The water barely shimmered as Li Mu Bai ran across its surface. Jen followed, marring the lake with expanding rings.
Wuxia is not about the kung fu. It's about the people.
"Do you know why I am going to defeat you?" He shifted his weight effortlessly, shifting from one pose to another like an eel. "No." She struck at him, again, again, again. The air shivered as the humming blade passed. "You're like the fire: swift, determined, hungry. But the unfathomed sea of patience will extinguish you." Still effortlessly he rippled out of the way of the blade, parrying absently with his staff.
Refreshing Rain is a role-playing game about the emotional conflict of wuxia. Sort of. It's set in the misty forests and snow-capped peaks of Imperial China.
What is wuxia? Wuxia is composed of two characters, wu and xia. Wu is used to describe those things that have to do with war, martial arts, the military. Xia refers to the protagonists of wuxia fiction; chivalric heroes in the Chinese sense. Films such as Hero and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon are examples of the wuxia genre.
Characters in Refreshing Rain are all masters of this or the other style of kung fu. It's just the way things are.
Characters have five Elements: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal. These have certain associations about them:
The green arrows represent the Creative Cycle: Water nourishes Wood fuels Fire whose ashes are Earth which can be smelted for Metal which melts into Water...
The red arrows represent the Destructive Cycle: Water quenches Fire melts Metal cuts Wood overgrows Earth absorbs Water...
For each Element, choose a Virtue; the Virtues are Poise, Compassion, Conviction, Grace, and Quickness.
A combination of Element and Virtue, such as Wood Poise or Metal Quickness, is called an Aspect. There are twenty-five possible Aspects. Each Character has five of these, representing the way that the Elements and Virtues combine within them. Each Aspect also has a Alchemy score ranging from zero to five, representing how connected it is to the cycle of Elements. Zero means that the Aspect is highly disconnected; it benefits from no Creation, nor can it Destroy. Five means that the Aspect has the strongest possible connection; not only do all Elements Create this Aspect, but it can also Destroy them all.
Choose a Alchemy score for each Aspect, and then determine and record which Elements each of your Character's Aspects Destroys, and which Elements Create them. Alchemy scores are prone to fluctuating slowly during the game, but consider them carefully.
Finally, you need three containers: one for tiles, one for Yang Qi, and one for Yin Qi. At the beginning of each scene, divide 5 points of Qi between the two containers. You must put 2 in one and 3 in another if your highest Alchemy is Earth, 4 in Yin and 1 in Yang if it is Metal, and all 5 in Yin if it is Water. Fire requires you to put all 5 in Yang, and for Wood, 4 in Yang and 1 in Yin. If some of your Alchemies are tied for highest, use the most even division; if they split in opposite ways but with the same fraction, then divide as if you had high Earth Alchemy.
Unlike many games, Refreshing Rain does not use dice to create random results; instead, it uses Ma Jiang (also spelled Mah Jongg) tiles. In the Ma Jiang set this game uses, there are 144 tiles. Ordered by their rank, from lowest to highest, they are:
Some Ma Jiang sets have slightly different "special" tiles in the place of the Flowers and Seasons. As long as the set you use has 8 of these, and you can identify each one uniquely, it's fine. If you have the wrong number or you can't tell them apart, then you lose a subtle aspect of the game, but it doesn't remder it unplayable.
Take note: we don't just draw tiles all willy-nilly, only when the outcome of some event will be interesting. Because of this, we only draw tiles when two Characters come into conflict: they have two mutually exclusive goals.
When this happens, they have a contest of Aspects. This is done by drawing Ma Jiang tiles randomly. The players should decide which Virtue is most relevant to the conflict at hand; this is what the conflict is based upon. Then each player draws the appropriate number of tiles, and picks out one tile. They compare these; the player with the highest-ranking tile wins. If either player drew a Flower or Season tile (see below), he can either set it aside and draw a new tile, or simply declare the conflict over; he has won.
To determine how many tiles to draw, each player consults his Aspect. If his opponent's Element Creates it, he draws four tiles, otherwise he draws three. To determine which tile to compare with the other character's, each player asks the other if his Element was Destroyed. If it was, that player uses his third-highest tile, otherwise he uses the second-highest. In either case, zero does not make an Element able to Destroy or Create itself; you must first leave your own Element and enter the Cycle to affect, or be affected by, the other. Before drawing tiles, you can spend a point of Yang Qi to draw an extra tile, or a point of Yin Qi to choose the next higher-ranked tile to compare. That is, if you have your Element Destroyed, you can spend Yin to negate the effect; if your Element was unDestroyed then you compare your highest-ranked tile. When you spend Qi, look at the trigram the Taiji sits on. Add a line to the bottom - solid for Yang and broken for Yin - and take a line off the top, and move the Taiji onto the new trigram. All the trigrams are oriented so their top faces toward one-o'-clock.
