[WuShu Renegades] - A quick primer

[Tark]

Wu Shu Renegades is a game that I've been working on for little over a year now.  The following is a little primer I typed up to give to people tog et their first impressions and generate questions.  So far it's been productive.  So I'd like to give it a try here.

Premise: Modern martial arts are a tangle of hundreds of different styles and philosophies from hundreds of histories, stories, and origins.  No one set of moves can ever be considered the perfect art and no martial artist can claim to be perfect in all arts.

This complex and wonderful fighting system has been woefully ill represented in tabletop gaming.  They generally fall into two categories, those who provide a small set of moves in order to represent an entire complex style, or those who rely entirely upon the players imagination to simply describe what the player does relying on abstract mechanics in order for it to be represented within the game.  The first one can never fully represent a complete style nor will it allow a player to do everything he may wish to do in an enclosed system.  On the flipside the abstractness of the second option allow for the infinite flexibility that players demand but without the solid foundation of rules an enclosed setting has then the player is forced t rely on the human judgments of a game master.

Enter Wu Shu Renegades.  Wu Shu Renegades provides players with a large number of build option giving them a chance to build attacks, defense, stances, special moves and whatever the player needs to accurately depict whatever kind of character they choose. Want to play Jackie Chan? How bout a Dragonball Z character? A Medieval Knight? A musketeer? A powerful wizard? A warrior fights with ballet moves and hip hop? A lawyer who defeats his opponents with the power of logical argument and reason? What would you play? It's possible and more importantly, it's balanced and measurable.

Setting: Imagine if you will that the first emperor of China, the one who had conquered all the provinces of China and united them all into a single nation, did not stop at China.  Imagine that he took his vast armies, under a mandate from the gods themselves and went forth to conquer the ancient Greeks, the Vikings, renaissance France, Japan, monster island, modern Israel and its surrounding neighbors.  Now imagine that his descendants built a massive wall around this nation preventing the monsters and barbarians outside the empire from threatening the peace and prosperity that was hard won through generations of blood shed and warfare.

During this time of peace and prosperity the people of the empire developed countless fighting arts and magical schools that budded directly from the nations various cultures and histories.  On top of all of these is the Heavenly Dragon Fist a style of martial arts created by the first emperor himself and taught to every soldier in the empire in one style or another.  This had been the way of things for over 500 years.  Then came interesting times.

The 13th emperor laid out a mandate across the land.  All practice of martial arts other then the style of the royal family was to cease.  Those who did not comply were to be executed.  A great massacre of hundreds of thousands of masters and students took place and those who survived only did so because they betrayed their brethren, went into hiding or simply defeated each and every assassin that came for them.  That was seven years ago.  Today you are one of the few who survived the purging of the fighting arts from the empire.  You are hunted, hounded, and attacked at every turn.  You are an outlaw, a renegade.  What now?

The Mechanics: The mechanics of the system are rather basic and flexible.  It is a system that uses d6's in dice pools. (Mainly because those dice are everywhere) And it revolves around two key stats; Discipline and Potential (called Chi in game.  Potential represents the full capabilities of the character.  It is generally his highest stat as it represents the maximum amount of dice the character can roll at any time.

Discipline represents training, meditation and practice that essentially represent how far the character ahs come along in fulfilling their own potential.  It is generally the lowest stat and represents the amount of dice kept and used in a roll.

Their are two reasons why it's like this.  In real life me, you, or any guy on the street can shatter a brick with a punch.  The design of our muscles, the strength of our bones, and the pure mechanics behind our bodies all suggest we are capable of that and more.  But, because we lack the discipline and training to unlock that capability all we can really accomplish is shattering our hands.

In anime and sentai shows (where most of the games inspiration comes from) they always speak of one or more of the main characters as being filled with massive potential, greater then anything before.  But, because the characters a goofball, hothead, klutz, or just generally an idiot (i.e. low discipline)that character has yet to unlock that power within himself.

