Tagged: wuxia

January 4, 2017

Art of Wuxia Design Guidelines, Part 4 Mysticism

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.

Wuxia is a broad genre category. There are many sub genres, some that don’t have any magic at all and others where nearly everyone has mystical powers such as magic or chi. Art of Wuxia has magic in it at about the same level as BareBones Fantasy (typical fantasy RPG fare) but there are notes in the GM section showing how to add more fantasy and magic or remove it entirely. We want to give you the tools you need to play the type of wuxia you want to play which means providing lots of options.

Design Guideline: Magic should integrate. BareBones Fantasy already has an excellent magic system. For Art of Wuxia, some spells were dropped and others added and a few altered to fit the genre. Genre examples are given wherever possible so players and GMs have ideas to work with. Alchemical items are right in the Equipment lists to purchase and the rules on spell acquisition altered so that finding old magic tombs becomes very desirable thus promoting exploration into dangerous old trap filled tombs of ancient evil sorcerers.

Two new skills are added to Art of Wuxia that specifically address wuxia mysticsm, the Diviner and the Mystic. A diviner can see the future and it has been a real hit with play testers. The mystic is like a detective for the occult, sensing aura’s, evil and even areas of chi. These skills add a lot to the flavor of Art of Wuxia. They can also be dropped if you are looking for less magic in your game.

Design Guideline: Chi should be baked into the system. Chi is absolutely an essential element of wuxia stories. Chi act a bit like hero points in other games but are designed to enforce the tropes of the genre. Most everything chi is shown to be able to do in wuxia stories is possible in Art of Wuxia. Chi can be used to heal someone, expel a poison, add extra effort to actions, leap over walls and more. Sworn brothers/sisters can even share their Chi pool. I’ll talk more about that another time.

Design Guideline: Lightness skills should enable huge leaps and running or skipping across water. Wuxia wouldn’t be wuxia without highflying action. And highflying action in wuxia comes from lightness skills. In Art of Wuxia lightness is a chi ability granted early on by internal kung fu styles and later on in external kung fu styles. Players love the tactical options it provides and GMs are encouraged to make their battle encounters three dimensional. Bad guys should be knocked off balconies and there should be sword fights on rooftops or atop torii gates.

Design Guideline: There should be demons & spirits. Ghost stories and plots around evil spirits or sorcerers summoning demons show up in many wuxia tales. Most creatures encountered in Art of Wuxia are either normal animals or some sort of spirit. Some spirits can take human form. Truly evil spirits become demons and are consumed by their hungers. The creatures and sample setting provide many adventure hooks for integrating them in play.

THE META GUIDELINES

These last two guidelines don’t really fit in any category but they have shaped every aspect of Art of Wuxia.

Design Guideline: If it isn’t fun, get rid of it. This guideline is really the ultimate arbiter of what goes in the game and what stays. This has been the most important guideline of them all. Art of Wuxia is about wuxia and that means great action and drama. If these things aren’t fun, there isn’t any point to playing. I have no qualms about throwing out pages of hard work if it doesn’t contribute to fun at the table. If it is part of the other guidelines, of course we try to make it work but ultimately no one wants to play a game that isn’t fun. And if something isn’t fun, it is dropped.

Now is this subjective! Absolutely. No group of people can agree about whether everything is fun. There will be differences. But still…if you like the tropes of wuxia, and your game supports the wuxia style with ease and gets out of the way and your players are smiling and really getting into their characters I think you have found your fun.

Design Guideline: Unofficial Litmus When watching wuxia movies or tv shows or reading wuxia books I constantly ask myself, “can Art of Wuxia do that?” Actually, now my play test group players are doing that. They see things in movies and then try to pull them off in the game. It is working very well. That feeds back to the fun guideline.

From Wuxia Edge Website, http://www.wuxiaedge.com/, Click for Animation

I’m not promising that Art of Wuxia will be the ultimate wuxia RPG for everyone. I can confidently say it is my favorite RPG and I think it is measuring up nicely. I can’t wait till it leaves its kung fu school and makes its way out into the world and into your hands. I cannot wait to see what it becomes as others take it in new directions.

