Sidebar: Notes for Veteran Roleplayers

Those of you who have played other role-playing games may have been expecting a few more rules. Their absence is no oversight. If you're going to make the jump to Wushu, take the following lessons to heart...

No Weapon Damage - A character's weapon of choice should have more to do with their personality than tactical advantage. That's why Wushu has no rules for weapon damage; getting kicked hard in the chest hurts just as much as getting stabbed through a lung. This frees players to select weapons that say something about their characters, without giving better armed enemies an unfair advantage. However, your players can still benefit from their weapons by using them as inspiration for Details: blood dripping off the tip of a spear, the angry muzzle flash of a Desert Eagle, the way your rope dart whistles as you whip it around your head, you get the idea.
No Initiative - Just to be explicit, there are no rules for initiative in Wushu. Who acts before who is irrelevant most of the time (all of the time, when it comes to Mook fights) and, on the occasion when someone does want to cut in, they can just ask! As long as it's for a cool stunt, nobody will mind.
Dice Don't Rule - Wushu gives the players complete control over the action... by taking control away from the dice! You're probably used to phrasing your actions in terms of "I try to hit him" and then waiting for the dice to tell you whether or not you succeed. Well, stop trying to hit him, and hit him! Don't get hung up on the dice; they're just there to set the pace and introduce an element of risk. The goal isn't to "win" against the GM, it's to entertain each other with a few hours of creative, improvisational violence.
See also - Things you don't need.

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