I know two things about Qin: its a historical but mythic China game and the book itself looks pretty damned good.  That's two out of three, the third being how does it play?  Can someone sum up the rules for me, please?

You have 5 attributes: Fire (social), Wood (brains), Metal (combat), Water (agility) and Earth (spiritual). IIRC, they go from 1 to 6, the human average being 2.

Secondary attributes are Breath of Life (Hit Points), Chi points (used to activate Taos or as bonus points in a skill check), Resistance (poisons, disease, etc) and Passive Defense (aka Armor Class). Armor substracts damage.

Skills are tied to each attribute. They rank between 1 and 5, IIRC.

You roll 2d10, substract the lower result from the higher, then add skill and attribute ratings. That's the result. You can burn Chi beforehand as a bonus, and certain Taos allow you to use Chi afterwards.

You roll a critical with doubles (regain Chi equal to the number). If you roll a double zero, though, it's a critical failure and you lose 5 Chi. If your Chi ever drops to zero, there are some serious consequences (like, you can't regain it simply by sleeping).

That's the core mechanic. It's very, very elegant, IMHO.

You have attributes based on the classical chinese elements; skills that are based on attributes. You roll 2d10, subracting the higher number from the lower (ie. 9 and 1 would be 9-1=8); you add that to the skill and the attribute to get your total that you measure against a difficulty number. If you roll doubles, its a critical success. If you roll double 0s, then its a critical failure.

You have special powers (taos) as well as magic, that you can use by spending Chi; they influence your rolls in different ways, as do special combat maneuvres you can learn with each weapon.


The system is simple and very elegant.

RPGPundit

EDIT to add: Fuck, what Jong said.

PS: Jong, when are you coming over with the suitcase??

interesting die roll mechanic.  how does it play out, as far as frequency of crits?

Obviously, crits happen far more often than fumbles, but fumbles are much more catastrophic.  In general the system works very well for creating "heroic" type characters.

RPGPundit