by robbbbbb

HiveGod wrote:

robbbbbb wrote:

Monster teeth make great adventuring items to procure. "Yeah, uh, you need the scale of a green dragon and, uh, an ogre's tooth! Go to it."

"Wait a minute—you killed him? Well, now there's no magic in it. Get back out there, champ!"

"And I'm just going to wait a minute for the novocaine ether grain alcohol to cut in, and, hey, Bob, can you play that violin a little louder for our patient's comfort? Open wide!"

by robbbbbb

In The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Mr. Beaver is having a conversation with the Pevensie children and remarks, "But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be human and isn't yet, or used to be human once and isn't now, or ought to be human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet."

Mr. Beaver, of course, represents the common English working and middle classes, and the depth of their industriousness and common sense. He's speaking of Jadis, the White Witch, and this is part of what makes her an illegitimate queen: She is not in any way human.

When I hear that quote these days, it makes me think of this bastardized thing we've created and christened 'AI', and most specifically LLM chatbots.

We have these things that programmers have created, through a process that we don't quite understand, which creates a thing which acts like it's human, but is lacking fundamental human attributes. It doesn't have any underlying moral sense, nor does it have direct experience of the world. Worse yet, it's sycophantic, appealing to the ego of the person who sits down to communicate with it. And yet, we are telling people that this thing is a substitute for human interaction, and can be just as good as any conversation you have with a live human.

If only there were some other literary masterpieces on the hubris of attempting to create a thinking being. Keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet.

by Steve Dubya

trystero11 wrote:

So given the genre description you quote above, my first question is: would the new genre only apply to games/items set in real-world ancient China, or should fantasy analogues count?

That's a good question, and would probably be determined by how closely we want to have the Genre verbiage mirror the "actual" definition.

trystero11 wrote:

Along similar lines, should the genre exclude games/items that focus on martial arts-heavy adventures in non-Chinese Asian or quasi-Asian settings, such as real-world Japan or Korea or their fantasy analogues?
We have Culture (Asian / Far Eastern) in the database already; should the new genre be at least as broad, or is there value to restricting it to China and China-like settings only?

I'm open to hear arguments for and against.
[hr]

Shardra wrote:

Isn’t it the same as Martial Arts?

That was almost exactly the same question that I posed to the submitter.

The Wikipedia page goes on a bit more about the classification:

Although wuxia is traditionally a form of historical fantasy literature, its popularity has caused it to be adapted for such diverse art forms as Chinese opera, manhua, television dramas, films, donghua, and video games. It forms part of popular culture in many Chinese-speaking communities around the world. Although they are commonly described as a subgenre of martial arts movies, according to Hong Kong film director, producer, and movie writer Ronny Yu, wuxia movies are not to be confused with the genre in a strict sense.

The sense I get is that wuxia and martial arts media are like squares and rectangles; all wuxia media would involve martial arts, but not all martial arts media would be considered wuxia.

Having said that, I'm certainly not pretending to be anything close to an expert, and am open to being corrected.

by b5dorsai

Congrats to all of the new stars!

by Shardra

Isn’t it the same as Martial Arts?

by Serpentine_C

From July 9, 2025 to January 7, 2026 I ran the Path To Eden campaign from the MYZ core book. I ran it online using Discord for voice and Owlbear Rodeo using a MYZ-specific dice plugin, which made it easy to track which dice were which. I've previously posted these session reports to the HDYRPGSGTW? Geeklists but am reposting them here to consolidate. We started out with the For A Mouthful of Water special zone from the core book, just to see if we liked it enough to run a whole campaign of the game. I started them out right at the adventure site, skipping any zone travel to get there.

Spoilers for the core campaign ahead!

The group is composed of Linna the Dog-Handler with her dog Bushwacker, Nova the Stalker, and Zippo the Gearhead. The Ark, the settlement they're from, is running out of clean water so they sent an expedition to an old ruin rumored to have clean water. The expedition never returned so the bosses are sending the party to investigate and come back with water.

