Thread 96041352

What are the essential setting/story elements of a successful wuxia/xianxia-inspired game?

Confident young masters.
Gentle jade beauties.
Endless heavenly realms.
Arrogant temple elders.
Unwavering dao hearts.
Forbidden demon techniques.
Qi stone currency.
Mystical meditation medicine.
Cruel tyrant divinities.
Boisterous yet honest devils.

Have I missed much?

>>96041614
>Have I missed much?
Yeah, Chinese face social mechanics.

>>96041352 (OP)
Some arrogant warrior telling a guy he is courting death before that warrior is killed in one attack.

Should I go with a "realistic" mythic China or a more syncretic east-Asian mélange, akin to Kara-Tur?

>>96042890
What part of "endless heavenly realms" do you not understand? A core aspect of gameplay should be transcending one celestial plane after the next through cultivation and qi accumulation. It should have no basis in any mortal world, China or otherwise.

>>96041352 (OP)
Journey to the West and Water Margin references, the more esoteric or out there the better

>>96042890
>>96042925
But Chinese made xianxia totally does base the heavens (and hells) on various parts and eras of China. You can go with syncretic East Asian kitchen sink if you want, but then at some point it stops being xianxia (or wuxia)

>>96041352 (OP)
Traditional games?

>>96042890
My setting, the Daxin (dah-SHEEN) Empire, attempts something like this. There's the Jade Emperor, August Son of Heaven, but he's largely a religious figure and subject of worship. It's his Right and Left Hands (the Grand Vizier and Grand Marshal, respectively) that hold the real (soft/hard) power (respectively), and I've divided the empire up into a sort of feudal system inspired by Japan's shogunate era, complete with a pseudo-caste system based around a person's inherited role in their society.

Oh, and everyone in Daxin fears witchcraft, so nobody goes by their real names, instead adopting pseudonyms like "Blood Falcon" and "Smiling Boulder" to ward off curses and so on.

>>96042192
I keep hearing about chinese face culture and how it's so different from the way we socialize but the more I hear about it the more it sounds like the same social bullshit we do but with slightly different ideas of what increases or reduces face

>>96045286
Unless you are a S*av, you have no fucking idea
>b-but it is similar
Similar to what, exactly?
In what laweless culture have you've been brought up that honor-bound behaviour and maintaining a proper outward image was paramount to it? Because that's the crucial ingredient - you need to come from a culture that has to deal with the fact the law kinda doesn't work at all, so you need alternatives.
Aka problems that most of Europe never have to deal with since early modern period, excluding fringes, like S*av lands, southern Italy or S*av-free parts of Balkans

>>96043916
Loving this.

>>96041352 (OP)
>chatgpt.com

>>96047536
AI sucks at worldbuilding, actually.

>>96041352 (OP)
>wuxia
Finding out that the person whom you thought your martial brother is somebody you have to fight because some second cousin's childhood friend being insulted by somebody in his family once three generations ago was the cause of a generational family feud.

>xianxia
Your mother married down so far that your home world almost got destroyed over it.

>>96046230
>In what laweless culture have you've been brought up that honor-bound behaviour and maintaining a proper outward image was paramount to it?
He could've grown up on the Balkans.

>>96043916
>>96047274
Wouldn't a caste-system be counter to the Chinese legalism that made their educated mandarin/minister-led bureaucracy possible?

>>96048441
Not entirely, if the exams allow you to leave your caste to better serve the empire.

>>96046230
He could also be a zoomer who grew up in the post-9/11 era where nothing works and everyone is out to get you

>>96052728
A lot of us remember the era before 9/11 and we can remind you Zoomers that nothing worked before and everyone was out to get you. And it has been like that for all of recorded history, which for the record, stretches back about six thousand years.

>>96052735
The hell, I had the door of my house open and the neigbor lady came a few times a weak to get salt, sugar or whatever, and if it found a member of the family there started a conversation. I could go to her pool whenever I wanted and if I needed say, a coca cola, I would get one of her fridge and say it to her the next time I see her. Not familial tie or whatever, this only changed when foreigners came to town in the 2000's and now its considered risky to not get it all under keys or escorting female members to anything.
Lots of you never lived in a functioning society and it shows.
>>96043916
I love that kind of things, my Not china is 12 big kingdoms and hundreds of city states/tribal/small kingdoms than are a remnant of the not Jade emperor kingdom, and it has a very 100 school of tought to it all.
Not-budism, Daoism, witchcraft, tribal religions and lots of petty spirits/godlings are also part of that, as it was a fox spirit than made the not-zhou implode.

>>96043916
>>96048441
Why not just use the traditional Imperial Chinese hierarchy?

>>96041352 (OP)
What non-human races might inhabit such a setting besides descendants of the Monkey King?

>>96054064
Because I like syncretic cultures.

>>96048441
Shouldn't the Constitution guarantee equal treatment to all citizens and protection under the law to non-citizens?

>>96041614
>Have I missed much?
A "Courting Death" status condition.

>>96055845
What?

>>96055857
This is good stuff.

>>96055624
Ogres, Oni, Onryo.

dice+2d6

>>96042890
If you are attempting to make a Wuxia or Xianxia-inspired setting? Obviously, China only. The entire world is China. The planet is the size of Jupiter but wherever you go - more China. You travel high over the hills, to the most remote of places? Guess what, everybody has Chinese names.

>>96055624
- Spirit-beasts (animals capable of cultivation). High-tier spirit-beasts can turn into humans (for gameplay purposes, you might lower this).
- A particularly noteworthy type of spirit beast is a fox spirit, which appears as a sexy slut to tempt men. Daji is suspected of being one.
- General spirits/demons, stuff isn't an animal, like a tree or an orchid, but got a bunch of spiritual oomph somehow.
- Devils, evil spirits.
- Ghosts.
- The "Eight Legions," borrowed from Buddhist mythology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Legions , as beings which are trapped in the cycle of reincarnation but aren't humans.

>>96058856
Thanks so much for this!

>>96055624
People with the blood of dragons maybe.

>>96063861
Dragon-blooded is a great idea.

>>96055624
Maybe karyobinga/kalavinka/however they'd be called in China? I assume there's a chinese intermediary.

