In an earlier post I listed the various skills in Art of Wuxia and wrote a little about each one. Today we look a little closer at one of the abilities of the alchemist skill, and indeed the most important one, Alchemy.
Upon gaining a level in the alchemist skill, the player chooses an alchemical expertise. There are six such expertise: Antidotes, Catalysts, Debilitating Substances, Deadly Substances, Explosives and Medicines.
Antidotes: used to treat poisons, these can be general or specific to one poison. Specific antidotes work better than general ones of course.
Catalysts: used to enhance one of the other five alchemical expertise by extending duration, adding new effects, or making deadly substances harder to treat.
Debilitating Substances: these cause conditions such as dazed, slowed, weakened, deluded etc.

Deadly Substances: these are poisons, acids or other harmful substances that do direct damage.
Explosives: things that go boom, also includes signal rockets and other fireworks.
Medicines: these cure common ailments, heal damage caused by physical injuries and cure diseases.
With a little bit of time and money, an alchemist can prepare several alchemical items to help his or her fellow adventurers. Small quests can revolve around acquiring rare ingredients to cure deadly plagues or save a poisoned individual’s life. The alchemy rules are designed to keep the alchemist skill relevant in any adventures the alchemist finds themselves in.

This weekend I finished Art of Wuxia. This says it all.

via GIFER

Con of the North, Feb 15-16, 2020
Minneapolis, MN
www.conofthenorth.org

Back in May, I said I wasn’t running any game conventions in 2019. That is still true. What is also true is I will start doing conventions again with Art of Wuxia in early 2020. I’ve made huge progress since my post in May and I should be done with Art of Wuxia in the next two weeks. Yep. Therefore, it is time to get this show on the road.

I’ll be running the scenario below at the times listed.

Ghostly Echoes

The Bowing Dragon Monks need your help fighting an enemy from the past. Can you discern the real from the Ghostly Echoes? Based on the successful Bare Bones Fantasy, Covert Ops and Frontier Space games from DWD Studios comes the high flying, sword swinging kung fu action of Art of Wuxia.

Con of the North
Feb 14-16^th. 2020

Friday 6 – 10pm

Sat 2 – 6pm

My time slots aren’t set in stone yet but those are what I submitted.

May your dice fu be strong!

 

The map is done! I’m thrilled to show off the map for Art of Wuxia! It turned out quite lovely. The map scale is similar to the Keranak Kingdoms, the default setting for BareBones Fantasy RPG by DWD Studios.

My original map for Art of Wuxia looked nice and I used it for many of my playtest campaign adventures but it had one HUGE flaw that took me much too long to notice. It didn’t contain discrete continents giving GMs the option of plunking them down in their own world, or that of the Keranak Kingdoms. So back to the drawing board, er…, computer I went.

My design goals were to create interesting landscapes that were pleasing to the eye, provide enough space for GMs to make the setting their own and have it inspire adventure wherever you look. I spent an hour and half last night just looking at the laminated poster I had printed out at OfficeMax and I can’t stop thinking of adventures and more setting ideas.

Another design choice, and a hard one, was that I decided to use English place names for the vast majority of locations. Some places are named after great heroes so retain a Chinese flavor. Older places of importance are still referred to in the Old Tongue (Chinese) within the text of the book. I also wanted players to understand that there is a North Dragon and a South Dragon fortress. Their names in the Old Tongue are Beilong and Nanlong.

My play testers got to see the map earlier this week and they want their characters to go “there” and “there” and “over there” etc. And you know, that sounds pretty awesome to me too! I hope this map inspires many hours of wuxia adventures, wherever they take you.

My next goal is to have the final chapter of the book wrapped up by the end of July.

Art of Wuxia is still alive. My progress on the game slowed significantly this past year for several professional and personal reasons but things are going well and I wanted to post an update on where things are. I’ve gotten to participate in an ongoing Art of Wuxia game as a player and the insights have been invaluable. Below are listed some of the significant hurdles of the past year of game development and what direction I’ve taken on them.

NPC Opponents: “tough” NPCs have been completely revamped. They are no longer built as player characters. Instead, a range of simplified stats and numbers of spells and kung fu techniques has been defined to greatly speed up creation of just what the GM needs to play these NPCs. In addition, that extra timesavings allows the GM to create memorable personalities and presentation of their NPCs.

The world map: there were significant problems with some map symbols that weren’t working out well. I think I’ve found some new symbols that should make the map even better. I should be able to finish it soon.

GM Guidance: Some of the book is being reorganized into a GM guidance chapter. The wuxia genre is close enough to standard fantasy that many GMs will be able to run successful campaigns right away. There are some differences though and I’m providing all the hard-learned lessons and tools I can provide to help GMs make their games really fun and feel like good wuxia material.

Adventure Scenarios: I’ve got six scenarios that I’ve been running at gaming conventions. They are all quite fun and showcase different styles of wuxia stories. I have outlines for another six. I thought long and hard about how I run published adventures in all my years of gaming and have determined that the best way I can present these adventures to other gaming groups is to write them up as one-shots. This will give GMs something they can grab, run as is or easily slot into their own game. I can’t write

adventures that capture all of the nuanced player character interactions with each other and the shared world that the players and GM create together, but I can provide some action packed plots that allow gaming groups to play them the way they want. With minimal art and layout needs, I should be able to provide several of these to help jumpstart campaigns close to publication of the game.

Finishing the Game: talk of DWD Studios doing a second edition of their BareBones Fantasy game really threw design decisions of my own game for a loop. Here we were, almost ready for large-scale public playtest and the game it was based on was about to be changed. The bottom line is, I let this interfere with progress on Art of Wuxia. A positive outcome of this is that it made me go back over every assumption of the game to-date. And you know what? This game is fun as is. We are moving forward as is. If great things come out of a second edition of the d00Lite game system, I’ll consider them for Art of Wuxia but until then our game kung fu must continue.

Gaming Conventions in 2019: not going to happen. I need the time to finish up the game and get it ready for large scale playtest. I’m sorry about that. I love running games at cons but I need to apply all my focus to finishing the game.