The Mist-Robed Gate is a game of wuxia cinema—stories of love, betrayal, and dying for the things you love and hate. If you loved House of Flying Daggers, Hero, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, then this is for you.

The book is going to be lovely. It'll be about 60 pages, 8.5" square with art by me and layout by Jonathan Walton. (It's going to have colored endpapers, too, which I'm really excited about.) The graphic above is a promo bookmark, which you can get inside of a copy of Elizabeth's "It's Complicated," or with a preordered copy of this game.

Preorders cost $24, with $5 shipping, national or international. I should have them before or right after GenCon. You can click this link to order one.

Along with the rules of the game, you'll find lots of support material in the book. There's an extensive filmography (by my friend Evan, a film student and all-round excellent dude; he worked his butt off on it), a chapter about tea, and a chapter about snacks to serve during the game—which ones you should buy and which you can make, and simple recipes for those—so you know everything you need to throw a Mist-Robed Gate dinner party. And LARP rules too, if you're into that kind of thing.

This is a game for enthusiasts, and the more you know about the genre, the more fun you'll have with it. But, you don't have to be familiar with the genre to play Mist-Robed Gate (Meg Baker wasn't), and it plays well with large groups, so the more the merrier! Go nuts, play it with all your friends at once.

If you have any questions, go ahead and ask me in this thread.

Wow. That is just lovely.

If I preorder, can I pick up the book at GenCon?

Shreyas, what's your favourite recipe in the book?

Is this something I could buy for a non-gamer and have them understand what it was they were to do?


If you had to describe the play structure/system/rules in a few words, what would those words be?


Cheers. This looks sexy.

Any words on the pretty steep price?

Shreyas,

Where will you be selling it at GenCon? This seems like the kind of thing that I'd really like.

Seth Ben-Ezra
Great Wolf

Posted By: shreyasSeth, you can find me hanging around GoD or the Design Matters booth. I'll be the brown guy.

But surely you'll have to narrow it--

Oh, right.

I shiver in anticipation.

Also!

If you really want a bookmark, we'll have some with us at DexCon. Just look for the brown guy (and the girl standing next to her). We just got them today, and they are gorgeous.

..Er, the bookmarks. Not the people. The people are us.

You've got mail.

I'm totally jazzed about picking this up at GenCon. Sweet.

See you at Booth 1940, Shreyas!

This sounds facinating.

I'll be at GenCon this year meself, and will have to give it peeksee.

Quick question- I've looked at some of the AP, and it either seems to be a general rundown on play or a description of the emergent narrative... can someone give me (or point me too) a pass-by-pass description of how the knife ritual works in an AP context?

I'm having a little difficulty visualizing the actual around-the-table play experience and how that becomes story.

-B

do i get a special deal if i order It's Complicated, the bookmark and Mist Robed Gate ALL AT THE SAME TIME? ;)
(aka, can you stick them in the same box when you ship them to me?)

Also- why am I saying what your character is demanding?

-B

Bailey: Normally you wouldn't say what my demand was, but we'd have probably come up with some issues between the characters during character creation, so I'm just trying to simulate that. Let's pretend that you don't know exactly what my character wants from you, but you suspect that it has something to do with your father and the King of Qin.

So we do this scene between Li Rong and Song the Lesser (ouch!) in the wine shop. At first we are just talking in character, but eventually things get down to business and, when it looks like there might be a conflict emerging between us, someone (either one of us or another player) removes the cover from the knife.

Now the knife is uncovered but still SHEATHED.

Because the knife is still in its sheath, I can't actually tell you what I want from you. I have to simply imply it. So I say, like, "The skies of Qin are clear and blue, but my lord knows that, one day, the night shall come upon us. Surely, the night shall come upon us all, in turn, and what then matter our earthly squabbles of the flesh? No, it would be better if every man were reconciled, one to another, as I am to you, my brother. Just so."