>>96063861
>>96064441
Dragon Magazine had a Half-Chiang Lung back in 2e.

>>96065234
>Maybe karyobinga/kalavinka/however they'd be called in China?
Jiālíngpínqié.

>essential setting elements
Only the elements that are directly involved with gameplay, that are consistent with each other, and that would fit in a typical work of wuxia or xianxia.
Anything else has no point, and doesn't fit in.

>essential story elements
Only the elements that can be baked into details of character options, item/gear/ability descriptions, and premise of thr game, that are consistent with each other, and that would fit in a typical work of wuxia or xianxia.
Anything else can actively get in the way of gameplay.

What about religion? I'm not too keen on explaining things like Buddhism, the Tao, or other established faiths to my players. Would something like ancestor worship be suitable, or is that insultingly reductive?

>>96066224
I straight up imported Buddhism directly into my fantasy game and didn't explain shit, just stated things at face value and answered questions if they had any, and over time my players went from not knowing anything about buddhism to being decently knowledgeable from immersion alone. It might require smart and attentive players though.

>>96066224
Go with big-print, easy-reader Tengrism.

>>96066224
Xianxia religion generally has these precepts:
- Gods exist, but they're just really strong spiritual beings, not Christian bastions of morality. (via Chinese folk religion.)
- There's an afterlife; you get reincarnated based on virtue &c, maybe as a different species. (via Buddhism.) Some people get around this sometimes. (via Taoism)
- Sitting around meditating helps you develop your spiritual power. (via Buddhism? Maybe Taoism too? Not sure on this one.)
- Alchemy, immortals, martial arts, etc (via Taoism)

There is no xianxia without Taoism, it's very deeply rooted in there. You don't have to get into the deep philosophy but it's like saying, "I'm not too keen on explaining Celtic and Norse paganism to my players, so I think I'll cut out Druids and Barbarians."

>>96053167
Man it sounds like you live in Norway or something.

>>96066974
Thanks. I'll work to maintain Taoist elemnts.

>>96041352 (OP)
>>96066974
Has anyone brought up yet stereotypical sorcerers like Lopan or alchemists like Fu Manchu? Gotta have those. Also hopping vampires.

Would Lopan be like, a Wu Jen lich? A taoist mummy?
Are chinese religions similar enough to shinto to use some elements from japanese myth?

>>96066224
>I'm not too keen on explaining things like Buddhism, the Tao,
You don't have to. Pretty much everything that made it up into the Himalayas and down into the river valleys before it leaped across to the Islands is an offshoot of Tantrism anyway.

>>96068109
That was nearly all europe not so long ago, 20 years or so in Spain. The dog of her even opened the door if I said it (her name was xispa, a German pasor) it's bizarre how much worse everything has become in such a brief time.
>>96072207
It's fascinating, lots of different tribes picked this or that of budism, some in the CHinese borders also mixed it with daoism, in the norht stuff like Bon/bo existed, with Tengrism and other shamanic/priestly mixes all around. Is fascinating and a lot of ideas for actual politheistic settings. Lots of different beings too, Long/lu/nagas, Gyalpos/Shen/lars etc

>>96072054
Yellow Peril characters don't really align with either Wuxia or Xianxia fiction since most of the time they are just petty warlords or crime bosses with Gimmicks rather than skilful or powerful individuals, pic being an example of a gimmick.
Fu Manchu has more in common with Blofeld or the Red Skull than he does with Dongfang Bubai or Gao Qiu outside of aesthetic considerations

>>96072388
I remember the villain in The Butterfly Sword resembling those a bit, even if only in appearance.
"Immortal" sorcerers look like something that could definitely work, just gotta make sure they can handle some melee.

>geography measured in billions and trillions of miles
>heaven-defying cheat tools
>tournament arcs
>mystic realm arcs
>more tournament arcs
>auction arcs
>outcast/amnesiac with famous father/mother/clan
>x-colored, yin-yang, five-elements tribulation/divine lightning at regular intervals
>impossibly beautiful female companion/weapon/spirit/rival/wife
>blood spraying out of mouth
>tumbling backwards x distance, like a kite with its string cut
>intense sense of deadly crisis
>jade-like skin/twin peaks/peerless beauty in every city/world/realm, each somehow more peerless than the last
>x girl's primordial yin is a perfect cultivation furnace for young master y
>x incense sticks of time
>I, your father/grandfather am not someone you can afford to offend
>trash believes he can jump cultivation levels to fight esteemed young master
>I will give you this face today
>frog in a well, could not recognize mt. tai, eyes but cannot see
>you mildly inconvenienced me, so I will cripple your cultivation, kill your entire family and dig out your ancestor's graves
>MC, you are going too far
>don't know whether to laugh or cry
>time it takes a spark to fly off a piece of flint
>takes some time to describe, but happened in an instant
>x flicking his sleeve
>this cultivation ground in x world/realm is y times better than the one I just left, twice the results with half the effort
>raping cute girls to cure their incurable illnesses

>didn't know whether to laugh or cry
>wry smile
>time it takes for an incense stick to burn
>trash from the XYZ clan!
>her flawless white/jade-like skin
>have eyes but cant see mt tai
>the difference between heaven and earth
>even though it takes a while to describe something, it happened within the span of a single breath/moment
>bitter smile
>young master, you dare?
>I, your father/grandfather
>you are courting death
>how dare you not give me my face
>spits blood/coughs up blood
>arrogant young master

>>96072458

>auction arcs
>evil uncle/elder that wants to take over the clan/sect
>mother is concubine that was bullied to death by main wife and was probably from famous sect/clan
>awesome immediate family, shitty relatives
>outer/inner/core disciples
>sect contribution points
>famous powerful mentor that saves the MC at the last minute

1 - MC is eating at a restaurant when an arrogant young master arrives. Random side characters talk about how awesome the young master is, how he is one in a million, a dragon among men, yadda yadda.

2 - Young master wants MC's table to which MC refuses causing random side characters to think MC is an idiot, and he is gonna get beaten up, crippled, yadda yadda.

3 - Young master takes it as an insult, MC faceslap him, "You're courting death", random side characters talk.

4 - Young master attacks, random side characters say MC will die, MC easily blocks.

5 - "That was just luck, take this", random side characters say this time MC will die, MC blocks it once again.

