Saturday, March 17, 2012

Flying Swordsmen is here!

That's right, Flying Swordsmen RPG is now available for download!  Get it RIGHT HERE!  For free!

I've got it up on my Mediafire account right now.  I'll be contacting some places like 1KM1KT to see if I can get it up there as well, and maybe the OneBookShelf group.  If you'd like to host a link to it on your website or blog, that's fine with me, too.  Reviews and actual play reports are welcome as well.

Special thanks to DaXiong Guo for the awesome cover art!
Thanks to Dylan of Digital Orc and Lee of The Plateau of XOLGMOD for art and design help.
Thanks to Matt of THE LAND OF NOD and David of Tower of the Archmage for editing help.  Any errors, omissions or confusing bits left in the text are all my fault.

30 comments:

  1. Looking at it now \ pretty cool! Thanks a bunch! If you move back to Japan and run a game count me in!

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  2. It's a great game, and I was happy to work on it.

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  3. I really like how you have taken everything from Dungeons & Dragons and made it completely Chinese in flavour: crazy stunts, ying and yang magic, shamans, martial arts manoeuvres, chi.

    I also like how at different points you exhort creativity even to the extent of reflavouring spells and components.

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  4. Hey, what more could a guy ask for? Oh a six-demon bag!

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  5. This is really great! I've only skimmed it so far, but it's clear there's a lot of work gone into this and it shows. Top stuff.

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  6. I just had the chance to glance at it, but it looks really neat so far. Awesome work!

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  7. Reading it now. Congrates Dennis.
    -Josh

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  8. Now I have to read the other 100+ pages I didn't work on :)
    At my XOLGMOD blog I'll probably post F.S. characters and creatures in the manga style I occasionally indulge in...

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  9. wait, wait... so how do I get this as a deadwood copy? because that is a book I'd love to have in my shelf

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    1. I'll look into it. I may put it up as a for-cost POD sometime in the future.

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  10. Thanks for all the positive responses! Hopefully we'll get some reviews and even an actual play report or two soon. :D

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  11. I downloaded and am still reading through it. Looks good and is organized well. Seems like you added a lot of rules to go with flavor vs. just re-skinning. That goes a long way in my book. I think the OSR has enough base clones to start working on the next level to have new material that is compatible but original. This product is a good example of someone doing that.

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  12. This looks really cool. As someone who studied East Asian history, it is nice to see more attention paid to actual Chinese mythology, rather than the mishmash (and often pure nonsense) of Oriental Adventures.

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  13. On the game page, you say that it "takes direct inspiration from a "lost" martial arts game". Can you elaborate on that? What lost game?

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  14. Flying Swordsmen is a simulacrum of Dragon Fist, by Chris Pramas (who later left WotC to start Green Ronin), put out as a freebie on the WotC website in 1999 or early 2000. I've added a lot to it over the course of creating it, and modified some, but the essentials are still there. If Dragon Fist had ever received any support besides a single module, that material would be compatible with Flying Swordsmen.

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  15. Downloaded this gem, had a read thru, and.. great work! Can't wait to run this with the gang this coming weekend. A question though: what's the relationship between armor & maneuvers? There's references sprinkled within the book but no real concrete mechanic.

    Again, kudos on a really cool game.

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  16. Actually, I just recently noticed I forgot to put it in the combat section (along with combat modifiers for certain conditions like shooting into melee). Next 'printing' of the game will correct that.

    Unless you are a Fighter with the Guardian profile (or find some magical armor that allows it or an esoteric technique somewhere...), wearing armor keeps you from performing martial arts maneuvers (but not stunts).

    Of course, individual GMs may rule as they like regarding certain maneuvers (like increased damage or weapon training) still working in armor. Anything movement related (leaping, flying, balancing), and the stance maneuvers, should never be allowed in armor.

    Glad you like the game! Please let me know how it goes with your group this weekend!

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  17. Downloaded and reading through. So far this is great, thanks for writing this up.

    Question: I noticed you dealt with the redundancy of knowing multiple stances by having the weaker versions give a bonus to the highest form, but the "Fists of X" maneuvers don't have anything similar. Should a character be getting some sort of bonus for having, say, both "Fists of Iron" and "Fists of Jade?"

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  18. In the original Dragon Fist game, the Fists of X maneuvers were a chain, and you couldn't learn a higher level one without knowing all the lower level ones. I decided to remove the prerequisites for the more powerful ones, but not to add any superior benefit for having both.

    The stance maneuvers work the same in Flying Swordsmen and Dragon Fist.

    Just decisions I made. If you want to add a bonus to damage (or to hit maybe?) for knowing a higher level Fist maneuver, that probably won't break things. And I'll note this for any revisions I make in the future.

    Thanks, Archaeopteryx!

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  19. THANK YOU!!!!! You have made my gaming life complete!. I have waited for Dragon Fist forever and you have completed the task.

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  20. Rules question. Would the shaman spell Immortal Aura's +1 to attack allow someone to hit magical creatures since it a magical boost?

    Thanks

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  21. Concerning the above question would that apply to any magic attack spell such as Assassin's Needles and Fire Eyes?

    Thanks again!

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  22. Yes to all of these. Any spell counts as a magical attack, and will damage creatures only hurt by magic weapons. If you want Immortal's Aura to allow that, sure, allow it. If you don't, then by all means don't.

    Assuming you also posted about the Xia NPC monster, yes, you are correct that they get 1 spell per day each of Shaman and Wizard spells of 1st, 2nd and 3rd level. So they have 9 spells. The spells mimic a lot of martial arts maneuvers from movies, so this is a quick way to cover more bases. And remember, all the NPCs are guidelines for GMs. If you want a Xia that doesn't have spells, or that has more spells, no one's going to stop you.

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  23. 감사합니다! Yes, that was me who posted above.

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  24. I did not see the following explicitly in Flying Swordsmen. Did I miss it in the text?

    Stunt die increase in DF was stated as this :

    Improving Stunt Dice
    Each time a character goes up in level, one of his or her stunt dice increases by one type. Depending on the new level, this improves a Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary ability score.

    New Level
    2 Primary
    3 Secondary
    4 Tertiary
    5 Primary
    6 Secondary
    7 Tertiary
    8 Primary
    9 Secondary
    10 All

    Thanks again for a great game.

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  25. It's in there, at the end of the character class section, in the part about leveling up. Due to copyright laws requiring different presentation, I just explained it in a paragraph form, rather than chart form.

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  26. Aha! I see it now.

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  27. great... I still have Dragonfist in my HD but this will help to show it around :)

    actually it's the only MA that I like more than 1st ed oriental adventures :)

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