Southern Crane moved his Elephant forward, and watched Orchid's face. She clearly had no idea what he was doing, his strategy shifted too quickly, but her own was full of feints and misdirection, a mirror maze of falsehood.
For example, Southern Crane and Orchid Tang are playing xiangqi, a Qinese game like chess. They decide to bet on it - Southern Crane must teach Orchid his style of kungfu if he loses, but Orchid must surrender the famous halberd of her father to Southern Crane if he wins. They decide that this is a conflict of Quickness. Southern Crane has a Water Quickness Aspect with 2 Alchemy, and Orchid has Metal Quickness with 3 Alchemy. Consulting the Cycles, they find that they both are Destroyed, but Orchid's Metal also Creates Crane's Water, so Crane draws an extra tile. They compare their third-highest tiles: Crane has 4 Circles and Orchid has 2 Bamboo. Crane wins.
Suddenly, Southern Crane saw through the mirror-maze; all the feints and disengages curled outward from one spot on the board. He moved his Cannon there, and the game was over.
If both players' tiles are the same rank, compare their Aspect scores; if those are the same then they draw tiles again. If a player draws any Flower or Season, and the other does not, he wins the conflict automatically, but his win must be described so as to evoke the Flower or Season drawn. This represents a great turn of good furtune.
Whatever happens, the winner gives a tile out of his hand to the loser, and takes one of the tiles out of the loser's hand. They keep these and discard the rest back into the pool for drawing tiles.
Any time that the players want to give extra focus to a Conflict, they can play it out as a Combat rather than as a simple Conflict draw. Combats can be any lengthy contest of wills: a debate, a xiangqi game, a fight, even two courtiers spreading rumours about each other to try and undermine their reputations.
The three Ma Jiang suits, Bamboo, Circles, and Characters, represent respectively Attacks, Defences, and the Ten Thousand Arts. Attacks and Defences are simply that: the character tries to directly harm the other or prevent himself from being harmed. Ten Thousand Arts are everything else. In a fight, they could be sleeve magic, needles, furniture... in a rumour conflict, they could be favors from other courtiers, notes, bribes, falsified evidence, whatever. The five directions correspond to the five elements: Earth::Centre, Water::North, Fire::South, Metal::East and Wood::West. Fa Cai (the Green tile) and the White tile respresent, respectively, External Qigong and Internal Qigong. The Flowers and Seasons represent really wild and crazy things.
The process is like this: The players simultaneously draw tiles, as usual. The winner has the 'advantage', and has the first opportunity to declare a technique. Then the loser can respond.
Techniques are performed by discarding tiles, in this way:
A simple technique uses tiles from only one suit, and nothing else. There may be no more than four. For each tile, the opponent must discard the highest not-higher-ranked tile of the appropriate suit: Defences destroy Attacks, which destroy the Ten Thousand Arts, which destroy Defences. If they run out of tiles in that suit, they discard *low* tiles of the next suit in the ring.
Complex techniques make use of the Directions. Any Complex Technique has two Direction tiles: the one representing the Attacker's Element, and the other representing the victim's Element. In addition, it has whatever number of suit tiles, with one restriction: To use an additional suit, you must expend all the tiles of the previous suit. If a Complex technique destroys all of the victim's suit tiles, he loses the use of the attacked Element. If it does not, that Element's Alchemy is reduced by one, unless that would reduce it to less than zero. Then, again, the Element becomes disabled. A Complex Technique can also restore the use of an Element or increase its Alchemy.
La "Sorrowful Fingers"Chi Lai notices that he has North and Centre, corresponding to his Quickness and his opponent's Conviction. and decides to use his signature Technique. He throws down the two Directions and every Character tile he has (five of them), as well as three Circles. It turns out this will run his opponent out of tiles totally.
He snatches a pen from a clerk as he runs over his desk, and brushes by his opponent. In a blurry moment, he signs his name across the dismayed monk's forehead; the poor monk freezes for a moment, thrown totally off-balance. He feels his confidence crashing down inside him.
