Art of Wuxia is surprisingly enough a Wuxia-themed RPG. It uses the RPG engine that drives most of DwD games, called D00lite; as far as I know, that engine was originally published in the space opera game Frontier Space, which is apparently based on an older RGP called Star Frontiers? In any case, there are multiple RPG products with high mechanical similarity, so AoW might serve as a good introduction. The character generation for it is very similar to Covert Ops, a D00lite game in the espionage genre that I have played a few years ago. Interestingly enough, Osprey has also published an Urban Fantasy game using the engine recently, Sigil and Shadows. I might come back to that one at one point.
D00lite is a D100 system, rather lightweight, and kind of focussed mostly on the game side of things. It uses some metacurrency, but is not massively concerned with emulating reality. I like the system overall, but have since playing Covert Ops found others that fit me a bit better in the espionage genre. If I feel like playing some Wuxia, I might give AoW a spin, though.
Let’s start.
First, I need to roll Attributes. AoW has four, Str, Dex, Log, and Wil. We can use a pre-determined set instead but where is the fun in that? Four rolls of 5D10+30, then distributing, gets us Str 59, Dex 65, Log 58, Wil 69. Not bad!
I feel we need a name, and after reading up a bit on culturally appropriate naming for Wuxia characters I decide to borrow a name suggested in a Reddit post by a Chinese native wuxia fan: Ye Ying (“夜荧 - the little luminescence of the night, 荧 is also an old name for Mars”). She will be a fearless warrior and leader of heroes.
Next, I choose one Primary, and one Secondary out of the list of ten skills. Basic skill scores are calculated from the attributes, and these two will get +20 and +10 respectively. I go with Warrior for Primary, and Leader for Secondary. In addition, I also get to give a level to two skills (adding another +10 per level) and need to define specialization in some cases. Leader and Warrior get a level each, I feel Ye Ying will be rather focused, intense even. Then I calculate skill scores and make decisions on specializations. Since around half the skills cannot be used unskilled we get to skip those, and a decision on specialization needs to be made only for Warrior. That skill is a bit special in this game since you learn a specific style of Kung Fu. If you wish to learn another, you need to learn that one as a separate skill.
Ye Ying does strike me as having hidden depths, so I choose an internal style, "Ten Styles of Life Taking Swift Sword". To copy the description: “The Lustrous Phoenix Society made this style famous. It is favored by those that use agility over strength; the melee weapons are often used in pairs.” This means Ye Ying knows Qi Healing, Lightness, and Transfer Qi at the start, essentially 'magic' skills that allow the more fantastical abilities of Wuxia martial arts. I also choose Counter Attack as her first technique.
Now we need to come up with one negative, and one positive descriptor of our fine warrior's character: “Ye Ying is nearly always irritated. She does like to dance and sing.” Her moral code also gets determined, by choosing from options in five areas. She is Very Kind, Somewhat Focused, Somewhat Selfish, Very Deceitful, and Totally Brave. So that this is less confusing - all of these have a spectrum that includes their opposite. So she could have been Cowardly instead of Brave, modified by intensity. She is, however, brave indeed.
Equipment-wise she will start life in the game with two Jians (a type of sword), some Needles (which are surprisingly deadly in her hands due to her chosen style, potentially deadly throwing weapons), clothed in Heavy Furs, riding her horse with her trusty dog at her side, and a flute on her lips. She owns 14 tl (local currency in this fantasy world).
No comments:
Post a Comment