In this entry to the Pick Up Pile Pondering series, I’ll be looking at Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades Wuxia Roleplaying by Brendan Davis and Jeremy Bai, published by Osprey Games.
This is a smaller format volume than many roleplaying game books. 229mm x 153mm which is about the same as many hardback novels. This makes it easier to hold when reading, and seems to be Osprey Publishing’s standard size. Despite the smaller dimensions the 272 single column pages are densely packed with information. They are maybe a little hard to skim to find information quickly, but they are well organised and the contents and index are detailed enough to find what you are looking for.
The introduction of the book doesn’t have the usual “What is a roleplaying game?” section that most books have. Perhaps understandably, as this is unlikely to be anyone’s first RPG, but a surprise to see its absence. It does have a note about the genre influences that are key touchstones, particularly the works of Gu Long who is name-checked many times in the book. It also notes that the portrayal of Chinese history is anachronistic and should not be taken as an accurate source on history.
Following this is the rules section, first laying out the core mechanic. Build a dice pool based on your skills, roll that many D10 and compare the highest result against a target number, aiming to meet or beat the number. A roll of a 10 is called a total success and can lead to better result on the action you were attempting, increased damage or a special effect for example. Fairly straightforward as systems go.
This section then details a few dice caps (7D10 soft cap usually, 10D10 hard cap in special circumstances), an overview of player ability categories, level, killing aura and killing aura darkness (and ideation of level and how deadly someone is that can be read by other characters), drinking culture and grudges (acting on grudges can give mechanical bonuses).
Also there are three charts for XP progression for differing campaign lengths. The shortest of these being gain a level each session in a two month campaign, which should take you to the maximum of level 9. The longest, for open ended campaigns, requiring hundreds of XP to reach level 9. With only 1 XP handed out for achieving goals and killing stronger opponents this could take quite some time. This is great as it does the hard work of tailoring level progression for you.
Up next are the combat rules. The sequence is broken into 1. Talking and Analysis, 2. Rolling Turn Order, and 3. Moving and Performing a Skill Action. Talking and Analysis is to psych out, provoke, placate etc your opponent. This can lead to gaining an advantage, learning something about them, or avoiding combat entirely. Rolling Turn Order is a typical initiative system, but is rolled every turn to make it unpredictable who goes when. Finally the movement and action phase is for positioning and attacking or some other action. this sequence is then repeated as necessary until the confrontation is finished. Damage and permanent injury close out this chapter. Being able to only take 3 wounds at the lowest level and 5 at the highest means this is one deadly combat system.
Up next is the Character Creation chapter, well the first character creation chapter, as many of the following chapters are lists that are relevant to this process.
The character creation process is a simple step by step process. Choose a signature ability, a counter, and appropriate resources from the following chapters. Then select your skills which will determine your dice pools for actions. Eccentricities, an unusual feature that marks you out from the crow, follow. Then occupation, backstory and finishing details finish your character. Finally it tells you to make a back up character in case your first one dies, this indicates just how deadly combat in this game can be.
I’ll cover the Signature Ability and Counter chapters together as they are very similar. Largely they both consist of a long list of special move that have really really fuckin’ awesome names. Some of my favourites are; Crescent Moon Style which enables you to curve the trajectory of thrown weapons hitting more than one target; Essence Absorbing Seven Kicks, where you can kick and ability out of someone and into yourself; Engulfing Wings of the Night Sky, a counter that uses your robes to block ranged weapons, throwing them back if they are darts or needles; Hand Shattering Defence, you know the one you see in films where someone punches or elbows and incoming punch and breaks their attacker’s hand, that one. And there are SO MANY more, all with awesome names.
Wealth and Social Resources are chosen next if applicable. From here you can be landed gentry, a government official, or have a group of devoted ex-lovers ready to act on your instructions. There is some rich roleplaying material in this short chapter. I might forgo a material resource to get on of these to add something to a character I was making.
Chapter Six follows with Weapons, object and Equipment. This goes over the basic currency rules first and how many copper coins to a silver or gold tael. Following that, there’s a list of basic weapons with cost in coins, damage dice and any special rules. Following that are rare and unique weapons with special qualities. Finally there are the Top Ten Weapons which are legendary pieces of equipment that have qualities beyond any listed before and are often in the hands of legendary characters. Paired weapons are treated as a single item, having two hammers, for example, is still a single attack when using them.
Items, pills, poisons and various other other objects follow and are arranged in a similar format to the weapon lists.
This is where I would have liked to see a few more illustrations, whilst the descriptions are very good I had trouble mentally picturing some of these items until I googled them.
Eccentricities follow, where you can decide if your character is ugly, or absent minded, or a pacifist, or collects noses or fingers, something to make them stand out from regular people. You can also at this point opt for a Deep Eccentricity, which has a more severe impact on the game and can cause mechanical issues. Such as being an inept martial artist, or a compulsive killer, or just plain unlucky. Why would you take one of these? Apart from them expanding the RP possibilities taking a Deep Eccentricity allows you to select a Unique Weapon in character creation, rather than a normal one, so this would very tempting to me.
