What about Chinese!?

[Jonathan Walton]

Good point, Gene.  But there are also risks involved in mixing various eras/genres together, namely, Ben's point about Rokugan: creating a fictional "East" that only exists in our minds and has no basis in reality, which can end up supporting stereotypes and culural misunderstanding.

By the way (and I apologize if you get asked this all the time), you don't  happen to be (or be related to) the Gene Ha who penciled The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix for Marvel Comics, do you?  Man, that guy's great.  "Ha," just isn't a very common last name, at least where I'm from.

[Kaelin]

But what if all you want (reffering to my original post) is the stats for chinese weaponry?

Hey, I know I'm new to the forums here, but in answer to your inquiry, and regarding my rather limited knowledge of Chinese weapons, a lot of the more "battle-style" kung-fu weapons seem to be fairly close to western-style weapons.  For example:

For the jian (straight, double-edged sword), I would use the stats for the cut-and-thrust sword.

Dao (Chinese "broadsword", or heavy saber), use the stats for the saber for the longer, narrower "willow-leaf" swords, and the falchion for the shorter, broader "ox-tail" swords.

For the two-handed jian, use either basterd sword, longsword, or greatsword - the few reproductions and examples I've seen of this type of weapon seems to have many varieties, so I assume its more of the individual warrior's choice if s/he wants a lighter, pointier blade or a heavier one.

Clubs are clubs, and I've heard of staves ranging anywhere from 6-9 feet, so both the quarterstaff and the shortstaff would be appropriate.

The halberd and pollaxe would both work for those long-handled axes you see on various martial arts equipment websites, and the bill could probobly work well for the "general kwan sword" or the "kwan dao" (think a falchion at the end of a 6-foot stick).

Hand axes would be appropriate (like the "double hero axes"), as well as the mace for those "mellon hammers".  Something like the morning star would work for those "wolves' teeth clubs", but I would make it two-handed only, increase the damage and DTN by one, and make it a long weapon, but allowing perhaps some half-swording techniques like with the pollaxe.

Light cavalry lances, pikes, and all varieties of spears would be appropriate, except perhaps the short spear - all the ones I've seen are often 6+ feet in length and used two-handed.

Daggers, of course, would also be carried, I think more along the lines of a poniard than a rondell however.  Throwing knives would also be fairly common, maybe not for battles, but perhaps for self-defense and/or assassins.

Short bows and crossbows, I think, are the most popular ranged weapons, along with said throwing blades.

In this listing, although drawn largely from what I've seen on martial arts suppliers' websites and some somewhat more "realistic" blademakers (cold steel, for example, www.coldsteel.com), these are all weapons that seem would be fairly appropriate for a realistic, bloody, gritty and not-too-flashy Chinese fighting system.  If you absolutely MUST have stats for all those wierd arm-blades, edged rings, and hooked blades, I'd probobly use the stats for daggers or short-swords (depending on weight and/or reach) for those fire-wheel or hand-held bladed weapons, and cut-and-thrust sword for the hook-swords, but put them under something similar to the "case of rapiers" proficiency (something to cover a variety of double-blades, like double-jians, double-axes, and double-daos) and give the proficiency the "hook" manuever to fully utilize those axes and hook-swords.

If anyone has any major disagreements with this, feel free to criticiz.  I'm new to the game (I have the main book and OB&M, but have never played the game yet), and this is my first post on this forum, so chew away at me boys and let me know what you think!

Kaelin

[Edge]

first post hey?? well i get to say welcome to the forum :)

Yeah i think you have pretty much summed it up though i think i have said before possibly in this thread that my knowledge of chinese weaponry is based entirely on Monkey Magic and cheesy hong kong kung-fu movies.  :)

[Kaelin]

Thanks Edge.  Yeah, I'll be giving an official "hello all" post in the near future.

Is Monkey magic a specific game or movie?  Or is it a sort of myth/story I have just never heard of?  In any case, most of my familiarity with weapons come from websites like Asian World of Matrial Arts (www.awma.com), a book I read some years back on ancient Chinese weaponry (I forget the name and author), and movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which, despite the wirework, I think was very TROS-y, in terms of the character's drives and goals.  I would work the wire-work as a type of sorcery, and adjust the rules to reflect this in some way - like making "gifted human" mean someone who can bend the laws of nature, but not break them so much as a sorceror would, making aging less of an issue).  I studied dragon-style kung-fu for about three months before deciding it just wasn't for me, but from what I got of it, I got the sense that it can be very hard and brutal, very ground-based, and capable of being reflected by TROS without going overboard into Jedi-knight-style flips and leaps and such.  I am by no means an authority on Chinese martial arts, what I wrote are merely my take on what little I DO know.  A lot of weapons are fairly universal to many cultures, or are similar enough to be reflected by European weapn stats in everything except specific appearance.

On another note, a correction of what I wrote before - the use of the falchion stats for the dao or "chinese broadsword" would be mostly appropriate for the heavier "Nine-Ring Broadsword"-type weapons, while the shorter, lighter daos are more scymitar-esque, and thus should use the same saber/scymitar stats as the longer, narrower daos.

