Moving out of the horror section of shelf two brings us to the costume drama section. First up is Qin: The Warring States. As the name indicates it’s a game of wuxia adventure inspired by super-lush Zhang Yimou pics like Curse of the Golden Flower & House of Flying Daggers. The character concept that sprung to mind, however, is better suited to a late night TV kung fu shapesfest, probably played by Yi-Min Li. But the heck with it, we’ll run with it anyway.

Chargen in Qin begins with assigning 14 points to the PC’s five aspects, each corresponding to one of the five elements. Our concept is an all-arounder, so we’ll put 3 in Metal (fighting), Water (body), Fire (social aptitude), & Wood (mental ability). That leaves the 2 in Earth (spirit), which is fine; our hero is young & callow & knows not the way of the Force … er, Dao.

Every PC has a Gift & a Weakness. These convey minor advantages, but they don’t provide or cost any points. Our hero is headstrong & bold, so we take Audacity of the Phoenix (you’re so self-confident that once per session you can redo a test rated Very Difficult or higher) & Haunted Soul (a ghost bugs you all night with visions & obscure promptings so you only get half normal Chi & health back when you sleep & presumably wake up grouchy).

Step two is to pick your skills. You’ve got 15 skill points & the cost of a skill not only increases geometrically, but you have to pay the cumulative cost of the level you begin with. So level 1 costs 1, level 2 costs 3, level 3 (which is as high as you can go at chargen) costs 6. If you want to start with level 3 in a skill it’ll thus cost you 10. Our hero’s career is just beginning, so let’s keep it to a maximum of 2.

Acrobatics 1, Bangshu (stick fighting) 2, Climbing 1, Craft (Woodworking) 1, Dodging 1, Hand to Hand 2, Legends 1, Perception 1, Stealth 1

Step three, work out your secondary aspects. These are all derived values. Your basic Chi is 4 x Earth x your highest rated skill. Passive defense is Water + Wood. Balance is the absolute value of (Metal + Water) – (Fire + Wood). Resistance (to poisons & drugs & whatnot) is Metal + Earth; lastly, cross reference Balance & Resistance to find how much Breath of Life you’ve got. Breath of Life is broken down into numbers of boxes per health level. WoD style, as the boxes fill up you proceed farther down a scale of dilapidation, suffering increasing penalties to your rolls until you up & die. Lastly, your starting Renown is equal to your highest skill rating.

Chi 16, Passive Defense 8, Balance 0, Resistance 5, Breath of Life 21 (7/5/4/3/2), Renown 2

In step four, you get 15 more points to spend on Taos, Techniques, & Magic. That’s the plural of Tao, by the way, not the city in New Mexico. Anyway. We don’t need to concern ourselves with Magic since our hero is a cocky, adventuresome kid, not a sorcerer. Buying a Tao, which is a preternatural ability powered by your oneness with the Tao like running across water, works like buying a skill. Buying martial techniques is a little different in that the cost isn’t cumulative; level 2 just costs 3, not 4, & so on.

Tao of the Destructive Breath 1 (smash small objects with a single blow)
Tao of the Thousand Bees 2 (mastery of improvised weapons; throw, kick, or otherwise propel everyday items effectively)
Tao of the Strengthened Body 2 (ignore extremes of temperature; spend Chi to shrug off penalties inflicted by loss of Breath of Life

Bangshu techniques: double blow, hold at bay
Hand to hand techniques: throw, trap

Player & GM decide what equipment the PC has based upon their back story & what’s going on in the scenario, so there’s no need to do any shopping. A quick throw of the yin & yang dice comes up yin 6, yang 9. Woman it is, then. Off to the Onomastikon to find a good Warring Kingdoms era name & our character is ready to go.

Name: Yan-Mei

As far as Yan-Mei knows, her family have been woodworkers in Spring Village since the days of the Yellow Emperor if not before. She expects & has been training from childhood to pursue the craft herself, though her impetuous spirit & tendency to rush off after excitement often drive her elders to distraction. She’s also starting to demonstrate some very unusual abilities, & those worry them even more. She was brought up by her aunt & uncle, who have always insisted that her parents died in an outbreak of the plague. The ghost who has recently been haunting her dreams, however, tells a different story. Yan-Mei’s mother Sung-Lee abandoned the family business to master kung fu. In she became head of the martial Falcon Clan, only to be betrayed & murdered by a resentful student who wanted to rule the martial world herself. Now Yan-Mei’s mother is reaching out from the spirit world with a demand & a warning: a demand that Yan-Mei devote herself to kung fu as well, & a warning that the treacherous student is still out to extinguish their family line. For her adopted family’s safety, as well as her own, Yan-Mei must become a wandering fighter, learning & testing herself until she’s ready to take revenge & reclaim leadership of the clan.

Aspects:
Metal 3, Water 3, Fire 3, Wood 3, Earth 2

Gift & Weakness:
Audacity of the Phoenix / Haunted Soul

Chi: 16
Passive Defense: 8
Breath of Life: 21 (7/5/4/3/2)

Skills:
Acrobatics 1, Bangshu (stick fighting) 2, Climbing 1, Craft (Woodworking) 1, Dodging 1, Hand to Hand 2, Legends 1, Perception 1, Stealth 1

Taos:
Tao of Destructive Breath 1, Tao of the Strengthened Body 2, Tao of the Thousand Bees 2

Martial Techniques:
Bangshu: double blow, hold at bay
Hand to Hand: throw, trap

So our hero is played by Polly Shang-Kuan instead of Yi-Min Li. So much the better.