As the topic suggests.

Has anyone here, and not in the rpg.net uber fanclub tried this? Impressions? Criticisms? Likes?

Yes. The setting is interesting and accessible. I didn't know many of the usual tropes of Wuxia, but the book does a fine job explaining them.

There is nice subsystem for intrigue, medicine, magical curses, divinations and combat strategies, borrowing from Chinese 5 element theory.

Character creation is fun. Kung-fu styles are quite colorful and non-repetitive. Loresheets offer a nice way to tie a character to the setting.


The greatest problem is the clunkiness of the combat system. It requires an active defense roll for every attack, and rolling dice is rather slow with LotW system.

Even worse are rippling rolls (~ damage rolls). The idea is great. During a fight, characters acquire ripples. Those can be surface wounds, fatigue, loss of balance whatever. On a critical hit, rippling dice are rolled and compared to the damage threshold. Depending on the difference the character takes a wound.

Problem: Characters can spend chi to roll dice against the rippling. So I need to roll my rippling dice, then roll my chi aura dice, then substract, then compare it to my damage threshold.

I'm still trying to hack the system to get rid off defense rolls and chi aura rolls.

what i read of it confused me intensely.

it seems that this is a resource management superhero game (at least wotg was). Now that's fine. I have no issue with presenting a martial arts game in that way at that power level and tony wong's drawings are amazing. In fact that's exactly how i'd do a Streetfighter/Mortal Kombat style game.

But it does sound heavy handed in places. Loresheets are conceptually again very interesting, but there's no book that can have a loresheet for everything - particularly stuff the gM creates for his campaign. So what advice is there to create your own, say for the Bad Guy's Clan/Home?

I still don't really get waves/marvels.

Is this just a flowery (which is fine) way of saying multiple actions.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;539665I still don't really get waves/marvels.

Is this just a flowery (which is fine) way of saying multiple actions.

Not quite. Its closer to saying minor and full round actions.

A Wave is an effect that takes a round to complete, so it can be interrupted Examples include movement.

A Marvel is a secondary attack effect such as knocking someone over, dazing them or doing fire damage on top of the normal damage.

Quote from: 1of3;539483The greatest problem is the clunkiness of the combat system. It requires an active defense roll for every attack, and rolling dice is rather slow with LotW system.

It is a lot of rolling and can take time. I am guessing that they assume that most fans of the genre will be happy with spending time in combat if its fun and interesting. Whether you find it fun and interesting is another thing

Actually, I have no problem spending time for some clobbering. I don't like spending time on math. I'm a mathmatician after all.

QuoteBut it does sound heavy handed in places. Loresheets are conceptually again very interesting, but there's no book that can have a loresheet for everything - particularly stuff the gM creates for his campaign. So what advice is there to create your own, say for the Bad Guy's Clan/Home?

Yes. That's the basic idea. Lore Sheets can be shorter than the ones in the book, though.


A wave is an action that does not directly affect an opponent, like movement, destroying the bridge, pick up items, treat the injured. Anything that does not directly harm another character.

Marvel is the word for "use an additional set for some sideffect".

All waves are such marvels on initiative rolls.

Can you give me an example of waves being used. I really struggle to picture this even though I suspect it's actually simpler than it sounds.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;539960Can you give me an example of waves being used. I really struggle to picture this even though I suspect it's actually simpler than it sounds.

"I run over there"

"I cut down the reeds around me so my opponents cannot hide."

"I set fire to the doorway"

These are all actions that don't immediately cause harm, aren't immediately resolved and are capable of being interrupted.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;539960Can you give me an example of waves being used. I really struggle to picture this even though I suspect it's actually simpler than it sounds.

Alright. There is a dam about break, threatening to flood a village. (We can savely assume that the bad guys rigged it in such a manner.) On the scene are heroes Resplendent Crane and Thrashing Dragon. They are fighting Bone Shadow, Flame Tiger and their henchpeople.

They have the following sets on their initiative rolls. Let's assume that their initiative modifiers are all the same, which is rather unlikely in a real game. We can therefore ignore it.
- RC : 25, 21...
- TD : 35, 18...
- BS : 27,26...
- TD : 24, 23, 18...
Henchpeople usually do not roll initiative.

No the players allocate their sets. RC would like to use her fabulous craft skill to repair the dam. So she assignes her 25 to init and her 21 to the wave. Her craft modifier +21 is the difficulty to stop her throughout the round.

As a vey high set and one in the tens. A marvel (that includes waves) is only possible with a "true" set, i.e. one 20+. So TD can either use a really good marvel and be real slow or real fast and no marvel. He picks fast, hoping to stop the bad guys from stopping his teammate.

Thrashing Dragon cannot stop resplendent crane, because he cannot go fast than her. So he doesn't really care going fast at all, using the 18 on iniatiative. He would much rather do two marvels with the two real sets. One to get the sand out of his eyes, that RC so marvelously place there last round, one for the thing you always do with extra initiative marvel: Breathe more chi. These two marvels do not affect the environment, so they are not waves. They cannot be stopped and resolve immediately.

BS really want some flooding, so decides to go fast. When ordering initiative results, it is found out that she actually does go before RC, so on her turn she can try. With her other set, she makes a Tactics roll to figure out RC's style and her weaknesses. That is not wave either and resolves immediately.

On her turn, BS can then attack RC. She must dedicate a marvel to stop the wave. The marvel is then compared to RC's craft +21. As with all marvel she must use a true set for the marvel. She can use a set in the tens for the primary attack, the one that deals damage.

Henchpeople always act last.
use a marvel on her attack roll to beat RC's craft +21.