What is Veeky Forums's opinion on wuxia/xianxia?

So where you are from people stand all the time on sword tips and walk on snowflakes ?

>never tricked
He got eaten by the two headed serpent though.

No, but that's explained as fantastical martial prowess. I thought we were making a difference.

> My personal favorite Journey to the West scene

youtube.com/watch?v=fJCX9B1vnSI

>I thought we were making a difference
I'm sorry, missed that point, please continue.

Tho all the "is it magic/ shouldit have magic" on Veeky Forums goes on my nerves, just let every fucker have "plot power" and call it a day.

I find that style of videos supremely annoying, but the tale is interesting, thank you.

If I'm going to jury-rig magic in a wuxia game, I'd probably steal from Weapons of the Gods and turn philosophies like Confucianism, Taoism, and Legalism into actual magic powers. They will feel distinct from martial arts.

I enjoy it so much that my pet project is making a campaign setting akin to the Spring and Autumn period with Path of War classes replacing martials, Psionics-refluffed-as-Chi replacing most magic, and Akashic classes in there for South Asian shenanigans.

Wouldn't Warring Kingdoms or Chu–Han be better period for that?

I particularly like Spring and Autumn because it's on the precipice of collapse. There's an Emperor with almost no power, administrators and military officers are carving out their own fiefdoms, banditry on the rise, it gives players a big wide sandbox to quest or build their own domain or even attempt to restore the empire. I definitely like 3 kingdoms and Han ascension eras, but nothing gets me going more than the S&A period for sheer imagination.

>and Akashic classes in there for South Asian shenanigans
The crossover I like the most is when Japanese ninjas show up in my wuxia youtube.com/watch?v=HeXZ9Q0UmAA
Speaking of which, does Japan have an equivalent of jianghu like Korea does?

Technically Son of Heaven was the king among the lords not the emperor but oh well.

I do LOVE Wu Zixu though. One true badass.

Aren't Japanese 'Wuxia' more focused on Onmyoji and Youkai than China and Korea's martial adepts?

...

Shit dude, it doesn't need D&D's type of magic. The divide between martial and magic is pointless. Embrace the true ways of battle and know joy.

So is there any of these Chinese webnovels that's worth a read? Especially if I'm not into self insert power fantasies?

it's OK, but the settings could really be loosened up to allow more playability.

For instance: Thunderbolt fantasy does this. Not only are demons obviously a playable race, you can be a necromancer or shrine priestess.

Basically, instead of "everyone kung fus, it's just a matter of how hard" it's "You can either put all your points in kung fu, or put your points in magic bullshit and also get basic kung fu for free".

Which I think is a better system.

Have you watched thunderbolt fantasy?

Yes, and a lot of wuxia movies and some live action series. I'm asking specifically about these web novels.

can't help you there, man.

>that part about "let's fight for x amount of moves"
I've never been able to understand how they're counted.

Are you familiar with the term Kata? That's pretty much it. Like, A perform Kata 1, B perform Kata 2 to counter and so on.

That's simple it's almost the same like the moves qhere you shave of three years of your live.
Or when you only use 30% of your power.
Pretty simple math, really.

Wouldn't that require them knowing each other's moves to know when one kata ends and the next starts?

it's like a fighting game. Everyone knows everyone else's moves.
It's why someone coming out of left field with an unheard of fighting style is a big deal.

Even the plebians know the moves, that why they can mutter about it so well.

Its not let's fight for x amount of moves, its more so I'm so much stronger the you, it wouldn't be a fair fight so I'm giving you a handicap of x free hits .

I've seen both things happen in different instances. At the end of Crouching Tiger, Zhang Ziyi dares Chow Yun Fat to disarm her in 3 moves. In Return of the Condor Heroes, Golden Wheel Monk tells Xiaolongnu she'll win their fight if she can survive for 20 moves. When you say handicap you make it sound like the stronger guy will start fighting back after x attacks, but it's really more about turning it into a contest that lasts x actions from one of them.
Anyway, I was just saying I can't tell what counts as one move in those instances.

I can't recall either scene precisely, but i would guess they meant attacks maybe?

It's an analogy to Chess/Go.

It turns Martial arts into a thinking mans game, and calling out "Turns" is a brag to show their martial prowess.

It can be fun to see what cultural tropes China has and puts towards its stories.
Wuxia in specific is a great inspiration and easier to convert to a playable format.

>missing monsters/playable races
in the novels I'm reading monsters are plentiful and pretty much ANYTHING can be an immortal

animals, trees, water, fire, fucking rocks

>I mean it's pretty much always human vs. human
>doesn't know about Sun Wu Kong
apply yourself

>if there is a fight between different sexes, female chest is off limits to empty handed attack
>doubly offensive if one party is using something like "Eagle claw" martial arts to target the female chest, or anything that looks like he's trying to grope her
>intentionally slash apart female dress (without harming her) is a big no-no
I sort of want to play a perverted martial artist in the vein of Happosai from Ranma 1/2 that goes around pulling this sort of shit now, LOL.

Which novels?

I can't believe nobody has mentioned Legends of the Wulin yet. It's a tricky beast to master but if you get past the learning curve it's a fantastic Wuxia RPG. It's a cleaned up successor to Weapons of the Gods with its own problems, but I've had a lot of fun with it. The setting is a nice distillation of Wuxia concepts in a way that's easy to understand and use for adventuring.