And, saying that, I take the uncovered blade and hand it to you, since I just made an implied demand. Here are your choices:

1) Agree to my implied demand (without knowing exactly what it is) and hand the blade back to me.
2) Draw the blade, escalating the circumstances and giving yourself new options. My demand is outrageous!
3) Pass the blade to another player and imply my demand (or whatever you guess my demand is) to their character, deflecting responsibility. If you deflect to a character not in the current scene, it's your responsibility to inform them of the demand in the next scene (tell them, they recieve your letter, etc.)
4) Initiate a fight! Try to beat me up for daring to imply such a thing!

Why don't you describe how you might respond, in four different ways, and we'll follow the different choice branches from there?

Here's a question - what's the penalty for blabbing your desire while the knife is sheathed?

-B

Bailey: I'm not sure what the book-rule is, but I'd say that the penalty for accidentally blabbing your desire is... that's not actually your desire. You have to come up with something else that you really want.

Also, as for fighting as a means means of communication, I have two suggestions. First, the game is not intended to be a universal wuxia game, adaptable to any kind of wuxia you can think of. It's meant to emulate a specific kind of wuxia, namely the big budget, trainwreck heartbreak style developed by Ang Li, the Fifth Generation Chinese film directors, and a few others. The fights in these movies are generally about resisting demands made on you by others, stalling when you are given a choice you must make, by refusing to choose between the options in front of you. So that's where the fight rules are coming from.

The other option would subvert the rules a bit but might allow the kind of thing you're talking about, is to have a fight that's not mechanically a "fight" according to the rules, but a normal part of description and inter-character interactions. Like, instead of having a conversation in the wine shop, we're having a fight in the wine shop that, mechanically, is considered just description, not an actual fight. And then I could imply your father is dying by my choice of fighting style. Something like that. But the fight rules are based around resisting a demand, so if you're not doing that, it probably shouldn't be a "fight" according to the rules.

As for your choices:

1. You agree and pass the blade back to me:

"I've committed myself utterly to the permanence of the flesh, blasphemed, and entreated with hungry spirits to learn the secrets of this permanence... given this, perhaps I should resolve past matters, before I stand alone upon the Earth, and all else have gone into shadow."

Now I have the following choices: 1a) set down the blade, satisfied with your agreement, or 1b) draw the blade, escalating because I'm not satisfied with your answer. However, let's assume that I agree, saying, "Fair journeys, Mr. Song." We'll follow the knife-drawing branch in #2 below.

2. You escalate and draw the blade!

"All this talk of squabbling flesh, and there you sit so fetchingly dressed! I think our flesh most certainly should not squabble, indeed, should be mostwarmlyreconciled."

This is the main track we're going to follow from here, since it branches out into the choices you make with a drawn knife. Now that you have a drawn blade, you pass it to me and openly declare a demand. The blade is drawn so there's no need to imply things anymore. What's your demand? That our characters have hot monkey sex? Note that demands, with the blade drawn, are basically backed by the threat of violence. Basically, you're saying: "Agree to this or try to kill me" because you're crazy, headstrong, super-passionate wuxia heroes.

3. You deflect responsibility for my demand to someone else!

"Somewhere my heart might be breaking, little sister, but not here. Not here." (somewhere distant, a young fisherman just pulled a ornate jade jar into his boat with a net full of fish)

In the next scene, the player responsible for the fisherman, another PC, has just been handed the knife and given responsibility for fulfilling what he thinks my demand is. At this point, that character has the same choices that you faced in the last scene: a) agreeing, b) escalating, c) passing, or d) fighting. He might 3a) decide that its his duty to return these organs to their household so that they can be properly buried and begin tracking down the engraved seal, which links to your family, or 3b) decide that he will threaten to smash this spirit relic unless its creator does something for him, drawing the knife and making a demand himself, or 3c) give the jade jar as a present to his beloved, another PC, or 3d) attempt to throw the jade jar back into the sea, refusing to make a choice and fighting against the ghostly spirits and magical protections that emanate from it. And then things develop from there. Let's stop following this branch now, because it's just the same as this one.

4. You refuse to make a choice and we fight!

I make a deliberately boorish grab for her, provoking her to slap me. It's ON.

Once you start a fight, you've moved from the negotiation based resolution of the knife to a different form of resolution. It's very much like getting to the stage of rolling dice in Polaris, once the ritual phrases negotiations have broken down and you've reached the exact point of disagreement.

