Any excuse for a plug...

Chinese New Year eh? Seems like a good opportunity for everyone to try out a Wuxia game.

*COUGH*

I guess that means my Chinese New Year's Resolution is to be more shameless in promoting my games.

Lessons Learned from Kung Fu Hustle

I can't recommend this film enough, but I don't want this to turn into a review. Here's what it taught me about running and designing games.

Don't fear the TPK

This film has a neat twist (don't go any further if you want to avoid spoilers) in that it keeps you guessing who the main heroes are going to be. The three masters that become revealed in Pig Sty alley trying to live normal lives seem to be our initial candidates, but soon get themselves killed by the two musicians. In step the landlord and landlady to defeat their killers and go on to fight The Beast, but after they're both defeated the real hero is revealed. I've always been a fan of death being a real possibility in games but there are very few that handle it well. In the case of this film a good supporting cast means new heroes can be drafted in when the first batch fall and it still makes sense for the story. In the Wuxia genre particularly we often see characters dying. Embrace death and look for ways to use it to your advantage in your game!

Have Style

This is one of the main focuses of A Wanderer's Romance. Every character in the film has their own style of fighting which is visually recognisable and comes with a neat sounding name. Even in games that don't feature mechanically distinct combat styles, consider how each person's techniques might appear. 

Comedy can Coexist

There's no doubting the film is a comedy, but it features action scenes that are often as impressive as anything in a straight Wuxia film. I'll confess that I was also moved by the emotional plight of the characters. You can add comedic elements to a game without removing the plot, character development and exciting action. In fact there are very few genres that don't benefit from a sprinkling of comedy. This is doubly so when you're creating the story with friends and it's something I fear some GMs worry about. Try embracing a touch of comedy in your next game where you might have tried to play it straight. Your players will thank you and in-character joking around is greatly preferential to out of character joking during a game. 

I've enjoyed writing these "lessons learned" posts a lot and would love to hear if anyone else has found gaming tips from more unlikely sources. In a future post I plan to talk about how training as a schoolteacher taught me a lot about GMing and game design. There are really more links than you might think!

Lessons Learned from House of Flying Daggers

I've been catching up on some of the more recent Wuxia films I missed, yesterday being the turn of House of Flying Daggers. Of course, there's no way I could watch this film without getting all sorts of ideas for running A Wanderer's Romance. Hopefully they'll stir up some ideas for your game too. There may be slight spoilers, but nothing too detailed. 

Say it with Colour

If you've seen this film you'll remember the green scene, the white scene and the yellow scene. There are few visual stimuli that hit an audience as immediately as a bold, highly saturated colour. This could be used to make instantly memorable locations. World of Warcraft is another example of how a strong palette can create memorable, flavourful locations. Whether it's through visual aids or pure description colour is an incredibly useful tool for the GM.

Location is your Off-hand Weapon

We all know that blowing your locations up is fun, but why stop there? The bamboo forest in the "green scene" mentioned above is used for far more than chopping up. Said chopped-bamboo forms a bed of spikes over one area, the stalks themselves provide a limitless supply of spears for the attacking soldiers as well as a vertical dimension to the fight. It's the use of your surroundings as a weapon that really appeals to me. If one of your players wants to cut a rope and send a suspended sandbag onto the head of their enemy why not let them? Roll it as a normal attack with their sword, damage and all, and enjoy the flavour. If your system uses hit points and treats them as an abstraction this fits all the better!

Who needs Badguys?

There really wasn't a single villain in this film. Even the faceless guards doomed to be slaughtered were people you didn't want to see die. The way I felt about the characters meant that when the climactic duel came around I didn't know who I wanted to win. I certainly had no idea how it was going to turn out, either, and I liked it! I like this feeling all the more in RPGs because we really don't know who's going to win. If I'm playing in a game where I'm the hero facing off against a supremely evil villain and I die, it just feels wrong. If my character dies by the hand of someone who was only as flawed as my character instead we have a delicious tragedy. The world doesn't end when I die, which leads onto...

Plot Potential in Success and Failure

As I mentioned, I had no idea how the final duel was going to pan out, besides a hunch that there would be some previously noted tragedy involved. As I was thinking about it I realised that no matter what the outcome there was scope for it to be satisfying. One thing I always try to put into my encounters is potential for the plot to move in an interesting direction no matter what the outcome. With AWR especially there's lots of scope for the player's characters to lose duels or contests and fail tests. This should never be the end of the game and call for disappointed rolling of a new character. Even in death the character should have a purpose in the story, whether a new character is introduced or not. There are a couple of characters I'm playing right now that I'm really looking forward to eventually killing off! 

Or maybe I've just been bitten by the tragedy bug and would regret it immediately! I'd love to hear about any experiences you've had with characters living on (not literally) after their death.

Writing a Wanderer's Romance - Concept

I've at least partially written more games than I've played. Of the two I'm most happy with A Wanderer's Romance is the one I want to talk about first.

Now that I'm at a point where I'm happy with the game I wanted to look over how I got there. The truth is a lot of things fell into place without much planning, but how does that make me look?

No. For the purposes of this series of posts you should accept this twisted version of the truth where I'm terribly organised and draw charts while sipping coffee. This will be mutually beneficial in making me seem to be a more effective designer and hopefully helping you in designing your own games.

A Wanderer's Romance is a game drawing inspiration from a number of areas, notably the following:

• Wuxia novels and films.
• Legend of the Five Rings, Chambara films and general western romanticism of Samurai culture.
• My own amusement, from afar, of Anime series where the strangest things can become epic battles.

These three combined with my dust-covered brainstorm for a system using Elements as character attributes and basic setting idea based around lots of tiny islands to eventually form the game. Frankly it's a miracle the game doesn't feel like a pile of ideas mashed together, but somehow coherence was formed.