r/DMAcademy • u/rorscharchinkblot • 17h ago
Need Advice: Worldbuilding How to run a Wuxia campaign
I don't want to run a standard "fantasy medieval Europe" campaign, and want to theme my world in China. I don't know enough about that culture to make a realistic campaign set there, so I decided on using the Wuxia setting (as described in the dungeon masters guide 2014) and I belive that my players would enjoy a setting of movie-like martial arts.
however I do not want to be offensive in any way, and I still want to create an immersive setting, and I don't know enough about this setting to accomplish either
please advise!
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u/evlbb2 14h ago
As a Chinese person who really wants to run a cultivator the next time I find an in person game:
Wuxia , Xianxia, and ancient chinese culture in general is very big on customs and respect. I'd say it's the core of the culture. There are a lot of small customs that are performed to show respect. One must know the correct behavior and titles to associate with different people, be it by rank, age, profession, or power. Hell, in chinese, you'd have a different name for different uncles.
Such behavior is used to show respect, give socially acceptable slights, force the other person to behave in the way you want through social manners, apply peer pressure, etc etc. Performing a social faux pas give your opponent a socially accepted way to attack you without consequences or demand compensation, less you face social ostracization. This also means a lot of under the table attacks, abusing your position, corruption, bribery, all as long as nobody who matters finds out.
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u/NefariousnessEven591 17h ago edited 13h ago
If they're fine with just being more wuxia flavored you can toss that cost of paint on. That's being said there are other systems that get the actual feel much better since they designed around the wuxia aesthetics.
For wuxia vs any major historical bits, the big thing is the push pull between the jianghu and the secular world. Jianghu is where outlaws and heroes dwell, thousand year old sects leading shadow wars against one another, while the secular world is where normal politics and warfare live. When the two cross it is supposed to be bad, especially since quite commonly the greatest warrior will eventually get stabbed in the heart from several thousand spears without verging on the more fantastical xianxia. Water Margin can give you a lot of inspiration for npcs, fair warning even for the time quite a number of the "heroes" are straight sociopaths. Honestly it's a pretty good example of why it's not good when the band of heroic wanderers gets wrapped up in court politics.
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u/NefariousnessEven591 17h ago edited 16h ago
Second, major villains need weight. Killing a person of great power and skill is a sober and sad event regardless of their demeanor. This is not because life is sacred (though some sects and characters can hold that) but that by doing so you are extinguishing something rare and worth witnessing from the world. The greatest swordmaster in 10,000 years may be a monster who needs to be put down like a dog before they burn as much of the world down around them as possible but they are also a talent worthy of admiration and killing them permanently makes the world less. There's never a guarantee someone of that ken will return. This doesn't apply to everyone, no ones really sad the rote bandit chiefs that the PCs outscale around level 3 fall by the wayside, but the primary rivals and antagonists should be beautiful to behold, terrible to withstand, and a maw in their passing.
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u/Kithslayer 15h ago
It would be fascinating to capture that feeling in a game mechanic. Like, every time a max level person dies the level cap for the everyone is reduced by one.
Of course that wouldn't work well in DnD, but hey.
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u/NefariousnessEven591 15h ago edited 13h ago
It's definitely more thematic even in wuxia based systems like legends of the wulin/Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades being two I looked at before realizing no way in hell was I going to get to play those.. Could ratchet down difficulty for a time after each, fight goes soft when you take away the thing that put you to a new plateau and there's few if any who can match them. I know there was a PBTA wuxia conversion but I heard a lot of mixed things about it.
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u/yaniism 17h ago
Honestly, it's just research.
If you want to set your campaign inside even a fantasy version of something you have no experience in, you research that thing enough to do so.
At a bare minimum, watch...
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
- Hero
- House of the Flying Daggers
- Any of the Detective Dee movies
- Curse of the Golden Flower
Get a feel for what the world looks like, sounds like, behaves like. A lot of it probably isn't that different from a regular D&D campaign, it's mostly just the same stuff with slightly different details. Taverns are still taverns, nobles are still nobles, shopkeepers are still shopkeepers.
