New on Desk #1 — Xianxia Winter

The first week of the year has been dominated by binge reading a trashy xianxia serial novel and playing the world’s finest cyberpunk roleplaying game. I arbitrarily choose the xianxia thing as the featuring theme for this inaugural edition of the newsletter, cyberpunk will have to wait. The rest of the newsletter will be experiments in sharing, let’s say — some highlights of my week with the arts and crafts.

A Short Intro to Xianxia

Xianxia is the name of a particular Chinese fantasy literature genre that’s been making strides over the last decade. It’s sometimes been understood as a subgenre of wuxia, quasi-historical martial arts superhero storytelling, but it’s developed into its own distinct thing by now, really. New novels are written in the genre all the time nowadays, particularly light novels in the Japanese style, and comics serials are also doing well. Xianxia movies are generally not very good, as tends to be the case with Chinese movies in general; cartoons are a better bet.

Because this is a bit of a recent phenomenon, I’ll just go ahead and explain it a little bit. If you already know about xianxia, feel free to skip ahead here. If not, perhaps check it out? The genre hasn’t brought up any truly world-class literature quite yet as far as I know, but novelty has a quality all its own as any starved fantasy addict well knows. Even if it’s not really any better than your average elfdwarf fantasy porridge, the Chinese version is still a nice change of pace.

The distinctive core feature of xianxia as fantasy literature is the concept of a Taoist immortal, a bit like how vampire fantasy revolves around the idea of the vampire. The immortals, commonly called “cultivators” in the genre, are Chi-using wizards: a mortal man may, by the way of occult meditations and medicine, elevate himself to higher stages of purity. I prefer “purity” to “enlightenment” because, as a western reader readily notices, people in these stories are anything but wise. “Alchemist” is much more on point than “monk” despite cultivators having the tendency to congregate in monastery-like temples.

As I intimated above, the enchantment in reading xianxia is for me in the exotic alien culture that peeks through in all kinds of ways. I could make a long list of the ways in which this Chinese “fantasy literature” is strange, but I’d rather just encourage you to look at it yourself. The sad fact is that the production quality is pretty trashy much of the time, but it’s not like there isn’t an endless parade of vapid western fantasy out there either. Somebody’ll do something remarkable in this paradigm before too long.

What I’ve been doing this week

I read xianxia stuff on occasion, and for some reason or other it’s been particularly on point for me this week. To be specific, I’ve been reading Savage Divinity, an interminably long serial novel. It’s by a western author, which is starting to be more common in the genre. The story is rather character-driven in a trashy fan fiction way, and apparently something that I can vacuum up for hundreds of chapters in a binge. Easy to recommend if you want an easy-to-read introduction into xianxia in web serial novel form, or are out of Terry Pratchett novels and want some light comfort reading.

If you’re after something a bit more authentic (read: awkward and weird), the Apotheosis comic serial is another one that goes on and on, this time very Chinese. (Based on a serial novel, but I’m not sure if anybody’s translated the original novel series.) I read this one in December, and although it partakes of the storytelling and dramatization issues common to the genre, I thought that the high concept stuff, the fantasy conceits and adventurous scenarios, were often on point.

One more, just for the gamers out there: my one top favourite xianxia work isn’t even quite a novel, it’s a forum “quest”, a creative writing exercise with audience input. (If quests are a novelty for you, this one might be a good read for that reason alone – it’s not bad in that regard either.) Forge of Destiny is again a western xianxia pastiche, but this time by a world-creator gamer. Thoughtful stuff that I think captures the key selling points of xianxia well. Better writing than either of the above, and very good points on the gameability of the genre. The game design is only mediocre, but I’m not playing so what do I care – and the GM/author applies what he has in a powerful way, getting a great fuel efficiency out of a not very useful rules system.

