Wushu (longer review-ish, plus Wushu/7th Sea hybrid)

Two days ago, I GM'd Wushu for the first time. I'd played it once before, a week and a half ago. This week's game was set in the world of Theah, the setting of 7th Sea. Here's some observations:

• In general, I really like Wushu. The best innovation it has is that the paradigm of "state what you want to do, then roll to see if you do it" has been done away with. Instead, you state what happens, and once it's been said, it happens. If you say "I stab him" then you stab him. The die roll determines how effective the stab is, but the die roll can't make you miss.
• The second best innovation (which, honestly, is just the second half of the first innovation) is that you aren't describing a single action, nor just your own actions. When you watch a sword fight in a movie, it's not a matter of one person moves, then swings, then the other person moves, then swings, then the whole series repeats. Instead, the fight takes both parties all around the scenery, and involves aggressive flurries, combo moves, and colorful stunts. If you say "I swing across the room on the chandelier, and drop behind him. He spins around just in time to barely parry my initial assault. I beat my blade against his several times, making openings and forcing him to give ground all the while. He manages a few counter-attacks, but eventually I back him in to the corner from whence there's no escape, and that's when I carve my initials into his shirt," it happens. If someone narrates an action that your character would never do, you may invoke a veto, but otherwise what's said happens, no matter who said it.
• Wushu is light and flexible, and readily ported to other settings. It's easy to use it to handle games (like 7th Sea) that have great, fleshed-out settings, but slightly clunky rules sets. A complicated system from 7th Sea, like a Swordsman School or any one of the 5(+) styles of Full-Blooded Sorcery, can be boiled down to a single Wushu attribute. Rather than having to memorize and understand a complicated system, you can use it as a summary and springboard for stunts and ideas. This will of course work best when all or most of the players have read large sections of the complicated rulebooks, so that everyone knows roughly the kinds of things various powers are allowed to do within the setting. It's still worth buying and reading more complicated games, but you now only have to understand the nutshell concepts, not the fiddly minutia.
  

That said, the Wushu system isn't without its flaws. It's a good system, but not perfect.

• The decision to make low dice successes on pool rolls was a strange one. Players are trained by the majority of games to feel like a high roll is a good roll. Going against that isn't a big deal, but neither would it have been a terrible burden to invert the number system. Doing so would have made character creation a tiny bit more difficult to explain, but certainly no harder to play. It's also worth noting that the game uses two types of rolls: pool rolls and scab rolls. One one type of roll you want to roll low, on the other you want to roll high, and there's no mechanical need for this discrepancy. Given the choice between two decisions, one of which will save 1-2 paragraphs in the rule book, and the other makes play more intuitive and more psychologically rewarding, I know which decision I would have made.
• Wushu Open has pretty much nothing in terms of timing rules. With the right group, that's a big plus, but I think they may be limiting their market to experienced RPG groups by doing so. The lack of timing is the only thing that keeps this from being the sort of RPG to cut your teeth on. New players, especially those new to gaming (not just new to this game) need a little more structure. Without it, more boisterous players will hog the glory while quieter casual gamers sit around doing nothing. Similarly, inexperienced GMs would probably get overwhelmed (out-of-character) the first time the PCs decided to dogpile on an NPC Nemesis.
• Wushu is at it's best when the PCs are heroes. The lack of timing rules, coupled with the lack of actions for mooks, requires the villains to do some villainous at the start of the scene to justify the PCs smacking them around for the rest of the scene. If the PCs are anti-heroes, or if the NPC villains are initially passive, flaws with the (lack of a) timing system become much more pronounced.
• Likewise, the mook battles don't leave much for the GM to do. This is especially pronounced in a one-player game, where by the rules, a GM's only action in a minor fight scene might be to announce the arrival of the mooks. With 2 or more PCs, there'd be more interaction, but with 1 PC and a GM it's almost a solitaire game at points.
• Our 7th Sea / Wushu hybrid game was a one-player (plus GM) scenario, in which Sarah's character was a Pirate. Man, did that ever make the first scene awkward! She picked [as in started] the fight, and at cannon-range it's pretty much just a mook battle, so there wasn't much for me to do. She'd only played Wushu once before (and never actually RP'd a high-seas cannon battle) so she was having a hard time getting into the feel of the system and what kind of stunts are appropriate during a cannonade. The only way I could help was by breaking the rules. Which I did eventually, and thus it all worked out, but the first 5 minutes were really odd. Having learned that lesson, it won't be a problem the next time we play.
• Other areas that are a little weird in the Wushu Open rules is the transition from 'acting' to 'action'. There's really no GMing advice in Wushu Open, and with no timing rules, it's hard to say exactly when a parlay becomes a melee. Again, this is the type of problem that sorts itself out with familiarity and experience with the system, but it's gonna be slightly awkward the first time it happens. (Why would this be awkward in Wushu, when it isn't in most other games? Because in Wushu, when you act, you aren't just narrating your own actions, you're also saying what the foes are doing, what's happening in the background, etc. But prior to the fight breaking out, the GM is presumably the one playing the NPC. When and how the transition happens isn't clearly defined).
• The flaw/weakness system in Wushu is just so-so. On paper it looks good, but in practice it doesn't quite feel right. The vampire example (given in the Wushu Open rules file) doesn't just make Vampires take more damage when struck by a wooden stake, it makes the Vampire significantly less effective on it's own attacks, less capable of using it's magic, etc, any time the foe is holding a stake. It doesn't seem logical that holding a stake should protect me from his hypnotic gaze.
• When we do the 7th Sea / Wushu hybrid again (which we will since, despite all the above complaints, we both really enjoyed it) I have a "fix" to solve the weakness of weaknesses. We'll do away with the weakness rules as written. Instead, each PC (and major NPC) will have a Flaw or Hubris, chosen from the corresponding charts in the 7th Sea books. Obviously, we won't have Drama Dice to activate them as one would in 7th Sea. So instead, the Flaw will be revealed (a peek behind the curtain, so to speak) at the start of the scene. That way all parties involved know what the weak spot of the enemy is. Rather than affecting dice rolls, it'll just be stated that no one can use a veto to over-ride a situation where a described action plays into their Flaw/Hubris.
• Wushu has no experience system or character advancement. That makes it somewhat unappealing for a long-term campaign. If it had a finer scale of gradation (d10 instead of d6, for example) it might better support an XP system, and thus have longer legs. As is, it's a sweet little one-shot engine.
  

