Wushu Open is a short, free and rules-lite roleplaying game created with the Wuxia genre of fiction in mind, although it can be used in any genre. Wushu’s author Daniel Bayn also offers two expanded versions of the game: Wire-Fu and Pulp-Fu (Affiliate links). Both books are about 40 pages long and help players and GMs to experience adventures in the Wuxia and Pulp genres respectively. I haven’t checked out those books yet, so this review focuses on the Wushu Open rules.

What sets Wushu apart from traditional roleplaying games is that the narrative control is almost completely in the control of the player. If a player says that he jumps over the counter, while picking up a gun while in mid-air, shoots the bad guy in such a way, that he is thrown back through a window, that’s exactly how it happens. Wushu encourages players to carry out multiple actions by adding dice to your pool every time you add another action to your description. Of course the other players and the GM have the right to veto.

Task resolution is doing by rolling the dice pool and counting all successes. Every die that rolls above a given number is considered a failure. Usually this number is 2 or the rank of one of the character’s Traits. Traits are something that sets your character apart, like his job, or an adjective that describes him. Each character usually can distribute 5 to 8 points between his Traits. All characters also have a Weakness that has a Trait rating of 1.

In combat you split the dice pool into Yang dice (offensive) and Yin dice (defensive). Successful Yang dice damage your opponents and successful Yin dice are used to soak damage. In Wushu you’re down if even one Yang die gets through! Players and important NPCs get 3 points of Chi which can be paid to negate Yang successes.

These combat rules are only used in fights against important NPCs like Nemeses. When the player characters fight mooks, the GM rolls no dice but the Threat Rating of the whole group of mooks becomes relevant. The players reduce the Threat rating by successful Yang dice. When the Threat rating has been reduced to zero, the mooks are either dead or fleeing. But as long as the rating is one or above, the group causes at one hit against each player.

I think I forgot to mention that the result of the rolls doesn’t change the outcome of the action. The players always have narrative control over what happens, but the dice decide how much the characters’ actions advance the scene.

There are some special rules for situations where you don’t want lengthy descriptions for task resolution and the booklet concludes with tips for veteran roleplayers (which probably have a hard time swallowing a few of Wushu’s concepts) and character creation.

Overall Wushu Open looks like a pretty cool game, especially if you prefer a narrative gaming style over realistic rules and tactical combat. Personally I am not really comfortable with giving the players narrative control, but I think I’ll have to try it out first. I don’t think Wushu can successfully be used for long campaigns, but it’s probably a blast if you’re looking for an easy-to-learn pick-up game.

You can download the free Wushu rules as a Microsoft Word document from the official site. You probably should also check out Daniel Bayn’s column on RPGnet called “Wushuu Skidoo”.

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Just this morning I had a chat with Alex Schröder, who is organizing this year’s One Page Dungeon Contest. He reminded me that the submission deadline is March 1st, 0:00 GMT. So, if you are interested in submitting something, you should make sure your are done before that!

Make sure you check out all the details at Alex’ site. And as with last years there will be great prizes for the winners. So, what are you waiting for? Create a one page dungeon and send it in!

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I have been waiting quite a time for this particular review! Kurt Wiegel finally gave Grey Area Games’ X-Plorers a look, which is a game I enjoyed tremendously. X-Plorers is a “what-if” game. What if the fathers of roleplaying were more into SF and not into the fantasy genre. X-Plorers is basically a retro-clone of a game that never was. Check out what Kurt Wiegel has to say about this fine game:

By the way, I am always looking for new ideas for my Lazy Friday Video posts. If you know some cool RPG-related video you want me to share, feel free to send me a message.

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It recently came to my attention (mainly by means of fellow RPG Blogger Greywulf’s post) that WotC will be releasing a new D&D 4th Edition Starter Box later this year.

I have to admit that the box itself looks pretty cool and the box art has some old-school vibe to it, BUT this will no more an old-school product than the rest of D&D 4th Edition. I believe Greywulf’s excitement got the best of him in this case (No offense meant!).

Reducing the available number of classes and races to four and putting everything into a neat boxed set is not what old-school is about. The system used in D&D 4th Edition is still based on the d20 System that was created for D&D 3rd Edition and that is definitely a modern system. You can turn the base system into something more “old school” as Microlite74 etc. has shown, but I really doubt that’s what WotC is aiming for. If they want to retain compatibility to the D&D 4th Edition game, they will have to include the powers systems, healing surges etc. And in order to please the target demographic they definitely will not adopt notions like “Challenge the player not the character” and “Rulings instead of rules”. On the other hand I expect something which is closer to the D&D Miniatures game they released around the time D&D 4th Edition hit the shelves. It was basically a slightly simplified version of D&D with everything non-combat stripped out.

If you ask me WotC is not really interested in get the grognards into D&D 4th Edition, but they want people who played D&D as teenagers (and who remember that red box from back then) to get the game for their kids. It’s a marketing ploy, not a change in direction.

That said, I actually applaud any attempt at getting new people excited in the hobby. If you already play one roleplaying game, you are much likely to give other games a try. But I just don’t believe that D&D 4th Edition was mysteriously turned into an old-school game while I was not looking.

