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Feng Shui: Action Movie Roleplaying
The true power of Feng Shui is known only to a few... ...too bad they all want you dead. Bad guys are coming out of the woodwork to wage the secret war. Powerful eunuch sorcerers from ancient China. Modern-day conspiracy masterminds. Cyber-demonic scientists from the future. They've almost Portals through time lay bare a secret history of our world, a history that changes like the breeze and can erase you without you even knowing it. There's only one things standing between these monstrous powers and complete control of all of human you and your buddies. But you aren't just anyone. You're secret warriors -- a group of butt-kicking, kung-fu fighting, spell-chucking, pistol-packing badasses. It's up to you to save the world, or die trying. Feng Shui is the Hong Kong martial arts action-movie roleplaying game. It contains all of the rules necessary for play. Feng Shui was originally published by Daedalus Entertainment in 1996, and Atlas Games is pleased to bring this best-selling game back into print. The Atlas Games edition features the same text as the original in a new format including new artwork, layout, and a hardcover binding.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1999
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About the author
Robin D. Laws
146 books195 followersWriter and game designer Robin D. Laws brought you such roleplaying games as Ashen Stars, The Esoterrorists, The Dying Earth, Heroquest and Feng Shui. He is the author of seven novels, most recently The Worldwound Gambit from Paizo. For Robin's much-praised works of gaming history and analysis, see Hamlet's Hit Points, Robin's Laws of Game Mastering and 40 Years of Gen Con.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 5, 2016
As with most roleplayers, I first encountered the games in my early teens and via D&D. This would have been about 1983 or 84, with the red box set of D&D Basic Rules, then the blue Expert Rules. Our group very much took to heart the concept that these rules were a framework, a guideline - now take it and make it your own! While we did buy supplements and Dragon magazine, our fertile imaginations and bottomless appetite for movies and books in the fantasy, sci-fi and horror genres meant we were more than willing to build (and shoehorn) our own ideas into this basic architecture.
I also played with another group of friends (I’m not sure why the two didn’t really mix, it was just one of those things). This group was less adventurous; we played different games - largely Rolemaster and Paranoia and boardgames - but stuck more within the strictures of the given rules. This was also the group where you didn’t get too attached to your character- perhaps unsurprisingly given the systems, mortality was fierce - while in my D&D group we would run characters and their relationships for years. Of course, both groups split when we reached college age and went our separate ways..
It was some years before I found another group of like-minded friends (I had considered going to one of the local game shops and seeing about joining a group, but gaming had for me always been quite a personal, intimate thing). This group, still going these years later, with some changes, had a much wider experience of games than I did and introduced me to some wonders, and we discovered many more together (one of the rules of gaming: never start to tot up how much you’ve spent on rulebooks…) and one that was an utter revelation was Feng Shui by a man who shall forever be known as The Mighty Robin D. Laws.
The subtitle “Action Movie Roleplaying” tells you much of what you need to know about this game. It is specifically the Hong Kong action movie genre of John Woo, Jackie Chan and Tsui Hark, although you can easily adjust it to fit Schwarzenegger movies, Indiana Jones or The Transporter. The main point is that it is Heroic; the characters are typically Big Damn arse-kicking Heroes who can leap off balconies firing a gun in each hand, punch opponents through walls and drive high octane cars down narrow streets at ridiculous speeds.
And it works brilliantly, due to Laws’ superb design. The basic mechanic is stunningly simple. Eschewing the multiplicity of dice I have come to know and love (the old joke is that you out a roleplayer by saying “would you hand me that d6?”) Feng Shui uses two six-sided dice of different colours, a good dice (positive) and a bad dice (negative), added on to a skill/characteristic rating (if you know what I’m talking about, you’re a roleplayer; if not, don’t worry about it). What really works is the level at which this is pitched; as I say, the characters are Heroes, they don’t need to worry about fighting with ordinary minions! This is accomplished by the simple expedient that Mooks (as they are designated here), generally the kind fodder the Big Bad will throw at the heroes to keep them occupied, tend to come in squads of six and each individual is taken out wit a single point of damage - so picture Jackie Chan running through a factory, knocking bad guys from gantries as they try to mob him. This is further enhanced by advantages that the game calls shticks, special abilities of an almost (or sometimes literally, depending on the character type) magical nature. For instance, the common one of never having to reload a weapon or, one of my favourites, the rather more tricky running up the stream of bullets coming toward you to attack your opponent.
