Wuxia

>Buddhism, Daoism, Confusianism, or one of the many different folk beliefs?

I mean, with Chinese mythology, it's all one and the same, basically.

Technically, Confusianism is philosophy on proper statesmanship/socioeconomics, no?

Correct, though it's less about economics and more about gentlemanly behavior and social propiety.

On the subject of ancient chinese philosophies, I read Bokko a while back (also not Wuxia), which introduced me to Mohism. I still don't got all of it down, but I believe it's all about rationalism and meritocracy?

Most I remember is that Mohist thinkers where also excelent siege engineers, and had a disdain for the fine arts, because it didn't benefit the well being of the working classes

Yes, Mohism was basically meritocratic thought and promotions based purely on competence rather then lineage or seniority.
Mo Di himself was a strongly rationalist person and took great interest in the sciences and mathematics, which are useful applications in siege warfare.

There's an unusual and amusing Hong Kong-made TV series about a HKPD officer who ends up traveling back in time to the Warring States Era (somehow) and using his modern-day knowledge of both history and sciences to advance himself in a local kingdom to stay safe while trying his damndest not to alter history too much.
To explain away his modern viewpoint and strong backround in science and advanced education he basically passes himself off as a Mohist.

Mo Di's distain for art actually probably stems from his strong dislike of Confucianist philosophy.
Confucianism ALSO believes strongly in learning and education (hence the Scholar-Bureaucracy), but the stuff you're supposed to be educated in is stuff like poetry, literature, and moralist Confucian writings and stuff like that, the skills of a Junzi, the ideal Confucian gentleman.

Mo Di basically thought that this was a huge waste of time because it promoted people who basically equated skilled statecraft with philosophy and poetry knowledge even though as Mo Di saw it they were completely unrelated to anything involving statecraft at all. Instead he believed leaders should have a strong knowledge of practical sciences to make better informed decisions about matters of state for more efficient governing rather then waste time with literature and poetry.

That sounds pretty amusing. I wonder what China would be like today, if Mohism became the dominant philisophy post-Warring States, instead of Confucianism or Legalism. I want to say government would've been more stable and effective, but most of the Chinese dynasties held out for 200+ years, which is still impressive.

Wikipedia states otherwise, but they don't link a source, so it may have been an improper translation/interpretation.

As they say it:
"Mozi views aesthetics as nearly useless. Unlike Confucius, he holds a distinctive repulsion to any development in ritual music and the fine arts. Mozi takes some whole chapters named "Against Music" (非樂) to discuss this. Though he mentions that he does enjoy and recognize what is pleasant, he sees them of no utilization in terms of governing, or of the benefit of common people. Instead, since development of music involves man's power, it reduces production of food; furthermore, appreciation of music results in less time for administrative works. This overdevelopment eventually results in shortage of food, as well as anarchism. This is because manpower will be diverted from agriculture and other fundamental works towards ostentations. Civilians will eventually imitate the ruler's lusts, making the situation worse."

Essentially: fine art is bad, because it takes a lot of skill and time, which could've been invested in effective government or agriculture.

If you heavily redifine what constitutes difficult terrain instead of impassable terrain, because wuxia jumping, and refluff the classes as martial arts styles, 4e works VERY well for Wuxia, arguably better than it works for Tolkienian fantasy.

I just realized that most of the developed world is extremely unethical according to Mohism.

I think Mo Di's philosophy has an equal number of holes in it as Confucianism, even if it's strongly appealing to a rational mind.
Both philosophies are concerned with finding the perfect method to artificially create competent rulers and governers through a codified education system of sorts.
I think this is an inherently flawed argument; while Mohist philosophy would certainly make people more inclined towards rational scientific thought it bears no relevence to analyzing the character and personality of a person, and an educated and rational shitty person will STILL be a shitty person and often a shitty ruler too.

I've noticed a recurring thing in history that skilled statesmen are found literally in every culture in equal numbers, so clearly there isn't a "one way" to do it correctly and how good a ruler or statesman a person is is dependent entirely on his character and temperament rather then some half-based philosophy designed to find the "winning formula" to the problem.

