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Introduction
I'm a big fan of Hong Kong Cinema. Not the biggest, mind you, but I do like it. I love Wushu, the various Kung Fu schools and all the excitement and grace of the genres that Hong Kong has brought to the world. All this led me to falling in love with kung fu games, and yet I always had trouble finding a game that really caught what - to me - made kung-fu action sequences cool.
When EOS press announced that they were going to release a kung-fu game based on a chinese wuxia comic called "Weapons of the Gods" and it would be using the ORE system from Godlike; I was excited. ORE seemed to me to have the potential to do some damn cool kung-fu mechanics. Something I felt a lot of other kung-fu inspired games seemed to always be weak at.
Then there was a change and ORE went away. It was then that EOS announced they would be using the Clockwerks mechanic that was developed for Cthulhutech. My interest began to wane, and I found myself watching from the sidelines, ever convinced that Weapons of the Gods would never actually see the light of day.
Well Brad Elliott is a rare figure in the roleplaying industry - he's a guy who refuses to give up on something he believes in. When the developers of clockwerks decided to take their franchise and system elsewhere, Brad didn't give up. He and Rebecca Borgstrom still soldiered on against all odds to produce what is possibly one of the best games to come out of 2005
Sorry for the long preamble, but I do think that it is important to understand where this game comes from to truly appreciate how impressive a product it is.
Layout and Design
There are a few of the more conservative minded people who find Tony Wong's comic a bit garish visually. His use of colour is at times very daring, but to me he has an eye for being able to make even a simple scene become lush with colour. The same goes for the core rulebook for Weapons of the Gods.
The front cover has an incredible mix of colours showing the lead hero of the series, Tian Wen, holding the Heaven's Crystal blade from the comic. It is a lush and dramatic picture that promises much.
The interior makes great use of white space and text, cramming a lot of information into the book without it getting too overwhelming. I found the information mostly easy to read. There is a little issue that sometimes it is difficult to spot a particular section within a chapter, but nothing that has proven to be too difficult in actual play.
Eos Press follows the current trend of detailing the margins, but does so with a beautiful mix of colour and design that keeps in tone with the game. The margins follow a similar idea to that found in Angel and Buffy by distinguishing each chapter with a different colour - allowing for a greater ease of reference during play.
Tony Wong's art is packed throughout the book, and while it may not appeal to some I did find it both inspirational and stunning to look at. Wong's work does a great job of capturing a very fluid and active genre within a static medium. His action sequences translate the fast paced fury of a kung-fu fight with a certain vibrance. As you can tell, I personally love it. Also, much of the full page art that opens each chapter is great, really showing the epic scale and nature of the game.
Setting
Which brings me to the setting. Weapons of the Gods is set in Shen Zhou - an Ancient China that never was. Much like Camelot is to ancient Britain, Shen Zhou is a romanticised vision of Confuscian China. Here the peasants are mostly satisfied with their lot, the bureaucracy is considered benevolent, and virtue is upheld by the Wulin warriors who ensure that the realm is righteous.
Naturally things are never quite that simple.
Shen Zhou, as presented in the comics - which I started reading after buying the game - is fairly sparse in detail. The comics really focus on the drama of the characters than on the world they live in. Credit goes to Borgstrom for taking this setting and turning it into a fully fleshed out, living world. The Shen Zhou of the game is a world of filial responsibility, complex politics, detailed relationships and a vast history. All presented with a startling new innovation for gaming - Loresheets.
Archetypes and Loresheets - Your gateway to Shen Zhou
Shen Zhou is a large and complex setting. Normally this would make it extremely difficult to get involved in the game due to players needing to read pages and pages of information to become involved in the setting. Not so with Weapons of the Gods.
Characters are created using one of three archetypes - these are the standard types of people who would become involved in the Wulin world (the society of martial artists). These archetypes are Warrior, Courtier and Scholar. The archetype is a very loose definition that presents the player with a number of suggested choices and some unique benefits relating to that archetype.
Each character gets a number of trait points and skill points to first build their core concept. They then receieve Destiny Points. These are used to buy loresheets. All the setting specific information and rules are presented on loresheets, and each Archetype has a list of which sheets to start off with.
