Just a few years earlier than the pandemic, two individuals who had been a part of an internet neighborhood I participated in, the Misdirected Mark Podcast Community neighborhood, began a podcast to speak about what they cherished about Jianghu tales. They talked in regards to the liminal area by which the tales happen, the language of fight scenes, and the concept of holding techniques of energy to account.
That was when Eli Kurtz and Eric Farmer began the Jianghu Hustle podcast. Along with inspiring me to look at the flicks they talked about after I hadn’t but seen them, Eric and Eli had Fonda Lee on as a visitor, which launched me to certainly one of my favourite ebook sequence, the Inexperienced Bone Saga (Jade Metropolis, Jade Conflict, Jade Legacy). The present was nice, however introducing me to Fonda Lee’s writing was an enormous present.
Go to Kickstarter, Fast!
I’ve met Eli and Eric at Gamehole Con, interacted with them on-line, and patronized their present on Patreon. Does that make me biased? In all probability, however I nonetheless assume they know what they’re doing and easy methods to provoke a considerate dialog, they usually deliver a whole lot of data and perception to the subjects they cowl. Disclaimer: they despatched me a overview copy of the Ashcan Version, nevertheless it’s not like I wouldn’t have checked out it by myself.
Eli and Eric have a Kickstarter operating for Sword Opera: An RPG of Melodrama and Violence, which I ought to have lined sooner since you’ve solely bought a couple of day to again it after I submit this. Hey, 2025 has been a tough decade. However you need to go there and test it out. However if you need, I’ll talk about it extra earlier than you go.
What’s This Factor?
Sword Opera, as a sport, is supposed to current a world with factions and supernatural powers, that are closely flavored towards feats of prowess and inconceivable pace and athleticism. It’s a Solid within the Darkish sport that tracks the targets of the factions and the gamers as huge dramatic issues occur. Whereas a particular setting is detailed within the Ashcan, the sport is designed to handle the broad conventions outlined above and isn’t simply tailor-made to current the Ashcan’s setting.
The broad construction has your gamers defining their targets and ideas and detailing their relationship towards the faction’s management, consisting of the Boss, the Common, and the Govt. Based mostly on how occasions unfold, characters can have relationship scores of Failing, Tense, Typical, Confirmed, or Privileged from these officers. This performs into the “melodrama” facet of the sport as a result of even should you’re working with a faction whose targets you’re feeling are good and pure, how do you do your job when the faction chief has a vendetta towards you? What occurs when one character is Privileged by the Common when one other has a Tense relationship with them?
The Cycle of Play features a Paragon Section (once you try to advance your targets and maintain duties you could have been assigned) and the Circle Section, the place you take care of your entitlements and are available collectively to verify in with the remainder of the faction. The leaders of the faction talk about the place the faction ought to go subsequent. Entanglements will help drive that melodrama, because the cube might have concepts about how properly the private targets of the PCs align with the faction or with the allies they’ve cultivated on the skin.
Energy and the Arts
If you happen to’re aware of Solid within the Darkish video games, you in all probability already perceive Actions and the way they inform your means to perform your targets. Actions within the sport are break up between Ambition and Loyalty, which implies that your means to withstand penalties will likely be couched in how your avoidance performs into both of these ideas.
What’s totally different is that you’ve got a pool of cube you can add to rolls that symbolize the supernatural means that your Paragon has. You possibly can spend these to spice up your means to perform your actions. A number of Arts describe what your supernatural means helps you with, and you identify which of them you might be educated in and which you’ll’t fairly faucet into. The variety of cube in your cube pool relies in your coaching stage and the dimensions of your faction.
If you happen to’ve by no means heard a dialogue of scale in Jianghu tales, you need to discover some outdated episodes of Jiahghu Hustle the place Eric and Eli discuss it, however having extra cube based mostly on the dimensions and significance of your faction performs into this concept. Generally, folks function on a totally totally different stage than these round them.
Supernatural powers have a supply that may inform how the Paragon attracts vitality to carry out their superb feats. The sources are Religion, Grit, Luck, Magic, Ardour, and Coaching. This will inform whether or not your paragon does what they do as a result of it’s the desire of the gods, if they’re too cussed to fail, or in the event that they wish to show their prowess in exact, advanced methods.