The party arrives at the site of an old water treatment plant. Standing across from the island it sits on, Bushwacker sniffs a scrap of clothing from the first expedition, then barks at a bush by the water's edge. Nova detects no rot in the river water, and Zippo uses a long branch to detect that the water is only 3 feet deep, so they carefully ford the river and reach the island.

Linna makes a bird call, used by the people of the Ark sometimes to keep track of each other. At first, silence. Then out of a small shed-like building scamper three zone ghouls. Zippo kills one of them with his assault rifle (he rolled a good result for his starting Artifact!) and takes its slingshot. Bushwacker bites one in the arm and doesn't let it go. Seeing this, the third flees back where they came from. The ghoul held by the dog starts pleading for its life, but only Zippo can make out what it's saying, or even that it's saying anything. In exchange for telling the party where the other expedition went and where the water is, they let him go, and he scampers off clutching his bleeding arm.

They sneak across the island to the main building, and Linna sends Bushwacker to scout out where the clean water is. The dog sniffs around all the pools of water on the surface but doesn't seem to like any of them and just paws at the door to the main building. They hear the same bird call Linna made coming from the short tower on the roof of the main building but are scared to respond and enter the building.

Inside they find mostly bare hallways and rooms, empty but for rusted pieces of metal. They hear an electric hum coming from below, and find a spiral staircase going both up and down from the main level. The same bird call comes again, this time from up the stairs. Linna sends Bushwacker up the stairs to scout it out, and he returns wagging his tail and resting his nose against the scrap of clothing. The other expedition must be upstairs!

by Mallet

Started in the 1980's with Melee and Wizard. Great game.

I'm very glad I bought the recent Legacy Edition. :cool:

by trystero11

The first thing that springs to my mind is the Legend of Ghost Mountain series of supplements for Savage Worlds. But those supplements aren't set in ancient China; they're set in a fantasy world, albeit one which has many similarities to ancient China. So given the genre description you quote above, my first question is: would the new genre only apply to games/items set in real-world ancient China, or should fantasy analogues count?

Along similar lines, should the genre exclude games/items that focus on martial arts-heavy adventures in non-Chinese Asian or quasi-Asian settings, such as real-world Japan or Korea or their fantasy analogues?

We have Culture (Asian / Far Eastern) in the database already; should the new genre be at least as broad, or is there value to restricting it to China and China-like settings only?

by latindog

A recent Pathfinder 2e campaign of mine had a goblin character named Pyte who took various biting advantages and feats and would use his bite as a primary weapon. He had gotten to the point where he could bite and then grapple opponents with his mouth by the time the campaign wound down. Also our resident alchemist fashioned a set of braces for him with small ampules filled with various alchemical substances to amplify the damage of his bite (we sort of modeled it on the idea of wiping a blade with poison or other substances). Pyte was a goblin who was rescued by some benevolent Knights of Lastwall and he greatly admired their chivalry so he aspired to an adventuring career based on their exploits. He had a hand painted shield with a smiling dog face as his heraldry (such as it was) and would practice and hone his biting attacks as if he were practicing swordsmanship. When we fought beasts that attacked with a bite, he would get particularly motivated to challenge them chomp for chomp.

by The Player of Games

Alex the Pretty Good wrote:

Wow... I'm blown away ... I got surprised by 3 stars in the last few weeks.
My sincere thanks to all of you who nominated me for this. I honestly have no idea what I might have done to deserve this. 😅
It looks like this maxed me out on available stars, so you'll be able to celebrate more deserving community members in the future 😜

Congratulations on the full set Alexander. Great! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

by The Player of Games

Tann73 wrote:

😱 I didn't realize I got a geekmail earlier because I got a star ⭐️ 😂 I thought it was to just inform me of this thread! I read through the thread and thought this is so nice… So Thank you to whoever sent me the star, that is so thoughtful and appreciated! It just made my day 😊

Congrats on your star and welcome aboard Tann.
🌟

by The Player of Games

queequeg wrote:

I'd no idea this was a thing. I just received one. Neat-o!

This is still my favorite place on the internets!

💫
Congrats on your star Jason!
💫