Weapons of the Gods

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>>48061095
Haven't played WotG but I have played its spiritual successor Legends Of The Wulin
pretty great for wuxia/xianxia/old shaw bros bullshit plus it doesn't rely as much on weapons like Weapons of the Gods

The only downside to LOTW is poor layout in the book and a few poorly explained bits regarding lore sheets

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Page nine bump

Its a shame /tg/ never seems to talk about Wuxia inspired games

>>48064021
Kinda odd, given the general subject matter of this Javanese wushu washingboard - but keep the faith, anon: you are not alone.

>>48064021
Educate me on the subject, anon.

>>48061095

I've played it. The base mechanics are pretty good, but a lot of the more in-depth stuff (like Destiny) is tough to wrap player's heads around.

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>>48065268
On what wuxia
Wuxia is basically wandering martial arts heroes think Hero,House of Flying Daggers and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragonthe title itself being based on a popular saying in wuxia fiction among many others. The term wuxia itself means "Martial Hero" and generally deals with powerful martial artists dealing with rival schools, evil martial artists, corrupt officials, bandits and a wide variety of other threats. Most wuxia stories also deals with the concept of a society of martial artists that exists within yet separate from secular society and tends to govern itselfsomewhat poorly more often than not

For more information check here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuxia and here for wuxia stories http://www.wuxiaworld.com/

Interestingly there is a sub genre of wuxia called Xianxia which means "Immortal Hero" and is much more fantastical incorporating elements of Daoist Mysticism, Classical Chinese Mythology, and fantasy. Protagonists of xianxia stories often find themselves embarking on the path of Immortal Cultivation going from normal human to immortal to basically or literally a god all the while facing monsters and rivals and demons and all sorts of other shit
Xianxia is in my opinion more suited to role playing games than wuxia purely because of all the magic and monsters. You can also find xianxia stories at Wuxia World in the above link

Pic related is from a series called Feng Shen Ji which those intersted in Xianxia should check out

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>>48065597
As far as games go there is Weapons of the Gods based off a comic of the same name Legends of the Wulin the spiritual successor of WotG that improves the mechanics and doesn't have such a dependence on established setting FATE has a book called Tianxia:Blood,Silk,and Jade and a few other dedicated wuxia systems I can't name off the top of my head

Other games could be used for wuxia like Feng Shui, Exalted, Anima, and others again I name off the top of my head
Hell even D&D has a small section in the DMG of 4th and I think 5th edition that talks about other genres including wuxia though I would not recommend Dungeons and Dragons for mechanical reasons more than any thing else setting wise you could actually do some cool shit. see my xianxia explanation in the linked post

>>48065903
OP here. The thing that attracted me to WotG is the whole five colors of chi system that I think would capture the whole feeling of "my dragon style is no match for his iron hands! I must use Monkey technique!"

>>48067246
>my dragon style is no match for his iron hands! I must use Monkey technique!
I need to play this game

>>48067246

It does do that rather well. Plus the mechanic encourages you to switch up a lot, rather than just using the same strong skill over and over. You need skills that pull from a variety of chi so you can let the pools regenerate.

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>>48067246
Legends of the wulin has a similar chi but its not so focused of what they call aspected chi
The style system in LotW has an interesting mechanic in that each style has something its strong against and some thing its weak against

For example lets look at Blossoms Harvest an external kung fu style it's strong against flashy and complicated styles as well as multiple enemies and difficult terrain. however it is weak against reactive styles and dudes with magic

The chi stuff falls under Internal styles which is more supernatural for example Fire Sutra which at its simplest is basically fire bending allowing you to apply a Burn effect to your attacks

>>48067246
>>48061793
I also remember I learned about it because at the time I was pondering a campaign set in a lowish magic version of Qin dynasty China, shortly after the Warring States period.

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>>48070545
There is actually a game called Qin: The Warring States you might want to check out I've never played it but I've heard is alright

I'll just leave this here.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Wulin%20Hero%20Quest

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>>48070826
Wulin Hero quest was great its a shame he QM keeps having real life issues that prevent him from running stuff

>>48070864
I am sorry about that.
I genuinely look back on when I could easily write that with a level of fondness that genuinely surprised me.

>>48070887
I miss it anyway.

