THE HAUNTED WUXIA DUNGEON

When I first started work on Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate, I wrote this blog post about the Wuxia Dungeon (and a PART II). This is something I have commented on a lot over the years, and my point was to emphasize that dungeons have just as much, if not more, of a role in wuxia as they do in medieval fantasy. I think there is an assumption that because wuxia also emphasis other things like drama between characters, that dungeons have less of a place. And my point was that a balanced wuxia campaign can include plenty of dungeons, and they provide plenty of fun and excitement. Here I want to talk about wuxia dungeons suited to October. 

A lot of wuxia films blend supernatural and horror (and plenty of horror films blend in wuxia elements). There is a fine line, as many more wuxia stories and films walk up to that line but don't cross it. For example Hua Shan's film, Bloody Parrot, presents a situation that seems supernatural but later turns out to have a logical explanation (still horrifying, but logical). On the other hand there are movies like Chor Yuen's, The Enchantress (not to be confused with Swordsman and the Enchantress), which embraces the supernatural. In the end, in an RPG it is a matter of taste and style. I often have supernatural elements like ghosts and spirited beasts present because it just makes it easier to have a long-ongoing campaign by giving the GM more tools to select from when designing adventures (it also adds more tonal variety). With that in mind, these are some of my favorite haunted wuxia dungeons I've done over the years. 

One of the earliest haunted dungeons I did was Iron Temple. This became part of The War of Swarming Beggars (I always wished I had published this as a book because the overall concept was so good). You can find the map and description of the dungeon (fully useable) HERE. The background is a great master destroyed a temple 60 years ago with a device called the Thousand Painful Deaths Flower (which also appears in the Maidens of the Jade Blue Sky sects book). The place became haunted, with the attacker and all the nuns of the temple turning into various ghosts. This was an adventure I remember working really well due to the supernatural elements. 

My favorite haunted wuxia dungeon is of course, House of Paper Shadows (in print HERE). It is an expansion of the Society of Leather Shadows (AKA The House of Paper Shadows) that first appeared as a small entry in the WHOG rulebook, due to their use of Leather Shadow Puppets (one of the more horrifying monsters in the game). At first it was going to be a subtle haunted house, but I ended up going in a much more gruesome direction (probably because I was watching a lot of Kuei Chih-Hung films and similar types of movies at the time). One of my readers described it as "sadistic". So this is not a subtle dungeon of horror at all. It is basically about a wasp demon who manufactures supernatural shadow puppets using human flesh. There are a lot of Clive Barker vibes. But it worked great at the table. I think part of that is the dungeon fully commits to the premise, but also it handles the backstory in a clever way with a small hidden time travel adventure that can reveal bits of the past (and give the players the power to alter the present). The other thing that makes this one great is the maps. Francesca Baerald produced a marvelous map for the book. It is a haunted earthen roundhouse (a Tulou dwelling). 

In Strange Land of Li Fan and the Ogre Gate Inn book I made a number of scary wuxia dungeons. That whole book is filled with stuff inspired by Pu Songling, and the region is meant to be more supernatural in tone. Perhaps the ultimate horror dungeon for wuxia is Yao Gong Palace. This is the foundation of the setting itself, and introduces an interesting opponent called the The Pure Ones. 

I think the most effectively horrifying entry though in Ogre Gate Inn is Bone Kingdom. It is a cave complex inhabited by three warring sisters who have all kinds of supernatural minions, including Death-Cursed guardians who painfully decay but never die. The dungeon itself is divided into three zones, each controlled by one of the sisters. 

The Ogre Gate Inn itself is something of a horror dungeon as well. It is three-layered, so it does depend on how deep the players go. But if they venture to the end, they find some truly terrifying creatures hidden beneath the inn itself. 

Another favorite of mine is She Lies in Stone (I challenge folk music fans to find the connection between this and Maidens of the Jade Blue Sky). This appeared on the blog is about a spirited turquoise stone who marries a man and uses him to lure in martial heroes that she feeds upon. It is a small dungeon but very fun and quite scary. 

