Here's how to play Ring Doctors, a boxing microgame that might be almost finished...

This is, at least, the current state of a project I've been trying to chip away at in my free time.  I met a very nice dude named (I think) Art (but with the handle of McGrizzle75) back during Covid.  We chatted a bit about tabletop sports games, and he even took the time to stat out a large number of players for the baseball simulation that I wrote about back during those strange times.  (I'm not sure how far he got with his tournament, but as you might imagine, sports simulations can be a bit of a grind, and sometimes it ends up being fulfilling enough to just assign numbers to a bunch of athletes in a way that you know contests COULD be simulated...)

Image from here

McGrizzle recently asked me if I had ever tried making a simple boxing game.  I had not made one, but because I spend way more time thinking about unimportant things than items of actual value, I had definitely put a fair amount of thought into how one might be structured.  (This is in part because I found that archive.org has all these old issues of an early 20th century publication called Famous Fights, Past and Present with some amazing and presumably public domain art accompanying stories about the history of bare-knuckle boxing.  There's a game just waiting to be made with those images; you can look here if that's something that seems interesting for your own use!)

Anyway, I decided to see what I could do with one.  And here are the results so far!  It's still in playtest mode, but it's actually worked reasonably well.  So far, at least.

Two notes: (1) I am apparently a person with really odd motivations at times, so there is also a D&D-style Pugilist class I've been working on simultaneously that covers the development of a boxer's style over five levels.  It isn't quite complete, partly because the specifics are dependent upon the final ranges of the minigame's stats, but I'll probably post it here eventually.  Theoretically, you could also then take a d20-esque character of any class and stat them out for battles in the ring.

And (2) I made sure to get the game to this point so I could "preview" this Saturday's bout between current IBF heavyweight champ Daniel Dubois and challenger Joseph Parker.  Here's a pic of the playtest cards I used for them; the results of the match are down below.  Get ready to call your bookie!

Ring Doctors

1.  Boxers are defined by five stats: Hand Speed, Dodge, Power, Chin, and Heart.  Most also have a special ability that helps to differentiate them a little more in the ring.

2.  Rounds are divided into 30-second segments during which one of the two fighters goes on the offensive, referred to broadly as an attack and as that boxer's turn.  Boxers are assigned to Even and Odd corners; at the beginning of each round, roll a d6 to determine which boxer attacks first.  They then alternate until both fighters have had three attacks in the round.  Since right now I'm just working with professional boxers at a championship level, matches can go up to 12 rounds.

3.  To attack, subtract opponent's Dodge from attacker's Hand Speed, then roll that many 6-sided dice. Any die that comes up equal to or less than the attacker's Power is a hit. (Note that maximum Power is 5, no matter how abilities might try to alter it.)  In a single attack, the opponent can disregard a number of hits equal to their Chin to determine the final damage, which is subtracted from the opponent's Heart.

4.  Once per turn, before or after their attack, a boxer can have their card rotated 90°,  which changes their strategy to a more offensive or defensive approach.  At the beginning of each round, boxers start with their base stats (an upright card).

5.  If 5+ hits are taken in a single attack OR if 5+ dice are rolled and they are all hits, the opponent is knocked down.  If knocked down with 18 or less Heart remaining, roll 3d6; if the total is greater than or equal to their remaining Heart, it's a knockout!  When Heart = 0, it's an automatic KO.

6.  TKOs are called if a fighter is knocked down three times in a single round OR twice in two consecutive rounds.  (If no knockouts occur and a decision is required, the boxer who has dealt the most damage is declared the winner.)

Additionally, each boxer has an ability and a random table for knockouts based upon their history in the ring.  For the Dubois/Parker championship bout, the abilities are:

Daniel Dubois:  Raw Aggression - If Dubois scores hits on the first two attacks in a round, he gets +1 to Hand Speed and Power for the third attack of the round.

Joseph Parker:  Well-Timed Counter - If an opponent scores zero damage on an attack, Parker gets +1 to Hand Speed and Power on his next attack (if it occurs in the same round).

And now, for the match...!

Image from the BBC here

Well...I guess this is a little awkward.  I just found out that Daniel Dubois is sick in Saudi Arabia and can't fight on Saturday.  He's being replaced with Martin Bokole, who is not the IBF champion and, crucially for this blog entry that I'd like to post, has not been statted for Ring Doctors.

I've already played the match, though, so here's how it would have gone...!

The champ Dubois came out aggressive, scoring a quick knockdown on the surprised Parker early in the first round.  Parker regrouped, however, and took a defensive approach, hoping to find a chance for a powerful counter.  Both fighters stayed on their feet for the rest of Round 1, even with Dubois's mounting aggression at the end of the round.

Parker had powerful combination to begin Round 2 and knocked Dubois to the canvas as quickly as he himself had gone down earlier.  Upon returning to his feet, though, Dubois went on the attack and leveled Parker with a left hook.  Parker went down in a Round 2 knockout!

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Okay, my out-loud thoughts:  I think I may still have some tweaking to do in order to let early knockouts be possible but not guaranteed.  Granted, I haven't played all that many matches yet, but I think I may have matches going a bit too quickly at this point (and directly related, knockdowns might be a bit too easy as well).

Of course, this isn't exactly a detailed simulation.  It's meant to be quick and fun, and it's definitely done that so far.  I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to "simulate" Parker/Bokole before it happens, but we'll see...

Okay, thanks for reading/browsing/checking out the pictures here!  I am open to ANY and ALL feedback you might have on this game.  I've never been in a fight in my life, and most of my boxing knowledge comes from trying to get Little Mac into The Dream Fight vs. Mike Tyson, so I'll be really upfront about my limited grasp of the sport.  With that said...hopefully more to come on Ring Doctors in the near future...!