An Ultraviolent Tropical Gothic Tabletop Role-Playing Game.
You play as Wanderers in a Dead World reanimated by the necromancer named Neoliberalism and the God named Capital.
Now currently at 1.3!
As Wanderers, you will travel far and wide, mastering technicks, magicks, and experiencing Reality to Cultivate your Heart. Determination is your privilege and your curse. But you will need to fight, lie, steal, cheat, kill, cooperate, save, love, and be human if you want to survive a world that is trying to convert The People into nothing but Labor.
Wanderers are age-old literary characters. The traveling xia enacting justice to those without it. The cowboy coming into town having to face injustice or gang war. The ronin dealing with a town’s local politics and shifting allegiance. The bandit liberating a sugar plantation from a haciendero’s grip. The shaman offering solace and revolution for workers in a cotton farm. The firebrand cadre organizing farmers in the countryside to march against the forces of Empire and Nationalism.
It is Ultraviolent because it deals with the wielding of violence to break free from cycles of violence. The World reels from Post-Calamity and burgeoning, unstoppable capitalism. Those exploited are even more exploited, those that benefit benefit even more. It understands that Violence is the only recourse against those committing Violence, but it is a pure, unalloyed Violence that wishes only to break free from oppression that breaks cycles, instead of Violence wishing to gain the power to oppress.
It is Tropical Gothic because 10kSwords’ World centers cultures, aesthetics, ideas, and ideologies that resonate or look like the ones in our third world, in the neocolonies and current colonies and semicolonies and semifeudal states of our world. In the socialist states of our world. Tropical Gothic is an old literary concept that blends gothic horror with tropical realities, dealing with colonial violence, marginalized indigenous histories, imperial faiths clashing with local cults, monstrous legacy of colonies and liberalism.
It is Xianxia because this world is a Dark Fantasy rooted in Buddhism, Daoism, and Folk Religion. Wanderers must cultivate themselves and, more importantly, their communities to create a force powerful enough to topple heaven—in this case, the neoliberal world order. Collect violence, esoterica, and lore to benefit not just themselves but the People. To cultivate for one’s own power is not Ultraviolence.
Put Them Together and what do you see? I hope you know when to look away. I hope you know when to look closer.
FIRST RELEASE OF 10KSWORDS! Please read through the text with the idea in mind that I'm writing this in between work hours and I can't afford an editor (they're way above what our Patreon makes right now) but I did my best to comb through it! Try running a game or two!
I'm still drafting up that Balancing Design post but just keep in mind that balance for now is not set in stone and also ultimately balance takes a backseat to fiction.
Also, no Bookmarks yet, I'll try to get it in the typo fixed PDF before we release this bad boy for free everywhere in the internet. Feel free to share it with your friends!
I can't stress enough that I couldn't have done any of this without your support. I quite literally would not be able to feed myself without you guys' material support. It means a lot—I'd decided that I was going to quite profesionally writing soon if it didn't pan out financially for me (living in the Third World, it was not looking good for me and my family!) but this is giving me hope!
I hope you enjoy.
Until all the hells are empty. Until all beings are free. Resolve the Contradiction, Wanderers.
A Few Day 1 Edits
Edited a few things mostly because they were holdovers from the immediate previous version.
Removed Strengthened and Weakened (we have Adjustments!)
Made some technicks and magicks a bit clearer, like Great Work Elixir.
Breath on p. 105 should now say 6 + Awakening Stage.
Some typo catches here and there.
Thanks all and sorry for the inconvenience!
Some 1.2 Edits!
Sorry for the constant editing, we're trying to lessen typos and vagaries as much as possible before going loud and releasing on public!
Daggers now don't have the Penetrating tag. Empty Hand deals 2dmg by default.
Stonespike and Crag can now Knockback.
Replaced most mentions of Burning Breath into Spending Breath.
Diacritic now heals an Injury.
Whole slew of typo fixes and corrections.
Diacritic now explicitly heals 1 Injury, changed Cost and Needs appropriately.
Changed Shields into (+1 Armor when in one hand).
Changed all mentions of Generic and Specific into "General" and "Specialized" Lore.
Emotion now refers to the bonuses as an Adjustment rather than to the "dice"
The Written Law must specify that the Dialectics Check is for PCs. Anyone who reads it you can roll a Dialectics Check against to influence
Fixed how Law of the Masses works.
Fixed the Twinlord Corpse Demon Description
Removed a repeating Health line.
1.3 Edits (And also the Release Candidate)
Put some more rules clarifications.
Fixed Typos and Errors.
Fixed typos in the World section (Yajism is now no longer just Jindo again)
Did some more balancing (Black Mace Metom edits, and so on)
Did some balancing for Shrine of the Black Bodhisattva
Added the new Weapon Property: Blitz (Can use Lightness for Attack Checks)
All daggers have inherent Blitz.
Added that Heavenly Avian Cantata commits violence as an Instrument (Presence or Masquerade)
Resonating Aria Blast costs 1 Breath now
Added a money system based on Marxian Economics
The map for Shrine of the Black Bodhisattva is on here now!
Character Record: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ohxTfHHK6okdZiLYT1ER3VZ0dKHyzmFFdJWM1m_l0yM/edit?usp=sharing