However, the real revelation for me was a step beyond that injunction in the original D&D to make these rules your own, and that is the encouragement to use description and inventiveness within the game by giving bonuses for descriptiveness, resourcefulness and imagination - along with penalties for being dull or repetitive. Example: in a firefight you can get away with saying “I take aim and shoot” a couple of times, but if you don’t try harder the Director (as the gamesmaster is called) should start to penalise you. Adding some description will counter this, and maybe give a minor bonus (“I leap over the bar for cover, blazing away with an automatic pistol in each hand”) and particularly good/descriptive/crazy ideas should earn you better bonuses (shooting down a chandelier onto a group of mooks, sliding on your back along a stream of lantern oil someone is about to set on fire while shooting, or simply punching/tripping/throwing one enemy into a pile of others. Just use your imagination, or steal from your favourite action films.
The beam of celestial light hit me in my first session playing this game. We were in a New Year parade in Kowloon when it is attacked by Triad goons/terrorists/whatever (I forget the details). My character (a fairly bog-standard Martial Arts Cop, one of the basic archetypes) was on the edge of the parade and I asked if there was a nearby lamppost or pillar I could use to swing around, kick some bad guys in the face and continue to boost up over the parade. Simon, the director, looked me squarely in the face and said “If you need there to be, there is.” Of course: movie logic!
Of course, there is the danger with this that either the players will just be too silly in their inventiveness, of the Director will expect and demand ever increasing invention to avoid penalties, but that is partly where the trust and cohesion of a good roleplaying group comes into things. In any game, the gamemaster (or Director, DM, storyteller, etc) has to set the tone and expectations, usually implicitly but occasionally explicitly, and the players let him or her know whether they are onboard. Roleplaying is a unique form or communal storytelling where each participant adjusts and makes room and reacts and accommodates to move the story forward.
This game was my introduction to the work of (The Mighty) Robin D. Laws, for my money one of the great game designers and writers and someone who has continued to work on games that foreground the storytelling above rulemastery aspects of gaming, while having systems that support and give structure - Nexus, The Dying Earth, the flexible Gumshoe system. I’ve left much out of this review - the setting and background, the influence of magic (this is primarily based on Hong Kong cinema, don’t forget, so we’re not just talking martial arts and gunfights!) but, if you haven’t yet, you should get it, get together with a group of like-minded friends, some wine and beer and chips and dips, and have yourself a real good time. In fact, 2nd edition has recently come out and I’ve not got it yet. Ah, so many games, so little time....
I also played with another group of friends (I’m not sure why the two didn’t really mix, it was just one of those things). This group was less adventurous; we played different games - largely Rolemaster and Paranoia and boardgames - but stuck more within the strictures of the given rules. This was also the group where you didn’t get too attached to your character- perhaps unsurprisingly given the systems, mortality was fierce - while in my D&D group we would run characters and their relationships for years. Of course, both groups split when we reached college age and went our separate ways..
It was some years before I found another group of like-minded friends (I had considered going to one of the local game shops and seeing about joining a group, but gaming had for me always been quite a personal, intimate thing). This group, still going these years later, with some changes, had a much wider experience of games than I did and introduced me to some wonders, and we discovered many more together (one of the rules of gaming: never start to tot up how much you’ve spent on rulebooks…) and one that was an utter revelation was Feng Shui by a man who shall forever be known as The Mighty Robin D. Laws.
The subtitle “Action Movie Roleplaying” tells you much of what you need to know about this game. It is specifically the Hong Kong action movie genre of John Woo, Jackie Chan and Tsui Hark, although you can easily adjust it to fit Schwarzenegger movies, Indiana Jones or The Transporter. The main point is that it is Heroic; the characters are typically Big Damn arse-kicking Heroes who can leap off balconies firing a gun in each hand, punch opponents through walls and drive high octane cars down narrow streets at ridiculous speeds.
