Fantasy Core RPG: Jianghu Setting Intro

Fantasy Core RPG
© Jerry Harris 2013
Published here as Open Game Content.
(This link will take you to the Fantasy Core Index.)

Jianghu Setting Intro

Sample Adventure

Setting Differences
Honor
Character Groups and Class Goals
Level and XP
Special Techniques

Shang-tu, Civic Ward, Guild Ward, Lake Ward, Governor's Ward
Governor Estate
Governor's Palace First Level & Basement, Visitors, Second & Third Levels, Fourth Level
Famous Court Personages
Governor Yu, Governor's Bodyguards
Ministers of State, Minister Liu, Security Chief Kogi, Minister Xun, Sub-Minister Kang
Other Government Officials, Justice & Law, Imperial Military, Other City Power Groups
Secret Societies, White Lotus, Triads, Tongs
Martial Arts Schools, Master Yune, Grandmasters
Mount Tien, The Everlasting Temple, Faith, Divine Favor, and Immortals
The Villages, Kinsai Village, The Brotherhood, Wong-Fei & Wong-Sim
Mongolia, Tibet, Lop Nar Desert & and the Empire
Monsters

Jianghu (jing-how) means “Underworld,” or the “World of Martial Arts.” It’s the domain of outlaws and adventurers; people outside of proper society. This setting is one where characters eke out an existence on the fringes of the law, while skirting edges of villainy. They seek opportunities to enhance their reputation and abilities, but must do so within the context maintaining their sacred personal honor. It’s a tightrope walk. Unbearable disgrace follows bad choices and failure. Redemption is much harder to attain than a title of master in your field. But what hero could live with being anonymous?

First, read this. Really, go ahead. The rest of this post can wait until afterward. I’m not sure how I stumbled upon that essay, but it put the seed of this setting in my mind several years ago. I put the Oriental Classes into Fantasy Core with the future intention of creating a setting for them. Sure, it’s fine to put Ninjas and Flying Warriors in a European fantasy adventure. If you’re accepting the premise of Orcs and dragons, why not? But Asian fantasy adventures usually have their own special flavor.

While the game that was linked to essay was an extension of an existing game with bits and pieces of other games, Wizards of the Coast produced an excellent setting in 1999 by Chris Parmas called Dragonfist. It was an odd mix of Second Edition AD&D in sort of a nascent Third Edition wrapper. It was probably the prototype for 3e. The setting itself was quite impressive as a heroic campaign to dethrone the evil emperor and his eunuch henchmen. It was limited in adventuring scope with the characters all starting at 3rd level and only progressing to 10th. (Parmas admits in the text that the system, with all it’s bonuses and stunts, breaks down after 10th level. If only the 3e designers had listened to that advice.) What is implied in the setting is that the characters are honorable heroes, in this case, trying to right a major injustice.

This setting focuses on the characters’ decisions and their honor. While there are still monsters to fight, most conflict will likely be with other human warriors and magic users. Acquiring wealth and power aren’t the characters’ motivating goals (though those events may happen), but rather the enhancement of their all-important reputation. This happens through the honing of their class skills via their exploits, all while maintaining their inviolate personal honor.

Don’t expect this to be easy. An adventure in this setting means having to make hard choices between serving various disreputable entities. Choosing one side, may make you an enemy of another. Characters should be consistently challenged about their choices and their beliefs and knowledge. In the beginning, the characters may have nothing other than ill informed choices or choices between bad options. Later, with more knowledge and experience, their decisions will be wiser. Finally, at higher levels, they can become primary decision-makers for a power group, or perhaps creating their own. But those days of leadership won’t come, unless they jealously guard their honor and atone for past sins.

Refs should tell the players, “You will be swimming in sewage, but must smell of roses.” Or, “You must maintain your virtue while living in a whorehouse.” I’m going to be littering this setting with little fortune cookies like this, so that you can quickly communicate essential concepts about people, entities, and organizations.

I must add this disclaimer. I am not an Asian scholar. That will become evident from the reading of succeeding posts. I’m not even a Hong Kong Cinema expert (though I can pronounce Tsui Hark’s name correctly). This setting is a curious mish-mash of Chinese, Japanese, and a few other historical Asian societies and mythologies, along with a jumbling of time periods and my own inventions. Real place names and names of groups have been used for the sake of easy identification, but often only bear a superficial relationship to the actual thing, if that. Some NPC names that I’m using may be unintentionally funny to people who know better. No apologies. This has all been done in the interests of making an interesting adventuring setting.

I’m going to start this off by posting the sample adventure first, which will hopefully illustrate the concepts of the setting. Latter posts will fill in the details.


Two things.  One, I'm off tomorrow.  Happy Fourth!  Two, this setting isn't entirely done yet (actually it's about at 70%).  With some trepidation, I'm releasing it anyway, but the rollout may be a little shaky.