Fights are conducted in a freeform fashion, with us describing or acting out what we're doing while all the other players serve as an audience, but an interested audience, because each player gets to vote secretly on which of us they think to win the fight. They can vote completely arbitrarily, based on how they want the story to go, whose description they find more evocative, who they want to lose/win, etc. We can also swing the vote our way by invoking traits to gain extra votes for our side, so if we were playing crazy Exalted M-RG, this is when you'd yell "Ever-Perfecting Drunken Clarity Prana!" or if you were playing it more straight, invoke colors or natural imagery (rain, vines, waterfalls) that are associated with your character and throw another colored token into the bag for yourself. The game itself has more details about using traits, which I won't go into here. Once everyone has voted, the fight reaches its climax and we draw a token from the bag. So, as Elizabeth put it, it's a "rigged election" system, because frequently the bag will rule against the majority of votes.

Let's say we fight and you win! We utterly destroy the wine-shop, but, in the end, your martial prowess is stronger and resist being forced to make a choice about my demand... for now. In the aftermath, you have the following choices:

4a) Enforce a demand, but this one works less well because you haven't made one of me. This is a better option for me if I won, forcibly dragging you home to your father or just sending you on your way there.
4b) Seize a prop or set, such as a weapon of mine, a faction I control, an office I hold, a location that serves as my base. Maybe you're now the King of Qin's champion!
4c) Seize the blade, if you didn't already have it, but you do.
4d) Finally, you can soothe the blade, which means moving the blade escalation backwards. You'd take the SHEATHED knife and return it to being COVERED.

In any case, having a fight stops progress along the branching tree of knife negotiations. In fact, that's generally why you fight, because you don't like the choices the knife presents you.

So... make your demand for #2 and we'll follow that branch.

EDIT: Cross-posted, but I think I'll leave the movie breakdowns to Shreyas, since it's his game and he can talk better about his intentions. I'm just describing how the system works in practice.

i'm still curious about the physical use of the knife?
i'm assuming from what i've read here that the states of the knife in the graphic at the top might be more acurately described as covered, uncovered, and unsheathed? when the knife is covered, what is it covered with? a cloth or something?
i really like the idea of the use of a physical blade as a tool of play, i'm just trying to imagine what it actually looks like around the table.

also, how do things work when the blade is covered? i am having difficulty imagining how things could work if you aren't even allowed to imply demands verbally at all.

Brian: When the knife is covered, as it starts at the beginning of the game, it just signals that the game hasn't yet progressed to the point where there are strong conflicts between the players. If you're to the point of implying demands, then you or some other player should remove the cover. In play, I use the tiny metal Chinese-style longsword that I got with the Deluxe Version of the Chinese Hero comics from Dr. Master. It stays wrapped in a handkerchief on the table, as if it's inside a ceremonial sword case (I really need to get a tiny letter-opener box for it or something) until it's uncovered. Bailey's clickpen idea would totally work, if you didn't have other implements, and might work really well in other genres, like spy films (remember the clickpen in Goldeneye?!!)

The sword actually has four states: covered, sheathed, drawn, and bloodied, the latter of which we haven't gotten to (it happens when you stab other people's character sheets, trying to kill them). I prefer to think of the "sheathed" stage as "sheathed" and not "uncovered" because it implies escalation (you unsheathe a sheathed sword) rather than de-escalation (you cover an uncovered sword). But yeah, those terms could potentially be interchangable.

Bailey: You get to make your demand of me, but you can't be like "I want her to fall in love with me so I can reject her." It needs to be a request that the character DO something, not just that something should happen or events should unfold in a particular way. Otherwise, it's not a demand, just scene framing or something. Saying "I want you to go home to your master in disgrace, but be passionate in love with me" seems fine to me, though some groups (and maybe Shreyas too, I don't know) may prefer that demands be made in character. But in our Boston playtest, sometimes demands were actually character-to-character, but sometimes demands would be made on the meta-level, player-to-player, like: "Okay, so what my character is demanding is that you kill the demon that your child has become."