Xianxia in old school D&D

Moving on, one reason that this has been a xianxia week for me is that I’ve been gathering some basic notes on how to implement xianxia cosmology in Dungeons & Dragons. In the spirit of the newsletter I’ll desist from a long essay here and merely make mention of some central conceits:

• A xianxia Cultivator in Basic D&D terms is basically a magic-user variant with a different spell list. The core conceit is that instead of being one-use fire and forget, kungfu wizard spells are continuous-use after memorization. A simple and genre-common example would be a 1st level spell “Qing Gong”, granting a AC and speed bonus while memorized. These Cultivator “Arts” are less punchy level-for-level compared to wizard spells, of course. A character has to meditate to reload their spell slots if they wish to change their Arts loadout, if they gain more spell slots or if they get injured or unbalanced in their Dao (a sort of Alignment crisis), but otherwise a Cultivator can use their kungfu magic without limits. Some stronger techniques require hit point expenditures, naturally, and nothing in particular prevents a technique from “expending” the Art in the same way a wizard spell expends itself in casting, even if not nearly as dramatically.
• The setting I’m working on for this was directly inspired by a discussion at Story Games, the one on SHOTGUN WIZARD, so I guess that’s the working title of my ostensible D&D xianxia campaign. Actually, I see that I’ve written a fair overview of the setting at SG already, so I’ll just link that. It’s pretty promising stuff, a sort of mixed combination of the xianxia, western and D&D genres.
• Aside from my western-influenced and military fiction resonating SHOTGUN WIZARD musings, a key issue for pure xianxia D&D is the lack of adventuring parties and dungeons. A weak practitioner would say that you gotta put those in to get anywhere, but I happen to believe that D&D is pretty flexible, so instead: the core xianxia scenario premise concerns a cut-throat magic school with merciless management of peer and mentor connections, wealth (to buy magic drugs with), time and magical secrets. Xianxia stories are also clearly sort of wargamey, what with the charop protagonists and desperately unfair world. I see no fundamental difficulty in envisioning a different kind of D&D campaign, one just as challengeful and wargamey as normal; it’s just that instead of a party of adventurers you play ambitious cultivators stuck in the same monastery / pressure cooker with each other and 20 NPCs cultivators. Instead of the free frontier of Gygaxian D&D you get a Chinese aquarium world with limited space and resources; a world where you fight and kill to emerge a rising dragon, or meekly make way for your betters. A challenge-oriented Ars Magica, if you will.
• One more, a delightful little secret to share: Frank Mentzer’s Basic D&D Immortals rules set is actually very xianxia compatible. For those who haven’t cared to crack it open (it’s not conventionally very D&D-useful after all) I’ll note that the high concepts in there are very solid in both mechanics and world-building. The details in both regards stumble in hilarious ways. For instance, there’s something that would be the ugliest task resolution system I’ve ever seen if Das Schwartze Auge wasn’t a thing. Still a mandatory resource in working out a D&D xianxia campaign.

Story Break: a Finnish Xianxia Epic

I put together and take apart a lot of stories in my spare time, so let’s look into one from last week. As you probably know (and not like it’s a surprise if this is the first time you hear about it), I like to do my own creative writing too, so this sort of cruft comes up now and again.

So the idea here is to figure out what a Finnish xianxia story would look like. It’s a quintessentially Chinese genre, so at first the combination seems somewhat arbitrary, but I realized while reading one of the aforementioned xianxia stories that there are interesting cosmological presuppositions in there that harmonize with old Finnish folklore and pre-Christian worldview in general. For instance, it just so happens that the whole Qigong cosmology of heavenly mechanics that forms the basis of xianxia fantasy has its equivalent in Finnish folklore. The understanding of what spirits are, how a human uses magic, even the morality (perhaps the most alien bit in Chinese literature for a westerner) gets rather similar if you squint just a little bit. Väinämöinen as a xianxia hero?

This similarity isn’t too surprising if you’re aware of the broad strokes of how Eurasian animistic cultures spread and interacted throughout the long prehistorical millenia; the way qi or väki or mana or whatever you want to call it works is generally cross-compatible between primitive cultures. The Chinese world just happens to be rather civilized despite possessing an old-fashioned mythological imagination in e.g. Taoist traditions.

But anyway, let’s just take it as a given that I’m not crazy here; the question still remains as to what one could do for a Finnish xianxia epic. Here’s a quick outline for the fun of it.