RUN A CHINESE GHOST STORY THIS HALLOWEEN

If you are looking for something scary and fun to run this October, try my game Strange Tales of Songling. It is light, easy and you can make characters in minutes. Inspired by Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a classic collection of anomaly accounts, as well as by movies like A Chinese Ghost Story and the Bride from Hell, this is perfect for Halloween. It is a game about ghosts, fox spirits and strange magic. 

One of the things I tried to do in Strange Tales was focus on monster-of-the week style adventures because, in my experience, a lot of horror gaming is one-shot or mini-campaigns. This makes it easier to get right into the adventure, without any fuss. 

Another thing that was important was keeping this firmly in the realm of horror and a big part of that is making characters vulnerable. This isn't a heroic game. This is a game where character death is a looming possibility. The monsters are powerful and characters can die. 

The system is very simple. We keep the rules section to the fewest possible pages, eliminating anything that was non-essential. However it is based on the Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate game, so if you need more complexity, even though the systems are different, it is fairly easy to port in rules from WHOG. Personally though, I find the simplicity of Strange Tales is one of the things that makes it so enjoyable to run. 

While it was based on the Ogre Gate system, some key changes were made. For example, we paired defenses down to Hardiness, Evade and Wits (Ogre Gate has 6 defenses). Skills were similarly paired down and made easier to run on the fly (the goal was to make entries shorter so there was less need to look things up all the time, and so the material was easier to read when you did need to look things up). 

The inspiration for the direction of the system and for the look of the book actually comes from the Moldvay version of D&D. This is not an OSR retroclone, though my adventure and setting content always has strong OSR sensibilities. Rather it applies the Moldvay feel and style to Ogre Gate. I had played in a Moldvay campaign while working on Strange Tales and it inspired me. I loved the simplicity of it. And I wanted to bring that approach to the system. So everything in Ogre Gate was streamlined and tweaked to fit that goal. 

One important part of this was the introduction of Paths. Ogre Gate itself is more of a point-buy system. And character creation in WHOG takes time, by design. I didn't want that here. I wanted four Paths (Scholar, Ritual Master, Demon Hunter and Wandering Sword) that would facilitate character creation. We actually timed character creation and you really can jump right into the game (important when characters die more frequently). 

I also took a 'show, don't tell' to the books content. What I mean by this is nearly half the book is adventures meant to illustrate how the game and its setting operate. I put a great deal of effort into the adventures. It might not be immediately obvious but a ton of research went into getting the locations right. 

There are four adventures: Ghosts of Songbird Villa, Heads of Waterfall Bay, Lotus Fragrance, and The Judge From Hell. My favorite is probably Heads of Waterfall Bay, a murder mystery loosely inspired by the film Human Lanterns. The Judge From Hell is another I really quite like. Lotus Fragrance is actually based entirely on a story of the same name in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. Ghosts of Songbird Villa is an atmospheric exploration adventure set in a haunted manor. 

I also tried to make each adventure a different type of location. Strange Tales of Songling emphasizes monster of the week, but treats each adventure as a kind of contained sandbox and monster hunt. So there is a conceit that "this is the adventure we are doing tonight" but within that framework it tries to maximize player freedom as much as possible. For this reason I thought it was very important to illustrate how locations could serve as 'contained sandboxes'. So Ghosts of Songbird Villa is an adventure set in a manor and the surrounding woods. Lotus Fragrance is small region with an inn, bandits, a scholar's residence and other locations. Heads of Waterfall Bay is set in a city, while The Judge From Hell is set in a village and the surrounding countryside. 

Another key aspect of the book are the monsters. This is a game for people who love supernatural creatures, and a game where monsters are seen as the engines for adventures. I want this to be the kind of RPG that the GM can run by simply picking a monster from the rulebook and spinning a night of entertainment around it. 

