So, I’ve been reading EOS Press’ new wuxia RPG, Weapons of the Gods.
This thing is so good, that I’ve pretty much decided that I’m not going to bother with my Dao of Wuxia project. I had been hemming and hawing over whether or not it was worth continuing, after Green Ronin announced the forthcoming release of their DragonFist game, which would cover the genre for d20…..but now that I’ve seen WotG, there’s even less point.
This game, designed by Brad Eliot and Nobilis creator Rebecca Borgstrom, may just be the perfect wuxia RPG. I really don’t think that I could say anything about the genre that isn’t covered by WotG, and covered brilliantly. If I did anything with the genre, I’d just end up comparing it to WotG, and I doubt that I’d think I had done it any better than they have.
Wow.
Yeah, someone told me about it the other night and it does sound really, really neat. Which is interesting as I’ve been in a Feng Shui mood recently but had been looking to tweak the system. And she is a genius, after all. I think I’ll have to check it out once I catch up a bit on my piles of reading.
is it a more elegant mechanic than Wushu? More details please…
I didn’t find the mechanic in Wushu particularly “elegant.” It was very “Indie/Forge Flavor-of-the-Month”, in my opinion.
Weapons of the Gods was a surprise hit for us at the store too. I think we sold out of our initial order of 12 the first day they turned up! It’s carried on selling really well to which is great news (not least for EOS Press).
I haven’t had a chance to look at it myself yet (mainly because we kept selling out to customers) but we should now have enough in for a while that I might not feel so guilty about grabbing a copy for me. Although saying that I don’t know when I’d actually get the time to read it let alone contemplate playing it!
It’s on my list. Or it would be if any of the stores in Houstopolis would bother to stock it. I need to remember to run by Dragon’s Lair in SA this weekend so I can see if they’ve actually got a copy. Otherwise, mail order, and I hate doing mail order.
Dammit FLGSs, I’m trying to spend money and you won’t let me!
I really like the Style Roll idea. Your success or failure is pre-ordained, your roll will indicate how well do.
Feel free to cut one edge of the rope bridge. No one needs to save versus death.
Doug.
I like the idea of how players can use the River to build up their attacks, and the way that styles work.
It’s a thing of beauty. I’ll miss Dao of Wuxia, but I can understand your choice.
Interesting. What sort of mechanic does it have?
Rolling multiple dice trying to get matches, to generate large numbers to compare against difficulty. Getting 2 twos, for example is a 22. 4 nines is a 49, etc.
One nifty thing is the River, which allows you to “float” dice from a roll and save them for use on a later roll. Not only is this a cool mechanic, but it ties in to the wuxia genre brilliantly (especially the concept of Jianghu, the “river-lake”).
Aside from the mechanic, though, Rebecca has covered the genre amazingly well, with the different kung-fu styles, the different colors of Chi (Jade chi, Gold Chi), Joss (both Xia and Corrupt), etc.
Sounds good. I’ll add it to my list of “would love to check out” books.
we need more games like WOTG, because it stops designers wasting their lives developing RPG game that try to better or emulate it, when clearly the mountain top peak has been reached!