yards than your Per plus
  Acute Vision (if any). This perk is redundant if you have
  Enhanced Time Sense or Gunslinger.
  Lower Arm Blindside
  This perk is only available to those with fully functional
  extra arms instead of legs – usually meaning that they’re Kumo
  parahumans (Deep Beyond, p. 113), or have received
  extremely radical biomods. Foot manipulators, as with the
  Tennin parahuman design, aren’t sufficient!
  You’ve trained to exploit your unusual physique against
  opponents who are accustomed to fighting ordinary bipeds.
  When you punch or use weapons held in your lower arms, oppo-
  nents parry at -1. This doesn’t work against leg/foot parries (see
  Martial Arts, p. 123) or the Jam technique (assuming that the
  fighters are more or less face to face), or if you and your oppo-
  nent are fighting inverted with respect to each other (“head to
  foot”), or against fighters who have extra arms instead of legs
  themselves – they tend to anticipate such moves instinctively!
  Only a few “spacer” styles teach this trick, and finding an
  instructor can be very difficult. On the bright side, spotting
  which instructors will not know it can be rather easy.
  DISADVANTAGES
  See Martial Arts, pp. 53-54, for more on this topic in gen-
  eral, including special rules for Delusions and Reputations
  among martial artists that can definitely apply in Transhuman
  Space games. Remember that disadvantage levels should gen-
  erally be relatively low in Transhuman Space campaigns;
  many physical and mental disadvantages can be cured or fixed
  by sufficiently advanced technology in this setting.
  Still, thanks to the prevalence of virtual reality training sys-
  tems, it is surprisingly easy for very skilled civilian martial
  artists in 2100 to have disadvantages such as Combat Paralysis,
  Pacifism (Reluctant Killer), or Post-Combat Shakes. Well-
  designed military training systems usually eliminate such
  problems from recruits, but civilian systems may concentrate
  on inculcating pure skill in a slightly too-artificial environ-
  ment; the first time that the student is faced with a serious, life-
  and-death fight, the psychological shock may be severe.
  Fighters trained using military or underworld VR systems
  with less “pain protection” and more accurate simulation of the
  behavior of injured opponents tend to be well-inured to violence,
  possibly acquiring High Pain Threshold (see p. 11) – or gaining
  disadvantages such as Bloodlust or Callous, at least at quirk
  level. Military forces may tolerate attitudes that mild-mannered
  Fifth Wave civilian societies regard with distaste; the military
  thinks that these characteristics make soldiers more likely to use
  their advanced fighting skills if necessary, and may even encour-
  age those traits a little. Nevertheless, high-tech armies don’t like
  some “killer” disadvantages, such as Berserk or Bully, any more
  than anyone else; they make soldiers unstable in the barracks
  where most troops spend most of their time, and unreliable in
  the field. Still, some notorious incidents with VR training sys-
  tems have produced whole units of severely desensitized com-
  batants, although every Fifth Wave army guarantees that such
  problems are long since resolved in 2100.
  Less controversially, modern memetics can help amplify
  certain tendencies. Many people in the military start with some
  kind of Sense of Duty, whether to squad-mates or to country,
  but a skilled “morale and memetics section” can do a lot to
  make sure of this.
  Bestial and Stress Atavism
  see p. B124 and p. B156
  Characters with the Bestial disadvantage, permanently or
  temporarily induced by, say, a nanodrug, or uplifts undergoing
  a Stress Atavism attack, cannot use (or study) the more refined
  aspects of the martial arts. They might use any combat skills
  from a style they have studied at other times, but the GM may
  rule that any attack more sophisticated than a simple punch,
  kick, claw, bite, or flying tackle, performed as an Attack or All-
  Out Attack, requires too much rationality. Likewise, their
  defenses may be limited to dodges – no parries or blocks –
  although All-Out Defenses are feasible, and indeed likely
  against seemingly superior foes. This can vary from case to
  case – some animals can be quite tricky fighters – but anything
  that the GM decides is simply implausible for a wild animal
  can be prohibited.
  Code of Honor
  see p. B127
  Personal codes are still quite widespread in 2100. Even if
  they can be “fixed” by memetic therapy or brainbug treat-
  ments, most people who possess them don’t want to get rid of
  them. Society at large tends to agree that they’re a good thing
  overall (-15-point versions may be regarded as somewhat psy-
  chotic, though). The Soldier’s code is still especially wide-
  spread and often encouraged among human and bioroid
  combat forces – it helps maintain unit cohesion, after all –
  while the Xia code (Martial Arts, p. 53) has been resurrected
  by Chinese war veterans on Mars.
  MARTIAL ARTISTS
  13
  Sifu Bruce Lee once said, “. . .
  unless a human being has three arms
  and four legs, there can be no different
  form of fighting. Basically, we have
  only two hands and two feet.” In 2100,
  I’m afraid this is something a fighter
  can no longer safely assume.
  – Anonymous JKD instructor
  
  Ham-Fisted
  see p. B138
  This isn’t exactly common in 2100, but it does sometimes
  appear among “street” martial artists, thanks to the existence
  of various dubious drugs and nanomods that attempt to boost
  nervous system function without proper regard for possible
  side effects. Other minor physical problems may derive from
  similar causes.
  SKILLS
  Martial-arts styles are mostly built out of skills. Once upon
  a time, this meant unarmed combat and muscle-powered
  weapon skills; by the 20th century, gun combat had advanced
  to the point where gun styles became quite feasible. In the late
  21st, combat arts have become subtle and technology-based
  enough that the inclusion of, say, Electronics Operation in a
  style is perfectly plausible.
  Artillery
  see p. B178
  Advanced technology permits the creation of hand-held
  indirect-fire weapons, sometimes as small as smart, guided
  bullets that handguns can fire. Hence, Artillery (Guided
  Missile) is a valid skill for ordinary infantry soldiers in 2100,
  and may sometimes show up in gun combat styles.
  Expert Skill
  see p. B193
  One new Expert Skill appears in this supplement.
  Robotics: This represents a general familiarization with
  modern robotic and cybershell technologies, such as is often
  included in Countermech Training courses on the classic basis
  of “know thine enemy.” It may also be known to entirely peace-
  ful technology buffs, salesmen, and journalists. It grants
  knowledge of different models of cybershells and AIs and how
  they work, including some idea of their flaws. It isn’t helpful in
  fixing problems, especially as it doesn’t cover use of the requi-
  site tools, but it may help with diagnosis, at the GM’s option. It
  even covers the aesthetics of cybershell design, and a little
  about the market for robots. It can substitute for Computer
  Programming, Electrician, Electronics Repair, Engineer
  (Robotics), Mechanic (Robotics), or Psychology (AI) in matters
  relating to general robot design and standard robot models and
  behavior; it might also substitute for Current Affairs (Science
  & Technology) or even Connoisseur (Robotic Arts) at times.
  Fast-Draw
  see p. B194
  Acceptable new specialties for this skill can include
  Grenade and Sprayer, for small devices used with Liquid
  Projector (Sprayer) skill, such as aerosol cans of tranquilizer
  gas; slightly larger sprayers are covered by Fast-Draw (Pistol)
  skill. Either may be taught as part of a practical combat style.
  Games
  see p. B197
  Martial-arts tournaments need judges with the appropriate
  Games skill. However, in 2100, detailed arbitration is often
  handled by AIs, which have faster perceptions and which can
  be certified as totally impartial. Hence, human judges may have
  only moderate levels of Games skill, but add various social
  skills so they can handle dealings with the participants and a
  bit of showmanship to help present rulings and announce-
  ments to the audience.
  MARTIAL ARTISTS
  14
  Retreats can be executed in three dimensions in micro-
  gravity or zero-G environments and underwater. This
  means a combatant can retreat backward and “up” or
  “down” as well as straight back or backward and to the
  sides. Using a sideslip (Martial Arts, p. 124), a combatant
  can make sideways defensive moves in many more direc-
  tions, too.
  Doing this sort of action effectively requires appropriate
  training, however. Underwater, the defender needs a solid
  object or surface to kick backward off, or must make an
  Aquabatics roll to swim backward effectively. In free fall,
  the defender needs a solid surface, a foot or hand hold, the
  Flight advantage, or a gadget (such as a gas jet) that grants
  the same ability, and must make a Free Fall roll at +2 to use
  any of these. In either case, pushing on a sufficiently solid
  but unfixed object – including a grappled opponent! – will
  send the object off in the opposite direction.
  A defender retreating in these conditions must still
  move away from the attacker, but can travel “up” or
  “down” a hex in the 3D combat space as well as moving
  back – thus bringing the number of potential retreat hexes
  from 3 to 9. All normal limitations on retreating apply.
  Moving “up” or “down” out of the plane in which the oppo-
  nent is attacking gives an extra +1 in addition to the usual
  retreating or sideslip bonus; this is the same bonus as is
  given by the rules for aerial defense on p. B398.
  These actions can be combined with Acrobatic Dodge
  (p. B375). Use Aquabatics instead of Acrobatics if under-
  water, Aerobatics (presumably learned for use in such con-
  ditions) instead of Acrobatics in free fall (as for aerial
  defense, p. B398). The Aquabatics skill roll for an Acrobatic
  Dodge underwater is separate from the one that may be
  required to retreat at all while in open water.
  All this makes retreating while in combat in wide-
  open, unobstructed spaces very difficult. That can force
  combat in such places to be quicker and bloodier – but
  moving to engagement range in the first place is more
  complicated, and the fact that effective combat skills can-
  not exceed Free Fall skill means that zero-G combat is
  that much more problematic.
  Retreating in 3D
  
  Group Performance
  see p. B198
  Fight Choreography is a useful extra skill for many martial
  artists in 2100, as they can make decent livings lending their
  knowledge of combat to the entertainment business. As a lot of
  initial planning for fight scenes is done in virtual modeling
  (even if the finished scene is performed more or less live),
  Computer Operation may be a handy adjunct for this, although
  often a companion AI deals with those aspects.
  MARTIAL ARTISTS
  15
  If skills define martial-arts styles in the broadest sense,
  techniques give them their distinctive flavors. All of the real-
  istic techniques in Martial Arts can show up in Transhuman
  Space martial-arts combats, and all of the cinematic ones are
  still well known at least in the entertainment business. Most
  of them have found their way into new styles such as those
  detailed in Chapter 3. Cavalry Training and Combat Riding
  are quite rare except in the reenactment community.
  Mounted Shooting is periodically recreated when someone
  decides to train to use hand-held missile weapons from mov-
  ing vehicles.
  NEW TECHNIQUES
  The following are new techniques taught by styles appear-
  ing in this book.
  Comms Multitasking
  Average
  Default: Electronics Operation (Communications).
  Prerequisite: Electronics Operation (Communications); can-
  not exceed prerequisite skill+4.
  Actively maintaining electronic links to more than one
  recipient at a time is tricky, leading to penalties on Electronics
  Operation skill rolls – but you are practiced at this. When mak-
  ing such a roll, apply the penalty to this technique rather than
  to the skill, then use the lesser of the result or your base
  Electronics Operation (Communications) skill.
  Limpet Mine Attachment
  Average
  Defaults: DX or Brawling.
  Prerequisite: None; cannot exceed DX+3 or Brawling+3.
  Limpet mines (p. 33) can be attached to opponents in com-
  bat by hand or using a limpet mine dispenser (p. 33); in either
  case, roll against DX or Brawling to hit. This technique repre-
  sents long practice with the task; roll against the technique
  level instead.
  TECHNIQUES
  One feature of Transhuman Space combat is that not all
  opponents will be human, or even humanoid. This can have
  serious consequences for the martial arts. See Martial
  Arts (pp. 95 and 114-117) for more on the effects of body
  morphology.
  Bioroid opponents (including bioshells) present the least
  serious problem here. Their designers tend to use a mostly
  human pattern, internally as well as externally, partly for sim-
  plicity (it’s easiest to follow an existing design that you know
  works), and partly for reasons of aesthetics (human customers
  tend to find bioroids who don’t quite function in a humanlike
  way rather creepy).
  Uplifted animals are trickier. In general, bioengineers avoid
  gross physical changes, especially in the early generations,
  except for extra skull capacity. However, few martial arts are
  designed specifically for combat against animals.
  Cybershells are completely nonhuman – even the ones that
  look human – and have few human vulnerabilities. There are
  reasons why styles such as Countermech Training (pp. 24-26)
  avoid “fancy” moves!
  Technique Problems
  Various combat moves – represented by techniques – can
  have problems against nonhuman opposition.
  Arm or Wrist Lock and Finger Lock: These presuppose an
  opponent with somewhat humanlike arms, although they will
  work well against any victim with a fairly humanoid body plan
  (and roughly human size). Attempting to use such a lock on a
  radically nonhumanoid opponent may take large penalties or
  simply fail, at the GM’s option; the leverage issues may just be all
  wrong. The Flexibility or Double-Jointed advantages, which may
  be incorporated in some bioroid and cybershell designs, already
  give bonuses to break free (see p. B56), though not for other pur-
  poses such as resisting damage. Extra-Flexible arms (see
  p. B53) grant immunity to these moves!
  NONHUMAN PHYSIOLOGY
  Actively maintaining
  electronic links to more
  than one recipient at a
  time is tricky . . .
  
  Choke Hold and Head Lock: These require that the victim
  has a neck, of course; Injury Tolerance (No Neck) negates
  them. If an opponent has that advantage to represent the
  absence of any vulnerable airways or arteries, but possesses a
  physical neck (like some Transhuman Space humanoid cyber-
  shell designs), an attacker can place such a hold. However, he
  cannot subsequently attempt to inflict fatigue damage, and any
  crushing damage he does counts as ordinary torso damage. A
  bioshell is also immune to fatigue from this attack, as it doesn’t
  depend on blood supplies to the brain, but still has to worry
  about crushing (tracheal) damage to the neck (see p. B552), as
  loss of the ability to breathe is still dangerous for such a body.
  Ear Clap: This attack depends quite heavily on the victim
  having a humanlike ear and skull structure. Bioroids and
  humanoid bioshells are vulnerable to it, but animals (including
  uplifts) may be effectively harder to
  affect or functionally immune, at
  the GM’s option – placing a
  cupped-hand attack so as to direct
  force appropriately into the ear
  requires a certain amount of
  knowledge and precision. This
  might be classed as a familiarity
  problem with some animals. Most
  cybershells
  are
  likely
  to
  be
  immune – their auditory input sys-
  tems are just too different. Cer-
  tainly, Protected Hearing means
  that an organic victim gets +5 to
  the HT roll to resist stunning, and
  that he can never suffer perma-
  nent deafness as a result. When
  combined with Cybershell Body or
  Machine, assume the target has
  complete immunity.
  Eye-Gouging: This, and the
  more exotic eye attacks described
  in Martial Arts, depend on the vic-
  tim not only having eyes, but hav-
  ing
  fairly
  soft,
  organic
  eyes.
  Hence, they work quite well on
  most organic beings, but cyber-
  shells with DR on their visual sen-
  sors are obviously less vulnerable.
  The GM may rule that they are effectively immune to Eye-
  Pluck attacks, and can apply the rules for Hurting Yourself
  (p. B379) freely; sticking delicate fingers into rugged camera
  lenses may be worse for the fingers than for the camera! The
  Nictitating Membrane advantage also provides any being pos-
  sessing it with useful protection against all sorts of attacks on
  the eyes.
  Judo Throw, Sacrifice Throw, Sweep, and Trip: Training for
  these tends to assume humanoid opponents, although some of
  the basic principles should work against most opponents with
  legs. Treat them as working normally against any humanoid
  bioroid or cybershell. Other body morphologies can compli-
  cate the issue considerably!
  To start with, opponents with a low center of mass may be
  a problem, at the GM’s option. As a general rule, Horizontal
  opponents with an SM within one of the attacker’s give the
  attacker -1 or -2 to Judo Throw and Sacrifice Throw attempts.
  Meanwhile, the defender gets a corresponding +1 or +2 in the
  Quick Contest to resist a Sweep or a takedown, and to the DX
  or Acrobatics roll forced by Trip. Victims with Extra Legs are
  thrown at -1 and resist at +1 per leg past two, cybershells with
  wheels get similar modifiers for each wheel past two, and those
  with tracks or who move by slithering (e.g., snakebots) are
  thrown at -4 and resist at +4. (If they’re small and light enough
  to flip over, attackers will usually do better simply to grab them
  and throw them around.)
  Neck Snap: Like a choking attack, this depends on the vic-
  tim having a neck to attack. Cybershells with a neck but no spe-
  cial structural vulnerability there can be attacked, but only for
  standard damage as if for a torso hit. Still, if the attacker can
  inflict enough damage to disable the cybershell that way, he
  can declare that he’s twisted its head right off, which always
  scores points for cool.
  Wrench Spine: This, and the
  cinematic
  Backbreaker
  tech-
  nique, assume that the victim has
  a spine – a more-or-less central
  rigid bracing member in the body
  that’s vulnerable to brute force
  attacks and well worth damag-
  ing. This will be true with most
  bioroids, bioshells, and uplifted
  animals, but cybershells tend to
  be differently engineered. Fight-
  ers can still use these attacks (or
  make a targeted attack on where
  the spine “should” be), but the
  damage they do is applied as an
  ordinary attack to the torso.
  Hit Location Issues
  If you need to determine ran-
  dom hit locations on a nonhu-
  manoid
  cybershell,
  find
  the
  most similar form in the tables
  on p. B553 (or some can use the
  vehicle
  location
  rules
  on
  pp. B554-555). Many of these
  are obvious – a snakebot uses
  the Vermiform table – while oth-
  ers can be identified with a little
  thought. Many cybershells are arachnoid (especially if they’ve
  got “spider” in their type name), although if they have less
  than eight limbs the GM may have to treat, say, “Leg 7-8” hits
  as “Leg 5-6,” while “Leg 1-2” hits will actually be arm hits for
  most such shells. Others, with pod-shaped bodies, multiple
  limbs, and front-mounted work arms or weapon mounts, are
  functionally cancroid.
  In addition, some hit locations – which may of course be the
  subjects of a Targeted Attack technique – work differently for
  different body patterns. Most are discussed in the Basic Set
  (pp. B552-555) or Martial Arts (p. 137). The following need
  further consideration in some situations.
  Eye: Not all beings that have both eyes and brains will have
  the two in close proximity. This is not only true of many cyber-
  shells but also of some radically nonhuman beings such as
  fish-based bioshells or the Astropus. At the GM’s discretion,
  Eye hits on such creatures can still blind but not be treated as
  Skull hits.
  MARTIAL ARTISTS
  16
  
