Last week, the family took a vacation to Japan. We met up with quite a few old friends, ate a lot of great Japanese food, and brushed up on our Japanese skills. I also found out that I've come to instinctually say thanks to people in Korean, which got a few confused looks and annoyed my wife (who is Korean).
Unfortunately, my wife caught covid while we were there, and I got it from her after we got home. It's not too bad this second time around. The first time I got it, back in 2021, I was on my ass for a day and a half or so, and it was like a bad flu. This time, it's more like a cold, and not an especially bad one, either. Which is good. Anyway, I'm feeling better today.
While I haven't been blogging much, I have been tinkering with ideas for a second edition of Flying Swordsmen, using Open d6. I mentioned that before. So far, I think I have the Abilities, basic Skills, and special Martial Arts Powers and Techniques all listed out. I based the Powers and Techniques off of class bonuses, martial arts maneuvers, and spells from the 1st edition, but the list is pretty slimmed down. There are a few new things on the list as well.
The Powers are modeled on the Force Skills in Star Wars d6. For each full Die in a Power, you get a Technique (or two?). So far, I've got six Powers, each granting a basic Technique with the first die. When additional dice are gained, there are several choices like feat trees that players can choose from. Some techniques are limited by how many dice you have in the power, and by prerequisite lesser Techniques.
I've been monkeying around with weapon stats, using Star Wars and d6 Fantasy as a basis. The two games have some different assumptions, so I'll end up going my own route with them. For now, though, I'm finding it a bit hard to differentiate some of the weapons. I think I need to sit down and work out the combat system in a bit more detail.
I decided one Ability will be Prowess, which covers melee weapons combat, with skills for different weapon groups. Thrown and Missile weapons are under Agility, while Kung Fu (unarmed strikes) are under Might. There's a Stratagem skill under Intelligence that I want to use for special maneuvers and the like, but certain weapons would allow certain special maneuvers with the base combat skill. So if you want to disarm someone and you're wielding a straight sword or a halberd, you'd need to use Stratagem. But if you have a hook sword or a double-stick (nunchaku), you could use your Sword Combat or Chain Combat skill, depending on your weapon, with a slightly higher Difficulty.
I need to work out the Kung Fu skill in a bit more detail. It will combine Brawling and the Martial Arts subskill from Star Wars, so you can use it to pummel opponents, but also to try to pull reverses, throws, use your opponent's momentum against them, and all that sort of thing. I need to figure out what the standard Difficulties should be for those sorts of things, and how easy or hard it should be for the opponent to resist/counter the attacks. There's also a Stance skill (under Agility) that allows for dodging or avoiding attacks, and Stratagem could also be used to perform special attacks, as mentioned above.
It may take a bit of time to work that out, and then to test the system, but I think the flexibility of the d6 system will fit better with a martial arts combat game than the AD&D system that Flying Swordsmen 1E (and Dragon Fist before it) used.
Oh, and I've got to work up rules for dealing with a Sifu or organization that trained you, rivals, backgrounds, missions and secrets. The real fun of wuxia fiction, which I think 1E FS didn't quite get, is in the character building and interplay. I have some ideas on how to make that a core driver of game play (because fighting monsters and collecting treasure won't work for this game), but it will need some work as well.
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