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FENG SHUI
by Robin D. Laws
published by Atlas Games (link)
Hardback, 256
pages.
Tagline: "The true power of Feng Shui is known only to a few... too
bad they all want you dead!"
Reviewed by Starhawk
As the tagline states, the true power of Feng Shui is known only to a few: the crew of Atlas Games, who bought the game from Daedalus Entertainment and have put it back in print, along with a line of revised supplements and plans for new material. And now, it is your turn to learn of Feng Shui's power.
Feng Shui is a fast-paced and rules-light game based on Hong Kong action movies, ranging from the sword-and-sorcery flicks set in ancient China, up to the Confucian era of 1850, modern day Hong Kong gunfights, and even cyberpunk flicks in the "not-so-distant future". They tie in all these time periods with a time-travel premise, so you can end up with wizened Chinese sorcerors side by side with hardened Hong Kong assassins and cyborgs from 2056.
The book is organized into sections on the Feng Shui method of handling skills, gunplay, kung fu, sorcery, and many other character abilities are all clearly marked, concise, and full of interesting toys for your players (and villains) to experiment with. Perhaps best of all, in the back of the book is not only a character sheet, but a several-page appendix that is a rules primer, for you to copy and hand out to your players before the first session! Character creation is based on templates, and allows you to easily whip up characters and start gaming within an hour or less. The index and table of contents are clear and complete.
The GM's section of the rulebook expands on the basic idea of "action movie roleplaying" with a very interesting metaplot involving alternate dimensions, conflicting timestreams, and a Secret War between many factions to control Feng Shui, the flow of chi, and rule the world with it. Yet, through some elegant mechanics, the game manages to avoid being bogged down in the usual time-travel messes of paradox. And if the Secret War isn't your thing, the game system still lends itself to high-action roleplaying in any time period.
The game system is very rules-light and operates on a simple dice mechanic. Characters have an Action Value (AV) in a particular skill. When that skill is used, you roll two six-sided dice - one to represent positive chi, and one to represent negative chi. Subtract one from the other and apply the result to your AV. Sounds simple enough - but the key to the system is that sixes on the dice add and roll over - meaning that more often than you think, your character is performing incredible feats or suffering tragic failure, as one of your dice explodes a time or three. Double sixes indicate a critical success or critical failure - events which the designers insist the GM should milk for all they are worth.
Playing the game truly becomes like filming an action flick when it comes around to combat, which the system is built to emphasize, like any good action movie. Combat in Feng Shui was designed with the intention that it should be just as cool as watching a Jackie Chan or Jet Li film, and never boring. The rules encourage players to come up with their own "stunts" for each and every action, and advise GMs to penalize players who say, "I just shoot him." In a typical Feng Shui action, a player might say, "I leap from my hiding place behind the girder, run up the wall to avoid the autofire from his chaingun, then shoot the wire on the crane above him to bring all those wrecked cars down on his head." Maybe the GM hadn't mentioned the crane, but it's there now: combat in Feng Shui revolves around larger-than-life characters doing impossible things in set pieces, where the "props" are everywhere and meant to be used in spectacular ways. All the restrictions and rules of other game systems are set aside in favor of fun and cinematics.
In fact, NPCs are treated in the most cinematic way of all. There are two types of enemies your group will run into: characters with names, and those without. Unnamed characters, just like in any movie, are unskilled mooks who fall before the heroes like grain before a scythe, being defeated by the dozen as the story works its way to the climax. Only villains with names get abilities that are on par with the players' characters - usually signifying a true battle royal.
The rulebook comes with a pre-made adventure in the back that I found to be almost perfect for introducing the "look and feel" to my group during a playtest. Like any action movie, it assumes that the players will bite on the plot hook, and the action comes fast and furious after that. The introductory adventure provides a great platform for getting used to a freewheeling combat system and a speedy plot, and my players were delighted that they could finally do all those Really Cool Things that other game systems kept them from doing. The critical hits and fumbles only added to the chaotic furor around the table, and by the end of it, everyone was clamoring for more. Fortunately, the intro adventure provides an absolute plethora of plot hooks to link into all the juicy tidbits in the GM's section of the Feng Shui book - including recurring NPC enemies, links to some of the factions fighting the Secret War, and several possibilities for continuing the plot into further adventures.
All in all, I found this book to be a very complete product and the game to be a genuine breath of fresh air. It's definitely worth trying out for anyone who likes Jackie Chan, the Matrix movies, Big Trouble in Little China, or anyone who just wants to kick butt, dodge bullets, and save the timestream from the Secret War!
This Review is Copyright 2003 by the author. Permission
granted to Boardroom Games to publish at www.boardroomgames.com
Feng Shui is
a trademark of Robin D. Laws.
All content copyright The Boardroom, Inc. 2003