• The story is set in 19th century Grand Duchy of Finland. A land under Russian Imperial government, so we get that nice “imperial flavour” with empire this and empire that which so characterizes Chinese fiction. The Russians are all snotty young master types, of course, the kind that xianxia stories love to humble. Stovepipe hats go flying as martial artists and witches (my preferred English translation for the native Finnish tradition of qi-channeling wizard badasses) upset Finnish high society with their antics. Asians generally write Europe in martial arts stories as having its own martial arts, but here that’s not true; the scary big boy Russian cavalry captain is the toughest because he’s been to the East to learn stuff. The locals are helpless next to somebody with real wu.
• The main character is a moody, dark-haired inheritor of the Kaspin (the link’s so you don’t think I’m making this shit up; not much in English about Kaspin out there, probably for a good reason) school of martial arts, of course. Ambiguous Chinese connections from the MC’s father’s Siberian railroad building hobby. The key twist, though, is that while the Finland of this xianxia fantasy has a native tradition of efficious witchcraft that basically works just like xianxia magic generally does, it’s not a martial arts tradition: the MC is a fish out of water as a relatively ordinary xianxia protagonist (Kaspin is a knife fighting art, to be specific) surrounded by a world of witchcraft steeped in pacifism and disconnected from the power structures of the empire. The background society does not see and understand the relationship between magic and violence that xianxia takes for granted, and the witches look down upon a “muscle-wizard” protagonist who isn’t so hot with spirit summoning and such staples of Finnish magic.
• A second or third story arc premise: the MC, remaining rather vaguely informed of the majestetic history of his martial arts heritage, gets saved by some gypsies — Romani. Befriending the vagabonds, the MC grows convinced that he in fact is Romani himself, seeing what he wants to see in his mysteriously orphaned background and excellent knife skills. (This works in Finland basically in the same way it’d work anywhere in Europe, I trust you can follow the gist here.) Later on the story of course backs out of this idea, as we’re writing trashy serial fiction and want cheap emotional thrills.

I’ll leave it at that for now. This newsletter’s already getting a bit long as it is. It’s fine for a first issue, I suppose. It’s the best time to be extravagant.

The Year of Cyberpunk

So, it’s year 2020 — the year of cyberpunk! I’m thinking of writing a bit more on that next week, so just a few quick observations now:

• We’ve been playing the excellent Subsection M3 roleplaying game with my tabletop crew for what, seven or eight sessions by now. The game’s an in-development project by the Finnish rpg designer Tuomas Kortelainen, hopefully to be produced and published this year. The premise of the game is to provide a kaleidoscopic crime drama ensemble sandbox, with the players playing a bunch of criminal detectives in a dystopic cyberpunk city.
• I got the idea a couple of months back that revising the classic Cyberpunk 2020 would be a really cool thing to figure out for this year. I haven’t had the time to do more than review the original game so far, but the idea is compelling: C2020 was one of my formative games as a teen, so although I am keenly aware of the short-comings in the game, I also have something of a soft spot for it. Taking old games and twisting them into pretzels is something I like to do, so perhaps…

Both of those are interesting topics that deserve a bit more development even within the constraints of a newsletter. Interesting enough that I’ll save further detail for next week.

Movie Club: The Court Jester

I’ve been doing a bit of a movie club with a couple of friends lately. It’s an old-fashioned activity, to speak plainly, and we’re all just a bit young to be genuinely into movies as much as that implies. A “movie club” to my ears sounds like something that people in the 20th century might have enjoyed. Treating a movie as an event instead of casual time-wasting is the old-fashioned bit, I suppose.

Having said that, I’ve enjoyed our particular club conceit. I developed the house rules after an accidental night of “what should we watch from Netflix” with the guys: the slow decision-making process and awkward motivations that everybody brought to the table inspired me to streamline the decision-making process. I suppose it also inspired us to do another movie night; not like it’s been a regular activity for us before now.