So let's say you pass me the unsheathed blade and make the meta demand: "I want you to go home to your master in disgrace, but be passionate in love with me." Now I have the following options:

1) Agree and set down the blade (still unsheathed), which I would probably do, because that's awesome bloody story meat.
2) Pass the blade and make your demand to someone else, which would also be pretty good, making someone else fall in love with you instead. But then they have the same unsheathed blade and the choices facing me right now.
3) Stab your character sheet with the blade, in an attempt to kill you. This escalates to BLOODIED.
4) Reject all these choices and fight! This takes us back to the post-fight choices, after resolution.

Let's say I do #3, to follow the tree all the way through. I define one of my blank prop cards as "the Heartbox of Song the Lesser," pull it out on the table, and say, "I knew it would be foolish to bargain with scum such as you! You know nothing but how to cavort with whores! And then I try to smash your heartbox with the heavy end of my pipa." After narrating that, I stab your character sheet with the knife, which, interestingly enough, means you now have the knife, stuck in you. That gives you these options:

1) Make a demand of the world and die. This is something that will ultimately prove to be true, showing the impact of your death. You can't demand the death of another PC (that's a different option), but you can call for just about anything else. Like, "Your master will betray you before the end!" or "You will come to regret the love you rejected here, as you will never know another!"

2) Make a final demand of me or another PC and then die. This also can't be their death, but it can be anything else. Like, "You will ensure that no one ever buries any part of me!" or "You will consume my spirit organs so that I can live on inside of you!" or "You must take this object and give it to my father" or whatever else. If you choose this option, then I have two choices: 2a) agree to your demand, or 2b) die, getting killed along with you, right on the spot. The latter case is how you get mutual destruction, like the final scene of Flying Daggers.

3) Reject all these options and fight! This becomes pretty interesting when a character has already been stabbed, because, if you win, you can choose to "soothe the blade" and that means being able to pull the knife out of your character sheet and prevent yourself from dying. But if you lose, you're still dead and I get to choose between the post-fight options. However, after being stabbed, fighting is the only way to prevent yourself from dying.

Does that all make sense?

Play another character? If you get in there fast or take over an NPC you should probably be able to accomplish more than show up like Fortinbras at the end (speaking of which, now I really want to play wuxia Hamlet set in Denmark, instead of just in China).

It's not really meant for long-term play (more, one movie at a time), unless you have a huge group (we played with 11 players one time) and have a lot of scenes in which nobody plays with the knife. That 11-player game took a while to get stabby, so we probably could have played 3-5 sessions and still had some folks alive at the end, unless it just turned into a giant monster bloodbath of stabbage.

And another realization - is this a GM free storygame?

It just occurred to me that with he knife ritual moderating how conflicts happen, you don't need one, and I've heard no reference to one.

-B

Perhaps... nailing wuxia in a game has been one of my lingering design bugs. Not about MRG obviously, but possibly another thread with similar thematics.

I've actually played a wuxia game based on tSoY's mechanics, and it gave me about the most authentic experience I've fond among the various alternatives, including WotG's which was such a heartbreaker for me.

-B

Something I've been wondering: All the knife-play so far (Which sounds awesome, btw.) has been between two people. How does that work when more then two people are involved, but they are NOT adressed by somebody passing the blade along.

Like, you and Bailywolf have your little conflict there and it's all fine and well, but instead of escalating to bloodied, you accept and set the blade down. Now, I get to narrate a scene (How does that work, btw? Round-robin or something more complicated?) and want to have a conflict with somebody. But the blade is already unsheathed, so there is no way I can be all Imply-y and stuff? I have to declare openly? Also, unless somebody else get's in a fight with me or refuses my requests and I get in a fight with him and de-escalate, there's no way for me to get back to the indirect level?

Also, what do the other people do while you and Baily have your conflict? Any way to influence it unless you get in a fight and we're called to vote? Anything in place, rules-wise, to stop two people from hogging all the spotlight with back and forth demands?