  Jaw: Even if a cybershell has a head, it may not have a jaw;
  the usual indicator of this is if it can’t make biting attacks. As
  a minor additional benefit, it’s harder to gag something that
  talks through a loudspeaker than to silence someone who has
  to move a jaw to speak.
  Nose: A being that doesn’t need to breathe (or can’t breathe
  air, but breathes water through gills) won’t generally have a vul-
  nerable nose. This is mostly a difference between (air-breathing)
  organic bodies and mechanical cybershells. Some humanoid
  shells have humanlike faces for aesthetic reasons, but with noses
  that don’t do much; treat hits there as ordinary face hits.
  Spine: See the notes on the Wrench Spine technique (p. 16)
  for guidance on which opponents have spines to attack. Attacks
  on this location are rare and difficult enough that not having the
  vulnerability can be treated purely as a special effect.
  Cinematic Skills
  In games with cinematic martial arts, the problems men-
  tioned above will extend to some cinematic skills. Whether
  nonhuman beings can learn such skills may be another inter-
  esting question; in general, if the skill costs FP to use, a
  machine fighter with no FP is incapable of using it – the skill
  needs access to an organic being’s chi flow.
  Breaking Blow (p. B182): A cybershell’s armor counts as “arti-
  ficial” even though it’s part of the character template. This is one
  thing that can give cinematic “robot fighters” some chance.
  Hypnotic Hands (Martial Arts, p. 61): As a matter of style,
  bioroids, ghosts, and uplifted animals – having minds on some-
  thing analogous to the human pattern – can usually be treated
  as being susceptible to this highly cinematic form of hypno-
  tism. However, the GM might decide that the skill user suffers
  a familiarity penalty when initially dealing with radically non-
  human beings. Artificial intelligences are immune to hypno-
  tism – they aren’t built with the same sort of subconscious
  structures. Having no need to sleep may help, too. Nonetheless,
  in highly cinematic games where chi-based martial arts are
  supposed to be a match for advanced technology, anything
  with a mind might be equally vulnerable to arcane methods of
  distraction and confusion.
  Invisibility Art (p. B202) and Kiai (p. B203): These should be
  assumed to work just as well on AIs as on humans – though
  perhaps not on completely automated sub-AI sensor systems.
  They work by fooling or stunning minds, and anything that can
  justify the word “intelligence” has a mind of sorts.
  Pressure Points and Pressure Secrets (p. B215): These are
  supposed to be based on detailed knowledge of the anatomy of
  living things and “chi flows,” so they might work against
  bioroids and bioshells, assuming that their artificial nature
  doesn’t cause problems. The user might take a penalty against
  such targets, but if these skills work against animals, they are
  presumably “general” enough for this purpose. They probably
  won’t work against cybershells unless the GM decides to take a
  highly cinematic approach, ruling that anything with any kind
  of motivation has detectable vulnerable points or a discernible
  chi flow, and even then, the initial attack roll may take a famil-
  iarity penalty.
  Sensitivity (Martial Arts, p. 62): This should work fine
  against organic beings, including bioroids and bioshells,
  although there might be a familiarity penalty when first using
  it against a nonhumanoid animal. Cybershells, not having
  organic musculature, could give the skill user a penalty of, say,
  -3; it’s still possible to read their stance and tiny movements,
  but interpreting some of that information is much harder, and
  there’s less to read.
  Defensive Features
  Some designers working on combat bioroids, cybershells,
  or even parahuman genetic templates anticipate particular cat-
  egories of attack and incorporate features designed to counter
  them. This can be as simple as armored lenses on cybershell
  cameras (treated as a Nictitating Membrane in GURPS terms),
  as broad as giving a bioroid Flexibility to help defeat limb locks
  and grapples (among other benefits), or as subtle as the added
  redundancy of backup hearts or a rearrangement of an organic
  being’s skeleton or internal organs to reduce specific problems
  arising from injury. These last sorts of thing can be represented
  by extra HP (usually 1 or 2, but up to 4 in advanced designs),
  levels of Hard to Kill (up to 3), or Injury Tolerance (No Vitals)
  with an Unreliable limitation that has an activation number no
  greater than 8. Certainly, many “male configuration” combat
  bioroids have internal testes only (possibly with external dum-
  mies for show), and should be treated as non-male in case of a
  groin hit.
  Where the benefit from a design improvement is real but
  limited and isn’t covered by an existing advantage, a perk
  might represent it. This will give from +1 to +3 to rolls to resist,
  defend against, or counter a specific category of attack or prob-
  lem, or -1 to -3 to opponents’ attacks; the level of benefit
  depends on exactly how broad and common the problem being
  defended against may be. Perks that give just +1 might be
  taken more than once (providing cumulative benefits) in sec-
  ond-generation or especially clever designs. For example,
  “Improved Stability,” defined as a lowered center of mass and
  some joint adjustments, could give -1/+1 protection against
  trips, sweeps, and throws, much like a radically nonhuman
  body plan (see p. 15). “Joint Reinforcements” could give +2 to
  resist damage from Arm, Wrist, Finger, or Leg Locks. A
  “Reinforced Inner Ear” might give +3 to HT rolls to resist the
  deafening effects of Ear Claps and similar maneuvers. Other
  such design features may be effectively equivalent to Iron Body
  Parts (Martial Arts, p. 50); for example, a reinforced throat
  could be equivalent to Iron Neck.
  MARTIAL ARTISTS
  17
  Some designers working on combat bioroids, cybershells, or even
  parahuman genetic templates anticipate particular categories of
  attack and incorporate features designed to counter them.
  
  “What we got, ’migo?”
  “Pretty much the usual, chief. Neighborhood never liked the
  provisional gov’ment, not much work round here – things boiled
  over this morning. Just a riot, no real command structure we can
  trace, but there’s a memetics whizkid at the back. Pull him out,
  the government meme boys can damp this down much faster. Is
  one catch, though.”
  “Yeah?”
  “The backroom team ran a search. Three businesses regis-
  tered in this vecindad as providing, quote, martial-arts training,
  unquote. One of ’em licensed by Makombo-Proudhomme
  International. And we think there’s at least one black clinic
  down here, too.”
  “Great. Buncha amped-up psycho brawlers. Well, let’s earn
  our fees. Come on, boys – straight extraction, and keep it nice for
  the cameras.”
  The team boiled out of the armored truck, forming up as
  they went. All of them had full ARC-P version 12 training, with
  dozens of hours of virtual experience as a team and a couple of
  real riots under their belts now, too. They moved down the
  street as a single unit, not flinching at all as a few thrown rocks
  bounced pointlessly off their shields. Then a half-dozen rioters
  burst out of a side alley, wielding staves and hatchets with a cer-
  tain amount of credibility. The team members on that side
  turned and blocked them, holding back the assault until the sec-
  ond rank could bring gas sprays to bear, sending the locals back
  choking and gagging.
  “Hold it!” the team leader snapped into his throat mike.
  “Something wrong there – that was planned. I think . . .”
  He didn’t finish the sentence, as a whip-crack report sounded
  from somewhere up and ahead. One of the team went down, red
  staining the shoulder of his armored suit.
  “Sniper!” somebody yelled. “Medevac!” said another, more
  useful voice. Tags scrolled across the leader’s helmet HUD.
  THREAT LEVEL ESCALATION +3.
  AUTHORIZED RESPONSE INITIATED.
  Another three whip-cracks sounded, but these were from the
  truck that the team had left behind them. Glass shattered on a
  building ahead. Another tag flashed up.
  1 IDENTIFIED TARGET BELIEVED NEUTRALIZED.
  0 ADDITIONAL THREATS IDENTIFIED.
  The truck surged past the team, screening them while they
  reorganized for the pull-out – but after long seconds, no further
  shots sounded. The team leader snarled a command to the sup-
  port AI, making sure that it told the government that they now
  needed SWAT, not Riot Control, then pulled up an IR trace.
  “All right,” he told his number two, “looks like the sniper is
  down.”
  “Just the one of him? And he was actually pulling his own
  trigger?”
  “Seems that way.”
  The deputy team leader paused to think about that for a
  moment. “Buncha amateurs” he muttered.
  While many martial-arts styles known in 2100 are much
  the same as those learned and used in 2010, there have been
  new developments, including some completely new cre-
  ations. This chapter looks at what is available in the world of
  Transhuman Space.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  18
  The range of traditional styles available somewhere, if only
  in the form of a training InVid or two, is probably greater in
  2100 than was the case a century earlier. The development of
  style analysis software (see p. 36) has allowed several nearly
  forgotten forms to be (supposedly) resurrected from old texts
  and recordings; the methods used by some historical masters
  who were active late enough to be caught on film are now
  rather better understood. Meanwhile, virtual-reality training
  environments have become realistic enough that casual stu-
  dents can learn something of various very serious killing
  styles that were previously only studied by professional fight-
  ers and at worrying risk to the students. Of course, the accu-
  racy of this computer-aided training is sometimes disputed.
  STYLE CHOICES IN 2100
  CHAPTER THREE
  NEW AND
  CHANGED
  STYLES
  
  A proper grasp of the deadlier martial arts may be hard to
  attain without the stress and pain of “real” training, and some
  experts insist that anything learned in VR should be counted as
  little more than a sport form. Still, the best courses and the
  best students have from time to time been tested in real-world
  fights, and have passed those tests.
  Hence, a sufficiently determined and eccentric person
  might know nearly any style listed in GURPS Martial Arts.
  That doesn’t make such styles useful, necessarily. It likewise
  doesn’t prevent some from being more popular than others,
  whether that’s because they’re known to be more useful in a
  fight; they’ve had good PR; they are linked to some other pow-
  erful memeplex such as a religion, philos-
  ophy, or ideology; or just through the
  random vagaries of fashion. For exam-
  ple, the Genetic Regulatory Agency has
  adopted Sambo (see Martial Arts,
  p. 185) as the style of choice for its
  agents: It’s businesslike and efficient;
  includes several techniques that are
  good for restraining suspects or for use
  against armored opponents; and the
  agency was able to find a number of
  competent instructors living nearby
  when it was establishing its HQ in
  Königsberg. This has had the side effect
  of making the style fashionable among
  admirers of the agency and some other
  preservationists – and correspondingly
  unpopular among transhumanists who
  dislike the GRA!
  LEGAL CONCERNS
  In a society that is rich in informa-
  tion flow and relatively low on privacy,
  and where some governments are more
  than willing to exert their authority,
  knowledge, including about martial
  arts, is sometimes subject to control.
  Skills that make people more danger-
  ous are arguably almost as much of an
  issue
  for
  society
  as
  are
  physical
  weapons – and weapons are often
  legally controlled.
  Attempts at wholesale regulation of
  martial-arts training are mostly limited to highly restrictive soci-
  eties – CR5+, in GURPS terms – although a CR4 society might
  have some kind of licensing system for teachers, or maybe treat
  combat-training software as a dangerous form of publication.
  Styles oriented toward fitness and artistry are mostly seen as
  harmless, and unarmed self-defense styles are widely tolerated.
  Even quite restrictive governments see these as preferable to
  having the citizenry insisting on carrying weapons for self-
  defense, while still leaving the weapon-armed (and hopefully
  properly trained) police and army with a decisive advantage.
  However, distinctly military styles – especially those including
  firearms use or encompassing high-lethality close combat arts –
  may be treated as distinctly military matters. They may not be as
  strictly controlled as guns or explosives, but schools may be
  watched by the authorities and shut down on minimal excuse,
  and training software may be subject to legal restrictions.
  The last holds true even in many tolerant societies, as a
  matter of public safety and with some logic. Software that
  teaches people how to maim and kill does make them more
  of a danger to others, if they are aggressive or unthinking
  enough to use these skills too casually. The same goes for
  training in old-fashioned schools and dojos, but there, a
  human instructor can emphasize the need for restraint and
  self-control, and hopefully look out for psychologically unsta-
  ble would-be students. High-quality but nonsapient training
  software, meanwhile, can be used by anyone. Hence, it is
  sometimes subject to various degrees of legal control or vol-
  untary limits applied by designers and vendors who want to
  avoid legal restrictions or bad PR.
  Some martial arts are entangled
  with subtler memetic issues. Aside
  from their use by various revolu-
  tionary movements throughout
  history, some styles traditionally
  include training in philosophical or
  religious ideas, which may not be
  approved of by restrictive govern-
  ments. When a martial art is entan-
  gled with a “subversive” memeplex,
  the authorities may clamp down on
  schools and teachers, even if the art
  itself isn’t particularly dangerous.
  In the 20th century, this sort of
  thing led the Chinese government
  to promote Wushu (Martial Arts,
  pp. 206-207) over more traditional
  styles, and this sort of thinking per-
  sists in China even 2100, although
  old-fashioned kung fu forms are
  now generally tolerated on Earth.
  On Mars, while the martial arts are
  too popular as a hobby to suppress,
  some of them are associated with
  the criminal and political under-
  worlds, leading to a certain amount
  of monitoring and official distrust.
  Elsewhere, the spread of train-
  ing software and VR has meant
  that some styles have become wide-
  spread despite what the authorities
  might want. In controlled but vio-
  lent societies – or controlled societies
  that people think are violent, whatever the facts – particular
  highly combative styles may become fashionable from time to
  time, and some students of imported training software may
  prove dedicated and competent enough to become effective styl-
  ists. More than one old military training system has been found,
  dusted off, updated to run on modern hardware, and ended up
  as the self-defense system of choice somewhere continents and
  generations away from its original creation. However, this sort
  of thing sometimes runs into another legal complication.
  Trademarked and Copyrighted Styles
  A peculiar development that began to emerge as early as
  the 20th century, but which has come to something of a
  fruition in the late 21st, is the idea that a style might be sub-
  ject to intellectual property laws. In the early days, trademarks
  might protect style names; see Style™ in Martial Arts (p. 27).
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  19
  
