[Power 19] - Wu Shu Renegades

[Tark]

I figured a Power 19 would be appropriate for this game I posted a quick primer earlier so I decided to go ahead and go through this.

1.)   What is your game about?
The game in its most basic form is about balance and conflict. Balance between the characters in the world, within themselves and in the society around them.

The setting the game takes place in is a fantasy world where a great empire has conquered numerous cultures and  walled itself in.  HAving existed in relative peace and harmony through thirteen emperors the latest emperor has essentially thrown a wrench into the works by outlawing the practice of martial arts causing much of the empire to descend into civil war and forcing the remainign martial artists to flee and hide or stand and fight for their very lives. Thus the world has become imbalanced.


2.) What do the characters do?**
The characters are martial artists in one form or another who find themselves outlaws for doing what they do.  The choice is up to them as to waht they do with this information.  Do they attempt to restore balance ot the empire? Or find a new one?  Will they join in on the chaos? Or attempt to mediate order?

3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?**
The players build and act their characters out in the setting.  They design the character fighting style in addition to the normal roleplaying things.  They also design the characters "supporting cast" as it were.  They can decide who the rivals, family, villains, their mentors and every aspect of their characters backstory in this way.  It's in this way that players have essentially complete control of their character.

GM's provide plot, support characters, and allows the character to interact with their supporting casts while providing the various challenges and battles the characters will be forced to deal with in these troubling times

I have been considering implementing conditions upon which individual players can take control of the narration itself further empowering characters.  An example would be the scene immediately following a duel.

4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
The world itself has become unbalanced.  The difference between civilization and the wild, nature and the unnaturral, good and evil has become so distended and warped.

Teh characters exist to restore balance, restore order to this world.  Whether it's the old order or a new balance of their own design is entirely their own doing.

5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?
While players can take their characters and toss them into massive extremes they will naturally find themselves trying to retain balance iwthin their own mechanics.  Two stats in particular Chi adn Discipline reinforce this fact.  Chi represents the maximum amount of dice a player can rolla t any given time while Discipline represents the amount of dice actually kept in this roll.  OF course neither of these two scores matter if the player doesn't ahve the basic stats from which to roll.  Thus players will find themselves trying to brign balance to themselves to remain effective or at least specialize in ways that are effective and work well with other players.  Afterall balance can be found in a  group rather then an individual.

6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?
Teh game rewards characters who find balance with themselves through progression.  There are dozens of different approaches to conflict adn a player will have to decide on hwo to deal with them all or frequently find themselves powerless against one form of fighting or another.  The game also supports the characters ability to interact with their own support cast  in developing the character and helping them grow.

7.) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?
They are enver punished directly but not findgin balance within ones character in soem form or another can prove to be extremely lethal to the unprepared.  IF one does not consider any sort of defense for wrestling then the wrestler will tear them apart. If a character does not find soem way of dealing with social attacks then he'll be beguiled into whatever other characters wish for them.



8.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

The GM and the players decide on where they wish to start, what type setting, who their characters will be and how powerful etc. The GM is the central narrator who lays down the story and places the characters within. After a brief explanation of what's going on the GM asks the players what they wish to do and the players take it from there. The GM is used to answer questions concerning the narration as the characters play and experience the world.

That was taken from another post and pretty much sums up about every such game. To expand on that in regards to my game the players themselves have some control over the narration.  They give themselves a cast of characters related to their own character, they describe what their moves look like, they essentially are the ones in control of the character.  The GM is there primarily to provide stimulus for the character to react to.

9.) What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)
The players create characters that are well defined and explored (pasts and personalities, goals etc.). Players are encouraged to find a cause to strive for, something that fits the persona of their character (this cause may be not caring). 

10.) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?

The resolution for most events in the game involve the rolling of dice and the playing of the characters persona. Dice are used to measure random events or outcomes such as combat the use of skills or magic or powers etc.

Again one can't put it nay better then that.  To expand however it should be noted everything is an opposed roll.  Certain objectives are given a trial rating which represents the number of dice the director (i.e. GM) rolls against the player to determine the outcome of the event.

