does anyone want to kungfu an uproar in heaven

I have like no idea how to title this in a sexy fashion. So the current will do. I've been really kind of hype about Sutra Stories as of late, a friend of mine's still in the works Fate Core based rpg. So I was curious if anyone might interested in trying even a one off session game of it?

What is Sutra Stories though you may ask? And the answer is it is a Chinese and other Asian mythology based game that takes place in the Celestial Bureaucracy. You are a god tasked with causing an Uproar in Heaven like the great Sun Wukong did so long ago. Cause trouble. Become a revolutionary. Politics your way into being the NEW Jade Emperor. The Wheel Must Turn.

Things the stories have...

• KUNG FU. magical kung fu
• WUXIA. complete with the wuxia jump
• Furries
• Transformers
• Those delicious steamed pork buns
• The Monkey King
• All the Asian mythologies you could shake a stick at (though admittedly China and India are the two main ones)
• No class system
• Special abilities, spells, and other mechanics that you the player make up! NOT THE GM OR THE BOOK.
• A night club on the moon that is both a Indian myth and a disney reference. the moon is a giant moth.
• The city in general is a chaotic schizotech wonder and marvel

 

Also forgot to add links to the books.

This is the Sutra Stories book. Yes it is incomplete. It is very playable however.

The Fate Core book which the system is based off is here.

 

how much prior knowledge of asian mythology is it required/recommended that players have?

 

You don't need any I don't think? Certainly not a lot. It'd be easier I guess for people who do have knowledge, but the game isn't a perfect representation of any one mythology or religion. Despite the inspirations. So you'd basically just need to know at least some of what is in the book there. You don't need to be able to write me an essay on the Three Kayas!

Basically if you've seen one kung-fu film or have seen an anime you are probably definitely good. Even if not we can get you up to speed. I mean people who know dickall about DnD can play the game.

 

thanks! :D

i'm not 100% sure if i want to play or not, but i figured asking this question would be a good first step for considering the idea.

 

Sure thing! If you have any questions about the setting or the system feel free to ask. Or if you want like a summary or something.

 

thanks! :D

 

Yeah, I'll give it a shot. I've done fate before, the setting looks cool, I am very down with indie RPGs in development, and I have character ideas.

 

Yaaaay. Character ideas are good, but I do want to say hold off on making a shit until we have a group. Partly because I just like the gameset up fun playtime of Fate a lot and partly because if we're going to be doing following scenes then the organization is very important. It's easier to make the org at the same time as the characters given that it's a thing they set up.

Also if you have any questions about the setting or the mechanics of it please do ask. And throwing out the characters ideas here might be a thing to do?

 

I rough-drafted some stats but I know not to consider that anything but brainstorming until group chargen. And I hadn't touched organization yet, having no inspiration, probably because that needs the whole group to provide the concept.

Sure, though keep in mind that my knowledge on eastern mythology and religion are mostly from modern fiction inspired by them - Exalted, Years of Rice and Salt, etc. - except I read a little on Taoism as a teenager.

My idea is a person who, over several lives, had the recurring fate of traveling, usually young and alone, through regions of unrest or oppression while visibly a member of the oppressing group. (Maybe they had done something like that once, fucked it up, and had to go back and try again until they got it right.) Mostly they ended up hurting people and making things worse, out of self-defense if nothing else, and then dying. But over multiple cycles they got better, achieved some enlightenment in the form of dim memories of previous lives, and used that to improve still further until finally, as an ethnically Han Chinese orphan in PRC-occupied Tibet they completed their journey while helping every person they met and harming none. After that cycle, they ended up in Heaven as a Bodhisattva, and now work in the office of Years as a representative of people disproportionately disadvantaged by fate. (Or I could do Bonds, if someone wanted to play the other twin.)

 

It does need the whole group yeah. Like ours came together pretty easily once we had all three of our people together. We all played Beasts who are the second class citizens of Heaven. My character was a bitter ex-assassin eaten up and spat out by the bureaucratic machine. The others were a former revolutionary for Beast rights and a woman who had been abused by Buddhism as an institution in the past (Heaven follows the Sanjiao but Buddhism is a very heavy focus in the setting). And that is when we decided oh ok. Maybe we're like the Black Panther Party kind of? But for Beasts. Our secret base of operations being the boozehouse that the former revolutionary was given to honor his rising to a high position in Office Dances for a Beast, the Zhu Baije. That being our organization. Came together pretty neatly when you had a group of people all wanting to be furries who were shat on by society to some extent.

Also it's entirely fine if your ideas are more inspired by works inspired by Asian mythology and religion. Porco Rosso is basically canon, the leader of the Horned Herd is named Le Di Er (this is just Aradia from Homestuck having her name spelled out in phonetic Chinese), and the Door Gods are literally transformers. The various real religious things are also altered or simplified as needs be, like the concept of Hun and Po.

