Introduction
Like Wuxia and Weapons of the Gods, Qin (les royaumes combattants) is a roleplaying game meant to emulate the martial arts movies and novels of chinese folklore, usually referred to as wuxia; a genre packed from the start with tragic loves, mysteries, honor, spirits... and, of course, cool kung-fu moves.
Each of the aforementioned game has its specificities. In the case of Qin, the emphasis as been put on a well detailed realistic (yet still definitely "wuxia") historical setting and progressive character development : as the authors claim "You're a Hero, Become a Legend".
Overall Layout, Design and organization
Qin presents itself in the form of a 288p hardcover book. From the cover to the internal layout and illustrations, everything (even the parchment-like color of the pages) is made so as to convey a feeling of ancient china in a sober yet very classy way; the landscape illustrations are especially beautiful. And, as the vendor told me, "the book even smell nice" !
Concerning the organization, the first half of the book is dedicated to the background, while the second half is dedicated to the rules (with a small bestiary). In between comes a small full-color section with 7 pre-generated characters. The book is concluded by Game-mastering advices (setting specific), a 12 pages introductory adventure, a character sheet, a small lexicon and a commented bibliography/filmography. There's also a map at each end of the book.
The only weak point might be the multi-part novel introducing the various sections: while it is certainly "in context", it often feels somewhat "off".
Setting
Everything is in the title. Qin, les royaumes combattants takes place at the end of the Warring State period of chinese history, just a few year before the seven remaining states are finally, and forcefully, unified by the strongest: Qin...
This setting is presented in a clear and easily usable way. Of course there are some simplifications (for example: all states are supposed to have the same administrative structure), but those details can be looked for in history books, or might be detailed in future supplements. In the meantime you get a comprehensive presentation of the Warring States, with almost everything a game master should need: administrative and military organization, five pages presentation of each state including important organizations and officials, food ("what, no rice!".. well, not everywhere at least), clothing, housing, leisures, work, beliefs, main philosophical schools, familial organization... and, of course, the Jiang Hu - world at the margin where assemble noble houses who did not adapt to the growing administration, chivalrous Xia, bandits, and all kind of misfits.
In fact, the main default of this section is that you can't just hand it to your players : there's metaplot information included, most notably about dragons and... To those who do not like metaplot, I would simply say that the game can perfectly be used without it, even if the part about the dragons is really interesting, with a definite mystic flavor. It's also seems to be some kind of a teaser for the upcoming campaign Tian Xia. Of course, I would have liked precise city descriptions and maps, maps of habitations, drawing of clothings, ... but I always want more, and after reading this section, searching should not be that difficult if one really feels the need to.
Pregenerated characters intermede
This section consists of seven archetypal characters, from the soldier to the alchemist. For each one, there is an "in character" introduction", a background, a description and a stat block on one page, and a vivid illustration on the opposing page. While they might not seem essential for the HK movies/Jin Yong novels-loving game master, they can certainly prove useful to the players who might have been dragged more or less unknowingly in the game, so as to flesh out their character and give them a quick taste of the world.
Game system
Skill tests
The game system use only one type of die: the yin/Yang die (yYdie). To roll a yin/Yang die you cast two ten-sided dice and subtract the lower result from the higher. There is however some subtleties :
- One dice is yin, and the other Yang, as of now this distinction is only used for damage calculation.
- If a double 0 is rolled, you get a critical failure
- If any other double is rolled, you get a yin/Yang equilibrium which is an automatic success (with margin the number rolled and additional benefits).
There are some discussions about yin/Yang equilibrium, since a 9% chance of automatic success seems a bit high. Personally I don't grant automatic successes.
To make a skill test, a player simply add stat+skill+yYdie versus a fixed difficulty. There are some rather convincing rules for continuous rolls (for example, to create complex items), as well as multi-skill tests and opposed tests.
Characters
Character creation in Qin is based upon a freeform point-buy system: while about 20 archetypes are provided, with description and suggested skills/taos/spells, there's no class-based restriction of any kind. Whether or not a player choose an archetype, character creation is as follows:
- Buying stats: There are only five stats, based upon the classical chinese elements: wood (intellect), fire (charisma), metal (strength and combat), water (agility and quickness) and earth (mystical attribute). All stats range from 1 to 5, with 2 being the human average. PCs get 14 points to spend, which put them in the heroic range.
- Choosing gift/weakness Each PC must have one gift and one weakness. Those are clearly meant to provide the character with some flavor/reputation more than anything else. While some weaknesses are interesting, almost every gift is like "you can reroll skill once per session", which have a really limited effect.