Loresheets present first a story or information about the setting element it refers to. For example, the Creation Myth loresheet starts with the actual myth. Then players are presented with a number of advantages that they can choose to purchase with additional Destiny Points. These advantages provide either bonuses, special abilities, access to certain kung-fu techniques or plot control.
That's right - players can buy future plot developments. This is a great little innovation because not only do loresheets allow players to learn the setting as they play the game, it also allows them to place their characters firmly in the storyline of the game, as well as showing the GM/Wulin Sage what each player personally wants to get out of the game.
On the down side, some sheets seem to be a bit obscure as to how they might benefit a player. However it strikes me that many exist to provide the option of going for a more interesting adventure over any statistical benefit. This means that the player who maxed out on techniques and advantages may have a competent character - but the weak courtier who bought up big on plot developments like filial piety, clan, and having her destiny intertwined with a Weapon of the Gods is more likely to get a lot more out of the game in the long term.
Of course, most character builds inevitably gain some sort of link to the setting through their purchases.
System
So how does it all play?
The system initially sounds rather strange. Players roll a pool of d10s, looking for sets. This is much like ORE, except that rather than read a set as 3x4, for example, WoTG reads it as 34. So the number of dice equates to the tens, and the number rolled in the set is the ones. For example, 1,9,9,8,3,3,3 would produce the sets 11, 29, 18 and 33.
I had been initially hesitant about how this would work - thinking that it might end up being somewhat counterintuitive to play. But in the games I have played in to date, it has worked a charm and people pick it up very easily.
Players choose which set they want to take and then either compare it to a difficulty number or against an opposed set. Certain abilities and weapons provide bonuses to these rolls. An odd error in the system revolves around how certain techniques provide odd bonuses when others provide extra dice. In play we found that unless a bonus provided +5, or sets of 5, it tended to be negligible in worth.
This is due to difficulties being measured in lots of 5, and GM provided modifiers also being in lots of 5.
The Flow of the River
It is at this point that I ought to mention another interesting innovation in the game. The River is a set number of "slots" that the player has based on his rank in the Wulin. The player can choose to "float" any of the dice from sets into his river that will fit. By doing so, the player is putting aside those results for a later roll in the scene. So, for example, a player might roll 9,9,8,8,3 on a simple task. If he has a River of 2 he could choose to move the 9s into his River so that he will have a 29 for later on, or two 19s.
This is a fantastic "drama" system that allows the players to be a lot more tactical in their thinking when choosing sets.
Kung-Fu
Now I love my kung-fu gaming. One of the appeals of systems like Fireborn is how kung-fu is presented in a fast paced mechanic that has detail allowing for variety of stunts and descriptions. While kung-fu in WoTG is not as detailed as Fireborn, it has a lot of scope and character.
Each style has a set of techniques that allow the martial artist to perform some incredible acts of skill. The sheer scope of styles presented in the core game is impressive - there are fast attacks, chi powered blasts, brutal slow moving attacks and even styles that don't directly relate to damage or combat.
Kung-fu is powered by chi, which we found was easy to keep track of with beads. Chi replenishes at one point of each chi a round, and is related to the character's core traits.
Depending on the style being used, characters can gain modifiers, extra dice, extra damage effects or special abilities.
The appeal, to me, was that these techiniques are rarely limited to one action. We have seen some very clever uses of techinques in play, and the game does encourage players to think about new uses for their techniques which can lead to amazing stunts. In one session a player used Lightfoot to run down the ribbons of a falling nemesis so that he could pummel her as they hurtled into a chasm, then used a scythe kicking technique to launch himself back up to the bridge from which they were plummeting.
Secret Arts
But the game isn't all about kung-fu. No, this is Wuxia, which is a much broader genre than Jackie Chan movies. Many Wuxia epics involve political manipulation, philosophical conflict and strange magical feats. Weapons of the Gods places all these under the broad topic of "secret arts."
These cover a broad range of abilities, yet uses the same elegant and flexible mechanic. At the core of secret arts is the idea of hyperactive and weak chi conditions. One provides bonuses to players who act on the condition, the other provides penalties for those players who do not act on a condition.
The next step in the mechanic is how these two conditions can be changed. There are five different techniques, and each produces a different outcome.
That's all there is to it at the core.
