Art of Wuxia: Not Perfect, But I Like It

The book's cover.

Its a fact I've been on a serious Wuxia and Xianxia kick, even if Jeremy 'Deathblade' seriously trashed me and went into great details on why my assessment of Xianxia and D&D was somewhat inaccurate to put it mildly, as this post accidentally ended under his radar somehow with an in depth video response. This hasn't exactly completely knocked the wind out of my sail when it come to Wuxia and Xianxia but it has certainly made me want to further dig into the genre and better understand it at a deeper level. Granted initially I did say I would never write about Wuxia and tabletop RPG ever again. However since then I have gotten my hands on Art of Wuxia by DWD studio. This isn't a 'proper review' as I don't really do review. Just some thoughts on it:

• The Good: While there are much more flavorful and complex systems out there Art of Wuxia is a fairly approachable primarily d100 RPG. A lot if its clean, simple and easily refluffed or modified nature makes it very much in the same vein as the more modernized OSR games I like so much while at the same time the system isn't a clone of OD&D, which would be a poor fit for this. These are simple, easy to grasp rules which can be easily thought to players and explain. The lack of a rigid class system is also good as I think for Wuxia stuff this is a net positive.
• The Bad: There is a serious misunderstanding of Wuxia morality, which Deathblade explains further into these two video. Suffice to say, Art of Wuxia seem to prefer characters which fit more neatly into our definition of 'Good vs Evil' which doesn't accurately portray the dog-eat-dog world of Wuxia to its full, messy potential.
• The Subjective: The game's power level is, I'd argue, fairly low. A lot of it is fairly grounded and more to a level which western fantasy fans would recognize as closer to Sword & Sorcery than High Fantasy. Truly powerful and staple Wuxia abilities, such as intensive 'wire fu' or even floating around are things far beyond the reach of a starting character, who only have a few skills and a technique to start with. On the positive, this make the power level of the game easy to manage for a GM and, just as importantly, easy to grasp for a newcomer player. The lower levels of power aren't as high flying or fantastical but this isn't a bad thing by itself as it truly give a chance to meaningfully grow a character's power as they master martial arts.

That said, the game has been added to my 'must run' list and is set to likely become a staple of this blog nonetheless.