Heavenly Kung-Fu: Sorcerer variant

[Judd]

Inspirations:  Shaw Brothers films, Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, Exalted (particularly Sidereals), Way of the Rat, Lone Wolf and Cub, Legend of the Five Rings

The kung-fu of the red dust can be as strong as mortal flesh allows it to be.  But then there is true power and true power comes from the Heavenly Kung-fu.  When Gods and Goddesses have come to earth to do sublime battle with each other or to banish devils, mortals have taken note, built monasteries over the battlefields and studied the techniques executed from deific forms and the most holy chi.

Hence, Heavenly Kung-fu was born.  It is beyond the pale of mortal arts and mortal flesh was not meant to contain its magnificence.  Study of these arts, be it the Monkey Under the Mountain Style or the White Crane Between Raindrops Technique, consumes its practitioner and makes vicious demands that few practitioners are willing to meet.

Humanity = Honor, at 0 you are an honorless dog not worthy of respect, a fair fight or to call yourself a practitioner of kung-fu. Your Heavenly arts abandon you, leaving you a husk whose chi once touched from earth to heaven and now cannot even move mortals.

Honor is knowing your place in the bureaucracy and while Heavenly Kung-fu can bring a mortal honor or even ascend them to the heavens, we are not meant to wield it and to do so stresses our bodies and souls to the brink of oblivion.

Will you use your Heavenly Kung-fu to challenge your place in the bureaucracy?

Humanity checks when…(help?)

Lore = Your knowledge of Heavenly Kung-fu.  Use it to find out how strong someone else’s kung-fu is, what style they use, who they trained under, how strong their chi is, etc.

Demons = a Heavenly Kung-fu form or technique, cursed weapons, sensei, ancestral ghosts.  All Demons allow their Sorcerers to do Heavenly Kung-fu of some kind.

To Banish someone else's Demon is to take away their kung-fu, to cut off their chi so they cannot touch their techniques.

Double dice bonus from listed book bonuses for combat description

+1 if you name the move you’ve executed in a flavorful way.

(I have not read the martial arts rules in Sex and Sorcery yet but I'd think that Heavenly Kung-fu would be Demon powers and red dust kung-fu would be the martial arts rules...but I'm not sure, I'd have to read them over for myself and plan to soon)

[DevP]

I'm curious how varying Demons (w/ Needs + Desires) will play out. Your Humanity definition seems interesting because Honor is an intuitively "good" thing but is tied to that which most players will consider "bad" - settling into you place in the bureacracy. This could lead to the players left with a fundamentally unfair outcome resulting from being good - the big crux of Humanity challenges.

[Judd]

Dev,

I'm not thrilled with where this is right now but I wanted to post it up, get feedback, so I could tinker with it for a while.  It was written in an exhausted daze and I considered just keeping it as a Word file until the idea matured a bit but decided to just post it up and see how it was received.  The Forge's critical commentary is always pretty damned sound.

Thanks, you've given me something to think about with the Humanity definition.

Judd

[greyorm]

If Honor is knowing one's place in the Heavenly Beauracracy -- that might also be interpreted as one's place in the order of things. So actions undertaken against one's destiny and one's place in the scheme of the world would cause Humanity checks.

One might add the Destiny rules from Sorcerer & Sword to make use of that, but I think it can work without, given the strict caste system and social constraints on behavior based on social status of many oriental cultures.

Thus, overstepping one's bounds in that society: a woman taking up a sword, a monk falling in love, a warrior attempting to usurp rulership of the throne of heaven, a peasant standing up to a samurai.

For example, a woman can become a great warrior, but she has to risk her Humanity in order to achieve it. And once she recieves recognition for her skills as a warrior from the powers of the Imperial Court, the behaviors no longer cause Humanity checks. She has changed her place in the order of the world. Take Disney's movie "Mulan" as an example of this.

[Judd]

Thanks, greyorm, I feel like you've put what I wrote better than I did.

Nice.  I needed that nudge.

[Judd]

prompted by this thread being cross-posted on RPG.net:

Punishing a style-Demon could simply be taking off the robes, hiding the tattoos, removing the scarf that is attributed that style.  The style is really the school, the network of teachers who make their living and fighters who make their killing through its high profile, deadly reputation and use.  

"Tiger Claw is weak and has failed me against the spear for the last time!"

For a Sorcerer, a DEADLY practitioner to publically denounce it in any way, would be a brutal blow to the school.

