Progress on Flying Swordsmen 2E

 In the past few days, I've been pretty busy. My older boy is back in Korea for summer vacation. I'm working on my next research paper. I've also been painting some minis in my spare time to relax. Oh, and I've got the first draft of Flying Swordsmen 2E more or less finished. I still need to add some examples (NPCs, making adventures, a sample of how a game plays). But the basic mechanics for creating characters, training/improving characters, running the game, creating campaigns and adventures, setting rewards, and the setting information are all there. 

I will need to decide if I want to license art this time, or stick to PD images...

 

The past two days, I've been going through it with find/replace to make sure I'm consistent with names of the skills, powers, abilities, etc. including which ones are capitalized, in italics, and so on. I also have used some words too often. 

Ability is used for the six main stats of the game (Prowess, Might, Agility, Observation, Presence, Education) but I also have used it indiscriminately to talk about capacities. 

Power is used for the special martial arts stats (Qinggong [lightness], Neigong [internal], Dianxue [acupressure], Suan Ming [divination], Wu [white magic], and Ku [black magic]) that allow for the use of Techniques (martial arts maneuvers, spells, feats). I also talk about creature powers, power as in political or social clout, etc. 

Luckily, I seem to have stuck to using skill mostly for mechanical skills within the game. 

My document is A4, single column, mostly 12 point font. Obviously headers use larger fonts, and some of the tables and some notes I use 10.5 point font. The document is 147 pages long, including 16 pages with character templates (two per page). No art yet, other than my Zhongyang Dalu map from the first edition.

I've got 41 skills, 108 techniques, around 60 monsters, 25 sample magic items (with notes on how to design more), and detailed but hopefully simple rules for combat including actions, reactions, special maneuvers, improvised weaponry, special types of damage (energy, poison, etc.), and so on. I've got a system for training new skills, and one for learning new Powers and Techniques. These are similar, but not exactly the same. Skills are a little easier to learn than a new Power, but if your Power increases you can learn a Technique automatically. 

Once I get done with the terminology consistency passes, I'll make a separate document with just the player facing information and work up an adventure or two to playtest the rules with my group.

Monsters in Flying Swordsmen 2E

I've been writing up the monsters for Flying Swordsmen 2E. I have around 50 of them (monsters and animals, not stock NPCs) total, and around 20 left to stat up. I've been basing a lot of them off of the OGL d6 Fantasy Creatures book, but with some modifications to fit the system I came up with for FS2E. 

A lot of the descriptions have just been copy/pasted from the original Flying Swordsmen, but there are some places where I've made some changes. One thing I did with the dragons is to make sure they all have some sort of special environmental effects they can create to make fighting them more challenging but also more interesting. 

Having done that, though, it makes me realize just how similar many of the monsters are to each other. Similar dice codes for abilities and skills. There's not really a huge range. Most creatures have attacks and skills at around 4 or 5 dice. 

I have given special abilities to some monsters, and some also get martial arts Powers and Techniques (Powers are sort of like the Force Skills in Star Wars d6, Techniques are a combination of the martial arts maneuvers and spells from 1E Flying Swordsmen, with a few new things thrown in). That helps distinguish some of the monsters. But I think I need to go through and figure out ways to make monsters more interesting. I think human opponents and rivals will be primary antagonists of the game, but there should be interesting monsters to fight when you have to throw in a monster.

Movie Review: Thunderbolts*

On Saturday, my younger son and I went to see the newest MCU movie, Thunderbolts*. I have to say, I wasn't eagerly anticipating this movie, but the trailers did make me hopeful that it would at least be entertaining. I went in with fairly low expectations, and it surpassed them by quite a bit. 

Note for anyone wondering how much "cursing" is in the movie, there's a fair amount of mild swearing. 

Yes, Google searches for movie titles plus "curse words" still lead people to my movie reviews. 

So, Thunderbolts. The team of the B-league antiheroes. Former villains/opponents, brought together and trying to do the right thing. It's got the Marvel action, humor, and heroics we expect. It's also a movie built around exploring depression, regret, and redemption. Yeah, the movie has heart. It's not a huge world-shattering plot. It feels fairly small and personal, despite the way things go south in the third act and do threaten the world...or at least NYC. 

And for a team that "just punches and shoots" as you may have heard in the trailer, our protagonists can't fall back on their military training to resolve the plot. 

I'll avoid spoilers, but this movie felt like a callback to the Phase I MCU movies. And yet, the resolution (and post-credits stinger) tie into the overarching plot of...what is this, Phase VI? After the slightly better than mediocre (fun and full of action, but failing to resonate) Captain America: Brave New World, this is an improvement. 

Watching Thunderbolts* after watching Daredevil Born Again (which was excellent!), I feel like Marvel may have finally figured out their new formula for success. And I was already looking forward to Fantastic 4 this summer, but I'm even more excited now! Of course, the MCU is also going up against the new James Gunn Superman, which I'm also really excited for. 

If you're missing the feel of the early MCU in the post-Disney+ glut era, check out this movie.