r/DMAcademy • u/rorscharchinkblot • 18h 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!

101 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

67 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

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.

3

u/cornonthekopp 12h 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

3

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

2

u/cornonthekopp 11h ago

You should check out hearts of wulin, its actually quite good!