11.) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?
Through opposed rolls their is a sense that the character is constantly in conflict.  At the same time to ensure success in conflict the character is forced to seek a balance to avoid rolling irregularities and get the most out of their own potential


12.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?
Characters advance through gaining in Worldly and MArtial EXP.  Worldly exp is essentially gained automatically as the character progresses, grows, interacts with others and essentially lives as a normal basic human being.  MArtial exp is gained through combat, training, and duels with other characters in the world.  This exp is spent to raise attributes, train skills and build new moves to add to the characters repertoire.

13.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?
As always characters will find themselves seeking balance.  They will either have to specialize and trust/rely on others to help them.  Or, learn to balance their worldly and martial expertise to guarantee success.


14.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?
I wanted to build a game that was as close to real life martial arts as possible but still had the awesome powers and neat effects you'd find in animes like dragonball or Naruto

15.) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?
The mechanics of building moves recieved particular scrutiny.  These attacks, defenses, and stances (and subsequent special moves) define the personality of the character.  The way he fights defines much about the way he loves, hates, and deals with the world around him.  I wanted the game to be as flexible and realistic as possible while giving the player as much freedom to define their character.

16.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?
I'm a sucker for good stories.  And seeing what epic tale might fall out of this. Without an overlaying metaplot a director can literally place the story anywhere, and even a story outside the empire is practically limitless as I intentionally left the area outside the empire undefined just to see what others might do with it.

17.) Where does your game take the players that other games can't, don't, or won't?
It takes the players literally into the shoes of their character.  Their's a certain intimacy that comes with creating and designing a character from the ground up without really following a template or being forced into any one particular genre.  The setting reads "Wuxian" but the game can quickly turn into a political slaughter fest with white haired bureaucrats duking it out with the force of their might policies on the parliament floor, or a duel to the death between two gentlemanly nobles with a choice of nun chucks or fencing blades at dawn. Players are the ultimate arbiters as to what there characters are and what they do.

18.) What are your publishing goals for your game?
Really more then anything this game could not be dealt justice in a pdf.  I like hardbacks.  Theres something far more personal about cracking open a book adn sifting through the pages.  Call me old fashioned I just don't like paging through pdf's and thus dont write as such. And should this prove as successful as I can only hope I ahve two other games in mind (A post apocalyptic superhero game and a game that draws its inspiration from Last Action Hero).

19.) Who is your target audience?
This game would appeal to martial art movie fans the most or those who enjoy anime.  But, theres more then enough room to easily crossgenre.  A medieval knight from dnd can feel as comfortable in the empire as an aztec warrior.  While it certainly won't be nearly as insane as rifts the potential is certainly there wiht the right amount of creativity.

[JoyWriter]

Hey, the basic setting seems elegant, very taoist; with imperial intervention upsetting the balances of the things they control. It's also good that the setting makes the players magnetic, as even if they do nothing, people will be after them. X-men ran on this premise pretty much continuously.

However, I'd like to examine your preconceptions if you don't mind, as you could be importing parts of other systems you don't really want or need:

First of all what is "other roleplaying stuff"? I notice that in films like kung-fu hustle (so awesome!) the characters are defined basically by personality and martial art, do you need anything else? Obviously that is a silly film, which might not suit the range of tones you are going for, but if your players are defined by their wushu, then it makes sense for it to be their only set of physical stats. This then encourages you to make the style creation rules fairly versatile, but keeps the rules structures in actual play minimal. Examples? In Jade Empires, the two moralities were "open palm" and "closed fist", in the same way the principles of the wushu could be used to derive their stats and not just their martial ones, so people use something inherent to their own style when in conversation or doing physical actions. I think that is the kind of thing you are going for, but I wanted to check that you weren't planning to put all this stuff on top of a separate system, when you probably don't need it.
Now in it's purest form this system is completely relativistic; it doesn't say which martial art is better, just that you need to be good at it. In that case the balance rules would need to be built into art creation. An alternative solution is to say that actually some martial arts are better than others, which either pushes you more towards the mma people and different forms of fitness, which doesn't really suit your paradigm I think, or to make a form of elemental system where styles proficiencies are defined according to something like the bagua (the trigrams not the martial art, although this would of course elevate baguazhang above the others). Now obviously you will need to find ways to bridge between the materialistic paradigm that many of the players will come to the game with, and this alternative way of grouping actions, but I think it will be worth it in terms of immersion.