  This practice has survived to 2100, albeit with predictable lev-
  els of complication, legal activity, argument, and interna-
  tional dispute, all accruing over the decades. In brief, when a
  style name has been trademarked, it’s more or less certain that
  it will have a penumbra of instructors (from frauds to true
  experts who merely resent paying the license fees) teaching the
  style without openly admitting to the fact, while being watched
  closely by the trademark-holder’s lawyers. Meanwhile, other
  instructors and schools attempt to establish the credibility of
  functionally identical styles with alternative names.
  A more recent and even more controversial development
  is the idea that a style might be copyrighted. In previous cen-
  turies, this would have been laughed out of court, because a
  martial-arts style is little more than an idea, and as the legal
  maxim goes, you can’t copyright an idea, only the expression
  of an idea. You certainly can’t copyright kicking, punching, or
  grappling. However, in 2100, with the growth of detailed soft-
  ware-aided analysis of combat styles, some teachers have
  tried to argue that they can and should be allowed to copy-
  right their particular forms as detailed expressions of more
  general principles. A number of cases have come to court,
  although most were lost when the defendants showed large
  bodies of prior art, helped by testimony from well-regarded
  martial artists who treat the whole idea of copyrighted styles
  with distaste. The joke in the martial-arts world is that some
  people are trying to copyright punching and kicking. A few
  cases have been won, though – and in each instance, exten-
  sive information on the newly protected style has almost
  immediately shown up on the TSA Web. This is threatening
  to lead some governments, including China, to associate
  parts of the martial-arts hobby with nanosocialism.
  OFF EARTH
  As significant human communities have developed beyond
  Earth’s atmosphere, martial arts have come along. In places
  where conditions have been established that are closely akin to
  those on Earth, teachers and schools simply continue to spread
  the same established terrestrial styles. For example, schools on
  Margaret Station happily teach several “karate” and “judo”
  styles that would have been completely familiar in a 20th-cen-
  tury dojo. In other cases, where practical conditions are less
  Earthlike, martial arts have perforce adapted, for example
  adding the Free Fall lens (p. 20).
  At the very least, fighters trained in different gravity condi-
  tions tend to display subtly different patterns of reflexes, making
  their use of traditional styles look subtly “off” to observers from
  Earth. The other point to note is that unarmed styles are the
  ones that have so far traveled best; even when a style only
  employs weapons that would be fairly harmless to the structure
  of a ship or station, weapons have mass, and mass is money in
  space travel. However, cheaper transport costs and local manu-
  facturing facilities are gradually beginning to reduce this bias.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  20
  Developments in the ways that martial arts are used are
  reflected in the teaching methods. These new lenses can be
  applied to any pre-existing martial-arts style, or to any in the
  next section, just like the lenses in Martial Arts (pp. 144-145).
  Bodyguard
  In 2100, as throughout the century, most effective body-
  guards use guns and good planning rather than unarmed com-
  bat. However, governments and transport organizations that
  restrict weapons ownership – and enforce this rule with high-
  tech scanners – won’t always make an exception for someone
  who’s worried enough to employ a bodyguard. In addition, hir-
  ing a “martial-arts adept” is sometimes just plain fashionable
  among the very wealthy, especially on Mars (where the Triads
  set many fashions, and weapons are often restricted). A body-
  guard from a big-name or cool-sounding school is particularly
  prestigious. Hence, many such schools, and many security
  companies, offer appropriate courses – even including skills
  that make the bodyguard genuinely useful.
  Start with any style that seems reasonably plausible for a
  serious bodyguard – pure sports forms make poor choices,
  as do any styles that depend on bulky weapons – and add
  Observation, plus one of Guns (Pistol) or Beam Weapons
  (Pistol) if the style doesn’t include either of those. Combat
  Art/Sport, Games, and Savoir-Faire (Dojo) become optional,
  although stylish bodyguards usually learn them if they’re
  required by the core style. Fast-Draw for pistols and any
  weapons covered by the style, and Intimidation skill, also
  become available as options. Techniques such as Jump Kick
  or Sacrifice Throw – which take the bodyguard out of posi-
  tion for his primary task of protecting the client – are rarely
  trained above default.
  Free Fall
  Many styles have been adapted for use in microgravity and
  free fall by dedicated enthusiasts who found themselves living
  in space. The success of such attempts has varied considerably
  from case to case – some styles are just plain better for the pur-
  pose than others – but some work just fine. Noted successes
  are adaptations of Escrima and Jujutsu; it’s been said that
  Sumo is probably the only style that will never be attempted in
  free fall. It is also possible to combine this with another lens to
  create a modified style for self-defense, military use, body-
  guarding, etc., in zero G.
  NEW LENSES
  Sniping used to be the art of killing
  from a distance. Nowadays, it has to
  be the art of killing from an absence.
  – The Royal Marines
  Instructors’ Manual, 2097
  
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  21
  As in past eras, the would-be student of a martial art in
  2100 still needs to find a competent tutor. However,
  advanced technology and communications put several new
  twists on this. So long as a teacher is available at all and
  doesn’t mind being found, a quick Web search can locate
  someone suitable, complete with supporting information
  about the combat style, plus some nice video images of
  classes, testimonials from happy students, and so on. A lit-
  tle more digging will usually find any negative comments
  that also exist and that can pass legal checking filters. A
  good memetic analysis can strip out most manipulative
  advertising double-talk – although some schools employ
  very good memeticists to write their advertising.
  Although teachers in many subjects regard the idea of
  actually being in the same physical place as a student as
  superfluous, even quaint, martial-arts teachers are fre-
  quently exceptions to this; hand-to-hand combat is a very
  physical business, and conducting training in virtual reality
  just doesn’t feel right. However, some teachers disagree,
  especially if they’re based in Fifth Wave areas with state-of-
  the-art VR and slinky systems – and most teachers tolerate
  the use of select VR “textbooks” and software aides to
  assist supplementary solo practice.
  Pure VR Courses
  In truth, TL10 virtual reality is good enough to be used
  for effective martial-arts training – it actually became
  good enough at TL9 – but it must be used correctly and
  carefully. (At TL9, the process requires even more skill
  and understanding of the medium.) Both teacher and stu-
  dents must have VII or upslink and downslink implants
  or the equivalent, or wear full-body deluxe VR suits and
  use a special “VR chamber” in which to move around a
  lot. They also need high-quality avatars with augmented
  kinesthetic feedback (occupying 2 GB and costing at least
  $50 each). Any significant lag is unacceptable; a teacher
  on Earth can’t really teach students in orbit or on other
  continents. The kind GM can permit a little basic teach-
  ing over inferior links, but at penalties.
  AI Tutors
  Another possibility is the use of a skilled AI as a
  trainer, in virtual reality or in the physical world. Not
  many AIs have attained mastery of the martial arts, but
  it’s technically possible, using the right cybershell or VR
  avatar. Some military and police forces certainly use
  NAIs to conduct combat training, which may encompass
  a basic military style. “Real” martial-arts training gener-
  ally needs the imaginative flexibility of at least a LAI,
  though. In addition, an AI with high-end skill set inter-
  face capability can work with Style Trainer software
  (p. 37) to become an effective tutor. That aside, note that,
  say, a LAI-6 with Teaching-12, two Hard combat skills at
  14, and four perks – an absolute minimum specification
  for a useful martial-arts tutor – costs $10,600, before
  buying the processor it runs on and any cybershells or
  VR constructs needed for the training. Although a signif-
  icant investment for an individual, it is within budget for
  many organizations.
  Trained by a Master?
  If a Transhuman Space campaign includes cinematic
  martial arts, finding a “Master to be Trained By” should
  be at least as much of an adventure as ever. True Masters
  should be smart, evasive, and strange enough to avoid
  showing up instantly on Web searches, or very hard to
  distinguish from the frauds, competent and commer-
  cially alert but unremarkable routine teachers, and plain
  crazies. Whether or not Trained by a Master is available,
  the “Secret Martial-Arts School” meme is strong and per-
  sistent enough for some people to find ways to exploit it.
  Indeed, sorting the reality from the myth might require
  a degree of memetic skill. Legends of AI masters
  even exist, who reside on obscure servers behind strange
  firewalls . . .
  Some styles have known founders who are still alive; see
  Famous Masters in 2100 (p. 9) for examples. Note that few
  of them give lessons, whatever their skills might be.
  Finding a Teacher
  Start with any style (except Sumo), and add Free Fall to its
  required skills and Vacc Suit to the optional list. If it includes
  Acrobatics as a required or optional skill, change that to
  Aerobatics. If it includes Riding or Sumo Wrestling, delete
  those skills and any techniques based on or requiring them.
  The same goes for Immovable Stance and Lizard Climb among
  the cinematic skills. Likewise, delete Elbow Drop, Ground
  Fighting, Knee Drop, Low Fighting, Sacrifice Throw, Stamp
  Kick, and Trip from the style’s standard techniques, if they are
  present, and Piledriver from its cinematic techniques.
  All this assumes that the adapted style is learned purely for
  use in free fall. If the school, dojo, or training software also
  teaches methods for fighting under gravity, all skills and tech-
  niques that the lens deletes or changes are restored as
  options, and G-Experience becomes an optional advantage.
  This also tends to make a style complex and hard to learn.
  Trained in VR
  Training that has been more or less entirely conducted in
  virtual reality (see the boxed text, below) doesn’t necessarily
  mean that students are less effective in a fight, although this
  is quite often combined with the Trained by a Fraud lens
  (Martial Arts, p. 145). However, the students may not be
  accustomed to the gritty realities of combat, or have
  advanced very far in the style. They’re unlikely to have more
  than a couple of points in any one skill or technique, unless
  they trained as full-time members of a military organization.
  They may have disadvantages such as Combat Paralysis, Low
  Pain Threshold, or Overconfidence – or a negative Reputation
  among more traditionalist students of the style for being
  flashy and naïve. Also, add Electronics Operation (Communi-
  cations) as an optional skill.
  
  The following are some of the more widespread or interest-
  ing styles that have appeared in the century leading up to 2100
  and that are still available at that date. These are mostly fully
  developed and established styles, intended for use by fighters
  with more or less human physiology and abilities. Some very
  new, incomplete styles that are still under development at this
  date are far more exotic and peculiar, being adapted for use by
  nonhumanoid cybershells or uplifted animals. See, for exam-
  ple, Canine Police Combat in Transhuman Mysteries (p. 11).
  ARC-P
  4 points
  Throughout the early decades of the 21st century, the U.S.
  Army frequently found itself engaging in police actions and
  “operations other than warfare” all across the planet. A recur-
  rent feature of these activities was a need to handle rioting
  (or simply unruly) crowds of civilians – more or less hostile,
  not generally armed with lethal weapons, in conditions where
  the use of lethal force would be politically inexpedient at best,
  illegal and catastrophic at worst. Conventionally trained sol-
  diers were grossly ill-equipped to handle such things.
  Although the Army responded by borrowing tactics and tech-
  niques from civilian police, these situations were always seen
  as a painful nuisance.
  In 2042, a young staff captain, Martin Ballantine, pro-
  posed a consolidation and improvement of the doctrines that
  had evolved in the Army to handle riot-control situations,
  using the latest VR training technology. The curriculum he
  designed focused on teamwork, riot shield use in a group
  context, stances and moves that enable the group to hold
  back large groups of protesters or other agitated civilians,
  and basic use of riot-control batons. Additional sections cov-
  ered other less-than-lethal weapons and arrest methods bor-
  rowed from police training.
  Ballantine’s proposal was approved, and the VR course he
  designed, “Army Riot Control Procedures,” was released in 2043
  and soon installed in every Army training establishment. It
  might have been forgotten after a few years, except that it was
  eventually identified as the first of the Virtual Arts; mentions in
  the history books earned it a certain mystique. As it was a well-
  designed course, many military and police forces still use deriv-
  atives in their training. Bizarre stories and barroom legends
  suggest that small groups of experts can hold back entire mobs
  of rioters, and exaggerate the calm demeanor of a competent
  professional into a stony utter fearlessness (so Unfazeable
  becomes an optional advantage in cinematic games).
  Several variants and copies of this style exist in 2100. Some
  organizations consider the use of batons (and even stun wands,
  p. 33, which have become widespread in riot control) to be out
  of date or clumsy, or think that they allow opponents to get too
  close. These groups prefer to emphasize ranged weaponry of
  various sorts – make both Shortsword and Tonfa optional,
  replacing them in the core of the style with either Liquid
  Projector (Sprayer) or Guns (Grenade Launcher or Shotgun).
  Others simply favor bigger sticks (change Shortsword or Tonfa
  to Broadsword).
  Skills: Shield; Shortsword or Tonfa; Sumo Wrestling.
  Techniques: Arm Lock (Shortsword or Tonfa); Armed Grap-
  ple; Disarming; Handcuffing (Sumo Wrestling).
  Cinematic Skills: Immovable Stance; Push.
  Perks: Shield-Wall Training; Skill Adaptation (Handcuffing
  defaults to Sumo Wrestling-1); Teamwork.
  Optional Traits
  Secondary Characteristics: Improved Will.
  Advantages: Fearlessness; Legal Enforcement Powers.
  Disadvantages: Code of Honor (Soldier’s); Duty; Sense of
  Duty (To unit or team).
  Skills: Beam Weapons (any); Brawling; Guns (Grenade
  Launcher or Shotgun); Liquid Projector (Sprayer); Savoir-
  Faire (Military or Police); Search; Wrestling.
  Techniques: Arm Lock (Wrestling); Jam (Brawling).
  BANTU BOXING
  (BANTUJUTSU)
  3 or 6 points
  The famous African martial artist Charles “Croc” Makombo
  founded Bantujutsu in the 2030s and 2040s. He was born
  somewhere between 1990 and 2000 in Paris, and migrated to
  NYC in 2018. After a promising career start in professional
  Boxing and Muay Thai, he astonished the fans by joining the
  Central African rebel forces of Colonel Thomas Lefevre in the
  Congo crisis of the 2020s. He soon became one of the leading
  figures of the war, and was the trainer and commander of
  Lefevre’s personal guard, the Simba. It was thought that he
  died with the rest of Lefevre’s personal troops in an ambush in
  2029, but he reappeared in Montréal in 2041, where he opened
  a dojo. In 2072, he moved to Marseille, where he opened his
  second dojo. His schools taught and perfected his new style,
  which he forbid to be taught to whites or Asians. It’s a tough
  but well-developed art, combining raw, damaging power with
  judo-style elegance when grappling, and teaching a full range
  of fist strikes. Fighters are expected to meet strength with
  strength, although opponents who use skilled kicks are usually
  countered by grappling.
  On August 1, 2086, Makombo retired and left the dojos
  and his martial art to his nephew, Anthony Proudhomme. On
  August 3, Makombo apparently died while swimming in the
  Mediterranean, but his body was never found. Anthony
  Proudhomme soon opened the dojos to students of all ethnic
  backgrounds, including whites and Asians. Some of Croc’s
  senior students grumble about this “perversion” and “selling
  out” of the style to this day.
  Bantujutsu is taught in two very distinct stages; only
  advanced students (First Dan or higher) of the “Warrior-
  Style” can learn the “Chief-Style.” At all levels, Bantujutsu
  is an art that emphasizes physical power, and tries to
  take advantage of a combatant’s size, body mass, and
  sheer strength. Consequently, many practitioners possess
  powerful physiques – either by birth, training, or design.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  22
  NEW STYLES
  
