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Players take the roles
of archetypical action heroes: maverick cops with chips on their
shoulders, martial artists of superb skill, rogue hit men, retired
Special Forces operatives, charismatic spies, stealthy ninja, etc.
If it’s a macho profession that makes for a good movie protagonist,
you’ll find it here. Besides the normal classes you’d expect from an
action rpg, there are also such intriguing archetypes as cyborg,
monster, sorcerer, ghost, and the ubiquitous scrappy kid.
The background provided for the game details
the effects of feng shui on the world. For those of you who aren’t
familiar with the concept, the Chinese have believed for thousands
of years that the world is bathed in ch’i, a mystical energy that
pervades the universe. “Feng shui” is the art of geomancy, or the
study of how to arrange the environment to take best advantage of
this energy. Controlling the chi of an area makes the owner
healthier, luckier, wealthier, and more influential. Therefore, the
more feng shui sites a person controls, the more chi they possess,
and the more power they draw to themselves.
Eventually, if you gain enough chi you can
begin to actually affect the reality of the world around you; people
will respond positively towards your every suggestion, you succeed
in any endeavor you undertake, your physical and mental skills can
soon become super-human. If any one person or group managed to
control a large enough amount of chi, they could literally change
the reality of the world, creating whatever version of the universe
pleases them.
Already kewl, yes? But, wait, there’s more!
Add to this premise the idea of time-travel,
and NOW yer cookin’. You see, in the game background, there are
magical portals that act as gates between four different junctures
of history: 69 AD, the 1850’s, the 1990's, and the
future of 2056 AD. Characters may travel to these years by finding a
portal and passing through a quasi-dimensional land called the
Netherworld until they find another portal leading into a different
time period. Changing something in the past may have a
disconcerting effect on events in the future time junctures. (See
the movie Back to the Future for ideas on how this all
works...)
You can see the tantalizing opportunities for
mayhem, can’t you? I knew you could.
Players thrust into this world are the heroes
involved in defeating the forces of evil that would harness the
planet’s chi for themselves. And when we say 'forces' plural, we
mean it. There are so many groups vying for domination of the
world’s feng shui sites that it’s often hard to keep them all
straight. (Especially since at any given time, these disparate
groups may either be peacefully cooperating, or plotting to utterly
destroy each other. Depends on their mood that day...) There are
eunuch sorcerers from ancient China, a fascist militant world
government of the future and their archenemies the pyromaniac
intelligent apes. Then there are transformed animals who look like
humans and control the modern world as you know it, as well as
shaolin monks from the 19th century who despise both magic and
technology. And that's just to name a few of the major factions.
PCs are
expected to go up against baddies from all over the timeline, laying
out the whoop-ass in heavy doses. The emphasis in this rpg is on the
action. The fights should be frequent and cinematic, with flying
bullets, exploding property, car chases, kung fu showdowns, daring
escapes, and witty one-liners the order of the day.
Character Generation
PCs are created from archetype templates. Each
template, such as Old Master, Karate Cop, or Techie is based on a
stereotypical action movie character. Just decide what type of
action hero you wanna be, and there’s a template for you. Each
archetype has four attributes: Body, Chi, Mind, and
Reflexes. Beneath each of these attributes are 3 or 4
sub-attributes. For example, under Body are your Move, Strength,
Constitution, and Toughness stats.
Stats usually start at around “5”, a pretty
average human score, in most attributes (except Chi, which is
usually "0" unless your archetype is spiritually or magically
attuned to the world’s mystical energy). Stats may be increased at
character creation, and later in the game by spending XP.
Stats that start creeping up beyond 10 are well
above the average citizen’s ability, and stats that sneak up into
the teens are phenomenal. It’s these high stats that make the PCs in
Feng Shui heroic. PCs should be able to pull off some
spectacular tricks in this game, like their favorite movie idols do,
using their above-average skills and abilities.
In order to pull off some of these tricks
during a session, each PC has a convenient selection of Skills.
