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No.406806
I've been running a dnd 5e campaign for my friends here in china that takes place during the Ming Dynasty.
While the west has tolken, canterberry tales, and whatever Appendix N material that the classic Gygaxian dnd is based on, china also has a very rich history of fantasy fiction such as Jouney to the West, Water Margin, the Classic of Tricks (骗经), and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Whenever I'm reading these there's always a great setup for an encounter in a campaign. There's poisoned yellow wine, magical chinese medicine, fornicating buddhist priests, clever battle maneuvers, bold tales of fighting monsters, etc. It's all already there in shenmo and wuxia fiction.
As students of chinese we are all familiar with these settings and themes and it goes pretty well. In our game, we had a monk that was secretly an alcohol-dependant rogue, who took on the disguise to solicit donations and sympathy. We traveled to the forest to rescue a fat fire-breathing hermit monk in the woods so he could make an NPC some of his famous hot-pot, and travelled to a town where shengshengs were being preyed on for their meat (which allows one to run faster if eaten) by a local medicine tycoon among other things. The setting fits so well with tabletop role-playing I want to write up a sourcebook and introduce this to my friends and others back home, and there's enough interest in the country nowadays in the US for an audience I think.
The problem I'm running into now is fitting this into 5e or another system. While I'm up for writing a short book that creates the setting, some monsters, and an adventure or two, but creating a whole new system would be a lot of work. The races have no map to Chinese mythology, the classes have a little connection but needs work (druids - daoist priests, paladins - fighting for a court, monk - typical wuxia wukong sort of thing, fighters/rangers - martial classes, warlocks - channeling ancestors Confucian-style?, etc.) The combat rules and spells seem OK, but messing around with the classes/races would be difficult.
So I want to know from you guys (especially since the other chan's tg won't let me post on the china ip range or behind by vpns) if you have any thoughts? Is there any easily digestible setting that is a bit more culture-agnostic, that people familiar with pathfinder or dnd would be able to grok? Additionally, is there any rpgs already that cover this theme well? And if you're curious about this setting or want to pick my brain about this setting, just ask!
____________________________
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No.406807
And here's The Book of Swindles. I think GMs will find it inspirational!
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No.406815
3.5 has supplements for gook races and exotic weapons. Cane recall the book name, but I remember it's the one that had the monkey grip feat.
Sage because you sound like a faggot, and this entire thread belongs in QTDDTOT as something simple like "what tabletop features Chinese mythology or has comparable classes and weaponry?"
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No.406816
>>406815
Figured this might also be a discussion on china/asian-themed trpgs. Our group had a lot of fun with the setting and I figured some people may be interested or be able to add their own experience or insight. It's not like it's that active on this board anyways.
And the rulebook you were talking about is Complete Warrior, thanks for the help.
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No.406824
Eastern mythology is really fascinating stuff, and a lot of it translates pretty well to tabletop. It's not Chinese, but I've been reading the Bhagavad Gita to use as inspiration for my setting, and a lot of these ideas are really great for a place with literal NPCs. I think you have two options: You can either make a splatbook for 5e, or you can start making your own system from scratch. Both sound like a pain in the ass.
>>406815
Fuck off faggot, you're an even bigger homo than OP. Every thread belongs in QTDDTOT if you're being reductive enough.
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No.406825
Ever hear of Legends of the Wulin? It's a Wuxia RPG, some even favorably comparing it flavor wise to L5R, and the system itself is supposed to be pretty good, gameplay wise it can also be described as being similar to Exalted in that during character creation you can buy techniques and abilities.
The Dice system is interesting, It's D10 but based on the characters in game power level they roll the number of dice equal to their Lake. So if someone has a lake of 10, they roll 10D10, and if the results are
>2,9,3,8,5,9,4,2,5,5
Your 3 5s becomes a 35
Two 2's = 22
and so on. You then apply these results to the challenge you have to beat, typically an action that the enemy is doing, so if you're trying to hide from someone searching for you would take your 35 and hope they don't beat that.
It's been a while since I read the PDF but it's an interesting system but just fucking clunky. If you want to use it make sure you take good notes or make a reference guide to get to the important stuff quick because the rules are prone to be interrupted by large swathes of fluff 'n such.
Still, might just be up your alley if you want to commit to a little loved system.
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No.406829
>inb4 pozfinder
Pathfinder's dragon empire books and Jade Regent adventure path decently detail the continent of Tian Xia and the various races that inhabit it.
The common races switch to kitsune, nagaji, tengu, catfolk (at least in Valashmai) and the like.
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No.406831
>>406824
>Every thread belongs in QTDDTOT if you're being reductive enough.
Let's recap:
>So I want to know from you guys (since I can't ask any other tg, because they've blocked my IP range) if you have any thoughts? Is there any easily digestible setting that is a bit more culture-agnostic, that people familiar with pathfinder or dnd would be able to grok? Additionally, is there any rpgs already that cover this theme well? And if you're curious about this setting or want to pick my brain about this setting, just ask!
Yup, I sure distilled OP down to the atoms on my summary. How dare I point out the obvious.