Qigong techniques use the Green or White tile, and any number of Directions. These shut down Direction tiles. External qigong is the use of Qi to do things to people; things like the Buddha's Palm in Iron Monkey are external Qigong. Internal qigong is less obvious to describe; it uses Qi on oneself. The flying in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was internal qigong. You'll notive that that was totally self-involved; internal qigong takes away opportunities, rather than destroying ability.
Finally, Flowers and Seasons end battles outright. Flowers are always emotional endings; one character either decides not to fight any longer (for the time being), or is so distressed he cannot. One of his Tensions increases. Seasons represent a change in environment that makes it impossible to continue the fight. At any rate, a battle continues until either a combatant leaves, or cannot fight any longer- all his Elements are disabled or his Alchemies reduced to zero, or Guardians - Flowers and Seasons - force an ending. No one is ever trapped. It is always possible to leave.
At the end of a battle, either player may declare a death scene for his character. The character with the lowest total Alchemy, or remaining tiles, gets precedence in the case of a conflict.
The Sky is a diagram that represents the fabric of relationships in the game. It uses a kind of astrological metaphor to accomplish this. We use a Go board populated by white stones (Stars) and black stones (Planets). There are five Planets, representing the five Elements, and the Taiji, the embodiment of the dance of yin and yang. It helps to mark the stones so that you can tell them apart. The Stars represent various characters and societies; Stars linked in vertical or horizontal lines share allied relationships, and Stars linked by diagonal lines share antagonistic relations. As relationships change, Stars can be moved to reflect this. Just as in Go or Wei Qi, Stars are placed on the intersection of lines, rather than the squares the lines form. A group of Stars linked by relationships, and related to no other Stars, is called a Constellation.
Unlike the Stars, which are moved by simple concensus, it takes power to move the Planets. After the Star-moving phase, the players take turns moving Planets, starting with the player who ended the scene and proceeding in order of decreasing total Alchemy, until someone triggers a scene or no one can move the Planets further. If someone triggered a scene, that scene is played out. If everyone is out of tiles and no one triggered a scene, then the Astrologer picks a relationship to run a scene around.
During a player's turn, he may move exactly one Planet. He must have nonzero Alchemy in that Planet's Element to move it, but he may still move a Planet whose Element is disabled but not destroyed. A 'movement' is a straight-line motion or a knight jump. The base cost of a straight-line movement is its length, and that of a knight jump is two. The Xth movement a player makes in his turn costs him X times the base cost. Players pay for movements with tiles. Suit tiles are worth 1, honour tiles (the Directions, Fa Cai, and White) are worth 2, and Flowers and Seasons are worth 4.
Four things can come of this:
You ended your turn by landing your Planet on another one. This is called 'Capturing' a Planet; the Planet you landed on is lifted off the boad and replaced on a corner, or one of the five darkened points. (The Astrologer picks an unoccupied point.) You increase your Alchemy in the captured Planet's Element. Your turn is over. Alternatively, if that Element was disabled, you can enable it instead of increasing your Alchemy.
You ended your turn by landing your Planet on the same space as a Star. This triggers a scene in the Star's mind; either a dream or a flashback. Regardless, events in that scene have game reality; they can affect peoples' tile piles and Alchemies. This scene involves at least one of the Star's current relationships; move the Planet one space toward that, and continue moving it until it lands on an empty space. This process does not count as movement.
You moved your Planet through one or more relationship lines. This triggers a scene, or series of scenes, involving those relationships. No Sky phase occurs until those scenes are played. If this happens in addition to one of the two above outcomes, then play out their results before playing these scenes, or involve those conflicts in the dream/flashback sequence.
You didn't do any of that. Nothing happens.
Whenever a new scene begins, look at the Taiji's position. Remember that the top of a trigram is toward one-o'-clock. The trigram determines the "Weather" of the scene. Weather encompasses many variables of the environment: the actual weather, the moods of the surrounding people, motifs in the backdrop, and so forth. Clockwise from the top, they are:
You can also Interrupt a scene to take a single turn as if it were the Planet-moving portion of the Sky phase. Costs for moving a Planet during Interruption are doubled. An Interruption can only trigger a single scene, whch is played immediately. Time in the 'external' scene freezes while the Interrupting scene is played out, then resumes when that scene ends.
On each character sheet, there should be a place to record Relationships. Whenever a scene ends where a Relationship was involved, determine whether that Relationship was strained by thte scene. If so, its Tension increases by one. When the Tension score of a Relationship rises higher than your highest Alchemy score, in the next scene that character is involved in, he must either destroy himself or do something to release the Tension of the Relationship.