Daniel Pond's Wushu

[Dotan Dimet]

Has anyone taken a look at Daniel Pond's Wushu  system?

The idea is really similar to "giving extra dice for good description", which also appears in Sorcerer. The big difference is that in Wushu that's about the only mechanic in the game: You get only one dice for anything you try to do, unless you add emblishments (bits of cool description) to pile on the extra dice. That and two other rules (a hit points thingie and a very cool way of handling mooks/extras) are the whole system.

If you're curious, get this PDF about running games in The Matrix using Wushu. The full product doesn't give you much more than that, but I spent the 5 bucks just out of enthusiasm.

The system relates to some stuff in Ron's scriptures, such as fortune-in-the-middle (Wushu has "forune-after", sorta). I'm interested to see what people think about it.

Why is this post in Actual Play rather than, say, theory? Because I'm going to run it tomorrow, in a con game (Shadowrun based; I was going to use Powergame or raw freeform, but Wushu looks like a better alternative).

- Dotan

[Mark Johnson]

How did it handle in actual play?  Looking forward to the report!

[Dotan Dimet]

Right, it's 3AM here, I ran my game at noon and then stood and talked about mythology in front of 20 people for 4 hours, so excuse me if I'm brief. I've still got an adventure to polish for tomorrow...

First, bitching: the game didn't go that well, both because I had a badly built plot (too much PC footwork required to find the plot, really - a Shadowrunish pitfall I would have been wise to skirt), a long slot (6 hours, cut to 4 and some), and a pretty dismal group of players. They didn't cotton on to the idea of description that well ("I hit him" or "I hack it" was typical), and when pushed for emblishments they scanned their character sheet, quoting ability descriptions ("I use my deep knowledge of security systems to figure out what security system this is") and relying on equipment lists ("I hit him with my knife and my shotgun").
But they did manage to give me a few good descriptions, here and there, especially from the Mages, and the fight scene was cool. Brief, but cool.
All in all, the system certainly didn't drag me down, there wasn't really a point where I wondered which trait to use or where I felt the system wasn't covering what was going on; I used both mooks and nemesis freely, and I think this was a good experience considering I was literally trying to get the players from 0 to 100kph while still shoveling them the Shadowrun setting and my so-called plot.
Would I run it again? Definately. Perhaps even again this con. With players who are more into cinematics, it'll shine, and with players who are doorknobs, it'll force them into narration (not roleplay or narrativism, but narration, which is also good).
I'd recommend running the Matrix for a better feel of the game, though.
Also, I'm curious if I can use the system to level the playing field for characters with different ability levels (such as UN soldier in a servopanzer and college punker kid, in the Centauri Knights game I'm running tomorrow).

- Dotan

[johnmarron]

Dotan -

  I'm just curious, did you ever get to run Wushu again?  I just picked up the game and love it.  I'm trying to convince the players in my Exalted game to switch to wushu, which captures the over the top anime inspired feel that I never get with the Exalted rules as written.

John

[Dotan Dimet]

yes yes (lets play already - Official Group Motto).
I ran Wushu with my regular group last week, switching from Powergame (which we fiddled with the session before). I've been meaning to post an account of that, but I've been too lazy. I'll give it a try...

- Dotan

[Jeph]

Last week, half my players didn't show, so we played the Matrix. I couldn't remember the specifics of Wushu, so this is the system we used:

Start with 1 die. Add 1 die per embellishment. Roll. Discard all dice that are over your Power (3 for Agents, 2 for Free Minds, 1 for Coppertops), total the values of the remaining dice. Compare to your opponants.

The players LOVED it. I mean, absolutely loved it. We had some 13-14 die moves, averaging at about 8 dice. There were three characters: Kotetsu, the hevay artillery man; The Yellow Dart, who faught with a flamberge in each hand thanks to the Matrix's flexible gracity, and Zero, standard dude with a trenchcoat, lots of guns, and a short sword.

A move that might have been typical: "The Yellow Dart leaps onto the car (+D), and from there bounds onto the top of the building (+D), whipping into an offensive stance (+D) as he lands with catlike grace (+D) and charges the Agent (+D) with a steel whirlwind(+D)!"

They were best a running away, that's when the made the superhigh die moves. They'd race across streets, back alleys, trafic, through plate glass windows, over the tops of buildings, smash in the telephone booth, pick up the reciever, and be gone. That was just after they learned why no one had ever defeated an Agent. ;-)

I will definitely play this again whenever we have an off-game. I expanded on the rules we used, added in some character distinction (with Matrix, Real-World, and Mind attributes, a Skill, and a Motication) and formalized the damage system.

I'm not sure how Washu would play out, but the players loved the "embellishments=+Dice" thing, which is the central concept. And that's the important thing.

-Jeph

[Bruce Baugh]

Jeph, I think what you did sounds more interesting than Wushu's actual mechanics. I find myself thinking about using that +D treatment with Over The Edge attribute definitions, for some reason.

[johnmarron]

Jeph, I think what you did sounds more interesting than Wushu's actual mechanics. I find myself thinking about using that +D treatment with Over The Edge attribute definitions, for some reason.

Bruce,
  Isn't that what Wushu traits are in essence (OtE attributes)?  That's how I read them.  They seem to be a mix of fairly broad (profession, race, etc.) traits like OtE central traits, and more narrowly defined abilities like OtE side traits.
    I've been thinking of doing a Lord of the Rings game (movie based) lately, and quickly whipped up a bunch of archetypal characters in Wushu.  I decided that race would be a trait, allowing you ability with racial stuff like elven walking on snow, etc., but tying up one of your trait slots.  Wushu character generation and OtE chargen seem to have a lot in common to me.
   On the topic of Wushu and another thread on gaming Icelandic sagas currently running, while reading the rules, I was mentally picturing some of the leaping over weapons, grabbing a spear thrown at you and throwing it back action of the sagas.  In a similar vein, I was packing up some books last night and ran accross my Jim Fitzpatrick stuff.  For those who don't know his work, Fitzpatrick illustrates Irish legends and myths using a sort of a colorful, poster-art or '60's album cover style (sorry for my lack of art critical vocab).  I immediately pictured a game based on the legends and his art using Wushu, in which players could not only pull off outlandish stunts in keeping with the stories, but be awarded for doing so.

John