I just finished a 9-session mini-campaign of Hearts of Wulin. It is a wuxia-melodrama RPG that is Powered by the Apocalypse. Despite the fact that it was published by The Gauntlet, it seems to maintain a very low profile online. It’s unfortunate that it hasn’t been discovered by more gamers. It really is an exceptional game, and a very solid toolkit for the emulation of wuxia television and cinema.
I’m an enthusiastic fan of classic wuxia films of the 1960s-1980s—especially those produced by Shaw Brothers studios and their contemporaries—and for some time, I had been shopping games so that I could run a mini-campaign that I hoped would bring their spirit to my gaming table. I found a lot of interesting systems, which often seemed carefully formulated. Two of my favorites were Art of Wuxia and Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades. I’d recommend both, if you’re thinking about running a wuxia game. Each one offers some background and world building tools, and, importantly, solid mechanics that codify the fluid grace and explosive violence of wuxia cinema.
Still, while the mechanics in these games are well-crafted, their tendency toward codification seemed to clash with how I experienced good martial arts media. Wuxia fight scenes shine as set pieces, each with an internal logic that responds to what’s going on in the story. The logic of one fight scene—in terms of both style and physics—may not be consistent with the next. Consistency does not always seem to be the point. The point—or at least one important point—is what best illustrates the story.
Hearts of Wulin bears this idea out. Its mechanics are intended to channel and enhance a player’s creativity. Combat, along with most other randomized tasks, is given a rhythm, but most other things are left to narration by players. The player is not even strictly limited to narrating facts about their own character. If they roll well enough, they are encouraged to provide details about the world around them—including their opponent’s weaknesses or fighting style.
As with many PbtA games, (not to mention other looser games,) Hearts of Wulin can get vague, especially when using the basic combat rules, which amount to a single dice roll that decides the entire fight. The game’s designer has made some very useful play practices to give the fights a sort of cinematic flow. (The best of these is borrowed from the awesome game World Wide Wrestling.) They mostly enhance the pacing of fights, and, when combined with the optional “Extended Duel” moves, I felt that they gave a very strong emulation of wuxia fight scenes. One of my players highlighted the same feeling on multiple occasions—both of us were just surprised at how well it worked. My entire table was completely adapted to the system within a few sessions, and we found ourselves staging some very interesting fights.
One unusual concept is called Scale. It does a fine job of incentivizing patience and forbearance, relative to combat. Some opponent’s are so far outside of a PC’s ability as to be undefeatable. If a PC chooses to fight such an opponent anyway, they lose, flat-out. However, Scale can be shifted if a PC works with allies at their side, or if they employ the “New Technique” move. This move is exemplary—it allows a player to narrate a montage of their character studying and training to learn better how to defeat a superior foe. If the player uses the move successfully, their opponent’s scale is reduced, making what was impossible now possible. (For very powerful foes, the GM may ask for multiple shifts before Scale can be meaningfully shifted. Interestingly, one PC may have an entirely different Scale relative to a foe than another does, which brings all sorts of dramatic depth to the game, as one PC struggles, sometimes for mysterious reasons, to defeat an enemy, while another knows how to best them. These reasons may be physical or emotional.
It feels a little strange to me that I’ve been focusing on combat so much here. Hearts of Wulin designates itself as a game based in wuxia melodrama. Many of the rules have little to do with martial arts, focusing instead on the relationships, romantic and otherwise, and the emotional struggles experienced by the game’s various characters. The game truly shines when it’s exploring emotions. Sometimes it happens during a fight, but more often, in my experience, the worst injuries to PCs happened when their feelings got the better of them.
I highly recommend this game. I’m hoping to come back for another story arc and the same group of players somewhere down the line, but in the meantime, I wanted to take a moment to share how well done it is and how much I really enjoyed it.