I'm running Legends of the Wulin in a few weeks, what am I truly in for?
I have read and half-understood the game (well enough that I made a printer-friendly character sheet with a few things missing from the original), but I want to hear about some of the common pitfalls new GM's face in it.
Should I ban some styles? How should I handle loresheets? How trained should I begin my players for a shorter game?
The game will run for about 4-7 sessions, it's the style our gaming club goes by, steering away from longer games. We might come back to it, but that's not a concern right now.
Any ideas for campaigns that could run for that length?
In terms of core book styles, Heaven's Lightning is the only super OP one to worry about, although Removing Concepts is also bullshit with secret arts attackers. Meanwhile, Fire Sutra can use some love. Thankfully, the Half Burnt Manual fixes both these problems.
As for loresheets, honestly I'd say wing it, be willing to improvise and don't worry too much about the nitty gritty. Fiddling around with the structure and stuff is just a headache in my experience. Just let players invest points in groups or people they find cool and figure out a cool bonus that investment could result in.
I'd also suggest being more structured with Deeds. The way the game puts it, anyone can basically suggest anything be a Deed, which can lead to a lot of stuff happening really fast and really uneven progression. I tend to assign each player one deed per session, taking ideas from the group on what those Deeds should be and using that to guide how I spend their Entanglement.
Starting characters have plenty of options, but an extra 10D might give them some wiggle room. You also need to decide whether or not people can spend Entanglement on Secret Arts- They're technically laid out as and referred to as loresheets, but they're also very potent combat side stuff if you build for it, so whether you let people will affect people who try to build Secret Arts Attackers.
I'd recommend starting your first session with some PvP duels. It's the best way to teach the system. If you have an even number of players they can pair off, if there's one spare you can pit them against an NPC. Learning how rolling dice and the flow of combat works, as well as the idea that the system puts combat at the heart of storytelling, focusing heavily on how interaction in a fight both express and develop their personality, will put your players in good stead for understanding and enjoying the system.
Ian Price
run some practice rounds first to get a feel for it
let the players know that focusing on damage is extremely detrimental
Aiden Perez
Eh, in my experience this isn't entirely true. Focusing on damage at the expense of all else is bad, yes, but good damage alongside decent Strike can be very effective. One on one you can straight up melt people even on low Ripple values, especially if you're using a Massive weapon to ignore armour, while when fighting as a group you're the team finisher- Other people rack up ripples, but you'll be the one getting major conditions or taken outs.
Michael Gomez
Nice, I'll keep these in mind. Gotta check out that Half Burnt Manual. I remembered there was some fanmade expansion that fixed stuff, I just couldn't remember the name.
Starting with PvP sounds like a fun way to teach the game, I will definitely start out with something like that. Thinking about possibly some friendly sparring.
Gotta brush up on the game again, because I remember that some things were pretty convoluted, but hey, this is a pretty good place to start with!
Although I should say I don't actually use most of the detail stuff. I use the idea of Discovery and manipulation of Chi Conditions, but I tend to not follow the exact structures or limitations and just go with what makes sense and feels thematically appropriate, which works fine.
Although, that's something to remember- All your PC's should start out with a Minor Chi Condition of some sort. It'll give them an immediate, tangible understanding of the benefits of their Secret Arts and get them thinking about how they can use Chi Conditions to help themselves or their allies.
I'll also nominally recommend the Wulin Legends homebrew wiki. It's a pretty good resource, but the balance isn't always on point. People like Zechstyr and Sage Genesis are basically always good, and if a style has comments you can usually get a good read on whether it works properly or not.
Luis Bell
Thanks. I really don't jive that well with extremely complex games, but Wulin has a weird kind of thematic logic going on, so I think I can manage.
These explanations really help though. I still have some weeks before it, and the game I have before it is with my own upcoming system, so I have some time to sink my teeth into Wulin before getting into it. Of course, before I sit down to play, I can't really say for sure that I understand the game, because in game it's inevitably different than when read.
Chase Jones
By the way, because I still have some time before the game, should I still add or change something from this sheet?
I think I could do a more conventional thing for the ripples, but other than that?
Jace Flores
Hmm. Overall it looks pretty damn solid, although in addition to a sheet like that you'd probably need a cheat sheet of some description, with reminder text for some of the more complex techniques or secret arts effects. Then again, I guess that's what scribbling notes on the back of the page is for.
Carson Stewart
I will probably let the back of the sheet do that.
Usually I put an "additional notes" to all the sheets, but I wanted to keep this at 2 pages. A third page wouldn't hurt, and probably wouldn't take too long to make.
I'll maybe do something about that before the game.
