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Note: This review is of the electronic English PDF version, from DriveThruRPG.

I still remember how it came to be: It was a lull during a game, while some players went for a much-neeeded toilet break, when we engaged in idle chit-chat. Then someone in the group said, "Hey, why not we have a Wuxia game, or something like that?"

"I thought you would never say that!" I exclaimed. I myself have been dying to run a Wuxia game for ages, and had long held the belief that no one wanted to play.

It took me less than 5 minutes to confirm that the whole group wanted a Wuxia game. And recently, there have been talk of a game called Qin: The Warring States on rpg.net. So on a whim, I brought the electronic version of the game, printed out the rules, and called the group together for a playtest...

Some Background

Qin in a Nutshell

The mechanic is Qin is very simple: You roll a dice, add your stat and skill to it, and attempt to beat a target number (or Stress Threshold). However, there's one little twist in this otherwise done-do-death mechanic. That's the Yin/Yang Dice

Yin/Yang Dice?

The curve of this dice is really steep. It's very easy to get values from 1 to 3, and it's rare to get anything beyond 7. This is what actually happens during play -- I swore I never heard so many groans at the gaming table before as the dice again and again gives us a 1.

Due to this steep curve, a +1 increment between a stat means a lot of difference. Hence, modifiers to rolls in Qin is always within the range of +1 or +2.

But other than this, Qin has no other outstanding mechanic, unlike its closest counterpart, Weapons of the God. The upside is that Qin is a lot easier to learn and grasp than WoTG.

Characters and Creation

Each of those are ranked by a number, usually from 1 to 4, though values of 5 and 6 are rare, but not unheard of. The average value for an Aspect is 2, while for a Skill or Tao, a value of 2 is assumed to be competent.

The Aspects in the game are the traditional Five Elements (Metal, Wood, Water, Fire and Earth) . Metal stands for martial ability, Wood is for intelligence, Water is for physical prowess, Fire is charisma and Earth stands for intuition and mystical ability.

The players at first dislike this idea -- I, myself, can understand that, for there seems to be no link between the element and the ability it is representing (For instance, Fire is Charisma?) It takes me some time to personally get attuned to the elements and remember what each of them do.

Skills, like in the usual RPG system, represents knowledge and experience of the character. Most skill is rather sparsely defined (except for those which have a use in combat), and you are frequently left to wonder how to handle them. Some examples would be Herbalist and Eloquence.

Tao is the catch-all term for any extraordinary abilities which is not magic. Being able to defy gravity, break wooden structure with a single touch, move so fast that you are invisible and etc. are all examples of Taos. The Taos can be verbose at times ("Taos of the Ten Thousand Hands", for instance) and whenever possible, we drop the "Tao of..." prefix.

Combat Techniques and Magic are very specialised and narrowly defined ability. A combat technique allows you to warp the rules for a moment, such as allowing you to do two attacks in a turn or gain a modifier to your defence, usually at some cost.

Each combat techniques requires a prerequisite level in the relevant weapon skill before you can purchase it. For instance, Charge is a level 2 Combat Technique, hence your sword skill must at level 2 or higher to purchase it.

One problem that Qin runs into is the "You don't have the feat, so you can't do that" syndrome. Here's an example: The Throw technique allows a combatant to throw an opponent some distance. The Trap technique lets you trap an enemy's weapon. During combat, one of the players trapped an unarmed enemy, and wanted to throw him, and questioned why he needed to know the Throw technique to do that. "Why can't I just kick him, and let my hands loose?" he asked.

Magic comes in 4 main schools - Internal Alchemy, External Alchemy, Exorcism and Divination. Qin's handling of Divination leaves much to be desired and could be ranked as one of the most useless abilities in the entire game. A diviner can foretell that you will die by water; but this doesn't necessary means that you will drown. You could be killed by someone with the character "water" craved on his sword, for example. Predictions gotten are unreliable and shaky, and if adhered to rules, generally unhelpful to the players. It does, however, superbly emulate the various divination methods used in Ancient China.

