So I heard you guys like Legends of the Wulin, can we get a Wulin/Wuxia thread going?

There's a whole set of them

Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate

Is it a bad idea to have, say, Iron Body Skill without being a buddhist monk and part of the Little Forest sect because they get all of the Iron Body techniques? I just worry that all of the really good internal styles are much better if you belong to one of the preset groups.

That's another issue with the game, honestly. I understand why they did it, but basically every group I've been in either lets everyone take a loresheet to master their chosen Internal styles, or just dismisses the 'one of every level' rule altogether. It just isn't very fun.

Plus, it gets extra headachey when you're considering the extra homebrew styles on wulinlegends.pbworks.com/w/page/48630360/Portal

I've now put it on text:
pastebin.com/BqUg9uKn
>Chinese Fantasy and Mythological tips.

>You decide to learn Fire Sutra, but from whom?
>One old master might teach a version called ‘The Holy Flame' whose techniques are Breath of Buddha, Mantra of Immolation, The Sun Scripture, and Prayer of Cosmic Rebirth.
>Meanwhile, another sifu in the neighboring town teaches a version he calls ‘Yang Legends’ whose techniques are Fire to Heaven Ascension, Elusive Desert Being, Aura of the Qilin, and Prayer of Cosmic Rebirth (which he happens to call “Phoenix’ Rebirth” instead).
I really like the way this feels, desu. Seems odd to me when people are throwing around complete internal style access.

The only source of inspiration you should draw from is Kung Pow: Enter the Fist.

>Movies

Read a book.

Er Gen is the best author to start with.

Maybe just make it a requirement that you study under multiple teachers if you want the full style?

By the way, is it weird that I really want to play a guy who's just fantastic at throwing rocks as his Ranged weapon?

It's a pretty good dump of info, but it lacks a lot of important nuances that would put things into perspective. There are reasons behind everything in Wuxia, as with any established mythology. Just saying something like "cutting off hair is as bad as cutting off their head" doesn't really give anyone an idea of why it's that way or if that's being genuine or simply grandiose.

In this case, long and well groomed hair was seen as a symbol of the Han Chinese and, by extension, a symbol of social order and faithfulness to tradition. Anyone who cut their hair, or didn't keep it proper and bound was seen as a barbarian, deranged and/or perverted. Somebody who would be openly mocked in the streets if they were seen and greatly looked down upon. As such, to cut off another person's hair - particularly the act of severing their bun - was seen as a great offense unless they had legitimate reason to publicly humiliate them.

And this is just something as simple as hair.

That could work, if you want people to consider their styles incomplete / don't want to engender greater rivalry between similar styles.

Not as far as I can see. Why? Are they just random rocks, flattened river stones, small boulders, stone dildos / onaholes ... ?

But those are tips, not an anthropological work. It's for anons playing campaigns. You wouldn't have me explaining the psychoanalytical themes behind the capelobo or the maria do gancho, or the socioeconomical aspects of the wheelbarrow for the same reason.

I love wuxia. I hate LotW. I wish there were more options for high fantasy kung fu fighting out there. I feel like people recommend LotW on impulse, sort of like GURPS, despite the game being an absolute fucking slog.

What is wrong with LotW?

Despite what the other user already mentioned:
1. Combat time is broken. There is no reason for a single encounter with four players to take five fucking hours to complete.

2. A lack of player choice in character creation is annoying. Despite certain styles in the book being all-around useless and others being all-around broken, it really limits your ability to play the game you want to.

>I wish there were more options for high fantasy kung fu fighting out there.
There is, "Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate", it's pay what you want: drivethrurpg.com/product/191631/Wandering-Heroes-of-Ogre-Gate

It's a whole lot better than the alternatives for Xianxia. Probably because it was made now in a time where there are a lot of novels being translated. (one of the playtesters was the translator of I Shall Seal The Heavens for instance)
Still trying to get my hands on a pirated PDF of the Setting book, "Ogre Gate Inn and the Strange Land of Li-Fan".

What are the rules like on Wandering Heroes? How does it capture the feel of Wuxia/Xianxia stories?

Seconded. Tell us more!

...Five hours? LotW can run long, but five hours seems crazy.

The system can drag on, sure, but only ever that long, in my experience, when I was just starting out with new players. It sped up a lot since then, and duels (where the system really shines) are even faster.

Weak core chargen is a legitimate complaint though, with internal limits and loresheet Kung-fu combinations being the worst offenders, effectively making a small number of specific style combinations the absolute best.

This does get a lot better if you use the Half Burnt Manual buffs, and reference the Wulin Legends wiki homebrew content. Not all of it is good, but everything by Zechstyr is sound and you can use the guidelines given in the book to assess and evaluate the rest.

