Tabletop roleplaying sure is hard when you have no friends! And that’s a real problem for me because I love collecting tabletop RPG books and guides. This reveals a deep sadness within me, but they feel like textbooks for the imagination! Between art, flavor text, and the gameplay, RPG books are almost as good alone as they are in a game! And by “almost as good” I mean “God, I have never been more lonely in my entire life.” But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. To quote Hannibal Barca, “I shall either find a way or make one.”
I’ve been curious about Street Fighter: The Storytelling game ever since I picked it up about a decade ago in a used bookstore. I avoided eye contact with the woman at the counter when I took it to the register. She knew what I was buying but I didn’t need her to see me also knowing what I was buying. That is, a pen and paper RPG based on an arcade fighting game. Oh, and the art on the cover of the book is pure 1990s American-style Street Fighter 2 art. This is a book that wants to humiliate you.
And, buddy, I was alone and ready for some humiliation. So I read the book.
It’s a fun roleplaying manual because it starts with the most basic rules, tells you that’s all you need to know to get started, and then follows that up by giving you the most complex instructions possible for making a character and understanding how it works. Literally, the first 30 pages are like, “All you gotta do is roll D10s to see if you’re over the success rate!” The next 150 pages are like, “Be sure to subtract your enemy’s successes from your failures while considering whether the Move and Speed stats are matching or inverse of matching in which case the flux capacitor must be set to minimum gigawatts.”
But, I was able to push my way through and create my character, T. Robin Chadson. Yes, I know there’s a character named T. Hawk which is kind of a similar bird theme. No, I did not remember that when making T. Robin Chadson. For his part, T. Robin Chadson was an ex-con who had special forces training before being abandoned by his commander who’d pledged fealty to M. Bison. Oh, T. Robin Chadson did not like M. Bison one bit! You can take that to the bank and deposit it and wait three days for it to reflect on your account!
While I’m relatively sure I made my character wrong in at least one aspect, I had my sheet. He was a tough dude who could nearly punch through steel and almost kick through paper. Unlike me, a big ol’ fat boy who waddles to and fro, his legs are not very strong. None of that mattered. He was on a quest for revenge and he’d stop at nothing until he could get his revenge. Even if that revenge meant fighting! Especially if that revenge meant fighting! To mark the occasion, I decided to try to keep drawings of my character in action.
Now, there aren’t any solo rules in the book, so I had to make up some of my own. Then, after re-reading the rules and understanding how complicated they are…
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… I just decided to play both sides in the fight. T. Robin Chadson would be the hero, and his opponents would be not the heroes, but as the storyteller and the player, I’d be doing both! It was an art that required careful balancing of fairness, story, and me wanting T. Robin Chadson to go on dates as well as fight.
As far as the campaign goes, I started in New York City and fought Ken to find out what he knew about Shadaloo. I said, “I need to find out more about Shadaloo!” And Ken was like, “I’m a good guy! I also don’t like them!” And I was like, “I need to find out more about Shadaloo!” And then Ken was like, “You already said that.” And then I said, “You’re right, sorry.” And then Ken said, “It’s okay. You wanna fight?” I said, “Yes” and then rolled three D10s to see if Ken was being sarcastic and making fun of me. He wasn’t! So we fought!
Combat in Street Fighter: The Storytelling game takes place over a series of rounds. Players reveal their moves and then resolve them based on speed, distance, and power. It’s fun because in Street Fighter the video game, if you push a button, you kick. In Street Fighter: The Storytelling game, you get to roll a bunch of dice and then compare them to other rolls and then compare them to the hex grid. This all sounds like a normal tabletop RPG but imagine if there was a little gap between every rule where you just gotta figure out what the designers meant. A move that would’ve taken five seconds on Super Nintendo takes about five hours to resolve here. But, between my spinning knuckle and Ken mysteriously rolling all 1s on his flaming dragon punch, he was soon defeated.
“I still don’t know a lot about Shadaloo,” Ken said. I was like, “That’s okay. I also fight because I’m a good guy.” Ken said, “That’s good to know. Now that I understand that part, I can recommend you talk to Vega in Spain. He’s got big claws and he works for M. Bison sometimes.” I asked if Vega was handsome. Ken said, “So handsome that he wears a mask during fights to stay pretty.” I was like, “Whoa!” And he was like, “I know, right?”
Fighting Vega was more of a challenge because I decided to make it so. Vega didn’t want to tell T. Robin Chadson where M. Bison was. But, through a Spanish translator, T. Robin told Vega he wanted to fight. So they fought. If I explained how the fight went, it would take a long time. Not because the fight was stunning but because I had to take out a pad of paper to keep track of which two of my three Triple Strike attacks I’ll keep. You should know this: Vega fell. His claws snapped off and everything, which was my idea alone. It was so cool. He was crying by the end and saying, “Not in the face!” But I didn’t get that translated until after I had hit him in the face.
And then I was in Thailand. After a confrontation with a bunch of goons that I just decided I beat because it was too much work, I finally faced M. Bison himself. The silver tuna himself. I told M. Bison that he ruined my life. M. Bison laughed and said, “That was the point of your commander betraying you. I knew you couldn’t resist coming here for revenge!” I gasped because I wasn’t expecting me to say that! I had fallen into a trap I’d set up.
Oh, M. Bison tried to cheat the match. He knew T. Robin Chadson had been coming. Bison rigged explosives on the field. He had snipers on every building surrounding the arena. For a reason that I decided not to explore, M. Bison would soon be happy to have T. Robin dead. But T. Robin Chadson had learned a lot in prison. He’d learned how to have eyes on the back of his head. With a quick snap of his wrist, he pointed to the snipers and said, “You better not!” And they didn’t! They took an early day and went home.
Bison growled in anger! “That makes me so angry at what you just did,” he said. I was throwing him off his game. The game of Street Fighter! Bison took the detonator out of his pocket. I gave myself a reaction roll to see if I could dive away in time. All 10s! Who’d have thought! I spun away and threw myself to the ground far from where the explosives went off. “Your tricks won’t work on me, Bison!” I said that part, not him. Although, really, I was saying all the parts to myself like when I pretend to re-litigate a break-up with an ex.
Summing up all the anger and rage and third thing I could, I produced a fireball. It may not have been a Hadouken but it was Hot and it was Dukin’ it out with Bison’s face. He burned. His face melted, revealing a skull until he fell to the ground, dead, a skull still attached to a full body. His red outfit became even redder. T. Robin Chadson hadn’t meant to go that far, but he was glad it was over. Now he could finally rest in his grave. Oh, also T. Robin Chadson is undead because I decided because that’s cool.
As a solo experience, Street Fighter: The Storytelling game is fascinating. It’s a lot like writing a novel but with more added extra steps and rules that almost kind of nearly make sense without ever going over. But I think I found something more important from the game: A friend. T. Robin Chadson. Who is undead and did go back to his grave, but can communicate from his grave and come back if bad guys also come back. I can do anything with the power of imagination. I could make him blow up the whole Earth and tell everyone it was all 10s. I’m basically God.
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