art of wuxia corerules.pdf

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A complete kung fu fantasy role-playing game
by Jim Alcala Sales and DwD Studios
To my wife and love of my life, Tina, who steadfastly supported me and this crazy idea through
everything; even when the Pillars of Heaven shook and the poison arrows fell from the sky.
Jim grew up watching Shaw Brothers movies. He received many small injuries trying make-believe
lightness skills, fictional training methods, and improvised weapons practice. This only fueled his love
for the talent of the actors/actresses, directors, fight choreographers, script writers, set designers,
special effects artists, and camera operators of wuxia film. Today, he and his wonderful wife Tina enjoy
watching wuxia movies and television shows, both old and modern. This game is his love letter to
wuxia across the spectrum from classic kung fu to high fantasy xianxia. He hopes you find what you
need here to make your own wuxia stories and heroes.
BareBones Fantay™, Covert Ops™, FrontierSpace™, Art of Wuxia™, Karanak Kingdoms™, and
Longzhi™ are copyright 2019, and are trademarks of DwD Studios. These trademarks are used
under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License; (CC
BY-NC-SA 3.0); Some Rights Reserved. To view a copy of this license, visit:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0
Or send a letter to: Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, CA 94041,
USA. For specific details, appropriate credits, and updates to this license, please see:
http://dwdstudios.com/barebones/license
PERMISSION IS GRANTED TO PRINT THIS DOCUMENT FOR NON-COMMERCIAL USE.
FOREWORD ................................... 1
INTRODUCTION ............................. 3
The Golden Rule .......................... 3
Players ......................................... 4
What is Wuxia?............................ 4
Setting the Tone .......................... 4
Tropes of the Wuxia Genre ......... 5
Kung Fu........................................ 6
Dice ............................................. 6
Abilities ........................................ 7
Skills ............................................. 7
Action Checks .............................. 7
CHARACTERS ................................. 9
Character Creation ...................... 9
Skills ........................................... 13
Alchemist
.............................. 13
Detective
............................... 13
Diviner
................................... 14
Leader
................................... 15
Mystic
................................... 15
Scholar
.................................. 16
Scout
..................................... 16
Sorcerer
................................. 17
Thief
...................................... 17
Warrior
................................. 18
Qi ............................................... 19
Alchemy ..................................... 21
Spells ......................................... 24
Kung Fu...................................... 31
Equipment ................................. 42
Moral Code ................................ 45
Character Development ............ 46
Sample Characters..................... 48
BASICS ......................................... 55
Actions....................................... 55
Contested Actions ..................... 55
Resistance Checks ..................... 56
Multiple Actions ........................ 56
Getting Hurt............................... 56
Getting Healed........................... 56
Time........................................... 56
Initiative..................................... 56
Movement and Range ............... 57
Combat ...................................... 58
Spells ......................................... 58
Example of Play ......................... 59
GUIDELINES .................................63
Rulings Not Rules .......................63
Success Modifiers
..................63
Breaking Things
.....................63
Resistance Checks
.................64
Getting Hurt
..........................64
Conditions
.............................65
Effects
...................................66
Descriptors
............................66
Languages
.............................66
Travel
....................................67
Magic Item Creation ..................68
Magical Objects
....................68
Sample Magical Items
...........70
Spell Scrolls
............................75
Market Price
..........................75
Poison ........................................76
Disease ......................................77
Adventure Idea Generation .......79
Random Dungeon Generation ...86
Traps
.....................................88
Hazards
.................................91
Treasure
................................91
Creatures
...............................91
Rewards .....................................93
NPCs ..........................................94
Human Villains
......................94
Minor NPCs/Mooks
...............94
Formations
............................94
Major NPCs
...........................95
Villain Descriptors
.................95
Example NPCs
.......................96
Master Villains ...........................99
Creatures .................................102
WUXIA ...................................... 125
Essentials ................................ 125
Romance.............................
