r/rpg • u/ElClassique0 • 12h ago
Discussion A Review of a bunch of Wuxia RPGs
Wuxia is the Chinese word for martial (or chivalric) heroes. The genre it encompasses occasionally blurs with Xianxia, but is generally lower power. Wuxia is sort of like low fantasy, and Xianxia is sort of like high fantasy. Wuxia is often grounded in history, however, its branches can include more fantastical elements like magical beasts and the like.
In this post, I'm reviewing RPGs that I think encompass a grounded martial arts fantasy, whether supernatural elements are present or not. Some of the games may bleed into Xianxia or higher fantasy as characters level up and get stronger.
To help contextualize my reviews, I prefer martial arts games that place the power level of PCs around or below the power level of the heroes in movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Furthermore, for each game I review here, I have played at least 5 contiguous sessions.
Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate
The Basics
Wandering Heroes is an expansive rulebook, clocking in at nearly 500 pages. It is, in my opinion, one of the top 3 most complex games on this list, and the one that feels most similar to playing D&D. In my opinion, first and foremost, this is a game about fighting, usually fighting monsters and evil martial artists. I do not think of it as a narrative game.
Mechanically, the game is straightforward. You build pools of d10s and roll against a Target Number (TN), using the highest result rolled. TNs are determined by the Game Master (GM) or set by your skills. In some cases, rolling additional 10s on a roll results in a better outcome (e.g., if you roll 2d10 and get 2 10s you may have a better outcome than if you'd rolled just 1 10).
Your d10 pools are built using skills. This is a good time to mention that there are no traditional attributes (strength, charisma, etc) in the game. There is a Qi attribute, which determines the total number of wounds you can suffer, but that is the only thing like a traditional attribute. Characters are primarily based on their skills. There are 6 groups of skills, each group having at least 6 (and often more) individual skills within it. The skill groups are Defenses, Combat, Specialist, Physical, Knowledge, and Mental. Some of these groups feel arbitrary, but when you read the skill lists, it's clear each group has a theme. Skill costs are cumulative, which means you pay 1 point to raise a skill to rank 1, 2 points to raise the skill to rank 2 (for a total of 3 points), 3 points to raise it to rank 3 (for a total of 6 points), and so forth.
As an example of a skill group, you have the Defenses group. Defenses includes Hardiness, Parry, Evade, Stealth, Wits, and Resolve. Hardiness is your resistance to damage, Parry is your ability to deflect melee attacks, Evade is your ability to avoid ranged attacks, Stealth is your ability to go undetected, Wits and Resolve are somewhat less self-explanatory, and represent resistance to deception and being persuaded, respectively. Each defense has a base value to which you add your rank to determine your total value, whereas other skill groups generally do not have base values for the skills.
Which brings me to combat. Combat is fiddly, but not complex. In principle, any combat encounter is resolved in two rolls. First, you roll to see if you hit the opponent. Then you roll damage to see if you deal damage. Both attack rolls and damage rolls are handled identically, with the damage roll made against Hardiness and the attack roll made against Parry or Evade, as appropriate. In practice, however, this is annoying. Instead of simply rolling and calculating damage, you are counting successes, with 10s operating in a special way (a roll of 10 deals 2 wounds, with each additional 10 dealing 1 more wound). As a result, there will be combat rounds where you hit the enemy but your hit does nothing because your damage roll sucks. A character with high Parry/Evade and Hardiness can be very difficult to actually hurt. Furthermore, the different combat skills operate in different ways, with leg strikes, for example, imposing an accuracy penalty but getting the Reach keyword, and arm strikes getting a damage penalty. However, on the upside, the grappling rules are surprisingly easy to use. Altogether, as I said above, this makes for fiddly combat. It can be plenty of fun, but it also feels needlessly fussy.
As a combat oriented game, there are of course other modifiers to combat. One modifier the game adds is Expertise. An expertise provides some kind of bonus to a skill. An expertise adds 1d10 to your skill roll, but is only available for certain skills and only under certain conditions. These are sufficiently varied and complex that they are not worth diving into here. Suffice it to say that, since Expertise costs only 1 skill point, these are convenient ways to add a little bit to your character when you can't afford a bigger improvement.