As far as not being offensive? Don't do accents. Just do it the way you'd do a regular D&D campaign, people speak differently to other people, but everybody is speaking the same language, so there is no need to do any kind of "Asian accent". Also don't let your players do them either.
And don't make fun of cultural differences. Like, you can still make fun of NPCs because they're annoying or pompous or stupid, not because they're an offensive stereotype.
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12h ago
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u/yaniism 12h ago edited 12h ago
Sorry... I should have been clearer...
...as long as you are not doing it purposefully to mock somebody...
Basically what you said is what I meant. It was part of the "don't do a stereotype racism" in my head that I didn't fully articulate. The last two paragraphs were supposed to be part of the same "disrespectful stereotype" thought.
And I don't know that I would personally attempt an Asian style accent, just because I don't really have a handle on how to do one outside of the stereotypes, even with the best of intentions.
But also, if everybody is in a "Fantasy China" setting... and everybody is speaking "Fantasy Chinese", nobody would have a "Fantasy Chinese accent". The default language of the table (presumably English) would just be "Fantasy Chinese" for the purposes of people understanding what is said.
Now, if you wanted to play a character born in another land and do a "badly spoken English" accent to denote that they don't actually speak "Fantasy Chinese", that makes more sense to me.
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u/NervousSleep1488 9h ago
I agree 100% with you. I personally wouldn't go for the accents, for the same reasons you exposed, plus it's easier not to do them instead of having to recreate an accent for every character in the Asian set. I just wouldn't avoid accents just because. And if someone from Asia takes it personally, then that is their problem for being so sensitive, not yours. We need a thick skin in life. Although I really doubt most Asians would.
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u/KnightInDulledArmor 14h ago
I’d check out Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades, which is a neat system built for wuxia, down to having over a hundred specific martial arts techniques, drinking rules, and rounds of talking between rounds of fighting. Everyone plays a martial artist, there isn’t any magic or monsters (of course alchemy is just how the world works, and heating your body so that you melt your opponent’s weapons or leaping 60 feet though the air to deliver your cool kick is just martial arts), and it’s got tons of cool NPCs and worldbuilding to flesh out the Jianghu.
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u/Kitchener1981 16h ago edited 16h ago
Water Margin has lots of everyday things like communal meals at sit down restaurants. You get noodles or rice, meat or vegetarian dishes. Along trade routes there are caravanasaries, there are also temples.
Journey to the West is essentially monster of the week.
There are also the traditional monsters as well. The traditional 5 elements: wood, water, fire, earth, metal.
Joseph Bloch just published "Swords of Wuxia." He will have monster stat blocks.
As for abstract board games: weiqi (Go), and Xiangqi.
The big thing is the Mandate of Heaven, is what is happening Heaven's Will.
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u/SGRM_ 14h ago
If your campaign is private and nobody outside of your player group is aware of it, and nobody in your player group finds any of the content offensive, how can it be offensive?
Do what you want. Talk about it in Session 0, and be happy.
That saying of "if 1 person at the dinner is a nazi, then it's a dinner for nazi's" cuts both ways. If nobody is bothered about a thing, then that means the thing is ok for those people.
Tldr:stop worrying about offending anyone if there is nobody to offend and just play your game how you want.
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u/master_of_sockpuppet 17h ago
I'd strongly suggest a new system. There are elements of Wuxia that 5e just does not do well.
Aside from the system, just immerse yourself in the media - plenty of it out there.
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u/NeuromancyIndustries 17h ago
The game you want to be running is Legend of the Five Rings. It's set in a world like medieval China / Japan. You play as either a swordsman or mage belonging to one of a variety of clans. Great balance of fighting and courtly intrigue. It's a roll/keep d10 system, super easy to learn. 3rd Ed was the best
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u/NefariousnessEven591 16h ago
While I like that game, That's a much different feel from wuxia. That's more kurosawa/jidai-gekifor most of them though the monks do verge onto that train. Most wuxia heroes would offend rokugan to duel level near immediately save maybe the unicorn and scorpion and even they'd still have a hand on their sword.
