Absolutely adore the Entanglements mechanic for creating the messiest background stories between all the PCs and plan on using it in my other games!

This game is very effective at evoking and providing tools for the melodramatic aspect of wuxia stories. The Inner Conflict move for whenever you feel pressure from your Entanglements or other relationships is chef's kiss. I've never seen a player not get excited when they choose for their character to run away, emotionally overwhelmed, from the scene as a result of that move

Hearts of Wulin is a great PBTA game for a genre that does not get much attention in the west. Wuxia dramas are something I have recently started watching, and for playing something like Handsome Siblings TV series or Juedai Shuangjiao the novel, this game gives the player and the GM all the tools to run the adventures of Xiaoyuer and The Ten Great Villains of the jianghu. Great game, I highly recommend.

This is easily one of my favourite games of the last few years, and every time I've played it has been an absolute blast. It does such a good job with both the action/combat and romantic/dramatic sides of play, separately and together - I can't think of another game I've played where every fight felt so personal, as well as dangerous and thrilling. Although I haven't run it (yet), I have enthusiastically stolen its ideas for other games, including the brilliant collection of scenario starters and specific mechanics, like Entanglements - a way to set up difficult romantic and other relationships at the start of play, one of the best approaches to setting up those connections that I've come across. I'm not very familiar with the genre and would not have guessed I'd enjoy a wuxia game this much, so I really recommend this to everyone - it's that good.

Hearts of Wulin is amazing. I personally rank it as the best PbtA RPG I have come across, having pipped out Masks for the top spot. It really showcases the power of PbtA design in a simple and elegant fashion.

My main 3 highlights are:

1. Instead of bonds/strings, each PC has 2 entanglements. These are effectively a bonds that are directed at a PC/NPC but another PC/NPC is in conflict with it i.e. PC1 loves another PC2 but PC3 does not not approve, or PC1 feels guilty about doing something secretly to hurt PC2 and PC3 knows about it. This is essentially the triangles that Masks talks about a lot in the GM section. Having them in PC creation basically generates PC focused story and drama from the get go.

2. Each PC and NPC has a scale. If you fight someone above or below your scale your lose or win respectively and only roll dice to determine the nature of the loss or victory. Stories as a default are about the PCs identifying the big bad and then needing to find a way to raise their scale so they can have a chance at beating them. This again provides for instant story and drama and can be used by the GM to define the duration of the story by determining what the PCs need to do to raise scale. For a one-off, PCs working together may be enough to raise the scale, but in a campaign it may be training or an item obtained by a quest.

3. The last is the Inner Conflict move. This is triggered when a PC is confronted by their entanglements. You get XP for rolling it. On a 10+ you keep it together, on a 7-9 you must flee or mark an element (damage), on a 6- the GM makes a move. This is the central move of the whole game and basically initiates the cascading effect of PbtA's "yes but" dice system and gets you to play to find out what happens early and easily. As a GM, you can literally drive the game forward by just having entanglements confront the PCs.

I also like how the PC has 5 elements for attributes and if you mark them (take damage) you can no longer use that element. This includes the element that the PC uses for combat. This also triggers a cycle of the PC needing to seek ways of recovery through certain other moves that helps generate drama and story smoothly.

Its also really good that the rulebook has two variants in it. The first is for courtly wuxia (think Game of Thrones) and the other for supernatural wuxia (Chinese Ghost Story). Each variant gets 1 or 2 new moves that are quite powerful. Courtly wuxia has social duels and supernatural wuxia has confronting the unnatural. Each playbook also has a new archetype option and a new move that adapts the concept to that variant.

For a 230 page journal sized rulebook, its gives the source material impressive coverage.