This review is based on a thorough read-through of the pdf. (I haven’t played the game and, spoiler, don’t intend to.) You can find the blow-by-blow commentary in a thread on RPG Geek, if you want to dig into the nitty-gritty of the book.
The pdf looks fine - it’s got a pretty standard layout for an RPG, with a two-column format and lots of text on each page. The pdf isn’t hyperlinked, but it is bookmarked reasonably well. The worst part of the layout is that the section headings are screwed up throughout, which cane make it hard to figure out how the pieces relate to each other. Still, it’s fine. There’s a reasonable amount of art, though the majority are headshots of Kickstarter backers in the “Far West” style. Since the vast majority of those are white males, the art does not showcase the diversity one might expect from the setting (much less any gender balance - also not helped by how the text leans strongly into gender stereotypes and objectification in the rare places where women are mentioned).
To sum up my impression of the game itself: it’s a mess. It began life as a d20 + Fate mashup, and it doesn’t appear that a lot of thought was put into how to merge those systems in an interesting way. Later, the designer switched from d20 to the D6 system, which further muddled things. The math isn’t tight, the rules explanations are confusing (to say the least), there aren’t any examples, and there are several points where different parts of the rules conflict or at least talk past each other. The rules section is poorly written, and unless you have a high tolerance for making things up as you go along and ignoring the rules as written, you will be frustrated.
Character creation follows a kitchen sink approach: there are attributes, skills, and specializations (all dice pools that build on each other). Then there are kung fu styles (special abilities, which look like skills on the surface but function differently), aspects (narrative tags from Fate), edges and flaws, and occupations and backgrounds. The skill system is granular (lifting! bureaucracy! charm, command, AND persuasion!) but the aspects are purely narrative.
That said, it’s pretty clear that the genre and setting were meant to carry the game - the idea of wuxia+Western is a compelling one. But the game doesn’t showcase the core of those genres in any substantial mechanical way. Even before the Kickstarter, the RPG community had embraced the idea that rules can drive the genre, so I expected mechanics that emulated martial arts battles, duels, chases, etc. Instead this is a bog-standard fantasy game with a few trappings that reference martial arts. You could rename 90% of the kung fu styles with more conventional names (d20 feats!) and the mechanics would make just as much sense. This is, structurally, the most disappointing aspect for me. This feels out of touch with the RPG scene in 2010 - much less today.
The setting itself is mostly fine; it comes across as more Western than wuxia to me, but maybe that’s because I know better what to look for in Westerns. There are some individual elements I like a lot (in particular, the sense that it’s at an unstable equilibrium between various power groups), but most of the presentation fails to sell the promise of the setting. There’s no unified core concept and no sense of what to do with the vast expanse; the book really, really needs a good intro adventure to show the reader how to bring out both elements. The writing in this part is fine, although the overall organization and focus on playable aspects could use help.
However, the complete absence of any Native Americans, in a world so clearly informed by other real world cultures, is a big black mark. It is a failure to respect both the genre and the real world.
Hard pass for the price.
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