Okay, I’m not Keiro, but I am a Wushu convert. I’ve run a few games, and played in more, and Wushu has always delivered where it counts: Jaw-dropping action, solid narration, and smooth gameplay. About the only complaint I’ve recieved is that it isn’t “crunchy” enough for the gamists I know.

Let’s start with an introduction to the basic game. Wushu is a game developed by Dan Bayn, that reverses one of the core concepts in a RPG. Namely, instead of rolling the dice to see how well you did, you describe how well you do and roll dice to see how effective it was. This is the PoNT: everything happens exactly as the player describes it. The only restriction is the Veto: anyone, not just the GM, can Veto a detail as inappropriate. Wushu thus offers us a loose trait system, with very little crunch to it and a lot of narrative. Budo’s promise to add crunch without hurting any of the above is intriguing, and potentially very cool.

But does it really deliver? Let’s take it from the top. Production-wise, this is an 18-page pdf file. Most interestingly for inexpensive web-only pdfs, it has actual artwork and lettering. Most of the artwork is simply scans of classical Japanese paintings, but it looks nice, and adds to the overall atmosphere nicely.

What about the content? Well, the first thing you’ll notice is that he uses a lot of vaguely Japanese jargon. And I mean, a lot. In the first page alone, he introduces *seven* new terms, none of which are standard Japanese and all of which are confusing. The document is loaded with these Japanese terms, enough so it took me several read-throughs to get what he was talking about. In fact, there's about 20 Japanese terms for you to digest. I can understand why the author wanted to add so much Japanese-- it creates a nice atmosphere-- but it makes things very difficult to read.

Once you get past that, you can start to appreciate the meat of the document. There are new and innovative rules to add to a Wushu game: Trait Damage, Equipment, defined rules for Character death, and rules for players without characters. (E.g., someone who’s character just died.) All of these are fully compatible with the standard Wushu rules, and all of them can potentially add a lot to your game.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. He introduces two new player roles: The Shihan (Shee-Hahn) and Iemoto (Ee-Ay-Moh-Toh) It takes a lot of careful reading to figure out these two roles; but basically the Shihan is the main PC who gets to act in a given round, while the Iemoto decides when the NPC’s go. If I understand things correctly, only the Iemoto has the veto power, which strikes me as very odd. The roles of Shihan and Iemoto will rotate among the players, so everyone will have a turn. I can’t see any real gain in the Shihan/Iemoto roles, which makes me rather puzzled. These rules are very confusing, and don’t seem to add much to the game.

The rules then go on to discuss the standard Wushu rules, with the subtle variations that make Budo unique. And there are many subtle and hard-to-distinguish differences. For example, you have to split your dice pool in order to deal with multiple scene aspects, but you lose additional dice for each aspect you try and deal with.

To sum up: Budo has a lot of great ideas, but unfortunately it’s hindered by an overdose of Japanese jargon and a lot of confusing writing. There is a lot to appreciate here, you just need to dig deep to find it all. Wushu players will find a great deal of new ideas and new concepts to add to their game; and I assume that once you figure out the rules, they’ll run smoothly with the standard Wushu ruleset. Still, I don’t believe one should work so hard to find the gold in a RPG. So, I’m giving Budo a medium rating: it’s good, but it could be much better with better writing. Had the writers cleared up their rule writing, Budo would have scored much higher.

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