SURVIVAL. Horror. Martial Arts.
My Sincerest Thanks Go Out To OUr Backers. You Made This A Reality.
BUILT BY A MARTIAL ARTS CHAMPION.
In addition to being an avid gamer since childhood, Randy Brown is a veteran martial artist and instructor who brings two and a half decades of real world fighting experience to the TTRPG world to help build one of the most engaging, gritty, and realistic martial arts combat games in existence. His goal is to ensure the combat is exciting, keeps you on the edge of your seat, is fast paced and fun!
You can read more about Randy’s martial arts experience and background here:
The ORIGIN STORY
FIGHTING ART.
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:
Why I created Fists & Fiends
Fists & Fiends didn’t start as a game—it started as a lifeline. During lockdown, my students were isolated, restless, cut off from training. So I created missions, characters, and fiends to fight. Each punch they learned in real life made their characters deadlier in-game. The line blurred between training and storytelling, martial discipline and fantasy survival.
Parents started watching. Then, they started playing. The game grew teeth, claws, and a story bigger than I could ever imagine. Four years of playtests, conventions, and hard lessons later, this isn’t just a rulebook. It’s a survival manual for a drowned empire full of fiends. Check out the video to learn the origin story behind Fists & Fiends.
Fists & Fiends is an Indie Martial Arts Survival Horror RPG set in 1800's Northern China, a hotbed of disaster, violence, and destruction that led to the birth of several unique and deadly martial arts fighting styles.
Designed and built by Randy Brown, Head Coach and 26+ year martial arts veteran, starting in early 2020 in the beginning of the pandemic as a tool to inspire, motivate, and encourage his kids team to continue their boxing and jiu-jitsu training through isolation. What started as a quick and simple TTRPG, became a much bigger and more elaborate game as time went on. More on that below. For now, let's get back to what the game is about.