I loved Weapons of the Gods, but Legends of the Wulin has basically replaced it for me. It's a very different system, and it still has issues (like an amazingly terribly edited core book), but it's a lot less broken and imbalanced and much better at giving everyone cool options to be a badass in one way or another. I play in two games of it, about to start running another (group is full though, sorry) so I can answer questions if you like?

I love this stuff, just wish I had a group to play with. No one else I know is interested in this.

>>48065597
>Hero,House of Flying Daggers and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Never read any wuxia, but did watch those. Also watched something called Swordsman on youtube which is supposed to be based off a classic wuxia Smiling Proud Wanderer. I saw a bunch of wuxia series on youtube, just didn't have the time to watch them.

>Xianxia
Been reading some of this stuff. It's pretty good, but seems a bit repetitive as a lot of authors use the exact same plots, ideas, story elements and cliches. The better authors obviously mix it up and put a new spin on it, but it's still the same. The cultivation levels are very reminiscent of D&D, and for some reason I get a very strong BECMI feel from some of them.
There is also a lot of alternative but related genres to xianxia and wuxia, I'm not too clued up on names, but stuff like xuanhuan, qi huan, etc.

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>>48072140
Xianxia is a relatively new phenomena that is mostly concentrated on the internet in fact a few of the xianxia novels from the link in this post>>48065597 are written by the same guy who uses similar themes and terms for example Coiling Dragon, Stellar Transformations, and Desolate Era are all web novels written by I Eat Tomatoes

But I'd keep at it their are other novels out there and even those I mentioned are different enough to be entertaining

The only problem is that most Xianxia novels fall into the same trap the protagonist either is born with something that lets them cultivate better than others or finds a crazy powerful magic item or discovers a lost secret technique that makes him super strong if he trains in it

These tend to be the tropes of the genre some of which are shared with wuxia

>>48072277
>Coiling Dragon, Stellar Transformations
Busy reading these 2. IET is one of the better authors.

>The only problem is that most Xianxia novels fall into the same trap the protagonist either is born with something that lets them cultivate better than others or finds a crazy powerful magic item or discovers a lost secret technique that makes him super strong if he trains in it
I've seen this complaint a few time, but it's actually the one thing I don't have a problem with, because it keeps the story moving. Without it, xianxia would be even more bogged down and drawn out and boring. Imagine if the MC had to invest and train as much as an average cultivator, that would be centuries of nothing happening. I can understand how a cheat can make things boring and remove the tension, but that's on the author to not overdo the cheat, plenty of authors pull it off well. I thought Battle through the Heavens, and Martial World pulls it off nicely, whereas Emperor’s Domination, Mythical Tyrant and few others that I dropped so don't remember the names are absolutely horrible when it comes to this. In those latter the MC uses their cheat to just senselessly stomp on everything, with no way for the enemies to fight back.

>>48072277
>Xianxia is a relatively new phenomena
How new? I thought this was a thing in China with all that Monkey King legends and Daoist cultivation stories. Seems like it should be old.

>>48072377
I would finish Coiling Dragon before Stellar Transformations they are part of a duology and while they are self contained you can better appreciate the ending of ST if you've finished CD

>>48072400
Daoist cultivation is just regular cultivation, and in fact the entire concept stems from Daoist physical philosophies.
The Journey West (Son Wukong's story) has basically all the characters already START as incredibly powerful immortal beings, and the only major human character Xuanxang/Triptikas is actually a total noncombatant who needs them as bodyguards.

>>48072400
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xianxia_novel
here is a better explanation than I can give at the moment

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>>48072426
As an addendum to this post the characteristics part lists a lot of the common tropes of the genre but they most assuredly do not apply to all xianxia works at the same time

>>48072413
Will do, I'm further along with CD than ST anyway.

>>48072422
>>48072426
Interesting link. Those characteristics are spot on. So xianxia is about as old as modern wuxia which is relatively recent. I always thought wuxia included all those old legends but it seems that is separate from the novels, which are a 20th/21st century phenomena?

How do the different cultural and religious traditions relate to xianxia. This always confuses me, since I don't know much about them. Taoism obviously plays the biggest role with the cultivation ideas and immortality, and there always seem to be a few references to Buddhism, but what about Confucianism? How does that relate to xianxia, if it relates at all?

Back on topic, are there any RPGs that can do and are better suited to xianxia, as opposed to wuxia?