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This post has nothing to with roleplaying games, but with something happening on Twitter right now. Please don’t stop reading, because I need your help!

Some hours ago some person started tweeting to @daneofwar’s Followers (and people he followed) and accused him of scamming money from him. I doubt there’s any truth to that accusation, especially because this person soon started impersonating people @daneofwar was connected with through Twitter. He also started posting personal attacks against not only @daneofwar but also other people as well, like @highmoon, @madbrewlabs and me.

The community is usually pretty quick in reporting the fake accounts as soon as they appear and Twitter promptly closes them, but there must be some way to stop this person posting slander and misinformation all over Twitter. If you know someone who can help or get in touch with the people from Twitter, please do so!

Any help is highly appreciated!

P.S.: I protected my Twitter updates for now and changed my avatar picture. That will not stop the person impersonating me, but it helps me to feel a bit better. If you get any strange tweets that look like they were sent from my account, please double-check the username.

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I don’t think there ever was a time during the last 20 years or so, when there wasn’t at least one roleplaying game book lying on my bedside cabinet. I actually believe it has gotten worse over the years, since I am currently reading several books at once, what not only makes my bedside cabinet look like a bookshelf but also keeps me from finishing the Dresden Files novels I’ve started reading some months ago.

A game that I wasn’t able to acquire for quite some time was Spirit of the Century. It is definitely hard to get your hands on that fine game if you are living in Germany. In the end I decided to order it directly from Evil Hat Productions’ online store.

If I remember correctly I almost paid as much for shipping as for the book itself but the fact that I got the PDF, too, made up for that. The FATE-based SotC is a wonderful pulp game which calls itself a “pickup” game. Alas it contains around 400 pages which take some time to read through. I definitely have a soft spot for the FATE rules, so I hope I can give it a try later this year.

The second book on my reading list is Starblazer Adventures by Cubicle 7. It’s another FATE-based game, but with a SF setting based on comic books from the 80s. I think I mainly got it to compare it to another FATE-based game I enjoyed reading tremendously – Diaspora. While Diaspora is a rather small and thin book, SBA is a tome. It’s a full-sized hardcover book with 600+ pages. I haven’t managed to give it a proper read-through yet, but I at least leafed through it several times. From what I’ve seen SBA allows a slightly wider range of settings (and perhaps even genres) than Diaspora, but the writing in Diaspora is definitely the best I’ve seen in any FATE-based game.

The next three books on my list where all part of the “Gamers Help Haiti” MEGA bundle at RPGNow/DriveThruRPG: “3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars”, the Serenity RPG by Margaret Wise Productions and the Cortex System RPG by the same company. For some weird reason the latter product has no dedicated page on the official site, actually I didn’t find any mention of it.

3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars is probably the most “indie” of those three games. Fellow RPG Blogger Greywulf has written a short summary of what the game is about and I hope he don’t mind me quoting it here:

3:16 is a stupidly simple beer-and-pretzels game and a deeply complex moralistic one, all at the same time. The players’ characters are members of the elite 3:16th Expeditionary Force who’s task it is to rid the universe of alien scum to keep the Utopian Earth a safe and wholesome place to be. It’s Starship Troopers, Those Guys from Alien II and every dumb Space Marine movie all rolled into one. Add in rules which perfectly fit the tone and setting, the utterly brilliant Flashbacks concept, the promise of Starkiller missiles and the lightest touch of moral decay and you’ve got a system that everyone should be legally mandated to play at least once in their life.

I have read most of the book already and I think it would be perfectly suited for running a Starship Troopers campaign based on the movies (yeah, there are three of those! And try to avoid watching the second movie, it’s just crap. The third movies is at least funny!).

The Serenity RPG is probably the one product from the “Gamers Help Haiti” MEGA bundle that I enjoyed the most so far.

I am a big Firely fan and I have seen the short-lived series several times. The game is based mainly on the movie Serenity but contains most of the material from the series anyway. I am sure this has to do with different companies owning the rights to the TV show and the movie.

The Serenity RPG uses the aforementioned Cortex System RPG which itself reminds me of Savage Worlds a lot. A lot of the concepts are almost identical but Cortex is definitely a system that can stand on its own legs. I definitely plan to write a review of the Cortex RPG and the Serenity game in the near future, so stay tuned!

The last game on my reading list is “Burning Empires”. I’ve read much about the game in the last weeks about it from various sources, so I decided to give it a closer look. Burning Empires is a SF RPG based on the Iron Empires comic series by Christopher Moeller using the Burning Wheel rules. Burning Empires is cool but weird on many different levels. When you have seen the book at a local shop you’ll have noticed that although it’s a digest sized hardcover, it’s extremely heavy (4 lbs).  The reason for that are the 656 full color pages on glossy paper. It feels like a brick when you hold it in one hand. The artwork is top notch and the writing is solid but there are as much “WTF!” moments in this book as there are “WOW!” ones. It has a lot of meta game elements and a scene economy and I find it hard to wrap my head around some of the concepts in that game. It’s definitely a game worth having a look at, but I am not sure if I will ever play it. Or perhaps I should play it just to find out how it’s supposed to work.

So, what games are you currently reading? And what are your thoughts on the game I just wrote about? As always any comment is highly appreciated!

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