The other really important mechanic that the game revolves around is that the character builds this own attacks and defenses, they can create a style and build their own attacks and defenses, they can create a style, school, and whole history based on their invented fighting style.  While there are very basic moves that allow a mundane person to defend themselves characters have the capability of building moves of their own and eventually their own special moves which shatter the laws of normal physics and human capability. (HADOKEN!)

If you want o get an idea of what I'm talking about look at a miniatures game such as warhammer 40k.  Each figure is customizable, you can determine its stats, its abilities, what weapons it's armed with etc. and that gives the figure a point value.  So, why not apply that philosophy to character abilities (magic spells, attacks, and defenses, whatever) they build their ability and then spend the appropriate exp in order to use it.  In this way under this philosophy you can have armies of infinite variety or in our case abilities of infinite variety.

If anyone has any questions they'd like

answered straight out of me you can catch me on AIM: Hiatachi Sensei

[griggs]

This system interests me, because I've always liked the idea of a DM's "ideal system" or as I like to call it, "making the PC's do all the work." I like giving a lot of the flexibility to the player, letting them make their own skills and styles and such. Also, if what you say is true, you can make Phoenix Wright a character with this game, and if that alone is possible, it'll become one of my favorites.

How much of the system do you have planned out? Could you show us an example character?

[Tark]

Alot of the system has pretty much been planned out.  This is a game I've been working on for a little over a year so.  This here is a character created by one of my playtesters.  This guy has also NEVER played a tabletop beyond playing NEver Winter Nights.  He picked it up pretty easily and did his character msotly on his own once I showed him the basics of the game and the choices available.  Below is his raw character sheet with no explanation or massive amounts of red text.

Name:Argon     Player Name:Anonymous   School:Improvised Kickboxing
Mentor:Spike  Supporting Cast: Grant(Older Brother)

Power:2
Speed:3
Genius:2
Instinct:3
Personality:3

Stamina: 5/5       Discipline:3        Chi:8

Chi Points: 24

Profession:Ganger
Training:
Basic Lifting, Basic Lockpicking, Basic Diplomacy, Basic Weapon Training (Staff, Dagger, Brass Knuckles)

Equipment
Master Staff (Dam:4 Rate:+2Dur7/7)
Master Chain Shirt (AV:4SpeedRed.:0Dur:9/9)
Money: 10imperials,6Reageants,2Nobles,5Peasants


Attacks:

Name:Swift Stab Description:A nondescript jab/stab w/staff Exp Cost: 35xp Rate:1 Damage:2 Accuracy:2 Descriptors:Takedown,Follow Up(BONK!) Range:Weapon(Staff) Requirements:Weapon(Staff) Flaws:Overextension

Name:BONK! Description:A swing with the heavy end. Exp Cost: 29xp Rate:3 Damage:4 Accuracy:4 Descriptors:Bonebreaking Range:Weapon(Staff) Requirements:Weapon(Staff) Flaws:Overextension, Open

Defenses:

Name:Staff Dodge Description:Digging into ground w/staff +pull myself away Exp Cost:18xp Rate: 2 Defense: 3 Descriptors:Counter(BONK!) Requirements: Weapon(Staff) Flaws: Exploitable

Stances:

Name:Flowing Stance

Exp Cost:10

Rate:3

Benefit:Balancing

Flaws:Vulnerable,Fragile,Butterfingers

Special Moves:

Name:Swift Fire Associated Move:Swift Jab Description: A jabbing motion which bursts forth a cone of fire. Exp Cost: 59 Area of Effect: Cone Range: 6 Meters Benefit: Sticky, Catastrophic Chi Cost:6 Element:Fire

Next is the same character sheet but I'll go through and explain what all this means.

Name:Argon     Player Name:Anonymous   School:Improvised KickboxingI wanted players to describe their school here.  This was done primarily to get them to consider what kind of mechanics they would wnat to use for their style and what kind of "look" they're going for.  In this case our player here wanted to go with somethign slightly more sophisticated then brawling but certainly not "Kung Fu"
Mentor:Spike  Supporting Cast: Grant(Older Brother)So here I wanted the character to name some names.  In my mind no character, no man, is an island.  We all come frmo somewhere and jsut where is up to the player.  SoI'm considering a system of things that give incentives for players to think deeply about this but for now this box is as it is.