6 - "You have some ability, but this is the end of it. Take my ultimate attack" RSC say THIS time MC dies, MC Blocks once again.

7 - "How is this possible!?", no one can believe their eyes, "Now taste my attack."

8 - "MC may have some ability to defend, but defeating young master won't be that easy."

9 - "My god, he defeated young master then crippled him. And MC took all his items and clothes to humiliate him. And the young master has a tiny little dick."

10 - "How dare you do this to me, my uncle/father/grandfather will avenge this offense."

Repeat 4 to 10 against uncle/father/grandfather

Rinse and repeat when done, this time changing table at a restaurant for an item at an auction/an item at a shop/a rare treasure and add some heavenly beauties in between.

Also, each paragraph was a chapter that you paid SS to read.

>>96072466

Some mundane activities that are easy to do, but extremely difficult to do WELL. Can only be accomplished with insane amounts of Qi, Energy, Essence or Intents (whatever that means) and what-have-yous.

Sitting down and meditating in hostile environments (extremely hot, extremely cold, infested with ghosts).

Painting or practicing calligraphy. You think it's easy? Nope! Look at this letter "SWORD." Each stroke carries the sword intents of a warrior with thousands of years of experience! Just looking at this one character can make you level up eleventy times in sword use, and also makes you amazing in bed!

Climbing a set of stairs. The higher you climb, the higher the pressure/ heat/ blah blah blah that will test your fortitude and willpower and whatchamacallit (I shit you not: Tales of Demons and Gods had like a dozen chapters just focusing on a stair-climbing competition).

No matter how awesome or epic the description is, eventually you will sit back and realize you just watch a bunch of people doing inane shit and wonder why you wasted your time reading about them. Excellent entertainment value!

Why do they gotta explain the entire cultivation process every couple chapters? That shit is retarded. Or, chapter starts, MC starts a sword swing, explains everything about sword from forging to enchants, explain years of practice of style of swing, sword connects, chapter ends. Wouldn't be so bad, except the previous 100 chapters explained all that in detail. Explaining the cultivation process over and over again is like if an alien were trying to write a story about humans, and felt the need to explain puberty ever 5 chapters, just in case you didn't understand it the first time it was explained.

>>96072365
Small town? It does sound like one of those where everyone knows each other.

>>96072471

Your character is sitting down alone at a table, where dragons and snakes intermingle.

An arrogant young master enters the establishment. Others present, including a peerless beauty with jade-like skin and eyes like limpid autumn water, comment on how the young master is a dragon among men, who produces clouds with one turn of the hand and rain with another.

After tens breaths of time, the arrogant young master bares fangs and brandishes claws. The young master, as your character's grandfather, demands that your character vacate the table, lest your character court death.

How does your character surmount these winds and waves, and overturn heaven and earth?

>>96072481

there are two problems with the majority of chink shit (I still read the ones that avoid these problems tho):
>1: cultivation is cancer.
Worse than rpg systems. I could not give a fuck if grand junior elder young master dong is one of the top youngsters of the later outer ki grand blossoming heavenly soul stage and thus would normally destroy our protag, who is only of beginning inner ki grand budding heavenly body stage
it's all fucking annoying. At least with rpg systems you get just "oh no he's level 40 and the protag is level 10" without the fucking grandiose prose.
>2: the supporting cast is almost non-existant
while reading jap light novels, the protag almost always is walking around with a friend/harem member who he can talk to, a lot of chink shit will spend 20 chapters in a row with nothing but the protag inner dialogue.
>3: chinks are monsters
too many chink protags are massive fucking assholes, and everyone who doesn't like them is portrayed as moustache-twirling villains
>4: chinese love repeating phrases
your grandaddy me is coughing blood after seeing all those maidens with jade-like skin
jap novels also have the same problem, but I'll admit I'm a hipocrite and say for some reason "it can't be helped", "he's fast" and other jap cliches aren't as annoying to me

The chink novels that aren't xianxia tend to be much better, like amber sword, which while still having flaws, doesn't really have to deal with most of these

>>96072488

I Shall Seal the Heavens has a word count of 3.3 million words.
https://twitter.com/deathbladeissth/status/882429642346450945?lang=en

For comparison, the Wheel of Time has 4,082,987 words across 15 books.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/6caja4/what_is_the_longest_fantasy_series_by_wordcount/

What are the riveting developments to be found across ISSTH's 3.3 million words?

https://i-shall-seal-the-heavens.fandom.com/wiki/Meng_Hao/Cultivation

Qi Condensation First Layer — Chapter 3
Qi Condensation Second Layer — Chapter 7
Qi Condensation Third Layer — Chapter 9
Qi Condensation Fourth Layer — Chapter 14
Qi Condensation Fifth Layer — Chapter 22
Qi Condensation Sixth Layer — Chapter 25
Qi Condensation Seventh Layer — Chapter 44
Qi Condensation Eighth Layer — Chapter 55
Qi Condensation Ninth Layer — Chapter 71
Qi Condensation Tenth Layer — Chapter 86
Qi Condensation Eleventh Layer — Chapter 87
Qi Condensation Twelfth Layer — Chapter 87
Qi Condensation Thirteenth Layer — Chapter 88

First Dao Pillar — Chapter 99
Second Dao Pillar — Chapter 132
Third Dao Pillar — Chapter 132
Fourth Dao Pillar — Chapter 174
Fifth Dao Pillar — Chapter 198
Sixth Dao Pillar — Chapter 228
Seventh Dao Pillar — Chapter 263
Eighth Dao Pillar — Chapter 265
Ninth Dao Pillar — Chapter 272
Tenth Dao Pillar — Chapter 273

Early Core Formation — Chapter 304
Mid Core Formation — Chapter 338
Late Core Formation — Chapter 386
Wood - Greenwood Tree Totem — Chapter 409
Metal - Golden Crow Totem — Chapter 432
Fire - East Pill Everburning Flame Totem — Chapter 449
Earth - Frost Soil Totem — Chapter 473
Water (Life) - Blood Totem — Chapter 513
Water (Death) - Violet Sea Totem — Chapter 521

>>96072495

First Nascent Soul — Chapter 522
Second Nascent Soul — Chapter 522
Third Nascent Soul — Chapter 522
Fourth Nascent Soul — Chapter 522
Fifth Nascent Soul — Chapter 522
Sixth Nascent Soul — Chapter 523
Seventh Nascent Soul — Chapter 527
Eighth Nascent Soul — Chapter 603
Ninth Nascent Soul — Chapter 626

First Spirit Severing — Chapter 677
Second Spirit Severing — Chapter 693

I am not going to bother with the rest. There are a total of 1,614 chapters.

https://i-shall-seal-the-heavens.fandom.com/wiki/Bag_of_holding
>Bags with varying inner storage. It is a spatial storage bag that cultivators use to store pills, magical items, scriptures, spirit stones, herbal plants and other miscellaneous items related to cultivation.
>Bag of Cosmos - substantially bigger than a bag of holding; inner storage is big enough to store a mountain

Never forget that Meng Hao has something as utilitarian as a Bag of Holding.