Hmm. I can kind of see the appeal, but it's also something that matters a lot less when you start homebrewing or using wiki styles, since you'll very rarely see two people using the style anyway, and they'll likely differentiate it more with how they use and theme it instead of which specific subset of techniques you know.

>Legends Of Gate Gate!
I know, it says ogre, but try unseeing it now.

It's like people have unreasonable expectations on how immediately fast things will be compared to the system they're already proficient in.

Unfortunately i'm a bit busy for now but the Core rulebook is free (just enter 0 dollars in the link above) and check it out for yourselves.
Otherwise the RPGPundit goes over the system here too: therpgsite.com/showthread.php?36767-RPGPundit-Reviews-The-Wandering-Heroes-of-Ogre-Gate

Being fair, LotW is a slow, crunchy system. It's something I enjoy about it, giving the combat a lot of interesting decision making, tactical options and narrative weight, but it's not something everyone prefers.

The system would be better if it had rules and guidelines for simplified NPC opponents to speed up GM turns. These days I often break down big fights into small groups or duels, and only run all vs one boss encounters with the whole group so I'm not spending so much time doing my own GM turns.

>n spite of the huge size of the book, the core system itself is very simple. In the first place, there are no ability scores. There's only skills. Characters make skill rolls of a number of d10, but only keep the highest result; the rolls are based on the ranks they have in a skill, which range from 0-3 (if you have 0 ranks, you roll 2d10 but keep the lower result). Success happens if you beat a difficulty number (rolling a 10 is a total success, which is sometimes special). Those are the basics, but the rules for mechanics, and especially combat, provide a lot of extra situations, conditions and details.
>In combat, characters roll to hit, opposed by the other character's defensive value. These values are purchased the same way as other skills, but they are not rolled; rather added to set values to represent the difficulty number anyone attacking them needs to beat. The character's level of Qi also contributes to his defensive values.
>If they hit, they roll for damage against a character's "hardiness" skill. If they succeed, they do 1 wound (2 wounds if they rolled a 10). Starting characters usually have 3 wounds, so it doesn't take too many hits to be dropped, but of course, there's a lot of other stuff that can factor into the mix aside from the basics (for example, kung-fu techniques that help you defend against attacks).
Sounds breddy gud desu.

Having a glance at it myself, I'm kinda unenthused. My usual benchmark for Wuxia systems is how they deal with trying to make a Blind Master. Things like LotW or Tianxia pass this easily. In Wandering Heroes it seems like it's a crippling penalty you can only avoid completely with one specific technique.

It does seem to have a niche, being a lot more conventional than LotW, and a lot grittier, but grit isn't what I look for in my Wuxia. I know many others disagree.

Being blind is an utterly crippling defect in most Xianxia stories even if they're over-the-top in other respects though.
Lots of "he was hamstrung/lost his hand/etc" in the sword-based ones at least.

Not in my experience? It tends to be something that might cause them a few issues every now and then, but only comes up in fight scenes in specific cases where their blindness is being exploited.

I guess it's just a preference for how to do disadvantages. I prefer the FATE/LotW approach of it being a narrative cue to cause problems, rather than an always on mechanical penalty.

>narrative cue
Narrativist stuff is just about the only thing in RPG systems I can't stand personally since they're both fiat-driven yet restricting for the DM. (I don't mind fiat itself though)

How do you mean restrictive? As a GM, I find that kind of thing really useful. It gives me explicit cues as to ways I can mess with the players and intrude in situations to make things more interesting for them, in ways that the players have already said is okay. It's not that I can't do anything outside the disadvantages, just that they give me some obvious, easy to use strings I can start tugging on if things are going too smoothly to the point it being boring, or if it seems appropriate.

Sounds interesting, would like a less complicated wuxia-ish style game that doesn't hurt my brain like LotW.

Looking at the book, the rules seem more granular and detailed than LotW, if less conceptually weird and badly explained. More complicated in some ways, less complicated in others.

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I wonder, it's been some time since I looked at it, could you just use a supers system for supernatural martial arts? Specifically thinking of BESM (3e I think).

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- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
- Forbidden Kingdom
- Big Trouble in Little China
- Azumi

Sensational recomendations.
Very nice find, senpai.

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These are awesome - do you have them all? Pls dump! I'm totally re-reading Romance with these in mind.....

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss Wulin Hero Quest.

Not sure I've got them all, but I found a page with a lot of them a few years ago and downloaded them. I'm actually using uploading them as a change to reverse GIS them to see if there's any better resolution versions, since some of these are kinda small. Some cases there are, some cases there aren't.