Tianxia deserves an honourable mention, a Wuxia FATE hack that does a decent job, even if it lacks tactical depth.

I do love Wuxia for RPG's though. It's possibly my favourite framework for it, since it puts awesome, cinematic combat at the heart of its storytelling, which I find really appealing.

>Tianxia deserves an honourable mention, a Wuxia FATE hack that does a decent job, even if it lacks tactical depth.
I've been reading Tianxia and considering running a campaign with it soon.
I don't mind the lack of tactical depth, but I do feel there could be more in there. Like it really loves it's kung fu system, but it would be nice to have suitable example stunts for other stuff too, without having to dig through example characters. Also I'm not sure if I need it, but it would be nice to have some more "high fantasy" aspects on the setting. There is bit with evil cultists and such, but it's really lightly touched.
Also while the style thing is kinda neat, I also dread the character creation of slamming handful of papers of game mechanics in front of players and having them make some decisions.

My nigga.

Is Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate good.

Honestly can't say. I hear some people swear by it but it's completely outside of my preferences to the point I can't really judge it.

Isn't that that puppet show that was on crunchy a couple seasons ago?
I didn't know it had a game tie-in.

>nobody mentions Exalted

It's fun.

Because it's shit.

the thunderbolt Fantasy fight scenes in episode 13 is critical. It shows the real difference between Japanese and Chinese fight scenes.

"If you think that dedication and passion alone will give birth to equivalent results, you're living in a naive dream."

Hot blood can't win against skill and practice.

youtube.com/watch?v=1HYXjcELQ3M

You know the writer is Japanese, right?
Also the anime Ping Pong touched the same theme, off the top of my head.

A 'move' is typically the main part of a wsingle kata or offensive set. This will be several attacks, as a general rule. for isntance, the tai chi move Brushing the Wild Horses Mane is a single mover, but it is actually five actions flowing into one another that includes two strikes, a block, a joint lock, and a disarm.

Yes, but the concepts in it are still Chinese. Urobochi does his homework. The puppeteering style is actually Taiwanese, for that matter.

being a chinese person, I like wuxia. I think it has opportunities for roleplaying seeing as it is a lot like the old west, with bandits, wanderers, heroes fighting against tyrants and all that good stuff. One of my favorite wuxia films, New Dragongate Inn (1992), and the remake Flying Swords of Dragon Gate (2011) even have all the characters meeting up in a tarven kinda deal. I'd say the biggest issue with a wuxia type game is that all the characters are kinda the same in the sense that from what I've seen at any rate, all the characters are fighters, leaving not a lot for other roles like thieves, clerics, bards etc.

Legends of the Wulin has an interesting approach to that. While Warrior is one available Archetype, the others are Courtier, Scholar, Priest and Doctor, adding some interesting secondary stuff while still having them all be badass martial artists.

cool. I will have to check it out. Thanks for bring it to my attention

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon you mean?

Anyone mind rattling off some good wuxia movies for me to watch?

Kung Fu Panda

>Dragon Gate

Is that the one where the eunuch takes a literal red pill?

I unironically agree, Po is for fucking real niggas.

Kung Fu Hustle

Legends of the Wulin is unusable in its current form. Piles of rules that don't make sense, a catastrophic editing, a setting that is only explained by tiny itsy bits.

Kind of funny how Exalted gets some shots for being poorly written when Legends of the Wulin is worse in every single regard. I guess Legends of the Wulin gets a free pass because it's "artsy" or whatever. Don't bother. It's a bad game.

Yeah, german translation of fun like that.

seconded

Maybe try heroquests:glorantha?
It's a surprisingly crunchy narrative system that offers allot of meaningful character decisions.
The system comes already with rules to define your soul/magical affinity.

Have a player whose swordfighter comes from not!-asia who based his "lightning sword style" on his affinity to the air element.

Exalted is kind of puerile and embarrassing in weird ways, like how every powerful woman is a lesbian or how the Sidereal Bronze Faction is portrayed as bad guys when the Solars were actually evil as fuck.

>the Sidereal Bronze Faction is portrayed as bad guys when the Solars were actually evil as fuck.
Isn't the point of that that both factions are wrong and right? The Solars will fuck up massively again if let in charge, the Great Curse guarantees it, but if they are all removed Creation is guaranteed to slide into WoD shit.

Lotw is my group's second favourite system.
The way It's written though is a fucking nightmare though. But once we got through several hours of brainstorming and double checking, the game instantly conquered our hearts.
You can make an encounter for any group with desired difficulty. You can easily make gimmick battles, you can plan a battle that requires a coordination of movement, action breaking, flanking and tanking and It will become a beautiful spectacle of teamwork, improvised moves and banter.

I admit we ditched the default ingame setting though.
We had a classic wuxia game with It, a mecha game, high school samurai girls game and now we're starting a xianxia game.
It's a nice system. Rewarding roleplaying and nicely narrated fights.

>Are you the drunken fist master?
>No. I'm the anal fisting master.

LotW is a badly explained and edited game with a fucking fantastic game lurking just beneath the surface. It just takes work to actually get there.

What does "OUT BY THE ROOTS" mean exactly?

>I sort of want to play a perverted martial artist in the vein of Happosai from Ranma 1/2 that goes around pulling this sort of shit now, LOL.

What if they were also a girl?

This is true, though.