I will hide the twin tigers, inked on my chest but the holiest monks of the Twin Tigers School so that other practitioners who see me will know of my displeasure as I begin my Mantis training."

perhaps some schools could have gods, devils or ghosts directly attached to them so that the school will have a kind of a voice bust mostly, it will be other members of the school who will come looking for those who punish the good name their school.

"Now you train Mantis, you weakling?  The school of your father and his before him wasn't strong enough? No, it is YOU who are weak.  Feel the wrath of the Tiger CLAW!"

[DevP]

This could lead to the players left with a fundamentally unfair outcome resulting from being good - the big crux of Humanity challenges.

To be clear, I saw this "unfairness" as a feature, not a bug. Interesting moral stuff often comes from those places where doing the "good" thing is still not "right", and you're compelled to commit a little Wrong for a bigger Good.

[Judd]

To be clear...

Sorry, Dev, you were perfectly clear.  I've been a half-awake chuckle-head all day and posted this whole deal after some intense sleep deprevation.

I apologize for not reading more carefully.  It certainly wasn't that the responses weren't nice and important.  It was more that I was half awake and should have posted this puppy and slept for 8 hours.

Thanks for the responses, clearing it all up.

[DevP]

I apologize for not reading more carefully. It certainly wasn't that the responses weren't nice and important. It was more that I was half awake and should have posted this puppy and slept for 8 hours.

Seriously, no prob!

I had another thought, sizeing upon my mastery of retcon-fu: the FlashBack! If each Demon is in fact the mastery of a forbidden martial art, then interactions could be flashbacks to the training long ago at the hands of a cruel master.

Contact/Summoning/Binding: Flashbacks to seeking the master, the training montage, and either the moment of fulfillment (either "graduating" or choosing to leave the Master, having learned enough) or the moment you were rejected (for success/failure of the binding).
Punish: In an interesting twist, a flashback to the Master punishing you for lacking the necessary prowess to master Heavenly Kung-Fu.
Banish: A flashback either to the circumstances leading to your rejection, or a time you stood up to your Master for his cruelty, or indeed a time you wish you had. In real time, having just re-experience this past event, you shake off memory of this training: "No more."

[DevP]

I nearly forgot -

Rebellion: Again doing that reversal thing, remembering an instance where you, the imprudent student, rebelled against your master!

[Judd]

I had another thought, sizeing upon my mastery of retcon-fu: the FlashBack! If each Demon is in fact the mastery of a forbidden martial art, then interactions could be flashbacks to the training long ago at the hands of a cruel master.

Nice idea.  It very much reminds me of Kill Bill 2's chapter, The Cruel Tutelage of Pei Mei.

Sweet.  Interesting.  

I'm interested to playtest that.

Perhaps the damage you take in the flashback scene could be some kind of Will damage?

[DevP]

Nice idea.  It very much reminds me of Kill Bill 2's chapter, The Cruel Tutelage of Pei Mei....

Perhaps the damage you take in the flashback scene could be some kind of Will damage?

Yes, Kill Bill was indeed my source. <g> I personally think that damage taken in the scene doesn't have to afeect your current status - it's still just a montage leading to a mechanical roll.

[urbwar]

Thor Olavsrud told me about this thread, so I figured I'd check it out (both here and on rpg.net). I just got Sex and Sorcery, and the martial arts rules are cool. Even better, I got to play Sorcerer at A Gazebo of Games, so now I got to actually experience it in play.

So I popped open my book to look at demon powers again, and saw how easily demons could be used to express martial arts more wild side as seen in film and such.

One thing I considered, and thought I'd pitch to you Paka, was that if you're going to have the demons be the style itself, then you might want to consider allowing the demons to automatically have the Spawn power before decided their other powers.

You could justify this as simply that when a person wants to train another in the inner secrets of the style, his "demon" would spawn another of it's kind automatically, which would then be bound by the trainee, who would now be a new initiate of the inner secrets of the style.

I love the idea of the red dust, and could well be used to reflect members of a style who have only mastered the basics, and haven't been able (or haven't earned the right to learn) the special techniques of the style, which is gained via binding as per the rules.

Does that make any sense? Does it sound good, bad?

[Judd]

Love your ideas, urbwar and I'm meeting with a buddy of mine to talk about some Chinese elemental philosophy so I can work on my Elemental descriptors.

I think this could make for a cool little variant.  

I have to finish two projects before I think about this one too hard but hopefully I will be pready to start playing this in the mid-summer.

I have one foot out the door.  More later.