I was wondering - has anyone here played Qin: The Warring States?

If so, what's your opinion on it? Is it any good?

I own and have played Qin a couple times. I don't have time to write a detailed review on it, but I'm happy to give some input if I can. Is there something specific you'd like to know about?

Overall, it's a good fun game, but it's definitely pretty locked into what it is. In other words, the game is meant to be played in a certain way and as long as you are happy with that (or something not too far from it) you'll probably enjoy it, but if you try to deviate too much from the original intent you'll find the system isn't really built to support a very flexible approach. Does that make sense?

Yes :) But what is the "intended way", then? Elaborate, please :)

Qin is intended to be a game of historical fantasy, specifically set in the Warring States period.

If you try to ignore the fantasy part, you'll be missing a huge chunk of the game, since you'll miss all the Daoist abilities which is like an entire chapter worth of the mechanics/abilities, as well as a significant chunk of the archetypes. Additionally, the combat system isn't really robust enough (IMO) to make it very interesting just making a straight combat game. You'll find yourself rehashing the same character types fairly quickly as a result.

If you try to ignore the time period, for example if you want to make a Three Kingdoms era game, you'll find the combat options aren't really powerful enough to accurately simulate the kind of high powered stories that are typically part and parcel of the characters from that era/storylines.

If you try to go with a straight wuxia type of game, you'll find that there is a limit to the number of combat options, styles, and techniques, and no easy way to houserule your own together. So again, you end up with a lot of recycled concepts.

Now if you play in the time period, you'll find lots of great setting material and a nicely detailed background to help you play. If you allow a mix of characters and concepts there should be more than enough abilities to make different and interesting characters without too much overlap.

It's a really fun game if you want to play with that historical fantasy mix in that specific era, and I enjoyed it a lot, to be honest. The problem is finding people who want to play the game as intended; many people want to take it and use it as the basis for a wuxia style of game, and while it CAN be used for that, I think serious fans of wuxia will find themselves disappointed because variety in styles, schools, etc. is a major part of the genre for most people, and the game really isn't built for that. It could be fixed with a lot of house ruling, so YMMV depending on your tolerance for that.

In summary, if you know what you're getting into and you want to play that style of game (historical fantasy, specific setting/period and genre) then you'll probably love it. If you're trying to take it as a baseline with the intent of customizing it to your particular tastes, you may find it difficult and not very rewarding.
This message was last edited by a moderator, as it was off-topic, at 04:00, Tue 24 Nov 2015.

Oh, I'm actually just wondering if the game's worth of purchasing :)

If I may ask: what do you mean by a "straight wuxia game"? I thought that Qin would be exactly that?

Obviously whether it's worth purchasing or not depends on what you intend to do with it, so I hope my analysis was helpful in that regard.

With respect to 'straight wuxia game', I'm referring to a game with an emphasis on the wuxia elements, such as a variety of martial arts styles and techniques, probably a more robust combat system, emphasis on the schools, teachers, and immediate social ties that bind. Examples of this include Tianxia and Weapons of the Gods.

Qin is more of an Asian version of Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire RPG, in that the game tends to involve more interplay between characters across different social strata, up to and including the upper levels of governance of the Warring States. You can still run independent adventures, just like hedge knights in GOT, but GOT is generally designed to involved politics and social interaction between organizations just as much as individual adventures. Qin is generally intended to do the same thing, albeit not to the extent of GOT, but it's really not designed as a wuxia game where the emphasis is on martial arts, individual adventures, contests of martial skill, etc.

I see. Thank you for the information - I admit that I *have* thought that it was more of a martial arts game...

To be clear, you CAN run it that way. The tools are there. However I think that most serious wuxia fans generally would like a variety of martial arts schools, styles, techniques, etc., and while Qin has those elements to a certain extent, my personal opinion is that I doubt it has enough of those elements to satisfy someone looking to run a more wuxia oriented game.

Okay, here's a question: what kind of martial arts does this game support? Is the approach there realistic, or is it something more akin to martial artists making enormous leaps, catching dozens of arrows shot at them etc.? Also, are there any distinct schools of martial arts modelled in the game?

BTW. Do you know of other martial arts / wuxia RPGs?

Off the top of my head: Palladium's Ninja's and Superspies has a lot of martial art / wuxia mechanics in it as I recall.

The approach has varying degrees of fantastic wuxia elements. For example qinggong (Lightfoot) skills exist, and there are some fantastic uses of chi for sure, particularly as it pertains to battling demons and spirits and such. However it's more like pushing the envelope of what humanity might be capable of (and even a little beyond) as opposed to over the top superhuman abilities like catching dozens of arrows that you might see in a game like Exalted.

No distinct schools of martial arts, although each weapon essentially is its own 'school', in that you buy techniques for the weapons themselves, thus forming your own 'school' of sorts.

As noted in a previous post, Tianxia: Blood and Silk, Weapons of the Gods, and Legends of the Wulin are some wuxia-centered RPGs.

You know, this actually makes me interested in the game some more :) I'm not really too keen of over-the-top depictions of martial arts... For instance, the movie Hero, with stuff like two warriors cutting through a whole army or people bouncing across the surface of the lake? A bit too much...



What about unarmed combat? How many skills and techniques are there for it?



Which of them are good? Which of them are cinematic? Is Tianxia good?

It's definitely not too-over-the-top. I mean, there's Lightfoot skill and some other staples of the genre, but it's more 'master level parkour' than it is Hero's 'I can walk and fight and jump on water'.

Unarmed combat is treated as a 'weapon' in that it has its own techniques available to it, at approximately the same number as weapons. It's certainly viable, but more realistic in that because its damage output is severely lagging compared to weapons, you're not likely to get the unarmed master who can take on eight guys with swords with his bare hands and make it look easy.

Weapons of the Gods is fun, but only if you have the Companion sourcebook and access to the Million Style Manual to make your own styles. The rules and prose are VERY hard to understand because it's just written/explained badly at some key points. Definitely over the top though. You can whack someone casually and send them flying 50 yards without a problem, so...yeah.

Never actually played Legends of the Wulin, it's the successor to Weapons of the Gods but the rules are even harder to understand and more nonsensical. It does a great job with the fluff/feel of the genre though.

Likewise never actually played Tianxia, but it's a Fate Core hack, so if you like Fate then you'll probably like Tianxia. Very nicely put together, they do a lot of the heavy lifting for you mechanically so if you're familiar with Fate it'll probably be easy to slide right into.

I decided to reply to your question from the Christmas thread here, WinterRat, so that we avoid thread hijack :)

Overall, as I mentioned... I'm reading the Qin rulebook these days. The system seems simple enough, although I haven't delved into the rules too much. The setting is... a bit unforgiving, as it's based on history - and, of course, human life in ancient times was usually unforgiving. Coming up with female PCs seems especially hard - it seems to me that every female PC is going to end up at least a bit of a rebel. Of course, that's realistic - a historical game set in ancient Greece would be similarly hard for female PCs, too.

Overall, the setting seems... dark. Somehow, I'm not gripped by it at the moment... Hm.