And ooh you're thinking being a Bodhi then? And in Office Years? Oooooh. I find that very interesting. For a variety of reasons. One of which being that I myself played a character in Office Years, so it'll be neat to see a different side of it and take on it.

 

Some key bits about Beasts, like where they come from, hadn't been written yet. Can you tell me more about them?

 

A lot of this I am writing is coming from the text itself. It's farther down in Chapter 1, right after the section about Offices. Other bits come from earlier and a bit of it hasn't been written. So I am just kind of condensing what I have into this one thing.

Beasts are Deities of Intellect like the Tianshen/Devata. Which means that they are born of an Ascended Hun soul. So basically when you die the Hun leaves your body and heads down to Diyu for processing. The Beasts and Devata had enough positive karma henceforth called merit to be reborn in Heaven. Away from that karmic side of things when two Beasts love each other very much they give each other a special hug and then a baby Beast results from it. So a Beast has parents and might have siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles and so on. The Progenitors are special Beasts and there is one for each Clan. They are what impresses the specific forms and personality traits in common with the specific Clans and are involved with the karmic process that results in Beasts being born at all. They are the ones that actually raise Hun to Beasts and thus have power far greater than that of even the Jade Emperor. Their power is greatly restricted though by agreements, promises, contracts and the fact that they do not think on a human level whatsoever. The Progenitors can't plan or analyze things like the Jade Emperor can.

Now despite being Deities of Intellect (Shen) the Beasts are regarded as little more than animals that gained intelligence by the others in Heaven. As a result they are the second class citizens of Heaven. Beasts are employed for very shit jobs that no one else wants to do. Need builders? Go to the Down Warren clan and hire on some Bolt Diggers. That isn't a Tianshen's job, but a rabbit's. Need assassins for your covert bullshit you hide from the rest of the bureaucracy? Look up the Soldier breeds of the clans and hire them on as guards on the books. Need a sexy whore to fawn over and mistreat? You want a Huli Jing of Faithful Fangs.

In terms of organization there are two ways in which they are organized. The first and most important to the Celestial Bureaucracy as a whole are the Breeds, of which there are four. The Breeds basically deem, from birth, what jobs you are suited for. If your family is one of Soldiers then you are a Soldier. That is that. The Breeds are Soldiers, Servitors, Entertainers, and Courtiers. Now Soldiers aren't all in the military. They can also be employed in the police force of Heaven, the Celestial Investigation Service, or as assassins of Office Years or as spies who sabotage rival businesses. There's a sort of breadth to the roles a Breed fulfills. Soldiers do the fighting, Servitors do the building and maintaining, Entertainers do the entertaining, and the Courtiers deal with ritual and shit like secretarial work. Regardless of what the Breed is though all Beasts are born to serve the "true" gods of Heaven.

The other form, which is more important to the Beasts themselves, are the Clans. There are a total of 12 Clans, one for each sign of the Chinese Zodiac. There are Beasts that don't fit into these Clans, however. While my friend hasn't really figured out what to do with them exactly you can presume that, say, someone who's a llama or some shit would go and find a Clan to submit entry to. They'd probably fit into the Horned Herd best just because they fit nowhere else. Anyway, the Clan is an extended family network for the Beasts. Each are led by a Chieftan and are comprised of a variety of Beast families that all are supposed to answer to the Chieftan. The Clans are then further broken down into groups based upon Breed which tend to fulfill certain roles (sadly only four of the Clans have their Breed groups all worked out). So like with the Down Warren of rabbits you have the Servitors of the Clan who are called the Bolt Diggers. They build and mine and are involved in construction. Meanwhile the Servitors of the Bulldoze, the Harvests, tend to be involved in farming.

Also because not all the entries are finished...I feel it's worth noting who the current Clan Chieftans that we have solidified are. Because that person is just kind of important to your Beast because well. That's your dude. Your leader guy. You might like him. You might fucking hate him and view him as a piece of shit leader who means nothing to you like my fox did. But you know him.

Mousetrap has Ci Po, Mother Thorn formerly Lady Earth Flowing
Bulldoze has Oxhead
Tiger Gate has Han Tang, the Red Claw
Down Warren has Chang Er
Dragon Deeps has Zhulong
Serpent League has Takshaka
Horse Power has Horse Face
Horned Herd has Le Di Er (it's Aradia Megido)
Monkey Compact has Yuan Fei, an OC
The Confederacy of Birds has Mahamayuri of the Wisdom Kings
Faithful Fangs has Panhu
Hungry Tusks has Zhu Bajie

The list is now complete. Now with the exception of Le Di Er and Yuan Fei all of these are figures from Chinese myth, folklore, or Journey to the West or from Indian myth. So if you're curious who this person is you can pretty easily find at least some info on them.

 

Oh fuck right courtesy and honest forms.