Nest up we have the Skills chapter, this is where the real mechanical bones of the character are put in place. Here you are instructed to allocate points to skills listed in several sections. Skills are rated 0-3 indicating how many dice you roll when testing them. You have 4 points to split amongst your Martial Arts skills, External for physical force based arts, Internal for internal energy based skills, and Lightness for body weight, speed and leaping huge distances. 6 points are available for Specialist Skills, which covers Medicine Survival and other trained specialities. Another 6 points are for Unorthodox Skills, which is where disguise, theft and other more criminal abilities are found. And 6 points are given to you for Mental Skills such as Detect for observing things and Reasoning for problem solving among others. Some careers require you to have certain skills at certain levels, representing the training you would need for them.
You also have 5 points to put into your three defences. These are Evade for dodging, Hardiness for damage soaking, and Wits for mental resistance. These points are added to the 5 already given to each category. This total isn’t a dice pool, but is used as the target number for an opponent to beat when rolling to attack you.
Just short of the halfway point in the book this finishes the player section and moves on to the gamemaster chapters.
The Gamemastering section starts with an explanation of the Wuxia genre (from Wu meaning martial and Xia broadly meaning Hero). Something I would have expected to be in the introduction, but this is as good a place for it. There are references to texts on the genre and films and novels for inspiration. This has added a lot to my “to watch” and “to read” queues. Past this there is a wealth of good advice on how and when to apply rules, setting target numbers and dealing with player bullshit unexpected power combinations. Also outlined are adventure and campaign types, with many descriptions of missions you can use from assassinations to escort missions to martial arts tournaments, a fantastic source of inspiration.
The phrase that stands out to me in this section is “Campaigns are shattered porcelain.” Embrace the chaos that players cause by interacting with your planned adventure and see what you can make between you when you try to put the pieces back together.
The chapter on Ancient China and Creating the Jianghu (the cultural environment of Wuxia characters) covers the cultural aspects of the game. Face and reputation, religions of the area, drinking culture which is very important, naming conventions, historical period references and basic geography are also here. This chapter ends with a guide to creating your own Jianghu for your games and populating it. However, as the work has already been done on creating one in the next chapter I would just use that.
The ready built Jianghu of chapter eleven is 75 pages of detailed setting material. First up are details of the organisations in the area detailed. There are religious sects, secretive government departments, powerful clans and a variety of companies. Each listing has details of the groups members, allies, grudges, and other details, All with page numbers to cross reference to the relevant entry.
Then there are many NPCs listed all with some fascinating, and often disturbing, personal qualities. Just hope your character doesn’t resemble someone from Song Tuan’s home fishing village. Next there are smaller stat blocks for minor generic NPCs such as bandits, guards and the like. Finally in this section there are animal stats, this just has tigers, sharks and crocodiles. Surprisingly after seeing vipers references in a few places in the book , such as Viper Style in signature abilities, there are no stats for snakes. My only issue with the stat blocks is sometimes the formatting wraps the dice pool for a skill onto the following line, makings things slightly unclear, but this is a very minor issue.
The final full chapter of the book is The Obsidian Bat, a sample adventure using the Jianghu detailed in the previous chapter. As an introductory adventure it is intended for level 1 characters, though higher level enemies are present to prompt the PCs to solve issues with other than violence, or ally with other characters to even the odds. What starts as a simple delivery job can get really complicated and dangerous for the PCs pretty quickly.The adventure lists the hooks, characters, events and locations, but leaves a lot of how and when these happen up to the GM. There is a recommended order, but his still has plenty of wiggle room. Also given are potential grudges that could develop after they complete the mission depending on how they acted and whose side they took, this can leads to all sorts of developments in following adventures.
Following that is a page referring to the adventure Pleasure of the Harbour, another adventure. This is available from the Osprey Publishing website for free. Pleasures is written as a potential follow up to Obsidian Bat it is a more complex adventure, being an investigation mission. It would have been nice to also have this in the main rulebook, but if it had to be cut for space it being downloadable for free is great.
Rounding out the book, the last thing before the well ordered index, is the character sheet. A nice open clear layout with a few detailed flourishes to match the theming of the book.
The character sheets and the Pleasures of the Harbour adventure are avaialable to download HERE from the Osprey Publishing website.
I would need to play this a few times to be comfortable running it, and I would enthusiastically join a game to play it. Though before playing I would probably watch a couple of the films mentioned in the book to get myself in the right frame of mind.
I can see this game being a lot of fun, especially for players with genre familiarity. Fast and deadly with pretty simple to follow mechanics and a lot of rich flavour.
Now to find a bunch of those films and start watching.
Three Kobolds With A Trench Gun 