And it works brilliantly, due to Laws’ superb design. The basic mechanic is stunningly simple. Eschewing the multiplicity of dice I have come to know and love (the old joke is that you out a roleplayer by saying “would you hand me that d6?”) Feng Shui uses two six-sided dice of different colours, a good dice (positive) and a bad dice (negative), added on to a skill/characteristic rating (if you know what I’m talking about, you’re a roleplayer; if not, don’t worry about it). What really works is the level at which this is pitched; as I say, the characters are Heroes, they don’t need to worry about fighting with ordinary minions! This is accomplished by the simple expedient that Mooks (as they are designated here), generally the kind fodder the Big Bad will throw at the heroes to keep them occupied, tend to come in squads of six and each individual is taken out wit a single point of damage - so picture Jackie Chan running through a factory, knocking bad guys from gantries as they try to mob him. This is further enhanced by advantages that the game calls shticks, special abilities of an almost (or sometimes literally, depending on the character type) magical nature. For instance, the common one of never having to reload a weapon or, one of my favourites, the rather more tricky running up the stream of bullets coming toward you to attack your opponent.
However, the real revelation for me was a step beyond that injunction in the original D&D to make these rules your own, and that is the encouragement to use description and inventiveness within the game by giving bonuses for descriptiveness, resourcefulness and imagination - along with penalties for being dull or repetitive. Example: in a firefight you can get away with saying “I take aim and shoot” a couple of times, but if you don’t try harder the Director (as the gamesmaster is called) should start to penalise you. Adding some description will counter this, and maybe give a minor bonus (“I leap over the bar for cover, blazing away with an automatic pistol in each hand”) and particularly good/descriptive/crazy ideas should earn you better bonuses (shooting down a chandelier onto a group of mooks, sliding on your back along a stream of lantern oil someone is about to set on fire while shooting, or simply punching/tripping/throwing one enemy into a pile of others. Just use your imagination, or steal from your favourite action films.
The beam of celestial light hit me in my first session playing this game. We were in a New Year parade in Kowloon when it is attacked by Triad goons/terrorists/whatever (I forget the details). My character (a fairly bog-standard Martial Arts Cop, one of the basic archetypes) was on the edge of the parade and I asked if there was a nearby lamppost or pillar I could use to swing around, kick some bad guys in the face and continue to boost up over the parade. Simon, the director, looked me squarely in the face and said “If you need there to be, there is.” Of course: movie logic!
Of course, there is the danger with this that either the players will just be too silly in their inventiveness, of the Director will expect and demand ever increasing invention to avoid penalties, but that is partly where the trust and cohesion of a good roleplaying group comes into things. In any game, the gamemaster (or Director, DM, storyteller, etc) has to set the tone and expectations, usually implicitly but occasionally explicitly, and the players let him or her know whether they are onboard. Roleplaying is a unique form or communal storytelling where each participant adjusts and makes room and reacts and accommodates to move the story forward.
This game was my introduction to the work of (The Mighty) Robin D. Laws, for my money one of the great game designers and writers and someone who has continued to work on games that foreground the storytelling above rulemastery aspects of gaming, while having systems that support and give structure - Nexus, The Dying Earth, the flexible Gumshoe system. I’ve left much out of this review - the setting and background, the influence of magic (this is primarily based on Hong Kong cinema, don’t forget, so we’re not just talking martial arts and gunfights!) but, if you haven’t yet, you should get it, get together with a group of like-minded friends, some wine and beer and chips and dips, and have yourself a real good time. In fact, 2nd edition has recently come out and I’ve not got it yet. Ah, so many games, so little time....
January 16, 2018
One of the gaming rule books I pull down and read for pleasure, I've been riffing through this again as I work on my 2018 game. It's really an astounding piece of work, though it can be hard to see that now 20 years on as so much that was radical in it then has become standard technology for later tabletop games. Of course, lots of game tech from the last 20 years can be inserted into it to clear up parts of the game that, while they work fine, are a little clunky by today's design standards. This is as minor a complaint as you can get.
The world is also strangely compelling in its bizarre reality - you can easily set the game in ancient china, mid 19th century (again, China preferred, but it's a great pulp adventure frame worldwide) the modern day or fighting against a bleak, totalitarian future police state. Or, thanks to the time war that underpins the setting, you can mash together elements of any and all of them, along with the timeless netherworld that connects them. that delicate act of just enough framework to guide you without restraining you.