  However, Makombo also sought to integrate some ideas from
  “internal” styles to produce a well-rounded “thinking war-
  rior.” To avoid having too many students arrested for mis-
  judged use of the style, and to help them in standing up to
  authority, schools traditionally offer lectures on basic legal
  principles and what to do if arrested, although this informa-
  tion doesn’t always stick.
  Bantujutsu teachers strenuously suppress stories about cin-
  ematic abilities, emphasizing that this is a serious art for real
  fighters in a kill-or-be-killed world, but a few wild stories
  inevitably circulate. Indeed, among Bantujutsu students, a
  rumor exists about a secret third stage, the “Witchdoctor-” or
  “Shaman-Style.” Whether this third style exists – and if it does,
  what it consists of – is left to the GM; one possibility would be
  to use Unusual Training perks to allow even realistic fighters
  some access to cinematic options.
  Warrior-Style
  Skills: Boxing; Judo.
  Techniques: Arm Lock; Breakfall; Choke Hold; Counterat-
  tack (Boxing); Finger Lock; Ground Fighting (Judo); Head
  Lock; Neck Snap; Targeted Attack (Boxing Punch/Face); Tar-
  geted Attack (Judo Grapple/Arm); Targeted Attack (Judo
  Throw/Neck); Uppercut.
  Perks: Clinch (Boxing); Neck Control (Boxing); Power Grap-
  pling; Teamwork.
  Optional Traits
  Attributes: Improved ST.
  Advantages: Combat biomods; Combat Reflexes; High Pain
  Threshold.
  Disadvantages: Bloodlust; Callous; Intolerance (Racial).
  Skills: Autohypnosis; Breath Control; Karate; Law (Local
  Area: Criminal); Meditation; Sumo Wrestling; Throwing.
  Additionally, all Chief-Style primary skills (see below) can be
  considered optional for Warrior-Style.
  Techniques: Knee Strike (Karate).
  Chief-Style Additions
  This is only taught to students who have the full Warrior-
  Style training. It is not a full style in itself, and it doesn’t have
  a separate Style Familiarity perk. Smallsword is included for
  use with the short staff, a popular weapon among stylists.
  Skills: Smallsword; Staff; one of Axe/Mace, Broadsword,
  Main-Gauche, or Tonfa.
  Techniques: Aggressive Parry (Boxing); Armed Grapple (any
  required weapon skill); Back Strike (Staff); Close Combat (any
  required weapon skill); Feint (Staff); Hook (Axe/Mace); Retain
  Weapon (Staff); Sweep (Staff); Targeted Attack (any required
  weapon skill/Neck); Targeted Attack (Staff Swing/Leg).
  Cinematic Skills: Power Blow.
  Cinematic Techniques: Backbreaker (ST); Piledriver; Whirl-
  wind Attack (Boxing or Staff).
  Perks: Iron Hands; Iron Neck; Off-Hand Weapon Training
  (any required weapon skill); Quick-Swap (any required
  weapon skill); Skill Adaptation (Piledriver can take Judo
  instead of Wrestling as its prerequisite).
  Optional Traits
  Skills: Any weapon skill available but not chosen as required
  is still available for later study.
  BATTLEDRESS TRAINING
  5 points
  Battlesuit use, in a general sense, is a basic part of human
  infantry training in any Fifth or high Fourth Wave army.
  Typically, power-armor troops perform a kind of tactical com-
  mand function on the battlefield. Although they are certainly
  dangerous in a shoot-out, AI-controlled military cybershells are
  equally effective, and losing those is cheaper and less controver-
  sial. Because power armor permits human troops (especially
  leaders) to venture close to the front lines with a better chance
  of survival, and to carry a lot of support gear and weapons, their
  job is primarily to provide local command initiative. Despite
  their main purpose, these troops have performed heroically and
  effectively in personal combat, when the need arose.
  The basics of power armor use are covered by Battlesuit
  skill, plus weapon skills and Soldier. However, armies issuing
  such expensive gear like to be sure that it will be used properly,
  and so have evolved formalized training courses. This style rep-
  resents a typical course of this kind. It covers battlesuit use and
  marksmanship, as well as comms and remote control of mini-
  cybershells and cyberswarms, which are often regarded as the
  most important parts of the course.
  Reflecting the nature of this training in the reality of 2100,
  cinematic battlesuit experts are often shown as tactical wizards
  who can coordinate hordes of supporting units, although wilder
  InVids persist in presenting them as one-man armies who can
  blast through any obstruction. Unfortunately, this sort of
  imagery, and the feeling of being inside an indestructible shell,
  does sometimes lead battlesuit troopers into overconfidence.
  Skills: Battlesuit; Electronics Operation (Communications);
  Guns (Grenade Launcher, Gyroc, or LAW); Guns (Rifle).
  Techniques: Comms Multitasking (p. 15); Limpet Mine
  Attachment (DX) (p. 15); Quick-Shot.
  Perks: Armorer’s Gift (for any appropriate skill in the style);
  Army of One (p. 12); Cookie Cutter (pp. 12-13); Cross-Trained.
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: Allies (Supporting combat infomorphs); Brain
  Booster nanosymbionts; Combat Reflexes; Military Rank.
  Disadvantages:
  Code
  of
  Honor
  (Soldier’s);
  Duty;
  Overconfidence.
  Skills: Armoury (Battlesuits); Camouflage; Computer Opera-
  tion; Electronics Operation (EW, Security, or Surveillance); Elec-
  tronics Repair (any); Forward Observer; Gunner (any); Guns
  (any); Savoir-Faire (Military); Soldier; Tactics.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  23
  The discipline of the new
  war machines was businesslike
  rather than pedantic . . .
  – H.G. Wells,
  “The Land Ironclads”
  
  COCERDELMI
  3 points
  This is a military hand-to-hand style, developed and used by
  the armies of various South American TSA members. This
  gives it a certain mystique among nanosocialist sympathizers,
  although in fact, it resembles other styles taught by military
  forces of several different nations aligned with various power
  blocs and political philosophies. The name is simply short for
  “Combate Cercano de los Militares” – “Military Close Combat.”
  The basis of this system is the recognition that, at the end of
  the 21st century, even irregular and insurgent opponents may be
  wearing very effective armor, especially on the torso. This may
  not protect perfectly against firearms, but it will certainly negate
  any punch thrown by an unarmed fighter. The style therefore
  concentrates on arm locks, leg sweeps, and to a lesser extent,
  face and limb strikes. Ground-fighting tricks are included
  because this sort of fight does sometimes go to the floor, and
  most training sessions are held on rough ground, not artificially
  smooth training mats. Advanced students have a large repertoire
  of techniques, although most fighters limit themselves to two or
  three moves chosen to suit their own physiques.
  Cocerdelmi takes a meticulous approach to leverage and
  grappling methods, while its punches and kicks are simple and
  functional. A common pattern of attacks (which can be used as
  the basis of a Combination) consists of a sweep or throw fol-
  lowed by a Stamp Kick against the prone foe – to the face if that’s
  unprotected, otherwise to the legs to prevent him getting up
  again. Training also emphasizes fast, decisive responses to emer-
  gencies – “he who hesitates, dies.” Armchair sympathizers with
  the cause are the main source of stories about superhuman jun-
  gle fighters with vast reserves of strength, able to defeat oppo-
  nents with their uncanny grappling skills, even in total darkness.
  Skills: Brawling; Judo.
  Techniques: Arm or Wrist Lock; Choke Hold; Disarming;
  Ground Fighting; Head Lock; Jam; Knee Strike; Stamp Kick;
  Sweep; Targeted Attack (Brawling Punch/Face); Targeted
  Attack (Brawling Stamp Kick/Face or Legs); Wrench Arm.
  Cinematic Skills: Blind Fighting; Power Blow; Pressure Points.
  Cinematic Techniques: Backbreaker; Timed Defense (Judo
  Parry).
  Perks: Armor Familiarity (Judo); Ground Guard; Special
  Setup (Brawling Parry > Arm Lock); Sure-Footed (Uneven).
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: Combat Reflexes; Higher Purpose (Defend
  Nanosocialism).
  Disadvantages: Intolerance (“Info-Capitalists”); Sense of
  Duty (Nanosocialists).
  Skills: Axe/Mace; Fast-Draw (Knife or Pistol); Guns; Knife;
  Shortsword; Soldier; Survival (Jungle or Mountain).
  Techniques: Retain Weapon (Gun or Knife); Targeted Attack
  (Knife Thrust/Arm, Face, Neck, or Groin).
  COUNTERMECH TRAINING
  4 points
  This style represents a range of training regimes developed
  for use by human or bioroid fighters who might find them-
  selves engaged with RATS or power-armored opponents at
  close quarters. They’re generally taught by the military,
  although some civilians – mostly paranoid cyber-phobes –
  also seek to learn them. As such, Countermech Training is
  even more of a style of desperation than most military forms;
  lightly protected humans tackling modern combat machines
  mostly tend to die, very quickly. Stylists are taught to use what
  advantages they can, but mostly to try to get away. Nonetheless,
  this is a functional style, quite effective against organic as well
  as inorganic opponents, and some armies teach something on
  these lines as their standard close combat form.
  The creators of this style went to great lengths to strip away
  many traditional martial-arts ideas. Anything predicated on the
  assumption that the opponent has specifically human features
  had to be ruthlessly eliminated, and some experienced martial
  artists have had to unlearn many habits when studying it.
  Strangleholds and targeted attacks aimed at human weak spots
  are likely to be worse than useless, even against humanoid
  cybershells, although skilled fighters may sometimes go for a
  shell’s camera “eyes.” The same goes for sweeps and trips, given
  the number of wheeled or multi-legged cybershells that exist.
  Targeted Attacks against chinks in armor might work, but are a
  distinctly cinematic option in this context; properly designed
  combat robots may well not have such flaws. In any case, the
  penalty to hit is likely to be overwhelming for a realistic fighter.
  Perhaps just as importantly, robots can’t easily be intimidated or
  defeated psychologically, and combat designs neither feel pain
  nor have much of an analogue for it. Countermech trainers see
  esoteric ideas about pressure points or chi as laughable, even in
  highly cinematic games.
  Instead, stylists concentrate on basic principles of leverage,
  study different types of cybershell in search of weaknesses, and
  make as much use as they can of weapons that might serve
  their purposes (see Chapter 4). Fighters usually work on the
  principle that they should get out of any combat situation as
  soon as possible. If they’ve got a ranged weapon that can dam-
  age the robot, they should hang onto it and try to buy enough
  space to use it properly. Going to very close quarters with a
  robot is usually a bad idea; many robots have multiple limbs,
  superhuman strength, or built-in blades, and will win a grap-
  pling match. Fighters learn elbow and knee strikes to use if
  they are forced to close quarters, hopefully discommoding the
  robot for a moment while the human moves away.
  Hence, this is taught very much as a striking style. Students
  start by learning basic punches and kicks (Brawling skill,
  which has the advantages of being quick to learn and of not
  worrying about encumbrance), then move on to disciplined
  karate punches and kicks intended to maximize hitting power
  if they have time and inclination to complete a full course.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  24
  Big guns they can walk round. You can’t
  shift big guns to keep pace with them and
  little guns in the open they rush. I saw ’em
  rushed. You might do a surprise now and
  then – assassinate the brutes, perhaps –
  – H.G. Wells, “The Land Ironclads”
  
  However, most stylists fight very defensively, using
  Defensive Attack (especially with weapons) or All-Out
  Defense and an array of techniques that are designed to
  avoid close engagement and open the gap. Some instruc-
  tors emphasize Push Kick, and a retreating Karate parry
  is a common move. This leads to the seeming paradox of
  a self-preservative style that concentrates on striking skills;
  many arts that emphasize self-protection focus on Judo,
  but they’re designed to defend against humans. Still, some
  versions of this style add Judo to the optional skill list,
  especially if users often have to fight humanoid robots or
  human battlesuit troops; these also add Breakfall (Judo)
  and Evade (Judo) to the list of optional techniques.
  Other skills and techniques are included in the
  style’s options list to work with common anti-robot
  weapons. Many training regimes move the skills or tech-
  niques (such as Hammer Fist) for particular weapons
  from the optional to the main part of the style. Robotic
  opponents with no more than human strength and mass
  may be slammed or battered aside or bowled over, giving
  the human a chance to get away or deliver a weapon
  attack; variant styles that focus on this add Sumo
  Wrestling to their core skills.
  Cinematic “robot hunters” in InVids are usually
  assumed to have a real chance of actually damaging their
  opponents, and so fight rather more aggressively – though
  even they may focus on defense for the first moments of a
  fight, until they have the measure of a new mechanical
  opponent. They also tend to show off their defensive skills
  against bigger machines, making any robot look like a
  lumbering joke, then use exotic weapons or devastatingly
  powerful strikes with pinpoint accuracy to shatter or
  bypass armor, leaving heaps of dismantled scrap in their
  wake. (The GM might add Targeted Attack against chinks
  in armor to such a fighter’s technique list.) They may also
  be highly acrobatic. Against hordes of small, weak robots,
  they’ll probably use Whirlwind Attack. While hand or
  weapon parries can work against robots, cinematic stylists
  may prefer to focus on dramatic but effective dodges; even
  cinematic robot opponents tend to be too tough to wres-
  tle! Fancy cinematic fighters may even use baton-format
  weapons with elegant fencing techniques. Alternatively,
  such weapons may be constructed in the shape of side-
  handled batons, used with Tonfa skill. For a multi-use
  weapon, try a tonfa with a different high-tech-weapon
  payload mounted at each end of the baton.
  The most cinematic fighters are sometimes depicted
  using devastating karate chops against robots. This
  would theoretically be represented by an Exotic Hand
  Strike or maybe Lethal Strike, but in reality and with the
  rules as written, using such techniques with an empty
  hand against an armored robot is likely to be dangerous
  and painful. Rather, treat this as an ordinary strike, prob-
  ably enhanced by Breaking Blow or Power Blow, with
  the appearance of the thing being a special effect.
  Alternatively, such fighters may have the Iron Hands perk
  (probably twice) and so be able to learn and apply those tech-
  niques relatively safely.
  Skills: Brawling; Expert Skill (Robotics) (see p. 14); Karate.
  Techniques: Back Kick; Elbow Strike (Brawling); Kicking;
  Knee Strike (Brawling); Push Kick.
  Cinematic Skills: Breaking Blow; Power Blow; Push.
  Cinematic Techniques: Flying Jump Kick; Roll with Blow;
  Springing Attack (Karate); Whirlwind Attack.
  Perks: Armor Familiarity; Cool Under Fire (p. 13); Improvised
  Weapons (Brawling); Rapid Retraction (Kicks or Punches); Style
  Adaptation (usually for a military style, but possibly for some
  types of Karate or other “hard” styles).
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  25
  Il Ballo di Salute
  3 points
  Il Ballo di Salute (“The Dance of Health”) is a remnant of a
  past age – one of the last surviving fitness arts (see p. 7). It was
  developed in the 2030s by a group of European fitness teach-
  ers, who combined aerobic dance-based exercises with ele-
  ments from various artistic styles, T’ai Chi, and yoga. Initially,
  they deliberately eliminated all elements of Eastern mysticism
  from their borrowings, but these were soon replaced by even
  larger elements of different, mostly “New Age” mysticism.
  The style has in fact survived to 2100 largely because of
  the mystical pseudo-philosophy that now surrounds it, which
  makes it very popular with a particular audience – although
  some practitioners study it for quite sensible reasons. Critics
  call it “The Path of the Endorphin High,” and some stylists
  are prone to pushing their bodies to their limits, whether for
  philosophical reasons or in pursuit of “the burn.” Instructors
  can be found in most large urban or quasi-urban areas on
  Earth, and one or two are on Mars. The number of stylists is
  hard to estimate, partly because so many are casual dabblers,
  partly because quite a few devotees are members of isolated
  communities.
  Realistically, the style has no significant combat value, and
  all respectable Ballo instructors make this completely clear to
  students. At best, some learn a set of moves based on artistic
  martial-arts kata and a few careful demonstrations of leverage.
  Still, it teaches some useful noncombat skills and a certain
  amount of agility (especially on smooth dance floors). It also
  provides general practical fitness maintenance for those who
  can’t or won’t use high-tech methods for the purpose. Few stu-
  dents actually acquire the Style Familiarity perk; they simply
  pick up the style’s core skills. However, if the wilder myths sur-
  rounding the style are true, advanced adepts display something
  akin to ESP and psychic body control, as well as know subtle
  arts of movement and pressure (requiring GURPS Psionic
  Powers or GURPS Powers to represent these abilities).
  Skills: Dancing; Meditation.
  Cinematic Skills: Immovable Stance; Mental Strength;
  Power Blow; Push; Sensitivity.
  Perks: Chi Resistance (any); Sure-Footed (Slippery).
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: Fit.
  Disadvantages: Compulsive Exercising (as a quirk); Disci-
  plines of Faith (Mysticism); Oblivious; Pacifism.
  Skills: Hobby Skill (New Age Philosophizing); Karate Art;
  Running; Savoir-Faire (Dojo); Sumo Wrestling Art.
  Techniques: Push Kick (Karate Art).
  