For those now interested in Wushu, here's some links:

1. download Wushu Open the free version
2. various Wushu PDF books priced from $2 to $5 at drivethruRPG
3. Wushu resources
4. a very thorough and insightful Wushu review
5. a short Wikipedia article (which doesn't meet their notability guidelines, and thus may disappear sometime soon).

Mii and Mi Wiiness

Wii got a Wii. Mi Wiife and Mii. So, wii made some miis.

At first I was bummed out. I figured I could never make a Mii for my buddy Jake, 'cause there's no way to make piercings. Then I realized, you can place a mole way off the side of the head (about where an ear would go), and that there was a way to fake a nose piercing, too. Jake's mii is still lacking about 50% of the real Jake's visible piercings, and I still haven't figured out a good way to give him a mohawk.

But still, it's a lot closer than I'd figured I could accomplish, and that inspired some additional craziness...




Dr Horrible is, of course, the creation of Joss Whedon - with some help from Niel Patrick Harris's parents (and their DNA).








Hopefully self-explanatory. If not we failed.








The Ithorian mii only kinda looks Ithorian, and only from the front, but it's still worth a giggle to starwars geeks (guilty as charged).






The Salubri are a clan of three-eyed vampires from White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade.






Our baseball teams are a lot more interesting now.

Boobs is 140 points

Not are, is. So is ass (in google image labeler). I hadn't realized that. I'd been undervaluing that portion of my vocabulary.

Wonky vs Broken

Nerd aside: That title kinda sounds like a lawsuit, doesn't it? Like Mr Wonky is suing The Broken Corporation...

• Wonkiness isn't the same thing as broken.
• Broken would be wonky taken to an extreme and likely giving someone an advantage.
• Plain vanilla wonky isn't nearly as bad as broken.
• In some ways, I find wonky more annoying, 'cause it bugs you but isn't worth changing a bunch of things to fix.

In Context: Scion is generally wonky, but only certain specific elements of it are genuinely broken.

2020's tech - Today!

Cross-posted, due to the fun gaming implications...

Lookie what they're making at the hospital my wife works at:

Cyber-contacts.

visual aids to help vision-impaired people, holographic driving control panels and even as a way to surf the Web on the go.

Heads Up Displays on your eyeballs.

Ideally, installing or removing the bionic eye would be as easy as popping a contact lens in or out, and once installed the wearer would barely know the gadget was there, Parviz said.

That would be freakin' cool. Ending blindness way before Geordi Laforge.


But it kinda creeps me out. I'm one of those guys who doesn't like having his eyeballs touched. I can't do normal contact lenses, let alone these:

Building the lenses was a challenge because materials that are safe for use in the body, such as the flexible organic materials used in contact lenses, are delicate. Manufacturing electrical circuits, however, involves inorganic materials, scorching temperatures and toxic chemicals. Researchers built the circuits from layers of metal only a few nanometers thick, about one thousandth the width of a human hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes one third of a millimeter across. They then sprinkled the grayish powder of electrical components onto a sheet of flexible plastic. The shape of each tiny component dictates which piece it can attach to, a microfabrication technique known as self-assembly. Capillary forces -- the same type of forces that make water move up a plant's roots, and that cause the edge of a glass of water to curve upward -- pull the pieces into position.