There are tons of entries in the monster section and they are each inspired by something from Pu Songling, Yuan Mei, movies like Mr. Vampire or Killer Snakes. 

If you haven't read Pu Songling, I definitely encourage it. Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio has inspired countless films, and it is also a very engaging book. There are many different versions out there. The Penguin edition is condensed but the prose is warm and it is a good way to get an overview. I became mildly obsessed with Strange Tales and found every translation I could. I think for thoroughness my favorite is the four volume Chinese Classics edition. 

So give Strange Tales a try if you are in the mood for horror. It really is a pleasure to run, and it is one of the games I am most proud of. 

THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

Remember fun? 

I almost forgot about it too. 

But delving back into horror movie classics for The Horror Express (THE) has reminded me of its importance. Take The Bride of Frankenstein (caution: spoilers ahead for a film that came out 85 years ago)

This week we'll be talking about it on THE, and rewatching it last night I forgot just how much fun it was. I remembered the tragic elements but had forgotten about the humor, the whimsical fantasy of the homunculi, and the stagey rolled Rs of Lord Byron. This is a campy, fun movie, that is still horror, but not just horror. It is a complete experience hitting a number of emotional tones over the course of its 1 hour and 14 minute run time. 

Directed by James Whale and released in 1935, it is a sequel to Whale's 1931 original Frankenstein. It picks up where the first movie left off, with the Monster and Henry Frankenstein both surviving. Henry recuperates and seems bent on a path of redemption, while the Monster ventures into the world, making a single friend, but ultimately reaching the conclusion that it is unloveable. Taking a thread of plot from the book, the movie is about the Monster's request for a companion, which it demands Frankenstein create for it. But this version brings in the deliciously vile Dr. Septimus Pretorius to goad Henry into resuming his research into making life. 

Dr. Pretorius is a fellow scientist, albeit a disgraced one, who has succeeded in seeding life and creating people whole cloth. His creations are much more humanlike than Henry's monster, but they are diminutive. He proposes they work together to create a female creature. And the film culminates around the successful experiment to create the The Monster's Bride. 

However, The Bride rejects the monster just like everyone else. Believing he is truly alone and unlovable, the monster pulls a lever that explodes the laboratory saying "we belong dead", killing himself, Pretorius and The Bride but letting Henry and Elizabeth (Henry's wife) flee. 

The film has a tragic story, and it brings more humanity to the monster than the first installment, but it is peppered with humorous moments. And much of the horror fun in an over-the-top way. A lot of this is due to Ernest Thesiger's performance as Dr. Pretorius. He is indulgently evil, completely rejecting moral norms. We see him delighting in fabricating small humans and dressing them up in royal attire. He enjoys a macabre meal in a tomb after an evening of grave robbing. It is a great character and memorably performed. 

The film also has quite a bit of heart to it. The monster befriends a blind hermit who plays the violin. He learns to speak and to smoke from the blind hermit. As with the book, his friendship is short-lived when others stumble upon the two and reject the monster. This aspect of the movie really works and gives the final scene its heft. 

There is also the Bride herself, who only makes a brief appearance at the end. But its quite memorable. Most people are probably at least familiar with the look of the Bride. But its really in the physical performance of Elsa Lanchester. She is strange and captivating, mirroring the awkward entrance of the monster as a new creature born into the world. 

Ultimately this is just a fun movie. Horror can have an element of fun to it. One of the reasons I like a lot of older horror films, particularly from the black and white era, is there is often a good streak of dark humor through them (something you see in 80s horror as well). Here it certainly succeeds in making a better movie than the first Frankenstein, using fun but also building toward a tragic conclusion. 

A couple of things I did notice this time. Quibbles, but given the fun tone of the movie, I don't think they are particularly important. The film is framed as a discussion among Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron where she regales them with further tales of Frankenstein and his monster. This would have historically taken place in 1816. But the movie contains a reference to a grave with a death date of 1899. Another slightly awkward element I had never really noticed before, when The Bride is brought to life, Dr. Pretorius announces her as "The Bride of Frankenstein", basically making the mistake audiences have made in naming the monster. 

