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I love Wuxia and Xianxia as themes for games. There are so few being run with them. Though, I think I'm a bit tired of PBtA, unfortunately. I've been in quite a lot of them lately with different genre skins attached. I'd probably be more interested if there was a different system attached. I've heard good things about Badass Kung Fu Demigods, but I do recall playing in other systems several years ago that were streamlined for the Wuxia experience.
Are you generally a fan of PBTA? If so, I strongly suggest checking out the rules at the link I posted.
I will be the first to admit I had my doubts about PBTA and wuxia. However, there are a couple of ideas that are being implemented that I am very excited to try out.
1) I really like how they divided up opponents into three categories: mooks, rivals, and superiors (exact terms may differ) and how they use the PBTA to represent the different scales of conflicts. It manages to be efficient to run yet true to the genre at the same time, making good use of wuxia tropes. It also does the best job of any attempt I've seen at addressing the widely different power levels of those three levels of adversaries.
2) One key element of wuxia is that no matter who you are, you're good at martial arts. Doctor, courtier, scholar, everyone is kung fu fighting! One problem a lot of systems have is that if you want your character to excel at something non-combat related, their combat skills suffer. I think the way they utilized the PBTA engine addresses this rather nicely, so everyone can be good at fighting and still do other things as well.
3) I think character creation and the playbooks do a good job of tying the characters into the world, which is a fairly standard feature of PBTA. I mention this because I have played a variety of other wuxia games that don't do this as well, in my opinion.
4) I like the PBTA engine for PBP in particular, because I think it is possible to actually run combats in an efficient manner. One major problem with most wuxia games in PBP is that they require a lot of back and forth between player and GM, and it simply isn't feasible to resolve combat in a timely fashion, even if people are posting every day. And given the amount of combat that happens in the genre, that's a real problem. Allowing combat to resolve itself in one roll means we can actually stay true to the genre and have a lot of conflict without the game dying in the first fight scene.
5) I think the system and playbooks in general really do a nice job if integrating many genre tropes and themes; it just
feels like wuxia.
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I will admit to one major concern with the system, specifically the oversimplification of combat. In the rules as written, characters select one of the five elements to be their 'style element', and they use this element for all combat rolls. If the character is injured in their 'style element', they can no longer fight.
I did not like this for a variety of reasons. I can articulate them if you want, but my planned adjustment/house rule to combat is as follows:
- Characters can learn multiple styles, up to one style per element (five maximum). It goes without saying that knowing multiple styles is a well-established genre convention. Same rule applies, if you are injured in an element, you can't use that element's style.
So why learn multiple styles, given that some elements will have higher bonuses than others? Why not just roll your highest attribute all the time?
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Enter Five-Element Theory. Here's a link if you aren't familiar with it (no need to read the whole article, the diagram is the important part):
https://www.chinahighlights.co...ments-philosophy.htm
If you select a style that overcomes your opponent's style (e.g. Your Water Style overcomes your opponent's Fire Style), you roll at Advantage.
If you select a style that is overcome by your opponent's style (e.g. Your Wood Style is being overcome by your opponent's Metal Style), you roll at Disadvantage.
If you select a style that is generated by your opponent's style (e.g. Your Fire Style is generated by your opponent's Wood Style), you roll with +1.
If you select a style that generates your opponent's style (e.g. Your Earth Style generates your opponent's Metal Style), you roll at -1.
Finally, if you use a style that is generated by your previous style choice, you get a cumulative +1 to each successive roll (e.g. You start with Water style. If your next attack roll is a Wood Style, you gain +1 to the roll. If your attack roll after that is a Fire style, you gain +2 to the roll. And so on).
Thematically, it encourages both learning and using a variety of styles.
Mechanically, this adds a strategic element to the game so it's not just picking your largest bonus and rolling the same thing all the time.
It's deep enough that there is no way to 'solve' the system, because there are too many variables (which styles you have, which styles your opponent has, the different base bonuses/penalties you each have to each of your styles).
Even if you both have all five styles with the exact same numbers (extremely unlikely), it still becomes a more complicated version of paper-scissors-rock. You can certainly make educated guesses so it's not just blind chance, but you can never really know for certain.
At the same time, from an execution standpoint it basically boils down to you saying: "I am going to fight with my <Insert Style Name and Element here>."
Then I say "OK your opponent is fighting with <Insert Style Name and Element here>. Roll with <Insert Modifier here>."
Then all you have to do is make the roll and post as you normally would in a PBTA game. Bam! Combat is resolved in one back-and-forth. For really significant fights there might be a few rounds of combat, but each round is resolved in one back-and-forth, which is a very reasonable pace for combat on PBP.
Sorry that was so long. I realize I can't talk anyone into being interested in something they aren't feeling right now, but I did want to explain in a bit more depth some of the things that I find appealing about this system and am interested in trying out. It seems you're both experienced with PBTA, so I thought I'd share a couple things I think this system does particularly well with that engine.
This message was last edited by the user at 01:26, Thu 16 Apr 2020.