These include martial arts, weapons training, medical training,
technical proficiency, forensics, driving, investigative training,
even deceit or seduction. The game is fairly fluid on the use of
these skills, with their applications being liberally applied to
encompass any aspect of the game. For example, Intrusion can be used
to sneak around, to disconnect or identify security devices,
rappelling, scouting an area, picking locks, picking pockets,
cracking safes, etc. Any explanation as to why Intrusion could be
used in your current situation is probably going to be OK’d by the
GM.
Finally, each character will have a few choice
Schticks. Schticks are the defining talents of a PC, the
common movie gimmicks that all good heroes possess. There are two
kinds of schticks in Feng Shui; Gun Schticks and Fu Schticks.
Gun schticks are such gun slinging staples as
quick drawing, lighting-fast reloading, sharpshooting, and firing
two guns at once. Fu schticks are martial arts maneuvers that help
your PC kick even more ass, such as attacking multiple targets at
once, stunning opponents with a touch, or avoiding attacks against
you with superhuman evasive speed. Your schtick types and number are
determined by your archetype during PC creation, but more schticks
may be chosen by spending XP later on.
EDIT: With the
addition of the Jammer sourcebook Gorilla Warfare,
Hardware Schticks have been added to the mix since this review
was originally written. These new schticks represent bionic or
robotic limbs and gadgets.
Mechanics
Any action a character takes is based on one of
their attributes or skills. For characters with high ability scores
and the appropriate schticks, running straight up a building wall
vertically, hanging by your fingertips from a jet plane wing, or
dodging effortlessly through a hail of machine gun bullets is no
problem.
Feng Shui uses a simple system to
resolve any situation calling for dice rolls. A Difficulty
number is assigned to any task, from punching an opponent to fixing
a car to hacking a computer. Simple tasks may rate a Difficulty of 3
(such as bandaging a scuffed knee) while seriously hard tasks may
rate an almost impossible Difficulty of 20 (sewing your arm back on
with dental floss after a grenade removes it at the shoulder).
Players use their appropriate stat as a base
number, then roll a pair of six-siders, one negative and one
positive. Any sixes are re-rolled, with further sixes adding
additional rolls, ad infinitum. This is great if it’s your positive
d6 rolling the sixes, thus increasing your success rate, but it
sucks ass when your negative d6 is pumping out the sixes...
Your rolls are summed, and this sum is
then added to your base Skill stat. If your dice roll plus your skill
score is
higher than the Difficulty of the task, you succeed! If you
seriously blow the roll, you may Fumble, which can mean a
catastrophic failure. Naaaaasty things can happen on a Fumble. Guns
can backfire, brakes go out on a careening vehicle, explosives may
prematurely ignite... whatever Murphy’s Law dictates would be most
annoying, you can bank on the GM dishing out.
A final note on the combat system of Feng
Shui... NPCs are broken down into two roles, "Unnamed" and
"Named". These connotations come from the movies.
Named : The main villain and any
important secondary characters have names, and the audience gets to
know them during the film. In Feng Shui, any character with a
name is much harder to kill, on the level with PCs. They have skills
and goals, and the GM has put thought into them.
Unnamed : These are the swarms of
unimportant bit roles. Usually the label "unnamed" is applied to the
various guards, spies, and minions making up the armies of
underlings controlled by the villains, but the term is also applied
to any NPC who is not relevant to the overall adventure and
therefore not important enough for the GM to have bothered giving a
name and background to. Unnamed bad guys, derisively called mooks,
can be mowed down by the dozens by skilled PCs. Rather than tracking
wound points for unnamed characters, they simply go down for the
count if a PC scores a high enough attack roll. (Picture the scene
of Bruce Lee beating the living snot out of an entire army of
pitiful lackeys in the tunnels below Han's lair in Enter the
Dragon, and you've got the idea.)
The
GOOD
The simplicity and fluidity of the system make
it a true pleasure to work with. Any referee who’s sick of pages of
charts, lists, and graphs will fall deeply in love with this
resolution mechanic. (The game is meant to be played fast and loose,
and so GM’s wishing to forego the dice altogether and wing it are
encouraged to do so!) A very economic system that works well in any game situation.