This mechanic is used to handle everything from medicine, to predicting future trends, to social interaction through to daoist magic and curses.
It's a fantastic addition that has so many varied and exciting applications that I could write for ages about the various tricks that players can achieve using this mechanic. From giving heroes powerful abilities based on their health - one suggested trick was that when a hero is near death, a charm could produce such bonuses as to make him near invincible.
But...
There is a problem.
Rebecca Borgstrom. Unfortunately, Borgstrom's writing has a notorious habit of getting her elegant and clever systems then losing them behind a confusing maze of terminology. The secret arts chapter is no exception. I have heard of how many people had to read the chapter several times before they realised what was being discussed. The general layout of information certainly doesn't help, often being confusing about whether the health and chi conditions apply only to medicine or to all the various arts.
Furthermore, Borgstrom's determination to use accurate terminology without providing a simpler initial discussion does make the reader feel like they walked into the middle of a holistic chinese feng shui lecture. This reminds me of how frustrating Fair Folk had been to read, especially how the hindu terms being bandied around did more to confuse the situation than help it.
Luckily the Eos-press website does have a guide to the secret arts here along with a number of other useful WoTG downloads. Nonetheless, this chapter's rather poorly planned structure and muddled academic style of writing did cost the game points in my final analysis. Namely because it is such a straight forward mechanical idea that shouldn't have been so hard to express.
On the plus side, the use of terminology does mean that players can actually have secret arts discussions in character that will sound like the kinds of things a predictionist or holistic alchemist would say. So it's not all bad.
Getting into character
Due to the combination of systems, WoTG produces a very detailed structure for character generation that helps players get into character without limiting them. The various loresheets help to give players a sense of history for their characters, as well as providing a very detailed view of how society in Shen Zhou operates. The kung-fu styles ensure that there is much variety and niche-protection for players, while the secret arts provide a huge variety of special abilities that can be used outside of combat and even can start off entire adventures on their own.
Remarkably like Blue Rose, it impressively shows how a simple spread of archetypes can lead to so many varied concepts. This I think it vital to point out. While Scholars and Courtiers can get certain secret arts more easily, and warriors benefit from broader choices in kung-fu styles, the game allows for such a breadth of ideas that it is unlikely many characters will be the same. From Warrior Bards to Courtly magicians through deadly fortune-telling courtesans, there is plenty there to give you characters who are steeped in history and intrigue.
Thoughts
All in all, I loathed Weapons of the Gods with a passion. Just kidding. It should be clear by now that I love the game. It manages to show how niche design can produce an incredible game. Weapons of the Gods certainly isn't going to do world war II gaming, but it does Wuxia better than any other game on the market. It has character, atmosphere and astounding depth of design.
From the first page, this book just astounded me. It has one of the most elegantly written "what are RPGs?" sections I have ever read. It clearly lays out its goals, what kind of a game is in mind. The overall layout of information is good, barring the secret arts chapter, with the introduction making certain to explain all the core concepts so that by the time you are reading the loresheets, you know what each system element means.
It has a great GM's guide that discusses everything from relationships of characters to poisons. There is a great quick and dirty adventure generation section, and a lot of secret kung fu styles for players to hunt out and learn, weapons of power to be found and all manner of other great ideas.
It has a number of great innovations that I would, personally, love to see repeated in other games - River mechanics and loresheets in particular.
Conclusion
Ultimately, this book is near perfect. There are some flaws, and the layout of some information could have been a little bit better. There is the usual problem of Borgstom's habit of over-writing some sections, and this adds a little unnecessary frustration when reading certain parts of the book. But it is also Borgstrom's wit and intelligence that makes a lot of the myths and fiction on the loresheets appealing to read.
Again I return to what was said in the introduction, this game has been through a lot to be published. It almost became vapourware at a number of points, and yet not only did it finally get published - it is a game that outshines many less troubled projects. The system is inspired and there is just so much crammed into this book that just guarantees games that are as lush and colourful as the art on the cover. It lives up to every expectation it sets and even exceeds them.
When I initially heard about the system, I was ready to just give up on the game. But I couldn't have been more wrong. Weapons of the Gods is a game that deserves to be on every gamer's bookshelf.
Should I Buy This Game?: Hell yes. It is the definitive Wuxia game.
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