We’re going to play it simple today and create a character for Wushu Open. The premise of Wushu is that great action RPG scenes thrive on vivid detail, and players should be encouraged to provide those details. So the more details you incorporate into your description of what you’re doing, the more dice you’ll get to roll for successes. Well, within reason—it’s suggested that GMs put a cap on the number of dice you can generate this way, and the GM or the table can also veto any detail that goes too far off the tone they’ve established for the game. (You’re gonna want a consensus on tone before you start playing, of course.)
My copy of the game is an RTF text file with no illustrations, so I've posted the cover of the 2015 Black Belt edition instead. (The rules, however, are all from the 2003 free version.)
Now, characters in Wushu are defined by Traits, which are short phrases that describe something important about the character. These Traits are rated at values from 1 to 5, with 2 being the default. The value of the trait is the number you need to roll (or lower) to generate a success on a d6. You’ll get 5-8 points to purchase above-average Traits, and then you’ll need to create a value-1 trait as a Weakness.
Since we’re working from the bare-bones generic version of Wushu, we’ll also need to sketch out a setting or at least a genre for our character to act in. Let’s go with something along the lines of a classic Jackie Chan film: a modern setting with lots of martial-arts action and acrobatics, and a tone that’s light enough for elaborate stunts but doesn’t stray all the way into Kung Fu Hustle slapstick. We’ll give our character 5 points for Traits, pretty close to the ground but still highly competent.
OK, so this is wide open. What do we do? I’m not gonna make this character a cop or a gangster, but some kind of solid citizen (with some high-quality kung-fu, of course) who gets caught up in a crime story. So let’s build him with a career Trait, a personal quality Trait, a martial-arts Trait, and then a Weakness.
Food cart people show up in a lot of action films, but usually as extras whose livelihoods get upended in chase scenes. We need a hero who can make a sandwich. Cooking is a cool skill, and street vendors get to know a lot of people and are also in the line of fire for all kinds of chase-scene shenanigans. So let’s call that Trait Street Sandwich Artist and rate it at 3.
As a personal Trait I’m going to make him Likable, which will help him sell sandwiches and get help fixing his cart each time it gets wrecked in a fight or chase scene. We’ll rate that at 4.
Then his fighting style. Lost Monkey style kung fu combines acrobatics with lots of feints, perfect for the nice guy who’s just defending himself. Student of Lost Monkey Style will also be rated at 4.
Finally, we need to give him a Weakness. Soft-Hearted is a natural choice; he’s a nice guy and likes helping people, so it’s hard for him to resist appeals to sentiment.
And that’s it, except for a name. We’ll give him a Hong Kong-style name with an English and a Chinese personal name bracketing a Hong Kong Chinese surname: Martin Yim Kwok-kwan.
And that brings us to the stat block:
Martin Yim Kwok-kwan, Sandwich Cart Hero
Street Sandwich Artist 3
Likable 4
Student of Lost Monkey Style 4
Soft-Hearted 1
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