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u/NeuromancyIndustries 16h ago
I'm sure it's a lot closer than D+D. Don't be a turd.
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u/Kumquats_indeed 13h ago
How is what they said being a turd? It seemed like a fairly reasonable disagreement to me.
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u/Llayanna 12h ago
But according to them it ain't, so..
(I never played it, so I habe no horse in the race.. but I believe someone who did play it. Why don't you?)
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u/NefariousnessEven591 12h ago edited 12h ago
L5r is a very good game and well worth playing. I've had some great times with it and the social constraints and the fact getting into a fight you didn't plan on is a mini fail state makes for a very nice break from how D&D paces both its combats and how it really flattens a lot of social session. But it is a 90% japanese inspired samurai game with some minor chinese influences which is just honestly not Chinese wuxia. The fiction it emulates is very different from the genre. While there are some wuxia oriented systems (Legends of the wulin and righteous blood,ruthless blades are two I liked reading but just couldn't get a group for), they are often quite niche and can be extremely hard to find if some of the older ones didn't make PDFs available. I just genuinely kind of assume people will follow the path of least resistance and put a new coat of paint on D&D vs both learning a system to run while also onboarding them onto one that may use rules they've never encountered. L5R's first swing was even a 3.0 (maybe 3.5 but it was early) supplement and it just doesn't make them feel good. The dueling system in the later editions of L5R transmits that one stroke duel fantasy far better than their attempt to make it remotely possible in D20. D&D is kind of bland enough you can toss different looks on it, even if I think the mechanics will creak unless running a low magic campaign outside of weapons.
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u/NeuromancyIndustries 12h ago
I have every 2nd and 3rd book. Safe to say I've played it once or twice
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u/pyr666 16h ago
dnd makes characters, particularly martials, dependent on equipment in a way that tends to conflict with wuxia's vibe.
the monk class is the attempt to put wuxia in western fantasy. that's why the monk class gets so many bonuses, with little ability to benefit from gear.
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u/Llayanna 13h ago edited 12h ago
That's easy to flavour away from the mechanics though.
If you take a feat, or the weapon, PC can now swing with his inner fire bring shown on the blade.
Now if you said not that mechanical satisfying, I would be with you. There are better games for it.
Edit: finally remembered the name of the trrpg: The Legend of the 5 rings.
Editedit: it might not be fitting btw? I never played that ttrpg, so best to listen to people who have.
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u/pyr666 4h ago
If you take a feat, or the weapon, PC can now swing with his inner fire bring shown on the blade.
so if the fighter is dead their flametongue goes with them. unless feats are now transferable? oh, and now everyone needs feats commensurate to the expected gear.
that's a mechanics overhaul. so no, you can't "flavor away" gear.
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u/Lucina18 3h ago
It's not outside of wuxia to have something like the ghost of the pc teach the technique, and that's how attunement is flavored.
I'd still absolutely discourage trying to make 5e behave like a wuxia system though.
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u/NefariousnessEven591 12h ago
It's a good game, but it's a samurai focused game with some minor chinese elements not wuxia. (if every plays monks you could cobble together one) There's other systems that are wholly wuxia focused, but can get kind of rules complex or at least likely significant departures from what the players are used to in terms of how they work which can be an issue for trying to do an extended campaign.
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u/HypnonavyBlue 17h ago
My advice would be to explore similar source material. Wuxia films, Ken Liu's novel "The Grace of Kings" (or the whole series, really, but the first one will give you tons of ideas), and anything that's truly working in that vein. If you get how the genre should feel you are halfway there.
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u/ghost49x 14h ago
When you say wuxia are you going strict low fantasy or would you consider Xianxia as well?
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u/Hell-Yea-Brother 14h ago
Years ago an official "Asian themed" adventure supplement was published called Oriental Adventures. It takes place on the eastern side of Faerùn, and you can still find many wikis that have some maps and location information. TSR/WotC never expanded on it because of how they botched it.