Kaelin

[Edge]

My knowledge is possibly slightly more than i give myself credit for as i have studied Kung Fu and trained in couple of the weapons you mention.

Monkey Magic or more correctly 'Monkey' is a Japanese cult series from the late 70's about the 16th century epic called Hsi Yu Chi

[clehrich]

I have to say that taking up a Chinese campaign world is not a small thing, and it's been screwed up so badly by so many games that I'm not sure I'd want to 'port TROS to China -- I'd be afraid of ending up with GURPS China (a horrible, horrible thing).  So my basic advice is negative.

Still, I spent a godawful amount of time trying to design a straight China RPG, and I want to pass on some of what I learned as it might affect a TROS version.

First, a couple references (as in things to read, not my references for my remarks or something):

Barry Hughart,

The Bridge of Birds and its two sequels.  Brilliant, hilarious, and deeply informed.  Full of sinological in-jokes, but those are really just icing on the cake.

The Journey To the West (Xiyouji, Hsi Yu Chi, etc.), trans. Anthony C. Yu.  Very funny 16th - 17th C. novel, well worth reading.  Lots of beating on people by Monkey and his pals.  Fantastic in the literal sense: not much use as straight historical background, but useful for getting a feel for Chinese literature and notions of fantasy.  This is a true fantasy novel, actually -- one of the earliest.  Arthur Waley's translation Monkey cuts most of the book -- like 80% or more.  Yu's translation is arguably the best translation of a classical Chinese novel ever.

The Three Kingdoms, trans. Moss Roberts.  If you want to read this book, this is the translation to get.  A fairly harrowing saga of people brutally slaughtering each other for increasingly no reason.  Based on historical events.  Excellent for getting the feel of Chinese warfare and politics.

Shui hu juan [The Water Margin, The Outlaws of the Marsh, All Men Are Brothers, etc.] I'm partial to the Dent-Young translation, because Alex is a close friend of mine, and the Shapiro translation is solid as well, but I think there's really no good translation of this.

Robert van Gulik, (The Judge Dee mysteries).  Van Gulik was a scholar and diplomat, and his novels nicely reflect a kind of odd mid-Tang China through images that imitate the Ming.  Lots of fun, and a good source generally.  The Chinese Gold Murders and van Gulik's translation of Dee goong an (Di gong'an) are the most faithful but also the least enjoyable.

Jean Levi, The Chinese Emperor.  A real masterpiece in its weird way.  A novelization of the life of the First August Emperor, Qin Shihuang (Ch'in Shih-huang).  Terrifying.  A sinologist, Levi beautifully reconstructs ancient China, in all its depth.  If you're going to do a China game, read this![/list:u]If you read these, especially the last, I think you'll see that a 'port of TROS into China is going to be a huge undertaking.  It's the background and history that's hard, though, not the fighting.

Frankly, I suspect that when metal hits metal, TROS already simulates things just dandy.  Weapon quality in China is going to be lower overall, for reasons I can go into if you really want but which Joseph Needham has covered well in his massive History of Science in China, basically having to do with manufacturing technology and poor mass-production.  Few Chinese weapons are going to be drastically different from European ones: there just aren't that many combinations of wood and metal used to kill people that last well on the battlefield.  Some martial arts weapons are different, e.g. certain chain weapons and flexible staves, but these aren't really for battlefield conditions.

If you look at Chinese representations of soldiers across the ages, you're looking at a guy in relatively light armor, with a solid helm and a medium-big sword.  He's a footman, and has also been given a spear.  Chances are, half the time, he doesn't actually have a sword because they ran out, and they've given him a bamboo stick and told him to tie his dagger to one end and pray.  Admittedly, a sharpened bamboo stick 10' long is something to be very afraid of, but footsoldiers really didn't have the greatest deal.  The elite soldiers would have had considerably better armor, and much better swords, but nothing really to compare to the samurai at his peak.  A well-made katana is going to eat most Chinese weaponry alive -- Chinese warfare wasn't about single combat, unlike in Japan, so it wasn't quality but quantity that mattered.

The big difference from TROS, I think, is going to be mass-combat rules.  If you're talking battlefield, the Chinese have this habit of BIG combats.  There is excellent reason to think that some of the battles that ultimately felled the Han dynasty (ca. 220 AD) may have involved some 10,000 per side.  Let me repeat that.  10,000 per side.  The Huang Chao (Yellow Turban) rebel assault on Chang'an (modern Xi'an) in 907, at the fall of the Tang, ended with no structure higher than knee level and no surviving defenders.  None.  We have a general's awed description of his return a few months later to a weedy, burned rubble-pit with rabbits playing in the heaps.  And when the battle started, this was the most populous city in the world, with the largest walls standing (roughly 40' high and 15' thick around the entire city, to say nothing of the actual defensive walls around the palace).  Fundamentally, the scale of Chinese mass combat is just not something medieval-Europe-based games can handle sanely.

Jake, until someone hands you at least 50% of a really, really good manuscript, I recommend that you shelve the China idea.  It's a well of horror you don't want to get into, I promise.  I know -- I tried to write such a thing once, with full background, for a game I ran.  Never again!

Chris Lehrich