To round it all up, each character has a Weakness and Strength. Unlike GURPS, you can only have one of each, which solved a lot of problems. However, the Strengths are rather uninspired in mechanic -- most of them just allow you to do a re-roll. Also, each Strengths and Weaknesses are given fanciful names evocative of the game's cultural setting, such as Hand of the Monkey. While some of them are self-descriptive, many are not. "Disgrace of Fuxi" has the same meaning as "Being Unlucky", but I find the latter easier to remember.

Character Creation

There are also a few catches here and there too, that make Qin different from the usual games. For instance, the calculation of Chi (think "mana") and Breath of Life (think "Hit Points"). While in most systems, say D20, you get the most Hit Points by bumping one stat, in Qin you have to ensure that your stats are balanced to get the most Hit Points. In short, your physical stats (Water and Metal) must be equal to your mental ones (Fire and Wood). The greater the deviance from 0, the less Health and Chi you'll get.

I still haven't decided whether this a cool concept or not. For it prevents the existence of a single "dump stat". But on the other hand, all my players in the group automatically choose to create balanced characters.

All in all, the process of character creation is rather simple and straightforward, with nothing much to complain about. However, there are a few criticism.

First, the Taos and Combat Techniques are not sorted. For instance, the "Tao of the Six Directions" is listed before "Tao of the Light Step". There are also no summarised charts or references, so players find themselves doing a massive lots of reading. This happens for the Weaknesses, Strengths and Combat Techniques.

Second, the exchange of points for levels in skill and Taos is not on a 1 to 1 basis. It costs 1 point to be level 1 in a skill and then you have to spend 3 more points to go to level 2 (so in total, you need 4 points). This method leaves my players with pools of 1 to 3 points. Those are not enough to boost a skill from level 1 to level 2 (or from level 2 to 3), but not using them is a waste hence they pick up a number of filler level 1 Skills and Taos.

Thirdly, to find values for Chi and Breath of Life requires a chart to be consulted. It's all right for one-time character creation, but it's a pain for the GM when he has to create multiple NPCs.

Playing the Game

A couple of mechanics make Qin smooth to play, which I would list down below:

Modifiers, or the lack therefore: Qin is not a game where you get +1 from a weapon, +1 from some enchantment and etc. Modifiers are rare, and usually comes in +1 or +2.

Combining Taos and Skills are easy: You can combine any number of Taos together as long as you have the necessary Chi point to fund them. This, in my book, is one of the best rules in the game. It allows players to think of wild crazy stunts, but at the same time imposing a limit on them

Combat

A combat is divided into round, and each round is divided into exchange. In each round, combatants can perform a number of actions, which is dependent on their weapon skill. The higher your skill, the more actions. In each exchange, you get to perform one (and only one action, unless you use a Tao to change that).

Doing anything, almost virtually anything, requires an action. Think of an action as a series of frames in an animation. All you can do is one action.

Everyone move in turns of Initiative order (which is re-rolled at the end of every round). You can move, attack or use a Tao when it is your action. Once you have performed an action, the person next in line will act, till everyone have performed an action. Then an exchange is over. Once everyone has no action left, a round is over, and your actions will be refreshed.

Actions management is one of the most important critical aspect of doing well in combat. You have a Passive Defence score, which is used to defend against attacks at all time, but it is really low (the highest you can get is 12). Once an opponent bypass your Passive Defence, you need to spend 1 action for an Active Defence, such as a block or a dodge (interestingly, once you weapon skill reached a certain level, you can block ranged attacks with no penalties, blurring the lines between a block and a dodge).

Hence, the time-honoured tactic of ganging up a character becomes more important in Qin.

If you hit, you have a chance to inflict damage. Damage is reduced by the opponent's armour -- it's just a straightforward reduction. You can use Chi to invoke certain Taos to do more damage.

Oh, if you manage to roll your Yang dice higher than your Yin dice, you get to do extra damage equal to your Yang dice minus your Yin dice.

