Wuxia in D&D?

[Inconsequenti-AL]

Actually, back in Dragon 289 (November 2001), there was an article on making a D&D game resembling Wuxia films, with several rules and sugguestions, like everybody getting to fly at 10th level. FYI, it's also the issue with the kaiju.

I got quite inspired by that article. Toyed around with the idea for a while...

Was going to put together a level advancement scheme for the PCs. At various levels they'd get to choose abilities from lists - better lists becoming available at higher levels. Much like the abilities for astral constructs, but mostly spell like abilities - minor stuff would be at will or continuous, some of the major ones #day. Like many good ideas, I never got to run it.


One I feel helps is how you adjudicate the use of acrobatic skills. Think a 'more lenient' approach makes for much more heroics. For example:

A PC tries to jump between 2 rooftops. They fail the check. Normally they'd plummet down to the street below. In the more lenient version they'd end up hanging from the other side by their fingertips. They just miss the next turns actions.

Have used this in several campaigns and found it works very well.

Also giving quite sizable bonuses for imaginative attacks. Have the bad guys lead by example...


Another GM we used to play with used action points. But you could spend them to perform mind boggling stunts or to 'break the rules' - i.e. bendy charges, act out of turn, throw yourself in front of an attacker and so on. That worked pretty well and gave a nice flowy feeling to the game. However, certain players can be very abusive with this sort of thing.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

And one more thing!

Feng Shui is good. Don't need to use the rules to use some of the ideas:

IIRC, they suggest the GM leave descriptions of the scenery very vague. The players then fill in the details/objects during the fight - e.g. there's always a rope handy when you need to swing somewhere, a conveniently placed lantern to start a fire, ledges to push bad guys over and so on. It's just limited by the players imagination and the GMs sense of what is possible or 'realistic'.

Took a bit of getting used to, but I found this a lot of fun!

Supose it might be more for the action movie genre, but think it has plenty to offer the mystical martial arts!

 

[tetsujin28]

I don't think d20 is really good at wu xia, although I love the background info for Dragonfist. Too many rules. Wushu is the best game I've seen for it, but it's not a traditional game in many respects. If I was going to do a d20 game, I'd probably use Mutants & Masterminds at PL 5 or so, maybe 8 for really tough characters like in Bride with White Hair.

 

[RangerWickett]

Wuxia feels like superheroes to me. Mutants & Masterminds might be a good starting point, though if you want to capture the "Aha, but my funky monkey style is stronger than your drunken shitzu kung fu" element, you'd need a way to emphasize differences in combat more than M&M does.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Chris Pramas' "Dragonfist" game. A precursor to the d20 ruleset, it's a fully detailed setting that, in my opinion, really captures the feel and flavor of a Wuxia film. It's no longer available online, though some of us have hoarded our .pdf's.

 

[Voadam]

Psychic warriors from XPH/psionic srd work well as do straight monks, and Beyond Monks martial artists. Atlas games has some wuxia genre rules free on their website for their d20 Feng Shui crossover adventure that cover things like mooks etc.

 

[sniffles]

I've just been reading up on psionics on the SRD. Psychic Warriors sound almost ideal. Awarding feats instead of XP (or in addition to a reduced XP amount) also seems like a good way to go.
I'll have to see if I can find PDFs of Dragonfist and Feng Shui for flavor.

I could see going with M&M, but I agree with Ranger Wickett's assessment that there isn't enough differentiation in combat styles. I'm also familiar with Hero system, which would be great for simulating the powers, but the combat system is just too slow and rigid for cinematic action. I know d20 combats can get bogged down too, but they're still more fluid that Hero, and there are ways to get around some of the crunchiness that tends to cause slowdown.

Several of my friends have suggested using Risus - The Anything RPG, which is a free web-based dice pool system. I enjoy Risus, and it's great for cinematic action. But it has no skills, and no really effective way that I've seen of giving any kind of roleplaying awards or character increases. And darnit, I like rolling for damage!

 

[Klaus]

Chris Pramas' "Dragonfist" game. A precursor to the d20 ruleset, it's a fully detailed setting that, in my opinion, really captures the feel and flavor of a Wuxia film. It's no longer available online, though some of us have hoarded our .pdf's.

Word!

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Sniffles, if you want to, send your email address to me at dungeonmastercal at yahoo dot com and I'll send my copy of Dragon Fist to you when I get home tonight.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Chris Pramas' "Dragonfist" game. A precursor to the d20 ruleset, it's a fully detailed setting that, in my opinion, really captures the feel and flavor of a Wuxia film. It's no longer available online, though some of us have hoarded our .pdf's.

There's also a new edition in the works. No idea when it'll be out, but it's in the works.