I Want to Play Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game
Have you been hearing about Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game, and now you're interested in playing it? If so, this article is for you! If you're not sure, well... "Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game" is a role-playing game (Dungeons and Dragons being the most famous RPG you may have heard of), and it was made by a company known as "White Wolf" back in 1994 through 1995. Later on, in Brazil the game was published through a magazine known as "Dragão Brasil". The system for the game is related to the system used in the so-called "World of Darkness" White Wolf was publishing at the time (used for Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Mage: The Ascension, among others), but adapted to fit the fighting game action of the Street Fighter video game. Beyond any expectation, this worked wonderfully! How can you play this amazing game?
Get the Rules
The first step to playing Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game is to acquire the rules! Now, there are a number of books and supplemental material for the game, both official and fan-made, and so you may ask yourself what is really needed. Here is my advice:
- Many players say that the "Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game" core rule book is all you need, with many others also including "Secrets of Shadoloo" (which includes the Boss characters from Street Fighter 2, among some additional maneuvers and styles, information about Shadoloo, etc.) I tend to agree with this assessment. Sadly, the original books are long out of print, so your options for acquiring these books are either to download scans of them from somewhere such as Archive.org, or to look for used physical copies at locations such as eBay or Noble Knight.
- Another very solid option is to download "Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game 20th Anniversary Edition", which is a fan compilation of all of the Street Fighter rules into one document. This eBook could be used to run Street Fighter on its own and is only lacking in that it does not include the stats for the World Warriors or any other characters, nor does it contain world background or adventures. One advantage of this document is that it is searchable and compiles all of the official rules into one document, in adddition to addressing errata from the original books as well. If not for the lack of characters, I would recommend this over the official rules, but chances are that you'll want some NPCs.
- Speaking of NPCs, there are 2 fan supplements you'll find very useful for providing opponents for your PCs to fight. The first is The Street Fighter Circuit Guide, which provides characters in all styles at various ranks. The other is The Street Fighter Circuit Guide - Basic, which is similar to the other Circuit Guide in many ways, but limits itself to martial artists using styles found only in the Core book and Secrets of Shadoloo. Both of these books also go into Animal Companions, Beasts and other supplemental material you should find useful in running a session. The characters are provided with their combat stats presented in a usable table format, making them more useful than many of the sheets in the original books. You will need to provide your own Talents/Skills/Knowledges for these characters if you want them, though.
- Other Official Books: These are a mixed bag, generally not considered as quality as the Core Book and Secrets of Shadoloo. Still, aside from the "Unique Backgrounds" in the Player's Guide, nothing in them breaks the game and some of it is a lot of fun!
- Shades of Gray/Storyteller's Screen: The screen portion of this tried to be useful, summarizing rules material and all of the Special Maneuvers, but sadly there are many errors in those Special Maneuver summaries. The Shades of Gray adventure is fine, and it also includes a few Special Maneuvers of its own, along with some extra Abilities. The new Special Maneuvers may be appealing, but the extra Abilities were less useful.
- The Street Fighter Player's Guide: Contains a large grab-bag of material. The new styles and maneuvers are largely fine and provide a lot of new material. The Unique Backgrounds are very questionably balanced. Otherwise, there is a lot of advice you may find usable.
- Street Fighter Contenders: This supplement contained a large variety of very unusual characters. They are just odd and not nearly as usable as the ones provided by the fan-made Circuit Guides. There are some usable new Styles and Special Maneuvers in the book though. The supplement also takes a look at the Duelist Division (weapon weilding characters).
- The Perfect Warrior: This supplement was a full on adventure. The only rules material is a Style and single Special Maneuver associated with that style and the adventure contained here.
- Fan Material: There is a large amount of fan material you may find usable, including a fan magazine that publishes quite regularly. I would suggest visiting Street Fighter Paradise for a listing of them. The G-File and Glory Times might find some use as they are both compilations of other Street Fighter characters and their Special Maneuvers and Styles. Other adventures, conversions, and articles abound!
- Tools: There are 2 tools that are very useful for making character sheets and combat charts and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND them both! Sheet Fighter 2 is a web app where you can enter all of your character's information and the program returns a filled out character sheet that looks identical to the ones provided in the official books. The Combat Chart Generator lets you enter your stats and select your Special Maneuvers, then it checks to see that you have any prerequisites and creates a beautiful chart listing your character's combat maneuvers with all of the stats and info you'd need.
So, the above covers everything pretty well I reckon. Grab the main rules. Grab a Circuit Guide. Use the Character Sheet Generator and Combat Chart Generator to make whipping up a character as slick and easy as possible. Then, get to chucking some d10 and kicking ass! Hope you have fun!