The world is also strangely compelling in its bizarre reality - you can easily set the game in ancient china, mid 19th century (again, China preferred, but it's a great pulp adventure frame worldwide) the modern day or fighting against a bleak, totalitarian future police state. Or, thanks to the time war that underpins the setting, you can mash together elements of any and all of them, along with the timeless netherworld that connects them. that delicate act of just enough framework to guide you without restraining you.
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May 4, 2021Another Bundle of Holding skim-review.
This bundle consisted of
Feng Shui corebook, describing action movie roleplaying in the secret war to control mystical feng shui sites throughout time.
Golden Comeback, describing the heroic Dragons, a group of secret warriors dedicated to freedom and the common folk (ostensibly the PCs group in a standard game)
Blowing Up Hong Kong, describing Hong Kong in 1996 (the standard "contemporary" date, pre reversion), which felt almost general enough to use in any urban fantasy game.
Friends of the Dragon, a guide to making groups and some different campaign frames (all magic cops, all criminals, all one family, etc.)
In Your Face Again, a bunch of adventures
Feng Shui was a game I discovered first in college, I think, and I remember rhapsodizing about its sublime dumbness, as exemplified by a rule I slightly misremembered: shotguns do more damage if the player makes a loud "ka-chink" noise and mimes ejecting a shell. (The actual rule is just that the character does that, not necessarily the player at the table.) That right there tells you what this game is about, which is simulating action movies, particularly Hong Kong actions movies, from wire-work wuxia to slow-motion gun-fu.
I've heard Laws talk about how, in the 90s, he was well-steeped in Hong Kong and Asian cinema more broadly, but the rest of the English-speaking world was just about catching on to how interesting things were in that field. I've also heard him talk about how he's interested in capturing genres, and this book really does that job, reminding players and game masters alike to think up cool things, and assume that if you need something (like a lamp post in a street), that the set designers have put it there. This is a game where your are encouraged to think in terms of stunts and shticks (which are special powers that your character has.)
Besides capturing the feel of the films that I was also just learning about back then, what was so exciting about this book to me is how expansive and occasionally nutty the background is: there are feng shui sites that different groups are trying to take over. OK, pretty normal for a secret history/urban fantasy game. But also, these different groups are evil eunuch sorcerers from 69 AD, anti-Western monks from 1850, biotech despots from 2056 (and their enemies, mostly escaped monkeys and apes with biotech additions), and animals-turned-humans who control the modern day, and of course, the four monarchs of Hell.
When I first started reviewing what pdfs I had, the corebook almost instantly had me thinking about going out and buying a collection of the physical books, an interest which gradually waned the more books I looked at. Because while the corebook is exciting and full of genre-supporting rules, the other books were all unevenly exciting. Each book has some things to recommend it -- chase rules in Golden Comeback, a twisty adventure in In Your Face where a demon might be trapped in a VHS tape, the idea of group shticks and purpose in Friends of the Dragon. But as well, there was a great deal where I kind of felt a little bogged down. Do we need more shticks? More archetypes for characters? More adventures where the PCs just happen to get involved because someone being chased drops something in their pockets?
In a way, maybe this is a reminder of when this game was first developed, but I feel like the later books don't so much as expand on the central themes and ideas, but kind of muddy the waters. (After all, this was the 90s, when White Wolf and Deadlands product lines were full of splatbooks that added more cool options for characters who were described in the corebooks as being the standard enemies. I'm all for "hey, let's step back and complicate our understanding of morality a bit" but these were all sort of add-ons, not a core concept of the game, which means that adding nuance mostly served to complicate what the PCs core actions were.)
Would I play this? Sure, though I think if I ever ran it, I would try a few changes, not least of which might be to toss out the whole rulebook and run it with something more like Over the Edge -- about which, more soon. (Also, as a nod to the source material, Laws's version centers on Hong Kong, but I think you could get more juice by honoring the sense rather than the word: set the adventures close to home to start so that they can get the sense of saving their world.)
This bundle consisted of
Feng Shui corebook, describing action movie roleplaying in the secret war to control mystical feng shui sites throughout time.
Golden Comeback, describing the heroic Dragons, a group of secret warriors dedicated to freedom and the common folk (ostensibly the PCs group in a standard game)
Blowing Up Hong Kong, describing Hong Kong in 1996 (the standard "contemporary" date, pre reversion), which felt almost general enough to use in any urban fantasy game.