Yeah, Vancian casting and D&D magic in general is really really terrible for wuxia fluffwise unless you basically say "okay, so in my world kungfu works exactly like D&D magic".
It's not that kungfu can't do magical things, it's that the magical things someone can accomplish with exotic kungfu tend to only work in a very narrow fashion because they mastered a particular skill related to that magical thing.

Example; if a Wizard D&D wuxia character could cast Burning Hands, then if it was being true to proper wuxia themes then he could then cast ONLY fire-based spells and nothing else as the esoteric martial art he learned had to do with generating and manipulating fire. Each new "thing" he could do with magic would literally be an entirely new martial arts style, and for each one he knew the more powerful overall he would get in literally every other sense due to how kungfu knowledge works in wuxia.

It's that way for most philosophies.
Generally the more elaborate and detailed the philosophy is the less applicable it is in real-life situations because it relies on the entires world bending over backwards to accommodate your beliefs, because in real life there's a lot of situations philosophies just don't adequately cover due to the broad variety of things that can happen.

Source; my old philosophy professor in a moment of shocking honesty to his students.

>Vancian casting
4e doesn't use Vancian magic, it's one of the reason people who don't like it don't like it. PC's have "techniques" that they can use over and over, "techniques" that they can only use once in a while, and "techniques" that they only pull out as trump cards... you know, like Wuxia.

>It's not that kungfu can't do magical things, it's that the magical things someone can accomplish with exotic kungfu tend to only work in a very narrow fashion because they mastered a particular skill related to that magical thing.
Yeah... combat. Once again, the narrow focus on combat, and specifically what PC's can do in combat is another reason people who don't like 4e don't like 4e, but why it's good for Wuxia.

>Example; if a Wizard D&D wuxia character could cast Burning Hands, then if it was being true to proper wuxia themes then he could then cast ONLY fire-based spells and nothing else as the esoteric martial art he learned had to do with generating and manipulating fire.
Picking a single elemental type, and refluffing all your powers to that element, and in some cases even changing the elemental type is not at all uncommon in the world of refluffing 4e... like at all.

While I agree 4e can work, I'd still recommend , as long as you've got a group who are prepared to put in the work to learn it. LotW is a rather arcane system, even without the godawful editing job in the core book. Still, I love it, it's my favourite RPG to date.

>Yeah... combat.
No actually, but your other point covers what I was taking about anyway.
I guess Healing Surges sort of reduces the problem of certain classes being too easy to kill for powerful martial arts practitioners too, so I see how it could work.

BEST GAME; WORST EDITING

EVER

It's predecessor, Weapons of the Gods, was actually even worse.
Thank Rebecca Borgstrom for that.

...

I have a softspot for Borgstrom/Moran games. Sure, they're nigh on incomprehensible, but once you get your head around their poetic metaphor and twisted sense of internal logic, they're really unique and beautiful bits of design.

...

The ripple calculations on this are off, but the rest of it is accurate. I think that's something they changed between the prerelease version and the published one.

She amuses me because she almost seems to be a walking exemplar of the stereotype that women who write fantasy fiction can only write in overwrought purple prose.

Except instead of using a three hundred words to describe a character in a bit of fiction she uses fifty to describe a bit of game rules she could describe using ten or less if she just got to the point already.
It's kind of weird to read and makes me laugh a bit.

Well I DO feel guilty. Thanks for that.
Dick.
As a fan of it, yes.

That's not really the problem, though. It has the right number of words or whatever, it's just no properly organized at all.

I've seen various games that you can always find a version of Japan and China.... But hardly anywhere else in that part of the world.

Anyone know of games that take place in some version of say.... Korea? Vietnam? Mongolia?

Well, yes, but it's a philosophy that rapidly began to permeate all layers of Chinese society, and has since gotten just as wrapped up in their mythology as all those aforementioned religions. The Jade Emperor and the Heavenly Bureacracy are often treated as being the ideals of Confucian leaders.

