Café de Nuit

Hello,

I was looking for some rpgs the other day, and I came across this little game by cubicle 7 entertianment that seems cool. Normally asian themed games are not my thing, but from what I seen in the free demo, it looks pretty neat and all. However, i am a sucker for historical games. It is set in the time of the waring states period of china, right before the first emperor of china Qin Shi-haungdi.

I wonder if anyone has played this game or taken a look at it?

-herkles

It's by Circle 7, right? AKA 7eme cirque in the original French.

Edit: the English name is "Cubicle 7", and the French name is "7eme Cercle".

I own it and I've played one single game session of it. We never got much into the spellcasting system, but it looked perfectly serviceable (if significantly lower-powered than pure DnD). The game mechanics are based on a pair of d10s, imitating the yin-yang dualistic philosophy.

One thing that's more mechanically purist in this game is that combat does not feature dice rolls for damage. Each strike will do a preordained amount of injury to the recipient based on weapon type, and adjusted downward for armor. This brings the game out of the realm of variable-damage RPGs and more in line with consistent-damage systems like you'd find in most computer action games (e.g. a sword slash will always do a certain amount of hp damage to enemies).

The setting detail is beautifully done - it tackles a very tumultuous piece of Chinese history (the period before the establishment of the first emperor Qin) and it does so with good research and very vibrant descriptions. The spelling of the Chinese names is inconsistent: sometimes they use Wade-Giles (Taiwan system) and other times they go with Pinyin (mainland system), but by and large the scholarship behind this book is excellent.



For a more Ravenloftish take, Qin himself struck me as being a fairly compelling character for a tragic work, in fact. This is not how he's usually viewed. Much of history viewed him as a cruel tyrant, and only recently in the Communist era has his reputation been rehabilitated as an able administrator and establisher of important national standards. Both these viewpoints strike me as missing a completely separate dimension of his character: somebody who dedicated his life to fulfilling an ancestral edict to unite the nation, only to see his friends and family betray and abandon him, and whose entire edifice crumbled a mere three years after his death.

that is an intresting take on Qin, the emperor that is. But I can see how he is tragic. It is a shame though that this era was not used for a ravenloft domain; the only chinese one I know of is I'cath but it does not seem to be a good place.

anyways, I do like lower powed games then dnd but that might just be me heh. I take it that combat might go faster in this game compared to DnD? the length of combat is always something that I find takes a long time to actualy do in most other rpgs.

herkles wrote:that is an intresting take on Qin, the emperor that is. But I can see how he is tragic. It is a shame though that this era was not used for a ravenloft domain

Actually, we did make some progress on an Asian style continent for Ravenloft, and one of the darklords was in a necropolis like Qin Shihuang's tomb. If you do a forum search for "Asianloft" there should be some good results. This thread is a good start.

As for making the Qin era a domain, that could work quite well. At the time the nation was in upheaval, and treachery and betrayal lurked in every court of the seven kingdoms. Plenty of good fodder for a horror/fear/terror campaign.

There are more expansions for Qin: The Warring States.

RPGNow has PDF sales of these expansions.

Also, the French website has some detailed resources on it, including a beautiful art gallery page.

ooh neat. I am waiting on the art of war to be published in english, as I do not know french but neat nonetheless thanks for the links humanBeing.