Sage again, because now I think you fags are just bored and on here because cuckchan doesn't get add revenue from gook land.
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No.406836
>Additionally, is there any rpgs already that cover this theme well?
I don't know how faithful it is to the setting but "Qin: The Warring States" is a really nice game. The system is classless and uses 2d10. Though I'd have to re-read the rules to go into more detail.
Though it's a completely different time period, I'm pretty sure you could use it for your own setting, especially since the more supernatural aspects of a setting are more or less timelss anyways. There's also a "Shaolin and Wudang" rulebook for it but sadly it hasn't been translated yet.
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No.406837
Tying race to class for all the non-human races would make the most sense to me. Fox-spirits have all sorts of trickster abilities and having someone play a fox-spirit warrior just wouldn't really make sense to me or fit with the feeling of a Chinese fantasy setting. Then divide up humans between the most broad categories of classes, maybe something like
>Warrior
>Thief
>Monk if you want a wuxia campaign
>Daoist Priest
>Buddhist Priest
>Fox-spirit
I would refrain from making the scholar-official an actual class since it would be more interesting if anyone could take the civil service examination and advance up the ranks. I'm kind of modelling this on B/X D&D because I like how easy the system there is, though it would need to be modified a little to allow customization for character classes if you want to add crazy wuxia abilities and such.
Also, another source of inspiration could be the Liaozhai Zhiyi by Pu Songling which has tons of strange stories to draw on.
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No.406839
>>406831
Suck my dick, faggot. You aren't Chrow, so sit down and break your fingers before you type some more dumb board-killing shit.
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No.406840
>>406839
Didn't know I had to be Chrow to point out how shitty a blog poster is.
>fag
<suck my dick
You sure showed me.
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No.406855
>>406837
>modelling this on B/X D&D
That's always a good idea. What about magic-users or is that the Daoist Priest?
>Monk if you want a wuxia campaign
My knowledge of wuxia is very limit but I'm not sure if that's a good idea. In any wuxia story I know every important character has these crazy, physics defying skills. So it would either take away from the setting, by making these skills class-specific or it'd make the class abilites redundant since everyone can do it.
Actually, I do wonder why there is no china-OSR, since there is Ruins & Ronin for Japan and Arrows Of Indra for India is what I was going to write but it turns out there is one:
http://lordgwydion.blogspot.com/p/flying-swordsmen-rpg.html
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No.407064
> What system?
> played on an abacus
> DM is an older chinese man
> the rules are you solve the problem or you get hit with a bamboo reed
> you level up when you advance in the imperial bureaucracy
> you can take the eunuch perk to advance more quickly
> make sure you don't break the mandate of heaven
> oops looks like you broke the mandate of heaven
> everythings on fire now
> rebels seize the capital
> get executed
> roll new character
> get out the abacus.
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No.407264
>>406855
This flying swordsman RPG is great, but I'm thinking that it's a bit too wuxia while I'm looking for a standard rare-magic dnd but based in Ming china with a full cast of backgrounds. Any wuxia character could do the feats mentioned in FS and anything further could be rule of cool'd. But the class actions in FS are too cool to be ignored so maybe they could be coopted into it.
For system and just for simplicity's sake and just so I can get started, I'm going to roll with 5e as a base system, but have sections for each race and class so they rely a bit less on Appendix N inspiration. Ie no mountain fortresses, tieflings are less "infernal" and more "yaogui" that pull power from the Dao, etc. Originally it was only going to be humans (which the first campaign of this setting we did was) but it shouldn't be hard to drop races in. The book will be based on 5e (in terms of stat blocks and mechanics) but more system-agnostic, opting for explaining how to fit races/classes in the setting, different environments, npcs/monsters, an adventure, magical items, and maybe some additional class skills and feats.
As for 5e backgrounds: Because I usually like having pre-made characters or at least backgrounds for my campaigns (so my PCs don't just play the same concepts over and over again like they usually do) I've thought of a way to incorporate some of the oldest mythology into the character creation: Yi Jing divination. For anyone too lazy to check it out on wikipedia you use coins or tarrow sticks to create a hexagram (or one hexagram that changes into another) which represents one of 64 concepts, for example "Family," "Falling Away," "Nourishing," "Household," "Abolishing the Old" which each has a sort of way of looking at a situation which superstitious leaders had their court oracles do to give advice on major decisions.
So before making characters, each player would do this divination which typically generates two hexagrams (one that changes into another) and could choose either. Each of the 64 hexagrams would correspond with a motivation for their characters and background which is made for the campaign, ie buddhist monk, Confucian official, soldier, eunuch, poet/bard, bandit, butcher, etc. Players can choose their own class as long as it fits the background.
>>407064
So court-drama Paranoia? THE EMPEROR IS YOUR FRIEND.
>>406837
I think B/X is a little too archaic for the playes I usually run with. Thanks for the rec of Liaozhai Zhiyi btw, ironically enough was reading a doujinshi based on it a day ago. Can't find anything in english besides the 1880 translation though
>>406840
I'm not breaking any rules, hide the thread if you're mad.
