The Simguy Method © 1999 "In boxing: speed can beat strength, strength can beat technique, and technique can beat speed."

General: The system I've settled on has evolved over the years to reflect the fact that what I'm interested in, is the narrative representation of a boxing match - I'm not particularly interested in determining the exact trajectory of every punch thrown. I don't want to spend all afternoon setting up the fight. I literally want to sit down, hazard a guess as to what the fight entails, and simulate it in 5 minutes so I can write up a fight report. Bear this in mind, because it may not be the sort of thing that you're looking for.

Early on, I got away from detailed numerical breakdowns of the participants. A real boxing match is never simply the extrapolation of results based on measurable attributes, and even if it were, it's not important how fast you are, it's how much faster are you than your opponent that counts. Also, a fight happens simultaneously - you can't capture the reality of a boxing match with a blow by blow type system. When you watch a fight - you don't actually 'see' everything that happens - your mind generalizes and filters the action for you. Furthermore, a boxing match winds up being a condition wherein the combatants are fine until something bad happens - therefore a 'hit points' system like you see in a lot of role playing games wouldn't work.

Here's the basic character line for Charlize Theron against, say, Debbe Dunning:

Heart 1

Legs 1-2

Boxing 2

Body 1

Endurance 10.

Heart is a number against which Charlize rolls if a power punch is landed against her - a 1 or lower means she's knocked out. Legs represents the chance of being knocked down by that punch - in this case, a 1 or a 2. Boxing is the amount we add to Charlize's roll if she chooses to box (plus2), body is the number we add if she chooses to fight inside, and Endurance represents the number of rounds she can go before her numbers start to diminish. Notice that the 'boxing', or 'body' or 'brawling' strategic category neatly sums up all the physical advantages and disadvantages between the two women, ie: strength, speed, reflexes, skill, experience etc. What it boils down to is a differential between 1 and 10 (10-100%). If I'm going to do 20 fight reports on a weekend, I can't possibly break every participant into 30 character traits, so I just summarize it.

Notice that the numbers change depending upon who you are fighting.

Charlize can't box with Jamie Luner - so her boxing numbers would be lower. Janet Jones might set a faster pace, meaning the endurance number might change. Brooke Shields might hit harder, so the heart or leg number would rise. You sort of generalize about the match up, then summarize all the physical, spiritual, and mental attributes with hard and fast whole numbers - there's really no need to break this down into 30 different areas. If you like Charlize a little bit, then plus 1 is all you'd want to give her in terms of hitting the opponent. If you think she'd dominate, give her plus two. If you see the other girl barely landing, give Theron plus 3 - anything higher than that and there's no point in rolling dice.

Another modification occurs according to strategy.

I usually set up a rock, scissors, paper type routine, in which boxing against body punching gets plus 1 to hit, brawling against boxing gets plus one to hit, and brawling against body work is even. A balanced fighter like Jamie Luner might be able to do all three types of fighting with some measure of skill i.e.: boxing +2. If Charlize tried to fight her inside, Jami would get plus 2 to hit if she used boxing, PLUS another 1 to reflect the difficulty of getting inside.

So you have your characters - now you set up the round.

Each round is composed of three (3) one minute segments. Take the first minute and decide what style the fighters are going to use (Charlize boxes, Debbe brawls). Roll 1-10 for each girl (this means take one of your percentile dice and just roll it to get 6, 2, 10 whatever.) Say Charlize gets a 6 and Debbe gets a 1 - modify the results according to all pertinent inputs, and figure Charlize wins the minute - best of three wins the round. But you need to determine results during each minute of combat.

Results can be as simple or complex as you want since you can roll literally 100 different outcomes for each minute. Each style of fighting (boxing, brawling, inside fighting) has it's own typical results. Boxing and brawling produce more 'power' shots - shots that can lead to knockdowns or KOs, but power punching to the body produces damage that lingers and hampers a fighter for a longer period of time.

Say Charlize wins the minute by boxing, I then roll 1-10 to determine the overall effect she had. Say, 1-5 basic jabbing, some movement, 6 stiff jab, 7 hooks and crosses off the jab, 8 opponent backing up, taking hard shots, 9 dominant performance, opponent hurt, 1 power shot landed (check critical results table), 10 total rout, 2 power shots landed.