126
Revenge
.............................. 127
Creating Kung Fu Styles
...... 127
Crippling Injuries
................. 128
Diviner—Identify
Convergence Point
......... 129
Secret Techniques................... 130
Weapons of Ingenious Design 132
Campaign Starters .................. 133
Genre Options......................... 136
Cinematic Sliders
................ 136
Training Montage
............... 136
Diviner Alternate
................ 137
Fantasy in Wuxia ..................... 138
LONGZHI ................................... 143
History .................................... 143
Gazetteer ................................ 145
The Dragon Empire
............. 145
Jin
....................................... 149
Demon Lands
...................... 150
Organizations .......................... 153
Mindsets of Longzhi ................ 155
Belief Systems
..................... 156
Customs
.............................. 158
Languages
.......................... 159
Money
................................ 159
Tokens of Authority
............ 159
Thresholds
.......................... 159
Symbol of the Dragon
......... 159
GLOSSARY................................ 160
INSPIRATION............................ 161
Author & Cartographer:
Editors:
Cover:
Illustrations:
Layout & Production:
Indexing:
Consultant:
Technical Advisor:
Jim Alcala Sales
dwdstudios.com/artofwuxia
Brian Gute
Pat Collins
Tina Alcala Sales
Eric Quigley
artstation.com/quigleyer
Daniel J. Garcia
danilustrator.wixsite.com/danilustrations
PNGtree
Bill Logan
Tom Stephens
Junyi Liu
Brendan Davis
Albert Dalia
pngtree.com
dwdstudios.com
expandingfrontier.com
thebedrockblog.blogspot.com
wanderingblade.com
Play Testers:
Anthony “Digua” Altiere, Brian “Red Crane” Gute, Pat “Bridgebreaker” Collins,
Reid “Constable Who?” Collins, Romesh Lakhan, Tambrey "Blue Thorn" Collins, Logan Sales,
Tina “Dancing Dagger” Alcala Sales. And a special thanks to all of the awesome players who
have brought Mighty Bahu, Brother Shan, Meilie, Lee Jielee, Lee Fang, and Yi Minzhe to life
while playtesting versions of the game over the years at Con of the
North, Gamehole Con, Menomicon, and Clearwater Con.
Wuxia xiaoshuo
and
pian,
“heroic fiction” and “heroic cinema,” have been the main stays
of Chinese popular entertainment. As both a traditional China scholar and a
wuxia
novelist, I
have long had an interest in this popular genre. And thus, found it both humbling and exciting
that Jim Sales, the author of Art of Wuxia, invited me to write the foreword to his game. I must
first confess that I am no gamer. So when Jim sent me this rulebook, I was fascinated by the
amount of work, thought, and imagination he has brought to this game and this genre.
So let me begin with the “scholarly” part of this essay. The primary meaning of the
character
xia
in ancient China was “to use strength to help people.” It became synonymous with
the word “chivalry.” I tend to eschew the use of traditional European terminology in dealing with
East Asian culture, and especially the term “knight-errant” to refer to the
xia.
In China, the character
xia,
first used disparagingly by the eminent Legalist philosopher,
Han Fei-zi (ca. 280-233 B.C.E.), described a class of fighters, as their chief characteristic was the
use of their strength to help others. Han Fei-zi disparaged them because he was a “law and
order” advocate who disliked the
xia
tendency to imposed their own sense of justice. The
character
you,
to roam, to wander, was appended to
xia,
becoming the combination,
youxia,
as
these fighters tended to wander over the land helping others. In my fiction, I have translated
youxia
as “wandering blades” since I write about heroes who were famous for their use of
bladed weapons. From this,
wuxia
comes to be literarily translated as the “martial use of strength
to help others” or, perhaps, “martial chivalry.” But this “strength” was not always “martial.” A
sense of balance – strength and intellect – was always a prime characteristic of the most renown
xia.
Jumping ahead in Chinese history, roughly a millennium to the 9
th
century C.E., the
xia
start to take a form in fiction and poetic literature which we can recognize in contemporary
cinema and literature: they are armed with a deadly array of weapons and fighting techniques
and they are gender “blind” in that swordswomen have entered the fray! And, most of all, they
are now understood as heroes defending the oppressed.
So what does all this have to do with a role-playing game? Art of Wuxia strikes me as the
gateway to this wonderful, gender-neutral heroic genre through the development of a game
playing camaraderie that would make any
xia
die for, as such friendships were at the heart of the
xia
sense of justice. So a roll of the dice here brings adventure, excitement, and friendship – Ah, a
perfect home for the wandering heroes of the
wuxia
tradition! Enjoy!
— Albert Dalia
www.wanderingblade.com

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