What Is a Jianghu Adventure?
The Jianghu is the wandering world that exists outside civilized rule: the bandit camps in bamboo groves, the abandoned forts above mountain passes, the haunted ruins where an old cultivator’s cell is slowly being reclaimed by tree roots. Romance of Five Kingdoms is set in the Àolǎng Empire, and the empire has roads and garrisons and telegraph wires. But the Jianghu sits between all of that, and it remembers older ways.
A Jianghu adventure is a short, self-contained episode set in that world. The game generates a premise, populates it with characters tied to real people and real locations near you, and then runs an automated GM to guide it through to a resolution. Adventures range across six plot types: rescue, investigation, political intrigue, sect dispute, treasure hunt, and horror. No two are identical.
You are a cultivator of royal blood. The problems of rural villages and wilderness ruins are, technically, below you. But the empire’s problems always start somewhere small.
Prerequisites
You need to be in the right place and the right state for an adventure to begin.
Location. Adventures can start anywhere in the empire except the five kingdom capitals and Zhūwān. If you are inside Fēiyín Dū, Táiyōu, Tiějué, Jīnhuì, Cángjìng, or Zhūwān, no adventure will trigger. This is also the case if one of these cities is currently your closest town/city. You need to move further away before one will start.
Energy. You need at least 250 energy. Adventures consume up to 1,000 energy per participant; you spend whatever you have up to that cap at the moment the adventure claims you. You can lower that ceiling for yourself with energy cap <amount> (see Costs below).
Not disguised. If your disguise is active, the adventure scanner passes you by entirely. The scanner is looking for idle nobility; a figure in a hooded robe does not qualify. See the section below on disguises.
Not on cooldown. After each adventure concludes, you cannot start another for 30 minutes. The cooldown refreshes from the moment the adventure ends, not the moment it begins.
Not already in a session. If you are currently inside an active adventure session from a prior adventure, you will not trigger a new one.
Idle for two minutes. The scanner runs every 60 seconds and looks for players who have not moved, attacked, or performed any room-changing action in the last two minutes. Stop somewhere outside a capital city, keep your disguise down, and let the world come to you.
You do not type a command to launch an adventure. The scanner finds you automatically when all conditions are met. You will receive a notification when the adventure begins preparation, and another when it is ready for you.
Party play. If you are in a travel party, the scanner treats the party leader as the trigger. When the leader qualifies, all accepted party members who are in the same room as the leader are pulled in as participants. Each participant pays their own energy cost; rewards are calculated individually based on what each person spent.
The Disguise System
Before going out into the Jianghu, you may not want everyone to know who you are. A royal cultivator wandering into a bandit camp under their own name is an event. A masked stranger is just a stranger.
To put on a disguise:
disguise
disguise a masked swordswoman
disguise the one with dust on her coat
Without an argument, disguise uses the default alias: “a figure in a hooded robe.” With an argument of up to 40 characters, you set your own alias. Other players see that alias in room descriptions and emotes instead of your name.
To remove a disguise:
undisguise
Recognition is permanent and one-way. If another player examines you while you are disguised, they learn who you really are. That reveal stays on record permanently: even if you clear the disguise and set a different alias later, that player will still see your real name. The reveal is keyed to your identity, not to the alias text.
Two rules govern adventures and disguise:
First, disguise blocks adventure triggers. As long as your disguise is active, the idle scanner skips you. If you want an adventure to find you, you must be undisguised.
Second, toggling disguise resets your idle clock. Setting or clearing a disguise counts the same as movement. If you have been idle for ninety seconds and then type undisguise, your two-minute window restarts from zero. This is intentional: you cannot use a disguise toggle to satisfy the idle requirement without actually being idle.
Costs
Energy. At the moment the adventure claims you, the engine spends up to 1,000 energy per participant. If you have 600 energy, you spend 600. If you have 1,200, you spend 1,000. The remainder stays with you. If the adventure fails during the generation phase before it can begin, your energy is refunded in full.