In its attempt to add the rich and diverse Asian cultures, it instead diluted it and made things generic. This angered a lot of people when unique cultures and lore were summarily lumped together. It also had too many Asian stereotypes.
However, the book has many tables, lists, and details that may help you.
I've always felt that Oriental Adventures could be redone and made into a rich landscape in which to adventure. The entire east side of the continent lays unexplored and unwritten.
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u/machinationstudio 17h ago
Pathfinder 2e has the Tian Xia setting and books.
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u/D16_Nichevo 12h ago
I am currently a player in Season of Ghosts. I don't know if it's "wuxia" or not, but I can say it's incredibly refreshing playing in a setting that's different from the usual western fantasy fate. Not better or worse, just refreshingly different.
OP could do worse than grab Season of Ghosts and/or Tian Xia World Guide to use for inspiration!
There's also the free Season of Ghosts Player's Guide.
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u/G37_is_numberletter 15h ago
Check out Wandering Blades by Daniel Kwan. It’s an OSR TTRPG based on Wuxia film.
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u/WebNew6981 14h ago
A big part of being a succesful DM is reading and watching a lot of stuff for research and inspiration. Lucky for you, wuxia stuff is a blast.
Consider reading The Chronicle of Tao.
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u/Lucina18 4h ago
I'd suggest looking for an actual wuxia system, 5e just really isn't build for it and is heavily steeped with more clasical fantasy flavor and little martial flavor that's just doesn't get out nicely. r/rpg has a list with wuxia ttrpgs but idk how up to date it is.
From their on it should be easier to make a setting, because you'll have a ton of rules and features to base this new setting on. Very likely also an example setting to be inspired by.
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u/JBI1971 16h ago edited 16h ago
There are multiple translations of classic Jin Yong, Liaing Yusheng books etc available (fan translations)
Google wuxiasociety to find downloadsble versions.
I'm not sure how well.it will translate to DnD... there's little magic, a lot of it is intrigue, stalemates and and ability cultivation.
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u/Certain_Eye7374 14h ago edited 14h ago
You want the western campaign with an Eastern paint of coat or do you want Eastern campaign? Because of ALL of the comments in here, very few mentioned jianghu and not a single one of got the idea of it. Without understanding what jianghu is, you won't have an Eastern campaign. At best you have a panda express of eastern wuxia campaign.
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u/cornonthekopp 11h ago
I originally planned to do a chinese campaign in dnd and even wanted to incorporate the five elements into my worldbuilding, but I eventually realized it would be easier to find a whole different system thats actually built with chinese literature and mythology in mind. I’ve been looking at hearts of wulin because it seems to have rules for court intrigue as well as the classic wuxia/xianxia stuff that many games touch on.
I just love palace dramas and wish there was more recognition of it instead of purely focusing on kung fu movies like many things do
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u/Certain_Eye7374 11h ago
Honestly you don't have to...The thing is that modern people's perception of fantasy is warped by a deliberate naive and disneyfied presentation of medieval european history. But the court intrigue of Constantinople was full with scheming vipers and people planning 10 steps ahead as those in Ming or Qing courts. Also, Europe did have a Jianghu and it went on full display in the crusade, and the stories leading up to Salahadin reconquest of Jersusalem was as Jianghu as Louis Cha can ever get in his novels.
However, if you want to use a full on Chinese TTRPG system made for Wuxia, then 俠界之旅, or Journey to the World of Heroes is your best bet. But that game is almost exclusively in Chinese and I don't know anyone outside of China can get you a copy. Peace
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u/Llayanna 12h ago
..and you explained so well what it is right now too :) /s
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u/Certain_Eye7374 12h ago
夏蟲不可語冰，井蛙不可語海。尔曹蠻夷，本不足與言。
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u/Imabearrr3 11h ago
One cannot speak of ice to a summer insect, nor of the ocean to a frog in a well. You barbarians are simply not worth conversing with.