Austin Thompson
Read the Half-Burnt Manual for errata.
You will have to decide if you want to allow elemental attacks to cause Taken Out results or not.
Cameron Thompson
>but good damage alongside decent Strike can be very effective.
It's not like damage doesn't do anything, it's just a last priority and you have little to no reason to pick a passive bonus to damage over a passive bonus to anything else. For a damage boost to have any relevance it needs to be part of a greater combo, as you said, dependent on certain conditions and on other stats that actually matter.
Same goes for toughness, to an extent.
That said, combining +20 to strike and +25 to damage is a potent combo
Landon Green
It's not actually as much of a big deal as you think, in practice. I've played as and in games with heavy damage and toughness characters and they function just fine as long as they have an at least okay Strike and primary defensive stat.
In super high optimisation games I'm sure they'd fall behind a lot more, but in most situations the difference isn't actually that big, and I've even seen Toughness/Damage people end up with advantages because of people making the assumption that toughness/damage is weak. One unlucky roll and someone with shitty toughness can be taken down in a single hit with a massive damage boost, while having a very high passive toughness can let you perfectly soak an ungodly number of ripples..
Adrian Johnson
Anyone have the half burnt manual to post. Also how is LotW at handling chanbara type games
And... I'm honestly not sure. LotW is very low lethality, high drama, and the social and ideological aspects of each culture don't really line up. You could try, but it would come across quite different to the classic form I think.
Connor Torres
I suppose I should clarify- I agree Damage does nothing without a Strike value, but once you hit +10 or +15 passive strike, and have a +10 or better boost tech, any gains beyond that have significant diminishing returns. And having a solid +20/25 total Strike bonus makes having a +40 or higher damage bonus obscene, as you've got a decent chance of landing hits, and whenever you do you will fuck someone up real bad.
Zachary Clark
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Nathaniel Richardson
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John Scott
Here's my form fillable sheet.
and here's a Discord full of some LotW veterans to pick ideas with discord.gg/nCVKqA6 when you're done with your thread.
I would encourage that your players learn to make interesting descriptions, not long voracious ones, but simple and cool ones that can be easily understood on how they manipulate the enemy and how the enemy can think to manipulate them.
You don't want a hugely mechanical step by step flurry of nonsense where your player does more things than his dice allow, or something that's so intricate or invasive that it undermines the defender's ability to describe his defense.
Brayden Garcia
You raise a valid point though. Description is important in LotW. How you describe something can have a significant numerical impact on the result of the roll.
Joshua Stewart
You should strive to create an interesting environment that each player can manipulate to overcome difficulties, and descriptions that allow things to be subdued, redirected, changed in some way.
And you should disallow anything that wasn't previously established without the spending of Joss to change it, or add to it for a moment.
i.e. You're in a neighborhood fighting prostitute xia and you run into a house, grab some plates to then throw at them as a makeshift weapon. Makes perfect sense, house was established so people living in it and having dishes is fine. Maybe you change it up on them because they have weird chinese plates of some kind.
but someone gets their legs cut off by the bandit king in the middle of a forest at night in the dark. and then the player says "I use the light of a nearby forest fire to hide in the shadows", or "there just happens to be a series of vines I can keep swinging on so I won't need my legs" shouldn't be allowed without Joss spending, and maybe without a lot of Joss spending. And of course, the villain can always spend some malicious or chivalrous Joss themselves, or just use the now changed environment to their advantage.
Cameron Wright
I can run you a couple of test fights if you'd like btw
Wyatt Price
I made a form fillable version of the original sheet, myself, too. But I made a completely new one later because I just got so tired of the little mistakes like the uneven lines on different sections in accordance to other sections.
I'll come check out that discord later, but I'll join the channel already.
Leo Turner
It's a lot cleaner than mine.
But I made my Ki & Virtues colorful. S-so there!
David Foster
I used more time than I would like to admit on that character sheet, only to joss it away and make a new one from scratch.
Making them colorful is pretty nice though, I don't even know how to do that.
Now if I made a form-fillable version of that horizontal sheet...
Dominic Wood
You need to combine your two sheets into the supersheet everyone uses forever
Ryan Rodriguez
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Gabriel Collins
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Jeremiah Ross
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Thomas Williams
>make 90% of the PDF form fillable >check boxes don't want to cooperate
Welp. Project over.
Angel Howard
So I'm pondering, as a houserule, letting my players roll their River value in dice at the start of each session, giving them something stored by default to work with. I like the River system, but I often feel like it's used less than it could be, which is a shame as that kind of dice manipulation is fun. It'll make the characters more competent in general terms, since they'll have that extra resource, but is there anything else you think that would be affected by it?