>>48072426

Interesting. From what I see there, Xianxia is treated as a kind of sub-genre to Wuxia in quite a similar way to the reincarnation/isekai works are to normal japanese fantasy.

>>48071079
>(like an amazingly terribly edited core book)
Everybody says this. What kind of problems does it have?

>>48072585
Confucianism isn't a religion.
It's like Marxism, or Leninism or Capitalism; it's philosophies about how a "proper" social order should work and how a just and orderly society should function.
Arguably Confucianist ideals shape modern Chinese thought more heavily then any religious denomination does, if only because many aspects of ancient Chinese governments were heavily influenced by Confucianist thought and practices.

>>48073903
It's hard to explain, but basically the rules are all in weird place (the rules for martial arts, chi, weapons and armor, and combat are all in different places) and because the rules are HEAVILY wound up in narrativist mechanics (albiet a very specific type of narrative) their lack of organization leads to some confusion.

>>48064021
What? Isn't there always an Exalted general?

It's more like, some games are a little over-hyped and there's a strong and annoying misuse of the term "tactical."

>>48061793
>LOTW

Did we read the same book?

I vaguely remember extremely boring styles composed of flat modifier ('Your hand burn with the power of a thousand sun, +1 strength', 'The chi of the moon suffuse your body for one hour, +2 sneakiness'), a vague and uninteresting system, and a clusterfuck of a setting that, though cool, seems to be written to be as difficult to grasp as possible.

But then it is still recommended.

wut

>>48074052
Not being facetious by the way. I genuinely wonder if we read the same badly layouted, bland and not well explained system, with lot of uninteresting martial styles. People seem to believe it is the greatest Wuxia game ever made. Maybe I just didn't read the same book, or the same edition somehow.

>>48074052
>>48074137

The book is badly laid out, but in my experience the system isn't bland and the martial arts aren't boring.

I can see them maybe seem that way at a very cursory evaluation, since every External is a similar list of stats, but even that produces an extremely different play experience, without even getting into things like style qualities, laughs and fears or the external techniques which further differentiate them.

With Internals it's a bit more of a stretch, but you could come to the same conclusion from seeing the large number of +stat techniques, but while those provide bread and butter combat bonuses every style also has interesting and flavourful tricks, such as Fox Spirit Song's ability to reverse the usual flow of combat or Thousand Venom's wonderfully dangerous Transformation of Dark Jade, which massively powers up a fighter in exchange for taking damage every turn.

And even then, there's a lot more to the system beyond the martial arts and how they're combined. Your choice of weapon, secret arts, chi conditions and even entanglement expenditures all comes together in a fight, where the systems multiple-action mechanics really like you feel like an awesome kung-fu badass.

I can acknowledge it isn't a system for everyone. In fact, it's a system for a quite specific niche, not exactly crunchy or 'realistic' enough for some, and too mechanically heavy for those who tend towards ultra-lite narrative stuff. Personally, though? I think it's the greatest marriage between narrative and mechanics I've ever seen in an RPG, despite its flaws.

>>48070887
I'm reading it over now, it was really well done! How did you do so much research on the setting?

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>>48074239
You were polite to a negative poster, I shall contribute for the good of all.

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>>48065597
Anon, thought I'd add but Feng Shen Ji is also based off of the Fengshen Yangyi or Fengshen Bang
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investiture_of_the_Gods
I'd also recommend pic related, Blood and Steel as a good wuxia read

>>48074458
Cool stuff

>>48074313
great pdf that condenses all the basic information into on easy to read product
my only complaint is the author seems to have included some material from his home gam which can make things confusing for new players

>>48076875
Nah, that's just really hard to find stuff from the base rulebook.

>>48074247
If you mean research about wuxia in general, then that's just one of many, many useless but entertaining things I know about.
If you mean about the factions and such, then the majority of them are inspired by the LotW RPG, but a lot are a mixed heavily with real-life (so to speak) wuxia organizations appearing in other novels written in China proper; the Shaolin Sect, the Wudang Sect, the Emei Sect, the Tang Clan, the Iron Palm Sect, and a lot of minor ones I bring up are from other wuxia stories. The factions from LotW I modify a bit too here and there.

And thank you for the compliment.
I'm not precisely sure if it was the best thing I've ever written, but I sure haven't gotten reactions from anything like that before or since.

