Rules tweaks for Wushu

[DariusSolluman]

So, I'm gonna do a system switch for my Spycraft game this Thursday. Cause I've been dying to try Wushu, and my players are willing to give it a go.

However, some have expressed reservation at the unlimited powers of narration. So, I've come up with some guidelines / additional rules for providing some direction to the Narration. I'm also renaming Chi to Cool, cause it's Spies not Kungfu.

In addition, I'm tweaking the game a little. Cause I can't help myself- I HAVE to system tweak. It's in my blood.

Anywho-


WuShu - Types of Challenges

Challenges have four parts: The Difficulty, the Danger, the Time, and the Type

Difficulty is the number of Offensive successes you'll need to finish the Challenge and reach the Goal.
Danger is the minimum number of Defensive successes you need to avoid losing a Chi. Unless otherwise stated, this is 1.
The Time is the number of die rolls everyone gets before the Goal becomes inaccessible. The Boss escapes, the target is kidnapped, whatever. The Time may be extended by someone sacraficing a Cool.

The Type is the general class of challenge. It helps define what type of narration is and is not appropriate. Examples are...

Combat: Narration has to do with beating people up. Or shooting them. Whatever.
Diplomacy: Narration has to do with convincing people to do as you say peacefully.
Chase: Narration has to do with a chase scene.
Infiltration: Narration has to do with gooing undetected while sneaking in somewhere.

Rules of Narration
WuShu uses Fortune at the End. The Dice only indincate how close to being overcome the current Challenge is. Cool is used as a combination vitality and safety net, to make Challenges easier to overcome.
While narrating, you're naming Facts. Just like the GM, you can describe anything you want, and if everyone accepts it, the embellishment stands. However, the GM reserves veto rights for two types of Embellishments.
A) Those which dictate success in achieving the Goal before the Challenge is overcome, unless the Goal slips away in the same narration.
B) Those which dictate the continued viability of a Mastermind or Henchman that has 1 or more Cool remaining. No killing them until they're at 0 Cool.

If an Agent hits 0 Cool and then loses another for any reason, they are down and out for this and the next Challenge. They may not be dead, but they're too far gone to be of any use whatsoever.

[DevP]

I like these, and I think they help get the point across about the line between what you can and cannot narrate - you CAN narrate coolness on the way to your ultimate goal, but you can't fiat your REAL goal.

I really liked this recent Forge thread with people making their own sense of this sort of thing. You pretty much his the same conclusion they did, and the four characteristics (Danger/Diff/Time/Type) are a really good metric for helping players get into the challenge. So, neat!

About bosses: from reading Cut/Gun-fu, Dan made a big deal of the coup-de-grace rule: you just do NOT deliver the final, artistic blow until the boss is down to zero. (I'd give whomever knocked him down to zero the rights to the finishing strike.)

[Zak Arntson]

An idea I had for promoting over-the-top action would be to do the following:

During combat, if you announce a unique and cool action, you get a +2 bonus to your roll. If, during the next round, you announce another unique and cool action, you carry over the bonus, and get another +2 bonus.

If you help another character out with a unique action, instead of the +2 bonus this round, you divide your current "wushu bonus" in half between you and your buddy.

Say you leaps from a bannister to grab a chandelier (to get a clear shot at the baddies below), bam. +2 bonus.

Then in your next turn, you hook a zipline to the chandelier and slide down to the mooks below. +2 bonus (now +4 total).

Your buddy is hanging from a chandelier, too (who didn't do it first, though, so didn't get the unique action bonus). During your attack, you leap over the Mook and as he's shooting at you. Tell the GM you want the mook to miss and hit your buddy's chandelier's chain, bringing it down on a buncha mooks at the bottom. You divide your +4 bonus between you and your buddy. Now you're at a +2 each.

Haven't playtested the thing, though. It's an attempt to provide for one-upmanship in cool moves by the players, and support cooperation to make the craziest action.

[DariusSolluman]

Um. Zak, are you familiar with WuShu?

The basic idea of the system is that you get dice based on your description of overcoming a challenge, and rolling those dice purely provides the pacing of the adventure.

Cut down your 'bonus' dice by half; you get one die per embellishment, to a cap of whatever (usually 6).

In your examples, Bob could...

Leap over the railing. (1)

Leap over the railing (1), emptying both barrels into the half a dozen guards below (+1), landing in a roll (+1) that knocks Jim out of the way (+1). (4)

Leap over the railing (1) and on to a chandeliar (+1) which swings periliously above the ground, clinking as bits of glass fall like rain (+1). Joe Evil opens fire at you (+1), the bullets shattering the chain supporting the chandeler (+1), causing it to collapse on him (+1) (6)

There's also a communal narration option- instead of going in a circle, everyone just narrates and picks out dice as they bounce off of one anothers ideas.

[indra]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Zack is intending to use a Wushu-style bonus mechanic in another game. In which case, I say Bravo! :) (If not, it looks like a case of parallel evolution. The chaining is a neat idea.)

I also like Darius' elaborations a lot, especially the types of challenges. It's an excellent deconstruction of what I do in my Wushu games, though admittedly didn't make clear enough in the original document. (Those were heady days, I tell you! The basic idea is so simple, but it turned out that a lot of what made it work was fairly unique to me and my playtesters. I think the supplements, especially Pulp-Fu, do a good job of refining the rules, though.)

Anyway, I'd love to hear an actual play report after your game, Darius. It sounds like a blast :)

L8r, --Dan

[Zak Arntson]

Oh man, you got me. I read "So, I'm gonna do a system switch for my Spycraft game this Thursday. Cause I've been dying to try Wushu, and my players are willing to give it a go." wrong. I thought Spycraft would be used to try a wushu style game. Not Wushu itself (I just discovered that game today, mentioned on the Forge).

You should ignore my suggestion unless you're trying to add some Wushu to d20!