Came here to say this

Try Google next time, fuck face

>What movies, series and books would you recommend someone to immerse themselves in the genre?

As a ten years practitioner and teacher, I was actually surprised to find Kung Fu Panda to have better martial arts than many others in genre fiction.

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If you're okay with a modern setting, the Iron Fist series of comics (especially "The Immortal Iron Fist" by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction) is a lot of fun.

That movie is legitimately a fantastic Wuxia movie. The second one even moreso.

Punisher, what are you doing in an Iron Fist outfit?

It's a previous Iron Fist, who served in WWI and channels his Chi into his bullets to make them hit like cannonballs and do various other magical things.

She's vaguely self aware of the absurdity of her design style at least, and I can't help but love some of her setting writing for the mythology blends they provide.

Well, at least she knows.

OP, the Four Constables manhua is an excellent inspiration source for wuxia action and ridiculously convoluted villain plots and storylines.

>It's too anime REEEEEEE!!!!!!

I'm imagining a western where some cowboy learns kung fu and does what this Iron Fist does but naturally you'll have the people who'll say it's too anime and piss and shit themselves freaking out over it.

Orson Rand (the gun-fu Iron Fist) actually compares what he's doing to shooting arrows infused with his power (something a prior Iron Fist did), just in more modern context.

That said, the way Danny Rand's Iron Fist powers work on a metaphysical level is pretty different from actual wuxia (actually sort of the opposite of it in some ways) and it's basically ended up at this point being a form of magic that happens to be accompanied by kung-fu moves.

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Blood and Steel for some good Wuxia. It's really good

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Is there anyone running a LotW game that is looking for players? I've been trying to find a game for ages, but either no one has heard of the system or the group is full...

Bump

LotW games actively recruiting are rare, but they do happen. I've seen a couple in the #LotW channel on Sup/tg/, although there's been a bit of a drought recently.

Thanks for pointing this one out. Already starting volume 4 now.

Question: does China have any traditions pertaining to wandering monks/pilgrimmage? Most things that turn up for me are Japanese Zen monks and Yamabushi.

And now I've completely forgotten this thing exists.

>daringdoo
It's "derring–do"

What is this thing?

It's a monk's spade, or at least a more weaponized version of the original tool.

Travelling Buddhist monks were said to carry these. It was used as a spade to perform improptu burials, should they encounter a body; swung as a staff to fend off attackers; or scare off predators by threatening the animal's throat with the crescent.

youtube.com/watch?v=nqeA18VgBS4

I get that, and I ever appreciate that. I was just making fun of the autist who get all butt hurt about everything that isn't just normal mcnormalson swinging a sword calling it anime as if it were a bad thing. I would love to have a character like the gun wielding Iron Fist but imagine the ass rage you'd see if you ever tried to put something like this in D&D

And there is The Dragon Poll, its based in Legend of Wulin but with some Cortex Plus throw in the mix and a better editor.

drivethrurpg.com/product/164898/The-Dragon-Pool

That was a great series.

can you go into more detail about this, what parts stand out to you as being good examples of martial arts?

How does Dragon Pool differ from Legends of the Wulin? Is the addition of the Cortex Plus system like a refinement of the original rules letter, or more like a complete overhaul?

Oh thank god there's a wuxia thread already.

Anyway, I just watched Kung Fu Panda trilogy and got hyped for the genre. I got that the Wulin system is the best but what I wanted to ask is:
What are the genre staples? What should I consider when making a setting?

My impression is that to make the world work,
1. I should forget about the common sense because Wuxia is basically a world of gimmick heroes doing gimmicky things
2. The character development is crucial for the plot
3. Each story has Its own main motif in the form of a particular weakness (for example, being unsure of my own strong or weak points, depending on a single particular technique). Ultimately, everything revolves about that

Thoughts, advice would be much appreciated

bump

In essence, Wuxia is a violent soap opera, set in a society separate, but parallel to the lives of ordinary people. This shadow community is known as the Jianghu (Rivers and Lakes), and operates on different morals than the conventional society, placing special emphasis on strength, courage, honour and loyalty. The people in this world live in a tangled web of loyalties, rivalries and, grudge enemies. Also, they may not always act in their best interest, being driven by their larger-than-life emotions/desires and whatever their code of honour demands.

