I've Been Away, and d6 Flying Swordsmen Thoughts

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.

Treasures, Serpents, & Ruins Game Master Guidebook is Now Available!

 I have just completed uploading the GMG to my Hidden Treasure Books store on DriveThruRPG. 

Here's a link!

It's got advice and rules for running a game the way I do it (mostly), including what I feel a new GM should know about running a game, or advice for people trying out old school style gaming for the first time. 

Most of you veterans who read this blog probably won't find much use out of most of it, but I do have some home-brewed modifications to the BECMI domain and war machine rules, and a different system for creating artifacts. Also my own version of the planes of existence. 

So there are some nuggets that might be useful even to the old, jaded gamer who's seen and done it all. Or at least I hope so. 

It's fully compatible with both my Ruby (standard Euro-D&D) and Jade (Asian D&D) sets. Oh, and I've made a few updates based on the past year of gaming with these rules to both the Jade and Ruby Players Rules books and the Bestiary & Treasury books. 

If you've already downloaded them, you might want to get the updated versions. There aren't many changes, but some mistakes have been fixed and a few things have been modified.

Projects Old and New

I've managed to finish up the semester, so I should have some free time over the next two months to get some gaming projects advanced, along with preparing my next academic research project for work. If any of y'all are thinking that teachers get to laze around all summer vacation, you're wrong. We've got stuff to get done before classes start up again in the fall. 

I've gotten some feedback on my TS&R Game Master Guidebook, but other things have been keeping me from getting to the final edit of that. I will be getting it, and the Rules Reference books for both Ruby and Jade, up on DriveThruRPG soon. 

The GMG is designed for game masters new to running games, or at least new to old school style exploration-focused gaming, including advice on running the game and creating adventures/campaigns, and optional or alternate rules. The RR books are a condensation of just the charts and rules that an experienced GM needs to run the game at the table. Other than having a few areas specific to the classes/races/spells of Ruby (traditional D&D) and Jade (Asian fantasy D&D), the RR books are nearly identical.

I also had a bit of an epiphany this evening, and started working on a framework for a 2nd edition of Flying Swordsmen, but using the Open d6 system rather than a Classic D&D system. I think it will work out better this way. The way actions in-game determine Character Points earned, and the way Character Points are used to develop Skills, will help give it that feeling of training up your martial arts. Having earning CP tied to upholding the Code of the Xia (act with courage, benevolence, loyalty, righteousness, and individuality) should help drive the emergence of wuxia style stories through game play. One problem with Flying Swordsmen 1E is that the mechanics allow for cool action scenes, but don't support the sorts of drama that set wuxia media apart from simple martial arts media. 

I think the basic mechanics are sorted out. I have my list of six Abilities, and what they govern. I need to decide on the actual lists of Skills under each Ability. I have several Powers that PCs (and NPCs!) can learn, and each will have a basic use, and Techniques that can be added as more dice are gained. Similar to the Force Skills in Star Wars d6, templates will have to put Ability Dice into Powers, but after that Powers will be improved with CP just as with Skills. New Techniques can be added with each full die gained in a Power. 

I think the Techniques will be sort of like feat trees, with prerequisites of either a certain number of dice in the Power, or certain lower level Techniques learned first. This will cover things like light step, Qi, divination, or straight up magic. I should probably get a hold of d6 Fantasy before I get too far into designing Techniques to see how they balance wizards compared to how SW balances Jedi. 

Once I've got the Skills and Techniques sorted (or at least a good first iteration of them), I'll create some templates of common wuxia archetypes and see how they look. 

I have no idea how much of this I might get done over this summer break, but I will keep you all posted!