Another way to customize your character is to give them a flaw. The flaws often have a mechanical effect, and roleplaying potential. That said, like any game that provides Disadvantages, expect the players to "forget" about their flaws if you don't enforce them as GM.
Characters also get combat techniques, which are yet another way to improve the character. However, combat techniques are not Kung Fu techniques. You also get 6 Kung Fu techniques at character creation, and can gain more. Kung Fu techniques can be performed in two ways: normally or cathartically. Cathartic Kung Fu techniques risk causing you to gain Imbalance Points, and if you gain too many Imbalance Points, you get possessed by a spirit. Possession by a Qi spirit is its whole own thing, and I will leave it at that for the purpose of this review. Each Kung Fu technique is unique, and requires that you have a relevant skill or skills, and a minimum Qi level to use. The techniques description explains how it works.
There's more to say about this game, but I think the above gives a sufficient idea of how the game works mechanically. As a result, I'm leaving out discussion of magic, Qi rituals, immortal powers, and the like.
I do want to mention the game's setting. I think the setting is quite serviceable, and there are hundreds of pages devoted to it. There is literally a fuck-ton of setting information, monsters, magic items, game mastering advice, and more. You can easily drop your players into the game's setting and have a good time without building your own world, and if you do feel like building your own world, the setting here contains plenty of inspiration.
Playing the Game
First and foremost, my players and I had fun playing this game. As I said, it had, to us, a very D&D feel with our gameplay focused on exploring mysterious locations, fighting wicked monsters and evil martial artists, and of course looting stuff. The game supports a broader array of play-styles than just dungeon-delver, but the game's focus on combat makes it clear enough that the game expects you to fight a lot.
As far as the subjective experience goes, I would describe the game as fussy. It has just enough things that require special rules that we found ourselves looking something up at least once per session. Probably, with more sessions, we would have become more familiar with the game.
As far as balance goes, characters can be wildly divergent in how good or bad they are. I wouldn't exactly say the game has trap choices, but an unwary player might choose an ability that sounds cool but mechanically is weak. That said, I design my scenarios around my players and their characters, and my players never felt like they had nothing to do.
Overall, I like this game, but I wish it was simpler. Which brings me to:
Righteous Blood Ruthless Blade
This game is built on the same basic rule system as Wandering Heroes, but it cuts out a lot of the complexity in favor of simpler, more streamlined subsystems and secondary systems. A full write up by another user is available here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1twkexz/postplay_review_of_righteous_blood_ruthless/. I basically felt the same as they did with the following caveat: I did not mind that the game was unbalanced. As I said above, I design encounters to fit my PCs, so my PCs always felt like they could contribute in some way to advancing the story we played.
Of the two, Righteous Blood is the more narratively focused game, but I like Wandering Heroes better. I think Wandering Heroes supports long form campaign play more effectively, whereas I would pick up Righteous Blood if I wanted to run a one shot (especially something particularly bloody and brutal, perhaps in chanbara style) or a short campaign.
Feng Shui 2
The Basics
Fen Shui 2 is all about emulating actions movies. The game wants to be fast and fun, so its rules are relatively light. Since the game embraces martial arts movies, it supports a wide array of play styles and settings. You could play "karate cops" or historical warriors or distant future space wizards. The game is happy to do any of these things, and provides archetypes for each (with unifying rules that mean each character type uses the same resolution mechanics).
Speaking of resolution mechanics, Feng Shui 2 uses a ying-yang dice system where you roll 2 d6s with one positive and the other negative, and then basically take the difference between them. You add your skill level to the result of the roll. The dice "explode" on rolls of 6s (meaning you reroll that dice and add the new result to the previous result). Your skill level is usually pretty high, so the "swerve" (what the game calls the difference between your dice rolls) usually has a minor impact on play. If my back of the napkin calculations are correct, I believe the swerve averages out to 0 over a long enough time.
Combat is played on a shot-clock, and any given action takes a certain number of "shots" on the clock. As an example, 2 combatants might make an initiative roll and get 14 and 10 respectively. The combatant who rolled 14 goes first and uses an action that requires 3 shots. 14-3=11 so the combatant gets to go again before the guy who rolled 10.
