Legend of the Wulin

[Chamomile]

I have heard good things from unreliable sources about Legend of the Wulin. Has anyone played it? It appears to be similar to D&D 3.5 in rules complexity which automatically makes me suspect it has serious balance issues, because no one ever seems to make these things right. There's a lot to take in and the layout is awful which leaves me wondering whether it's worth reading through the entire thing. Does anyone know if there's a decent game buried in this wall of text?

[angelfromanotherpin]

It's worth reading, I think there's definitely some good *ideas* in there. But even having played it, I don't know if the game as a whole is worthwhile.

I'd probably do a better job responding to specific questions than just ranting if you want more details.

[Chamomile]

Probably this will end up with me just ranting instead, but sure, here's some questions.

The wonky dice lake mechanic. For those following along at home, you roll d10s and look for matches, and if you get, say, three sevens, then your total is 37. Four sixes is 46. Just one nine would be nine. Does anyone have the slightest idea how to calculate the odds on this? Does this system work? Plus, since rolling more than one zero leads to Interesting Times which is always bad (though doesn't stop you from succeeding if your roll was high enough to win), this seems like it might lead to a thing where adding more dice makes things worse.

Also, this isn't a question, but since I'm kind of going into review mode here, d10s. For God's sake, why d10s? They don't look right, they don't feel right, they're not platonic solids and you could say that to someone who's rolled different types of dice and they'd know what you mean even if they'd never heard of a platonic solid before in their life.

It seems like of the five classes (warrior, priest, scholar, courtier, doctor), one of these lets you be a wuxia hero and the others don't. Even if you're playing less Crouching Tiger and more Romance of the Three Kingdoms, doctor seems like an odd choice. Granted, I do not have an amazing grasp of the combat mechanics of this game. I have read the book twice now and failed to absorb large parts of it, and I'm not even entirely sure why it's not sticking, so maybe having a team medic is super helpful and I just missed it. But it seems like doctor would be a secondary schtick in a wuxia game. Are all the archetypes equally useful?

There is a very long list of Kung Fu. That seems like the sort of thing where some number of them would end up being straight-up better than others. Making this worse is that you have internal and external kung fu, which can be mixed and matched, which seems like a thing where a few combos would definitely be the killer app which leaves all else behind.

There's probably more, but this is what I can think of off the top of my head. Also, good God, all those different new terms. It's bad enough they're introducing some legitimately new concepts like River and Entanglement and Cultivation. Was renaming XP to Destiny and a dice pool to Lake and such really necessary?

[angelfromanotherpin]

The wonky dice lake mechanic. For those following along at home, you roll d10s and look for matches, and if you get, say, three sevens, then your total is 37. Four sixes is 46. Just one nine would be nine.

Actually, just one 9 would be 19. Number of dice showing the value is the 10s digit, shown value is the 1's digit.

]Does anyone have the slightest idea how to calculate the odds on this?

Yes. Not me, mind you. Here's a link with discussion and links to actual charts.

Plus, since rolling more than one zero leads to Interesting Times which is always bad (though doesn't stop you from succeeding if your roll was high enough to win), this seems like it might lead to a thing where adding more dice makes things worse.

It's not rolling multiple zeroes that bring on Interesting Times, it's *using* the zeroes for an action that does. So, every so often, you will have to choose between a less optimal die result or narrative complications. It's pretty rare, considering that the zeroes are the lowest 1s digit.

It seems like of the five classes (warrior, priest, scholar, courtier, doctor), one of these lets you be a wuxia hero and the others don't.

This is not even close to true. Everyone has crazy kung fu - the warrior archetype just uses warrior 'Secret Arts,' where they come up with original martial methods for advantage. But given that priests can bless/curse for advantage, scholars can keikaku for advantage, courtiers can mindgame for advantage, and doctors can fiddle with humors for advantage... warriors do not have some sort of huge edge in this regard, only a different way of going about it.

There is a very long list of Kung Fu. That seems like the sort of thing where some number of them would end up being straight-up better than others. Making this worse is that you have internal and external kung fu, which can be mixed and matched, which seems like a thing where a few combos would definitely be the killer app which leaves all else behind.

There's a couple of demonstrably broken techniques that have had a lot of complaining about them. Otherwise, I don't know if there's been enough playing to reveal any one true ways. I would not be surprised if you were right.

Was renaming XP to Destiny and a dice pool to Lake and such really necessary?

Not necessary, no. I can think of two reasons to do it, though. The first is distinctiveness, and the second is immersion (if Lake and Destiny are the terms used in-setting, they should probably be the rule-terms). The trade-off of accessibility is difficult to calculate for.

[Orion]

This finally came out? I've been looking forward to it for a while. The old version, Weapon of the Gods, was also full of awesome ideas but only barely playable. Sounds like the improvement is not substantial. Anyway, based on my familiarity with the old game, I can defend it on 2 point. Doctors aren't healers in WotG, they're mad scientists. They're like Enchanters or something who work by touch. But they can induce various moods, buffs, sicknesses, all kinds of weird stuff. And while Lake is stupid, Destiny is completely appropriate. Seriously, you can literally spend XP to write out your hero's future plot points in advance, and you can actually have abilities like "destined to find the phoenix sword" or whatever. So Destiny is actually literally more descriptive than XP.

[fectin]

Apparantly, there are no authors.

[RiotGearEpsilon]

I'm one of the editors. Ask me anything.