>>96072502

For what it's worth, a lot of the more recent novels are derivative. They're the equivalent of what those awful LitRPG novels are to fantasy novels. For instance, a really old martial arts novel that was adapted into 'Secret Battles of His Majesty' had a monk who tried to learn a martial art that would let him assassinate the king. He manages to, after tremendous suffering.

It turns out that the ultimate martial art gives him a single month to live. He storms the capital, battles his master (who sided with the Emperor) to near-death, and they agree to fight together to kill the tyrant. When they burst into his room, they're both promptly killed by his (formerly unseen) bodyguard, a sexy female martial artist held back for just this eventuality. The series ends with their deaths and his ascension to the throne, whereupon he rules harshly but justly for fifty years.

>>96072477
2500 people or so, now more. But really that stuff wasn't rare at all, it was extremely comfy, but now people don't even let the bikes outside without chaining them and every week you hear some drug dealer or other shenaningans.
>>96072502
I think I only enjoyed ONE cultivation novel and that was Reverend insanity. So much so than fang yuan became one of my prefered characters ever.

>>96072540
At least also read Lord of the Mysteries then, before the cartoon is released.

I heard that The Grandmaster Strategist is really good, but the kinda translations we get clearly made most of everything end up being lost in translation - like with Iron Ladies, you can still guess where the jokes are, even if you don't get them.

>>96072566
>lord of mysteries.
I tried it a few times, it just didn't click, I got about 150 chapters or so and I was bored to death with it.

>>96072488
Koreans somehow do it better for.

>>96072488
>3: chinks are monsters
>too many chink protags are massive fucking assholes, and everyone who doesn't like them is portrayed as moustache-twirling villains
Kinda feels like they consider arrogance a virtue. Maybe like an unironic Chad meme.

>>96074818
Aggreed. Regressor's Tale of Cultivation is the only pure cultivation story I've enjoyed, and arguably only fails number 4 of those points. (It's still cultivation, so if you think it's cancer you'll probably not change your mind, but it's well-developed and the MC pursues multiple paths keeping things interesting.)

Cultivation fiction sounds really complex and a little tiresome. Is it possible to have Wuxia without all that Xianxia stuff, but still have magical/spiritual elements? I'm going for something like Jade Empire in tone.

>>96045286
The Romans called it dignitas, it's hardly a unique concept. You'd think the Chinese invented pride and shame.

>>96076379
Well, maybe shame.

>>96041352 (OP)
Well, what about kinds of settings that work mixed with wuxia/xianxia-settings?

>>96076392
In Spain we had Honor, and Honra. Honor was the public face, honra your own view of yourself. It was honorary to let a granny of your enemies to sit down in your place in the theater if the circumstances so dictated, but it tarnished your honra so you had to something to your enemy to compensate.
To illustrate it, a quite famous tale, of a servant than than killed his master because the master backhanded him, citing " he was as christiano viejo as him", in other words, he was a servant perhaps and working for him was honorable, but not some half blood mutt and he was to have his respect, and would kill it to save his honra.

>>96076362
>. Is it possible to have Wuxia without all that Xianxia stuff
yeah, that's most Wuxia fiction

>>96078383
Funny enough, the Koreans write a lot of it, xianxia is mainly chinese and they don't make as much Wuxia, wich for me is the superior genre (I read Condor Heroe and a few more like the Gentleman one, and its truly good literature, wich you feel lose a lot of they meaning without it being read in chinese).

>>96078383
>>96078470
Well, I meant specifically that I want to have an Oriental-flavored martial arts action game with magical elements, but not with all the xianxia cultivations stuff beyond maybe a few mentions of the Great Masters.

>>96079229
>that I want to have an Oriental-flavored martial arts action game with magical elements, but not with all the xianxia cultivations stuff beyond maybe a few mentions of the Great Masters.
Yeah, that's possible, stuff like Mortal Kombat or Big Trouble in Little China do neither of those care that much for the reason behind the magic

>>96079322
Yeah! The tone I'm going for is even a sort of outsider's perspective of the story; regional overlords inspired by Daimyo are called Barons, for example, and the Samurai-inspired warrior-class are just called Knights, because they're armored and mounted.

>>96042890
My setting is a mix of ancient Greece (with philosophical schools of thought), ancient china (righteous and demonic factions and an empire) with manapunk technology.
Do whatever you want.

>>96079405
What kind of philosophy are you using? I was thinking of ripping off Open Palm and Closed Fist.

>>96079430
It depends on the school of thought.
Like one is based on stoicism and by studying there, you can comprehend different kinds of spells than someone going full cynicism.

Would a Frumentarii-esque organization of Imperial Couriers be out of place in a setting like this? I like the idea of it doubling as a spy and assassination network within the Empire, to maintain the Imperial Order.

>>96079485
Isn't that just the Jinyiwei of the Ming Dynasty?

>>96078470
The koreans make portal fiction with video game mechanics instead.

>>96041352 (OP)
do you really need anything else?

>>96079735
>we asked around, and not enough people in this room would fuck you, so you don't get to be a Samurai.

>>96079545
They were more like the official secret police of the Empire. I'm hoping more for sort of internal intelligence agency that keeps the capital informed of the comings and goings of the bordermarches.

>>96079735
Isn't this a really racist book?

>>96086261
In a hilarious way. Comeliness is a literal racial stat and the higher it is, the more repulsive you are to any race but your own.