Obviously, I'm not giving you the actual critical results lists I use, but hopefully you can imagine what they must be like. You can get really complicated by having some results refer you to sub lists, whereupon you roll again to get ever finer resolution. I don't do this unless a power shot is indicated.

If a power shot is landed, you again roll 1-10.

Maybe 1 is an uppercut that produces a minus one for Debbe to hit during the next minute. Maybe 10 is a HUGE shot, Debbe has to roll against her legs and chin to avoid being knocked down or out. The point is, you can get as specific as you want here. I usually just need to know how hurt the person is - I'll fill in the details when I do the report.

You can modify this basic approach as much as you need to.

If Charlize has an endurance of 7, then she fights at -1 during the 8th, -2 in the 9th and -3 in the 10th. That's a big disadvantage if you're fighting someone who has an endurance of 10, who won't be suffering any negative modifications down the stretch. Maybe you want to encourage the chance of a first round knockout: have 5 segments in the first round rather than three - more opportunities to swing away.

Say you don't like Carmen Electra in a fight - you don't have to cheat, just say she had trouble making weight and give her a minus 1 to hit, or hurt her endurance, or whatever. You could determine that Dunning can't knock out Theron past the fifth round - reflecting the idea that late KO power is relatively rare. Say one girl rolls a 10 to hit, and the other a 1 - the difference is so great you might want to reward the successful fighter with a plus one on the result roll, making a power shot more likely. The point is, every fight has it's own dynamic, it's own unique relation. You can satisfy your biases, and still see your favourites lose - it can get downright frustrating at times.

The finished product is a column of results which shows the minute by minute breakdown of the fight. You record who won each minute, how hard they hit each minute, check to see if the other girl is hurt, record any thoughts or impression (i.e.: in the seventh, Charlize went to the body while Debbe continued to brawl) and record a winner for the round (10 point must system works for me.) This forms the skeleton of a fight which you can write up in as much detail as you want, for the fun and amusement of your message board buddies!

So is this a great technical simulation?

Well, it could be if you really spent a lot of time finagling the modifiers and accounting for differences between the fighters, but really, it's not meant to be a representation of reality. It has a kind of 'open architecture' which makes it a lot more flexible than other systems I've used, and it accounts for all the factors which could influence the outcome of a fight. What it does really well, is capture the feel of actual boxing, recognizing that styles make fights, and that some fighters just don't match up well against others regardless of physical advantage. And it really does generate a believable narrative structure that makes descriptive writing a breeze.

I think it works when I write up the reports for other people, because I have a pretty good repertoire of bouts in my memory - literally thousands of actual contests in the gym and on television - that I can draw on to fill out the action. This also shortcuts the simulation exercise, because I already know what the boxing realities are going to be given certain premises - I've taken the reality of the celebrity out of the equation by casting each girl as a 'type' of fighter based upon her physicality, personae, image etc. This is what's bothering some of the readers who want to simulate what would 'really' happen - the last thing you'd see in a real fight with celebrities is footwork, defence, then a sweet 6 punch combination. That's just a matter of taste of course, and hopefully someone else will write up those kinds of conflicts - I'm just not interested in simulating that kind of action. I must say however, that without a certain boxing repertoire my system might be a little too bare-bones to be of use to other people.

You've talked about evolution of a fighter on the message board, and this system really can take advantage of that through the concept of feedback. You start out by making your best guess about a fighter, but if the results are the opposite of your expectations, and a pattern emerges, it's fun to go with it, and change things to encourage those results in the future. This is how Debbe Dunning became a brawler in my game - she started out as a boxer, but every fight seemed to be a war. In Charlize' case on the message board - she started out with an average chin, but she had some really fun tussles where she absorbed tremendous punishment, so I gave her good heart numbers to encourage that style of fight, and sure enough, she withstood subsequent beatings that would have stopped her if she hadn't evolved. This in turn encourages certain story lines - and you've seen the results of those speculations on the board. I haven't done this systematically, but if you did, I bet it would be really interesting to see the fighters take on lives of their own, eventually honing styles which would tend to promote match-ups, and before you know it, you're barely writing the thing at all.

What I would suggest you do if you want a simple combat resolution system, is look for an old copy of Steve Jackson's 'Melee' in your local game or hobby store. This won't be any good for boxing, but it will show you everything you need to know about simulating in general, and then you can go about designing your own system.