Legends of the Wulin - It exists!

 

A very elusive game for those of us who are crazy about wuxia is Legends of the Wulin. Eos Press made a game a few years back called Weapons of the Gods, based on a comic I have never been able to track down. The next step in the evolution of that game system have been mentioned in hushed whispers, but sightings are few and far between. The publisher does not even sell the game from their own website!! I went so far as to pledge for a Kickstarter where one of the bonuses on a higher pledge level was not only the board game the crowd funding campaign was all about, but also a copy of the hard to catch RPG. Now it's mine! Noble Knight Games suddenly had a copy, and I grabbed it as fast as I could! Yah! 

Nothing is so sweet to a collector as finding that thing you have been looking for. The system looks interesting, but a bit fiddly. It's very clearly made by someone who knows a thing or two about Chinese culture, and the visuals are quite impressive with glossy paper and a lot of art. This baby increased the shipping weight and costs quite a bit!

Now it's mine. It will be interesting to see how it stacks up compared to Tianxia.

Some impressions of Mutant: Year Zero

I guess you have heard that Modiphius is going to publish the Swedish post-apocalyptic game Mutant? If you have not, go forth and click that link and read some about it. I'll stay here until you get back?

You're back? Good. Let's move on. I have read the Swedish edition of the game and I'm going to talk a bit about my impressions. It is a game with some peculiarities and own takes on things. Please note that as far as I know, the edition Modiphius is publishing is just like it. But, I have no inside information.

First off let me say this is an interesting game. I have yet to try it, but reading it makes me really pumped up about the idea of running and playing it. There are some things that stand out.

The first thing is how the game have a communal part, and an individual part. You all belong to a community of mutants, an Ark. This Ark you all develop together, deciding how it's supposed to be developing, putting efforts into defenses or developing culture. This works as a framing device for your individual goals and also drives you into the Zone, to gather resources. I really like how this gives you all a reason to band together, and something to do.

Then there's the characters. All characters have one NPC they hate, one they want to protect and then they have their one big dream. It's the classic stick and carrot. While this is neat, I think where the system has the potential to really shine is in the mixing. You have a "council session" first at every game session where you plan the strategic game, then you get to play your characters and their hates and cares pull them in different directions.

Now, this is when I find it all becomes quite interesting. You have 10 Type Events for the Ark and 10 Events for the Zone. Roll the dice or pick one of those events, like One NPC Is In Trouble or Fight About An Item and combine that with the strategic goal for the Ark and the different characters the PCs care or hate and you will have something happening. I think this has potential! When things have really gelled in my Tianxia game is when I have managed to match a place with characters in conflict. This feels like it could work like that.

Actually, this makes me think of how I used to read Ars Magica and feel that game sounded great, and then really fall flat in play. This promises some of the same things. Maybe it will all come together better this time. I feel this way the characters are beings hooked into the Ark more than the Ars Magica characters ever where. In the Ark there's a desperate need for food and clean water, and necessity will drive the PCs and NPCs into conflict, and into the Zone. With the Type Events, you are sure to have something happen that will topple any kind of balance achieved.  

This all comes together to drive story. Note to my old school friends, this is not Story Before! This is very much a story that develop out of play. This naturally relates a lot to my previous Fate experience. There are still lessons to be learned from that. I will re-read chapter 9 of my Fate Core rule book and think upon the Mutant way a bit more, and I expect the fallout to at least be interesting. Yeah, fallout. The future is post-apocalyptic and brutal.

Running Tianxia - the session that brainfaded

Last Wednesday I was supposed to be running my somewhat weekly Tianxia game. This time I canceled the game, since not only were attendance a bit spotty, but the main reason was I was totally out of ideas. Now the question rears up, should a total brain fade on the GM's part be reason enough to cancel a game night? Can you not just plow on, or is it indicative of something being done wrong?

In theory you just show up for a game, explore the hell out of the secondary world and fun things happen, right? Pure sandbox enthusiasts talk about that as the bees knees, but I've never been able to make it happen. Either it's me not being able to make the sandbox enticing enough, or the people I play with just aren't that good at go and make the world their own. Considering the fact we are all busy people, who drink beer and chat during the the game on a weekday night tired after a day's work, I guess the latter is a major part. My limitations I am well familiar with, so I leave them out for this time.

So, what do you do to give the game some structure? Previous sessions I've set up a location with some people in it and written up some goals for them, and then it has just evolved naturally from there. I wrote about that, the plot triads, and how well it worked before. This time I had the location, but just couldn't invent any interesting people for the life of me.

Thus I turn to the game system for a lead. When you play Fate you can be sure of one thing, it's covered by the rules somewhere. It's the most comprehensive rules set I've played so far! Guess what? I have not read chapter 9 of the Fate Core rules yet...

Looking in that chapter I find a handy little list.

Creating A Scenario:

• Find Problems
• Ask Story Questions
• Establish the Opposition
• Set the First Scene

There's one way to start off that first bullet point, start with the aspects. Naturally. Everything is about Aspects in Fate.

This kind of brings home how important it is, and hard, to create good aspects. Now when I sit down and look at them, some of these I should be able to use, shouldn't I?

Always in Trouble, Watch Your Tongue, Unwilling Mentor, Paladin in training, These are sad times, Righteous Anger, Scumbags gets what they deserve, The Good Fight

I know where I want the action to kick off, in the governor's palace. Using that I guess the list above should be able to tell me something about the potential conflicts and opposition.

I wonder if it's because it's so formalized that it feels hard? In the end I still think this will make me a better GM. I usually never think things through like this, and when lightning strikes I am cooking with gas. When there's no lightning it will be a dud. Hopefully this will teach me something.