Of course with a film like this, these are not important observations. They don't really take away from the movie. I just noticed them this time around (and I am sure there are possible explanations for them). 

I certainly would encourage folks to check out the Bride of Frankenstein this Halloween season. We will be talking about it this weekend on the Horror Express and I look forward to getting Joel and Adam's opinions on the movie. I wasn't able to find it for free on any streaming service. But it is widely available to rent or buy. 

RIGHTEOUS BLOOD PODCAST: THE KID WITH THE GOLDEN ARM

Jeremy and I resumed the Righteous Blood Podcast, where we discuss movies that influenced the flavor and mechanics of our upcoming Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades RPG (RBRB), and talked about the classic film The Kid with the Golden Arm. 

The Kid with the Golden Arm uses a simple plot, the talent of the Venom Mob, and the hand of director Chang Cheh to reliably entertain fans with great fight scenes, tension, twists and likable characters. It has something for everyone, whether you are a wuxia fan or a kung fu junkie. For me this movie is solid all around, with Lo Meng playing a great villain, a cunning and wicked martial expert who has a sense of fairness, loyalty and clearly a personal code. 

We talk about how this influenced the Obsidian Bat Adventure (a sample adventure in RBRB), as well as our reactions to the costumes (which could be described as glamorous or over-the-top, depending on one's point of view). 

One reason I like to suggest The Kid with the Golden Arm to game masters is it is a very gameable film. It also highlights a lot of key tropes in the genre: poisoning, escort companies, love triangles, the personal codes of the jianghu, etc. 

Check out the podcast below and check out The Kid with the Golden Arm as well: 

A BLACKADDER RPG

As a kid I was a huge fan of Blackadder. I lived in the US, and to my knowledge it never aired on my local PBS station (or at least I was unaware of it airing if it did), so I picked up the series slowly, one VHS tape at a time. I began one series one, which I quite liked. I enjoyed it so much, when I finished the second series 1 tape, I rushed out to pick up the second series. The quality of series 2 amazed me; the writing was sharper, and the characterization of Edmund Blackadder worked a lot more. I devoured the remaining series, and loved them all. Joke after joke had me on the floor. It appealed to my interest in history but also propelled my curiosity about history further. It was formative, both in terms of my academic interests and in terms of helping to shape my sense of humor. 

Years later, I was running a Masque of the Red Death campaign. It must have stumbled, or been an off night. I can't quite recall. The bottom line is the session wasn't as horrifying as planned. So I just started incorporating a lot of situational comedy complications: the PCs had a rich uncle, were hosting a large important ball, and their reputations and wealth would be ruined if any of the guests discovered an embarrassing supernatural curse was spreading among the guests. The details I don't recall so well anymore. But I remember the basic thing I did was throw in complications and give the players space to solve them. It just worked well. And everyone laughed the whole time. 

This planted a seed of a game I never made. When Bill and I started Bedrock Games, we had a list of things we wanted to make over the next several years. One thing on that list was something we just called "Sitcom: The RPG". But what I really wanted, was to make a Blackadder RPG. There was a Red Dwarf RPG, which I liked at the time. And that gave me the thought it might work. 

I had no idea how to secure the license for such a thing though (and doubt I would have been able to even if we had the resources). So it never went anywhere beyond some ideas tossed around in a few meetings (we used to meet and brainstorm all the time). We toyed with the idea of just going with a generic sitcom RPG, but that never really captured out imaginations the way a Blackadder RPG would have. 

To this day I am curious how it might have come out. It probably would not have been a network game. If it were, the system would have been greatly altered I think. I do recall us bouncing some interesting ideas. But interesting ideas don't always survive playtest, and we never got to the play testing phase on it. 