Friends of the Dragon, a guide to making groups and some different campaign frames (all magic cops, all criminals, all one family, etc.)
In Your Face Again, a bunch of adventures
Feng Shui was a game I discovered first in college, I think, and I remember rhapsodizing about its sublime dumbness, as exemplified by a rule I slightly misremembered: shotguns do more damage if the player makes a loud "ka-chink" noise and mimes ejecting a shell. (The actual rule is just that the character does that, not necessarily the player at the table.) That right there tells you what this game is about, which is simulating action movies, particularly Hong Kong actions movies, from wire-work wuxia to slow-motion gun-fu.
I've heard Laws talk about how, in the 90s, he was well-steeped in Hong Kong and Asian cinema more broadly, but the rest of the English-speaking world was just about catching on to how interesting things were in that field. I've also heard him talk about how he's interested in capturing genres, and this book really does that job, reminding players and game masters alike to think up cool things, and assume that if you need something (like a lamp post in a street), that the set designers have put it there. This is a game where your are encouraged to think in terms of stunts and shticks (which are special powers that your character has.)
Besides capturing the feel of the films that I was also just learning about back then, what was so exciting about this book to me is how expansive and occasionally nutty the background is: there are feng shui sites that different groups are trying to take over. OK, pretty normal for a secret history/urban fantasy game. But also, these different groups are evil eunuch sorcerers from 69 AD, anti-Western monks from 1850, biotech despots from 2056 (and their enemies, mostly escaped monkeys and apes with biotech additions), and animals-turned-humans who control the modern day, and of course, the four monarchs of Hell.
When I first started reviewing what pdfs I had, the corebook almost instantly had me thinking about going out and buying a collection of the physical books, an interest which gradually waned the more books I looked at. Because while the corebook is exciting and full of genre-supporting rules, the other books were all unevenly exciting. Each book has some things to recommend it -- chase rules in Golden Comeback, a twisty adventure in In Your Face where a demon might be trapped in a VHS tape, the idea of group shticks and purpose in Friends of the Dragon. But as well, there was a great deal where I kind of felt a little bogged down. Do we need more shticks? More archetypes for characters? More adventures where the PCs just happen to get involved because someone being chased drops something in their pockets?
In a way, maybe this is a reminder of when this game was first developed, but I feel like the later books don't so much as expand on the central themes and ideas, but kind of muddy the waters. (After all, this was the 90s, when White Wolf and Deadlands product lines were full of splatbooks that added more cool options for characters who were described in the corebooks as being the standard enemies. I'm all for "hey, let's step back and complicate our understanding of morality a bit" but these were all sort of add-ons, not a core concept of the game, which means that adding nuance mostly served to complicate what the PCs core actions were.)
Would I play this? Sure, though I think if I ever ran it, I would try a few changes, not least of which might be to toss out the whole rulebook and run it with something more like Over the Edge -- about which, more soon. (Also, as a nod to the source material, Laws's version centers on Hong Kong, but I think you could get more juice by honoring the sense rather than the word: set the adventures close to home to start so that they can get the sense of saving their world.)
February 21, 2014
Feng Shui is an older rpg game now but when I first played it I was hooked. I had mainly played Dungeons and Dragons and this was very much a different animal. This game is very cinematic and wants both players and the game referee(GM) to really do outlandish things. The system is simple and you can get into the action right away. There are a ton of supplements that really help you attain the frenetic action that this game meant to emulate. Hong Kong Action flicks where tough guys shoot tons of ammo without having to reload, Magic using karate Cops that fight evil, Ghosts that are back to right a wrong done to them in life. Explore different ages, a netherworld and fight the good fight in the Time War where the characters are doomed to fail but that is what heroes do. Good primers to get you in the mood to play Feng Shui are movies like Bullet Proof Monk, The Killer, The Replacement Killers, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and many many other films like that. And if you want to play that kind of game and tell that kind of story, then Feng Shui is a game you should try.
January 19, 2009
Además de ser un excelente juego de rol, me abrió los ojos para cambiar mi estilo como Dungeon Master, hacer las partidas más dinámicas y cinematográficas.
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