So far, they've tested it on rabbits. It's safe on them for 20 minutes, at least. As long as you wear your contacts for no more than 20 minutes, it's unlikely they'll explode and jam microscopic circuitry straight into your optic nerve. Fear nothing, my friends.

Think of all the practical applications. It has so many advantages:

"There is a large area outside of the transparent part of the eye that we can use for placing instrumentation," Parviz said. Future improvements will add wireless communication to and from the lens. The researchers hope to power the whole system using a combination of radio-frequency power and solar cells placed on the lens, Parviz said.

Solar cells in your contacts! At last, that extra reason I needed to justify staring directly into the sun all day long. Wireless calls directly too and from your eyes! Now you can search the net while stumbling blindly down a hallway. Heads up displays so we can save millions by making newer gas-guzzling hummers that lack steering wheels and dashboards! LARPers and Goths are no longer restricted to cat eyes and the Union Jack, either. The possibilities are endless! There's no limit to what crap you can stick to your eyeballs.


I can't wait till they make the ones that subliminally flash the words "Obey" over everything, like the inverse of They Live. Or the ones that selectively alter your world view, making your friends look less ugly, and the environment less polluted. Ah, sweet blessed miracles of science.

Identifying your Boonhole

Ahem. A boonhole, for the sake of this post, is a hole in the Boon charts of a given Purview in Scion. As in, a place where an alternate boon is needed. This could be because existing boons at various levels are redundant, such as Water 2, 7, and 10. Or it could be most people who take a given Purview find certain boons to be lame, such as Death 2 or War 8. Or it could be because certain basic things you expect to find in a particular purview either don't exist or don't show up until the mid- or late- game, like any attack power for the Fire Purview.

Here's the lists we brainstormed:

All Purpose Boonholes

• Darkness: 2 or 3 (just make sure it's not about hiding/disguise)
• Death: 2, also something at a level 4-7 that isn't about Ghosts
  
• Fertility: Any 2 boons at levels 5-10, and/or possibly a new level 1.
• Fire: 3 (either control/manipulate fire or be a hero-level attack power)
• Psychopomp: 2
  
• Sky: 3 and 5.
• Sun: 1 or 2 (should function like smoking mirror)
• War: 2 or 3, plus 8
• Water: 2, 7, 10 - they overlap, I'd probably just replace 2 of them
• Death and Psychopomp: The general power that PCs with these purviews have to enter portals to their underworld should be codified into specific low-level boons.
  

Special Boonholes

• Magic: New spells are always welcome, since magic's supposed advantage is that it has more spells than the other purviews have boons.
• Mystery and Prophecy: Alternate versions can be found here and here.

Pantheon-Specific Boonholes

• Heku: 2 or 3 or 7 or 8 or 10. (However, Heku levels 1-3 are so darned good, they kinda make up for the wonkiness later, so perhaps it's best to leave Heku alone. If I did anything to improve Heku 7/8/10, I'd knock Heku 1 - 3 down a few notches to balance.)
• Tsukumo-Gami: 10
  
• Of course, touching TG or Heku opens the doors on all sorts of Pantheon Specific craziness. Itzli just does the same thing at level after level, so you'd need 2-4 alternate Aztec boons. Cheval is more open-ended, but really the powers are similarly redundant. Arete would need to be redone entirely, since it's "just" a die-adder. The alternate Jotunblut now would need revising, perhaps so that both sets of Jotunblut boons could exist in the same campaign, etc. And since Heku 1 and 3 are so incredibly good (and making alternates just bumps up the power of Egyptian heroes), perhaps it's just best to leave well-enough alone.
• Overworlds and Underworlds. The various Axis Mundi and the general ability of any PC to enter their pantheon's underworld from various places could be codified into specific boons.
  

Brute Squads of the 7th Sea

At the Scion forums there's a discussion of how to streamline the use of followers, a topic brought up by someone with a 12-player Scion campaign. This made me think about the 7th Sea RPG, which really handled followers and squads well.

7th Sea had "Brutes". Brutes came in squads, and could act independently, or under the direct command of a named character.

If acting independently, they had kinda meager stats, simplified a bit and toned down (like Extras in Scion, but taken to a further extreme). One hit was enough to drop them. The cool part was you could choose to raise the difficulty of your attack roll in order to take out an entire squad at once, instead of having to harm them individually.

