The Journey To...Romance Of The Three Kingdoms

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Role playing games are rooted in human myth and the continuation of oral tradition, up to and including the war games that are RPGs' direct ancestors. Although the stories that primarily drive play are derived from north and northwest Europe (Moorcock, Tolkien, various versions of Norse mythology), there is a vast and often neglected collection of human mythology and history available for play. The idea of this series is to talk about the history and mythology of other cultures and how players and game masters can incorporate this bounty into their own characters and stories. Today we journey to ancient China and the last days of the Han dynasty.

The Three Kingdoms is a period of Chinese history that has been covered by film, video game, and board games but seems underrepresented in RPGs. A real historical period between the fall of the Han dynasty and the beginning of the Jing, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a novel that has immortalized this period. The historical romance is attributed to Luo Guanzhong. Guanzhong takes historical events and transforms them into legend to tell a tale of war, politics, ambition, and betrayal. The fates of the nations of Wei, Shu, and Wu are entwined in an ever shifting world of alliances and personal politics.

With such a dense source material to work from, a game master won't lack for conflict and details to choose from. It is however, the focus on the personalities that makes the novel as well as the period a perfect sell for a campaign. Role playing games are about larger than life characters and few works of literature express this better than Romance. These are not mere mythological analogues, but actual people who lived, loved, and died during a tumultuous period in the history of one of Earth's greatest nations.

How can you use this? Romance of the Three Kingdoms is not a dungeon crawl setting. Where it can shine however, is as a campaign focused on politics and power, with high stakes decisions affecting the lives of millions. Every character will not be carrying a sword, which makes a game focused on the politics behind the battles extremely rewarding. A tale of families and politics on par with the War of the Roses / A Song of Ice and Fire is available for the ambitious game master willing to tackle the source material in depth. Of course there is plenty of fodder for individual heroes interacting with legendary figures like Liu Bei and / or the more metaphysical myths of Chinese lore. Indeed, combining Journey to the West with Romance of the Three Kingdoms would make for an outstanding play experience.

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China has a long history and a wonderful mythology that goes beyond what we have talked about here. I recommend taking a look for yourself and breaking free from gaming tradition for a while to walk among legends who actually lived. The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is well worth the experience.

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[Sunseeker]

I've done this.

The problems are, IMO, threefold.

1: Ignorance and to some degree casual racism against China (in the USA at least). The cultural gulf between "The West" and China is too great for many people to have in the past attempted to overcome, or are willing to overcome now. There is also a general lack of material readily available.

2: ADD. Many players simply do not have the attention, desire, or willpower to participate in a "politics and power" game. Anyone can hack-and-slash their way to victory.

3: Prep time. The lack of readily available material extends to ready-made elements in the RPG market. Putting together a campaign, creating NPCs, building monsters fitting to the themes of East Asian mythology (as opposed to the mythology of Hinduism, ancient Persia, or others in the area) takes real work. Work that requires the DM to go to unusual lengths for IME, little reward.

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Look, I'm a political scientist by trade, I eat, drink and breath the stuff when I'm not doing my day job. And by and large, that applies to Western politics (with a few forays into Sino-Russo international relations). I can't even get my players interested in a politics and power game running on Western political tropes and I'd like to take a step off the deep end and run a politics-and-power Drow campaign (it's in the works whether they like it or not!). But even that is just western political tropes flipped on their head and taken to the extreme.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

This is a very cool idea. I would enjoy an ancient China based game.

There's a challenge, though. Because we're at a tabletop, we fill in our RPG experience with our imagination and things we've learned about comparable settings. Since American and European players are much more familiar with western myths and history than eastern, we don't have as much in our heads to fill in the blank spots, leaving a much less rich roleplaying experience. I think this needs to be overcome somehow to make an ancient Chinese setting popular.

Random question: what is that weapon in the first image called? It looks like a naginata, but those are Japanese and (I believe) mostly used on foot.

Even more random comment: I have fond memories of playing the Genesis game Romance of the Three Kingdoms as a kid. The best moment was sending Lu Bu on a diplomacy mission proposing a joint attack on another warlord's territory. When the alliance was turned down, he shouted "You're next!" which made me giggle. Diplomacy is not his strength.

 

[ScaleyBob]

It's a wonderful period to set a campaign in.The PCs could easily just be bandits, or dislocated Peasants, and just be caught up in the world changing events going on. Although it could be a politics game, it could also be quite easily a hack and slash game as well. Incorporating aspects of 'Journey to the West' or any of the more cinematic versions of the Monkey King legends could easily give you any amount of excuses for monster fights or dungeon bashes.

