GAMING STRANGE TALES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO: THE PAINTED WALL

I recently started blogging scenarios and monsters inspired by Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. You can read the first entry for a deeper explanation of the source material and the intention of these blog entries. This one is for the 6th story in the penguin edition, The Painted Wall. I decided not to do Talking Pupils (the 5th story) because the monsters in it seem curious and interesting but less interesting to me as a hook for adventure unless there is some railroading. I may come back to it though because I think it could be the basis for a cool scenario if I ran with some of the concepts. 

In The Painted Wall, a man named Zhu goes to a monastery and finds a wall mural that pulls him into a world of Apsaras. By the end of the tale, a monk at the monastery suggests his experience is an illusion that comes from within. In order to make this one work, I am tailoring it to the Qi Xien setting and giving it a more immediately hostile threat (because the danger in the original tale is contingent on the protagonist falling in love with one of the apsaras). 

Also I should note that I've already taken inspiration from this story. The wall scroll in the Ogre Gate Inn Book was a nod to The Painted Wall. 

MAGIC MURALS (OBJECTS OF POWER

Yaksha Art by Jackie Musto

Magic Murals are gateways to pocket realms or the inner worlds of the viewer. They vary but most depict the inhabitants of the pocket realm in question and many serve as a trap for unwary viewers. Others serve as a test for religious seekers or martial heroes. There are two basic types of Magic Murals: those that lead to other worlds and those that lead to inner worlds. The end experience is pretty much the same, but the latter are illusory while the former take you to genuine places. The consequences for entering another world can be deadly. The consequences for entering an inner world, can sometimes be deadly but usually just result in a sense of exhaustion. Whatever their precise nature, all Magic Murals affect anyone who looks into them for more than a few moments. Magic Murals to other worlds roll 3d10 against the target's Resolve. Magic Murals to inner worlds roll 3d10 against Wits. If the roll succeeds the person is pulled into the mural for an hour. On a Total Success the person is pulled into the mural for day. To onlookers the individual seems like a painted figure in the mural. The person drawn into the mural experiences the world as if it is a real place. 

Viewers can attempt to extract people imprisoned in a mural by placing their hand on the wall and concentrating. Each attempt takes ten minutes and requires a Meditation Roll TN 10. 

PALACE OF BEAUTY (SAMPLE MAGIC MURAL)
The Palace of Beauty is a wall mural found at Sun Mai temple. It is used to test the cultivation of high ranking disciples before they become abbots. Anyone who fails the test cannot become an abbot for five years (at which point they can take the test again). The Palace of Beauty is rendered on a wall in the temple's courtyard and depicts eight beautiful maidens in what seems to be a heavenly palace. In truth these are female Yaksha demons imprisoned by one of the early builders of the temple. The test is very real. The maidens use their beauty to lure unsuspecting disciples to their deaths. While the monks of Sun Mai do their best to extract anyone who falls victim to the Yakshas, but all go in knowing they could die. 

BEAUTIFUL YAKSHA DEMONS (8)
Beautiful Yashas appear like lovely human maidens when they are not feeding. However as soon as they attempt to feed they reveal their true form: small twisted creatures with gray skin and blood red hair. They have long narrow claws that can draw out human blood. They also have some different abilities from normal Yaksha.

Defenses: Hardiness 7, Evade 6, Parry 4, Stealth 10, Wits 8, Resolve 7

Key Skills: Bite: 2d10 (4d10 Open), Claw: 2d10 (2d10 and special), Speed: 8d10 (110 feet), Detect: 2d10, Muscle: 2d10, Persuade: 3d10, Deception: 2d10, Language (Any): 3d10, Talent (Singing): 3d10, Talent (Guzheng): 3d10

Max Wounds: 5

Powers

Devour: The teeth and mouths of Beautiful Yaksha Demons are exceptionally large and lethal. They deliver 4d10 Open Damage on a successful bite.

Blood Nail: The fingernails of Beautiful Yaksha are narrow and sharp, ideal for puncturing veins. When they hit with their claws, on a Total Success, they cause the target to bleed profusely (1 Automatic Wound per round until the bleeding is stopped). They can also use this to help feed on sleeping victims at night.

Entrancing Song: The Yaksha can sing or play a gentle melody that makes it difficult to move like a terrible nightmare. Roll their Talent (Singing) or Talent (Guzheng) against Resolve. On a success the person falls suffers -2d10 to their Speed for the purposes of Turn Order and calculating movement for ten minutes. On a Total Success the target cannot move for ten minutes (but they can attack and perform other skill actions). 

Immunities: Beautiful Yaksha Demons are only harmed by energy attacks and heat. Peony flowers are particularly harmful to them (exposure to the petals of a peony causes them to take 2 wounds). 

Spiteful Burst: All Yaksha do not like being captured and would rather die than be forced to cultivate or reform. They can explode themselves in a blast of burning blood. Roll 4d10 against the Evade of everyone in the area. Those affected take 5d10 Fire Damage (no need for Total Success to function as the blood sticks to anything it comes in contact with).