Relying in your means stage, you possibly can retain your cube after you spend them. This occurs in a 6 for practitioners, as much as 4-6 for a Grasp of their Artwork. That additionally means it’s good to hold monitor of the die that you simply use out of your pool separate from the remainder of your roll.
Related and Totally different
Because it presently seems, Sword Opera doesn’t use clocks explicitly to trace progress, however sure incremental parts have totally different levels earlier than they’re absolutely realized.
The decision ranges within the sport are described like this:
- 6s on multiple die–essential success
- 6 on at the very least one die–full success
- 4-5 is a partial success
- 1-3 is a foul end result, which is a failure, or the character can accomplish their purpose with a extreme consequence
The outcomes of the actions have the same framing to different Solid within the Darkish video games, the place the participant declares what they wish to do and what motion they wish to use, and the GM describes the Menace (the diploma of consequence) and Impact (the scope of what you possibly can accomplish).
Characters can Tempt Destiny for an additional die by introducing a further complication to the decision of the roll, very similar to a Satan’s Discount in different FITD video games. Penalties are outlined as Sword penalties and Opera penalties. Sword penalties contain injury to folks or issues’ bodily construction or skills. Opera penalties contain uncomfortable coincidences, revelations that might trigger hassle or a disaster that have to be finally handled.
The paragon sorts included within the Ashcan version embrace:
- The Analyst–the planner
- The Captain–the chief
- The Catastrophe–the one with the horrible luck
- The Information–the helper and advisor
- The Ruthless–the relentless fighter
- The Savant–the individual that’s all about mastering the Energy
The Setting
Studying in regards to the management roles within the faction and the way factions function and monitor their territory and sources, I couldn’t assist however consider how intently this hews to the setting of the Inexperienced Bones Saga and the households in these tales. That’s not a unfavourable from my viewpoint. That stated, tales are constructed from tropes, and there are totally different trappings you possibly can hold on the framework of the principles.
Eli and Eric know what they’re speaking about. They’re insightful and enthusiastic. I’m additionally glad that the setting isn’t a extra conventional Jianghu setting; as an alternative, it presents San Mercurio, an island that blends the supernatural parts of Jianghu tales with Shakespeare and Dumas. It’s an island set other than the Europe we all know from this era, the place the supernatural is current, and that typically interacts with the mainland however performs with its personal guidelines and stays unbiased and outdoors of time in some methods.
Don’t get me flawed, Eli and Eric know the Jianghu storytelling conventions, they usually’re properly versed within the classics, however I’d additionally like to see folks related to the cultures that spawned these storytelling conventions to inform tales in settings they create. Have I discussed you need to go learn the Inexperienced Bones Saga?
San Mercurio has noble factions, spies, and a corrupt Bishop greedy for energy. Pirates use the island as a port, the Phantom Market seems and disappears, and the island is dwelling to rumors of fey courts, ghosts, and spellcasting witches and magicians. The instance factions embrace two feuding noble households, a fleet of privateers who at all times discover their method again to the island, and a combating faculty hiring themselves out to the very best bidders. There’s a listing of contacts, landmarks, and beginning conditions for the primary play classes.
What Comes Subsequent?
A number of the stretch targets embrace a setting with trappings of Dune and the Locked Tomb, a contemporary city fantasy enlargement, a setting of fey households in battle, an enlargement so as to add merfolk to the San Mercurio setting, and a Jianhu skilled wrestling setting.
Along with San Mercurio, the settings already slated to seem within the ebook embrace Sizzling Metropolis, an alternate Nineteen Seventies New Orleans that pulls inspiration from John Wick, and a extra conventional Jiahnghu setting, which additionally attracts on The Wire for inspiration.
The challenge is funded and has hit its first stretch purpose as of this writing. If it will get sufficient help, perhaps we’ll even be capable to see a few of these stretch targets over time as folks proceed to select up new copies of the ebook. However should you actually wish to, you possibly can rally round and push them to the subsequent stretch purpose earlier than that is throughout.
Name to Motion
If this appears like your form of factor, head to Kickstarter, and when you’ve got the spare sources, think about backing this. Eli and Eric know what they’re speaking about, so I’m excited to see the ultimate model of this, and hopefully, they’ll forgive me for taking so lengthy to jot down this.
Now go, fast; I’m too long-winded to do a gross sales pitch this late within the sport.
