Hearts of Wulin

3-6 players, 20 July 2022

A game of Wuxia Melodrama, Powered by the Apocalypse.

Emulating classic wuxia like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you will fight incredible battles while navigating love you can’t quite express and loyalty to your faction.

Set shortly before the Three Kingdoms era, the tyrant Dong Zhou has the heir to the empire hostage and different factions are all conspiring to take him down. Can you work together with your rivals to strike a blow against him? 

Choose one of six playbooks such as the wise Aware, the bold Bravo, the stalwart Loyal, the mysterious Outsider, the naive Student and the weird Unorthodox. Channel the elements to solve your inner turmoil, fight your enemies and possibly even be able to declare your intentions to the one you love. Be careful though, as your elements may go out of control and turn you towards recklessness.

In the session we’ll be making characters and defining details about the setting in the first hour, then playing through a whole story together.

You don’t need to know anything about Powered by the Apocalypse games or even RPGs at all to join in. If you’ve played games like Masks and Monsterhearts, this will totally be your jam! The system uses a couple of six-sided dice per player. I’ll be bringing enough for everyone, but if you’ve got a favourite set of dice, feel free to bring them along!

This is a light action drama, but there are elements of war, tension and romance, so we will be using safety tools such as the X card.

I’m Charlie Etheridge-Nunn, indie RPG and board game reviewer for Who Dares Rolls. I’m a massive fan of the Three Kingdoms era, mainly thanks to my love of the Dynasty Warriors games, so I will be quoting them and will not apologise.