The movie club’s rules are simple: everybody brings one movie to the showing night, something they think that the others should see. We do elimination voting to find out which of the suggested titles is the least hated, and that’s what we watch. The goal is getting to know each other better, of course, and to improve our mutual cinema literacy. The “everybody brings one” thing is there to emphasize personal responsibility and strike a happy compromise between an endlessly chaotic suggestion-countersuggestion dynamic and a staid “tonight we watch my pick, even if you aren’t interested”.

Last week’s movie club featured a tough debate between the late ’90s action thriller “The Rock”, and the mid-’50s musical comedy “The Court Jester”, recommended by yours truly. The headline probably gave away which movie won this round, and I obviously enjoyed getting to show a long-time favourite to the others, but the movie pick debate itself was also fun and interesting: a good addition to the movie night experience.

The movie itself proved to stand the test of time: I’m no expert on classical Hollywood (or cinema in general, really), but for what it’s worth, I might not have seen a movie from the era that I like as much. I like musical theater, but American musicals of the time are often rather… stuffy. Not so with the Court Jester: the personable verbal comedy and classic farce plots are accompanied by a fun, not at all boring series of musical numbers. All the good bits of classical Hollywood era are on full display: colorful set designs and costuming, theatrical actors and well-formed plotting.

Gentlemen on the Agora

Lastly, a few observations from my gentlemen’s club. “Agora” is the pet name for a certain Finnish IRC rpg discussion channel where every day is a cultural salon day. Here’s some of the best bits I caught on the Agora this week:

• Witcher stories by Andrzej Sapkowski have won a reluctant commendation from the often over-critical pulp fantasy enthusiasts on the agora. (I’m talking of myself, of course.) The first collection in particular, The Last Wish, seems to stand up to strident examination.
• The afore-mentioned Das Schwartze Auge, “The Dark Eye”, was examined in passing when one of the contributors revealed that they’d used their skills in Germanese to study the rulebook of this seminal German roleplaying game. The gentlemen were shocked to hear about the frankly farcical task resolution rules system. Check this out for size: every task in DSA is associated with three different ability scores, which are all tested in sequence on the dice to figure out a result, success requiring passing on all three rolls. Skill values are assigned as points between the three individual checks to modify the target numbers on a case-by-case basis. Sounds like a fun pastime.
• Storyboarding — advance plotting of a scene before playing it out in a roleplaying game — was discussed in relation to Tales of Entropy, a story game that one of the contributors is preparing to facilitate at a convention. While there are roleplaying games that suit railroading or storyboarding playstyles, Entropy is hardly one of those; not only is it pretty boring to play with storyboarding, but the rules also don’t respect player intentions: the dice are very likely to throw the story into directions not intended by the storyboarding. All in all, a nice way to say that the prospective GM should knock off the micromanaging and trust the game to do its thing without interference.
• Did you know that sea buoys were built with cabins to serve shot down fighter pilots during WWII while awaiting rescue? Speaking of, why don’t people draw these “How things work” cross-section infographics anymore? Is it because modern technology is not as visually interesting as steampunk or dieselpunk tech, or do we have too much technology to have time to appreciate individual pieces?
• Is Dungeon Crawl Classics an old school game? If it is, why doesn’t it have xp-for-gold? Age old questions…
• Who is Harshax? A contributor has delightfully started reading King of Sartar, a fantasy literature classic. The question’s not bad, either.

That’s All, Folks

Let me know if you have opinions on how to improve the newsletter. I’m still feeling my way around, after all. At this writing I think that this first issue is too long for one; I’ll try to keep it to about half this length in the future. On the other hand, I’m pretty happy with the idea of a “featured theme”; the other alternative would be to write about my activities in strict diary-like weekly chunks, but this way probably makes the stuff more readable.

Also, if some of these bits are boring, don’t hesitate to tell me to my face. I don’t have a complete theory of what sort of content works the best in the long run. I’m not sure if I should focus more strictly in roleplaying stuff only, or if it’s worthwhile to try to write a bit about other things, too. I personally liked the Court Jester bit here, for example, but maybe it’s a pretty boring anecdote to you.