I do remember wanting time to be important. I was hoping for the game to play out over the course of thirty minutes, so the situation would have a real countdown to disaster feel (something I had done a lot in our game Terror Network, except in this case the disaster would probably be more social). 

I almost did something like I had done with Servants of Gaius, and make a game greatly inspired by the source material (Servants of Gaius was inspired by I, Claudius). I doubt this is a game idea I will come back to. It is one of those games that never made it past the idea stage. 

BILL THE GAMING WIZARD

Today is the day that Bill Butler, the co-founder of Bedrock Games, my creative partner and friend, passed away. I always spend a lot of time thinking about him in the days leading up to the 3rd of September. And this year I thought I would explain what Bill brought to Bedrock, why he was so important, and why his influence continues to be important. 

Bill was the gaming wizard. I don't think people truly appreciate how much Bill loved gaming. I am a gamer, but my devotion to the hobby pales compared to his. Bill was a person who gamed possibly 4-5 nights a week (I can manage 1-2). When he passed away, and we attended his memorial service, people identified themselves by the day on which they gamed with Bill (i.e. I am so and so, from Bill's Tuesday game; I am so and so from his Saturday game). 

And playing that much made a difference when we sat down to design. Bill played games, read games and thought about games all the time. I believed I knew a lot of systems and games before I met Bill. No. Bill demonstrated an encyclopedic knowledge of the hobby I never possessed. He knew every system imaginable, knew what made that system unique, what was good about it, and what wasn't good about it (with plenty of subjective opinion thrown in for good measure). He understood game systems, and I always deferred to him when we were managing mechanics (we both did a bit of everything, but basically he was more the mechanics guy and I was more the writing guy). If you don't have sound mechanics, there isn't much to write about. 

After Bill died it took me and the others a while to do this without him. Because we buried ourselves in making new material after, there was an explosion of content, but I still feel it took time to bring the games to a focused level that fit Bill's more demanding standards. 

One thing Bill helped maintain was quality control. He was very good at tightening a system. You can see the difference very clearly when you look at a game like Sertorius, which he was involved with from beginning to end, and compare it to Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate, which he was involved with in the beginning but was unfortunately not part of the design process after the first few months because of his death. Don't get me wrong, Ogre Gate is a very good game, it was also the game we needed to make at the time, but it was part of learning not to design without Bill. And that made it very different. I think by the time we got to Strange Tales we had a better sense of how to implement the mechanical vision Bill had for these games. 

A word Bill used a lot when we talked design was "sleek". He was always interested in sleek design. Which is why we made Strange Tales as sleek as we possibly could. 

Another aspect to Bill's approach was this: once we decided upon a course, even if it was one he didn't like, and even if he grumbled a bit afterwards, he would eventually say something like 'okay we can do it like that if we do Y'. He was good at figuring out a way to steer the course once we settled on an overall vision (even if it wasn't his preferred vision). 

As an example when we did the Network System, I knew I wanted d10 dice pools. They are somewhat of a tough sell, or at the very least, a bit divisive. I won't get into the pros and cons as most gamers know them. But after some objections, Bill agreed to do d10s if we adhered to 'roll a hand of d10s and take the single highest result'. That was his exact phrasing which I've tried to keep. And that is what made the system work so well. If it had been any less simple, it would have been too fiddly. In a lot of ways, Bill wasn't a fan at all of d10 dice pools, and he especially hated 'buckets of dice' games. So I think he was the best person to create a d10 dice pool system for that reason. 

Our initial design of the system was often me proposing all kinds of things I wanted and Bill saying no, recommendations ways to make what I wanted work, or saying yes. In the absence of Bill, it became very hard to appropriately gauge the level of restraint he would have brought to an idea. I had two very capable co-designers helping me at that time (Dan and Ryan) but we were all committed to the idea of trying to preserve Bill's spirit in the design process, and I think we all had our own difficulties figuring out the answer to what Bill would have thought. I know I personally found it to be a very delicate process because it was just as easy to overplay Bill's potential objections or praises of an idea, as it was to underplay them. We wanted to preserve the dynamic that was in place when we were designing Sertorius with Bill. Obviously that is an impossibility but something we really strove to achieve. 