>>96086286
Amazing.

>>96086286
Unearthed Arcana made that a stat first
>>96086261
I'd call it ignorant more than intentionally racist. Despite Gygax's reverence and research into European history in his pre-D&D days, there wasn't any thought into creating OA other than "those oriental movies with the kung fu samurais are popular, what sounds cool and exotic?"

>>96043916
Tell us more about Daxin?

>>96089302
It's some asshole's shitty homebrew setting.

Also, stop replying to yourself.

NEXT.

>>96089293
>there wasn't any thought into creating OA other than "those oriental movies with the kung fu samurais are popular, what sounds cool and exotic?"
Back in the day, D&D just followed the Rule of Cool.

>>96086261
I've only heard of newfags complaining that the "Oriental Adventures" name for the 3e one sounded racist or whatever for some reason. So I don't think there has been an official OA type book for 4e or 5e.

>>96091392
I'll check it out, then. Could mine it for inspiration.

>>96090472
Who spit in your cornflakes, dude?

>>96093249
Oh absolutely, you may want to check the Kara-Tur boxed set, which details the kingdoms from OA better. There are stand ins for China, Japan, India and some of South Asia.
The writer himself openly says he might get some of the cultural details wrong, but he's making the whole thing in good faith.

>>96093319
*South East Asia

lots of arrogant young masters ITT

>>96041614
People having cool animal name titles, if there isn't atleast three characters with names like "the fifth roaring dragon" you are doing it wrong.

You eat a pill, sit on your ass for several years, and once you're done, you go from rank 8 ping-pong to rank 2 ching-chong, which is still like hundred ranks below the Heavenly Golden Dragon God Emperor Star Ancestor, but it's ok since there are still about 3000 chapters to go and all the big dick characters that could kill you with a fart are currently busy, so you can go and wipe out the Ding-Dong clan, which obsessively wants you dead because you courted death by destroying the King-Kong clan after it's young Master picked a fight with you over your jade-like beauty childhood friend.

>>96041614
Training sequence.

>>96042890
How well do you know china to begin with?

Piggy. Asura.

>>96055845
Why the fuck would it do that?

>>96079485
Not at all, every (competent) empire had something like this even if they werent as well-developed. You'll have to scrape off the Roman-unique paint like them doubling as couriers and grain logistics, and having legionary ranks

>>96041352 (OP)
That's a cool picture.

>>96094245
Walk like a pigeon, sit like a tortoise, sleep like a dog.

>>96089302
I've developed a rice-backed currency system inspired by the Japanese koku, a unit of measurement that reflects the volume of rice required to feed a man for a year, which I've rounded to 200 liters.

>>96047869
Sect politics are hilarious bullshit, you have to keep a mental list of thousands of names just so you don't accidentally end up pissing one of those people off.

>>96055624
Usually you've got animal and plant people, literal demons from a hell dimension and artifact/object spirits.

>>96066224
Hope you've got the Investure of the Gods memorized if you actually wanna use religion.

>>96072488
Because being nice will unironically get your ass merc'd in the average xianxia setting, if you're not paranoid enough some old asshole is going to pop out of thin air and rob your ass before turning you into a ingredient for some fucked up thing. No kidness goes unpunished in these stories.

>>96072566
While the adventures of Gehrman Sparrow, horror of the seven seas are fun purely because of how many madlad things the protagonist gets up to, once he becomes a worm that walks the whole story becomes a gambit pileup played between a bunch of ancient assholes who might or might not be Amon.

>>96076362
Most Wuxia stuff has people still be killable even once they become one-man armies, it's just extremely impropable that you'll be able to deal with a man who is a walking sky with the sky being his sword.

>>96086261
I don't want you on this site if you care about that.

>>96094245
Most xianxia stuff is lucky if it gets above 300 chapters as the writer either burns out, has a actual goddamn job or is in and out of hospitals for a billion reasons.

>>96100795
Duly noted.

>>96098561
Why? Do your players care about the economic underpinnings of the setting?

I'd say just write a novel, but Martin's wrong; readers don't care about tax policy.

>>96103893
What's a good level of narrative worldbuilding, then?

>>96105187
To the point where your players care and no further.

>>96100809
It all seems so tedious and tiresome.

>>96113130
Kind of like your attempts to bump this thread, huh?

>>96055624
Aren't Yaoguai basically "Anything goes"?
Animal-people, fiends, personification of hatred, some angry ghost taking human shape....
That and some are solitary, some form communities, some are evil, some are wise.

Though I guess you wouldn't find a Bison-yaoguai but chinese animals like rats and snakes and monkes.

>>96115900
They're the Chinese yokai, so that makes sense to me. Monster, demon, ghost.

I'm planning to implement a monk who'd performed a perversion of sokushinbutsu to become a sort of lich-like spiritual vampire.

I just wanted to share that, because I think it's cool.

>>96125167
>a perversion of sokushinbutsu
Like how? Is he going to crash the supply-side economy by starving himself to death? Will Supply-Side Jesus come down and try to force-feed him all the tofu dishes he refuses to eat?

>>96125292
Self-mummification in pursuit of a post-Taoist, youwei-oriented attempt at flaunting the laws of nature.

>>96094245
I still how how accurate that is every time i read it.

>>96125537
They're Buddhists. Through self-mummification, they're demonstrating that life and death are one. Even if one of them would keep on giving lessons as a mummy, there would be nothing evil about it. It would be all the better as a demonstration if one of them kept on preaching even after his eye balls have fallen out of his skull, as it would demonstrate what a powerful monk he is most splendidly.
Also
>stores full of the freshest, most exotic tantric Sanskrit magic literature, fresh from the Western lands
>use Taoist theories about huffing sulfur and chugging mercury
Not even once.
Somebody very advanced in their Buddhist studies could still become a Youkai by fucking up their Buddha-mind somewhere along the way though. There was a story about a gay monk who became a Zombie and ate his lover.

>>96125599
Why do the Chinese put up with it?

>>96066224
You don't need to. Most Xianxia don't give a fuck about the actual beliefs beyond lightly using well-known words like "the dao that can be spoken is not the true dao", "red dust by the roadside" and having buddhists offer to help you "cross the sea of suffering" by killing you and taking your things.