Using Plot Triads for the win

Last night we played Tianxia again. My life is in a very hectic phase, but I have managed to get a 2-3 hour session in now for two weeks in a row. Naturally, when you have limited time you have to use your game prep wisely.

The setup for the episode last time was that the Iron Monkey Escort Company had gotten the prestigious contract to move the Jade Buddha from the Green Heaven Temple to the governor's mansion in the city of Bao Jiang. Since running yet another ambush in the woods felt repetitive, I decided to focus instead on what happened at the end and the beginning of the journey. So, it was to be intrigue and showdown in the temple before they get out the door with the jade statuette.

Having decided that I wrote up a few antagonists. I had a young woman, with a troubled past. Since one PC is a "paladin in training" I knew I could entangle him there. I had an arrogant noble sword fighter who would rankle one of the other PCs, and to make things interesting I followed the advice in the Tianxia book and made a plot triad.The plot triad is a simple but smart idea about always having three way interplays between plot elements. So, the arrogant noble knew about the troubled past, but was honour bound to protect her because of that.

I took that same plot triad idea to the jade buddha statuette. Young woman want buddha, scheming corrupt bureaucrat want the buddha and the PCs are hired to take it from point A to point B without those two getting it.

It turned out this was a great way to get the players to interact with the world, and the characters within it. Thinking about it, just interacting with one character that have a "thing" and you want it, is pretty limiting. Either you get it, or not. The triad turned out to twist that into something that felt complex, and manageable at the same time.It was easy on prep, with just jotted down notes on who where present and who wanted what from whom. All in all, just a sentence on each character. Having limited time for prep, this was perfect. I can really recommend this tool!

What happened was the young woman charmed one PC to let her out of jail after her attempt on the statuette, the the magistrate made his grab for it, and the players got to fight a whole squad of soldiers in the abbot's quarters. They whacked the magistrate, scattered the soldiers and ride off with the buddha, escort company banner fluttering in the wind. Up on the hills were bandits and out there was the young woman, and the mysterious swords man. Very cinematic.

Next time I will just fast forward to the governer's mansion, and set up some new triads. Almost instant drama. It worked wonders for a busy gamer!

Campaign design in Tianxia

By now you have probably picked up on what's my favourite Fate setting, the wuxia game Tianxia from Vigilance Press. I have ran a few sessions, and decided to wrote some words on how setting development and campaign design have worked for me.

First off I might say I consider a campaign to be a GM and his or her ongoing game, not a storyline. That being said, I have not really thought much about where this game will be heading. My main focus was to have a set up that would enable people to come and go, and always have a reason so slot in the game for a night.

The gathering point, I decided, would be one of the security and escort companies that litter the setting of Jiangzhou. Having a central repository of "missions" and clients would help tie the characters to existing conflicts and also to powerful individuals that could make life interesting for them.

If you have ever played Call of Cthulhu, you are probably well familiar with the question of not only "why are we doing this again?", but also "why am I hanging out with these nut cases again?". For me that is a very relevant question, not only in CoC. By having the escort company, I get to offer some kind of fall back to those questions for the PCs. For those tired nights when everyone feel less than inspired, that can be a great help. This is what I wrote for the central organization for my campaign.

The Iron Monkey Security Company
It Will Be Delivered On Time
Discretion Above All
It's like a family

Great Contacts +4
Good Resources +3
Fair Lore +3

I really like the way you stat things up like this. I gives you some game mechanics to hang on to. If I'm out of ideas I can always use those traits as a problem and off we go.

For me it has often been a source of problem to tie the PCs to the actions in the setting. I've been a CoC fan for ages, and the idea of Delta Green as a solution to that age old problem for CoC is not exactly new to me. Maybe I had to read it in a book to feel I got the blessing of the game designer to use it somewhere else, I don't know.

I decided the company is run by "Old Monkey Li" one of the disciples of The Flashing Sword Song. Another of Song's disciples, Madame Wu, is running The Golden Flower Company which will be a possible source of conflicts.

I think the next time I start up a "D&D game", broadly interpreted, I will also start with an centring organization like this. It strikes me as I write this that The Harpers in the Realms probably started out with a similar function. Well, it would not be the first time I was a late guest to the party...

This is what I had when I started the first session. Every night would be another mission, or some intermezzo created by the last one. Regardless who showed up, the company would have representatives present as everyone was a brother or sister in the company. I decided to start the off on their way home from a mission, and naturally there was an ambush in the woods. Original, yeah right. But, it has worked before, have it not? At least it were no kobolds involved. Let's just say it's a classic.

From this start we put things in motion, and I'll write more about the highs and lows of what happened later. 

 

Running a game of Fate - Tianxia

Having played a few sessions of Fate, and having seen how much it's been talked about, I took the plunge and ran a game myself. The publisher of Tianxia has a great blog post about running demo games of Tianxia. I stole his setup whole cloth, and it worked great!

I've found there are some things I really like with Fate. My favourite above all is how easy it is to create the opposition. You just need to think up the main thing the character is about, that's their High Concept, and add their top three skills in the pyramid and you're ready to go.

I guess that is precisely the thing that makes class based systems work so well. For me those have never been categories that sparked my imagination, though. Being able to use Drunk Brute or Snarky Magistrate  just runs straight into what makes me go "wow" and get ideas about what that character can do that would be cool to put in a scene with the PCs.

This might be the "killer feature" I unconsciously have been missing in so many other games. It makes me think that there might have been a reason I so often have relied on stock NPC templates from the GM chapters of the rules of whatever game I'm running. Interesting that it took so long to figure that out!