Aaron, I can't reproduce the entire game here! Wait until it comes out! But... The knife ritual is always player-to-player, though it can move around if people defer responsibility to someone else. Scene framing passes between players. Players can assist in other people's fights by supplying useful traits (extra votes). If the blade is unsheathed (doesn't matter who did it), you can declare your intentions unless someone "soothes" the blade and returns it to being sheathed. Hogging is deterred by 1) if your character (or their direct agents / props) is not in a scene, you can't make demands, and 2) excessive use of the knife ritual usually means you end up dead quickly :)

This sounds like a pretty rad game. Very interesting.

Wow.

Shreyas, your black bean tofu was half of what convinced me to order this.
Jonathan Walton, your break down of how play works was the other half.

I am very excited about the possibilities this holds.

Hmm... I think you could probably make 3 work, since there's precedent in House of Flying Daggers, right? Aside from Zhang Ziyi, Andy Lau, and Takeshi Kenishiro, there's no one there that needs to be a PC. Two would be doable, I suppose, but probably not that great, since you wouldn't have anyone to defer demands to. If you only have 3 players, though, you just need to be more careful about pacing, maybe talking about expectations first. If you all run into it head first, the game could be over in an hour (which is fine, if that's what people want).

Question: I recently watched, with my wife, Curse of the Golden Flower.

For anyone familiar with both this game and that movie: Could that movie be done well by this game? Assuming that the players had bought into the initial premise, of course?

Oh, I'm sorry, missed one.

Moreno, I have no plans to release this game as a PDF.

Sure, chess has a commonly accepted repair routine. I think it's important to have one of those in your game! I also think that it's your job, as a play group, to work out what your repair routines are, and it's not my place to dictate them. Maybe you think the person who screwed up has to buy the next round, or call the pizza delivery place, or just re-narrate their action. Your group is best qualified to decide what works for it.

That said, I'm interested to hear how your group handles it in the event that that happens in play.

The game text has an answer to your question about implicit demands.

1) Thanks for your enthusiasm!

2) I came up with it in my brains.

"Gate" is like, a pretty common part of the names of monasteries and consequently martial arts schools. Remember Dragon Tiger Gate?

I don't really hold much to notions of pretension, honestly. There is a palace made of luminous glass columns in Curse of the Golden Flower. The genre's got a habit of breaking the record for "most expensive movie made in China." What's a word choice in the face of that?

well, i dunno. in the end, i don't give a crap, cuz the game itself sounds so rad. :)
but the other day i was telling a friend about it and when i said the name out-loud it kind of made me cringe. i don't know, it kind of made me think of... poetry or something. the kind of poetry that would make me cringe. :) or that would at least make me very concerned upon hearing the name.
so thats why i was curious if it was based on something or whatever.
but what the hell do i know about names? i mean, i still buy White Wolf games and they certainly aren't unpretentious. I mean, Vampire: the Requiem? Horrible. Just horrible names.

beyond the name the only thing that sounds bothersome about M-RG is that I think I'd feel the need to buy some really sweet Chinese-looking knife. I've got a few other games I feel like I ought to have nifty tidbits to play the game with, even though, technically speaking they aren't required.

So, we're "recipe testing," which is to say that we were in the mood to eat something that happened to be in the book. The photos aren't going to make it to print, but I thought I'd share.

Also, Joe, we're making black bean tofu next!

Posted By: shreyasSo, we're "recipe testing," which is to say that we were in the mood to eat something that happened to be in the book. The photos aren't going to make it to print, but I thought I'd share.

I'm not even hungry right now and that looks goddamn delicious.

Wikipedia says: Tom kha gai (Thai: ต้มข่าไก่, IPA: [tôm kʰà: kàj]), literally translates to boiled galangal chicken. It is a spicy hot sweet soup in Thai Cuisine made with coconut milk, lemon grass and chicken.

My recipe's a little simpler than the one there - for one thing, galangal is hard to get even if you have a well-stocked Asian grocery, and I don't really use it very often. My version's also less sweet and more tangy; I find it a little disconcerting to drink sweet soups with mushrooms and meat in them. There's, um, let me think, a four-course meal with some variations, one traditional Chinese condiment, some noise about what sorts of foods are good to buy prepared instead of cooking them yourself, and the big ol' section on tea, with a few of my favorite iced tea recipes.