It's on average no more real ancient china and real ancient chinese concepts than AD&D is real ancient europe. Heavily inspired, yes, just like it is by Jin Yong's sects, Legend of the Swordsmen of the Mountains of Shu, Journey to the West and various webnovels but it is it's own fantasy thing and not really historical or very focused on the real deal except as an exception to make a scene cooler or if the author is really into a historical period.

Anyway i'd start with OD&D or AD&D because the actual journey they go through is highly similar.
They explore a sandbox setting, go into dungeons (ancient cultivator tombs/inheritances, secret realms either owned by sects or fought over, etc) where you can decide to push your luck or take the treasure and run, wilderness where powerful demon-animals (including sentient ones) can fuck you up and all sorts of thing abounds, city adventures that are mostly faction play all of which relies on taking risk/violence/powerful backers, you leave weaker areas for more powerful ones because you don't get exp for dealing with too weak stuff (AD&D-specific and ties well into the leaving your weaker backwards region to go closer to the central place, possibly returning for some badass dungeon you couldn't deal with) and higher level adventures are planar which fits higher realms very well.
XP for treasure/herbs/spirit stones also fits readily into this along with training costs/downtime cultivation.
Honestly the only thing I think it wouldn't model out of the box well is different techniques, but my inclination would just to have you treat them as weapons and spells for gameplay trumping simulationism.

>>96072495
>>96072502
The mcdonalds pasta is funny. This one is just retarded if you've actually read either one.
>What are the riveting developments to be found across ISSTH's 3.3 million words?
Significantly more than can be found in all of Wheel of Time, even before Sanderson shat it up with his incapability of writing half the characters, and that's without trying to argue from this kind of retard reductionism and actually reading the books.
By the same retard metric nothing happened in WoT beyond Rand learning to weave magic before becoming his troo self and becoming good at magic. (which is ridiculous, there was lots of braid tugging, plots that went nowhere and fake swears filling out those four books of content dragged out over 11 books of paper)

>>96076362
Yes, either high-powered Wuxia or Xuanhuan.

>>96086261
Not really. Not to my taste though.
>>96089293
Gygax didn't write OA, it was roughly a year after he had checked out, his name is on it because it sparked from some ideas he and a french rpg designer whose name I forget dreamed up and it gave him royalties. I think the copyright fight over it was actually what lead to him leaving TSR for good but I forget the exact details.
In any case it was written wholesale by Zeb Cook and Gygax was disappointed with the end-product as his and the french dudes notes were more or less ignored and the french dude wasn't brought on to write it despite being a big name.

>>96125782
Because you can make anything sound retarded if you go out of your way to maliciously summarize it.
Nevermind that the average cultivation novel doesn't spend time on secluded cultivation. They're pulp action novels for men with some cultural chinese fantasy tropes. Like levelling, elves and magic-users for D&D.

>>96126045
>higher level adventures are planar which fits higher realms very well
Can you expand on this? Am new to all ching chong stories but I am curious because I keep seeing this kind of threads here and on /v/.
Are the "realms" just different worlds like hell world, heaven world, fire world... shit like that? In other words, am working on such a setting, I could sendmy players to the demon realm so that they can retrieve a mcguffin? Do characters in these stories use portals to jump realms or is it more like "You jump so high that you reach the heaven realm in the clouds" or "dig too deep" kind of situation for hell?

Legit curious.

>>96129480
Secret Realms are small minor dimensions, like say a jungle or an island, usually with some centerpiece inheritance place. Used in stories as secret MC treasures or commonly for multiple sects to send in disciples into as a way to fight for opportunities. (the usual explanation is that it was setup by some more powerful cultivator looking for inheritors to their techniques and they setup a ban on more powerful and/or elderly/untalented cultivators preventing them from robbing the place clean when they're not fit to inhert) These may require multiple stronger people to be present to open them for their disciples and/or only open once every couple of years.

For "higher" worlds they ascend leaving their original world when they become too strong and become "rejected by heaven"/forced to ascend and come to a new world with higher level cultivators and new locales. Maybe the lower world is controlled by a human empire and is more earth-like while higher ones may be ruled by cultivator sects, cultivator families, open clans, powerful beings etc. (it varies by story)
Sometimes instead of having a higher world they instead have continent regions where the first area will be poor (maybe with some secrets to it) and the closer to the centre of power you get the more fantastical and powerful things get and there may be huge distances or bans on more powerful beings passing through regions so a big bad in a region might be a lesser cultivator from one of the other ones.
As for travelling to hell, the heavenly court and so on yes they do that. Either by that being a much higher world they ascend into or by having them connect to that world through portals like ghost gates going there or being brought there by someone related to it. Sometimes they're just part of the base world like one region being the not-east china sea with the dragon king's palace full of underwater sea soldiers and clans.

>>96126045
The Chinks have the benefit of cultural osmosis that you don't enjoy.

>>96131186
This, there are lots of "we just now" stuff in Xianxia stuff, than foreigners have to study and even then will not know.
Like Hand gestures, they are very cultural specific.

>>96126045
Some Germs tried that with this easter bunny movie and the thing came across like the most awkward CCP propaganda.

>>96126135
Xuanhuan sounds like the tone I'm going for.

>>96089293
Dragon magazine 3 had the Beauty stat, but only for women. Check it out, it's stupid as fuck. You can just get any man to strip for you, items, armor. But the rings and talismans stay on.

>>96066224
Usually in these threads we talk about xianxia, but in wuxia you have various religious organizations based on their respective mountain:
- Shaolin Temple, Buddhist (male) monks
- Wudang School, Daoists priests
- Emei Sect, women's religious sect who are very womanly women, usually founded by a Daoist priestess but in some stories they're Buddhist nuns. To make matters more confusing, some writers have the Emei accept male disciples.

If I am the GM I run the Emei as an eclectic, syncretist, and women's only religious organization dedicated to pursuit of beauty and of martial and spiritual development.

These are all orthodox school in the jianghu, i.e. almost always "good guys" and they're basically "must have" factions for pretty much most wuxia stories.

