(Dominic Bailey)

Dragon Warriors has no official rules for grappling or wrestling of any kind so, in order to resolve a bout of sumo with a boisterous Yamawaro (a type of mountain yokai), I dug into my memory for old rules from other systems that I might be happy with. In general, grappling is hard to get right in RPGs. Either the author of the rules doesn't understand it or they understand it too well, giving rise to the situation that grappling is usually abstracted too much or presented in unnecessarily granular detail. Also, a sumo bout has very specific rules that don't necessarily apply to wrestling with an opponent under life-and-death conditions. Sumo rules therefore do not follow the standard combat rules of DW, but instead I settle for the following gross oversimplification of this ancient and complex martial sport:

Each participant calculates a sumo score. This is the average of their Strength, Reflexes, and ATTACK scores. To simulate the fast pace of a sumo bout, an opposed roll under the sumo score is made with the highest success on the die showing an advantage. Two consecutive advantages result in victory, and you can narrate this however you like, such as pushing your opponent directly out of the competition ring or throwing them to the ground in spectacular style. Any roll which is exactly equal to the sumo score is a critical and results in instant and overwhelming victory, unless the opponent also rolls a critical in which case there is a tie…

In my game, Khasan – a shipwrecked Khanate tribesman – was soundly thrashed by the one-eyed, hirsute mountain spirit but did earn a point of Ki¹⁾ out of it.

This article first appeared in Casket of Fays Issue 5.