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: Combat Reflexes; Enhanced Dodge; Enhanced
  Parry; Military biomods.
  Disadvantages: Duty; Intolerance (AIs).
  Skills: Acrobatics; Armoury (Body Armor, or anything relat-
  ing to standard anti-robot weapons); Fast-Draw (anything use-
  ful for robot fighting); Guns (any); Liquid Projector (Sprayer);
  Shortsword; Smallsword; Soldier; Sumo Wrestling; Tonfa;
  Two-Handed Axe/Mace.
  Techniques: Breakfall (Acrobatics); Close Combat (any
  optional Melee Weapon skill); Close-Quarters Battle (any);
  Evade; Hammer Fist; Limpet Mine Attachment (p. 15);
  Retain Weapon (any); Targeted Attack (Liquid Projector
  (Sprayer)/Eyes); Targeted Attack (Shortsword Thrust/Eyes).
  Perks: Improvised Weapons (Two-Handed Axe/Mace); Suit
  Familiarity.
  FREEFIGHTING
  5 points
  This style is described in Martial Arts (p. 210); it fits very well
  in the Transhuman Space setting, and so the mechanics are
  repeated here for convenience, with some small additions. Note
  that practitioners who operate mostly or entirely in free fall are
  likely to choose Aerobatics rather than Acrobatics from the
  options, while Kumo parahumans and anyone who’s had a rad-
  ical biomod to replace his legs with arms will learn Elbow Strike
  rather than Knee Strike. Suit Familiarity is actually quite rare
  among freefighters in 2100, because available TL10 vacc suits
  don’t restrict wearers enough to need special training!
  Note that military spacers may learn Military Zero-G (p. 28)
  or something similar, rather than this style, while freefighting
  forms of other styles can be defined by applying the Free Fall
  lens (p. 20) to the standard form. Hishôjutsu (below) is another
  option for spacers, especially those with connections to Mars.
  Skills: Brawling; Free Fall; Judo; Vacc Suit.
  Techniques: Arm Lock; Disarming (Judo); Handcuffing;
  Knee Strike.
  Cinematic Skills: Blind Fighting; Sensitivity.
  Cinematic Techniques: Binding; Roll with Blow.
  Perks: Lower Arm Blindside (p. 13); Suit Familiarity (Vacc
  Suit).
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: 3D Spatial Sense; Enhanced Dodge; Perfect
  Balance; “Spacer” biomods.
  Skills: Acrobatics; Aerobatics; Climbing; Fast-Draw (Knife
  or Sword); Jumping; Karate; Knife; Shortsword.
  HISHÔJUTSU
  (“FLIGHT ART”)
  5 points
  This style was founded in the 2060s by Paul Sayama, a young
  master of mixed heritage (his father was German-Japanese,
  while his mother was of Chinese-Brazilian heritage), who prac-
  ticed Shorinji Kempo, Wushu, Capoeira, and Savate. He was
  based on Mars from 2056 onward, and opened his school in Port
  Lowell in 2063. He had worked as a farhauler until 2061, which,
  together with the increasingly tense situation on Mars after
  2058, inspired him to develop techniques to take advantage of
  the possibilities of a low-gravity environment. Although the style
  is at least as popular on Mars as in space (and has devotees on
  Luna, too), its teachers insist that zero-G techniques are central.
  Students who can’t get out of gravity wells may use deep immer-
  sion virtual reality training, preferably with a VII (or, even better,
  slinky) implant, to study how to fight in free fall.
  Hishôjutsu in action is a spectacular style, with lots of wide-
  ranging jump kicks, somersaults and leaps – but the training
  often includes the use of tools as improvised weapons, precise
  attacks on vulnerable parts of the body (or a vacc suit) and the
  use of the boomstick (see pp. 32-33). The style was an almost
  immediate success. While some martial artists on Earth like to
  belittle Hishôjutsu as a “circus style” (just as a few space-based
  freefighters dismiss Hishôjutsu as compromised by all the
  training for fighting in gravity wells), Sayama’s art now has
  enough practitioners, from Luna to the Belt, who will gladly
  show anyone that on their turf, Hishôjutsu reigns supreme.
  Skills: Acrobatics; Free Fall; Jumping; Karate.
  Techniques: Acrobatic Stand; Attack from Above; Breakfall;
  Drop Kick (Karate); Evade; Feint; Jump Kick; Kicking; Push
  Kick; Targeted Attack (Karate Punch/Face or Groin).
  Cinematic Skills: Blind Fighting; Flying Leap; Light Walk;
  Power Blow; Push.
  Cinematic Techniques: Flying Jump Kick; Lethal Kick; Roll
  with Blow; Springing Attack.
  Perks: Acrobatic Feints; Combat Jumping (p. 12); Free-Fall
  Roll (p. 12); Improvised Weapons (Karate); Skill Adaptation
  (Drop Kick defaults to Karate-1); Suit Familiarity (NBC Suit or
  Vacc Suit).
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: Andraste and “spacer” biomods; Combat
  Reflexes; G-Experience; Improved G-Tolerance.
  Skills: Brawling; Judo; Performance; Shortsword; Small-
  sword; Stealth; Vacc Suit.
  Techniques: Targeted Attack (Shortsword or Smallsword
  Thrust/Vitals).
  MARGARETIAN KARATE
  3 points
  Dancing Crane Studios and a number of spin-off groups and
  independent instructors offer instruction in a wide range of mar-
  tial-arts styles on Margaret Station (High Frontier, pp. 102-106).
  Additionally, many instructors have spent time on the station.
  Contrary to popular myth, no specific “Margaretian” style
  currently exists. Dancing Crane has always preferred to teach
  whatever styles are fashionable or best suited to each student’s
  needs, and the zero-G styles developed on the station have
  quickly spread beyond (most can be represented by Freefight-
  ing, above). However, this situation may be changing. A num-
  ber of instructors on the station have collaborated informally
  to develop a standardized training regime to meet the most
  usual requests they receive from students – for effective self-
  defense and fitness training, for useful bodyguard skills, and
  for techniques to use in mixed martial-arts competitions.
  This synthetic style is still under development, and doesn’t
  even have a universally agreed name yet; “Margaretian Karate”
  is merely the most popular nickname. However, it’s an appropri-
  ate label, and may well stick.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  26
  
  This is a striking-based style owing most to various 20th-cen-
  tury karate forms. It does incorporate a number of grapples and
  throws, but these are mostly intended to allow the fighter to
  break out of holds or put an opponent who is attempting to close
  onto the ground, setting him up for aggressive strikes or giving
  the Margaretian fighter time to escape. Indeed, some of the
  style’s own creators de-emphasize these elements of the style
  quite strongly; their preferred response to being grappled is to
  punish the opponent savagely with elbow and knee strikes and
  head butts until he lets go.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  27
  The following are examples of derived fictional arts
  (see p. 8).
  Althasian Iffjurr-Laur
  4 points
  League Combat (below), the style of the heroes of the
  InVid Starburst Station, was shown as the practical combat
  training of tough but sensible people – but the “Althasian”
  villains of the show, being an obsessive warrior race, went
  for something more flashy. Their style is notably short on
  defensive techniques; although League Combat fighters
  were almost always depicted as being superior one-to-one,
  the handful of fans on the L5 Starburst Station habitat
  (High Frontier, pp. 126-130) who’ve studied “Iffjurr-Laur”
  argue that the best defense is always a good offense. Com-
  mitted and All-Out Attacks are the norm!
  Aside from fist-fighting, the style encompasses use of
  the Althasians’ beloved array of ornate axe/mace-type
  implements.
  Skills: Axe/Mace Art; Karate Art; Savoir-Faire (Dojo).
  Techniques: Armed Grapple; Choke Hold; Hammer Fist;
  Head Butt; Hook; Knee Strike; Reverse Grip; Spinning
  Strike (Axe/Mace Art); Two-Handed Punch (Karate Art).
  Cinematic Skills: Immovable Stance.
  Cinematic Techniques: Dual-Weapon Attack (Axe/Mace
  Art); Springing Attack (Axe/Mace Art).
  Perks: Biting Mastery; Exotic Weapon Training (Any
  weird Althasian weapon); Off-Hand Weapon Training
  (Axe/Mace Art); Quick-Swap (Axe/Mace Art); Skill Adapta-
  tion (Two-Handed Punch defaults to Karate Art).
  Furusiyya-Prime
  5 points
  This is the style used by the heroes of The Golden Jihad
  (Toxic Memes, pp. 90-91), at least according to some fan-
  made episodes of the show; the original, “official” series had
  them employing a rather unremarkable set of standard stage-
  fighting moves. Furusiyya-Prime combines flamboyant
  movie combat with elegant swings and parries derived
  mostly from Western saber fencing and showy close-range
  pistol shooting (using the show’s weird ray guns, of course).
  It’s an acrobatic style, certainly entertaining to watch; attacks
  are typically either Defensive or Committed. A notable fea-
  ture is a set of moves designed for use from flying carpets; the
  Mounted Shooting technique in this style doesn’t actually
  require a vehicle operation skill as a prerequisite, because the
  flying carpets involved are faked by special effects.
  In keeping with the “Jihadi” ethos, serious fans are for-
  ever adding new details to this style, and most people who
  claim any expertise in the subject are actually engaged in
  creating their own (combat-heavy) homemade episodes.
  Plausible variants can add almost any Combat Art skill,
  especially if it involves a sword of any sort.
  Skills: Acrobatics; Beam Weapons Art (Pistol); Brawling
  Art; Saber Art.
  Techniques: Acrobatic Stand; Armed Grapple; Attack
  from Above; Back Strike; Bind Weapon; Breakfall; Close-
  Quarters Battle (Gun Fu, p. 26); Counterattack; Disarm-
  ing; Elbow Strike; Evade; Feint; Head Butt; Leg Grapple;
  Mounted Shooting (Beam Weapons Art (Pistol)/Flying Car-
  pet); Spinning Strike.
  Cinematic Skills: Light Walk; Precognitive Parry.
  Cinematic Techniques: Flying Lunge; Grand Disarm
  (Saber Art); Roll with Blow (Brawling Art); Timed Defense
  (Dodge or Saber Art Parry); Whirlwind Attack.
  Perks: Akimbo; Quick-Sheathe (Sword); Sure-Footed
  (Flying Platform).
  Optional Traits
  Skills: Broadsword Art; Electronics Operation (Media);
  Fast-Draw (Pistol or Sword); Group Performance (Fight
  Choreography); Parry Missile Weapons; Shortsword Art;
  Stage Combat; Wrestling Art.
  League Combat
  3 points
  This is the fist-fighting style of the heroes of Starburst
  Station (the InVid), now sometimes studied on the like-
  named L5 station; see also Althasian Iffjurr-Laur above. It’s
  not terribly sophisticated – Starburst Station wasn’t a mar-
  tial-arts series – but those characters were all-round
  heroes, tough and precise. A couple of League Combat stu-
  dents have achieved moderate success in freestyle martial-
  arts contests, but analysis shows that they mostly used
  other, more practical styles, with a few flourishes borrowed
  from the series.
  Skills: Karate Art; Wrestling Art.
  Techniques: Aggressive Parry; Arm Lock; Breakfall; Dis-
  arming (Karate Art); Elbow Strike; Exotic Hand Strike;
  Feint; Ground Fighting (Wrestling Art); Hammer Fist; Leg
  Grapple (Wrestling Art); Push Kick; Trip; Two-Handed
  Punch (Karate Art).
  Cinematic Techniques: Dual-Weapon Defense (Karate
  Art); Roll with Blow (Karate Art); Timed Defense (Dodge or
  Karate Art Parry).
  Perks: Improvised Weapons (Karate Art); Rapid Retrac-
  tion (Punches); Skill Adaptation (Two-Handed Punch
  defaults to Karate Art); Teamwork.
  Derived Styles
  
  For a style often learned by sports fighters, Margaretian
  Karate has a surprisingly strong focus on serious combat skills,
  treating Sport skills as secondary even for students intending
  to participate in closely regulated competitions. The fact is that
  instructors take an intense pride in the idea that they teach
  effective self-protection methods (quite a few students learn
  this style with the Self-Defense lens – Martial Arts, p. 145).
  Additionally, part of the developing philosophy of the style is
  that even a purely sporting fighter should learn focused aggres-
  sion. This occasionally leads to problems for fighters who get
  carried away in sporting bouts being fought under tight rules,
  especially as many instructors throw a few bluntly practical
  brawling tricks into their teachings. Moderating this aggressive
  approach, and in keeping with the general memetic environ-
  ment on Margaret Station, many instructors steer students
  into taking meditation classes, as well as emphasizing situa-
  tional awareness and general physical fitness. Both the
  Bodyguard and Free Fall lenses (p. 20) are also often applied.
  When this style develops a body of legends, it’s bound to
  echo the long-established mythology of karate, full of shatter-
  ing and disabling blows. This is especially inevitable for a
  forceful striking style often learned by lightly built women
  (some of them spacers with low-G physiques); their penchant
  for aggressive use of punches and kicks is bound to lead to
  exaggerated stories. A certain notorious recording of a Dancing
  Crane-trained bodyguard breaking an attacker’s neck may also
  contribute, although she wasn’t using this style.
  Skills: Judo; Karate.
  Techniques: Aggressive Parry; Back Kick; Breakfall; Coun-
  terattack (Karate); Disarming (Karate); Elbow Strike; Feint
  (Karate); Head Butt; Jam; Kicking; Knee Strike; Stamp Kick;
  Sweep.
  Cinematic Skills: Breaking Blow; Mental Strength; Power
  Blow; Pressure Points; Pressure Secrets; Sensitivity.
  Cinematic Techniques: Lethal Kick; Lethal Strike; Pressure-
  Point Strike; Springing Attack; Whirlwind Attack.
  Perks: Improvised Weapons (Karate); Rapid Retraction
  (Punches or Kicks).
  Optional Traits
  Secondary Characteristics: Improved Per and FP.
  Advantages: Combat Reflexes; Fearlessness; Fit.
  Disadvantages: Bloodlust; Delusions (“A male conspiracy
  seeks to oppress women”); Duty (Bodyguarding client); Intol-
  erance (Male chauvinism or Lack of physical fitness – either
  are usually just quirks); Obsession (Sporting success or Fight-
  ing “the patriarchy”).
  Skills: Brawling; Judo Sport; Karate Sport; Liquid Projector
  (Sprayer); Meditation; Savoir-Faire (Dojo).
  Perks: Style Familiarity (any other unarmed style).
  MARTIAN SWORDPLAY
  3 points
  Quite a few of the Chinese war veterans and other wild-eyed
  romantics who’ve adopted the name of the xieh (xia) on Mars
  (see In the Well, p. 84) have taken to wearing swords – just
  because. The widely preferred sword type is the Chinese jian
  (Martial Arts, pp. 217, 227, and 229), although some carry
  blades of all shapes and sizes. Most of them use these swords,
  if at all, with Broadsword skill at default, but a small number
  have gone to the trouble of developing and learning an actual
  martial art. Fewer than 10 serious stylists reside on the entire
  planet. However, they are proud of themselves, and the fame of
  the style is spreading; those who can teach it with any convic-
  tion are acquiring followers.
  The style borrows from traditional Chinese sword forms,
  directly and by way of old movies and modern InVids. It also
  includes quite a lot from Japanese Kenjutsu and Western fenc-
  ing schools (again partly via the mass media). Its developers
  are tacitly honest enough to use whatever works best, and
  Western rapier styles offer a set of techniques that adapt well
  to the jian. All of the current serious stylists have backgrounds
  in other martial arts, especially Zhua (see p. 31). They could
  reliably be expected to employ that style’s characteristic nimble
  approach, should they ever actually be drawn into a real fight
  with blade in hand. The style’s own growing mythology is
  inevitably that of the super-agile swordsman.
  It’s entirely possible that this style will be absorbed and sub-
  sumed into Zhua as time goes on – or it may evolve into an ele-
  gant pure art style, given that the opportunities for serious
  sword-fighting remain fairly limited on Mars.
  Skills: Rapier; Savoir-Faire (Dojo).
  Techniques: Back Strike; Bind Weapon; Counterattack;
  Feint; Targeted Attack (Rapier Thrust/Neck or Vitals).
  Cinematic Skills: Blind Fighting; Flying Leap.
  Cinematic Techniques: Flying Lunge; Grand Disarm; Timed
  Defense (Rapier Parry); Whirlwind Attack.
  Perks: Drunken Fighting; Sure-Footed (Uneven).
  Optional Traits
  Secondary Characteristics: Improved Basic Speed.
  Advantages: Andraste and combat biomods; Combat
  Reflexes; DNA Repair and Nerve Booster nanosymbionts.
  Disadvantages: Addiction (Alcohol) (see Changing Times,
  p. 41); Bloodlust; Code of Honor (Xia); Odious Personal Habit
  (Poor Manners); Overconfidence.
  Skills: Broadsword; Fast-Draw (Sword); Meditation; Rapier
  Art; anything (required or optional) included in Zhua (p. 31).
  Perks: Quick-Sheathe; Style Familiarity (Zhua).
  MILITARY ZERO-G
  7 points
  Military Zero-G developed through the middle of the century
  out of standard military hand-to-hand training as a pragmatic
  style featuring quick-and-dirty elimination techniques for use in
  low- or no-gravity situations. Practitioners are expected to close
  with and attack opponents with great aggression. The style
  assumes the fighter will be attacked while closing the gap – kick-
  jamming techniques, arm locks, and leg grappling are taught to
  counter such moves. The style also includes knife, stick, and
  boomstick (see pp. 32-33) techniques and counters.
  The style given here is the form used in the U.S. Special
  Operations community – many other military and security
  forces rely on variations or similar styles. Those units and
  forces without the time (and/or VR resources) to dedicate to
  this level of training often use Freefighting (p. 26) instead. In
  practice, the opportunities to employ this training have proved
  rare enough that many senior officers question the need to
  retain it. Even so, some elite units still insist that, when this
  sort of thing is needed, nothing else will do.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  28
  
