Public Release of Peerless

Its been a long road for me actually releasing Peerless publically.

Roughly six years ago I first started drafting a basic game system, to create a game where my players would feel truly integrated into the world, like they understood the culture and the rules that governed society. I had just come off a fairly unsuccessful light science-fiction game. My player's journeyed a vast array of worlds and different cultures, but somehow they felt consistently afraid. I realized, when you are not powerful in the world, you need to understand the rules. How to convince someone, how to be convinced, what is the socially appropriate amount to push an issue? I sought to make something I could work with in that regard.

The initial game I ran lasted a couple years and was quite successful. It turns out many players viscerally 'get' social position through combat. The lethality of harm as they pushed themselves created a solid soft wall to push up against when serious, and with very obvious feedback, and experience when they were green and interacting with their powerful seniors informed them what it felt like for when they in turn became powerful.

The most important thing came from a common trope in Wuxia fiction, but far from a law in it. It was using a standard of combat without animosity. People have enough reasons to disagree, and the world is hard enough without bringing in an actual desire to harm others into your problems. In many games, in many worlds, it is hard to back down because people you disagree with actively mean you harm. The world is so much brighter, so much better to explore the nuances of opinion, when that is not the standard anymore. It lets Players fight each-other with no ill feelings, and lets you get in over your head.

Using these principles, I hope I was able to make a game that works as well for others. The test games with other Guides have been promising, and many potential Guides have successfully gone through the processes to make new and interesting martial arts, both for real and theoretical players. I hope more will join them after this release.

Moving forward, I am going to make a few setting guides, for those more interested in a clear default setting than developing their own. Likewise, I have a few hundred pages of Martial Arts for the game that I hope to arrange as a supplement for those less interested in developing their own, or just in need of an NPC. To me though, those things come in a distant second from creates characters, martial arts, and Sects mirroring the lives and needs of your campaigns players. Any documents I add from here will never really be able to replace that ability to create something know the facts, I simply hope that this system will arm you well for that act of creation.