Best System for Mortal Kombat RPG?

Hello fellow PbPers!

I just recently watched the new Mortal Kombat movie, and it’s given me some ideas. I’d really love to run a Mortal Kombat game on this site. I consider myself somewhat well-versed in the lore, despite not having liked all of the sequel games. What would people recommend for a good system that would capture the tone and style of the Mortal Kombat universe? Ideally, I’m looking for a RPG system that would work decently well for play-by-post, so something that isn’t too complex. While I normally enjoy crunch, I’d want to use a system that’s at least a little PbP friendly.

Lol, that’s a fun idea! If I were you, I’d look into a system called Fight! It’s a setting agnostic system designed to replicate martial arts games just like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. Granted, I’ve never tried it so I can’t vouch for the system, but it might be worth looking into.

Mutants and Masterminds could be tailored to a Mortal Combat system. However, the Street Fighter RPG is a no go... worked with designers to try and make that system viable and it ended up being a bust as we could not develop a means to reflect the more in game feel.

I have not used the Fight System even though I do have it. Still many systems would work but they would just require tailoring to the game you are deploying. The question then becomes are you only focused on fighting or will there be opportunity to explore characters and what they do when they are not fighting?

Basic PvP can only go so far before it becomes kind of dull for many.

How about Exalted 3.0?

The whole stunts and whithering and decisive attacks and dramatic initiative lend themselves well to martial arts stuff.
And the Charm system covers all sorts of esotheric builds like "my martial art is basically wearing a hat with style".

Just to give you way too much to analyze and wade thru... My go-to for any setting that doesn't already have a dedicated RPG system for it is Cortex (Prime, now). And I think it could do MK well. The system is very "tuneable" to how much crunch you want it to have, and so you could adjust it to your desired amount of pbp crunch.

Have you considered Feng Shui? I mean, it is literally made for that genre.

WhtKnt could not be more right. He could try but he would not be successful.

Hearty third recommendation for Feng Shui, though Fate would also be great -- and there are existing MA Fate games out there. I'd also consider Tiny Dungeon, believe it or not -- there are optional martial arts rules, and they're simple and fun. That game is super-extensible too, if you're feeling creative but don't want to deal with all the options in something like Cortex or Fate.

Qralloq why would someone not be successful with Feng Shui? The system seems pretty straight forward and the concept if embraced by the players should work just fine.

Although it does seem to require a bit more work to make it more than just a hack-n-slash style game.

I think Qralloq was saying that Whtnt would not succeed if he tried to be more right. In other words...he heartily agreed with him about Feng Shui

Ah if that be the case then cool

I second Cortex. If you want to make it more about the things going on between the fights than just a crunchy fist fight simulator, then Smallville would work great.

If you're looking for a more technical game with some crunchy mechanics, I have to recommend the Street Fighter RPG. Although it's pretty much oop, there is a ton of fan work done to update and balance it and add a bunch of content, most of which is surprisingly balanced and versatile.

Now fight 😆

B.L.O.O.D.P.O.U.C.H.

Unless some kind of update has fixed the major broken issues with Street Fighter those being Speed Dominates and Grappling is Overpowered then regardless of the balance of the rest of the system these break it fundamentally.

I ran a Genesys game here using the "Ready... Fight!" unofficial supplement. The idea was to emulate beat-em-up video games like Double Dragon and movies like The Warriors more than a straight-up tournament fighter, but there are ideas in the book about that subgenre of fighting game, as well. It wasn't perfect, and I have ideas on how to improve things for PbP, but it is a solid choice if A) You're already familiar with the related Star Wars game, 2) You want to have fighting feature alongside other types of role-play, like social encounters, snooping around, etc.

As someone who is most familiar with Star Wars FFG, I just couldn't wrap my head around how to apply it to MK.

I was thinking maybe having Talent trees that give a lot of action options for different types of attacks (e.g. make a hard coordination check to perform a "Jonny Cage splits/low blow" action to apply Disorient to a target in engaged range per rank of Whoohooo)

I just would worry that the only skill/characteristic that would matter in that system would be Melee/Brawn, specifically in combat

It's Genesys, so slightly different in that there are no talent trees but rather an à la carte approach to buying talents. But, yes there are plenty of talents to allow for the kind of theatrics you mention. And the author wisely splits Brawl into Brawl (Grappling) and Brawl (Striking), linked to Brawn and Agility respectively. The Grappling rules were where I had my main complaints, as Grappling is an opposed check against the opponent's Grappling. This effectively slows combat way down, as it's hard to get enough successes or advantages to do anything. But I have ideas on how to speed things up if the OP is interested in using "Ready ... Fight!" for the Mortal Kombat idea.

I haven't done Genesys at all, just Star Wars FFG so I was using that knowledge to work off of. I GUESS Grappling being opposed makes it harder to do, which in MK grappling isn't impossible but is sort of hard to functionally use unless you get an "opening" of some kind.

So given you have the talents available to players early to gain different types of actions (maybe "Give" players sets of talents based on a "fighting style" or character template from the games to start) it probably wouldn't be too bad.