Best Game For

The 'Best Game For X' Project (BGFX)

The objective of this project is create an index of games based on the kinds of in-game situations they're best used for, with an explanation as to why that's the case. It was created in response to the many threads on RPG.net that just recommend games without any explanations, and the fact that simple genre classifications are insufficient to properly describe what players are actually seeking from a game.

Again, this project is trying to index games based on SITUATION, and not Genre, Setting, or even Mood. For example, games should not be indexed under 'Horror' or 'Chinese Myth', but under 'An Investigation Into the Paranormal' and 'A High Flying Wuxia Adventure'. My bad for not being able to state this clearly enough in the beginning, but I just kinda caught on to the right way to word it myself.

A High Flying Wuxia Adventure

To me, the ideal kung fu game has great combat (which entails a dynamic, evolving battlefield, rather than "I hit him. He hits me. I hit him again. He hits me again. One of us falls down"), interesting characters who are utterly unbeatable because they followed X interesting strategy (bordering on super-human, in some cases), lots of dialogue (perhaps OOC) about why such and such a path is totally awesome, but it doesn't lose sight of whats going on around it: the setting matters too, and your place in it. The setting needs to be appropriate to your kung fu game too: It should have masters atop mountains and kung fu secrets hidden all over the place. Finally, it's epic: your players get to make sweeping changes to the world because of their awesome, kung fu action

Weapons of the Gods

Weapons of the Gods fulfills all of those objectives. The mix and mingle of River with Chi means that the battlefield constantly flows. This turn, you're all charged up, that turn, you have nothing, on another turn, you might have no river but great Chi, and on yet another turn, you might have all kinds of river, but run short on chi. What choices will you make as you fight? It matters turn by turn, so you find yourself watching the unfolding to the battle intently, rather than waving your hands and saying "Ok, and in ten turns, you defeat the other guy."

The nature of your kung fu matters a great deal. Consider two different warriors from my Weapons of the Gods game:

• The Destruction Saint uses devastatingly offensive techniques like Holy Fire, Hell's Disasters and One Man Legion, relying on his superior Strike (thus, parries) to protect him. He tears down armies, annihilates foes in a single blow and "Kills you before you can kill him." However, he had his ass handed to him when he faced a flying wielder of Mental Summons, because he couldn't actually REACH the flier (See? Lightfoot IS useful!) and the Mental Summoner's ranged attacks are very, very hard to parry.

• The Prince of Wine is a more laid back warrior, using his Predictionist Blade and his Drunken Monkey technique to keep him alive, and then laying down the hurt with his Three Kings sword techniques. Drunken Monkey is supremely defensive, granting him plenty of armor and dodge bonuses, but he lacks the strike bonuses necessary to "double stack" his defense the way the Destruction Saint can. Thus, when someone rushes him with an overwhelming strike, he is forced to rely on his armor, but when a Mad-Staff wielding Hell Clanner hit him, it inflicted a Burning and Poison condition on him, both of which ignored armor, devastating him. On the other hand, the Mental Summoner couldn't touch him, thanks to his huge dodge (and even if he did hit, that armor would soak up the rest)

Weapons of the Gods is filled to the gills with neat little techniques and a constant struggle to discover the full implications of them. Where many games simply require that you have the right stats in the right place, WotG is very "player skill" friendly, meaning that you (and thus your character) learn over time how best to use your martial arts to a degree useful.

Which isn't to say that WotG forgets about everyone else. It's got neat sorcery and some of the best social combat I've ever seen. It integrates you right into the setting with Loresheets, that allow you to make the setting yours, and encourage you to rewrite the world: will the Destruction Saint, out of desperation to save his friends, cast aside the Mandate of Heaven and become a Baneful Warrior? Will the Prince of Wine acquire the lost seal of the Han Dynasty and then be anointed through heaven via his Huangti lineage to become the next king of Yang?

Finally, the game scatters little techniques and secretive styles all across the world, requiring you to learn at the feet of masters and to carry on the martial heritage of the past to the present day, and then pass it down to your own (kung fu badass) children. It fits the genre beautifully.

GURPS + Martial Arts

The core GURPS combat system is inherently interesting enough to demand constant hard choices. Simply hammering at each other, especially at high kung fu levels, doesn't really get you anywhere. Instead, the game encourages you to move right to the edge of failure: Do you risk it all in a Deceptive Attack? Do you disregard your attack in favor of a feint? Do you disregard your defense with an All-Out Attack, or do you hedge your bets with some Evaluates and some Defensive Attacks?

With the Martial Arts system, and its many varied techniques, each and every move is interesting and note-worthy. Balance is refined to the point that players will argue about the benefits of single-point perks, and use them to surprising advantages. This is great for a low-level kung fu game.

But it scales up nicely. Once you bring Chi Powers into the mix, you have alot of the same feel that WotG gives you, except WotG prints all of its techniques in a book, whereas GURPS has vastly more flexibility. You'll never know what you face (while the Million Style Manual greatly increases WotG's flexibility, it's still not up there with GURPS).

For a straight Chinese Wuxia, nothing beats WotG, but GURPS has advantages in scaling low and tackling different genres. If I want a modern street-fighter type game with evil robots and special ops trying to fill your martial artist full of lead, it's alot easier to support that with GURPS that with WotG.