In terms of the players, wushus should really produce the clear form of action identity that classes do in D&D "I'm a Northern Crane Fist artist, what do I do?" Which again could be found in their principles, if they really are embodying their art. Actually though, it would be cool to add a different and even conflicting set of motivations, like in so many martial arts films, where people are torn between their love and their wushu, or where they want to go into hiding because they want a normal life. These kinds of complexities would help when distinguishing one artist from another.

Next you've got the classic dilemma of player/GM authorship, what Ron (I think it was him) calls "the impossible thing before breakfast". I'd say it's generally better if the players and the GMs take complimentary but separate roles, so you don't have the GM trying to secretly control the players action, but rather either controlling the starting situation, and then letting the players play merry hell with it, or insuring that the story is set up in terms of flexible dynamic elements rather than set scenes they need to get too, as they probably won't! If you can find the core of your story, it will generally be exploring a theme or the relationships between a set of themes, producing shifting kinds of mood and pacing, frequently tension and resolution, or it will be about digging into the characters you have created, or that the GM has created, or again the relationships between them. If you add tools to help with all of these to the game, then any GM will thank you, maybe even without liking your particular application. Although I have to say it looks quite charming so far!

[Willow]

Hey there-

Do you have any specific questions for feedback?  Generally, a Power 19 isn't the greatest tool for inducing discussion.

[FrankBrunner]

I like the setting idea, and I second Joy's opinion about the action principles clearly answering the "What do I do?" question.

I would like to see the following ideas fleshed out a little bit more:
1. How characters and the GM share authorship. How do the rules support the sharing?
2. You mention political play and combat. Do politics use the same mechanic as kung fu fights? Why or why not?
3. It sounds like you're using a dice pool. What is the reasoning behind that? How big do the pools get? How does that correspond to what the game wants to support and encourage in terms of a playstyle?

Balance seems to be a key theme. You talk about the world being imbalanced, and the PCs seeking to restore balance. I like that. Could that be reflected in your core mechanics? Dice that try to roll an average as opposed to high or low?

[Tark]

First of all what is "other roleplaying stuff"? [/quote[

Still trying to find the context it was said in.

I notice that in films like kung-fu hustle (so awesome!) the characters are defined basically by personality and martial art, do you need anything else?

In a movie, no.  In a game, yes.  Characters are reflections of the thigns they do.  A skilled warrior perfect with hsi blade is likely a total klutz when he ahs to do anything that doesn't involve swording peoples faces.  So yeah, basic skills, muscle power not to mention thigns like movement also need to eb defined.

Obviously that is a silly film, which might not suit the range of tones you are going for, but if your players are defined by their wushu, then it makes sense for it to be their only set of physical stats.

Yeah but their martial art doesn't determine how much they can lift, how fast adn far they can run.  What their martial art does do is enhance these thigns (where Chi comes in) and allow them to realize the fullness of their potential.  So, martial arts doesnt ADD anythign to the people themselves, it merely helps them fully realize what's already their. And of course, if it's not their to begin with then it does nothing at all.


[quotNow in it's purest form this system is completely relativistic; it doesn't say which martial art is better, just that you need to be good at it. In that case the balance rules would need to be built into art creation. An alternative solution is to say that actually some martial arts are better than others, which either pushes you more towards the mma people and different forms of fitness, which doesn't really suit your paradigm I think, or to make a form of elemental system where styles proficiencies are defined according to something like the bagua (the trigrams not the martial art, although this would of course elevate baguazhang above the others). Now obviously you will need to find ways to bridge between the materialistic paradigm that many of the players will come to the game with, and this alternative way of grouping actions, but I think it will be worth it in terms of immersion.

That was a lot of massive and scary words.  But yes a system already exists within the system.  Later on when I show a character I'll detail how.

In terms of the players, wushus should really produce the clear form of action identity that classes do in D&D "I'm a Northern Crane Fist artist, what do I do?"