- Buying skills: skills range from 0 to 6, but beginning characters are limited to rank 3 (aka. expert), and most will not have any skill beyond rank 2, since buying a skill at rank 3 cost 10 points and they only have 15 to spend (rank 1 cost 1, rank 2 cost 4). In my test session, this was clearly here that my players felt restricted, even thought I freely gave them the competence of their chosen archetypes at rank 1. Given the (well, not so...) small statistical difference between 2 skill rank, the cost curve seems a bit step, save in the case of combat skills -where your rank determine both your bonus and your number of actions- and mystical arts -where you can't learn spells of level higher than your rank. All in all, my players did not feel so heroic after buying skills but, at this point, they were still only humans...
- Calculating secondary statistics: Probably the most important is Chi, which you need to use mystical arts, tao, . . . or simply to add bonus to your rolls. Moreover, the very idea behind it is interesting, since your Chi is based on the balance between yin and Yang stats, so over-optimized character usually end up with small Chi (I had players ranging from 12 to 45).
- Taos, maneuvers, mystical arts: Here come the really heroic part, even if the players still only got 15 points to spend, and the costs are on par with the skill costs, what they got here really set them apart.
- Taos are special ways for a character to use his chi in order to modify his actions. most are combat oriented -like getting free moves or attacks, ignoring pain, charging items with your chi to use them as weapons...- but some are more utilitarian -providing a bonus to discretion or social skills, granting eidetic memory, crafting exceptional items-. One is even some kind of metagame tao, allowing you to alter dice rolls. In any case, taos are powerful without being too flashy, and everyone should take a few.
- Maneuvers are special combat moves -subduing, feint,..- which don't cost chi, but add a penalty to attack rolls. The most interesting part is that the maneuvers are weapon dependent. As an example precise-strike is a rank 1 sword maneuver, but a rank 3 boxing maneuver... and is not a shield maneuver at all.
- Mystical arts are for those versed into the study of taoism. All have various skill prerequisite, including taoism, and the corresponding mystical art skill. There are four mystical arts :external alchemy (brewing potions, explosives,...), internal alchemy (body and chi manipulation), divination (include geomancy) and exorcism.
Since you can mix taos, maneuvers and mystical arts any way you like, this makes for a good variety of PCs. In my test session, I had:
- A junior wuxia whose father had been killed by a vicious demon during an exorcism. Now raised by the wealthy merchant family his father heroism had saved, and trained by an experienced Xia, he combine very good combat skills with a limited knowledge of exorcism.
- The first son of this merchant family, also a spy in training for his home country... has decent combat skill and a good mix of utilitarian taos.
- His drinking pal, a taoist healer with good medical skills (and internal alchemy) and an obsession for the gentler sex; Chased from his home state because of his heterodox studies (too much experiments in sexual rituals to replenish his chi ?), he has become the apprentice of a local healer.
- The other apprentice of this so-called healer... a cold blooded assassin-in-training who has vowed to kill her father for abandoning (and supposedly raping) her mother. of course, she's more concerned by poison than by actual healing. Both her and the healer are in fact "executors" for the state of Zhao.
Combat and actual play
I ran the first part of the introductory scenario with the aforementioned PCs (and will run the second part whenever I can get the same players and no exams). There has only been 1 fight scene confronting the PCs with a minor bad guy and a dozen of goons. Thanks to the rules on joint attack (and limited resistance) of the goons, it was rather quick, with goons going down in a satisfying cinematic way while the PCs still occasionally got hurt despite high passive defense scores.
Since the number of actions per round depends (rank+1) on the weapon skills, and since people can use defensive actions out of turn, using a table to keep track of everybody actions could be a good idea though...
Other potential fights (which would have been very bad ideas) and difficulties where avoided/resolved through roleplay and, in particular, the social skills (and serene presence tao) of the merchant son, in a way which indisputably proved the efficiency of non-combat-oriented taos.
Conclusions
Qin is a beautiful game, with a distinct feel to it, at the same time heroic (wuxia), mystical and historical... a combination which, in fact, follows the path of such classical writing as the romance of three kingdoms. There's also something serious about this game (at least, that's my feeling) which might not make it the game of choice for every wuxia table... Personally, I would definitely favor it for a long campaign full of intrigues, revenges and mysteries, but not for crazed one-shots (yet I already have other games for that).
Notation
While sober, Qin is definitely the most beautiful RPG book I possess, especially considering how well its look match its content, so style is definitely a 5.
The content itself is great... but could be greater -I already have quite a small list of house rules in mind for my own games,...-, so substance will "only" be a 4.
Post Scriptum
Well, it's my first RPGnet review, english is not my first language... so I just hope this review was somewhat enjoyable, or at least informative and readable :)
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