The background of the Secret War, factions
vying throughout history’s timeline to control the world’s feng shui
sites, is rich and detailed enough in the main rulebook (and
detailed further in the
various faction sourcebooks) to keep a gaming group occupied for a
good long time. The game designers went to extravagant lengths to
build a complex yet useful setting, while leaving plenty of room for
GM’s to utilize their own ideas within that milieu.
However, while background material is supplied in abundance in the
main rules, gamers are under no obligation whatsoever to actually
use any of it. The game mechanics work perfectly well for designing
ANY type of role playing game a group may want. There’s nothing that
says a Feng Shui group can’t play a gothic horror campaign,
or a sci-fi space opera, or a medieval fantasy, or a modern police
campaign, or a western, or a WWII historical campaign... anything,
man, you see what I’m saying? The options are endless. True,
straying too far from the premise of the game will render the
background sections of the book moot, but I recommend this
rules system for both fledgling and veteran gamers.
The
NEUTRAL
I know the authors drew
their inspiration from the HK cinema, but they take that homage a
little too far in the rules. In both the main book, and in a few of the
sourcebooks, a great deal of time is spent describing Hong Kong; the
city, the territories, the people, the lifestyle, the movies, even
its own rules for chi flow. OK, maybe you’re into the idea of using
Hong Kong as your base of operations, but I haven’t the faintest
interest in the little land of Hong Kong. I’m sure it’s a
fascinating place filled with friendly people, but there are far too
many other places I’m much more familiar with that I’m basing my
games out of. I feel a little cheated when so much ink/ page space
is used to describe one locale for the campaign. It'd be better if
the authors were a little more generic in their game setting
material.
The
EVIL
The game breaks fights down into “Shots”.
Each action a PC takes costs a certain number of 'shots' worth of
time. Firing a gun at someone or trying to punch them is a standard
3-shot action, for instance. Each fight turn, called a “Sequence”,
is made up of a varying number of shots, determined by initiative
rolls each turn. So, in a Sequence that has 12 shots, your PC would
be able to take four actions that required 3 shots each, or two
actions requiring six shots, or what have you. So, the faster your
actions, the more stuff you can do in one fighting turn.
Thanks to such things as widely differing
initiative rolls, varying shot costs for actions, and opponents’
schticks that can delay your own actions, PCs and NPCs end up all
taking their actions at all sorts of different points during the
fight Sequence. When there are many people involved in a fight, this
makes for some odd bookkeeping. It’s actually suggested in the rules
that you use a counter to determine who’s acting when in a given
Sequence. For a game that prides itself on free-wheeling action and
cinematic fight choreography, it seems like a prohibitively clunky
system for figuring out who kicks whose ass when.
This is, in the face of all the great aspects
of this game, a bizarre quirk... considering how
streamlined the rest of the game is, this discrepancy stands out
rather obviously. In all honesty, this is the main reason I
don't use Feng Shui as my default game system; I can't stand
the Shot Clock mechanic. And because it's an integral part of
Schticks and combat, you can't just toss it out in favor of more
traditional initiative or timing rules.
SUMMATION
I
strongly recommend checking out this game,
even if you only want to mine the setting material for use with
another system, which is what I'm now doing. As the last decade has
gone by, I find that the actual mechanics, while sleek in idea, have
some clunky drawbacks that slow down my cinematic action sequences
far too much. I'll be converting my next Feng Shui campaign
to another system. But, I'm keeping all dozen of my Shui
sourcebooks so that the core background and awesome setting concepts
can be kept intact. Where else are you gonna hear a phrase like, “I leap off the
hovercraft onto the back of the winged cyborg panda, and as we
spiral towards the rice paddy, I open fire on the eunuch wizard’s
ogre pikemen with my MP40 submachine gun!”
If you want a taste of what exactly I’m
talking about, I highly suggest you go out and rent Big
Trouble in Little China. There are other movies that have the
flavor of Feng Shui, but this is an American-made flick that
has all the elements involved in a good Shui session wrapped up in a
tidy package. The tongue-in-cheek play style, the fantasy elements,
the clichéd heroes, the action, it’s all there.
Now you
too may possess the powerful kung fu, young one.
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