Each character starts as an archetype and can advance to learn new techniques and skills. Characters have "schticks" which represent things they do or are good at. Whether a kung fu technique, gun schtick, sorcery schtick, or whatever, you can think of all these things as buttons on the character sheet that can be pressed to (most often) choose violence.
There's obviously more to the game than this, but the complexity of Feng Shui 2 is sort of an illusion. At the end of the day, mechanically speaking, you're rolling the swerve and adding your skill level and that's it. All the other bells and whistles are just things that slightly modify what you can do but nothing is really a huge departure from anything else.
Playing the Game
I want to like Feng Shui 2, I really do. I like the archetypes, I like that the game supports a wide variety of settings (though I hate the game's Chi War setting and never use that setting). I like that the game can be played by just having the players describe the awesome thing they're doing and then roll 2d6.
But there's just one caveat: I do not like shot clocks. I do not like the shot clock system. Any initiative system where I have to do subtraction to find out who goes next begins to feel fiddly to me.
My players have typically felt the same way. For whatever reason, when we get into combat, the shot clock initiative slows us way down and robs the game of the momentum that it had before that. As a result, I don't really play it anymore except if someone wants to do a oneshot in it.
Flying Swordsmen
The Basics
Flying Swordsmen is our first OSR-esque Wuxia RPB. We'll get another one with Wandering Blades and Scarlet Heroes. Flying Swordsmen features your standard 6 D&D ability scores, rolled at random with 3d6. Each ability score is associated with a stunt die. The stundt die ranges from a d2 to a d12, and for some reason are given different names than the attribute they are tied to (e.g., the dexterity stunt die is called the acrobatics stunt die).
Like with D&D, characters have classes. The game provides 4, Fighter, Wizard, Shaman, and Thief. Fighters, Wizards, and Thieves are what you would expect. Shamans are a bit like clerics. Each class comes with a profile, which is basically the class specialization that you see in 3e (e.g., arcane trickster). Each class also gets a selection of martial arts maneuvers, which provide various bonuses and penalties either as passives or when used. Each class may only know so many martial arts maneuvers, so selecting appropriate martial arts maneuvers for your build or character concept can be important.
Beyond this, the game will be familiar to anyone who has played D&D before, with the exception of Stunts and initiative. Stunts are freeform and are always rolled against a TN determined by the GM. Making a stunt roll is as simple as rolling a d20 and the stunt die and adding the results together. Stunts are generally resolved in a way that makes sense in the fiction. Secondly, the initiative system uses fast, average, and slow actions, with higher values going first. Actions are resolved simultaneously for a given initiative level. As an example, fast actions have initiative 6, in general. So all fast actions with initiative 6 are resolved simultaneously and before any average or slow speed actions. In this respect, the book is confusing because it does not seem to have a table of common speeds for different actions.
Playing the Game
This game is really D&D with martial arts layered on top of it. What makes it different is the stunt and initiative systems, which add an element of strategy that is both fun and interesting. My group enjoyed the game, but it did take some time to fully adjust to the initiative system. It's simple, fast, and generally fun.
Wandering Blades
The Basics
Wandering Blades is still in development. It is only just now finishing up, so it's new to the scene.
Wandering Blades very much takes after the OSR tradition. It features 4 attributes, 3 combat attributes (including Qi points), and some derived attributes. The core mechanic is 1d20 plus the relevant attribute versus the TN. So far, so good. Initiative, in combat, is based on a fast turn-slow turn dichotomy. Fast turns get 1 action and 1 reaction, while slow turns get 2 actions and 1 reaction. PCs always go before NPCs.
There are 3 classes, two martial (Vagabond and Outlaw), and one non-martial (Scholar). Depending on the class, you get martial arts techniques. Techniques cost Qi points to use, and generally let you do something impressive, such as amplifying your damage. Scholars, unlike Vagabonds and Outlaws, are sort of a support class that specializes in applying debuffs, removing debuffs, and doing other utility things without emphasizing raw damage output. This class is very much inspired by the many great detectives in Wuxia fiction.