The intro paragraphs of Legends of the Wulin give a clear and concise description of common tropes and themes of the genre.

*grudges and enemies.

Phone posting.

I know tv tropes raises a lot of red flags here, but it also has a pretty decent description of the genre.

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Wuxia

Does anyone else find the concept of the celestial bureaucracy really interesting? Especially the idea that it's possible to resign meaning they have to find another spirit or immortal to take over the position which raises a lot of questions: what's the application process like? what qualifications are needed to be, for instance, god of fire?

I feel like you could make a roleplaying game out of players being minor gods in the celestial bureaucracy trying to do their jobs, keep the emperor happy, and generally stop the world from going to shit.

Bump

youtube.com/watch?v=XC1tyEeLVpM

You've reminded me of an NPC follower in Jade Empire.

Jade Empire is Wuxia by way of pre-EA Bioware. Midway through the game, your party is joined by a Celestial Bureaucrat named Zin Bu, the Magical Abacus. Originaly, his job was to calculate the karmic consequences of the PC. PC does what PCs do, and he was demoted because he couldn't keep up with the workload you produce. Now he works as your personal vendor. He also lets slip that one of your party members has a whole department dedicated to calculating the consequences of his exploits.

I wish I had that screencap of that storytimed thread about the PCs all being minor gods in this kind of divine court drama that resulted in them trying to wage war against the major gods. The only thing everyone really had in common was that they died in the mortal realm, they respawned in the hall of immortals, and beyond that they basically picked a vague power like super strength or peerless martial skill or manipulating desire or something.

>Jade Empire

REMINDER OF THE BEST SIDEQUEST IN THE GAME

youtube.com/watch?v=HccNAt20LlQ

>I'm sorry, I have to let you go.
SUCH POETIC JUSTICE.

>"I'm sorry, I have to let you go."
>"You can't be the one to let Aishi the Mournful Blade walk free. That would cast undeserved suspicion on you, and *that* crime I will not commit."
>"Some things are stronger than anger, Spirit Monk. Love is one of them."

It's like I can feel my heart ahegaoing.

Maybe not as emotional satisfying, but I got a thing for emotional burials/peaceful passing on etc.
youtube.com/watch?v=eYNs8vqvwmQ

One final bump before bed.

>Play Age of Wushu for a few years off and on
>Come to realize that wuxia is best described as "the internet, but with kung fu"

Seriously. You know the kind of autism that people sometimes display online? Like if you post on a conventional registered forum and you're some newbie who disagrees with the King Ultradick who's been shitposting since 1998 with a post count in the millions, and now suddenly he's out for blood for this unimaginable slight against his honor?

Or when gankers will rub your face in shit by killing you over and over and over for no other reason than because they can?

Or when you'll randomly do a dungeon together with a guy, chat it up, and suddenly you're martial bros who hang out every day and support eachother through thick and thin?

It's almost unnerving how close the parallels are when I started thinking about them.

I typed that up so I could post something besides "bump"

I can dig that.

Does anyone actually have a game with a slot or two open. East Asian everything intrigues me and I always wanted to see how the Martial Brotherhoods of other cultures act when conflicting.

Great point, senpai!
Autism is autism - be it in the martial arts, or the internets, or anywhere else. The autistic fucks prey upon the noobs in their desperate attempts to one-up each other. It's a human thing, to be honest..

>Mongolia
Wind on the Steppes

Neat!

Practical, AND useful for some self defense. I like it.

Forgotten Realms/Kara-Tur has Korea and Mongolia, but that's D&D.