For instance in Age of Kung Fu you have those three, then a Beggar faction who are also necessary good guys, then the neutral guys who are the obligatory (Confucian!!!) Scholar faction and a token edgy assassination-y sect (the Tangmen), and lastly the bad guys who are the emperor's Royal Guard ("pre-communist government = bad" in a theme that happens frequently) and the mandatory villainous faction who are merciless and train in secret (in AoKF it's the Wanderer's Valley Sect, do note that these guys hail from a valley while the good guys are usually headquartered in mountains - except the Beggars).

In novels you have unorthodox schools like:
- Ming Cult, Manichaeists who are actually good guys despite not being perceived as such because they're secretive
- Holy Silkworm Cult based on a Chinese folk deity of silk and sericulture
- Sun Moon Holy Cult, led by Dongfang Bubai who castrated himself to learn the Sunflower Manual, who fights with flying needles with red string and he's an LGBT icon among wuxia readers and disproportionally popular even though he appeared in only one chapter.

>>96136762
Damn you brought back memories.
9Dragons and Age of KungFu/Wushu was my first intro to wuxia video games and has left an itch that I could never scratch again.

What's a good system for running a wuxia/xianxia game?

>>96137136
GURPS, Star Wars D6 or RIFTS.

>>96137136
Bandits on the Water Margin, if you want a very specific type of Wuxia game.
Finding a copy online is probably the bigger issue

>>96041352 (OP)
The key to all stories is rape.

>>96041352 (OP)
>muh BIG NUMBERS
All Asians, Chink, Nip or otherwise, have an obsession with rankings, big numbers, and crap that doesn't contribute anything but background fluff hammered in by their society

>>96139281
You're joking, but Grasping Evil is a pretty good novel.

>>96041352 (OP)
Chinese people see yuri as a gateway into having a threesome with two girls. Many don't recognize lesbian sex as a thing. So if you ever do wuxia or xianxia, remember that players (especially Chinese) will interpret any and all female relationships as a potential future threesome. This also goes for polygamous lesbians. For them, it's just more female bodies in the foursome, fivesome, onward.

>>96139470
>why do people accept yuri but hate yaoi
duh straight men like yuri, straight women like yaoi.
>Chinese people see yuri as a gateway into having a threesome with two girls. Many don't recognize lesbian sex as a thing.
that's not a chinese exclusive thing

>>96140599
That used to be the norm and still is the norm, but apparently nowadays a buncha people think that lesbian porn is a gateway and slippery slope for vulnerable males deciding to go MtF.

And we used to laugh at the Romans, who proposed that giving your wife head and not face fucking her when she gives you head was gay.

>>96089293
>I'd call it ignorant more than intentionally racist. Despite Gygax's reverence and research into European history in his pre-D&D days, there wasn't any thought into creating OA other than "those oriental movies with the kung fu samurais are popular, what sounds cool and exotic?"
I know you haven't read it just from this. There's all sorts of bizarrely obscure SE Asian stuff and Philippino stuff inaddition to Chinese and Japanese. Research was obviously done, but its a bit of a clusterfuck. Everything leanable from the local library is probably in the book

>>96142909
>it sparked from some ideas he and a french rpg designer whose name I forget dreamed up
>In any case it was written wholesale by Zeb Cook and Gygax was disappointed with the end-product as his and the french dudes notes were more or less ignored and the french dude wasn't brought on to write it despite being a big name.
François Marcela-Froideval, died last month. Gygax actually write an intro for Froideval's version that got pulled due to TSR meddling.
It was originally meant to be a Greyhawk supplement that added areas to western Oerth.
OA, PHB2, the Thief-Acrobat, the original samurai class, MM2 and early BECMI world stuff were Froideval's ideas or partly his ideas.
He also edited Casus Belli magazine, wrote for the Black Moon Chronicles comic and did the writing for a bunch of Cryo games.

So uh any games?

>>96079735
I've started reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and was wondering about Domain play in OA. 0D&D to 1AD&D had this weird focus on castle lords inviting adventurers to jousting and knightly tournaments. But what would be the Chinese/Japanese equivalent? I see holding feasts as the main thing in RoT3K, and I remember from Journey to the West that Sun Wukong was entertaining his demon brothers by showcasing his weapons (and promptly breaking them, leading to his quest to find the As-You-Will 800 pounds golden cudgel). I remember L5R having tea and origami ceremonies...

>>96145845
Remove the horses and tell anyone wants to become the next General Who Manifests Spaghetti to grab a staff and hit each other in a single elimination tournament till either one surrenders, or first blood.
Why, yes, it's not the equivalent of jousting, and I just made it up on the fly.

>>96145845
Ladder climbing contests? New year dragon costume duels?

Just going from what anons mentioned here and hong kong movies.

How much cultural synthesis is too much cultural synthesis before the pot is over-seasoned? Like, I'm trying a sort of Tekumel-ish cultural fusion to make a 'mythic orient.'

>>96155435
If you're intentionally doing cultural synthesis at all you're doing Xuanhuan, embrace it

>>96157308
Fantastic; thank you so much!

>>96041352 (OP)
ur mum lmao

>>96162000
You are courting death!

>>96162197
me when i'm courting death: Damn, Death, you lookin' fine today.

>>96167947
Nephrite skin and eyes like limpid pools...

Did anyone mention tribulations

>>96174267
What are tribulations, within this context?

>>96179616
when you cultivate to certain levels the heavens get mad and send a bunch of lightning bolts at you, you have to survive these and reach the next level or you die, and most people die.

>>96179616
>>96182961
If you freak out hard enough, freak accidents start happening to you.
aka you get deliberately targeted by lighting strikes.

>>96182961
>>96182976
So the universe pushes back against you pushing back against it. I like that; it makes sense, since Cultivation seems to go against the natural order of the Dao.

Can anyone recommend music to play during this sort of game?

>>96190493
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yRjPxpAutso

>>96190493
>>96190659
Actually my bad, it was supposed to be this
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fEmcQN2NHD4

What should I be searching for to find that twangy, drum-heavy music? Something like this, but maybe not so electronic?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUvpFQnqnHk

>>96194550
This one is probably more errs on the side of western rockthan what you're looking for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fibnZC0bxNc

>>96190493
The entire OST of Dynasty Warriors

>>96197394
This is genius, of course. It should have occurred to me.