Power:2Physical Strength, added to damage rolls of attacks and used in some skills. And you know what my time is short so I'm gonna go ahead adn simply tell you what each of these adds to since you prolly already ahve an idea of what they do.
Speed:3Atack rolls, agility based skill trials, adds to mvoement speed.
Genius:2Provides a discount after character creation to the exp costs of some things. Also used in knowledge based skill checks.
Instinct:3Social atack rolls.  Used in determining starting initiative and awareness type rolls.
Personality:3Social damage rolls and resolving petty social conflicts

Stamina: 5/5Health and damage resistance       Discipline:3 The maximum amount of dice  kept in a roll        Chi:8 The maximum amount of dice actually rolled

Chi Points: 24Used in activating special moves, derived from multiplying discipline and Chi together

Profession:Ganger Bought at character creation that gives a absic lsit of skills and an amount of money the character can start out with at the begginign of the game.  The more exp you spend the more skills you get and the more money you have
Training:
Basic Lifting, Basic Lockpicking, Basic Diplomacy, Basic Weapon Training (Staff, Dagger, Brass Knuckles)These increase the characters discipline regarding the specific rolls these skills entail, later on you get to add actaul dice to the roll

I'll get into the rest tomorrow when I have more time but this should be enough for now.

[Tark]

Continuing from yesterday.

Equipment
Master Staff (Dam:4 Rate:+2Dur7/7)[/color=red]Dur is for durability there are no magical weapons in this game unless they're wielded by beings of incredible power
Master Chain Shirt (AV:4SpeedRed.:0Dur:9/9)
Money: 10imperials,6Reageants,2Nobles,5PeasantsBasically the empires currency system is relatively universal.  Wanted to keep that simple at least.


Attacks:

Name:Swift Stab
Description:A nondescript jab/stab w/staffBasically what the attack "looks" like according to the player.
Exp Cost: 35xpDerived essentially from all the stuff writtne below every number adn descriptor below has an exp value which is totalled up to give the moves cost.
Rate:1The amount of frames it takes for a character to recover from this attack. A character cannot attack while recovering unless it's part of a Counter or Follow-Up.
Damage:2Added to power.
Accuracy:2[/color=red]Added to speed.[/color]
Descriptors:Takedown,Follow Up(BONK!)Basically these each ahve their own point value adn rules.  By getting these you give your move flavor adn make it more then simply a damage dealing/prevention mechanism you can also buy the Social descriptor makign it a social attack.
Range:Weapon(Staff)Chosen between Close, Long, Wrestling or Weapon based ranges obviously this attack can only be used from this range.
Requirements:Weapon(Staff)
Flaws:Overextension[fcolor=red]Where everythign costs exp these two actually help discount the price making them more manageable but at the cost of flexibility.[/color]
         
Name:BONK!
Description:A swing with the heavy end.
Exp Cost: 29xp
Rate:3
Damage:4
Accuracy:4
Descriptors:Bonebreaking
Range:Weapon(Staff)
Requirements:Weapon(Staff)
Flaws:Overextension, Open

Defenses:
Name:Staff Dodge
Description:Digging into ground w/staff +pull myself away
Exp Cost:18xp
Rate: 2Rate for defenses work differently they add to the current recovery but can be executed while recovering. But, doing so repeatedly only lengthens the time between your next attack.  So rate  management becomes very important to palyers who want to fit a certain style.
Defense: 3
Descriptors:Counter(BONK!)
Requirements: Weapon(Staff)
Flaws: Exploitable

Stances:

Name:Flowing StanceStances provide small passive benefits while the character is in them.
Exp Cost:10
Rate:3
Benefit:Balancing
Flaws:Vulnerable,Fragile,Butterfingers

Special Moves:

Name:Swift Fire
Associated Move:Swift Jab
Description: A jabbing motion which bursts forth a cone of fire.
Exp Cost: 59
Area of Effect: Cone
Range: 6 Meters
Benefit: Sticky, Catastrophic
Chi Cost:6
Element:Fire

Special moves require a whole other bost of their own to fully explain but I'll get into them later.  For now I'm off to bed. Be back tommorrow to finish this.