If the Jianghu is the internet a relatively closed off self governing society existing parallel to normal society
Then what would the Jianghu version of Veeky Forums be

The Yun Clan.

Bump

I'm a classic casual scum as far as Wuxia is concerned, I've only really gotten into Louis Cha with Return of the Condor Heroes, The Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre Chronicles and a little of what I only know as Tian Long Ba Bu. And if Journey to the West counts as Wuxia to a certain degree, sure, that too. I've loved it since I was a child though, used to watch the Mandarin programmes all the time. It's more equivalent to comic book heroes in my opinion though.

A little off-topic and not very teeg but I was hoping someone interested in Wuxia might be able to link to source for Damon Albarn's Monkey: Journey to the West?
I'm desperate. Can't find anything.
Tell me this doesn't look amazing.

Well, this is useful.

I want to get into wuxia. Not just the basic trappings, I want to have first hand knowledge of the genre.

What books should I read? What series or films should I watch? I know about Louis Cha and his Condor Heroes series, but there must be more authors other than him.

So. What do I read/watch?

Oh! As I recall, Shui Hu Juan (Water Margin) is pretty deep in Wuxia. There there's what I mentioned in , and as a Chinese person I'm pretty happy to get behind Jade Empire too.

There's also a Singapore/Malaysian manga artist who created his own oc Wuxia series called The Celestial Zone that I was exposed to. He also adapted Return of the Condor Heroes to comic form.

>Question: does China have any traditions pertaining to wandering monks/pilgrimmage? Most things that turn up for me are Japanese Zen monks and Yamabushi.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West

The amusing thing is that her most recent solo game, Chuubo, has a bunch of it basically written less in big prose and more like she was talking to the reader straight up. The entire thing feels like a conversation. It's circuitous not because she uses a lot of overwrought wording, but because it's written like she was talking right there, with examples and comments and stuff.

It makes it a nightmare to re-find rules, but it makes actually reading the book the first time a lot less heavy than a lot of other wordy systems.

I mean, compare to Exalted 3, which is also circuitous as fuck but IS overwrought and reading it feels like trudging through molasses.

>noble heroes from all social classes
>they fight evil, be it a local bully or corrupt governments
>Kung fu masters, monks, warriors, princesses, thieves, beggars, merchants, healers, craftsmen, priests, etc are all trappings of fantastic Zhongguo
>An ideal wuxia story has intricate relationships of honor, love, loyalty, and even hate between people
>Government officials will mostly be corrupt, lazy, incompetent, or unjust. Hence the need for Xia to solve problems with force, only with the code of chivalry holding them in check. They often must live as outlaws, righting wrongs wherever they go.
>There's probably gonna be an evil martial arts academy or teacher dedicated to pumping out assholes for various purposes
>Putting down very powerful enemies is tragic because the world has lost a very talented individual who made the poor choice to do evil
>Bros often become "sworn brothers" after going through deep shit together
>For some odd reason a baddie grabbing a girl by the wrist often magically turns her into a helpless crying damsel
>Edgy brooding heroes may sometimes kill an innocent in a fit of angst, cue more brooding
>Highly dangerous forbidden techniques often come at the price of using up insane deadly amounts of your own chi
>Loyalty is always tested, ALWAYS. Whether it's between a parent and a lover, or a friend vs social superior. Confucianism says its okay to kill yourself to escape choosing. Great drama fuel. Think Byakuya from bleach being caught between loyalty to his parents wishes and those of his wife.
>Bad girls nearly always turn good after getting thrashed by the hero and cured with chivalrous dick
>Betraying your master nearly always makes you the BBEG, you don't fuck with social piety in magical Asia
>Evil eunuchs, no more needs to be said
>The emperor is ALWAYS the good guy, but his advisors keep important shit from him which could be sorted out easily otherwise