  Some combat courses still teach limited sentry removal
  techniques, but these are largely legacy maneuvers in an age of
  high-tech surveillance. Only a few forces employ troops with
  extra arms instead of legs, so the Lower Arm Blindside perk is
  extremely rare – but it fits well with the style.
  No body of cinematic techniques is associated with
  Military Zero-G. The entire style is centered on getting in
  tight with your opponent and hammering or choking him
  into submission – or death. Fancy
  moves are actively discouraged.
  Skills: Free Fall; Karate; Knife;
  Judo; Shortsword; Vacc Suit.
  Techniques: Aggressive Parry; Arm
  Lock; Attack from Above (Karate or
  Knife); Choke Hold; Disarming; Head
  Butt; Head Lock; Jam; Knee Strike;
  Leg Grapple; Leg Lock; Neck Snap;
  Retain
  Weapon;
  Targeted
  Attack
  (Knife or Shortsword Thrust/Neck);
  Uppercut.
  Perks: Lower Arm Blindside (p. 13);
  Suit Familiarity (Vacc Suit).
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: Combat and “spacer”
  biomods and nanosymbionts; Combat
  Reflexes; Fit; G-Experience.
  Disadvantages:
  Bloodlust;
  Duty;
  Fanaticism (To a service or nation);
  Sense of Duty (To a service or nation).
  Skills:
  Beam
  Weapons
  (Pistol);
  Climbing;
  Garrote;
  Guns
  (Pistol);
  Jumping; Smallsword; Stealth.
  Techniques: Close-Quarters Battle
  (any); Retain Weapon (any).
  REMOTE SNIPING
  8 points
  Snipers continue to be a potentially useful type of soldier
  for armies to deploy in 2100, able to inflict damage and confu-
  sion out of all proportion to their numbers and cost. However,
  they suffer huge problems on the Fifth Wave battlefield,
  because their targets are all too likely to be equipped with
  countermeasures – primarily sensors that can trace a shot back
  to its point of origin, often linked directly to automated “coun-
  terbattery” systems. More than one traditional sniper has died
  within three seconds of squeezing off his first shot at a high-
  tech force, slain by precise return fire. All troops in 2100 suffer
  from this problem to some extent, but ordinary infantry can
  hope to survive by exploiting numbers, mobility, and the con-
  fusion of the battlefield; lone snipers don’t have those benefits.
  Modern snipers get around this problem by deploying tech-
  nology of their own, including semi-disposable teleoperated
  drones and pre-emplaced one-shot ordinance launchers. This
  style represents the body of methods taught by Fifth Wave
  sniper schools to make this effective. Note that the school’s
  doctrine and traditions – not personal taste! – determine which
  of the weapon skills are required.
  Stylists like to prepare positions carefully in advance, set-
  ting up intricate kill zones and making sure that no shot can
  be traced back to them personally, although the most skilled
  of them can improvise and deploy fast when they have to.
  Such snipers are notoriously hard to recall once they’re on a
  mission; they tend to avoid communications, to minimize
  their electronic visibility and avoid attempts to smoke them
  out, and their weapons arrays are often set for autonomous
  fire. Similar methods are taught by the armies of several
  antagonistic power blocs and by one or two smart insurgent
  forces with the ability to
  learn and to scavenge or
  acquire appropriate gear.
  Because snipers need to
  know how to operate a
  wide range of weapon sys-
  tems, this is nominally an
  expensive style in point-
  cost terms – especially as a
  sniper
  is
  usually
  still
  expected to have excep-
  tional skill with his per-
  sonal
  weapon.
  However,
  students for these courses
  are
  usually
  chosen
  for
  proven aptitude in prior
  training with several of the
  style’s skills, so teachers can
  concentrate on filling out
  their skill sets and teaching
  them to integrate all that
  they know. Still, several
  armies are increasingly opt-
  ing to issue less broadly
  trained snipers with per-
  sonal AIs that can handle
  the
  additional
  weapon
  types they may need.
  Cinematic remote snipers
  are depicted as shadowy ghosts, vanishing from the scene and
  leaving carnage behind them; even if they are the heroes of the
  story, they often appear sinister or uncanny.
  Skills: Camouflage; Electronics Operation (Communica-
  tions); Stealth; any four of Artillery (Guided Missile), Gunner
  (Machine Gun or Rockets), or Guns (Grenade Launcher,
  Gyroc, or Rifle).
  Techniques: Targeted Attack (any/Face or Vitals).
  Cinematic Skills: Zen Marksmanship.
  Perks: Akimbo; Armorer’s Gift (any); Cool Under Fire
  (p. 13); Cross-Trained (any).
  Optional Traits
  Secondary Characteristics: Improved Per.
  Advantages and Perks: Acute Vision; Allies (Supporting com-
  bat infomorphs); Deep Sleeper; Outdoorsman; Single-Minded.
  Disadvantages: Callous; Duty.
  Skills: Armoury (any); Battlesuit; Electronics Operation
  (EW or Surveillance); Electronics Repair (Surveillance);
  Explosives (Demolition); Forward Observer; Guns (LAW);
  Navigation (Land); Observation; Soldier; Survival (any);
  Tactics; Traps; Urban Survival; any weapon skill not taken
  from the required options list.
  Techniques: Precision Aiming; Set Trap (p. B233).
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  29
  
  SACT
  6 points
  For as long as there have been serious combat divers, the
  forces that employed them have been training them in as
  much underwater combat skill as they seemed to need.
  Mostly, however, this has meant a fairly basic, ad hoc collec-
  tion of moves – handling methods for appropriate weapons,
  maybe some knife strikes to vulnerable points such as air
  hoses – never collected into a large or formal enough body of
  lore to rate as a serious style.
  The evolution of TL9-10 subaqua technology, let alone the
  creation of parahuman and bioroid types who can operate
  underwater without technological aids, has changed that. Now,
  countless underwater installations need protection (or rate as
  valuable military or economic targets). Even more opportunities
  exist for divers to attack surface targets from beneath the water;
  warriors have to learn to fight there – and hopefully to fight well.
  Even with TL10 technology, spotting a well-equipped opponent
  at range can be tricky underwater, and hand weapon ranges are
  often seriously reduced. Thus, this sort of training still includes
  a large element of hand-to-hand combat.
  “SACT” was originally short for “Sub-Aqua Combat
  Training”; the acronym has been around and widespread for
  long enough to become a word in its own right, pronounced to
  rhyme with “act.” Although SACT was a specific U.S. Navy
  training regime, the word has become a nickname in military
  circles for a range of similar training courses from all over the
  world, also sometimes referred to as “Sub-Fu” or “Aqua-Fu.”
  Although many local variations exist, teachers learn from each
  other, through friendly meetings or espionage, and the differ-
  ent schools are converging on a more or less standard form. Its
  defining features include the study of various hand weapons
  that are useful underwater, both archaic (knives, spears) and
  high-tech (boomsticks, limpet mine dispensers – see pp. 32-
  33); a strong emphasis on thrusts (preferably with weapons)
  over swings (which tend to be baffled by water); a related focus
  on grappling techniques; and a recognition that underwater
  combat is inherently three-dimensional.
  Another notable feature is the elimination of the targeted
  strikes that were once considered so useful underwater. High-
  tech military diving gear may well lack vulnerable airlines or
  detachable tanks, while opponents may actually be subaquatic
  bioroids or cybershells that don’t need diving equipment at all,
  and may not have entirely human vulnerabilities. Still, some
  fighters still learn some old-school killing knife thrusts.
  Sact is an aggressive style, emphasizing the effectiveness of a
  quick first strike, especially when the fighter has a powerful
  weapon. It also recognizes the possibility of facing well-armored
  foes and of being caught without a weapon. In those cases, a
  fighter is advised to maneuver and possibly grapple while look-
  ing for help or a balancing advantage. Military divers have to be
  quite courageous to volunteer for the duty, but often also display
  a streak of caution, preparing carefully for their missions and
  monitoring their situation carefully along the way.
  No cinematic form exists of this style; it’s insufficiently well
  known as yet, and too bluntly practical. InVids with subaquatic
  specialists as heroes mostly just emphasize their agility, cun-
  ning, and high-tech gadgetry.
  Skills:
  Aquabatics;
  Knife;
  Shortsword;
  Swimming*;
  Wrestling.
  Techniques: Choke Hold; Limpet Mine Attachment (DX)
  (p. 15); Retain Weapon; Scissors Hold; Targeted Attack (Knife
  Thrust/Neck
  or
  Vitals);
  Targeted
  Attack
  (Shortsword
  Thrust/Vitals); Wrench Arm; Wrench Leg.
  Perks: Naval Training; Power Grappling; Suit Familiarity
  (Diving Suit).
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: Fearlessness; Natural Diver (Changing Times,
  p. 40); Subaqua biomods and nanosymbionts.
  Disadvantages and Quirks: Bloodlust; Careful; Duty; Sense
  of Duty (To nation or service).
  Skills: Brawling; Breath Control; Diving Suit; Guns (Gyroc,
  Pistol, or SMG); Scuba; Soldier; Spear.
  Techniques:
  Knee
  Strike;
  Limpet
  Mine
  Attachment
  (Brawling).
  * Swimming skill is optional for those with the Amphibious
  advantage or the Aquatic disadvantage. Reduce the style cost
  by 1 point for them.
  SHAN CHUAN
  (KILLER FIST KUNG FU)
  3 points
  It is hard to find the true roots of this style, which includes
  dozens of schools in 2100. It probably developed out of Muay
  Thai, Bando, and some “external” kung fu forms, as well as
  some modernized Pankration schools and simple streetfight-
  ing techniques. Dr. John Yueh, an American-Chinese physi-
  cian, founded the first school during the 2040s and 2050s.
  Shan Chuan – sometimes called “Kill Fu” by both fans and
  detractors alike – concentrates solely on the quick and dirty
  infliction of a maximum amount of damage to the opponent.
  Students even study anatomy to learn about the best ways to
  cripple and kill their foes. Some schools concentrate on the use
  of body-mass and wrestling techniques (Wrestling becomes a
  mandatory skill, Sumo Wrestling becomes an option; add Choke
  Hold, Head Lock and Neck Snap to the techniques, Immovable
  Stance and Backbreaker and Piledriver to cinematic skills and
  techniques respectively, and Cotton Stomach, Iron Neck, and
  Power Grappling to perks; de-emphasize striking-related tech-
  niques and perks). Other schools focus on devastating kicks
  (drop Counterattack and Two-Handed Punch from techniques;
  add Jump Kick, Kicking, and Spinning Kick, plus Lethal Kick to
  cinematic techniques). The style has been around long enough
  to accumulate its own body of legends, which naturally are all
  based on exaggerations of its fighters’ lethality and power.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  30
  The U.S. Navy is a leader in
  the development of modern diving
  and underwater operations.
  – U.S. Navy
  Diving Manual, 1999
  
  While most “legit” practitioners of Kill Fu use their
  skills only in meatfighting contests, some people have
  certain real-life applications for this style. Rumor has it
  that some Maple Syndicate families keep teams of Shan
  Chuan-trained Spartan bioroids as enforcers and per-
  sonal bodyguards . . .
  Skills: Brawling; Karate.
  Techniques: Aggressive Parry; Axe Kick; Counterat-
  tack (Karate); Ear Clap; Eye-Gouging; Ground Fighting;
  Head Butt; Jam; Knee Strike; Targeted Attack (Brawling
  or Karate Punch/Face); Targeted Attack (Karate Knee
  Strike/Groin); Spinning Punch; Stamp Kick; Two-
  Handed Punch.
  Cinematic Skills: Breaking Blow; Power Blow; Pres-
  sure Points; Pressure Secrets.
  Cinematic Techniques: Lethal Strike; Pressure-Point
  Strike.
  Perks: Biting Mastery; Iron Arms; Iron Legs; Neck
  Control (Brawling); Rapid Retraction.
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: Combat biomods; Combat Reflexes; High
  Pain Threshold.
  Disadvantages: Bloodlust; Bully; Reputation.
  Skills: Lifting; Physiology; Running; Stealth; Wrestling.
  ZHUA
  4 points
  This style was originally described in In the Well (pp. 92-93).
  It is a martial art that has evolved in the Chinese community on
  Mars, with features that enable stylists to exploit the planet’s low
  gravity – primarily the use of spectacular leaping acrobatic
  moves that would be considered hopelessly cinematic back on
  Earth. Zhua is an unarmed style, partly as a point of tradition but
  also because it developed in the Chinese-governed domes where
  weapons were severely restricted for multiple reasons. However,
  Zhua training does allow for the range of “street” combat bio-
  mods that are available in the Martian martial-arts underworld,
  with hand strikes that are highly effective when used with claws
  (see p. 10). Throws, on the other hand, are not emphasized, as
  falls are much less likely to hurt an opponent in Martian gravity
  – but some schools do cover that topic and a bit of grappling, or
  at least teach basic counters for use when grappled.
  In combat, Zhua stylists balance on their toes, with one foot
  far in front of the other; the feet are mostly used for mobility,
  the hands for attack and defense. Kicks are limited to flashy
  opening and finishing moves, and the occasional passing strike
  when jumping clean over opponents. While Zhua fighters can
  be aggressive when they have the advantage, they begin most
  fights with several Defensive Attacks, until they have the meas-
  ure of their foe. Because transhuman opponents can have such
  a range of body types, Zhua instructors pay little attention to
  attempts to read a foe or strike at vulnerable points; they pre-
  fer direct blows to obvious targets. Wiser instructors also teach
  that, if the opponent proves too tough for that to work, a Zhua
  fighter should use agility and speed to get away.
  Different Zhua courses teach striking methods that are closer
  to Boxing or Karate, for slightly different purposes. Karate is cer-
  tainly better for most purposes, and includes kicking, which styl-
  ists do use occasionally. Boxing is easier to learn (making it good
  for basic self-defense students) and doesn’t take encumbrance
  penalties (making it useful for fighters in heavy vacc suits or out-
  door gear – although encumbrance is rarely a major problem in
  Martian gravity). With cumbersome outdoor gear less required
  as Martian terraforming progresses, Boxing moves are falling
  out of fashion in Zhua schools, although they’re likely to survive
  as options for teaching to casual students.
  Skills: Acrobatics; Boxing or Karate; Jumping.
  Techniques: Breakfall; Elbow Strike (Karate); Evade;
  Feint; Head Butt (Karate); Jump Kick (Karate); Spinning
  Punch (Karate).
  Cinematic Skills: Breaking Blow; Flying Leap; Power Blow.
  Cinematic Techniques: Flying Jump Kick (Karate); Spring-
  ing Attack.
  Perks: Acrobatic Feints; Acrobatic Kicks; Armor Familiarity
  (Karate); Combat Jumping* (p. 12); Iron Hands; Rapid Retrac-
  tion (Punches); Suit Familiarity (NBC Suit or Vacc Suit); Tech-
  nique Mastery (Evade); Unusual Training (Breaking Blow,
  Only vs. well-braced objects out of combat).
  Optional Traits
  Advantages: Andraste and combat biomods; Combat
  Reflexes; Cultural Familiarity (Asian/Chinese); Extra Attack
  (Single Skill, Boxing or Karate); Language (Cantonese or Man-
  darin); Resistant to Chi Abilities (in very cinematic campaigns).
  Disadvantages: Code of Honor (Xia); Enemies (Rust China
  cops, Rival schools, Racketeers, Rival Triads, etc.); Intolerance
  (Earth “authorities” of any sort); Overconfidence.
  Skills: Whichever of Boxing or Karate wasn’t taken as
  required; Breath Control; Judo; Karate Sport; Savoir-Faire
  (Dojo).
  * This is the signature move of Zhua, so it can be purchased
  as soon as the student has Style Familiarity – 10 points in the
  style’s skills are not necessary. The requirement for both
  Acrobatics and Jumping at DX or better still applies, however.
  NEW AND CHANGED STYLES
  31
  Rival “Martian” Styles
  Uninformed observers occasionally confuse Hishôjutsu
  (p. 26) with Zhua (below). However, they are very different, and
  some rivalry exists between the two.
  Zhua is very much “Rust China Kung Fu”; it has evolved in
  the specific Martian environment. While it has a fair number of
  non-ethnic-Chinese practitioners, it is still linked to Chinese cul-
  ture. It also focuses on barehanded combat, making it useful in
  strictly controlled Chinese domes where any weapon may be
  spotted and confiscated.
  Hishôjutsu, by contrast, is adapted for a wide range of grav-
  itational conditions, from Martian 0.38 G to free fall (which is
  the usual excuse given for all its flashy, flamboyant kicks), and
  incorporates plenty of weapon use. When confrontations occur
  between practitioners of the two styles, which one wins often
  depends heavily on the specific circumstances.
  In addition, Zhua has some associations with the Martian
  underworld and the Triads – although it also has plenty of per-
  fectly respectable students. Meanwhile, Hishôjutsu has some
  long-standing if vague associations with more politically ideal-
  istic radical movements on Mars and in the outer system. These
  two stereotypes create a degree of friction, while making some
  of the ruling power structures suspicious of both.
  
