FOREWORD
Wushu has come a long way since Daniel Bayn (aka indra) first published it in the wee years of the 21st century. At first, this game was seen as a rules-light way to emulate action movies, especially of the Hong Kong variety, but since 2006 the Wushu community has become extremely active (they even have a clan now) and, as a consequence of that, the game has seen an increase in popularity. The greater attention given to its mechanics has led to the expansion of its original goal and nowadays you can see people proposing Wushu-powered games as diverse as forensic TV drama and undercover Vatican agents. My interest was picked during that time and I joined a play-by-post game here at RPG.net. It was an interesting experience, but I wanted to see if it could work with a tabletop group. I got a complimentary copy of the latest Wushu installment – Wire-Fu -- and ran a playtest session with some friends, which resulted in this review. Usually, the playtest comments are interspersed along the review, but since this is Actual Play Week, I changed the style a bit and concentrated them on a section of their own close to the end. If you already know the system, you might want to skip ahead.

APPEARANCE
Wire-Fu is 544-KB PDF 44 pages long. The text is displayed in landscape orientation with a simple two-column layout and large-sized font. There is no art whatsoever, except for the cover. Even given the original purpose of the game to focus on martial arts action films, the cover is somewhat limited in addressing the various scenarios that can be played within that genre. It displays a petit blonde woman and a trench coat-clad wearing monster facing off bald MIBs. Everybody is wielding katanas, of course, except for another trench coat monster, which is joining the fight (I am not sure on which side) armed with cutlasses. Maybe a GURPS 4th edition approach would be better, with scenes from the different settings presented in Wire-Fu displayed against the backdrop of the Wushu yin/yang logo.

WUSHU & KUNG FU FIGHTIN’
After a brief introduction, Bayn explains how Wushu works. For every detail a player adds while describing his character’s action, he gets one die (Wushu uses only D6s). When he reaches the scene’s cap (the maximum number of dice one can gain per action), he rolls them. Every die that comes up equal to or lower than the Trait (the things at which the character excels) the character is using for that action is a success. So, if a character has Smooth Talker 4 and is hitting on a NPC, the player would get one die for declaring that. He could get some dice if he embellished the scene. For example, he could say: “I hit on her/while flashing a charming smile/and dramatically lighting my cigarette”. That’s three dice. Rolling them up, he gets 3,3 and 5 – two successes. If there were no resistance from the NPC, he would have been successful.

However, the GM could have set the Threat Rating, the difficulty to overcome the scene and move the plot forward, as 3. Meaning the NPC was not charmed by the character yet and he would need to make another roll with new details. Threat Ratings do not need to represent human or even sentient threats; they can be used for all sorts of opponents or situations, like ticking bombs, winning over an audience, escaping from a collapsing building, bypassing a security system etc.

Threat Ratings are usually associated with Mooks, the less important opponents the characters have to face in the adventure, the legion of police officers/terrorists/assorted henchmen that get blown up in action movies. Mooks are under the control of the GM, but he does not get to describe their actions. They are there to soak up the hits and allow the PCs to show off. However, Mooks are not completely harmless. Besides the Threat Rating, which is, in a way, their hit point pool, they also have the ability to deal one hit in every character in the scene per round. PCs have three Chi points, which measure their importance to the scene and plot power, when they are zeroed, the PC is out of that scene, but not necessarily dead. To avoid being knocked out by the Mooks, a PC divides the dice gained in the description of the action in Yin and Yang, the former is used for defense purposes, the latter for attack. If the character gets at least one success in the Yin roll, he defended himself against the Mooks.

Nemeses, on the other hand, are the villains of the piece, the level boss of computer games. They behave mechanically as PCs: they have Traits, describe their actions, gain dice and divide them in Yin and Yang ones. A Nemesis is reserved for what Bayn calls mono-a-mono fights – battles in which one PC faces off against the villain. The mechanics of the confrontation are the same, but ties go to heroes. Whenever one of the combatants sends his opponent into negative Chi territory, he wins and describes the Coup de Grace, the dramatic killing blow. This happens even if his own Chi is negative, as long as the opponent’s Chi is lower.

Wushu is based on the Principle of Narrative Truth: everything a player describes, happens. Period. The roll of dice only shows how those actions advanced the story. In order for this to work, however, you need some ground rules. For example, no one can describe wiping out the opposition if the Threat Rating has not been zeroed yet. The same thing applies to Nemeses fights – no killing the villain, before his Chi is negative. Also, if you have to describe actions that fit the tone and setting of the game: you cannot describe drawing a laser gun in an Old West game. To avoid this, there is the Veto, which allows anyone on the table to, well, veto any description that they feel do not work in the game. This does not need to be confrontational, it can be a suggestion to improve a description, like saying to a player: instead of dong this, why don’t you do that”.