>Lots of villains seek immortality for all the wrong reasons
>Cutting your hair (or refusing to cut it) has enormous importance
>Shounen tier training arcs where the hero learns the "super secret dangerous badass ultimate technique of destiny" in a week when it allegedly takes decades
>You have to master both body and mind to use "magic". Not in the book learnin western sense either.
>Old masters often become lonely due to their sheer level of skill. They might train the youngins to be their sparing partners. Evil masters may act out their genius loneliness by picking fights with some strong youth to train him into their "equal"
>Evil pupils are a good source of action too
>Wuxia is VERY idealistic and light hearted, take your game of shit elsewhere
>Tsunderes are everywhere, bonus points if they use fighting a hero as an excuse to get close to him
>Monsters are pretty much the pets of the gods left to go feral
>dragons are benevolent water gods and can play a role like LOTR eagles

Thanks!

Not precisely true about the Emperor.
If he's a later-era Dynasty (Song and after) he could be decent, but he's also equally likely to be portrayed as an incompetent with no real skill at ruling, especially where the Ming Dynasty is concerned.
For Emperor's and rulers of eras when China is fractured into multiple warring states, there's a REALLY high chance of one of more of them being martial badasses themselves, and an about equal chance of at least one being an incredible asshole too since basically the various kings and Emperorers in these periods were just warlords with more power than their peers.

>Wuxia is VERY idealistic and light hearted, take your game of shit elsewhere

More on this; it's not that there's no politics or social manipulation in wuxia, it's that usually there's next to no moral ambiguity about who is the bad guy and who is the good guy.
Since Chinese society is all about acting proper and the Wulin is all about acting proper or someone beats you the fuck up over it there's LOTS of convoluted social manipulation a going on in certain scenes where characters trade words like they trade blows, testing each other to and trying to get each other to back down.
It gets pretty ridiculous sometimes as they play these Death Note-estate word games with each other to get one person to reveal their weaknesses or secrets without revealing anything themselves or forcing themselves into a social corner.

Arguably this happens more then actual FIGHTS do in wuxia novels because frequently characters go up against characters of near-equal or even greater strength then themselves so they don't want to risk a direct confrontation.

>Shounen tier training arcs where the hero learns the "super secret dangerous badass ultimate technique of destiny" in a week when it allegedly takes decades

More elaboration;
The thing that's noticeably different from shounen stuff is how the training itself is percieved to work. In shounen very frequently the training is just shown to be intense physical labor and workouts and doing kungfu moves, but in wuxia doing JUST the physical part of kungfu means you're basically doing a third of the necessary work, because any idiot can just pump up his muscles over time and it's not even that hard to do it, otherwise there'd be millions of Xia all over the place instead if the relative scarcity of powerful ones you see.
Instead you need to work on your Qi cultivation (special breathing techniques) as much (or more, depending on the school) as your muscles, which looks to most folks like just sitting there and meditating. You also need to study hard and understand the philosophical theories and applications behind your school's techniques and forms.

Frequently when a character's talent in martial arts is remarked upon his intelligence is brought up; this is because a more intelligent person can understand the theories behind the style in question and extrapolate more uses out of them then a less clever man. VERY few wuxia heroes are shounen-style "idiot heroes" (with at least one notable exception), and most are highly intelligent and analytical people who are at worst somewhat naive about people's intentions or motivations rather then mule-headed dunces.
They sometimes seem moronic when it comes to the advances of the opposite sex, but to a large degree this is just Confucian ideals at work; you NEVER talk about sex or open relationships or approach the fairer sex until you're both married, and even then only in private and away from everyone else, including family. Even physical nearness is a fairly strong social taboo.

>Tsunderes are everywhere, bonus points if they use fighting a hero as an excuse to get close to him

More elaboration; tsundere is basically automatically the default female character archetype in wuxia.
There might be better behaved or more "proper" heroines, but these characters will only rarely ever get anywhere with the hero and frequently will instead fall in love with and marry side characters. This is mostly because Jin Yong's novels set the standard for wuxia back in the 60's and he clearly had a thing for that archetype; one notable protagonist primary love interest is basically a villain and starts manipulating him and enacting more and more schemes just as an excuse to spend more time around him.