Tagged: villains

July 14, 2017

Art of Wuxia at Clearwater Con III 2017

Jet Li as The Monkey King in Forbidden Kingdom

Last weekend I had the pleasure of gaming with a great group of people at the Clearwater Con in Eau Claire WI. The drive was lovely and the accommodations were excellent. This is the second year that my wife and I have made it to this con and I ran two very fun sessions of Art of Wuxia. I also got to play in a FATE game and one of Abstract Dungeon.

Before I talk about the Art of Wuxia games, I want to note the fun games I played run by Matt Hansen of Sneak Attack press. The first game was a FATE game. This is the third time I’ve played FATE and I still don’t understand it. That is totally on me, not the GM or other players. The second game was an Abstract Dungeon game. I love this game. It is an unusual game in which players roll all their dice at the beginning and spend them to overcome challenges as they play. It is very story driven with some fun game elements. Matt did a great job keeping everyone involved in both games and rolling with all the crazy player ideas. There was much laughter and fun.

The first game I ran I had a completely full table because I stole a player from one of my GM friends’ table. I feel a little bit bad about that but the player got to try a new game, Art of Wuxi, and he loved it!

I kicked things off with the scenario A Jianghu Ghost story. This scenario is inspired by Judge Dee novels by Robert Van Gulik, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling and movies like A Chinese Ghost Story and the modern Judge Dee films. It is full of mystery, investigation, an evil cult, ghosts, dark rituals and the secrets of a family’s past. It fits fully in the xianxia (immortal heroes) end of the wuxia spectrum.

Aaron Kwok as The Monkey King in The Monkey King 2

Of the five players, two were familiar with the system. I figured they would show the others how the high-flying action works but the new players jumped in with both fee and pretty soon everyone got a good taste of what their characters could do in a fight. There were lots of smiles around the table. One person said, “Sold!” because they wanted to buy the game right now! This group of players did a particularly good job of connecting the dots of the mystery and saving everyone.

The next day at the con, I ran another Art of Wuxia game. This time the scenario was Red Tiger Clan. This scenario contrasts greatly with A Jianghu Ghost Story. This is much more on the kung fu side of things with sect politics and hostile clan leaders. There is still a creepy evil artifact at the end of the story but the rest is classic Shaw Brother’s era movie kung fu.

I had a smaller table this time but all were return players. One returning player wanted to play his favorite character that I use in these scenarios (Mighty Bahu); specifically because he can’t stand to watch others not play him up to his boldly brash promise. Hah! One of the people running the convention, Erik, got out of his table duties to join in the fun. My wife Tina played a character she hadn’t played before and brought a valuable character to the table strong in the leader skill which really helped.

The enthusiasm was huge in this game and a three-player team really sped up decision making. There was a fight in and out of a teahouse. Some furniture (from the teahouse) was destroyed. Then some tense negotiation with surviving sect leaders. There was also the start of some romance, a classic wuxia trope! There was a daring rescue, the big reveal, an alliance of kung fu sects followed by an assault on the Iron Pagoda itself. A final boss battle had a plot twist that caught the players by surprise and caused them to really dig deep to defeat the real final boss. The good guys prevailed and new alliances were reaffirmed. The heroes made a real difference in the region.

Donnie Yen as The Monkey King in The Monkey King

I’m greatly encouraged by the enthusiasm in which players respond to this game. I know it is a niche game but I’m trying to tie every design element into producing the kind of fun action adventures you see in wuxia movies, TV series and books. I think it is working well. Every adventure I’ve made for the convention games I made by using the adventure generation tables in the book. This makes me believe that assuming you are any bit familiar with the genre; the book will really help you make fun wuxia adventures. If you like wuxia and RPGs, this game should be right for you.

March 10, 2017

The Wuxia Way Saved My Game

Chaser, Heartless, Coldblood and Ironhand from The Four TV series

During my last bi-weekly Art of Wuxia game some bad rolls, not the best player tactics and a GM (me) bent on providing a very tough fight almost led to several character deaths. In another gaming genre, this could have gone very bad. The tropes of wuxia saved the day.

The scene: Heroes surrounded in a village by many minor NPCs (crunchies) and several normal NPCs (not crunchies). Many innocent villagers that the bad guys will kill for several reasons not important here. Only three player characters are in the current scene. The rest of the player characters will arrive in 4 turns.