>>48077121
I think he means stuff like elves, calling chi Aether, and the 1-10 rank scale with higher ranks being better

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>>48077983

>>48065903
>Hell even D&D has a small section in the DMG of 4th
Most editions of D&D do not work well for wuxia, but if you use HP as plot-shield/parry points, instead of meat points, and really stress that anyone who's a PC is a Wuxia hero, and anyone outside the purview of kung-fu Wuxia exeptionalism is represented with minions, 4e works REALLY well for wuxia. Usually, I give a little (lot) more leeway with vertical movement, and for example treat jumping to the top of a building as merely difficult terrain, to help better represent genre tropes, but that's more of a fluff change than a rules change. Likewise, most classes will be refluffed, but we already knew that.

It really does work quite well.

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>>48072585

What's interesting about Chinese mythology is that, in a lot of ways, it's sort of like Highlander. Everything is (for the most part) either an immortal human or an immortal animal. There are a few specific non-human races that were always non-human, but they're the exception. Most monsters, gods, evil spirits, nature spirits, fairies, etc, are just humans and animals who achieved immortality in some fashion (and there are a lot of ways to do it) and acquired supernatural powers and possibly a changed appearance in the process.

As you say, Daoism is the core of it, although it really goes back even further then that, having its roots in more traditional Chinese ancestor worship. Buddhism got neatly folded in thanks to the concept of the Bodhitsattva, a human being who nearly achieves nirvana but decides to stop and help other humans before becoming one with the universe. Their enlightenment is so great they are basically an immortal superbeing too, and many are worshipped as gods.

>>48074022
Exalted isn't wuxia.
One of the many (many, many, MANY) deformative effects that fucking game has had on this hobby since it crawled out of whatever ruinous monsters spawned it is sucking all the air out of the idea of a 'wuxia game', just because of the charm names. Nine times out of ten, it doesn't fucking deliver that, in system or in setting.

>>48079931
I know we had some fun with that, in the day.

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What system would you fellow anons recommend for a Star Wars wuxia game

Do I go with a star wars system and make it wuxia
Or do I go with a wuxia system and make it star wars

>>48080989
>Do I go with a star wars system and make it wuxia
>Or do I go with a wuxia system and make it star wars
Very much the second one. The system is very important in helping to simulate the, atmosphere, genre conventions, and action sequence feels. The GM is the one who makes the world feel like the world it's supposed to feel like. Therefore, if you want a star-wars game with the atmosphere, genre conventions, and action sequence feels of Wuxia, then you take a wuxia system and re-skin it, not the other way around.

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>>48070826
>>48074247
For those checking out Wulin Hero Quest in the archives check out a manhua called Lawless one of the main characters uses a style similar to Sky's Heaven's Blessings
you can find said manhua here http://kissmanga.com/Manga/The-Lawless

pic related demonstrates a few of his moves

Also >>48077249 Sage loved your quests and am eagerly awaiting the next installment of Super Hero Quest

>>48072377
>that would be centuries of nothing happening.
I don't quite mind that when it's done in an interesting way. I quite liked how one of the power-ups in ISSTH's involved the MC sinking down to the bottom of a lifeforce-exterminating sea and merging with it for almost two centuries to cultivate understanding of Death and gain control of the sea itself.

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>>48081417
Thanks for the advice I was thinking of using Legends of the Wulin and altering/creating a few loresheets to get the organizations such
Combat should be easy as I have seen people stat guns as just ranged weapons so blasters and other weapons wont be a problem
Force powers can just be internal styles and formless techniques and external styles can be refluffed to be lightsaber forms

My only concern is ships and vehicles and the various species

>>48081551
Never read that manhua or even HEARD of it, but now I'm going to power through that shit. Thanks anon.

>Sage loved your quests and am eagerly awaiting the next installment of Super Hero Quest
I only hope I ever find time to do it again.
Adulthood fucking blows: it's just endless hours of labor and work for money that immediately evaporates into thin air as soon as you get it and then physical and mental exhaustion crushing any desire to do anything else out of you.
Even my days off aren't REALLT days off, and in between my struggle to get everything I need done, my issues with depression, and my inability to stay creatively focused on anything for more then five minutes I'm honestly thinking QMing is a bad idea since I'll just be forced to drop it so long that I'm unable to find my rythem at it anymore.

