James Nicoll Reviews

Joyce Ch*ng and Lowell Francis’ 2022 Hearts of Wulin is a wuxia roleplaying game. The core mechanics are derived from Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA).

I dithered over how to present the credits and the date. Credits, because RPGs often have teams of creators and this one is no exception¹. I took the quoted material below as sufficient evidence that I could correctly credit this as I have. Date: the rule credits don’t seem to mention when the book was published so I went with the date specified on DriveThru.

The text is formatted in such a way as to make it convenient to read in PDF form. One would expect that to be the default in the online-sales-dominated table-top roleplaying game industry. It is not. Double-column text dominates. I don’t know why that is.

On the subject of things that should be included in every rule system by default, but aren’t: Hearts of Wulin has a hyperlinked index. The links actually work and the page numbers are correct. Again, one would expect that to be the default in the online-sales-dominated table-top-roleplaying-game industry. It is not. Sometimes there is no index. Sometimes the page numbers are wrong. I don’t know why that is.

In fact, the designer was so invested in the rules being absorbed as PDF that there’s no formal table of contents, just the usual left-hand column of (entirely functional) hyperlinks.

As for the game engine:

Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) is a tabletop role-playing game design framework (…) developed by Meguey and Vincent Baker

Since its creation, the PbtA engine has been adapted to quite possibly hundreds of roleplaying games, of which I’ve played a bunch. I enjoyed my first exposure (Dungeon World). It turns out I dislike PbtA in most of its iterations, for two reasons:

• PbtA games seem to work fine² if you want to do the very specific thing the designer had in mind, but they break down if you venture away from that core vision.
• PbtA experience systems do not seem to lend themselves to lengthy campaigns. I didn’t play Dungeon World for long, so it never came up. It was an issue with Brindlewood Bay.

Wulin’s specific implementation of PbtA seems to avoid the first issue by selecting as the very specific thing the designers had in mind a field that is not so much very specific so much as very broad. Wuxia covers a lot of ground.

As to the experience issue, a bit of math I won’t reproduce up here suggests that campaigns could run between thirty to one hundred sessions before encountering the upper limit of the experience system. At once a week, that’s almost two years. Depending on how current events play out in the near future, two years could be the rest of your life³!

However, even if I absolutely loathed the game mechanics, which I don’t, I’d still recommend Hearts of Wulin. Not only does it include gamemastering advice I intend to steal without credit, Wulin is an informative, conveniently-priced sourcebook on wuxia and related genres.

Hearts of Wulin is available here (Age of Ravens Games), here (DriveThru), and here (Itch.io).

Now for the nitty gritty.

Intro

This provides the usual general description of roleplaying games, as well as a more specific explanation of wuxia and related genres.

Safety & Content

Advice on running enjoyable games that do not traumatize players.

Why is this necessary, you ask? Because some folks are clueless or even malicious.

Character Creation

How to create player characters.

As there are six basic templates, each with three variations, this should be fairly quick.

Basic Moves

The core mechanics relating to task resolution.

Conflict and Advancement

This covers combat and any other circumstance where characters have (seemingly) irreconcilable goals.

A detail I’ve not seen elsewhere: scale. Characters fall into three grades. A conflict between equals could go either way. When one side is better/stronger than the other, the inferior will lose. In the second case, an inferior’s victory consists of being able to define the nature of their loss.

At least, that’s how the first confrontation is resolved. Having been defeated, the loser can then seek out some New Technique (or depending on how badly they are outmatched, several) in the hope of prevailing during the inevitable rematch.

Entanglements

Entanglements are connections between two characters that are complicated by another person. These can be but do not have to be romantic triangles.

Romeo and Juliet’s entanglement, for example, is complicated by Tybalt, who is a homicidal hothead.

Playbooks

The six character archetypes, each of which has three variations.

Gamemastering

Advice on gamemastering in general, as well as gamemastering Wulin in particular.

Gamemastering Moves

Advice on adjudicating specific game mechanics.

Scenario Starters

Thirty-six scenario seeds.

Courtly Wuxia

Pointers for conducting campaigns focused on palace politics.

Fantastic Wuxia

Pointers for campaigns set outside conventional power structures (this is where the All Men Are Brothers games would go).

History & Cultural Notes

What it says on the tin.

Setting Alternatives

How to adapt the rules to settings other than historical China.

Narrative Fight Scenes

Unlike simulationist RPGs like Basic Roleplaying, conflict is driven by narrative needs and conventions. This chapter provides advice on how that works in practice.

Index

This is not listed in the hyperlinked sidebar but it does exist and it is correct. I just thought I’d mention it again in the hope other companies will notice.

1: Full credits:

Game Design by Lowell Francis

Additional Development by Agatha Cheng, Jamila Nedjadi, Alun Rees, Sherri Stewart

Writing by Joyce Ch*ng and Lowell Francis

Chapter 16 ​“Narrative Fight Scenes” by Eric Farmer and Eli Kurtz

Editing by David LaFreniere

Layout by Harald Eckmüller

Culture And Sensitivity Reading by Yilin Wang, Agatha Cheng (Chapter 1 – 5)

Original Art by Minerva Fox

Watercolor Art by Knumina Studios (page 4)/Shutterstock.com, asylsun (page 44)/Shutterstock.com and asharkyu (pg. 225)/Shutterstock.com

Logo by J. L. Householder

Playtesting And Feedback by the Gauntlet Gaming Community, The Gauntlet Forums, Origins Games on Demand 2018 & 2019.

Published by Jason Cordova

Powered by the Apocalypse engine by D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker.

Special Thanks to Renee Knipe for early encouragement and Jason Cordova for pushing to get this project forward

2: With the exception of Girl by Moonlight, in which the Magical Girls didn’t seem to be very magical and also couldn’t do their vaguely defined thing for very long. Games emulating specific genres should be able to emulate those genres.

3: USA delenda est.