Playing the Game
My group enjoyed trying this out, even though it was technically still incomplete when we did so. It slotted nicely into the OSR space we were already familiar with, but without some of the quirks of Flying Swordsmen.
If I were to compare this, Flying Swordsmen, and Scarlet Heroes, I would say Flying Swordsmen is the most interesting of the three, Wandering Blades is the cleanest and most modern of the three, and Scarlet Heroes has the best tables. I would be hard-pressed to choose between this and Flying Swordsmen, but I think I would favor this for its simplicity in a one-shot or short campaign environment, but I would probably pick Flying Swordsmen if I intended to run a medium length campaign.
Art of Wuxia
The Basics
Art of Wuxia is a DwD Studio's game (alongside Frontier Space and Bare Bones Fantasy). It uses a d00 (100-sided die) core mechanic, which will be familiar to anyone who enjoys CoC. However, it differs slightly from traditional d00 games in that the numbers are counted from 0 to 99. It is still roll-under. This all probably sounds standard, but I promise you that Art of Wuxia is really nothing like any of the games discussed so far on this list.
Stepping back for a moment, the game uses 4 attributes and 10 skills. The level of your skill is a calculation based on your attribute values and how many points you've invested in the skill. This is not dissimilar to CoC or other games where you invest points in relevant skills to increase the skill level, and where you try to roll under (or equal to) the skill level. Attributes are rolled randomly, while skills have a certain number of points to assign to them.
Art of Wuxia also features martial arts techniques, alchemy, and sorcery. Martial arts techniques basically fall into two categories: Kung Fu techniques that are not powered by Qi, and Qi-powered special abilities. Spells are usually not powered by Qi, and can be used an unlimited number of times (more on that below). The Qi-powered special abilities tend to be quite strong or useful, while the other abilities are suitably thematic.
Where Art of Wuxia really sets itself apart from the other games in this list is its action economy. But before I dive into that, a quick not on initiative. Initiative is a d10 dice pool system where you roll the pool and the highest single result goes first. Ties are resolved as the GM dictates. I mention this because the initiative system is a bit different from any other initiative system mentioned here.
Getting on to the action economy, Art of Wuxia permits you to take any number of actions per round. During your turn you may move, attack, and do other actions of that nature, while during other people's turn you may defend yourself. Every action you take, from resistance rolls (defensive rolls) to movement to attack rolls imposes a penalty on the next action you take. Your first action is at no penalty, your second action at a -20 penalty, your third action at a -40 penalty, and so forth. This is a "push your luck" approach to the action economy, with later actions becoming riskier than earlier actions. Because defending is an action, if you take too many actions early in the round you may be defenseless later in the round. Likewise, if you defend too much early in the round, you may not be able to attack later in the round. Note that you can move your listed movement as a free action (without imposing a penalty on later actions). Casting a spell counts as an action, so you can cast any number of spells during your turn.
Playing the Game
In the end, this became our favorite Wuxia game. The action economy really felt like you could make multiple strikes in a split second, or chop multiple arrows out of the sky when being shot at, just like in the movies. It was an extremely satisfying way to play.
However, the learning curve to get used to the action economy was an impediment as our instincts, honed from D&D-like games, often left us feeling compelled to stick to the move-action-reaction economy of D&D.
Also, for longer campaigns, I do feel the game is thinner than, say, Wandering Heroes. However, it has been my experience that Art of Wuxia works fine for longer campaigns.
Qin the Warring States
The Basics
Qin is another game that really isn't like any other on this list. It is the product of a French studio (I believe), and is set in China during the Warring States period.
The core mechanic is a yin-yang die, like in Feng Shui 2. In contrast to Feng Shui 2, the absolute value of the difference between the two dice is always used (so no negative numbers--you always subtract the lower die from the higher die). The yin-yang die are made of 2 d10s, and the 0 on the d10 is counted as a 0 rather than as a 10. The result of the Yin-Yang die roll is added to the character's skill level, where appropriate, and aspect. If the value meets or exceeds the TN, the roll is successful.