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No.408211
Read some wuxia or xianxia cultivation novels for inspiration.
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No.408219
>>407264
>did all this research
<guess I'll play 5e lol
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No.408241
>>406825
Got a pdf for Wuxia?
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No.410401
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
How fantastic did you want it to be? Paralysis touch? Flying? One vs 1000?
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No.417480
Can I have mortal-kombat style fatalities like Rise of the Legend (2014)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7utledubsdY
Starts Sammo Kam-Bo Hung as the villian.
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No.417487
>>408211
Months late to reply, but the "cultivation" genre is often worse than the most shit tier generic isekai shit.
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No.417526
>>406825
Wulin is terrible. The book is terrible, and the rules are terrible. If you are into combat that has no concept of cover/line of sight (fucking rules light zone based combat) while some characters can use attacks that sound like they should be either projectiles or AoE, and if you are happy with the book giving you vague explanations of stuff that should be mechanics (yeah, some of the mechanics are "just make shit up lol"), and can stand a chargen tbat requires you to read the whole manual, then you might enjoy it, because the rest of things are pretty cool, but if you are looking to any degree of simulation, you better look somewhere else.
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No.417528
>>408211
>cultivation
<dude level up pills lmao
<protagonist is always the strongest in his power level band
<everyone acts like a fucking sociopath the whole time, even the heroes. This is never shown as a bad thing
<killer instinct auras (even the supposedly righteous heroes have one) that are capable of killing peasants on sight
<the smallest offence is punishable with the edgiest death you can imagine
<a story about a guy grinding his skills like it was an MMO, over and over
<I hope you appreciate a writing style that reads like it was made for early elementary school children
<endless dead end plots for you and your friends
<if the author manages to insert it, and if you are reading some relatively recent books, expect a shoehorned CEO marriage subplot
Fucking bugmen. man.
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No.417529
>>417528
<everyone acts like a fucking sociopath the whole time, even the heroes. This is never shown as a bad thing
<the smallest offence is punishable with the edgiest death you can imagine
Korean manhua gets some of this shit too, but it's only rarely as bad as the pure chink power fantasy that cultivation stories are. It's so fucking jarring that every fucking character is an edgy murderous dickbag and the protagonist is never any better than the 1-dimensional assholes he murders left and right.
>hahah! I'm strong and you are not, Li Ding Dong! So that means I get to kill whoever I want, including you! This makes me the bad guy!
<FUCK YOU, NOW THAT I AM STRONG I WILL MURDER WHOEVER I WANT BECAUSE I HAVE ASCENDED TO THE LAYER OF DOUBLE PHOENIX REACH AROUND SPHINCTER LAYER CHI!!
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No.417573
>>417528
>Fucking bugmen. man.
Less bugmen and more that China is heavily poisoned by cultural marxism and it influences their thinking.
Add on top that they live under 24/7 surveillance by their government for wrong think and you get cultivation stories as a result, simply because its the only ways for them to let loose.
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No.418493
>>417480
Shaolin monks were pretty blatant in MK.
>>417528
>>417529
>>417573
What you say about China? Taste my repeating crossbow 诸葛弩 (Chu Ko Nu/ Zhuge Nu).
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No.418496
>>417528
You forgot powerleveling by sitting. Also protagonist is always stronger than everyone else despite his low lvl, he is just good! But protagonist "team" are powerleveled and good because they outlevel everyone else, even if they never fought before in their life.
>>417573
Basically yes, revenge fantasy. But its not like chinks produced any good books ever in their history.
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No.418511
>>417528
I dont think that happens too much in Wuxia but Xianxia is just dragon ball with fancy names instead of bigger and bigger numbers.
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No.418534
>>418496
>But its not like chinks produced any good books ever in their history.
What about Journey to the West?
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No.418686
>>417526
>>406825
I ran a campaign of Wulin for a good few sessions. The book is an absolute mess that didn't have an editor, or if it did a shit one. The book is like it was translated from chinese to french to english in google translate.
You have to basically study and decrypt the whole book. Rules for related things are spread throughout the book and you basically have to call an Ecumenical Council of you and your most Rules Lawyer players to figure out how the game works.
That said, if you can manage to do that, the mechanics work solidly for what it tries to do- but a single fight takes up a whole session or more if you play rules as written. The flavor behind all the mechanics is great, the wuxia setting in the book is great, but the game is a clusterfuck.
If I were to run another wuxia campaign, I would do Fate Core Blood Silk and Jade or Flying Swordsman or any other wuxia system.
Great ideas, terribly put together, difficult book to read, massive pain in the ass. My love for wuxia is what drove the campaign, and the rule sytem and book itself was more of a hindrance than anything.
Will answer questions about what it's actually like to run and play the system if anyone has any.
>>408241
>https://mega.nz/#!pRVHBBCJ!3HCkG60N-n5Uf_j9XUMOZJZfJ8O8d2XogYCft5cQPi0
won't upload to /tg/ directly so here ya go
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No.419014
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
I just wanna remake recent kung fu movies...
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No.419036
>>418496
I kind of liked Dream of the Red Chamber...
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No.425836
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