This is a post about our wuxia game that's currently in development. You can check it out here.
We've been teasing the game on here for a few years now, only occasionally giving glimpses. But seeing as how we've kept it pretty close to the chest, as well as how significantly it departs from a lot of the design philosophy I discuss on this blog, I figure you may be curious about where the heck this project is even coming from.
Context for the game
Some of you who've been fans of this blog for awhile are probably aware that I don't exactly write it alone. My older brother is an important creative partner for most of what I do. In this case, Rivers & Lakes was an idea he had back in 2020. He was mostly just spitballing, as I recall it. Y'know, "how I would do the monk class better" and all that. When he has an RPG idea, normally it's kept confined to his home games, and maybe a journal or spreadsheet if he feels like writing it down. But I thought these ideas were promising enough that I insisted on him pursuing it further.
I'm certainly not a pro when it comes to making RPGs, but maybe I was just swept up in the DIY fever that many of us suffer from. So I said, "let's get this in writing, give it the bare minimum formatting needed to be readable, and put it out into the world."
Nearly all of the actual game design is his, while the writing, editing, and playtesting is my own. Ava joked that he's the Dave Arneson while I'm (unfortunately) the Gary Gygax. Haha. I've probably done the majority of the work so far, but to me it is unambiguously his game. Partly that means I get to blame him for almost anything you dislike about the game. But mostly it means I get to credit him for all the things you do like. Even when I've suggested tweaks to the rules, he usually takes my ideas and refines them further.
So on the one hand, I can firmly say that, if I were making the game on my own, there are plenty of things I would have done differently. But more importantly, there's a load of things I just never would have come up with on my own. When I sat down to make my list of "designer notes" blog posts, I wanted to include everything in the game that I thought was cool and unique and worth highlighting. And when I was done, I realized that every last one of them were things that my brother came up with pretty much on his own.* So even though I'm the one more inclined to ramble online for thousands of words about game design, he's the one who can actually do it.
*The main exception being the character sheet and cheat sheet. We'll dive into that later, though.
Context for the designers
When this project started, my brother had been a fan of kung fu and wuxia for many years, but I was almost entirely new to the genre. In the time since then, I've immensely enjoyed my journey diving into these stories, learning about what I've been missing out on.
Of course, because my brother's always loved martial arts, his favorite class in D&D has long been the monk. Watch a Shaw Brothers movie, see a guy doing some totally bananas fighting style, go stat it up in D&D / Pathfinder.
Meanwhile, I've always chafed against the monk class. I felt like it was reductive, that it butchers the wuxia genre, awkwardly jamming it into a game that clearly wasn't otherwise designed with that vision of fantasy in mind. Trying to summarize an entire genre of fantasy down into a single class does a disservice to those stories, I think. Better to play a whole game devoted to it. Opposite attitudes, but convergent interests.
Moreover, we both have a complicated relationship to tactical combat in RPGs. Although my brother was the one who originally introduced me to the OSR, the truth is that he's spent most of his gaming life playing D&D 3E, Pathfinder 1E, and Lancer. When you find yourself fed up with the crunchy action offered by these games, it's easy to just say fuckit and abandon the pursuit of crunchy action. But there's always been some part of us that can't let go. That says, "but with just a few changes..."
Now of course, it's one thing to want to play around with tactical action game design and see if we can innovate on it. But it's another thing to also play around in a genre that's, well, y'know... deeply rooted in a cultural heritage that is completely disconnected from our own backgrounds.
We have no pretensions that Rivers & Lakes offers an even remotely "authentic" rendition of Chinese fantasy. It's all-too-common for western creators to claim as much in a cheap bid for credibility. I wouldn't insult you by pretending that we're somehow the exception. Instead, we can only hope to earn our place in the tradition of respectful works created by western fans of Chinese fantasy.
Avatar: the Last Airbender and Kung Fu Panda are pretty valuable touchstones for us. Nobody would claim that they represent a genuine Chinese perspective, obviously. Rather, they're the product of a uniquely western perspective of Chinese culture. The product of generations of western audiences who grew up loving martial arts films and fantasy, and who were inspired by them to make something new. I think that is itself a perfectly valid cultural experience, and one that's also worth celebrating and sharing. Ultimately, I want people to create the art that they're passionate about. To chase the vision that inspires them, from wherever it may come.
Context for the wider industry
That said, I am keenly aware that, when a TTRPG fan goes online and asks around for recommendations on wuxia games, the majority of popular and prominent titles they'll be offered are games created by white westerners, despite the fact that there's no shortage of Asian creators working in this genre.
Thus, I want to take this opportunity to highlight a small sample of some Asian creators who have made or are making action / wuxia RPG systems. You may find any of these games suit you more than Rivers & Lakes does (or could supplement it somehow), and I'm sure all of these creators would be excited to have more attention directed their way:
- Daniel Kwan and Drew Quon, hosts of the Asians Represent! podcast, have worked on or consulted for numerous projects in this area, and are currently working on a wuxia RPG called Wandering Blades
- Hearts of Wulin is a wuxia PbtA game with many Asian creators involved
- W.H. Arthur has made, well, a huge list of microgames, including several focused on action and/or Chinese culture
- The folks at Curious Chimeras have likewise included wuxia / martial arts / xianxia games in their growing catalogue
- Jacky Leung has made quite a few games, including the martial arts game Fists of Truth
- kingCrackers has made several games of interest, especially Under Heaven, Underworld
This doesn't even include all those who've been publishing scenarios, settings, supplements, and so on based on martial arts / wuxia fiction and Chinese history and folklore. Our game is just one modest addition to a corner of the hobby where all kinds of exciting things are happening every day, but which doesn't get nearly enough attention.
And honestly, as it's only in its beta version right now, Rivers & Lakes isn't even complete without additional materials to flesh out the world and stories a little further. So if you want to play our game, then you have no choice but to go check out those links! I recommend the system-agnostic micro setting Paradise Mountain as a solid starting region.
-Dwiz
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