My attempt to grasp, explain, vary, & otherwise muse upon Wushu

• Wushu
• The Wushu wiki

(...in progress...)

Wushu is a role-playing game. Although, it might be better described as a collaborative story-telling framework. Originally designed to emulate action movies, it has proved quite flexible.

Wushu is played in scenes.

Each scene has a goal established by the GM.

Each scene is divided into rounds. Each round consists of two phases:

• Narration
• Resolution

During the narration phase, each player describes what happens that round. The only limits to what a player may narrate are:

• Veto
• Coup d’grace

Every person at the table—player or GM—has the power of veto. Despite its name, vetoes are not meant to be confrontational. It simply means, “That seemed out of place in this particular game.” Vetoes are resolved by consensus. If a veto stands, the narrator must redo his narration.

The other limit on narration is that you cannot narrate achievement of the goal until the end of the scene. The right to narrate achievement of the goal is the coup d’grace (which will be described below).

Each detail a player adds to his narration earns a die to be used during the resolution. The GM may establish a cap for the scene on the number of die that can be earned each round. A detail may be anything.

Note: The narration does not depend upon the resolution. What is narrated happens. The resolution determines:

• Overall scene outcome: Whether the goal is met & who gets to narrate the conclusion
• Pacing: How many rounds pass before the scene ends

For the resolution phase, each player splits the dice he earned during the narration phase between:

• Offense: Brings you closer to the goal
• Defense: Protects your narrative ability (chi, which will be described shortly)

Each player chooses one of their character’s traits that is most applicable to their narration for that round. (Traits will be described below.) Each trait is rated from 1–5. Each die that equals or exceeds the trait is a success.

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Things left to cover:

• Challenge levels (threat levels)
• Chi
• Nemeses
• Secondary goals
• Traits & weakness/flaw

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Ideas for games:

• Sherwood
• Swashbuckling
• Star Wars
• Swords & Sorcery
• Pulp Space Opera
• The Dying Earth
• Authurian
• LotR (I might have preferred Wushu to Decipher’ system)
• Firefly (Although the Serenity game looks fun)
• Wild (Wild) West?
• Gold Monkey?

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last updated 1 year ago #