What is the best system for a cultivation game ?
There isn't a pre-built system that'll handle Xianxia, If your willing to put in work Megaversal can handle the combat/movement flow and already has pills, qi, etc.
>>96581223Junior! You dare come before this board and ask such a foolish question? You disgrace our clan with such public displays of ignorance!
>>96581223Anima beyond FantasyGURPSMAIDI think Reign had interesting conflict resolution mechanics, which would be necessary for one of these games.
>>96581348GURPS?
>>96581358GURPS
>>96581223This faggot has three feet.
>>96581358That's because its mechanics tend to break down at higher points values, which is absolutely intended by the genre.
>>96581461>which is absolutely intended by the genrePartially true, although some of the "better" written stories go the rule-lawyering route and at least try (and fail) to avoid the inevitable breakdown.
>>96581223Ewwwwwww...sloppa!
>>96581223Why don't you cultivate some decent art for your OP image?
>>96581838>>96581717There's nothing wrong with the OP image. Some of you humans have 3 legs and fused hands.
>>96581856you're not fooling anyone, now go learn how to draw hands already
>>96581223Anima is meant for things like this.Exalted, as well, if you don't mind the trappings of its setting. Cultivate your Essence and your Artifice.
>>96581223What is a cultivation game?
Freeform.>>96582071A game based on xianxia literaturehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O3xlh-P1Uc
>>96582071Harvester Moon with JRPG mechanics, played in Ultima Online.
>>96581223There isn't one for pure Xianxia/Xianhua at least in English afaik. There's two games I've seen at cafe's here in Korea called 신들의 무기 (God's Weapons?) and another called 용호상박 (Tiger and Dragon Fight?). My Korean is abysmal so I don't know if they are any good or even if I'm getting the names right.Qin: the Warring States is pretty good for a more wuxia experience but the Legends ruleset puts the game into some xianxia shit with heavenly weapons and martial arts.
>>96581348>>96581358>>96581367What supplements? do I just grab the super hero book and the fantasy one?
>>96581415bruh what is this?
>>96582285and Martial Arts and China
>>96582307>>96582154
>>96581223You need to make sure the PC can get magical eyes that boost their antique appraisal skills and allow them to roll to court death
>>96581434When you Reach The Lunar Iron Soul Cosmic Fruitger Aero Level of cultivation, you gain the power to spontaneous generate an extra foot. Try reading a culivation history book one of these days, junior.
>>96581223A was once told by an old monk that I could only best him if I mastered the tools of cultivation and I killed him with a pitchfork.
>>96581717Would you prefer puckee?
>>96582684Good Junior, you are progressing fast your next step will involve locating and defeating the legendary master known as Lady Hoe
>>96582285>>96582314It's Infinite Worlds you want, and Illuminati. Furries too, also the robot apocalypse setting.We're literally talking about a setting where NGOs are robbing people off their valuable resources to feed them to their own members. That's what your players need to 'get', don't bother them about Chyyyna.
>>96582562>when your grandfather's spyglass increases your appraisal skill, you become a necromancer and fight alien invaders.Typical urban cultivation plot.
>>96581223Serious question. If I made a very high-quality one, would you be interested in actually playing it? What player-facing features are you looking for in a cultivation game?
>>96581223AnimaAnd if you squint really hard, Exalted.
>>96584540>Serious question.Not really>If I made a very high-quality oneNever gonna happen>would you be interested in actually playing it?No>What player-facing features are you looking for in a cultivation game?Ability for the game to translate content of seven Daoist treaties into a format of a tabletop game that captures the cultural and spiritual nuance needed to grasp the whole thing properly, and all of that within less than 250 pages of it allIn other words: impossibility
>>96582285>>96582285GURPS Powers OR GURPS SupersGURPS Martial ArtsGURPS Low TechGURPS fantasy is honestly optional, you're not going to need to make up a whole fantasy setting, you're just playing in fantasy china.If you want to have catgirls or foxgirls or other animal people that sometimes show up in xianxia then you get GURPS furries of GURPS template toolkit 2.
>>96584612Heroes does it better straight up>>96584540if one were to be made from scratch, i think the most important thing is to include a specific subset of cultivation rules etc and not try to include literally everything out of i dont know how many different cosmologies, power levels, systems etc
>>96581223Any of them, just rename the gaining of XP to "cultivating" and let players buy it with in-game currency.
>>96589081No, tiering of power and broad scaling accordingly is REALLY important to the genre, so it STRICTLY NEEDS to be a level-based system. WotC D&D is unironically a good starting point.
>>96584574Any degree of spiritual nuance would be grossly out of place in a cultivation game. The genre's about as rooted in Chinese philosophy, religion and mythology as Western fantasy is in Western mythology, which is to say only superficially. The genre's about power-hungry assholes fighting and plotting against each other for resources they can use to get longer life and more superpowers. It's all very non-spiritual and not very nuanced in any way.
>>96591674NTA but the problem is that the tiers are extremely specific, but the powers aren't. There's a clear ladder of levels and titles to ascend and each of them comes with greater power, but what that power is, how it can be expressed, and how it can be quantified are much harder to nail down.It would be like trying to make cookie clicker into a TTRPG. What you know is that the numbers needs to go up as much as possible. You need to upgrade in certain ways that make the numbers go even bigger in faster and better ways. All that matters is that you make more numbers more big. What those numbers actually mean is incomprehensible to mortal minds, though.
>>96581223ACKS
ExaltedThe right answer is Exalted. It's literally a game about OP cultivators.