Maybe I should focus more on one-shots or something, that's more realistic.

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>>48081685
Hope you get more time to chill and decompress I completely understand where you're coming from with the depression thing and mental health is more important than some strangers on the Internets entertainment

Also when you get to it the Thunderstorm technique is what I imagine Feng Renshu uses to end a fight
spoilered just in case

>>48081818
Damn, I GOTTA read this comic.

>>48080989

I actually had a friend stat out all the SW lightsaber forms as Legends of the Wulin External styles. They were planning on running an all Jedi game in the system.

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>>48082754
Any way you could post them or a link to a document containing them if its not too much trouble

>>48082826

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sFXnMTMSkZ1gCPXz2O-xejC1ioluaL0xvMmagvMO7jQ/edit

They're still untested and might need some tweaking, but I think they did a decent job capturing the essence of each.

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>>48082853
Thank you you magnificent bastard
I've been looking to run a wuxia game since re watching the prequel trilogy. Star Wars has always had an Asian flair to it in terms of the Jedi but it was mostly based around old chanbara samurai films George Lucas watched in the prequels they brought in different choreographers for the fights and they took on a distinctly Chinese look
So I thought why not run a wuxia inspired game based around wandering Jedi and associated non force users originally i had planed to use Saga Edition because I hadn't heard of LotW

>>48081673
>My only concern is ships and vehicles and the various species
Species is a loresheet

Ships, well that's a bit trickier.

>>48082853
I don't know LoW well, but it kinda seems like Form V is just flat out better than Form III because it can what it does, plus the range blocked, plus the extra options of Djem So. Like, for example, Force Deflection=Trust Your Force, but Blade Deflection gives the same bonus as Reaction Defense but without the condition of going last in initiative.

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>>48083576
I'm sure I could just fluff vehicles when it comes to travel and in the case of larger ships environments but I don't know how to handle AT-STs, small one man star fighters, or things like STAPs that the players could be expected to use or fight against

>>48065597
What, so essentially every character is some flavor of monk?

...I need to play some wuxia.

>>48084043
Yes to some degree, but in actuality relatively few characters in wuxia are actual monks in the D&D sense.
A strong belief seems to be that isolating yourself in a monestary and being lawful or something gets you Monk class powers, but in the actual genre the Monk class is FROM the esoteric martial powers are like any other skill ever; you learn by reading about it, being taught, and through practice and experience.

Ugh, here, read this. It's faster.
http://pastebin.com/KZhsJX1G

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>>48084043
D&D Monks are a pretty specific flavor of martial arts type dude that you don't really see anywhere else in fiction or roleplaying for that matter
The lawful monastic sort of shaolin guy who can move a little faster, jumps a little higher and at high levels doesn't age and basically "death touches" people

Martial artists and and warriors in martial arts and wuxia fiction tend to be much more varied and nuanced with a wide array of skills and abilities they may have access to whereas in D&D there tends to be only one or in the case of 5e three fairly limited paths

Any Wuxia movies /tg/ would recommend for a player going into a game based on the genre or a GM trying to familiarize themselves with it? I'm just thinkin in the context of being a GM, this kind of thing could be different from just the normal lists of essential Wuxia films.

I've seen a few myself, but I still plan on seeing some others like Come Drink With Me, Dragon Gate Inn, and Touch of Zen at least.

>>48084737
Iron Monkey is a really great example of the genre, as is True Legend. The Netflix origins sequel to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (based off the novel Iron Knight, Silver Vase) is also actually pretty good despite entirely being in English, and they frequently discuss "The Iron Way" in the film which is basically what they call the Code of Xia.
There's a lot of good TV series to watch based off extremely famous wuxia novels too (such as Swordsman and Legend of Condor Heroes), but be forewarned that the pacing may seem odd to a lot of first-time viewers and the heavy emphasis on romantic leads might put off some, mitigated somewhat by the fact that EVERYONE in wuxia stories is REALLY pretty to look at.
Complex love triangles is a pretty heavy staple of the genre, rather like a soap opera where instead of all situations being resolved by emotional confrontations and people suddenly getting cancer it's resolved by people killing each other in martial arts battles.

>>48084737
Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, and Iron Monkey
The last being a personal favorite

>>48084737
Kudos on Dragon Gate Inn being a choice BTW; pretty much everything by Tsui Hark is an awesome wuxia film.
Detective Dee: Mystery of the Phantom Flame is another really great one of his.

