Martial Arts Mayhem Review

Martial Arts Mayhem is the newest book for Bloat Games Dark Places & Demogorgons. It may have started with Bruce Lee in the 70's, but Americans in the 80's were wild about all things martial arts and ninja related. This book focuses on that and lets you add it seamlessly to your DP&D games.

We're presented with new rules for fighting and dojos (including belt progression). There are three classes and an optional fourth. The first two classes, karate kid and teen ninja have been presented in previous books. The teen samurai and optional Wuxia martial artist are new. One of the main reason the Wuxia class is optional is because practitioners of these arts gain supernatural abilities that defy reality (like the warriors in films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). There are three new skills and a lengthy addition to the martial arts skill. While you can take the core book version of the fighting style, we're presented nine other versions, including Jeet Kune Do, Akido, and sumo). Finally we get some martial arts related equipment. This is where the players' section ends.

For GM's there are rules for one-on-one tournaments (including special tables) and Kumite. There is also a lengthy section describing where in J'town fights go down. There are several adventure seeds. The book ends with martial arts gangs, east Asian mythological creature, and generic martial artist stats.

This is a fantastic resource for DP&D. It really opens up the game in a way that was only touched on in the core book. The martial arts styles and npc stats also make this a great street level resource for Vigilante City. If you plan on having any Kung Fu fighting in your games, you definitely need to grab this one.

You can grab the book in print or pdf.

While you're at it, if you really want to be the Last Dragon you should grab these dice and the matching dice bag from the amazing folks at Black Oak Workshop.