So for Beasts their Honest Forms are...furries. A Huli Jing is thus most comfortable being an anthropomorphic fox. Courtesy Form is just a normal looking representative of the animal in question. So a Huli Jing's is literally just a fox. However Beasts are also the most talented of the gods at shapeshifting, with certain ones being well regarded in that front especially. So Beasts can also show up as things that look like humans, tianshen and so on. However that's not really their Honest versus Courtesy Form thing. Also feel free to have them in states between forms, so to speak. So like how some depictions of werewolves have them being as capable on all fours as they are bipedally. That can be a thing. Or Naga turning their arms into long snakey tails. You can have that be a thing too. In general though you're a furry.

 

And here is the tag list of all the named deities in the setting. Unlike the book the tags are very regularly kept up to date. This blog also has some other named shit. If you're like "wtf is this" it consists mostly of pictures to give a sort of idea of what the setting looks like or might look like. To give inspiration, you know? If you want to look at specific tags or types of tags go to menu, then links. A series of shit like Tag Cloud and Prop Table will show up.

 

Hm. Okay, I'm also brainstorming a beast who became an unlicensed sorcerer by stealing books. Probably from Down Warren, because I'm a sucker for a good Watership Down reference. How does sorcery work? Unique skill modes? Or is that just for immortals?

 

Everyone can use sorcery. Lore wise I am going to post this big block of text I put elsewhere...

As for how it works mechanically...This factors into your skills or aspects mostly. So nothing super set in stone mechanically. At least currently. So we'll use my Huli Jing I had before as an example. Abhaya is capable of using sorcery to create illusions. These can fall into a number of skills though. So like, let's say she's trying to make an illusion of some office worker to trick someone into going the fuck away so she can continue to rummage through shit. Abhaya would make a Deceive roll against the person in question. Now aspect wise she used to work for Office Years so she was a Former Fox Industrial Saboteur. The sorceries employed by Office Years' spies, assassins, and saboteurs during that game were mostly Enchantments of the Fojiao/Buddhist school of teaching. So while mechanically her invoking that aspect to work a sorcerous act is paying a fate point, narratively she is forcing the maturation of karmic fruits, delaying that maturation, or transferring her merit to another. Additionally it can be a special effect. A sort of ability that you yourself come up with. The mechanics are all yours and you basically run this by me and we talk about whether or not you can do it. For an example Abhaya had one called Stylish Red Suit that allowed her to leave a scene if she was unattended and then return to the scene at any moment she wanted with an advantage. That isn't really sorcery per se but it does show what the special effects are like. I suppose you could also make a custom skill mode to mechanically represent sorcery too, to get the best out of your skills with it. All you need are to pick 9 of the existing skills, name the mode, and you're golden.

Thing to keep in mind too is that the skill modes get tied to your Past, Present, and Future Aspects. So feel free to play with getting those to work all synchronistically. Using a different character as an example of how to connect the modes with an aspect. Heihe has three modes. Mode Violence, Mode Understanding, and Mode Tianshen. The first two are basic modes that I picked because I was lazy. The third is necessary because he's a Tianshen. So backstory wise Heihe's life before this was in Diyu being tortured. This aspect was titled I Was Roasted Over Hot Coals and it was tied to Mode Violence. Also because his memories of this life were decently strong, but not so strong as to be his main thing this was his fair level mode. By contrast his future mode was Mode Understanding with an aspect of I Will Be The One To Open The Door Of Mind and his present mode was Mode Tianshen with an aspect of I Am The Shadow Of My Shadow, My Sister. Given how central his growth and eventual goal is to his character that future mode became his good one and his average one was the present mode.

 

Posting Heihe and Mengzhi's sheets just so people can see what the aspects, special effects, and modes all look like. Just so you know unlike standard Fate Core you fill out experiences over play sessions, as opposed to working them out before the start.

EDIT: Relevant to the sorcery talk Heihe's Dream Diary special effect is an example of sorcery. Specifically he's divining things and writing them down in Fuwen characters. So it's a sort of Daojiao sorcery.

 

Hm, okay. So, was there any mechanic behind Abhaya's ability to create illusions? Was that an aspect or a special effect she had?

 

There was no one mechanic, no. Instead it manifested through several different mechanics. So her skills of Deceive, Provoke, Empathize and so on could all conceivably be used to roll for a sorceries success. Her special effect of Stylish Red Suit was sorcery being worked through the mechanic of the special effects. Her aspect of Former Industrial Fox Saboteur meanwhile while not specific to sorcery can be invokved to work sorcery.

So basically I made a choice about my character narratively. She can make illusions and other similar sorceries. Mechanically I made use of various mechanics to make that narrative fact a mechanical fact. So every time I did I had to discuss it with the gm in whether or not I was allowed to do this. So you as the player are effectively making mechanics. Just like me, the gm here, and my friend, the author of the system.