Well, this time I am a little more determnined. Even if it proves difficult to launch a new game (as I'm certain it will be), I have this blog, convention games, and the Mythic GME as an avenue for exploring the ideas that were popping into my head as I toured the exibit.
Like I said, the exibit itself was fantastic. The aesthetics made my wife and I wish we had the time and money to redecorate our house in a similar style. The historical presentation was top-notch. The warrior themselves were, of course, extremely impressive. But for me, it was the little cultural details of ancient China that really got my creative juices flowing. I never knew that jade was more valuable than gold, for example, and I marvelled at the type and quality of the ancient arms & armor (even though they are mostly bronze and leather).
Beyond that, the whole premise of Emperor Qin's necropolis practically screamed "Mega Dungeon!". Like the Eqyptians, the ancient Chinese thought that the objects in your tomb could assist you in the afterlife. Qin had a terra cotta army because he wanted to conqueor the afterlife! How cool is that? The adventuring possibilities are endless.
I'm not sure if I'd want to go full-bore wuxia, as my interests are currently more along the lines of classic sword & sorcery. But it would cool to develop a setting that had ancient China as it's historical and cultural model, rather than ancient or medieval Europe. My current thinking is that I'll raid Chinese history for cultural ideas but describe them in such a way as to distance them from a specific time and place. I want sword & sorcery, not historical fantasy (in this case). I also don'twant to have to worry about getting details wrong and I want the freedom to incorporate ideas from other fantastic or historical sources.
Obviously, given the nature of this blog, I hope to do all this using Risus. But I may decide to add support for Swords &Wizardry (or Labyrinth Lord), PDQ#, or make it entirely system-less. Stay tuned for more on this in the coming weeks or months.
3 comments:
I love that era as well and have wondered about incorperating aspects of it into games as well. I recently played PDQ# and found it a very agreeable system, sort of an a frown up and moved out, version of Risus. I ran a few games of S&W a while back and while I thought I would really like it, I actually thought t was rather bland. People tended to fall right back into the stereotypical archtype and it seemed to suck the creative and storytelling juices right out of the game. Perhaps it was just the wrong game at the wrong time. I could easily see a Wuxia PDQ# game though, the system lends itself to creative and more freeform games
Wow I really need to stop posting comments from my iPhone, I sound like an idiot.
Haven't actually played S&W yet, but of all the retro clones it is my favorite. I can totally see how you could fall into the worst and most bland aspect of old school gaming with it. At the same time, I think that if you approach it with a Risus mentality then it could be a very good system for modeling the best of what Old School gaming has to offer. It's weird. I started with Moldvay and never knew what earlier editions of D&D looked like until recently (I experience AD&D as coming after Moldvay even though that's inaccurate).
Anyway, Risus and PDQ (PDQ#) would be my first choices in most cases. But I really respect what the OSR community is doing these days and I'd love to support them if I can.
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