Combat in Qin, I would say, is of medium crunch. It's defintely less crunchy than D20, but tactics and proper usage of skills, Taos and numbers play a part too. It's crunch level is probably less than of Weapons of the God though, but I can't say for sure. And it is cinematic, and gritty at the same time. There's a spiral of death, where as you lose more and more Breath of Life, you suffer a penalty to all your rolls, and lucky roll of dice (such as a critical) can easily kill an opponent.

So, are there anything bad about combat? If you are slow with mental calculations (like me), you may find combat to be slower due to all the adding and subtracting. But other than that, combat in Qin works and is playable. There's nothing really outstanding here, though, but hey, it works!

However, if you hate the constant resources management, then maybe combat won't be fun for you. The two most-used resources during combat are Chi and Action Points. As usual, creative use of tokens, paper-clips, index cards and other handy tools can reduce the pain.

...and the rest of the Book

Style: The electronic English version of Qin comes with a printer-friendly version and a screen-version. In the latter, the pages are made to resemble an old Chinese martial-art manual, with a dark-brown page background. The art are mostly black and white, and usually consists of combatants in life and death duels. The quality of the art is good and the art seems to be inspired by movies like Hero.

Magic: The default setting and campaign of Qin mixes historical elements with those of Wuxia and magic. If you have watched "A Chinese Ghost Story" or any Chinese Vampire Flicks, you would have an idea what magic in Qin is about. There are very few flashy effects like fireballs or magic missiles; the magic in Qin are very subtle.

Setting: The core rulebook gives a run-down of the Seven States, a brief history of China, a quick description of significant myths and legends and created a few NPCs and an enemy organisation for the PCs to battle. I give an "Average" to these materials. They are informative, functional, but a bit bland, but it may be due to the French to English translation.

What's lacking in the settings are illustrations which get the ideas across. There are no pictures of how a Chinese peasant looks like, what a typical street is like, or how a city would look. There's very little to help a new player to visualise how Ancient China might look like. Fortunately, watching Chinese Wuxia movies is way to help visualisation.

GM's Aid: The book proposes to present China as a world steeped into ancient traditions, but modern at same time, due to its advanced technology. It sounds neat, but I cannot reconcile this to the China I know, hence I didn't use the ideas suggested.

Sample Adventure: A sample adventure is included, but I didn't read much of it. Why? The reason is below:

On Issues of Authenticity

But before going on, I have to state that Qin is a well researched book, and it earns a "A" from me in terms of that. With that said, let us look at the list.

First, it is some of the terms used in Qin. For instance, a "wuxia" is used to refer to someone of Wulin, a hero trained in martial arts doing good wherever he goes. However, in movies and novels, that term is never used. Instead, "xieke" or "daxia" is used, but not "wuxia". Wuxia is a name of a genre in Chinese, not used to describe someone

Second, the usage of "Taos" are a catch-all term for all extraordinary abilities. Again, this is not commonly used in the Wuxia genres, be it novels or movies. Tao, for the Chinese, usually refers to the "Tao" as in the Taoism way of thinking.

Thirdly, the names of some the NPCs does not sound like proper Chinese Names. This is enough for me to take a break from the setting materials, and most particularly, the sample adventure. In the sample adventure, there is a character called "Left Hand". That sounds entirely impossible for proper names, and highly improbable for nicknames as well.

While these issues are unlikely to be important for any gamers in the US or in the western world, those are things which players of the native cultures will be able to pick up. It's like White Wolf using improper native phrases in their product. It's not that bad, but it's grating, like finger-nails across the chalkboard.

Summary

Scoring

For nice artwork and readable text, I give a 4. What stops me from giving it a 5 are that entries are unsorted, the font size is small at time and the lack of bookmarks for the electronic version.

Substance: 4

I give Qin a 4 for substance, for being well-researched in terms of setting, for presenting a set of playable and yet simple rules and most importantly, emulating the genre damn bloody well.

What keeps me from giving a 5 is that there's really no outstanding mechanic. Also, Divination Magic can be better fleshed out, and more variety would be good for character's Strengths and Weaknesses. Artwork which gives players and GMs better visualisation about Ancient China would be a good improvement too.

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