Wuxia tabletop games!

[Leveret Deity]

For you pen and paper fans out there, let's talk about tabletop wuxia games!

I shall quickly list all the "big games" that I know of, for those who'd like to see what I'm talking about!:
- Legends of the Wulin
- Weapons of the Gods (predecessor to the above)
- Qin: The Warring States
- Feng Shui (1 and 2!)
- Flying Swordsman/Dragon Fist (Dungeons & Dragons, wuxia-style)
- Basic Roleplaying Celestial Empire
- Wushu (very simple game)
- Tianxia: Blood, Silk, and Jade
- And way back in the day there was a free Outlaws of the Water Margin game that looked promising. The game is incomplete, but all the rules are available.

I think one of the most impressive efforts to capture a wuxia feeling in tabletop gaming is Legends of the Wulin, which I believe is posted in China. It's a successor to a system based on the Weapons of the Gods comic. But fights are known to take forever, and the Secret Arts are very confusing to me and a bunch of others.

So has anyone here tried a wuxia tabletop game? What was your experience? Do you have a favorite not mentioned above?

EDIT: Oh, I forgot! As a shameless plug for an extremely interesting upcoming tabletop RPG, I recommend looking up "Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate" which is inspired by Shaw Brothers movies and the works of Jin Yong! It's due later this summer -- I'm very excited to run it!

[darkcser]

For you pen and paper fans out there, let's talk about tabletop wuxia games!

I shall quickly list all the "big games" that I know of, for those who'd like to see what I'm talking about!:
- Legends of the Wulin
- Weapons of the Gods (predecessor to the above)
- Qin: The Warring States
- Feng Shui (1 and 2!)
- Flying Swordsman/Dragon Fist (Dungeons & Dragons, wuxia-style)
- Basic Roleplaying Celestial Empire
- Wushu (very simple game)
- Tianxia: Blood, Silk, and Jade
- And way back in the day there was a free Outlaws of the Water Margin game that looked promising. The game is incomplete, but all the rules are available.

I think one of the most impressive efforts to capture a wuxia feeling in tabletop gaming is Legends of the Wulin, which I believe is posted in China. It's a successor to a system based on the Weapons of the Gods comic. But fights are known to take forever, and the Secret Arts are very confusing to me and a bunch of others.

So has anyone here tried a wuxia tabletop game? What was your experience? Do you have a favorite not mentioned above?

EDIT: Oh, I forgot! As a shameless plug for an extremely interesting upcoming tabletop RPG, I recommend looking up "Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate" which is inspired by Shaw Brothers movies and the works of Jin Yong! It's due later this summer -- I'm very excited to run it!

I've tried several times over the years to run a wuxia themed pen and paper game but was never overly successful. Out of the list you have above I've tried Dragon Fist, and have seen some of the others. Most of the time though they felt like they didn't truly grasp the essence or theme of wuxia and instead based everything on HK cinema with rather stereotypical concepts and "4th wall" terms like "wire fu".

The closest playable feel I was able to achieve was with Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords back in the hey day of DnD 3.5. Thematically it was more a fusion of wuxia and anime-inspired fighting (which shows a lot of wuxia influences to begin with) but it was a really interesting system to play with. It's mix of stances, boosts, attacks and defenses really made combat fun and varied. The other issue with wuxia is that there are plot conventions which are inherent to the genre that everyone has to nominally buy into for it to work, and if you just rope together a group of random rpg players new to the genre it will seem very odd to them. The whole school/faction/senior/junior thing can be foreign to many classic rpg players.

I've also tried wuxia attempts with GURPS and the Palladium systems but eventually abandoned those due to either the sheer amount of work required to balance or integrate them.

You can probably find some rants from me on wuxia rpgs on this forum from years past.

[Leveret Deity]

I've tried several times over the years to run a wuxia themed pen and paper game but was never overly successful. Out of the list you have above I've tried Dragon Fist, and have seen some of the others. Most of the time though they felt like they didn't truly grasp the essence or theme of wuxia and instead based everything on HK cinema with rather stereotypical concepts and "4th wall" terms like "wire fu".

The closest playable feel I was able to achieve was with Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords back in the hey day of DnD 3.5. Thematically it was more a fusion of wuxia and anime-inspired fighting (which shows a lot of wuxia influences to begin with) but it was a really interesting system to play with. It's mix of stances, boosts, attacks and defenses really made combat fun and varied. The other issue with wuxia is that there are plot conventions which are inherent to the genre that everyone has to nominally buy into for it to work, and if you just rope together a group of random rpg players new to the genre it will seem very odd to them. The whole school/faction/senior/junior thing can be foreign to many classic rpg players.

I've also tried wuxia attempts with GURPS and the Palladium systems but eventually abandoned those due to either the sheer amount of work required to balance or integrate them.

You can probably find some rants from me on wuxia rpgs on this forum from years past.

I suffer from a similar problem of always trying to try out a game, and never really succeeding at anything really... special. I agree that the problem is trying to find a good system. I can't stand 3.5 personally, but I'm glad you had something somewhat successful with it!

I've actually only tried Feng Shui and Qin: The Warring States and the first edition of Hong Kong Action Theater (which I forgot to mention). Of the three, I know glorious wuxia magic can happen somewhere around HKAT's discrete "wire-fu move" system, but that's really the only part of the system that I appreciate. The rest feels too... Saturday morning.

Basically the system goes like... here's a list of effects and restrictions the move can take on. Effects make the move cost more in Chi points, and obviously the reverse goes for restrictions. Very simple, but that's pretty ideal to me, at least if I have to make my own techniques.

By the by, if you liked the idea behind Dragon Fist, check out Flying Swordsmen. It's a retro-clone that's got, in my opinion, a way better setting. But it doesn't feel like wuxia. It feels... a bit more like Bridge of Birds, I think.

I did not get the Palladium stuff when I tried to read it. Too many 3-letter acronyms! GURPS is eh; it's a good realistic system but it falters at cinematic play in my opinion. Haven't tried either, though.

I will now seek thine prior rants for further insight!

[Greyhawk Grognard]

For you pen and paper fans out there, let's talk about tabletop wuxia games!

I shall quickly list all the "big games" that I know of, for those who'd like to see what I'm talking about!:
- Legends of the Wulin
- Weapons of the Gods (predecessor to the above)
- Qin: The Warring States
- Feng Shui (1 and 2!)
- Flying Swordsman/Dragon Fist (Dungeons & Dragons, wuxia-style)
- Basic Roleplaying Celestial Empire
- Wushu (very simple game)
- Tianxia: Blood, Silk, and Jade
- And way back in the day there was a free Outlaws of the Water Margin game that looked promising. The game is incomplete, but all the rules are available.

I think one of the most impressive efforts to capture a wuxia feeling in tabletop gaming is Legends of the Wulin, which I believe is posted in China. It's a successor to a system based on the Weapons of the Gods comic. But fights are known to take forever, and the Secret Arts are very confusing to me and a bunch of others.

So has anyone here tried a wuxia tabletop game? What was your experience? Do you have a favorite not mentioned above?

EDIT: Oh, I forgot! As a shameless plug for an extremely interesting upcoming tabletop RPG, I recommend looking up "Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate" which is inspired by Shaw Brothers movies and the works of Jin Yong! It's due later this summer -- I'm very excited to run it!

At the risk of another shameless plug, you might want to try Golden Scroll of Justice, which was just released today: http://www.rpgnow.com/product/165259...oll-of-Justice. It's a supplement for use with other RPGs, and it's currently #1 on the RPGNow bestseller list.