Regeneration: Unless they are killed by Peonies, the Yaksha in the mural reform within 8 hours after being destroyed. 

GAMING STRANGE TALES FROM A CHINESE STUDIO: SPITTING WATER

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Qing Dynasty poet and official Pu Songling is a collection of wondrous tales and accounts. Published as early as 1740, it contains nearly five hundred stories of unusual events and creatures. It is filled with tales of fox spirits, strange snake charmers and ghosts. These stories have inspired countless movies like A Chinese Ghost Story and Painted Skin. They are also great inspiration for gaming. I am going to attempt to turn entries from Strange Tales into gameable content for Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate. My intention is to go through each story, ignoring or coming back to the ones that might be tough to fit into an adventure. Some will be simple monster or NPC entries, while others will be more complete scenarios loosely inspired by the tales. 

For this I am using the John Minford translation in the Penguin Classics 2006 edition. I decided to skip making the first story, Homunculus, into game material because it would require developing other aspects of the game system. While An Otherworldly Examination (story number two) isn't as gameable in my opinion, the next story, Living Dead, most certainly is. However I think I want to use that as inspiration for a complete scenario so I will come back to it. The following monster entry is inspired by Spitting Water, the fourth story in the Penguin edition. It is about a group of women who encounter the hunchbacked ghost of an old woman that spits water in ferocious bursts. Because so many of these stories get right into the strangeness of the tale, they are easy to mine for gaming inspiration. 


WATER CORPSE 

Water Corpses look as they did in life except they appear warped and swollen. They are mad with delight and anguish, dancing with abandon, spewing drowning gushes of water at the innocent. They are created when the buried or forgotten remains of a person becomes water-logged. Water Corpses cannot travel far from their remains, they must stay within 100 yards of their burial site. 

Defenses: Hardiness 4, Evade 6, Parry 3, Stealth 7, Wits 7, Resolve 4

Key Skills: Bite and Claw: 1d10, Spitting Water: 3d10 (see below), Speed: 2d10, Detect: 2d10

Max Wounds: 5

Powers

Bite: The bite of a Water Corpse does 1d10 damage.

Deathless: Water Corpses take damage normally but when they are destroyed they return in 1d10 hours. The only way to truly defeat them is to lay their body to rest. 

Spitting Water: Water Corpses release a spout of water from the mouths attacking everyone in a 40 foot cone. Roll 3d10 against the Evade of all targets. On a Success anyone struck is coated in water that causes them to suffocate for the next three rounds (WHOG, Suffocation and Drowning, page 83). On a Total Success the targets suffocate for the next 4 rounds. The water coats their pores and lungs, making death extremely uncomfortable. 

Bound to Body: Water Corpses must remain within 100 yards of their body. 

DISPOSABLE DISCIPLES SESSIONS 59-60: JOURNEY TO THE PAST

This is a log for my ongoing Disposable Disciples of Bone Kingdom campaign. You can see the previous session log HERE.  Note that I began recording sessions, so this has allowed me to do more detailed session logs.

Player Characters: 
Shen Chun/Crazed Raksha
Little Bai
Red Crane 
Ong Lao
Min (Feiyan)

Disciples of the Sect: 
Red Eagle (Little Bai)
Mount Dao/Biggest Sister (Little Bai)
Filial Cricket (Little Bai)
Dim-Witted Chen (Shen Chun)

Sects: 

The Righteous Outlaws
Calamity Star
Ou Jinghzhu
Tea Master Houzhou

Stone Palace Sect (Also called Golden Way)
A gambling hall and criminal network in Yun Hu. Currently under control of party, with Weeping Lotus managing it. They've absorbed many other sects into this organization including Crocodile Sect, Blades of the Weeping Lotus, Temple of the Jade Mercies, Relentless Corpse Sect and more. Recently they joined with Relentless Corpse again when Shen Chun arranged a marriage with their leader Da Mei Mei. 

Members:
Shen Chun (King)
Da Mei Mei (Queen)
Weeping Lotus (Right Vanguard)
Silent Dagger
Feng (Accountant)
Gu (Head Chef)
Little Bai
Min
Scholar Shen (a scholar who has been writing a story about Little Bai's life)

Dancing Scorpions
Criminal network in Yun Hu

Relentless Corpse Sect
Da Mei Mei

Temple of the Jade Mercies (see Stone Palace)
Abbot Wei Zhao
Abbess Bao-Yu
Yao Tu-On
Yao Chun
Yao Ba

Southern Hill Sect
Yellow Mantis
White Chysanthemum
Green Mantis (Dead but important)

Twin-Fisted Eagle Sect
Twin Fisted Eagle
Jade Fist

Bone Breaking Sect
Destroyed and taken over by Drunken Hero Kang

Glorious Death Cult
Led by Supreme Master Tung, who says he is a god of death

The past two session have been unusual because playtest material came up during play (I was not intending to playtest this book for this particular campaign, but it happened to come up). Because I've been trying to avoid spoilers I am going to provide a brief and concise recounting of major events. 