The players had the upper hand for the first part of the fight but then things went bad. While they attacked the enemy, they didn’t coordinate their efforts nor try to focus their attacks. Each player character was doing their own thing. Points to them for playing such individual heroes. I also think they were a little rattled as the villains were hitting hard and not holding back. One of the villains was a sorcerer with a creepy wooden backpack with a demon face inside that would cast spells. They pulled off a poser turn when things got really bad but then again failed to focus on one enemy at a time. They managed to save a few villagers but even that tactic was not coordinated so many of the villagers were still in danger. One hero managed to dish out a lot of damage to the sorcerer but instead of finishing off his target, he dove for cover. This was a reasonable tactic as this a press your luck kind of game and he wanted to reserve something for defense.

Terrible dice rolls by the players and extraordinary dice rolls by the GM changed things from bad to worse. When the villain sorcerer’s turn came up, he drained the heroes of their strength leaving all but one of them incapacitated.

A dramatic moment

Now this could have played out with the bad guys killing all three player characters right then. However a) that isn’t fun, and b) that isn’t the wuxia way. In wuxia stories, villains much prefer to humiliate their enemies to outright killing them. The sorcerer used a charm spell on the player character still standing and commanded him to use his sword to kill his friends. The hero, obviously struggling to resist the compulsion slowly walked over to the friend farthest away. His footsteps dragged and his whole body was stiff with the effort to resist. This forced the sorcerer to maintain his full concentration on the spell. When he got over to his friend, he apologized before running the sword through him and into the ground.

Gasps at the table, terror on the faces of the players and then silence… But then the player character who was pretending to be under compulsion (he had resisted the spell earlier and was stalling for time!) used some magic to restore strength to his friend, drew his sword out of the ground (he had faked stabbing him) and they were ready to fight together again. The villain sorcerer could not understand what had just happened. Cheers erupted in our gaming room.

Long Chen as General Meng Zhi in Nirvana in Fire TV series

The rest of the player heroes arrived and the fight was soon over. They congratulated their brethren on a hard fight and for holding out until they arrived.

So, what could have been a real bummer turned out to be a lot of fun. Wuxia was the reason it turned out to be this way. As GM, I used the villain tropes of wuxia to gloat and be mean without killing the characters. This allowed the characters to use their wits and try to outsmart the overconfident villains. Even when wuxia heroes are physically beaten, they still can win the day if they are smart. This is classic wuxia in practice.

We play for these moments.

December 14, 2016

Art of Wuxia Design Guidelines, Part 2 Adversaries

Before beginning work on Art of Wuxia I developed a list of things that I wanted out of the game. Before every writing session and play test session, I take that list out and read it. My rule is that the list must absolutely be followed to keep the design of the game focused on its most important parts. The next few articles will cover this list and explain why I feel each of these guidelines was important for Art of Wuxia.

Nothing defines wuxia heroes more than the adversaries they face.

Design Guideline: Bad guys should come in several flavors; crunchies, villains and master villains. Wuxia heroes wade through crunchies, have duels with villains and have epic battles with master villains. The D00Lite system (of which Art of Wuxia is based), already differentiates between minor NPCs (crunchies) and normal NPCs (named villains). We’ve added Master Villains to the game and they are designed to battle a whole group of player characters. In fact some of their stats are related to the number and power of the heroes. These are used at the end of major adventures. Heroes must come prepared to face such a challenge and give their all.

Design Guideline: Unimportant NPCs should be able to be fought by the dozens. Wuxia heroes are clearly cut of a different silk. They may start out weak but once they come into their own they can take on hordes of minor NPCs and not take a scratch. As mentioned above we already have minor NPCs and they are not much of a threat to heroes. Art of Wuxia lets you take it further and with the spending of chi, player characters can take out a dozen or more minor NPCs in one turn. Even more if you use the Battle Fu option.

Design Guideline: Most adversaries should be human; some will be demons/monsters. A strong trope of the wuxia genre is that these are human stories about human deeds, emotions, desires and actions. A guardian monster might play a role. A demon might be a powerful opponent but ultimately it must be about humans. The guardian monster is guarding something for a human. A human summoned the demon or otherwise let it loose for their own failings or ambitions. Art of Wuxia does have a monster section in it for GMs that want more fantasy in their game but adventure generation tables and published adventures will focus on the goals of humans. Wuxia stories are personal stories and the main villain is seldom if ever a nameless monster.

Pai Mei (played by Lo Lieh), master villain of Executioners from Shaolin.

Adversaries are crucial to good wuxia stories and Art of Wuxia, by having genre examples of several different strengths and types, has you covered for any wuxia story you want to tell.