Another Wushu principle is that everything is a detail. Does the character have heat vision? Wields a soul-stealing sword? Was blessed by the Goddess of Love? No need to apply Traits to those things (although you could, if you felt they were central to the character), just work them in the details: “My eyes glow red as I focus my power/and blast at Negator/searing his titanium armor/with my scorching eye beams”, “I slash at him with Tempestcaller/which glows eerily/and wails with the sound of its imprisoned souls”, “The wind blows my hair dramatically/and Marianne feels an instant connection to me/as, unknowingly to her/Aphrodite’s blessing makes her/see me through the lens of loves gone by”. This allows the system to remain simple and unencumbered.

I KNOW KUNG FU & EXCUSES TO KICK ASS
Bayn devotes a chapter to describe possible details that can be used in describing actions, everything from kinetic linking to exotic weapons, passing through flying kicks, locations and camera tricks. This is good for kick starting the imagination of those that are not all that familiar with the material. The following chapter tells you how to create a character. Usually, the GM gives 5-8 points to spend on Traits, which start at 2 for free and can never be higher than 5, but there are other ways to do it, like requesting at least one combat, professional and social Trait or giving a 5, 4 and 3 rating to be allocated as the players sees fit.

Characters also have a Weakness, a Trait that represents vulnerability, a tragic flaw or any other thing that hinders the PC. These are rated at 1, meaning that whenever the character goes against his Weakness, he only gets successes if he rolls 1 on the die. There are also notes on gear, which should be details, and advancement, which does not really happen in Wushu, at least mechanically. The chapter ends with an optional system to represent honor in settings where that attribute is important and a list of example characters for the players, such as the Enlightened Master, the Kung-Fu Witch and the Cyborg, among others.

WORTHY OPPONENTS & WORLDS OF WIRE-FU
These two chapters list opponents, both Nemeses and Mooks, for Wushu games and possible settings in which to use them. Some of the example characters from the previous chapter are also appropriate for these. Purgatory is a virtual reality prison with a seven deadly sins theme, a kind of Matrix meets Oz or Jailbreak. Discord is a Taoist fantasy populated by evil eunuchs, renegade monks, wandering swordsmen and geomantic magic. Bad Blood is modern occult fantasy that pitches vampires, genetically-engineered super-soldiers and cyborgs against each other.

KICK-ASS EXAMPLES OF PLAY
This is the last, but by no means the least chapter of Wire-Fu. In fact, it may be the most important one. Wushu has such a different mechanical approach to RPGs that it is difficult to wrap your mind around it. Some things only gelled for me after reading these three examples. Bayn divides them into in-character text, dividing each detail with a slash, like I did in this review, and totaling the number of dice earned; and out of character text, where he explains the choices of Yin and Yang, reveals the rolls and the conclusion of each round. Even after reading the rules and these examples, there were things that still did not click for me and which I mention in the following playtest section.

PLAYTEST
Since ‘everything is a detail’, Wushu allows characters from what, in other RPGs, would be completely disparate power levels to work together without a problem. The ever-present ‘Superman/Batman coexistence’ conundrum that crops up in super-hero games is a non-issue in Bayn’s system, since the only difference between those PCs would be in what details they used to describe their actions. Based on that, I decided to set the playtest session in my ‘everything goes, multidimensional plane’ campaign.

Four of my friends, all long-time roleplayers, three of which took part in the Truth & Justice playtest, joined me for the game. I explained the system to them and told them to create characters with a social, a professional and a combat Trait and assign one of 5, 4 and 3 to each. We ended up with:

Bavaran Qatar: Ass-kicking Gurkha 5, Been in this dimension like forever 4, Cold and resolute 3, Stubborn 1
Nai-Q: Technomagic master 5, Technobabbling 4, Omniscience 3, Not objective 1
Victor Creed: Werewolf 5, Animal magnetism 4, Gypsy 3, Rage 1
Chuck Norris: Chuck Norris 5 (I have to apologize here. I lost Norris’ sheet and not even the player remembers his other two traits, but they were equally fun)

All of them put the 5 in the combat Trait, which seems natural for a game that emulates action movies. However, I believe that using the making use the other Traits is just a question of inserting scenes that cannot be solved by violence. Also, in campaigns that focus on other areas, like the forensic TV show one I mentioned above, combat Traits will probably not be as important.