Art by Jackie Musto 

The start of these sessions was mainly political, almost soap-opera like, with Shen Chun trying to get to the bottom of recent poisonings. He used Yellow Mantis' staff to interrogate everyone at the sect headquarters and learned that Ferocious Flower was behind the events. He asked her why and she said he was unfit to lead the martial world. He then had her hands cut off and sent her  back to the Tree Dwelling Nuns. 

Shen Chun forged a fake Wind Saber of Sunan and Phoenix Crown of Bao, renounced his position as leader of the martial world, and gave the fakes to the new leaders (Lady Plum Blossom and the Five Masters of Dehua Sect. The party then ventured south with the real objects and gave them to the Immortals of Red Mountain Villa with the instruction to hand them to his daughter when she was 22. 

After this the party debated what to do. Ultimately they decided to take the Chariot of Du Qian to Daolu and drive it through the gates with the intention of writing the House of Paper Shadows out of history. They reached Daolu and upon traveling through the gates.....

At this point in the sessions, I get into spoilers, which I'd like to avoid so people playing the module don't have it ruined for them. But I can say a number of interesting things happened when the party went back in time and three sessions in, they are still enjoying the voyage. Some notable details that won't spoil anything include: Shen Chun got an opportunity to test his luck fighting in Arena and he won a bunch of money. They made new friends, betrayed those friends, then became friends with them again once they learned more about the situation. Then they met a nice woman named Hui. Shen Chun changed his name to Zhao Kang and changed his martial nickname to Green Cat Kang (he was formerly known as Crazed Raksha). 

TOURNAMENT OF DAOLU PLAYTEST THOUGHTS

Instead of running my regular Saturday game this weekend, the group playtested one of the scenarios int the Tournament of Daolu adventure. The previous session we playtested another scenario. I've been doing something similar in my other campaigns, testing different aspects of the module. This was one I was looking forward to because it involved the time travel scenario (which I plan to playtest again this week). 

Tournament of Daolu cover
by Jackie Musto 

The session went well. I think we  had some interesting developments and as always one of the benefits of play testing is seeing developments you didn't anticipate, this expands the possibilities in the module. For example, one of the players met Sunan and tried to teach him a martial arts technique. There was another moment where they changed the future by winning a tournament that Sunan was supposed to win. 

I also found some minor organizational issues I had overlooked. This scenario is set during the Era of the Demon Emperor when the Hen-Shi Empire on the verge of being conquered. I realized I only include the name of the current emperor in the middle of a paragraph deep in the book, so I made a point of making that information easier to find. 

One of the biggest changes resulting from the playtest was to a major NPC in the book. I play tested the scenario this Saturday then again on Sunday, and that gave me a chance to try out two different personalities back-to-back. I also tightened his motives a bit by the second playtest. The difference was night and day. The NPC worked out much better on Sunday's session so I revised his entry. I'll get another chance to try out the NPC tonight at another playtest. 

Some other tweaks were the physical descriptions and abilities of important objects of power, cleaning up important stat blocks, adjustments to encounter tables and finding places in the book that don't match what I had in mind. 

Overall the playtests worked well. Both felt successful to me, the second one much more so, and in part due to the tweaks to the NPC. 

The Tournament of Daolu is a setting supplement with a quirky time travel scenario that can come up if the players involve themselves in it. However that is only a small part of what the book is. It is essentially a guide to the city of Daolu in the present and during the time of the Demon Emperor. So the two playtests in question dealt with the latter. On Monday I was able to playtest more of the former, for a group who in a campaign in present day Daolu (present day being the Era of the Glorious Emperor). I was able to test out more of the tournament fighters and some of the major locations. I've also been seeing how well the content from the appendices works. The appendices mainly contain tools meant to help the GM in a pinch. 

BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR DISCUSSION

Sat down with Adam, Lady Cao Feng and Kenny to talk about the Ronnie Yu classic, the Bride With White Hair. Had a blast and look forward to discussing the sequel and the novel soon too. Next week we are going to talk about the Five Venoms. 

THE BRIDE WITH WHITE HAIR DISCUSSION THIS FRIDAY

I just wanted to let everyone know we will be doing a discussion of the bride With White Hair this coming friday on the Bedrock Talk Podcast (you can check out the channel HERE). It is an atmospheric wuxia film starring Brigitte Lin and Leslie Cheung. The movie is based on the wuxia novel Baifa Monu Zhuan by Ling Yusheng and I will be doing a discussion about the book with Kenny a week or two after this coming podcast.

There may be spoilers in the discussion. 

DEATH DUEL DISCUSSION

This week I talked with Lady Cao Feng and Kenny about the Chor Yuen classic Death Duel. This film stars Derek Yee and is based on the Gu Long Novel Sword of the Third Young Master. It was also recently remade in the Derek Yee Directed Sword Master.