>>48084834
Who DOESN'T like Donnie Yen doing his best Chun Li impersonation?
http://youtu.be/oB1gPpQZuPw

>>48084879
Who DOESN'T like Donnie Yen doing anything

>>48084886
Godless heathens.

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>>48084737
>>48084834
For an American take on the genre try Into the Badlandsa post-apocalyptic western take on wuxia, Kung Fu Panda although a comedy it is still a pretty good take on the genre, and the classic tv series Kung Fu starring David Carradine [speaking of Carradine Kill Bill while not wuxia should be watched purely for Pai Mei who I copied amost exactly for a game of D&D except he was a Gold Dragon in human form

>>48064021
>Its a shame /tg/ never seems to talk about Wuxia inspired games
Where have you been?

>>48084822
>Sword of Destiny
Any clue why the reviews are so bad?
>Complex love triangles is a pretty heavy staple of the genre,
I read shoujo manga, I'm fine with this. And I've kind of already noitced the trend anyway.

>>48074022
Not straight the way LotW or WotG are. It pulls equal parts illiad odessy and Gilgamesh as it does romance of the three kingdoms or journey to the west. Not to mention second edition went insane directions with magitech and 'the sun is a giant robot that knows kung fu'

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So I remember kindling this paper a while back and I find "ku" interesting as a form of magic. Do any wuxia stuff ever cover it? And how is ku handled in that stuff? Obviously I'm sure the lesbian orgy detail is gonna left out but I'd probably have to leave that out anyway.

>>48085393
>Any clue why the reviews are so bad?
Basically, because people were expecting another Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and were surprised to discover that the
CTHD film is actually RADICALLY different from most proper wuxia stories.
The full was full of understated emotions and subtle imagery because that's what the director was into, whereas actual wuxia is ANYTHING but subtle (with people starting fights over the tinest most ridiculous little things and blood feuds that last a generation starting over incredibly simple misunderstandings).
CTHD isn't even an accurate adaption of the novel it was based on, and much like it's sequel the novel was extremely bombastic and over the top.

So in short; stupid white people think they know some shit about some shit but because they be stupid white people they don't know shit about shit and so go to a thing and are surprised when they don't know shit about shit and so they think it's shit rather then go learn themselves some shit.

>>48085471
It doesn't because I recognize this paper; it was constructed from several different sources that whoever wrote the paper basically understood maybe half of and then he wrote it like he was an authority on it.
It RESEMBLES Daoist Sexual Alchemy (basically practicing specific sorts of sex to improve some baseline health and shit), but other then that he's putting together a lot of unrelated things without context.

Another thing to note; actual magic in wuxia is rare. Magic isn't something learned or done by human beings in Chinese culture, only by xuan (Immortals). While a human can BECOME Xuan using the right circumstances and in some stories using the right training, no mortal human being is capable of performing magic while still living in a mortal state; magic is the purview of gods, demons, and ascended humans, not men.

That said the line between magic and the shit you can do with appropriate Chi Cultivation in wuxia stories is pretty goddamn thin.

>>48085471
To further explain; Gu (the proper word for what he's describing) is actually more about the study and application of poisons in a very specific Southern Chinese subculture.

This paper was written by a white guy in the 1950's in Pennsylvania.
I don't think I need to explain exactly how freaking racist as a matter of course ("Well it's Chinese so all of their practices must be the same, right?") the 1950's were to you, but I will anyway; pretty goddamn racist.

>>48085585
is it bad that when I first saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon I felt it was kinda garbage, and then when I watched Hero I fell in love?

>>48085695
However, the Chinese themselves DO have some interesting stereotype stuff esoteric poisoning techniques coming from southern China.
Most of what we consider mainstream Chinese culture is Han Chinese, centered around the Yangtze Basin and northern China, yet a lot of what Western cultures think of as Chinese is is shit out of Hong Kong and the southern parts of China which a lot of people don't even realize wasn't even a city proper until the British sat on it for decades.
Southern China (the Cantonese speaking areas) is historically speaking a relatively recently settled part of China and all the major cities were definitely elsewhere in the more northerly regions.