If used as a bodyguard / assistants, Brutes wouldn't get an action of their own. Instead, they'd act when their boss did, and simply add bonus dice to his roll. They also added their health levels to the boss. You'd have to take out the brutes before you could do any actual harm to the Villain.

It was a pretty sweet mechanic. Elegant and streamlined, and lots of fun. It really captured the feel of cinematic battles, where the mooks aren't really important, yet having dozens of underlings is an advantage somehow.

• I've considered adapting it to Scion on more than one occasion, but have never gotten around to it. I could see such brutes work as a Charisma Knack, or as a War Boon, or as just a general tactical rule not unlike Coordinated Assault, or as a specific type of Creature/Follower you can buy. The big flaw with using it for Scion has to do with the greater extremes in character power level. In 7th Sea, PCs were human, and so were the brutes. They moved about the same distance, had similar biology, etc, and the rules were abstract enough to make that work. Scion is bit more crunchy, and a much higher power level. You could have a Hero-level PC that can leap 25 yards or run 72mph accompanied by his followers that can only manage to jump 8 feet or run 18mph. At that point, it stretches credibility for them to move with him and assist his rolls.
  
• This is one area that Wushu doesn't handle as well as I'd like it to. That game seems to take the abstraction to slightly more of an extreme than it needs to. The lack of timing rules doesn't seem to support using mooks and a nemesis at the same time, and there's nothing to stop PCs from just concentrating on the big bad since Mooks can't fight you if you don't fight them. There's also "nothing" for the GM to do in a scene where the PCs fight only mooks, since Mooks don't act or roll. This could be very easily and elegantly house-ruled, though, so I may just do so if I ever run Wushu.
  

The Wayward Coffeehouse

3 posts about Thursday:Part 1 Part 2 Part 3:

And now, a tangent about the Wayward Coffeehouse. That place has got it's geek on. It's the HQ of the local Browncoats. They feature sandwiches named after all the crew of the Firefly, and drinks referencing the same plus Dune, Star Trek, Farscape, and The Princess Bride.

I wish we'd tried more (what we did have was very tasty)... but at the same time, there's something very intimidating about a latte flavored with iocane powder.

Hollows & Hobgoblins

3 posts about Thursday:Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Last night, we played Hollows and Hobgoblins. It's a dark fantasy RPG based on the Wushu rules. Humans were the minority, forced to live in the impoverished wastelands, not far from the haunted Hollows. The setting had a lot of depth behind it, I could tell, but our one-shot about a bar besieged by corrupted animals and something akin to a barrow-wight didn't provide us much opportunity to explore. We had fun, though, and I'd enjoy a chance to explore the setting further.

Wushu is a great system, a "hippy game" as they called it, since it's rules light and very flexible. Our characters were three descriptors, a magic item, and a signature move, all of which we made up. I made a somewhat Bleys-ian flamboyant warrior type, spiced up with magical power over metal. The magic was fast and loose: I made a doorknob bite a badguy, directed a coat-rack to grapple someone, and when the leaded window-glass shattered it fell onto the floor as caltrops per my command.

The best part of the mechanics is the huge amount of power granted to the players. On your action, you say what happens. Not what you want to happen, but what actually happens. The thing you described happens regardless of how you roll, but the roll quantifies the effects. For example, we faced an unspecified number of mooks, so we could freely narrate how many any given action killed and how we drove the enemy legions back. But until we scored 20 or more aggregate successes, there'd always be more mooks.

The cooler your description of your action, the more dice you roll (like Scion's stunt system, but more integral and more potent). The battle against the big bad was a bit more structured than the mook fight, but we were still empowered to describe amazing acts of heroism and skill. For example, we couldn't chop his head off until and unless we'd worn him down a lot, but nothing stopped us from using our actions to throw him off balconies or into the fireplace.

Actually, I could get the hang of Thursdays

3 posts about Thursday: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

My wife and I finally got to go to the Emerald City Game Feast. The feasters are a weekly RPG group that mostly does "short-shots" (one-shots and slightly longer), trying many different systems and settings over time. We'd been meaning to join them for months, but it kept not happening. Sarah's Mondays tend to be heavy workload days, and her Tuesdays are packed with meetings. As a result, Mondays just aren't a good night for us to commit to gaming. That coupled with uncertainties about the membership dues at the Seattle Metro Gamers facility, kept us away.

Thankfully, the Game Feast decided to try a second night a week, Thursdays, and instead of running it at the SMG clubhouse, they're hosting at the Wayward Coffeehouse. Sarah telecommutes Fridays (meaning she can sleep in 1.5 hours later), so Thursdays are a perfect day for us to stay out late. Plus, the coffeehouse is within walking distance of our home.

I'm glad the opportunity came along, because we had a lot of fun last night. This may well become a regular weekly thing for us.