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I like the idea of it, but I feel like it's really married to its setting, simply by the dint of how much work was spent setting up the different factions and fighters and their relationships and the martial arts styles they know. It's a lot to keep track of, but it'd be an even bigger mess taking the styles and starting from scratch. I mean, it's ridiculously flavorful, it definitely feels right, but it's a lot of logistics.
Also, I have no idea if the system's any good or not.

>Er Gen
Isn't his stuff technically a subgenre/related genre? I thought his stuff is more 'Xu Warriors', while Legend of the Wulin is aiming more for 'Condor Heroes'?
Though, I have no idea how much Louis Cha is available for reading in English.

>but it's a lot of logistics
ANY wuxia game will be chock full o' logistics, senpai. This game has already done the work - you just have to keep track of stuff relevant to your adventures. Believe me, as someone trying to hack together their own wuxia game, having someone do all the heavy lifting is amazeballs.
>also, I have no idea if the system's any good
Erm, that's why you ought to try it out, instead of simply judging it from arm's length. Sheesh.

Can you explain why a Wuxia game would be heavier on logistics than any other game?

Why yes! Yes I can!! Read the file in this post And that information barely barely scratches the surface. Wuxia is gloriously deep.

I've read that post. I was there when it was first posted. But as interesting and deep as it is, none of that depth is really necessary.

Is it good to know? Sure. It provides interesting background to a lot of the elements at play. But that deeper understanding is also entirely unnecessary if all you want to do is run a fun Kung fu adventure story for some friends.

It's why I appreciate the settings LotW or Tianxia went with. They're more shallow, sure, blending together tropes and cliches that might not otherwise be seen together in the source material, but it's all familiar enough that people can easily get a grasp on it and get right down to the most important thing, enjoying the game.

>But as interesting and deep as it is, none of that depth is really necessary.
Then you're not playing wuxia. You're playing some randumb kung fu superhero game. Nothing wrong with that, but don't mistake chop sokey for wuxia. Wuxia is too deep for you.

>Erm, that's why you ought to try it out, instead of simply judging it from arm's length. Sheesh.
Fair enough; was hoping that enough people one here had started to use it that I could just use their opinion instead of forming one of my own.
>Believe me, as someone trying to hack together their own wuxia game, having someone do all the heavy lifting is amazeballs.
So, are you rolling with their setting as-is, or is it actually relatively easy to use their system as a basis for building your own crazy web of martial arts intrigue?

Nope. It's all Wuxia. Same themes, same tropes, same setting. Something being lighter and easier doesn't make it any less real.

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>So, are you rolling with their setting as-is, or is it actually relatively easy to use their system as a basis for building your own crazy web of martial arts intrigue?
I haven't decided yet, but more than likely I'll hack it into a more historically accurate setting. I have a better grasp of history than I do of other peoples' settings, generally. But it depends on what I find in there (I have not read nor mastered the whole game yet). It may hook me into using their setting, I just don't know.
>Same themes, same tropes, same setting
But user: THAT is the heavy logistical shtuff. THAT is the deep deep stuff only hinted at in the post here In the Ogre Gate game, they've already done that for you.
Unless something different was meant by the term 'logistical'.

But you're making an extreme logical leap, that the only way to do it is that super in depth way. And that's just not the case. But not burdening yourself with all that stuff to deal with doesn't stop it being Wuxia.

Have you read Legends of the Wulin or Tianxia? Neither of them feels particularly logistically heavy to me. It can be, sure, all the moving parts are there, but they're there for you to take or leave as you like, letting you adapt it to the Wuxia story you want to tell, rather than telling you there's only one way to do it.

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Thanx again and good night!

Night! Just thought I'd post all these up in case anyone wanted the full set, as I'm off to bed myself soon. I figure they'll linger in the archive for long enough if anyone wants to nab 'em.

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>le one way to do it maymay
Come on! That's exactly opposite to my point and you know it - the depth I'm speaking of leads to MORE ways to do it, not less. Don't strawman me.
But I see what you mean by 'logistical' now: you mean: "chock full of lore I don't need." Well, you're smart: leave the shit you don't like out.
And clearly you haven't read lotw if you think that fucker don't feel 'HEAVY'. That's the densest goddamned rpg i've ever read, and I've read some sickening shit.

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Yeah, I figured the rapid dump meant bedtime. Thanks again again!

Those are pretty easy things to fix though, by just removing internal limits, entirely or for a modest Destiny cost. Tell me about the Half Burnt Manual.

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Between your typing and opinions I can tell that you are a complete and utter fucktwaffle and suggest you fellate a guandao.

And that's the last one!

If you think LotW is heavy then you're a baby child, or a woman, a hypothesis supported by your poor typing and reasoning along with your abuse of irrelevant punctuation. Colons are not used that way.

Stunning comeback, desu senpai! You sure wrecked me, imo.
For sure.