[whiteknife]

This system looks really cool. I'd been thinking about something like it myself, but it's such a massive undertaking that I never got very far. Your system looks good, I'm interested in seeing more, so keep it coming!

[Tark]

Special Moves:

Name:Swift Fire
Associated Move:Swift JabEssentially the mechanical basis for the move.  It goes without saying that you can't have special moves without normal ones.  It is possible to base multiple special moves off the same basic move making characters like wizards adn shamans who only specialize in the use of special moves possible.
Description: A jabbing motion which bursts forth a cone of fire.
Exp Cost: 59
Area of Effect: ConeThis has a cost one without an AOE effect essentially acts like the basic move.
Range: 6 Meters
Benefit: Sticky, CatastrophicAs above but gives the special more and crazier stuff to play wiht.  While this attack uses the same numbers as the basic one this one burns people corrosively and has the effect of tearing apart scenery and killing mooks wiht impunity.
Chi Cost:6
Element:FireBasically a choice of one of six elements Fire, Water, Air, Wood, MEtal, Earth.  It's possible to not be associated with an element at all but it ruins the benefits (and disadvantages) of having one.

Now of course this is jsut an attack.  It's very possible through special Stances to summon creatures, transform into werewolves, become a Power Range, infuse your weapons wiht the power of the heavens or make eleventy billion clones of yourself.  This si where the game goes from a pretty hum drum and boring martial arts system to "Holy crap! Did he just tear that guys heart out in one move! Jesus!" sort of feel that mangas and movies have but tabletops seem to be seriously lacking (such is the trouble wiht a purely non-visual medium).  And yes now that I've essentially got a good basis for combat and skills I want to lok into ways to make the game write it's own plot so to speak.  Where players can get together make characters together and essentially ahve tons of plot dripping out of them right from the start.  That kind of "pick up and play" is what I'm trying to hammer out now.  I ahve some ideas floating around.  But nothign coherent enough to write down.

[Tark]

Now originally the timign system for combat was going to have some simliarities to Exalted 2nd eds. combat system. That is timing was done in ticks and each action you took had an amount of recovery time associated with it. This works rather well for what I'm going for since I'm trying to get a fluid combat system to best represent martial arts. Character chooses attack, other character chooses defense (if he can or will) and each have their own recovery rates. A character can only attack when they have zero recovery unless it's part of a Counter or Follow Up chain. A character can defend so logn as he's being attacked but defenses add to his recovery making him take longer to recover.

This ahs the fluidity I want but early on it looked like the better builds were going to be ones that focused one heavy duty counter chains or ranged combat. Not quite what I was going for. So I came up with a solution I was going to try out in playtesting when I finnally got a group together. I was going off the idea of Threshold. That is a character has a score that determines how much recovery he can have before he is simply overwhelmed and cant defend himself. This has it's merits but it opens the door for gang tactics where pc's unleash cheap, easily defended combos while one player waits for the other guy to be defenseless and unleash his death move. A fun strategy but if every combat against a single opponent turns out that way it's not that cool.

Though an idea came to mind recently that may be a decent alternative. Essentially give the characters a score based off of their endurance called Fatigue. Fatigue would be like their Chi score in that it would be a pool upon which the character's to draw from to unleash their attacks and defenses. The mroe I think about this more I like it as it allows combos to be mroe easily built (since I can remove the Follow Up descriptor entirely). As well as allow for some interesting mechanics to be implemented. And since the actual Fatigue cost of the move would be XP based that would mena the "one death move" syndrome would essentially be solved.

Any thoughts? Questions? Preferences?