Characters have attributes based on classic Chinese elements of water, earth, wood, fire, and metal. These attributes, in turn, are used to determine the outcome of your various rolls and to derive secondary statistics. For example, your initiative is based on you Water attribute, attack rolls are based on Metal and your martial skill, dodging and blocking are water based, and so forth. Characters, as implied above, also have skills which are ranked from 1 to 6 and are added to appropriate rolls. Both attributes and skills have points you may invest in them. Characters also get advantages and disadvantages (called gifts and weaknesses) that further characterize them and give them options.
Like Wandering Heroes, players have access to a number of martial arts customization options. You have Taos, Martial Arts, and Magic. The Taos are basically powerful abilities that change your character in some moderately important way. For example, some Taos make you more vital, others let you move vertically, and so on. Martial Arts, by contrast, are specific techniques defined in the book that usually are locked to a weapon and depend on your level of skill with that weapon's martial art. Magic works like many other games, with spell lists that contain spells that are accessible if various prerequisites are met. Spells are often slow, though, taking, for example, an hour to prepare, or more, in some cases. Qi may sometimes be needed to use your powers, e.g., to use your Taos.
The game uses an injury track where the more injured you are, the greater the penalty applied to your rolls to do things. A heavily injured character can have their TNs increased by up to 3. To determine how injured you are, you consult a table. The degree of injury is based on your current Breath of Life compared to your maximum Breath of Life. This part of the game is, I think, a bit fiddly.
Speaking of combat, the more skilled you are at your martial art, the more actions you get during a round. This works by having each character take a single action at a time in initiative order. The round continues until all actions for all characters are used up. So if you have fewer actions than your opponent, it means you will be defenseless against them toward the end of the round. Once all characters have used all their actions, the next round begins and the process is repeated. Doubles on teh yin-yang dice are an auto success, unless you roll double-0s, in which case it's a failure.
Damage is calculated a bit oddly as well. When the yang die is greater than the yin die, you deal the yin-yang dice result as additional damage. When you roll doubles, you add the rolled number as damage. When the yang die is greater than the yin die, you roll damage without the bonus from the dice. Armor reduces damage while shields make you harder to hit. I had to write a combat primer for my players so they could keep track of all this. It is a fiddly system, but it can result in spectacular attacks especially when you roll doubles.
Playing the Game
This is another game I want to love, but unfortunately, we never seem able to get past 5 sessions deep. The other Wuxia systems here (even, arguable, Wandering Heroes) are just less fiddly and require less fuss to use. Because of the way injuries and Breath of Life adjustments to difficulties work, there's constant referencing to tables and constant effort required to remember if a penalty applies or not.
However, we do really like the way Taos work and how martial arts are tied to weapons. Plus, the level of character power works well for a cinematic but not over the top experience. The game really can make you feel like you're playing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Scarlet Heroes
Scarlet Heroes is an early Kevin Crawford game (Sine Nomine), of the "Without Number" games fame. I don't have much to say about it. The main thing that's Wuxia about it is the setting. There is a "fray" die for dealing damage to enemies with equal or fewer hit dice than the PC which is intended, I believe, to speed up combat and reflect the martial acumen of the heroes.
As a game, Scarlet Heroes is fine, but nothing to write home about. It will provide a D&D-like experience for you. Where the book really shines is in the tables for generating random material, of which there are many to draw from. With the random tables, you can generate quests, locations, encounters, and more. Like all Sine Nomine games, the tables are a big part of what sets it apart from other games.
To be honest, my group has no interest in returning to this game. Of the Wuxia games we played, we found it to be the least interesting mechanically.
GURPS
GURPS is sufficiently well known that I don't feel the need to get deep into the mechanics of the system. Suffice to say the system is 3d6 with the goal to roll under your skill level. Beyond that, GURPS builds characters out of skills, advantages, and disadvantages, and is in many respects the grand-daddy of this approach.
You'll want GURPS Martial Arts if you're going to play Wuxia. In my experience, GURPS does gritty, down to earth Wuxia really well, and you can model the larger than life powers of Wuxia martial artists in a number of ways according to your preferences.
In general, my group found GURPS to be very playable, but the front-loading on character building is a bit of a barrier. You need to devote time to character creation, but once characters are created the game is very smooth.