This works if the game had a solely eastern flavor that would go well.  However, I wanted the martial arts to be a reflection of the character, not a definition.  So what differentiates one art from another? When we sit down and think about martial arts in general physically they do the exact same thing, break bones, rupture organs, they hurt, harm, and kill.  So mechanically speaking theres no need ot change those very basics.  The esoterics however are player defined.  If a plyer literally wanted to be a practitioner of "northern Crane Fist" he doesn't ask himself "What do I do?" he asks "What does that say about me?" what he does is always the same he hruts people.  The player chooses his moves adn creates them based upon meeting that goal, but it's description and the "whys" of it are entirely up to the players ideas behidn hsi character.  For example in our playtest group so far we have two characters wiht characters done.  The first player approached creation from a roleplaying stand point, he created a cahracter based  roughly off of an anime character and selected hsi skills and statted accordingly, like the character he really doesn't see his art as an "art" but a means to an end.  As such his moves are very simply and described very simply (The ttwo attacks he created for example are named BONK! and Quick Jab respectively since he fights witha  staff).   He did this because he saw his character as a very simple man who did what he had to to survive, no more, no less.  The other player approached his purely from a mechanical stand point wanting to emulate the real martial art Vale Tudo(sp?). His character has yet to be fleshed out but he ahs described his character as being very "efficient".  The iamge im getting is a very cold, mathematical analyst.

Next you've got the classic dilemma of player/GM authorship, what Ron (I think it was him) calls "the impossible thing before breakfast". I'd say it's generally better if the players and the GMs take complimentary but separate roles, so you don't have the GM trying to secretly control the players action, but rather either controlling the starting situation, and then letting the players play merry hell with it, or insuring that the story is set up in terms of flexible dynamic elements rather than set scenes they need to get too, as they probably won't! If you can find the core of your story, it will generally be exploring a theme or the relationships between a set of themes, producing shifting kinds of mood and pacing, frequently tension and resolution, or it will be about digging into the characters you have created, or that the GM has created, or again the relationships between them. If you add tools to help with all of these to the game, then any GM will thank you, maybe even without liking your particular application. Although I have to say it looks quite charming so far!

Theyre beign added, btu the tools adn aplications are still beign hashed out.

Do you have any specific questions for feedback?  Generally, a Power 19 isn't the greatest tool for inducing discussion.

I'm mostly just looking for general opinons regarding what people think of what I'm proposing and doing getting a dialogue adn discussion "going" so ideas can be generated that I can perhaps adapt and use.

1. How characters and the GM share authorship. How do the rules support the sharing?

This particular idea is late in comign adn is still beign worked out.  But, so far I'm thinking that the results of certain actions be determined by the player. Winniing or losing a duel allows a player to take the reins and determine his/her ultimate fate. Do I slay my opponent? Do I let him slay me? Should he have a flash of enlightenemtn and become my student? Will I become hsi instead?  It's soemthign I'm thinking about while I get the basic mechanics smoothed out and polished.

2. You mention political play and combat. Do politics use the same mechanic as kung fu fights? Why or why not?

Yes and no.  Social combat is modeld alot after second edition Exalted which simply translates normal combat into social terms.  The difference being that this flows in Wu Shu Renegades seamlessly with actual combat.  While you wont be shattering bones with your words (unless you make your social attack into a special move) you attack a characters "Chi" score the maximum amount of dice they can roll.  This allows social combat to carry soem actual weight in real combat, somethign alot of systems unfortunately lack which often divides social and martial characters alogn soem very drastic lines.

3. It sounds like you're using a dice pool. What is the reasoning behind that? How big do the pools get? How does that correspond to what the game wants to support and encourage in terms of a playstyle?

Mainly for ease of play.  Adding takes time, counting takes time.  I want combat to "feel" quick.  It's really easy to tell that "my plastic cubes have more dots then your plastic cubes".  Theorhetically the pools can be infitely large given time but so far the biggest EXP NPC I've made thus far (around 1000xp) has abotu 12 dice maximum to roll on any roll but only keeps 8.  And again it's easier to think of balance when dealing wiht a dicepool then with a single die+modifier. 

Balance seems to be a key theme. You talk about the world being imbalanced, and the PCs seeking to restore balance. I like that. Could that be reflected in your core mechanics? Dice that try to roll an average as opposed to high or low?