>>96196833
https://youtu.be/YC8cuvaS41s?feature=shared

>>96075035
in the west things like personal strength, intelligence, charisma, etc are more socially acceptable to brag about than things outside your control like connections or family status/background or being lucky. Even very wealthy and very powerful people go to great lengths to whitewash their backgrounds or portray themselves as self-made underdogs. Even if they really are nepo babies and silver spoons people will say "I got lucky' and "I'm doing very well/I'm very comfortable but I wouldn't say I'm rich" because it's considered tacky to brag about those things. Where somebody's from, what their accent sounds like, and even now they dress is also not a very good indicator or predictor for class unlike many other countries, somebody with a deep southern drawl might be a blue collar laborer or he might have three generations of oil money, somebody with a harsh new york accent might be a Manhattan finance guy or he might be a cashier.
In China your family status and connections are literally considered just as if not more important than personal qualities and are categorized in the same group as being strong/smart/handsome/skilled, and since China is largely ethnically homogeneous ("han chinese" being a hodgepodge of millenia of conquest and subjugation aside, to the chinese they're all the same) they have massively cranked up regional discrimination. And since the difference between living in a "tier one" city and some countryside boonie is shitting on a fancy toilet with heated seats and a bidet vs a literal latrine hole in the ground outhouse, things like accents and regional discrimination are a much bigger deal the same way people in the UK judge somebody ten different ways based on two sentences of word choice associated with a specific class.

This leads to "arrogant young masters" behaving in cringe worthy ways that most Westerners would associate with insecure nouveau riche even though they're meant to be some 10,000 year old dynasty or megacorp ceo

>>96197992
Haha. Silly.

>>96190493
https://youtu.be/X70m65dSM7g?si=oIRlYmXY8vnnFsZQ

>>96200043
This is pretty fantastic.

>>96094245
>>96139423
"YOU COURT DEATH" is such an awesome thing to mindlessly shout before a random battle.

>>96202501
Even better when it's for little reason

>>96126045
BAN GUNHA BAN GUNHA BAN GUNHA

>>96041352 (OP)
I have the exact screenshot

>>96194550
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iNS2XSwKKE

What are good ways of doing tournaments in Wuxia/ Martial Arts fantasy?

>>96126045
>BAN GUNHA
Gunha-dono...

>>96041352 (OP)
Rape is the key.

>>96139348
You say that, but for a novel about being evil there's exceedingly little rape. It's rather disappointing. Did he even bang those knights from the all female red grass realm?
>>96145845
>>96215106
hunting competitions, ancestral drum banging competition, pill refining competitions, king of the hill (pagoda/tower/pyramid).
>>96182961
some novels contextualize tribulations as a heavenly baptism to cleanse your body for improved circulation of higher energy. But most people are scrubs that forgot to git gud before ascending.

>>96228580
>You say that, but for a novel about being evil there's exceedingly little rape.
I dimly recall him raping hundreds of women, whom he trapped in his private sex pocket dimension. He also initially raped most of his harem members.
Honestly, dude should've been a dolphin in his past life.

>>96215106
>Wuxia
Settling disputes: ownership of something, leadership over the Wulin, anything really.
Selecting and ranking promising youngsters to promote within a given faction.
>Martial Arts fantasy
The tournament is how a nation's monarch is chosen.
It's simply a sporting event and most of the fighters are looking for the usual motivations such as money, fame or proving themselves.
>Either
Overconfident villain hosts a tournament and sends challenges to multiple enemies of his to get rid of them - or if the enemies are entire factions, at least to get rid of their best fighters - by having them all in one place and fighting each other.

>>96229098
>The tournament is how a nation's monarch is chosen.

One day, in the year of the fox
Came a time remembered well
When the strong young man
Of the rising sun
Heard the tolling of the great black bell
One day in the year of the fox
When the bell began to ring
It meant the time
Had come for one to go
To the temple of the king

>>96215106
Sect training potentially lethal or not, winners get some rewards and can even move up the ranks. (servants/outer disciples -> inner disciples -> core disciples -> personal disciples of elders)
Multiple sects, friendly or not, showing off the strength of their younger generation. Usually involves some fuckery or targeting of the ultra-talented.
Similar things in an army setting except it's different divisions showing off against each other and for the top brass. Usually involves resources for the group in question.
Can also be national tournaments meant to find recruitable talent, have the sects show off and suppress imperial power or vice versa (most likely the latter since it's probably the emperor calling for it), have foreign dignitaries try and suppress it with their own talents and so on.

Okay lads, I'm reading water margin,extremely kekworthy, I'm in the part of one of hte bandits going in drunken rampage in the mountains and killing a tiger with his hands, also sociopathic chinks isn't anything new, the amount of crazy stuff than happens in that novel is incredible and it has some very funny names.
So as asome on than only has liked Rverend insanity and it was some years back, what are good xianxia novels? I prefer lower power levels (universe tossing shit extremely bores me,reverend insanity had a nice power level ranking and it was everything confined in a world), love monsters, love crazy magic, anyone can recomend me something?

>>96230296
It's a manwa (and not a novel adaptation) but I'm quite fond of Song of the Sky Pacers.

>>96230324
Luv manwa too, I'm reading the Reaper right now, but I'm trying to uderstand chink mentality better and books offer that in Spades, RI introduced me to all the bug like mind tricks of face, using social expectations to get out scot free and how to subvert it, amazing , Great Love venerable sure shows us a lot about chinese culture.

>>96230296
Chaotic Evil Pokemon battles, aka The Charm of Soul Pets and Gaslight SPC aka Lord of the Mysteries were solid, I also like Chinese Autismo Heinlein, aka 40.000 Years of Cultivation.

>but I'm trying to uderstand chink mentality better
There was one of the dad-themed quick transmigration novels that did a very good job of shining a light on the mental framework of 20st century Chinese. Could've been The Analects of Righteous Father’s Collapse.

>>96230296
Try Journey To The West.

>>96229705
Holy shit, this is great.

The Man on the Silver Mountain could also work as the inspiration for a great Sage or something.

>>96228878
It's not rape if their eyes turn to hearts at the end. If he actually did hundreds, that might have been the knights I was thinking of.
>>96230296
World of cultivation is pretty low power level and doesn't have any higher realms. It's also one of the few where the side characters are demonstrated to have some agency and feel like they're more than window dressing.