The Gaming Den

We had this idea for a game we want to play, but we don't really have a game system in mind. Anyone have any ideas for a game system that would allow us to emulate fantasy china with miriad kung fu styles, and chi magic.

Feng Shui


Weapons of the Gods is specifically a Wuxia RPG for a long running Wuxia manga.

I don't know how Qin is, but it's set in ancient China.

That's basically a superhero game, so I'd use Champions.

Weapons of the Gods looks like it has potential.

Weapons of the Gods does have potential. But that potential is buried in an excessively slow and arcane resolution system, burdened with a huge number of resource mechanics. You have five colors of mana, two flavors of Joss, saving die results for later, etc. etc. Keeping track of everything is crazy.

Also, the book is hideously organized, poorly referenced, and is in general a chore to work with at the actual table.

There are some genuinely good ideas in WotG. The part where someone has a prophecy where they can only be defeated 'by the ocean,' and so remains inland, and people can discover the prophecy and rename their sword 'The Ocean' to get around it is very cool. But I think you have to rip those ideas from the steaming corpse of that game and implement them better in a different context.

Legends of the Wulin is from the people who did WotG. I have no idea how it actually shakes out because I've never played it and find it way harder to grasp than any other RPG I've ever read for some reason, but it is a thing that exists.

My #1 recommendation would be Feng Shui - it's setup to do largely that in a lite and easy to access way.

My #2 recommendation would be Champions / HERO using the the Ninja Hero / Ultimate Martial Artist supplements. (This has the horrible learning curve of Champions)

My #3 recommendation would be using Mutants and Masterminds and adapting key pieces of the Champions Ninja / Martial Arts supplement powers and advice to M&M. (This is harder on the MC but easier on the players)

Anima: Beyond Fantasy doesn't get a good rap in these parts and it's honestly kind of a mess but it could do this.

Depending what you're doing, the Dragonblood part of Exalted works pretty well.

Yes, but just about any of the other suggestions here would work better for this. (Only one I can't call for sure is Anima.)

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Weapons of the Gods does have potential. But that potential is buried in an excessively slow and arcane resolution system, burdened with a huge number of resource mechanics. You have five colors of mana, two flavors of Joss, saving die results for later, etc. etc. Keeping track of everything is crazy.

I disagree with this. The mechanics are fine for those who enjoy MtG and similar things. Lots of resources to manage? Yes, but they're pretty straight forward.

Also, the book is hideously organized, poorly referenced, and is in general a chore to work with at the actual table.

This is true. Dear god, most poorly organized book ever. And that includes a book my cat tore apart and spread the pages around my apartment.

I'm giving Weapons of the Gods a shot. The math actually looks halfway decent, and the kungfu seems to be right in the alley we're looking for. The players are all experienced gamers (20+ years) and game system collectors, so doing resource management is not daunting.

Legend of the Wulin is a substantial improvement on Weapon of the Gods. The book is much better organized, character creation is less painful, and they actually do some interesting things with their dice mechanic. (It's still borderline-unplayably complicated, but at least now it's not complicated for no reason)

However, it's still got really painful dice mechanics and the combat system uses huge piles of tea party fiat bonuses. On the psotive side, there are pretty detailed guidelines on how tea part bonuses are supposed to be earned and strict caps on how big they can be. On the downside, they're really big compared to anything else in the system.

If you end up wanting to design your own game, I do strongly recommend reading it. There are a lot of good ideas to steal, particularly external kung fu and abstract weapon customization.

If you go with Weapons of the Gods and want to allow unarmed combat to be other than inherently underpowered, allow for some way to get Strike bonuses to Palms and Kicks. (e.g., I've heard of people setting the Strike of all weapons to +0, or splitting attack and defense like here)

You'll also want the Companion (which includes all sorts of rules for characters' constructing their own kung fu styles) and all the various pdfs that EOS released. If you want those pdfs, I can send them to you.