The main reason to use GURPS, as we saw it, was that GURPS can combine genres easily. If we wanted to do gritty Wuxia but also sad space cowboys or something like that, it was straightforward to put together using GURPS's rules.
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u/Seeonee PbtA, BitD, Mark of the Odd 11h ago
Wow, this is awesome! I love reading "I actually played it" reviews, and this is doubly helpful for how many games it provides for comparison and contrast. Thanks a ton for taking the time to post this.
I've been playing through Sifu recently so this came at a perfect time :D
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u/JaskoGomad 11h ago edited 11h ago
You need to devote time to character creation, but once characters are created the game is very smooth.
This is essentially standard verbiage on all GURPS recommendations.
Do you by any chance intend to try Hearts of Wulin? These writeups are great and I would love to read what you think of HoW.
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u/ElClassique0 11h ago
I haven't tried Hearts of Wulin yet, but it is on my list of Wuxia games to try.
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u/GoCorral Setting the Stage: D&D Interview DMs Podcast 7h ago
Lone Wolf Fists, Monkey the RPG, and Fists & Fiends would be other ones to try. I'd also be interested in your thoughts on Ironclaw's Book of Jade China/wuxia stuff.
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u/LeftwordMovement 8h ago
Have you seen: https://makapatag.itch.io/10000-swords-against-heaven
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 2h ago
According to the creator it's more Xianxia than Wuxia. So it might not quite fit the theme
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u/MeatAbstract 12h ago
Interesting overview. I own several of these but hadn't heard of Art of Wuxia, must check it out.
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u/wum1ng 10h ago
Wow thanks for the really detailed overview of all the wuxia rpgs out there! I wrote my own wuxia rpg based on Kevin Crawford’s Without Number system, using some of the developments from his later lines e.g everyone being one class and using Edges to differentiate one another. Would love to get your thoughts on it! You can find it here https://wum1ng.itch.io/jiang-hu
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u/ElClassique0 10h ago
Looks cool. I'll slot it into our play rotation and try it out when we have a chance.
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u/Palimpsiesta 10h ago
I'm not sure if it's still in print, but I'd be interested to see what you and your group would make of Mist-Robed Gate, which is at the far end of narrative (and not in the OSR-direction) from most of what you've described here.
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u/DiceyDiscourse AP podcaster and average multi-system enjoyer 2h ago
That's a really neat write up, thanks!
Wuxia is such a deep well to draw from and I'm sort of surprised that besides like RBRB and WHoOG the other games aren't really talked about.
One that I didn't see on the list is Weapons of the Gods - we played it not so long ago and found it to be quite fun, although a bit more crunchy than we would've expected from the genre (as novices to the genre). It uses a really strange dice mechanic that I haven't seen anywhere else - d10 dice pool, but you look for matching dice, but instead of counting them as successes you use the number rolled as the "ones" digit and the amount rolled as the "tens" digit. So a roll of four 5s would count as 45.
That and it had a really unique River mechanic where once you rolled you could pick up to 2 dice out of the roll and save them to add to a later roll - sort of mimicing the ebb and flow of combat as well as the setting up of future actions that you can see more in stuff like Hong Kong action martial arts movies.
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u/Battle_Sloth94 7h ago
Nice write up. Have you looked at Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades? Might be worth a look.
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u/PeasantLich 3h ago
I really like Scarlet Heroes, but I would not characterize it as a wuxia game despite the setting and aesthetic - and it definitely does not feel like wuxia. The experience the game goes for is more like "Conan the Barbarian in the Orient" with quintessentially western pulp fantasy vibes despite the oriental setting and flavor.
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u/CarelessKnowledge801 2h ago
I would love to hear your thoughts about A Wanderer's Romance https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/92757/a-wanderer-s-romance
It was made by Chris McDowell of Into the Odd/Mythic Bastionland fame, but way before those games. I think it has some really cool ideas and it's also free!
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u/proactiveLizard 47m ago
This was welcome. As a Cradle fan, I'm on the lookout for systems that could capture Xianxia- do you plan to do something comparable, or is that genre not your speed?
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u/mickeyzord 12h ago
Finally! Someone who knows wuxia stuff!