>>48085794
No, just means you have different tastes.
Like I said, CTHD isn't really a very good example of a common wuxia story at all, but Hero most definitely is one.
Though it's also subtly shilling for the PROC government kinda hard, but that's really difficult to escape from in Chinese culture in a general sense.

>>48085852
I feel like CTHD was just trying a thing it wasn't very well-suited for. The subtlety and drama fell flat for me because I was used to Dostoevsky-tier shit and the way people spoke of it, I was expecting something of that caliber, but Oriental.

Kung Fu Hustle/Shaolin Soccer and their (less-comedic) ilk on the other hand just got me rock hard because they were plain fun and went hogwild, so it confuses me that CTHD is considered THE pillar of Wuxia in Western pop culture (though to be fair, it's so niche that it's probably not very reflective of Western sensibilities at all)

>>48085891
I once put it thusly; Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is an excellent drama film. It is however, a pretty poor example of a wuxia story. It actually didn't do very well in China proper compared to the States because a lot of people were like "What the fuck is this, this isn't even the genre this is supposed to be in" over there.

Kung Fu Hustle is pretty brill because despite it's bizarre Loony Tunes-esque antics it is FULL of references to classic wuxia fiction; the Landlord and Landlady introduce themselves by name as Yang Guo and Xiaolongnu, who are a pair of star-crossed lovers who end up together in what is arguably THE defining romance story of the entire wuxia genre from the novel Return of the Condor Heroes. The dub and sub introduces them as Paris and Helen of Troy because otherwise the reference would be kind of lost entirely, though I'd argue it kind of still is.

>>48085891
I think CTHD is so widely received in the west because it had such a huge theatrical release compared to any other martial arts flick at the time most of the martial arts stuff people in America were familiar with were old Bruce Lee and Shaw Bros. films all action and poorly dubbed so when this came along and was a well directed and well written drama it garnered alot of attention

>>48085977
Ang Lee is also a director heavily inspired by Western cinematography and storytelling.
He directed Brokeback Mountain, which is not even remotely a very Chinese subject matter.

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Oh, and to whichever anon suggested The Lawless; thank you.
Two pages in and it is already The Dopest Shit.

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Sometimes you just gotta kill a motherfucker with a tiny red poison frog you spit from your mouth, amIrite?

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>>48086083
Have you ever poisoned a dude so hard he fucking exploded?
And then killed all his friends with Arrow Bazookas you were pretending was bundles of wood?

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>>48086035
Lawless is pretty dope it's just too bad I haven't found a site that has it translated past the 9th chapter

Also how fucking metal is the Fortress of Chained Souls

>>48086191
Wuxia is the most insane shit most days.
Exalted is not a particularly great wuxia setting (it's more like Moorcock mixed with fantasy anime thematically), but it's thing where every aspect of it's world is the more ludicrous thing ever that was done in the hardest core way anyone has ever done anything is pretty wuxia.

I think that's on accident though and White Wolf was just being edgy because that's their go-to.

>>48086191
This site goes to 12 http://manga.life/read-online/TheLawless

>>48085641
Thanks for alerting me that it's bullshit.

>>48086229
No problem.
Chinese culture is pretty inscrutable sometimes, particularly since a lot of people forget just as "American" culture is actually pretty broad and covers a lot of only vaguely related topics, China is an equally large land mass with an equally large number of subcultures living there and and even more languages spoken in large numbers then are spoken here.

>>48085935
>Kung Fu Hustle
Oh shit, that movie was amazing. The funeral bell scene was the best.

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>>48086982
That whole movie was pure gold. So much awesome.
Steven Chow manages to homage both classic American cinema and wuxia fiction in the same film and it doesn't even come across as weird.

>>48087108
>it doesn't even come across as weird.
The Looney Tunes thing was a little weird, man.

Hey, while you're on, I've been hankering for a Wulin game for some time. I've run the game before but holy god does it take forever to run a combat. Is there any way to speed things up? Literally everything else besides the combat is amazing.

>>48087154
Couldn't tell ya. I'm not really an authority on the ins and outs of the system, and the one time my group played it that wasn't a complaint of ours.
Perhaps it just requires players with a much stronger grasp of the entire rules to speed things up or something? Or maybe just we didn't care when we played.

>>48087154

I love the combat, but it is a crunchy system with involved combat, so it takes time.