In a sense they already are.  Players ahve to balance themselves within three stats Chi, Discipline, and Base Stats.  Chi determiens the maximum amount of dice they can roll on any given roll, where discipline determines the actual dice they keep to determine the result of that roll, and the basic stats give them the dice they can roll.  Balance in the game comes from the players ability to balance those numbers on his sheet to ensure roll consistency while still growing as a character.

One interesting variant I've jsut considered is to play ahnds of poke to resolve dice conflicts. Chi represents the maximum size of cards you can be dealt where discipline represents the cards you keep. Bidding is done where the attacker bids an amount of Frames he'll spend recovering if he loses the hadn where the defender bids the amount of hits/ wounds theyll take if they lsoe. This gives even more control to the characters and makes the importance fo balancing those stats all the mroe important.

[JoyWriter]

However, I wanted the martial arts to be a reflection of the character, not a definition.  So what differentiates one art from another? When we sit down and think about martial arts in general physically they do the exact same thing, break bones, rupture organs, they hurt, harm, and kill.  So mechanically speaking theres no need ot change those very basics. 

Notice how these priorities seem to come out in your players attitudes:

... like the character he really doesn't see his art as an "art" but a means to an end.  As such his moves are very simply and described very simply (The ttwo attacks he created for example are named BONK! and Quick Jab respectively since he fights witha  staff).   He did this because he saw his character as a very simple man who did what he had to to survive, no more, no less.  The other player approached his purely from a mechanical stand point wanting to emulate the real martial art Vale Tudo(sp?). His character has yet to be fleshed out but he ahs described his character as being very "efficient".  The iamge im getting is a very cold, mathematical analyst.

Many martial arts consider themselves a full budo, a martial way of life, that has transferable value in many areas, from business to social attitudes to drinking tea! They often try to move people beyond being a simple brawler to being a well rounded and sometimes peaceful person those who seek power for service and defence rather than to destroy.
That is what I was trying to explore with the idea of martial arts as wider skills. You say that a swordsman might be rubbish at everything else. There are people who train at kendo to learn to be alert and responsive without being tense, and to unify their will into single swift action. That's more than sticking steel in people! A mechanistic approach may well work fine, but I think that a narrative approach has a lot of value for the levels of detail we mostly use in a table top game. Consider that the purpose of stats is partially to reveal the character, and partially to provide resources for a player to get things done. The less those two roles conflict the better I say, unless you can push player resources into a different system, which would be quite unusual!

[Tark]

Many martial arts consider themselves a full budo, a martial way of life, that has transferable value in many areas, from business to social attitudes to drinking tea! They often try to move people beyond being a simple brawler to being a well rounded and sometimes peaceful person those who seek power for service and defence rather than to destroy.
That is what I was trying to explore with the idea of martial arts as wider skills.

I see where you're getting at and it already exists in the game through the Discipline stat. Does a person simply spontaneously develop quick reaction time adn alertness because he practices a skill that demands it? Of course not he's ahd the potential for it the whole time he simply needs to train his mind adn body to work in harmony.  And is martial arts the only path? A race car driver or professional video game player would argue with you on that, though they would lack the physical training to back it up. I feel that complicating it past this point murders partly what I'm going for.

A mechanistic approach may well work fine, but I think that a narrative approach has a lot of value for the levels of detail we mostly use in a table top game. Consider that the purpose of stats is partially to reveal the character, and partially to provide resources for a player to get things done. The less those two roles conflict the better I say, unless you can push player resources into a different system, which would be quite unusual!

I'm really more or less searching for a middle ground by allowing players to select their mechanics and describe how those mechanics actually work.  I've had players in other games who essentially fail at a narrative approach they can wrap their heads around it and find comfort in more mechanical systems. Essentially the difference between a white wolf player and a dnd player.  One prefers very simple basic mechanics that only serve as a reference for the narrative while the other had narrative purely driven by the mechanics.  So far I think im at least close to what I'm trying to achieve.  And consequently it seems the setting itself is somewhat close particularly with the heavy mixing of western and eastern cultures. 

Unfortunately my playtest group has fallen through and now im back to the search for a new one.