Setting your own stake. energy shows what you have and what an adventure may take. energy cap 500 lowers the ceiling to 500, so an adventure never claims more than that however much you are carrying; energy cap off restores the full 1,000. The setting sticks until you change it, and the webclient exposes the same dial under Settings → Gameplay → Adventure Energy Stake. The lowest stake you can set is 100.
Remember that what you stake is your reward budget. Capping at 500 does not buy the same adventure for half price; it buys roughly half the haul. Use it when you would rather bank energy for offline work, a stealth mission, or hosting an event than sink it all into the next story that finds you.
Time. Adventures are bounded by an inactivity timeout of one hour. If the session sits idle for an hour without any player action (and nobody is typing), it is abandoned. There is no upper bound on how long an active adventure can run, but most conclude well within an hour.
Cooldown. After the adventure resolves, whether by success, partial success, or failure, every participant enters a 30-minute cooldown before they can trigger or join another.
How an Adventure Plays Out
When the scanner finds you, the game enters a preparation phase. This takes a minute or two. The engine selects a plot template appropriate to your kingdom and region, brainstorms a scenario, grounds it in the real NPCs and locations near you, and produces a structured script for the automated GM to run from. You will see a brief notification when the adventure is ready.
Your basic tools in the session:
- Emote freely. Describe what your character does. The AutoGM reads your emotes and responds to them narratively. Longer, more detailed emotes give the AutoGM more to work with.
- Use standard game commands: move, fight, examine, speak. Combat resolves through the normal combat system. The AutoGM is watching and will react to the outcome.
- Use
assertto spend destiny and shape the story directly (see the Destiny section below).
The beat structure. An adventure is organized as a sequence of beats: typically an inciting event, two or three middle stages, and a climax. Each beat has a location, a challenge or situation, and conditions for advancing. The AutoGM moves the story from beat to beat as you make progress. Some adventures have a branching structure where your choices at an early beat determine which version of later beats you face.
Advancement. The AutoGM does not require a specific action to tick from one beat to the next. It monitors your activity against the beat’s advancement conditions and narrates the transition when those conditions are satisfied. A rescue adventure might advance from “infiltrate the camp” to “find the prisoner” when you have navigated past the guards; an investigation might advance when you have asked the right questions or found the hidden document.
Outcomes. When the climax resolves, the AutoGM classifies the result: success (full), success (partial), or failure. Full and partial success both grant 100% of your energy-based reward budget. Failure grants 50%. The outcome also determines the reward focus: a story that ends with a sect negotiation leans toward ingredient rewards; one that ends recovering a cache leans toward treasure.
The Fate System
The Fate system is the AutoGM’s tool for keeping the story interesting. As the adventure runs, the AutoGM accumulates fate points when the session leans too far toward smooth, effortless play.
How fate accrues. Fate builds when players succeed easily and consistently: dominant skill checks, flawless combat victories, showing clear command of the situation. The GM also reads tone: open boasting and hubris feed the pool, and the complications it later buys may echo your own words back at you. The Fate pool is capped at 12. At zero, the world is calm. As it rises it passes through: stirring, gathering, threatening, and at 12, crisis.
What you will see. When fate climbs above calm, the look command will show a subtle atmospheric line:
- Stirring: “The threads of fate begin to tighten…”
- Gathering: “A weight settles over the air, unseen but undeniable…”
- Threatening: “The world holds its breath…”
You can also see the exact fate total: a dark crimson hexagon icon on your status bar, next to your HP and Qi, shows the current number throughout the adventure. The atmospheric line from look is a narrative cue on top of that number, not a substitute for it.
