So Clint Kraus wrote this awesome Wushu-hack called Roanoke, which is my current favorite Story Game Written By Someone I Don't Know From The Forge. He does give props to My Life With Master and Conspiracy of Shadows in the back, though.

It's a Brotherhood of the Wolf-inspired game set in colonial North Carolina and seeks to explain how the Lost Colony got itself good and lost. Some of the historical information he gives doesn't quite gel with what I was taught in school (growing up in NC, we learn a lot about the Roanoke Colony), but the game isn't out to be really historical anyway.

So you make characters, in standard Wushu style, pretty rules-lite.

And then the GM chooses adversaries and plot hooks from among a handful of awesome ones presented in the book. They include the likes of:

- cannibals
- undead vikings who reached the New World first
- cthulhu-spawn
- Elizabethan spymasters
- witches & sorcerers
- demon-worshiping native tribes
- etc.

Each type of adversity has a main statted villian and sometimes a "mini-boss," guidelines for the appropriate minions that the PCs might fight, and then a couple of Bang-style plot hooks to get the story started in media res.

There's extra rules in the end for narrating the demise of the colony after the game is over, based on My Life and Conspiracy of Shadows. The players are encouraged to call on the Doom of the colony to counter bad die rolls, but accumulated Doom makes the colony's end more and more grisly and makes it less likely that the PCs will escape alive.

There are some flaws that I could talk about (and will, once I get around to writing an Actual Play report), but I really dig it. It's a sweet little indie game that's hella fun. I might even run it at JiffyCon next weekend if I don't have my Exalted Hack finished by then.

So, like, how does it rescue Wushu?

Posted By: shreyas

So, like, how does it rescue Wushu?

Posted By: JonathanWaltonShreyas, it doesn't really, which is too bad. Wushu could be rescued from mediocrity by better guidelines for narrating details and a few other things, but it works okay for what Clint's trying to do here.

Meh, I don't think Wushu has to be rescued at all, but YMMV.

M

Posted By: shreyas

It varies!

I think it does a really great thing - it pulls super fun narration out of people really well - but like, that isn't really very useful for me; I am lucky enough to play with a group that narrates really well without mechanical stimulus.

And it doesn't do anything else.

Heh.

My group is a mixed circle of newbies and long-term gamers. The newbies haven't yet learned most of the unnecessary habits of the long-term gamer ("No, you can't just narrate what the NPC does...") and because of that, I prefer their style of play. Wushu gives them the freedom to play the game the way they want and breaks down a few of the long-term gamers preconceptions, so much fun is had.

M

*shrug*

Different people like different things. Me, I'm pretty happy with Wushu as is, but I can see where you're coming from. (Although I still think that Wushu needing "rescue" is a pretty sucky description.)

M

Posted By: JonathanWaltonDon't mind Shreyas. He's just bitchy about stuff that doesn't satisfy him.

Heh, I'll keep that in mind. ^_^

M