The adventure started in a tavern where the PCs were hired by an old man to rescue his granddaughter, who had been kidnapped by Baron Karza (yes, of Micronauts’ fame) for his harem. When the characters were leaving the tavern, a brawl ensued, since I wanted to test the system. At first, not surprisingly, my friends did not get Wushu -- there were lots of “I try to…”. I had to remind them that the system was based on narrative truth and, as such, they should state what they did and the results of that action. That was difficult for them, especially the last part. In order to do that, they had to narrate the response and reactions of the NPCs, something that 20 years of RPGs had drilled into their heads was the GM’s province. Once I managed to break that, things flowed a little better.

Most descriptions were tame, with conventional fight moves and such. Even the technomage did not produce details as fantastical as he could, given his shtick. This was something I observed in parallel to the narrative problem. I tried to remedy it by describing some of the things the bar crowd (the Mooks in this encounter) was doing and that helped. When they finally realized the degree of freedom they had, things changed and, at one point, Nai-Q opened a mini black hole in the middle of the room to suck his opponents in.

The players were not the only ones to find the mechanics strange. Being silent most of time was a new ting to me. Since the bar crowd as a whole was treated as a Mook, I had no need to describe their actions, which mostly consisted of reactions described by the PCs. I did not like that, because part of the fun of GMing for me is controlling the NPCs. One of my friends even nicknamed Wushu the “lazy GM system”. I circumvented that by describing what the crowd did in-between the rounds, after all the players had declared and resolved their actions. This, as I stated above, also helped the players to embellish their descriptions.

The group knew Karza lived in an island not far from the shore and decided to get a boat. But before they left, Chuck Norris decided he wanted more information on the baron and strolled along the docks to beat some out of a few sailors. This is one point where I had some doubts. After reading the rules, I still had not fully grasped when to use the details mechanic. It seemed to me it only applied to combat and that for everything else a Scab roll would suffice. Scab rolls are used when you need to know how good was the PC, but does not require a whole scene. The player rolls a number of dice equal to the Trait being used and compares the highest result to a table -- the higher the roll, the better the result. I used this mechanic for the information scene, even though the Chuck Norris player described in detail how he intimidated the sailors. Now I know the details mechanic applies to everything, but it is still not clear to me exactly when a Scab roll is called for.

On Karza’s island, the PCs devised a plan to invade the baron’s castle and save the women held hostage. I introduced another Wushu rule in that scene, the Hold Dice one. By preparing for an action, be it by drawing up an attack plan or equipping up or anything else, the PC can get a pool of extra dice to use during the future action. Each detail in the planning adds one die to the pool.

The plan worked and they saved the women. In the end, there was a massive battle against the baron’s minion and a showdown between Chuck Norris and Karza. The combat was great and lasted several rounds, with neither my friend, nor I running out of details. Unfortunately, I had forgotten the rule that states that ties goes to the heroes and Karza defeated Norris, which felt extremely wrong.

One problem that surfaced during this battle was one of who declares the Yin/Yang spread first in a Nemeses confrontation. Even though Wushu does not have initiative, knowing how many dice your opponent separated for attack and defense is a tactical advantage. This is especially important for the GM, because that way he can control how long the Nemesis will last. We found no satisfactory way to solve that one.

CONCLUSION
Wushu is successful at what it sets to do. It provides a simple framework to emulate action films. As the continued development of the game and support of the fan community has shown, it is not limited to that and its engine can be used to simulate a wide range of situations. However, what Wushu does not give you is system validation for the coolness of your character. Sometimes, you want the rules to support your claim that the magic sword your PC wields is kick-ass with to-hit bonuses or special powers that have a mechanical effect – and that makes you different from the other character. Though, technically, Wushu does that, since a detail is part of the game’s mechanic, has an effect and is specific to the PC’s shtick, it feels like, according to one of my playtesters, as your character is just like the other players’, but with a different name.

There are ways to change that. The Hold Dice rule could serve as a machanical differentiator and the The Wall of Wushu lists several optional rules, add-ons etc. to increase the crunchiness of the mechanics. The problem with that is that Wushu’s strength is its simplicity, which makes it especially useful for play-by-forum games. If you start to tackle a lot of new stuff to the basic engine, you run the risk of ending up with a misshapen hybrid that has none of Wushu’s advantages and is more limited than a crunchier system. The game’s lack of advancement may also make it inappropriate for long-term campaigns.

As I said in the beginning, the Wushu community has become quite active and a lot of answers about the game can be found in the many threads at RPG.net. A good start is the Wushu thread index created by Kiero. If this review piqued your interest, the resources listed there will certainly let you get to know the system a little better.

STYLE: 3

• Layout: 3
• Art: 2
• Coolness: 2
• Readability: 4

• Content: 4
• Text: 5
• Fun: 5
• Workmanship: 5