How the AutoGM spends fate. The AutoGM uses fate points to introduce mechanically grounded complications. Minor interventions cost 1 to 2 points and include things like the next skill check becoming harder, an NPC adding a demand before continuing to help, or a previously available path closing off. More significant interventions cost 3 to 4 points and can impose stat penalties on one character for the rest of a stage, undo a completed objective, or block HP recovery until a condition is met. At tier 3, for 5 to 6 points, the AutoGM can introduce a powerful hostile NPC connected to your character’s history, have an allied NPC betray the party, or add an entirely new stage to the adventure.
During combat, the AutoGM can also spend fate between rounds to trigger special effects: double damage on the next enemy hit, reinforcement spawns at varying tiers of power, or improved enemy defenses for the remainder of the fight.
The Destiny System
Where Fate is the GM’s currency, Destiny is yours. Destiny points are individual, not shared by the party. Each participant has their own pool, capped at 8.
How destiny accrues. The AutoGM grants destiny when you act heroically, make a genuine sacrifice for the party or for an NPC, or play in alignment with your character’s established values and history. Engaging with setbacks also builds it: the system tracks when you have suffered multiple reversals in a row and scales your destiny award upward when you recover from them. A longer, more detailed emote at a moment of crisis carries more weight than a single terse line.
As your destiny rises, the look command will show a quiet reflection of it:
- Flickering (1-2): “A faint warmth stirs within you…”
- Steady (3-4): “The spirits watch you with quiet approval…”
- Bright (5-6): “Heaven’s gaze rests gently upon you…”
- Radiant (7-8): “You feel the full weight of heaven’s mandate…”
Spending destiny: the assert command. When you have destiny, you can spend it to make narrative assertions about the world around you. This is how you as a player reach into the story and change it.
The command syntax is:
assert <type> [@target] <description>
Types and their costs:
| Type | Alias | Cost | What you can do |
|---|---|---|---|
environment |
env |
1 | Change the scene or surroundings |
npc |
2 | Introduce a new NPC into the story | |
connection |
conn |
2 | Assert a relationship between characters |
complication |
comp |
0 (self) / 1 (targeted) | Add a complication to yourself or another player |
gift |
1 | Give an advantage to another participant | |
revelation |
reveal |
3 | Reveal a hidden secret or truth |
converge |
convergence |
2 | Propose a story convergence (requires party agreement) |
Examples:
assert env A thick fog rolls in off the river
assert npc A courier arrives with urgent news from the capital
assert connection @Meilin You recognize her as the one who pulled you from the fire three years ago
assert comp You stumble on the loose stone and drop your lantern
assert comp @Zhao A wanted poster on the wall bears Zhao's face
assert gift @Meilin You spot a hidden exit the guards have forgotten
assert reveal The merchant has been feeding information to the bandits since spring
assert converge All of this leads back to the same night at the old granary
Tonal validation. Before your assertion takes effect, the AutoGM checks whether it fits the tone and structure of the current adventure. Most well-considered assertions are accepted. If the AutoGM finds an issue with the tone or setting fit, it may offer an adaptation: a revised version of your assertion that preserves your intent. You then respond:
assert accept
assert reject
Accepting wires in the adapted version. Rejecting withdraws the assertion and you keep your destiny points.
Self-complications skip tonal validation. You can voluntarily make things harder for yourself without review.
Per-session limits. You can only introduce one new NPC per scene. You can only apply one complication per target per scene. A revelation can only be made once per player per session. A convergence can only happen once per session, and it requires the rest of the party to join in before it takes effect.
Adventure Locations
Every town outside the five capitals has several named wilderness sites within roughly 15 kilometers: old forts, abandoned mines, cave networks, ruined estates, sacred valleys, fords with bad histories, and places the locals prefer not to talk about after dark. These are the places adventures unfold.
The story generated for you will be grounded in whichever of these sites is appropriate to the premise. The AutoGM will bring you there through the narrative, or start you at the scene if you are already nearby. You do not need to travel manually; the adventure’s inciting beat places you in the action.
After the adventure concludes, you are returned to the room where the adventure found you.