  It was an astonishingly secure golf course, as golf courses
  go, but the security had two flaws. First, it assumed that any
  intruders would themselves be relying on technology – so a spy
  with very little metal on his actual person, giving off no radio
  emissions, could move through most of the place like a ghost,
  once he was past the perimeter. Second, the water feature on the
  seventh had to get its water from somewhere, and that some-
  where proved to be linked by a broad pipe with only the most
  pathetic of mesh protections.
  So the spy got onto the course with his golf bag, leaving his
  air mask at the outlet of the pipe. Once his golf clothes had
  buzzed themselves clean and dry, he slipped into the clubhouse
  and planted his little nanovirus payloads in the kitchens just
  before lunch was served. Then he made his way back toward the
  water feature.
  The meeting with the guard was sheer bad luck, of course, but
  the fellow was a bungler. When the spy’s first attack – a solid kick
  to the body – bounced off his nanoweave suit, the fool actually
  smiled and cracked his knuckles! That gave the spy plenty of
  time to draw what he needed from the golf bag – and the guard
  just looked puzzled at that!
  The rather elegant fencing thrust felt like a terrible waste, under
  the circumstances, but it did the job. The boomstick payload deto-
  nated with a soft report, and the guard dropped on the spot.
  His personal systems would have alerted the control center, of
  course, but that still gave the spy time to reach the water and dive
  in. If the guard was lucky, his bosses might even be able and will-
  ing to salvage whatever it was he used for a brain. The spy
  doubted that he’d learn anything from the experience, though.
  Much of the equipment of the more traditional martial arts
  remains the same in 2100 as for centuries before, although
  materials and standards of manufacture of budget items may
  be markedly improved. Even so, technology allows some
  refinements and new ideas. Some of the following items are
  drawn from the Fourth Edition version of GURPS Ultra-Tech,
  while others are new.
  NEW WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT
  32
  The following are a few high-tech melee weapons that can
  be used in conjunction with more or less traditional martial-
  arts methods to useful effect. While TL9-10 offensive technol-
  ogy primarily involves a considerable increase in the accuracy
  and effectiveness of ranged weapons, some of the technology
  can be applied to melee fighting.
  No guns are presented here. The styles in this book that are
  designed for use with ranged weapons can be applied perfectly
  well to those listed in the main Transhuman Space book and
  in Changing Times – or use Ultra-Tech, for a slightly different
  treatment of TL9-10 weaponry.
  Boomsticks
  The basic concept of the boomstick goes back to the 20th
  century, when similar weapons were used by divers, mostly
  to drive off sharks and other large predators. With not only
  increased subaquatic operations but also the possibility of
  serious military combat operations aboard spacecraft
  and stations, weapons designers dusted off and embellished
  the idea.
  A boomstick consists of a short rod or baton with a small
  impact-detonated explosive charge at the tip. In its simplest
  form, it is quite easy to make, given a skilled armorer, an ade-
  quate workshop, a supply of small arms ammunition, and
  some basic materials. The spacer boomstick represents such a
  version, often carried by civilian spacers in the Belt who expect
  trouble, citizens of some larger underwater communities, and
  some terrorists. The “warhead” on this is actually an adapted
  shotgun cartridge; if the user somehow triggers it without
  touching a target, the buckshot spreads normally. Other types
  of shotgun shell might also be used to create variant damage
  effects. Spacer boomsticks are purely one-use weapons; the
  detonation trashes much of the structure of the stick. LC3.
  More advanced designs are also available. The panzerstick is
  a professionally made boomstick, which not only has a better
  designed and fabricated warhead, but is better balanced
  (allowing slightly fancier combat use). It may be a bit more
  reliable and certainly has proper safety features. However, the
  shaped-charge warhead (basically a repurposed 15mm HEMP
  round) also produces a 1d crushing explosion that can effect
  the wielder as well as the target (and anyone else nearby).
  WEAPONS
  CHAPTER FOUR
  NEW WEAPONS
  AND EQUIPMENT
  
  Thus, the panzerstick usually is limited to troops in fully
  enclosed armor (typically battlesuits, or at least armored
  space or diving suits). It can be reused by fitting a new war-
  head (cost $3), which takes about a minute. Some panzer-
  sticks actually have a limpet mine-like attachment capability
  (see Limpet Mines, below); the warhead sticks to the target
  and detaches from the stick, detonating a fixed time later. The
  time is set by a dial in the base of the stick (allowing any time
  delay from 0 to 11 seconds). This raises the cost of the
  weapon to $100, and the cost of a new warhead to $5.
  Panzersticks are popular with spaceborne troops of the
  French Foreign Legion, among others. LC1.
  Lastly, the burnstick is a variant boomstick whose head,
  rather than carrying an explosive charge, is loaded with a
  dose of nanoburn (see Transhuman Space, p. 158, or Ultra-
  Tech, p. 161) in a sticky gel suspension so that it only effects
  the single target. Other nanoweapons might replace the
  nanoburn for specialized purposes. The cost of a reload is
  $10. LC1.
  In action, the user arms the boomstick (a Ready
  action), then stabs with the tip; the warhead is triggered
  on a successful hit. Because the effect has to be some-
  what directional, a spacer boomstick or standard panz-
  erstick won’t work properly if swung; treat it as an
  ordinary baton in that case, with a chance for the war-
  head to be damaged at the GM’s whim. However, a
  “limpet panzerstick” or burnstick can be designed for
  effective swinging use, and some are (doing swing crush-
  ing damage followed by the warhead effect). If a success-
  ful attack is blocked, or if a missed or dodged attack was
  aimed at someone immediately in front of a solid sur-
  face, the boomstick may trigger and affect whatever got
  in its way – GM’s option.
  Limpet Mines
  In general, the best way to attack a heavily armored
  high-tech opponent is to shoot him with a big gun.
  Nonetheless, actually placing a “warhead” by hand occa-
  sionally makes sense, perhaps because close combat is
  somehow unavoidable, or because the attacker doesn’t
  want to fire projectile weapons in a cluttered or confused
  environment. Action InVid directors love this idea.
  Limpet mines are hand-held “warheads” that suit this
  purpose; they can also serve as handy instant booby-traps
  or small demolition charges. They can be activated (or
  deactivated) by a coded communicator pulse (usually sent
  from the user’s wearable or implant computer). After activa-
  tion, they will stick to any surface onto which they are slapped,
  using a molecular adhesive pad. They then detonate after a
  preset interval (up to two weeks in theory, but usually set to a
  few seconds when the activation pulse is sent, and very rarely
  more than 100 seconds) or immediately on another signal from
  the user. Roll vs. DX, Brawling, or the Limpet Mine Attach-
  ment technique (p. 15) to secure one in combat.
  To remove a limpet mine on which you can get a grip but
  without the proper code, roll vs. ST-5, one try per second;
  pulling one off flesh or other soft materials does 1 point of
  damage. On detonation, a limpet mine does 5d¥4(10) crushing
  incendiary damage to the target, and a linked 2d crushing
  explosive damage with 1d+1 cutting fragmentation damage to
  anyone nearby. Hence, realistically, this weapon works best for
  fully armored users; anyone except battlesuit or cybershell
  troops probably needs to set a significant delay and put some
  distance or cover between himself and the mine before it goes
  off. Each weighs 0.06 lbs. and costs $5. LC1.
  In terms of Ultra-Tech (p. 147), this is a limpet mine version
  of a 25mm thimble grenade with a TL10 shaped charge war-
  head. That supplement also includes a wide range of other
  warhead sizes and options.
  Limpet Mine Dispenser
  This tube-like device, usually worn on an arm, incorpo-
  rates a magazine holding 10 limpet mines (above). As with
  single hand-held limpet mines, roll vs. Brawling, DX, or the
  Limpet Mine Attachment technique (p. 15) to attach one cor-
  rectly. These devices are usually mounted as external acces-
  sories on battlesuits or cybershells, but can be fitted to a
  nonpowered rigid sleeve; the wearer does need a minimum
  amount of bracing.
  Stun Wands
  A stun wand is, very simply, the technology of the shock
  glove (see Changing Times, p. 63) fitted to a stick comparable
  to a baton or short staff, giving it a bit more reach and the
  option to parry opponents with something less vulnerable than
  an open hand. Weapons of this type are often carried by police
  officers, especially on riot control duty. Some wands are
  jointed or padded, to reduce the risk of physical injury even by
  a blow from an adrenaline-charged riot policeman; -2 to crush-
  ing damage in this case. All are LC4.
  As with the shock glove, the victim must resist stun afflic-
  tion damage when struck by a stun wand, and the base roll to
  resist is HT-2.
  NEW WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT
  33
  Martial Arts and
  GURPS Ultra-Tech
  As noted elsewhere, some Transhuman Space campaigns
  may use the current edition of GURPS Ultra-Tech as a fur-
  ther or alternative source of equipment options. In addition
  to a wide range of guns, this offers possibilities for alternative
  types of limpet mines, grenades, or boomstick warheads, as
  well as several melee weapons (on pp. 162-166 of Ultra-Tech)
  that could fit well in this setting. Some are repeated in the
  main text here. Other items of note include karatands (very
  appropriate),
  vibroblades
  (not
  inconceivable,
  though
  arguably verging on superscience), and rocket strikers (prob-
  ably possible with Transhuman Space technology, but a lit-
  tle bit silly).
  Chapter 7 of that supplement features a system for cus-
  tomizing armor for varying levels of bulk and stylishness and
  to cover specific areas of the body. This can be used to define
  various types of martial-arts sports/training gear, and to spec-
  ify custom-designed protection for the sort of combat special-
  ists who like to be able to operate in civilian environments
  without attracting too much attention.
  
  Any of the training gear or training/sports armor detailed in
  Martial Arts (pp. 232-234) can still be acquired in the
  Transhuman Space setting. However, general-purpose TL10
  armor may actually be cheaper, lighter, and usually superior for
  many purposes – especially where safeguarding opponents’
  hands or feet against injury isn’t a major concern. Any special
  training armor that is available is often lighter and more flexible
  than lower-tech versions, thanks to advanced materials; halve
  any penalties to DX or Move from such gear, rounding down.
  In addition, TL10 training/sports gear is often studded with
  micro-sensors that detect and measure all impacts on the sur-
  face and can send the information via microcommunicator to a
  nearby computer system. (This adds 10% to prices at this TL.)
  This is used both in sports contests, to provide a reliable scoring
  system, and in serious combat training, to assess how well stu-
  dents are learning to deliver their attacks. Some designs have
  simple “chameleon” surfaces (adding 20% to prices), and auto-
  matically change color or appearance near an impact point, dis-
  playing “rips,” “bruises,” or “blood spatters.” This is mostly for
  show, especially in public contests, but some teachers also feel
  that it adds a useful touch of verisimilitude in training.
  When choosing gear for actual combat, like anyone else, a
  martial artist might employ any of the body armor options
  defined in the Transhuman Space main book, or those in
  Ultra-Tech if the GM prefers to use that. Note that the very
  light weight of effective TL10 personal armor means that quite
  good protection can be fully compatible with the most mobil-
  ity-oriented fighting styles, even without special training.
  Riot Shields
  During the 20th century, police, especially those on riot duty,
  rediscovered the classic shield – albeit using new, high-tech
  materials. The idea still works in the face of riots at the end of
  the 21st, and the materials have got even better; TL10 shields are
  made of advanced polymers, sometimes reinforced with
  nanofibers. In addition, standard police shields have “semi-
  smart” surfaces (which detect impacts) and incorporate one or
  more miniaturized cameras and short-range radio transmitters.
  NEW WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT
  34
  Melee Weapons Table
  TL
  Weapon
  Damage
  Reach
  Parry
  Cost
  Weight
  ST
  Notes
  BRAWLING or DX
  9
  Limpet Mine Dispenser
  See text
  C, 1
  No
  $200
  2/0.6
  –
  See text
  SHORTSWORD (DX-5, Broadsword-2, Force Sword-4, Jitte/Sai-3, Knife-4, Saber-4, Smallsword-4, or
  Tonfa-3)
  9
  Electric Stun Wand
  sw cr
  1
  0
  $100
  1
  5
  See text
  linked
  HT-2 aff
  or
  thr cr
  1
  0
  –
  –
  5
  linked
  HT-2 aff
  9
  Panzerstick
  5d¥2(5) imp inc
  1
  0
  $60
  1.2
  6
  See text
  9
  Spacer Boomstick
  4d+4(0.25) pi++
  1
  0
  $35
  1.2
  7
  See text
  10
  Burnstick
  See text
  1
  0
  $50
  1
  6
  See text
  SMALLSWORD (DX-5, Main-Gauche-3, Rapier-3, Saber-3, or Shortsword-4)
  9
  Electric Stun Wand
  sw cr
  1
  0F
  $100
  1
  5
  See text
  linked
  HT-2 aff
  or
  thr cr
  1
  0F
  –
  –
  5
  linked
  HT-2 aff
  9
  Panzerstick
  5d¥2(5) imp inc
  1
  0F
  $60
  1.2
  6
  See text
  10
  Burnstick
  See text
  1
  0F
  $50
  1
  6
  See text
  These values are consistent with the treatment of electrical
  stun weapons in Changing Times and earlier Transhuman
  Space books. If you are using Ultra-Tech for all purposes,
  use the damage effects listed there (p. 165). Note also that
  the version of this weapon described in Ultra-Tech can’t be
  used effectively with Smallsword skill. However, combat
  experts in the Transhuman Space world have recognized
  the possibility of using this weapon with refined styles, and
  ensured that standard models are correctly balanced for
  the purpose.
  Superfine Blades
  The best available TL9-10 materials are superior to steel for
  melee weapons. Superfine blades, made of advanced alloys or
  ceramics, can be used for any weapon that does cutting or
  impaling damage. They add +2 to cutting and impaling dam-
  age, give a (2) armor divisor, and are six times normal cost.
  Many human special ops troops carry such blades, usually
  large knives, as a last-ditch option or as a point of style. The right
  choice of materials and coating also ensures that their blades are
  nonmagnetic, corrosion-resistant, and nonreflective.
  ARMOR AND TRAINING GEAR
  
  These allow nearby police systems to detect and log incidents,
  including missiles hitting the shield and occasions when the
  wielder uses it as an offensive weapon. This helps senior offi-
  cers track the progress of incidents and provides reliable evi-
  dence for any ensuing court cases.
  Medium Police Shield: This is a simple medium-size shield,
  usually with “Police” or an organization logo on the face. This
  type is occasionally made with a single central hand-grip
  instead of the usual arm strap, in accordance with more
  aggressive and flexible training doctrines; in that case, use
  Shield (Buckler) skill instead of Shield.
  Large Riot Shield: This is a large-size shield, usually issued
  either to less well-trained officers (who use it simply for the
  Defense Bonus) or to specialist squads (whose members have
  the Shield-Wall Training perk, and who can therefore use it
  actively and very effectively in group actions). It has large
  transparent sections, which don’t weaken it – materials are
  available that were originally developed for armored visors or
  aerospace windshields – and a panel with a controllable liquid
  crystal surface that can display organization symbols or simple
  messages such as “Return to Your Homes” or “Protest Declared
  Unlawful.” Similar designs are occasionally used by SWAT
  teams who can’t afford armored cybershells to take point dur-
  ing assaults, or who need to have human members deployed in
  forward positions for political or ethical reasons.
  Shield Table
  TL
  Shield
  DB
  Cost
  Weight
  DR/HP
  LC
  SHIELD (DX-4, or other Shield at -2)
  10
  Medium Police
  2
  $70
  7
  28/40
  4
  Shield
  10
  Large Riot Shield
  3
  $300
  12
  35/60
  4
  NEW WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT
  35
  The following programs are widely used by martial artists
  and other combat specialists.
  Brawl-Aide
  Technically a type of skill set software, defined and priced
  accordingly, Brawl-Aide requires skill set slots to use. The
  software provides Tactics with an optional specialty in defen-
  sive hand-to-hand fighting, and thus is IQ/Average. As combat
  is inherently a high-stress situation, Tactics will usually be at
  -3 due to Limited Integration – but most of this software’s
  practical applications are simple enough that the task diffi-
  culty bonuses (p. B345) will more than compensate. It’s also
  possible, though rare, for AIs to learn the skill for themselves,
  thus avoiding the penalty.
  The software is largely useless for experienced combatants,
  as the advice it can usefully provide is exactly the sort of thing
  they already know, but for an amateur with just a little self-
  defense training, it can be literally a life-saver. The user should
  train with it for at least 15-25 hours, ideally while learning
  self-defense skills, otherwise while sparring in the gym or in a
  good VR simulation. The software and its associated AI learn
  what the user is capable of, and can suggest how to handle
  dangers. Rather than saying too much beyond simple drills
  (“Punch-Turn-Stamp!”), it often overlays brightly colored
  “target markers” wherever it judges the user should strike, or
  deploys them to indicate high-priority threats; students learn
  to aim at these during the familiarization process. The AI can
  make Per-based skill rolls to spot weapons or body armor,
  even if they are somewhat concealed, and will factor this
  information into its advice.
  For a few users, this sort of software, or just an AI trained
  to provide well-judged advice in combat, can act as a Mitigator
  limitation on the Combat Paralysis disadvantage; the value is
  -60% if it runs on a wearable system, -80% if the user employs
  an implant computer. Note that the AI must spend most of its
  time talking to the user during fights for this to work. Cost and
  Complexity as for standard skill set. LC4.
  RefSoft
  This skill set software offers some specialty of Games
  relating to a combat sport (that is, an IQ/Easy skill). The main
  use is of course to enable an AI to act as a contest judge. All
  RefSoft programs include interfaces for any sensors normally
  used to aid judging in the sport in question, such as impact
  detectors fitted to body armor. Cost and Complexity as for
  standard skill set. LC4.
  SOFTWARE
  Victory in combat consists of defeating the enemy – no more, no less.
  Defensive actions simply ensure that one survives long enough to do so,
  while remaining capable of the requisite movements. When survival and
  capability can be ensured by other means, we can concentrate on what is
  actually important.
  – Dr. John Yueh, 2052
  