It helps to not run every fight until Taken Out- if characters and NPCs are willing to surrender or back off when things obviously aren't in their favour, you can trim off a large part of most fights. Another thing is generally focusing on small battles or duels. Large group battles with an equivalent number of enemies are awesome, but can easily eat an entire day.

In online games I often split into duels and run them over the week between sessions, while IRL I've had a decent amount of success with splitting the players into pairs, giving one an NPC sheet to run the opposition in another players duel, with bonus Destiny if they do well.

>>48087154
This is for Legends of the Wulin.

One of the things that slows down combat is the fact that attacks take between 2-4 rolls to resolve *with* minor actions on all sides.

Here's some experimental numbers for static defense rather than rolled defense.

Static Defense starts at (10 + 5 * River slots). This means a rank 4 character (who would have 2 river slots) would have a base Static defense of 20.

When being attacked (or against other minor actions) you use that as if that was your rolled result.

While static defense is not rolled, you can still flood the river to use that result for a higher defense, but only against one action.

Toughness, instead of being rolled, is now a static 10 for the first chi, and then +5 for each Chi afterwords.

This cuts down the number of rolls to resolve a successful attack from 4 to 2 and increases the number of normally successful attacks. This makes the game far more aggressive though, and makes taking out foes easier.

If you *really* want to include some balancing factors for LotW, make it so that Damage now instead adds extra ripples instead of adding to the rippling roll at a rate of 1 extra ripple per 5 damage. You still need to get a crit on the Strike to get a rippling roll. Block gets a +5 to static defense.

These are completely untested though. So warning. I wouldn't even use the strike and block rules if you use the static defense and toughness.

>>48065597

The ones I remember the most are 'The Stormriders', with Ekin Cheng and Aaron Kwok, which was a fucking awesome movie. It also had the best villain I've ever seen, a man literally named Conqueror.

The other one is Return of the Condor Heroes, and it's basically a VN/hentai game at some points.

Is there an easier way to read Legends of the Wulin? Having crunch in the middle of the fluff sections of a bookmarkless pdf is really making things hard for me, and I spent most of the weekend trying to read it.

Also, is it just me or do the external kung fu techniques not really do anything? They're almost all just a +5 to something you could already do, not giving you the ability to do something new and interesting.

>>48090618

There's a bookmarked pdf floating around /tg/, but I don't know off hand where it's uploaded to.

And while a lot of External techs are stat buffs, in my experience it's important to have a mix between those and weird interesting utility stuff, which Externals also have. The core book internals are a little conservative in their design, but the Wulin Legends site has a lot of really cool custom Externals which play with the design space a lot more.

>>48090772
>Wulin Legends site
I might have known there'd be something like that. Reminds me of Everway a bit in that respect, if only because one book doesn't quite seem enough to express all the options that should be available in this system.

Has anyone actually played this game? I'm curious how it works in play. It looks fun, but as with most games that aren't either DnD 5e or Dark Heresy, I can't find anyone interested in playing it.

(inb4 "run it yourself". I'm already running Shadowrun. If karma were real, I'd be in two niche RPGs right now. Maybe just one if it were Exalted; that system is also wilfully needlessly complicated.)

>>48090997

I play it a lot, and I love it. I've run and played in multiple games of it, and I find each new character to be a very different experience.

The flexible skill system lets everyone be useful both in and out of combat, while Secret Arts (once you wrap your head around them) are a wonderfully weird addition, letting you both manipulate the world and a fight in various unusual ways.

I still adore the combat. The dice system creates a constant set of interesting decisions to make, allocating your resources to various actions and trying to get the better of your opponent. The narrative side is wonderfully integrated, too. Figuring out your opponents style and chi conditions, and therefore finding out things about them and why they're fighting you, is a key part of victory.

One of my favourite things about the system, in particular, is how well it does PvP. In most games PvP is ruinous, something to be avoided at all costs, but in LotW it's fun, interesting and potentially mutually beneficial. In true Wuxia fashion, the end result of two characters beating the crap out of one another can be a greater mutual respect and understanding along with a tangible power up to represent their new bond. A scene where that played out remains one of my favourite gaming moments ever.

How does anyone find a game for LotW? I look in all the gamefinder threads, but I never see it mentioned.

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in what system can i be samurai jack?

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>>48091736
I would say Feng Shui

>>48090772
Seconding Wulin Legends.
Lots of great ideas on there for players and GM's alike.

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