WHAT IF THE RPG MONKS Were Built like WIZARDs?

When playing RPGs over the years I always felt like wizards and sorcerers get all the fun stuff: spectacular spells, exciting effects, combine them for even more fantastic feats. Their leveling up impacts not only themselves but the world around them through the magic they weave. Then we have fighters…and more specifically...monks, where leveling up is represented as 'just another punch’, or ‘yet one more kick', or, I can now use three different weapons! Rather than the two I had last level.

While building Fists & Fiends over the past few years, it has been critical to me that the combat be not only the heart of the game, but the most enjoyable and engrossing experience while playing. I want you to feel like your character jumps off the page to punch the fiend you are battling, to have agency in the world around you, to have an earned advantage over an untrained foe, and yet, still a vulnerability that makes each action you take carry an immense element of risk, making the reward of surviving and winning even sweeter.

Each character you create not only has a unique fighting style to choose from, and a distinct background, but their own unique hand-to-hand combat fighting techniques based on real martial arts moves. This gives each build an extraordinary outcome and independent feel while playing through missions and campaigns. As you level up you can spend XP to gain new fighting techniques, learn advanced combat talents, improve skills, or achieve a new level in your character’s style of fighting to tip the scales of battle.

Fists & Fiends is a martial arts RPG that engages the player in hand-to-hand combat as a true martial arts fighter. Weapons? You are A weapon. Choose from 6 unarmed combat arts each with its own distinct style and flavor. Enter the grit and glamor of the melee fight while you battle to survive in a chaos filled world that has collapsed entirely. Where superstition has become reality.

“Traversal will be perilous, but you must venture out to ensure everyone's survival. The time is now or you all will perish. Are you ready?”

Steven Wu is a freelance writer and illustrator based in New Jersey. When not crafting fantastical worlds with words and pictures, he loves getting lost in worlds created by others. His favorite food is whatever you can get while jet-lagged at 3 in the morning.

In addition to creating his own games, writing, and creating art, Steven brings a special passion to this project. He is an avid Chinese history buff, and his ancestor was assigned to pacify the wokou pirates in Zhoushan during the Qing dynasty in China; one of the many fiends players encounter in the game. You can find more of his artwork at:

BORN IN STRIFE

When the pandemic hit US shores in earnest in early 2020 I closed my gym and moved my teams online, coaching everyone on how to continue to train on their own through the lockdowns. At the time, I did not have a streaming location for classes, but I could do pre-form video. So I made courses and supplementary training missions for my students to follow week to week. We would also meet online once per week to discuss training, answer questions, and watch/analyze fight footage together.

Knowing full well martial arts was going to be a healthy outlet, and that physical exercise would keep us all stronger and happier during the lockdowns, I was doing everything I could to keep the team engaged and training. My major concern though was my kids team; adults are more self-guided. I could give out the training missions and the adults would step-to. The challenge with the kids was. keeping them thinking about their martial arts and motivating them to train. When video games, movies, toys, etc were vying for their attention. Parents were dealing with massive upheaval and trying to stay afloat, I could not add yet another task to their already chaos-filled schedules by requesting them to watch/force their kids train. That would last but a day and would help no one.

Having played Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, and other RPGs intermittently over the years, I cooked up an idea for an RPG/Martial Arts Training hybrid to motivate the kids. If we could not work together physically, we could at least game out strategy, tactics, and fights in varying situations to help them learn in a fun way. An off the shelf game would have been easy and great, but there were none that fit. Aside from complex dice that parents would have to hunt down, no roleplaying game that I ever played, read, researched handled combat in a way that accurately reflects the gritty adrenaline-inducing realism that fighting elicits in the participant. So I set about making my own game that would fit what we do and keep the combat fun.

I whipped up character sheets and sent them out to the parents so we could help the kids make characters. There were only three styles; Mantis, Monkey (Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu), and Supreme Ultimate Boxer (multiclass). A simple 3D6 system to start based on AGE, so the kids could find dice in any board game in the house. We would meet online one night per week and the fighting and fun commenced.

I would gamemaster and Coach Tom would assist the kids. They battled a 'fiend of the week'. The hook - if they did their training missions, watched training videos, read some of the training/history articles on our website, it would buff their characters stats for that week’s session, and they would earn XP so they could level up faster. The kids loved it!

As time went on some of the parents began eyeing the game over their children’s shoulders, and soon they asked to play too. Thus Fists & Fiends was born. I went from full-time martial arts coach, to also a part time GM/game designer. Since March 2020 I have continued to build out the mechanics, lore, world, mission types, campaign, etc, and introduce it to a wider audience at game conventions, local game stores, and other groups on request. Now it’s time to make it official and share it with all of you. Thank you for being part of this game which is very near and dear to my heart.

-Randy