December 21, 2016

Art of Wuxia Design Guidelines, Part 3 Tropes

Donnie Yen kung fu fighting — Donnie Yen in Wu Xia

The tropes in wuxia are very strong. I’ll write another article on wuxia tropes later on but for now I’ll focus on my design guideline list.

Design Guideline: Anything can be used as a weapon. I have seen everything used as a weapon in wuxia movies and TV shows and the books are even more over the top. Built right into the weapons table in Art of Wuxia are improvised weapons. So if you can imagine using something as a weapon, you can.

Design Guideline: Unarmed attacks should be almost as good as armed attacks. Heroes in wuxia tales are usually as good with their fists as they are with their swords. The same thing is true in Art of Wuxia There are certain cases where having a weapon is better than not having one but it isn’t overwhelmingly so. One of the kung fu styles in the game doesn’t even teach weapons.

Design Guideline: Armor needs to be limited. Nearly every hero you see in wuxia stories doesn’t wear armor or if they do it is something light. You’ll still find armor in Art of Wuxia but the damage reduction it offers is variable, and it is expensive. Unarmed peasants (minor NPCs) don’t stand a chance against armored troops (minor NPCs). But if they have some heroes defending them…

Design Guideline: There should be a poser turn. I’ve talked about this one before. It is a favorite at my game table and at the convention games I’ve run. Just as in wuxia movies and TV series occasionally the heroes pose and the camera zooms in on them at a dramatic moment, so too this will happen in your game. It is a moment where the action pauses and something cool to help the PCs happens before the next turn begins.

Design Guideline: Adventures should include love and vengeance. Here is where the wuxia genre really departs from traditional fantasy. I can’t think of a wuxia story where these two elements weren’t a key plot element. The GM is encouraged (if the players are up for it) to provide romantic entanglements for the PCs to get involved with. These come with plot complications (he’s the son of the governor and she’s an outlaw) and can lead to further adventures. This is not forced on anyone and is an option if you really want to embrace the genre. After each adventure the GM goes over a checklist to see if anyone will seek vengeance for some slight, or harm caused by the PCs. Beware murder hobos! Beware!

Design Guideline: There should be wuxia examples and quotes. To help players and GMs get into the wuxia genre we are putting quotes by famous NPCs in the book. The quotes are designed to reinforce the tropes of wuxia and possibly give GMs adventure ideas. We’ve also listed examples of what spells look like for that wuxia feel and even specifically spells cast by certain sorcerer sects.

These guidelines were created to help ensure that wuxia tropes would be integrated into the rules. Yes, there is a list of wuxia tropes in the introduction but that would be useless if they weren’t reinforced throughout the rest of the book. Tropes can be shown with NPCs, items, skills etc. but the rules or “game verbs” of the book need to solidly support them.

You can see how strong the tropes of the wuxia genre are for yourself. Go to the Downloads page, download, and print the wuxia bingo cards. Then play wuxia bingo with friends while watching a wuxia movie. Remember to yell “WUXIA!” when you win.

December 14, 2016

Art of Wuxia Design Guidelines, Part 2 Adversaries

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.

December 2, 2016

Art of Wuxia Lets you do cool things!

heroe surrounded — Seven Baddies about to be schooled by Golden Swallow in Come Drink With Me

Wuxia stories are filled with incredible action. A wuxia RPG must not only support such play style, it must encourage it.

I’m certain that Art of Wuxia does this in every game session. For example I have seen fights take place across rooftops. I’ve seen accupoint strikes paralyze opponents. Players have used poles, chairs, tables, bowls, stones and a flagstone as improvised weapons. They have leapt down stairs and up to balconies. They have fought standing on tables and shooting while standing in a saddle. I’ve seen fans that have hidden blades, poles that spring out spear points, and sabers that are actually two swords used as one or two separately. I haven’t seen chopsticks used yet in game but I’m sure they will at some point.

So far, my favorite cool moment is when a player walked into a circle of minor NPC baddies calmly placing stones on the blade of his kwandao (glaive-like weapon). He told them, “Drop your weapons or I’ll drop you!”. They almost balked but decided their seven against one odds favored them. The PC spun flicking his blade and the stones went out striking and incapacitating all seven baddies. The table erupted with cheers!

