The die mechanic packs an enormous scale with a phenomenal degree of transparency into a remarkably small number of dice. Players roll a pool of d10s, with the highest number of matching die rolled serving as the 10s digit and the actual digit on the dice giving the singles digit; e.g., a roll of 1, 3, 3, 7, 9 would yield a 23 (two matching dice reading “3”).

A clever little rule called the “River” allows players to “float” some or all of a set of matching dice from a given roll, setting them aside for later use to create higher matching sets. Starting players have a River of two dice. Theoretically, I’m told this helps combats simulate the buildup to a big crescendo, the participants slowly building higher Rivers. In practice, not so much: I found that I needed to use my dice immediately and could only spare dice from extra matching sets, which didn’t come up all that often. Instead, I found myself having to rely on joss.

“Joss” means “luck,” and comes in two varieties: Xia Joss and Corrupt Joss. Players earn the former by succeeding with sets of tens and by player-determined awards at the end of a game session, when each player can elect to give one point of joss to another PC. Corrupt Joss comes from failed rolls in which the best set consists of tens. Xia Joss can be spent to earn extra dice on a roll, and Corrupt Joss can be used to subtract dice from an opponent’s roll.

Getting back to my original point: I discovered that to get the badass effects I really wanted, I had to spend Xia Joss, which made creating a badass warrior seem pointless.

Compounding this problem was the nature of kung fu powers. While the game does embrace truly insane stunts, it does so by relying very, very heavily on kung fu powers rather than on artful description alone. In retrospect, it reminded me of trying to hit the right combination of buttons on a controller in order to make the best “special move” in a fighting video game – something that I never really enjoyed doing. For example, the game’s “mook rules” allowed me to use a powerful kung fu technique to slaughter ten hapless goons in a single round… but that, apparently, was a very specific circumstance, since I was unable to duplicate the same feat for the remainder of my time playing the game. In fact, I found that as often as not, my character, who looked like a badass on paper, ended up looking like a chump in practice – so much so that it became a running joke.

My GM observed that combat has a very heavy tactical minigame aspect to it, strongly rewarding players with extensive knowledge of the mechanics and skill with their application and just as strongly penalizing players with only passing knowledge of them. Furthermore, he observed that the game seems to expect a higher degree of player rules familiarity than do most of the other games he’s played. This, he said, likely explains my PC’s problems.

On the bright side, I love the way weapon stats work in play. Weapons have Speed, Strike, and Damage scores. That alone isn’t particularly revolutionary; however, it’s the way these stats function in two-weapon fighting that really appeals to me. Basically, rather than allowing for two attacks per round or the like, characters simply take the best aspects of the two weapons. Only one weapon’s actually doing the hitting, mind you – the combined score is just a way to represent the extra advantage the additional weapon provides: the speed of a dagger in the off-hand, the extra defense from a shield, etc. The one problem I have with this otherwise very clever mechanic is the fact that it doesn’t address what happens if, in classic gamer style, your character chooses to wield two of the exact same weapon.

Now, two major aspects of the system and setting never came up as they related to my character, but they bear mentioning nonetheless.

The first is the concept of the Lore Sheet: entire swaths of knowledge about the setting PCs may purchase with Destiny points that have the added bonus of allowing further Destiny expenditures to affect upcoming plot developments. For example, a PC might have studied the creation of the world and thus be able to entwine his fate to varying degrees with the Axe Immortals, great warriors dedicated to preventing the Void from returning to destroy Creation. The prospect of using a Lore Sheet didn’t appeal to me, personally, because I didn’t feel all that invested in the setting in the first place; however, my fellow players, who were really into the setting, seemed delighted by them.

The second are the Secret Arts, which are the various manifestations of magic in the game. These aren’t flashy displays of arcane power, which fall under kung fu in this setting; rather, they involve manipulations of chi to produce “hyperactive” and “weak” chi conditions. These do not directly inflict bonuses or penalties, however. Instead, characters get a bonus for going along or not going along with hyperactive or weak chi conditions, respectively. The same basic principle applies to medicine, diplomacy, and even prognostication. Unfortunately, while the system seems very flexible, that “tactical minigame” aspect affecting combat was also at play here, making the application of the Secret Arts difficult for the players of Courtiers and Scholars in our group.