When I was a child, I wanted to be like the boy from Karate Kid. I wanted to kick ass with my cool Karate moves. I trained and practiced the Crane Kick. It must have looked funny. Eventually, I learned a bit of Taekwondo at the age of 16. But I was never good at it. Still, watching Asian Martial Arts films inspired me. For two years I played in an Oriental Adventures campaign. That’s the universe of Legends of the Five Rings adapted to D&D 3. The campaign fizzled out. My current group isn’t interested in the genre of Wuxia (martial arts in ancient China). We play D&D 5. I played Feng Shui 2 online once. (Impressions here.) It was fun. But the PDF costs almost 20 bucks. And the hardcover costs more than 40 €. Don’t get me wrong, the game is surely worth it. But for something that won’t see a lot of play, it’s too expensive. Enter Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate.

Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate is a wuxia RPG set in a fantasy world of feuding sects and martial heroes fighting in the shadow of a corrupt and powerful empire. The game comes with over 180 Kung Fu Techniques and complete rules for running a wuxia campaign. ¹

game clocks in at 492 pages. Interior art is black/white and professional. The layout somehow looks old school. There are tons and tons of skills (point-buy-system): Kung Fu styles, Qi powers, Pressure Point techniques etc. Wandering Heroes has no classes. Races are optional. But players are part of a sect. At its base, this RPG is pool-based. You roll a number of d10s equal to your skill rank, take the highest result and compare it to a target number. It’s not a rules-lite game. Yet it seems not to be too complicated. The base mechanic is simple. A lot of research has gone into the game. It feels authentic (if you can say that of a fantasy game). The background information is extensive. It’s certainly worth many months of gaming. This article is not review. I only skimmed the game. I don’t know if it plays well or not. But. It is Pay-What-You-Want. That means you can get the game for free. I’ve been following The Bedrock Blog sporadically. I was looking forward to the release. I’m still perplexed that they chose to release it for (essentially) free. But who doesn’t want to have an interesting RPG for zero (or more if you choose to)? I don’t know if I will have the chance to play this with my friends. But I certainly hope so. Chances are at least better than becoming a master of the Crane Kick. Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate: pay what you want at DrivethruRPG or RPGNow (affiliate links).  

Links: The Bedrock Blog Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate: DriveThruRPG or RPGNow (affiliate links)