Art of Wuxia has several game mechanics that support this type of action. First, baked right into the rules is Chi which is used like hero or action points in other games. Chi can be used to do all sorts of things from adding damage from an attack, leaping incredible distances, re-rolling a bad die roll to expelling a poison. All players have access to certain Chi abilities with warriors having access to a few additional ones.

Another factor of cool is weapon damage is keyed to skill so the more skill warrior you are the more damage your weapons do. This also includes improvised weapons, which could literally be anything. This makes it so small darts are deadly in the hands of an expert. A teacup can be thrown and knock a weapon out of an opponent’s hand. A table can be picked up and used to knock several opponents across the room! These rules are designed to allow player imagination to be rewarded with cool action.

One final rule I want to talk about which really brings the cool factor up is the Poser Turn. Any character may call a Poser Turn by spending a Chi. Only one of these is allowed per game session. When called, the action stops, each player must describe how cool their character looks at that moment. Imagine if the “camera” focused on just each character one at a time and their name/nick-name appeared on screen with dramatic music. If the GM is satisfied that all the players were cool enough, the player that called the Poser Turn gets to assign a benefit to his team and a new turn is immediately started with the benefit added to the players. I’ve seen players uses this to offset bad initiative rolls at the end of an epic battle with a master villain who just won initiative. One of the players called a Poser Turn and it turned the tide of battle for them changing what could have been a defeat into a cheering victory. Now that is Cool!

November 29, 2016

Why Art of Wuxia!?

Heroes of Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber — Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber

My enthusiasm for wuxia as an art/entertainment form is large enough that most folks don’t ask me this question. Because I seem to enjoy it so much it must be good! Right? But still, it is a very qood question.

First, I think wuxia makes an excellent base for role-playing games. Wuxia books, TV series and movies are filled with perfect examples of heroes fighting villains, of adventuring bands foiling insurmountable evil and dramatic character arcs alongside outstanding action. Watching a single Shaw Brothers movie will give you a metric ton of gaming ideas, from devious plots, overt character examples, ingenious weapons, wicked traps, three dimensional battle sets and awesomely cool action.

As a GM I’ve got plenty of material to draw upon when developing adventures for my players. This works for players too. Simply watch a few movies from the genre and you’ll have a huge number of example character motivations and characteristics to draw upon.

Second, so much of the genre is already familiar to players of fantasy games. Yes, there is much that is different but I can get players to try Art of Wuxia by asking them if they like fantasy RPGs and if they would like to see what it is like with high flying kung fu action mixed in. They smile, join my table and have a darn good time. The genre is much deeper than this, of course, but getting people in the door is not as hard as other genres. At least that is what I find.

Just look at the commonalities of traditional fantasy with the wuxia genre: party of adventurers (check), delving into ancient tombs (check), fighting bad guys (check). If your wuxia has magic and monsters (and many examples do), you can see how similar it is. There are many differences and nuances but that can wait until after you have player characters swinging swords and facing master villains.

Third, the D00Lite rules used by BareBones Fantasy and Covert Ops by DwD Studios is an easy to learn game system with much more interesting combat and character development than you would think of games this size. I can teach the basics of how to play Art of Wuxia in two minutes or less. Yet my veteran players continue to amaze me with their interesting character builds and creative exploits when the action is on. It is a subtle system that I think really shines the more you play it.

Fourth, campaign play is very important to me. I simply must have a game that supports long-term play so that my players and their characters can really come together as a team and they can sink their teeth in a world rich with adventure possibilities. Art of Wuxia supports long term character growth and has many tools for the GM to build adventures, villains, monsters, treasure, traps, magic, poisons and more. It also has a setting laid out in broad terms to be developed as play continues. The setting can also be ignored for one entirely of the GM’s making. It doesn’t matter.

Fifth and final reason is that the game rules support cinematic wuxia action very very well. Player characters can wade through unimportant NPCs and have amazing battles with other kung fu experts and face off against master villains with fists, swords and spells! The game uses a press-your-luck system where defense is an action. The more offensive you take things the less you’ll have for defense. This aligns perfectly with wuxia action.

So why Art of Wuxia!? It is a game that has many good adventure sources to draw upon, ease of entry to those familiar with fantasy RPGs, a rules system that is easy to learn supports campaign play, and the action is simply beautiful!

We are currently well into testing all aspects of campaign play and the game is shaping up very nicely.