I always thought Legend of the Five Rings was reasonably influenced by this period.

As for game versions - there was a Magic the Gathering set released themed around it - Portal, The Three Kingdoms. It had very limited release, in the Pacific/Asia region, and is about the hardest set to come by nowadays.

Found a list of the Cards:

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/S...r&method=visual&set=["Portal+Three+Kingdoms"]

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I played in a game based on this material for a long time in the '90s. My friend who ran it had been very taken by a trip to China he took as a teenager and had very carefully read the source material. This was the mostly pre-internet days so he'd gone to a good bit of effort to track it down. It had other aspects thrown in so it wasn't a "pure" Romance of the Three Kingdoms or pseudo-China for that matter, but Lui Bei, Cao Cao, and the rest were all there and formed the core of the campaign. Sometimes it was politics, sometimes it was good old fashioned adventuring. We just used 2E D&D (with a bunch of house rules).

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I've done this.

1: Ignorance and to some degree casual racism against China (in the USA at least). The cultural gulf between "The West" and China is too great for many people to have in the past attempted to overcome, or are willing to overcome now. There is also a general lack of material readily available.

Yes, this is an issue, though with any RPG it's going to be a good bit of pastiche no two ways about it. So you can embrace it and realize that an RPG is likely to have a certain amount of chop-sockey to it no matter how you play it, and that's not wrong.

2: ADD. Many players simply do not have the attention, desire, or willpower to participate in a "politics and power" game. Anyone can hack-and-slash their way to victory.

This is definitely group-specific, and having the right group of players who want the deeper immersion experience is what you need to run such a game. If your group is more of the beer-n-pretzels types, this isn't the kind of game to run for them. Still, in my experience, even very motivated players like a good beat down from time to time.

3: Prep time. The lack of readily available material extends to ready-made elements in the RPG market. Putting together a campaign, creating NPCs, building monsters fitting to the themes of East Asian mythology (as opposed to the mythology of Hinduism, ancient Persia, or others in the area) takes real work. Work that requires the DM to go to unusual lengths for IME, little reward.

True, though it's way better than it was these days. Also I think it's important to recognize just how much of Chinese mythology is influenced by other cultures (and vice versa), so it's OK to do some borrowing and/or repurposing. For example, Buddhist art is highly influenced by Greek art via Alexander's conquests, which in turn is highly influenced by Egyptian. The Silk Road with cross-Eurasian contact played a huge role throughout most of history (and is likely reasserting itself).

I trimmed out your comment below about drow politics being just Western politics flipped around, but I really wonder how different Eastern politics really are? I am sure once one gets down to the micro level there are important details, but the implications of human ambition are fairly universal in any larger scale societies. In some respects I think modern Western politics is the anomaly and that older clan-based systems are more "natural." There were plenty of those throughout Western history and I think you can better understand many monarch's behaviors and motivations in that nature, furthering the ambitions of the House of Bourbon vs. the House of Habsburg, and so on. These feel odd to us now but were important as late as World War I, and we may be the WEIRD ones.

There have been some useful games you can mine for source, though: Weapons of the Gods, Rokugan, etc., plus many movies, Jade Empire, etc. Of course they're all games or movies and not "authentic". It's not like Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Journey to the West are either. I wouldn't worry about getting the details exactly right because... it's an RPG.

 

[Von Ether]

Perhaps an under appreciated aspect to such a game is how these power and politics would be a living world in the background for even a regular D&D style game. They can get a drift that the world moves on with or without them.

Perhaps they'll start caring more about the politics as their sponsors fall out of favor, or are even replaced by the time they come back from a dungeon.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Perhaps an under appreciated aspect to such a game is how these power and politics would be a living world in the background for even a regular D&D style game. They can get a drift that the world moves on with or without them. Perhaps they'll start caring more about the politics as their sponsors fall out of favor, or are even replaced by the time they come back from a dungeon.

That's a good way to do it for players who mostly don't like politics. They don't have to participate in it constantly, but it has consequences that can show up. Killing a patron is a good one.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Journey to the West is highly gameable in my experience.

Water Margin is also a good source of inspiration. And Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio is a great resource (I've gotten more adventures out of that than any other book on my shelf).

 

[Herosmith14]

I do not know much about the mythology of Eastern Asia, though a politics and power campaign sounds like a fun idea. Adventuring and combat could be a means of collecting favors or blackmail and catching the eyes of sponsors or important political figures.