One thing that Bill's passing changed as well was how we handled any design conflict that came up. When you lose a voice at the design table the way we did, you gain a greater appreciation for the voices present. Our disputes became a lot less petty or ego driven. 

RIGHTEOUS BLOOD, RUTHLESS BLADES: DARK WUXIA AND SIMPLIFYING THE COMPLEX

I realized I hadn't quite made an official announcement about Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades. I have commented about it here, posted about some of the design goals, but I haven't provided a clear announcement. 

Righteous Blood Ruthless Blades is a dark wuxia RPG, written by myself and Jeremy Bai. Our aim was to capture the feel of the style of wuxia in Gu Long stories and Chor Yuen movies. We wanted something that was more gritty, dealt with weightier themes and presented an unflinching view of the Jianghu. 

RBRB is fast, lethal, and dark. It will be released December 10th in the UK, and December 8th in the US. It can be pre-ordered HERE. 

You can listen to our podcasts about the design to get some insight into what to expect. 

Our aim was to make a game was light enough to fade into the background, but deep enough to emulate the intricacies of the wuxia genre (particularly the martial abilities). I think we achieved our goal and am proud of the final result. 

A few years ago I made a game called Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate, my first attempt at a wuxia RPG. It is a good game, but mechanically on the heavier side (which I felt was necessary because I wanted to capture all the kung fu and swordplay I could from the genre). During the years I ran Ogre Gate, I had been thinking of ways to simplify without losing the flavor. What we tried to do was keep the core idea of selecting martial abilities, and codify the counters better (making them a whole separate category). This worked well. We also tried to make many of the abilities broader in application. 

One lesson I learned from Ogre was that because the core system was deep on its own, some of the residual depth in the system elsewhere could bog down play. So I wanted a much less extensive section on combat rules. We have key rules in there, but we set a bar that it really has to be necessary to be a part of the game. There was a point for example where we considered not having guidelines on restraining (in the end we reluctantly decided this was needed). Every mechanic was seen as a potential drag on the game, something the GM had to remember and keep in mind during play, or something that would necessitate look-up. And we wanted to reduce all that. 

The design became about streamlining and simplifying our ideas as much as possible. But again without losing the emulation. 

I also made a point of measuring things. It is easy to say "quick character creation" or "speedy combat". But I timed them both whenever we play-tested. We were particularly interested in combat speed (whereas when I made Strange Tales of Songling, my interest was in very quick character generation). Because we were drawing a bit more on Gu Long stories, many of those feature more efficient combat scenes than Jin Yong stories. There is a bit of a gunslinger or samurai vibe to how Gu Long handles duels. There is often a suspenseful buildup, then the confusing flash of weapons, followed by quick dismemberment or death. It is stylish and fast. And we wanted to capture that. 

One of the key ways to make sure this was in the game was to time the combats, and I think we succeeded. Obviously when dice are involved, and different mixtures of characters are in play, you can have much longer fight sequences. But I think the fights play out quite fast on average and this is aided by the fact that the game is theater of the mind (I do not ever use miniatures for my wuxia campaigns). 

Another key thing that helped this was how we handled turn order. We placed a talking phase at the start of combat. This is called the "Talking and Analysis Phase". It can be used to simply say something dramatic before the fight begins, but it can also be wielded cleverly to manipulate a foe, get in their head, or decipher something about their skills, so you gain an advantage or edge in the battle. It isn't always a required phase (it can be skipped in instances like ambushes for example). But it is a very good tool. 

This is also a gorgeous book. I am very impressed with the color artwork, the maps and layout design. 

As we get closer to the release date I will post more thoughts and ideas. In the meantime, check out the preview at Osprey Games.