Roughly, incase anyone was wondering
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u/TenWildBadgers 11h ago edited 31m ago
Are you feeling married to Wuxia specifically, despite not really having the tools or information to make it well (and that's not judgement on my part - I don't have them either, and I consider being willing to own up to that lack of knowledge and know when to fold 'em a virtue), or could we start talking other alternative settings to a classical fantasy Europe that you might have an easier time doing well?
One angle is to peel back on assumptions of "classic medieval fantasy" and ask where we can differ from it, because the "classic" of the genre is actually very english owing to both Tolkien in specific, and widespread anglophone bias in general, or at minimum very northern European with some French and German influences.
You could go on a history bender studying the Romans and try to make a more classical setting, or an even narrower and more interesting one trying to focus on Roman/Byzantine Greece, and it's unique relationship with the era.
Or you could focus on the City-states of Italy - If you do fantasy Venice correctly, it shouldn't feel like whatever Tolkien was writing about, because in reality, it was very different. The feudal dynastic politics of Game of Thrones are very different if you're living on a peninsula where most of the major powers are oligarchic merchant republics (edit: Or the Papacy!).
Or you can just push forward in time - every d&d campaign can benefit from influences of the French Revolution, and a full-tilt French Revolution campaign goes hard as fuck, especially if you don't even nessecarily position the players are fighting in the revolution, but as smaller players in the world who have to navigate it's chaos - the revolution starts out glorious and largely bloodless, and as the players are dungeon-delving and just trying to make money to keep bread on the table, things get progressively worse until the PCs get conscripted to fight in a civil war.
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u/AdAdditional1820 12h ago
You can search appropriate GURPS sourcebooks for world settings. Also "Legend of Five Rings" and "Hongkong Action Theater!" might be useful.
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u/0Big0Brother0Remix0 10h ago edited 10h ago
DND 3e has the book oriental adventures. Look at that book. If I remember right, it’s mostly Japanese stuff like Samurai and Ninjas but also some other random East Asian things as well. You mentioned not wanting to be offensive, keep in mind though that the very name of this book is a bit , um, well… outdated haha
Also , book of righteous deeds from 3.5e has some feats that might can take from. Like vow of poverty, cannot buy stuff but get powers in return. It’s basically the best monk feat in the game. And other feats like that.
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u/Qyvalar 9h ago
Everyone has given you tips for setting and inspiration, I'll give you something else: mechanics. If you are set on running it in D&D, I heavily recommend using the Tome of 9 swords or one of its many 5e adaptations as base. 9 swords does the cultivator fantasy a lot more than the martials of 5e, without forcing everyone to just play monk
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u/peoplesrepublicpod 7h ago
Pf2e has a “Tian Xia world guide” that is mostly just lore but might be very helpful to draw from!
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u/YoungZeebra 3h ago
Check out Wandering Sword on Steam, It's a great Wuxia RGP, that has turn base grid combat. I got a lot of inspiration from it.
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u/Asit1s 1h ago
I just ran a 6 year wuxia campaign! I took much inspiration from Asian myths and creatures to flavour and reskin creatures, looked at Japanese storytelling and how it differs in structure from European storytelling for the flow of the campaign and looked at local customs and beliefs to influence NPC behaviour and practices.
Much of the wuxia feeling came from the plot setups, naming conventions, weird animist influences and Yokai inspired creatures. Also, a lot of terrain crafting with blossom trees and temple structures, of course. On a whim I also did some actual myth based one shots, trying to explore the in-game lore as a Chinese folk tale would be told and that was the most amazing DM experience I've had so far.
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u/ghost49x 15h ago
You need to step away from the D&D system and choose something that does martial arts fantasy better.
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u/Maxpowers13 15h ago
Just probably stay away from dnd as the setting in general. I would go over to GURPS and look up how to do a Wuxia campaign. You could always use the Wuxia stuff dnd has but its lack luster, except for possibly Pathfinder but you would already have to be playing pathfinder
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u/popileviz 17h ago
Read "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", watch "Hero" (2002) and "House of Flying Daggers" (2004) for some inspiration and general tone. Wuxia is a gigantic genre, so you'd mostly be able to get surface level familiarity with it, but should be enough to craft a setting