>>96591772>There's a clear ladder of levels and titles to ascend and each of them comes with greater power, but what that power is, how it can be expressed, and how it can be quantified are much harder to nail down....The point still stands because D&D has this thing called "classes" that have historically held very different powers expressed in very different ways that are quantified by very different means. Even in 4e they still gave Psionics its power-points.>What you know is that the numbers needs to go up as much as possible.Only for exceptionally poorly managed progression slop, otherwise the need to decide the tiers ahead of time to settle a ruleset means there's a pre-defined ceiling.>You need to upgrade in certain ways that make the numbers go even bigger in faster and better ways.Really all you need to add is XP modifiers, the rest is taken over by general character optimization work.
>>96591772>>96591674wotc dnd is a very bad choice for a base, but Adnd 2e and rules cyclopedia isnt. It has more levels, the classes are pretty barebones and in 2e they gain experience differently just like how cultivators gain experience differently based on the method they use, and they have different exp amounts required to leveling up.Basic dnd rebundled into rules cyclopedia cuts the game into 5 pieces Basic Expert Companion Master Immortal, something that ties in very well to different cultivation tiers and the sub levels between them
>>96591845Nah, Exalted's got similarities to xianxia, but it doesn't really do cultivation-style advancement. The kind of Exalt you are is in many ways more important than how high your Essence is, past editions Elder Essence shenanigans aside differences between different Essence levels aren't really steep enough to match cultivation ranks in a typical cultivation story, and there's no focus on searching for means to advance your Essence, which would be important for a cultivation story. Also, while Exalted has heavy Oriental aesthetics, it draws at least as much on Western mythology and more than that on Tanith Lee and other Western fantasy. Now, it's entirely possible to make a cultivation story that's not full-on Chinese, but still, Exalted's inspirations only partially overlap with those of the cultivation genre.
>>96591932>It has more levels3.0 has infinite through Epic Level Handbook if desired and adjusting how many there are does little to the system's recognizable structure.>the classes are pretty barebonesThis doesn't help when you have to build up the class-tangential mechanics almost entirely from scratch, even with the Player's Option series, because Thief Skills and NWPs are vastly more tedious to fit Xianxia work into than 3.X skills and feats.>and in 2e they gain experience differently just like how cultivators gain experience differently based on the method they useWhich is quite trivial to add to a system otherwise lacking it, and the adjustments needed for this to support Xianxia become difficult to recognize for their AD&D sources.>and they have different exp amounts required to leveling up.Which is trivially integrated into XP gain modifiers with much less overhead for mixing than a TSR-edition baseline given what Prestige Classes do.>something that ties in very well to different cultivation tiers and the sub levels between themNot really, given that BECMI scaling relies heavily on Domain play that is almost exactly opposite how progression in Xianxia goes while merging Immortals into the standard ruleset is difficult, to say the least. It's a vaguely useful principle but there's fuck-all actual rules text you'll be keeping, as opposed to handily repurposing Prestige Classes for a bunch of the conditional progressions.Overall, the basic design approaches mean it's a lot harder to pick out an AD&D or BECMI baseline because you'll have to rewrite an incredibly wide variety of low-level rules to the point of having few left in a recognizable state, while the actually-consistent skeleton of the WotC editions mean those overhauls can be made to work on much more recognizable game math that has merely shifted in scales.
>>96591849Do you have any idea how retarded Cultivation power levels get? D&D cannot model cutting down armies with a single swing because even if you make the numbers go up and up, the scale and potency of every non-caster class does not go up. An epic level fighter who has ascended to become a lesser God is still only swinging his sword at one target at a time, a few times per round. Leveling up enough and raising skills high enough has a few "impossible" DC skill checks, like balancing on a cloud or whatever, but increasing class levels don't amount to anything quite on the level of a typical cultivation story protag's abilities.
>>96593343>Do you have any idea how retarded Cultivation power levels get? D&D cannot model cutting down armies with a single swing because even if you make the numbers go up and up, the scale and potency of every non-caster class does not go up.5e babby with no comprehension of what is meant by "a good starting point" nor what modeling the paragraphs of flowery exposition on that swing entails detected.>An epic level fighter who has ascended to become a lesser God is still only swinging his sword at one target at a time, a few times per round.In addition to the previous about modeling the paragraphs of flowery exposition, you appear to be unaware of the fact that 3.X does in fact have exactly the scenario you describe with a Cleave combo.>Leveling up enough and raising skills high enough has a few "impossible" DC skill checks, like balancing on a cloud or whatever, but increasing class levels don't amount to anything quite on the level of a typical cultivation story protag's abilities.Which is just a matter of setting new DCs and bonus sources appropriately. Again, STARTING POINT. I am saying that "D20 Xianxia" is a reasonable system because the structure can hold scaling in a way few others do because a LOT of TTRPG designers utterly fucking loath progression bluntly overwhelming the dice. To get a 99% disparity out of competing dicepools, you're going to need a whole fucking lot of dice, whereas in the d20 system it's just a +20 bonus difference to genuinely guarantee something impossible to another.
>>96593784Cultivation is not Xianxia, Midwit Junior
>>96593343just multiply numbers by 10 for every cultivation stage difference, easy
>>96595984Xianxia is the genre of the stories the extreme progression you mention use Cultivation for. If you mean to separate out Xuanhuan as "Cultivation stories", most of what distinguishes it from the "purer" Taoist alchemy that "Cultivation" is a translation of is external influences like litRPGs which again favors D&D for the utter landfill of compatible material to choose from.
>>96584540YesA combat system that's more then just "I do damage". I want kung fu, I want choices, I want different styles.
>>96581223Meme answer: Savage Worlds with a bolted-on XP system.