  Style Analysis
  This software can function as a Style Scanner program (see
  below) when presented with a known and established style;
  treat it as having built-in skill equal to twice its Complexity
  (that is, from 10 for Complexity 5 up to 16 for Complexity 8).
  However, it doesn’t operate as a skill set. It can also attempt to
  reconstruct and assess a style that isn’t already in its database
  by analyzing the performance of one or more fighters from
  first principles. The output from this process is a comprehen-
  sive “description” in digital form that can be added to the data-
  base used by another compatible Style Analysis or Style
  Scanner program, displayed in illustrated form in a VR envi-
  ronment for a human trainer to review further, or used as input
  for a Style Trainer program (p. 37).
  This class of software can range from Complexity 5 to 8;
  versions that are more complex are simply better at their job.
  The software’s basic roll to conduct this sort of analysis is equal
  to (Complexity ¥ 2) - 3; that is, from 7 for Complexity 5 up to
  13 for Complexity 8. Several important modifiers should be
  taken into account for this roll.
  Modifiers: Duration of the recording or combat directly
  observed: +0 for one full hour, -1 for every 10 minutes less than
  this down to -5 for 10 minutes (the functional minimum); +1
  for two hours, +2 for three hours, +3 for four hours or more.
  +3 to recognize and analyze a minor unknown variant of a
  known style from its database (e.g., to realize that the subject
  is using a version of Jujutsu that includes some weapons train-
  ing, or a common style with the Self-Defense lens applied). +1
  for recordings that include at least 25% but no more than 50%
  material taken from the viewpoint of a fighter or opponent (by
  wearable camera, etc.). -1 if the style (as seen) has five or more
  mandatory skills. +1 if the style (as seen) has no more than two
  mandatory skills. -1 to -5 or worse for poor-quality recordings
  (from a distance, ancient black-and-white film, images shot
  secretly by a concealed camera, etc.), depending on the GM’s
  assessment of quality.
  When running analysis on an unknown style, note the mar-
  gin of success and whether it was a critical success; this is
  important if the results are fed to a Style Trainer program. If
  the subject was actually using multiple styles, the software may
  come up with an “omnibus” style that includes features of
  both, or stop and display a warning message suggesting that
  the input data includes anomalies (GM’s option). The GM can
  also rule that some input data misses significant elements of
  the subject style – for example, recordings of sporting contests
  may lack examples of a style’s more dangerous, “serious com-
  bat” moves, or a particular fighter might have avoided using
  one or two techniques out of personal preference. Input
  recordings will often be missing the style’s non-DX-based skills
  and some or all of its optional skills. Where such gaps exist,
  those elements of the style will be missing from the output
  data. Conversely, if the input showed heavy use of the style’s
  optional skills, then the software may well treat those as if they
  were required.
  Normally, a failed roll means that the software can’t use this
  body of input data to produce useful outputs, although a criti-
  cal failure may generate bizarrely useless results. In games
  with cinematic martial arts, the software will likely have severe
  difficulties when presented with cinematic versions of styles
  (unless it’s a special, advanced – and itself cinematic – piece of
  programming), and will probably just throw up error messages
  if confronted with recordings of cinematic skills or techniques.
  $400 for Complexity 5, $900 for Complexity 6, $2,000 for
  Complexity 7, or $4,000 for Complexity 8. LC4.
  Style Scanner
  This is skill set software for Expert Skill (Style Identifica-
  tion), an IQ/Hard skill which can substitute for any combat
  skill, Teaching, Tactics, some Games specialties, etc., solely for
  the purpose of recognizing martial-arts styles in action. It is
  designed to scan visual records of combats (from cameras in
  real time or from video recordings), analyze the physical
  motions and body language of the combatants, and compare
  them with extensive databases of known martial-arts styles.
  With this information, it displays a style match for the user,
  along with an assessment of the certainty of the identification.
  If possible, it offers some standard advice on how to counter
  this particular style. These notes are rarely detailed or sophis-
  ticated enough to make a real difference in subsequent com-
  bats, but can help eliminate unfamiliarity penalties, at the
  GM’s option.
  The skill roll to identify a style takes modifiers, as follows.
  Modifiers: Duration of the recording or combat directly
  observed: -10 for 10 seconds (the functional mini-
  mum), -5 for 20 seconds, -2 for 30 seconds, -1 for one
  minute, +0 for two minutes, +1 for five minutes, +2 for
  10 minutes, +3 for 20 minutes or more – this assumes
  that all combatants observed are using the same style,
  or at least that both are students of the style; if only one
  is using the style to be identified, halve the observation
  time to determine the effective time. -1 to -5 for poor-
  quality recordings (from a distance, ancient black-and-
  white film, images shot secretly by a concealed camera,
  etc.). +2 for a very widespread style (Boxing, Judo,
  Wushu, etc.). -3 per style after the first if the combatant
  is actually using multiple styles.
  One minor but useful feature of Style Scanner software is
  that it can take advantage of an AI’s Enhanced Time Sense
  when analyzing video recordings. Treat it as watching these at
  four times normal speed.
  A failed roll usually just causes the software to display “No
  Reliable Match.” If low-quality input data leads to a roll failed
  by 1 to 3, the GM may decide that the software offers a tenta-
  tive identification, perhaps suggesting several possible similar
  styles. Critical failures can lead to dramatically incorrect iden-
  tifications. Cost and Complexity as for standard skill set. LC4.
  NEW WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT
  36
  Recreating Lost Styles
  Quite a few martial-arts experts are extremely dubious about
  the use of Style Analysis software to recreate lost styles, arguing
  that it does little but stitch together a few details with a lot of the
  designer’s prior assumptions. They say it’s like trying to recon-
  struct a whole dinosaur from a couple of bones; it may work, but
  it’s not the real thing.
  
  Style Trainer
  This software is more than a Teaching skill set, although it
  functions similarly. Actually a general-purpose, VR-oriented
  training system, it can provide instruction in any martial-arts
  style for which adequate data exists. Complexity ranges from
  5 to 7.
  Input data may come from a Style Analysis program (see
  p. 36), or be prepared “by hand” by a team of experts. The
  latter option is better but much more expensive. (The experts
  can and often do start with computer-generated output,
  though.) Like an ordinary skill set, an AI must operate a
  Style Trainer program. In turn, this AI must be capable of
  interfacing with a skill set of the same Complexity (that is,
  Complexity 5 is equivalent to an 8-point skill set, 6 to 16
  points, or 7 to 32 points). Treat the program as giving the AI
  Teaching-12 for purposes of instruction in this style only,
  along with every required skill in the style and every DX-
  based optional skill, all at attribute level for a Complexity 5
  Style Trainer, attribute+1 for Complexity 6, or attribute+2 for
  Complexity 7. These effective skill levels assume “hand-pre-
  pared” input data. If using the raw output from a Style
  Analysis program, all skills take a penalty unless the analysis
  roll was a critical success; the penalty is -1 if the roll was
  made by 5 or more, -2 if it was made by 1 to 4, or -3 if it was
  made exactly. If the AI already knows any of the skills at a
  higher level, use that level rather than the one granted by the
  software for training purposes.
  A Style Trainer program can be used for either standard
  education or intensive training (p. B293), if it meets the
  requirements for a teacher (work out how many points the
  operating AI would require to have the skills involved at its
  effective level if necessary for intensive training purposes). It
  can train students in the style’s techniques, but only up to its
  own effective level. If it doesn’t have high enough effective skill
  to function as a teacher, it may still assist someone in self-
  teaching – treat it as providing the equivalent of a set of text-
  books for this purpose.
  The AI only really gains these skills for the purposes of
  teaching that one style. In theory, it can attempt to use skills
  derived from the database in combat (while running a
  humanoid cybershell, say, or in a VR environment). When
  doing so, the -3 (from Limited Integration) for using a skill set
  in high-stress situations is doubled to -6 – the system just isn’t
  designed to work that way! However, it can use the software to
  train itself in the style; treat this as standard education, not self-
  teaching. As AIs don’t have to sleep, they can acquire styles very
  fast this way! $500 for Complexity 5, $1,000 for Complexity 6, or
  $2,000 for Complexity 7. Input data for any style typically costs
  $500 plus $200 per point of the base cost of the style if it’s hand-
  prepared, or $200 plus $50 per point if it’s just unedited output
  from a Style Analysis program. LC4.
  NEW WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT
  37
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  Advantages, 10-11; perks, 11-13.
  AI tutors, 21.
  Althasian Iffjurr-Laur style, 27.
  ARC-P style, 9, 22.
  Arm or Wrist Lock technique,
  against nonhumans, 15.
  Armor, 34-35.
  Armorer’s Gift perk, 12.
  Army of One perk, 12.
  Artillery skill, 14.
  Backbreaker technique, against
  nonhumans, 16.
  Ballantine, Martin, 9, 22.
  Bantu Boxing (Bantujutsu)
  style, 9, 22-23.
  Battledress Training style, 23.
  Berserk disadvantage, 13.
  Bestial disadvantage, 13.
  Bioroid opponents, 15; see also
  Nonhuman Physiology.
  Bloodlust disadvantage, 13.
  Bodyguard lens, 20.
  Boomsticks, 32-34.
  Brawl-Aide software, 35.
  Breaking Blow skill,
  nonhumans and, 17.
  Bully disadvantage, 13.
  Burnsticks, 33, 43.
  Callous disadvantage, 13.
  Campaigns, cinematic elements,
  12.
  Choke Hold technique, against
  nonhumans, 16.
  Claws advantage, 10.
  Cocerdelmi style, 24.
  Code of Honor disadvantage,
  13.
  Combat Jumping perk, 12.
  Combat Paralysis disadvantage,
  13.
  Combat sports, history, 5, 7-8.
  Combate Cercano de los
  Militares, 24.
  Comms Multitasking technique,
  15.
  Cookie Cutter perk, 12-13.
  Cool Under Fire perk, 13.
  Copyrighted styles, 19-20.
  Countermech Training style,
  24-26.
  Cybershell opponents, 15; hit
  locations, 16-17; see also
  Nonhuman Physiology.
  Dancing Crane Studios, 9, 26.
  Defensive maneuvers, 3D
  environments, 14.
  Disadvantages, 13-14.
  Ear Clap technique, against
  nonhumans, 16.
  Enhanced Defenses advantage,
  11.
  Enhanced Time Sense
  advantage, 11.
  Equipment, 32-37; from GURPS
  Ultra-Tech, 33.
  Expert Skill, 14.
  Eye-Gouging technique, against
  nonhumans, 16.
  Famous masters, 9.
  Fast-Draw skill, 14.
  Fictional arts, derived, 8, 27.
  Finger Lock technique, against
  nonhumans, 15.
  Fitness arts, history, 4, 7; styles,
  25.
  Flight Art style, 9, 26, 31.
  Free Fall lens, 20.
  Free-Fall Roll perk, 12.
  Freefighting style, 26.
  Full-contact sports, history, 5,
  7-8.
  Furusiyya-Prime style, 27.
  Games skill, 14.
  Genetic Regulatory Agency
  (GRA), 19.
  Group Performance skill, 15.
  Gunslinger advantage, 11.
  GURPS, 12, 17, 19; Basic Set,
  3, 16; Gun Fu, 3, 11, 27;
  High-Tech, 3, 11, 12;
  Martial Arts, 3, 5-17, 19-21,
  26, 28, 34; Powers, 25;
  Psionic Powers, 25;
  Tactical Shooting, 3, 9;
  Ultra-Tech, 32-34; see also
  Transhuman Space.
  Ham-Fisted disadvantage, 14.
  Head Lock technique, against
  nonhumans, 16.
  High Pain Threshold advantage,
  11, 13.
  Hishôjutsu style, 9, 26, 31.
  History, early 21st century, 4-5;
  famous masters, 9; late 21st
  century, 5-7; recent events,
  7-9.
  Hit locations, problems, 16-17.
  Hypnotic Hands skill,
  nonhumans and, 17.
  Il Ballo di Salute style, 25.
  Invisibility Art skill, nonhumans
  and, 17.
  Judo Throw technique, against
  nonhumans, 16.
  Kiai skill, nonhumans and, 17.
  Killer Fist Kung Fu style, 30-31.
  League Combat style, 27.
  Legal concerns, 19-20.
  Lenses, new, 20-21.
  Limpet Mine Attachment
  technique, 15.
  Limpet mines, 33; dispensers, 33.
  Lower Arm Blindside perk, 13.
  Makombo, Charles “Croc,” 22.
  Margaretian Karate style, 9, 26-
  28.
  Mars, importance, 9; rival styles,
  31; styles developed on, 26,
  28, 31.
  Martian Swordplay style, 28.
  Masters, famous, 9.
  Military lens, 9.
  Military training regimes,
  desensitization, 13; history, 5-
  6, 8-9; styles, 22-26, 28-30.
  Military Zero-G style, 28.
  Modular Abilities advantage, 11.
  Neck Snap technique, against
  nonhumans, 16.
  Nonhuman physiology, 15-17;
  cinematic skills and, 17;
  defensive features, 17; hit
  locations and, 16-17;
  technique problems, 15-16.
  Off-Earth style choices, 20.
  Pacifism (Reluctant Killer),
  disadvantage, 13.
  Panzersticks, 32-34.
  Perks, 11-13.
  Police, lens, 8; see also Military
  Training Regimes.
  Post-Combat Shakes
  disadvantage, 13.
  Pressure Points skill,
  nonhumans and, 17.
  Pressure Secrets skill,
  nonhumans and, 17.
  Prototyping, history, 6; software,
  35-36.
  Proudhomme, Anthony, 9, 22.
  Pyramid magazine, 3.
  RefSoft software, 35.
  Remote Sniping style, 29.
  Retreating, 3D environments,
  14.
  Riot shields, 34-35.
  Robotics Expert Skill, 14.
  Sacrifice Throw technique,
  against nonhumans, 16.
  Sact style, 30.
  Sambo style, 19.
  Sayama, Paul, 9, 26.
  Self-defense styles, history, 5, 7.
  Sense of Duty disadvantage, 13.
  Sensitivity skill, nonhumans
  and, 17.
  Shan Chuan style, 30.
  Shields, 34-35.
  Show styles, history, 7.
  Skills, 14-15; cinematic in
  setting, 12; cinematic and
  nonhumans, 17.
  Sniping style, 29.
  Software, 35-36; history, 6.
  Stress Atavism disadvantage,
  13.
  Striker advantage, 11.
  Stun wands, 33.
  Style Analysis software, 36.
  Style Familiarity perk, 11-12.
  Style Perks, 12-13.
  Style Scanner software, 36.
  Style Trainer software, 37.
  Styles, cinematic, 12; current
  choices, 18-20; derived, 8,
  27; legal concerns, 19-20;
  new, 22-31; recreating lost, 9,
  36.
  Superfine blades, 34.
  Sweep technique, against
  nonhumans, 16.
  Swordplay style, Martian, 28.
  Table, melee weapon, 34; shield,
  35.
  Targeted Attacks technique,
  problems, 16-17.
  Teachers, finding, 21.
  Techniques, 15; against
  nonhumans, 15-16.
  Trademarked styles, 19-20.
  Trained by a Master advantage,
  11, 21.
  Trained in VR lens, 21.
  Training, finding a teacher, 21;
  gear, 34-35.
  Transhuman Space, 3, 6, 11-13,
  15, 16, 18, 21, 26, 32, 33, 34;
  Changing Times, 3, 10, 28,
  30, 32-34; Deep Beyond, 13;
  High Frontier, 9, 26, 27; In
  the Well, 9, 28, 31; Toxic
  Memes, 27; Transhuman
  Mysteries, 7, 22; see also
  GURPS.
  Trip technique, against
  nonhumans, 16.
  Ultimate style, search for, 6.
  Underwater style, 30.
  Unusual Training perk, 12.
  Uplifted-animal opponents, 15;
  see also Nonhuman
  Physiology.
  Vigil, Sylvia, 9.
  Virtual reality (VR), combat
  sports and, 8; desensitization,
  13; prototyping and, 6, 36;
  training, 21; see also
  Software.
  Weapon Master advantage, 11.
  Weapons, 32-34.
  Wrench Spine technique,
  against nonhumans, 16.
  Yueh, John, 30.
  Zero-G styles, 26, 28-29.
  Zhang, Master Xiao-Yue, 9.
  Zhua style, 9, 31.
  INDEX
  38
  INDEX
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/GURPS [multi]/SETTING/Transhuman Space/Transhuman Space (Gurps 4e)/GURPS 4e - Transhuman Space - Martial Arts 2100.pdf