Feng Shui 2 (04-01-21)

 

Feng Shui is a system for creating Action Movies games, specifically Hong Kong action movies. It was the System Mastery podcast which put me onto it, I really doubt I’d have looked at it otherwise as the setting it is not a natural one for me, although the designer is Robin D Laws who was involved with Over The Edge (the 2nd ed is actually dedicated to him) and the writer of Hamlet's Hitpoints, which I happened to order at the same time.

The first edition is from 1996 and although I don’t know what they've changed since I get the impression that this game was hugely influential, especially on ‘Fiction First’ games like Fate. It is a fairly simple system with the emphasis on creating fast paced dramatic action.

Players choose from one of 36 'Character Archetypes’ to play, which are more like playbooks from PbtA than D&D character classes. The idea is to take them as is, fill in the personal details (name, concept, ‘melodramatic hook’) and make any small modifications you like. 

There is no actual character creation system as such. The archetypes range from 'Everyday Hero' to 'Transformed Crab', with each listing its special abilities (‘Schticks’), stats, skills and advancement details. An aspect I really like is 'buying in', i.e. it is up to the player to say why their character is here getting involved in the action, not the GM.

The dice roll mechanic is possibly closest to Fate; you throw 2 dice, and subtract one from the other giving you a base value from -5 to +5, only it has exploding sixes so the numbers can get very high or low. To this you add the stat or skill relevant to the action, and the degree to which you beat a difficulty target set by the GM dictates the details of the success or failure. 

You can spend a point of Fortune (one of your stats, replenished at the start of each session) to gain an extra die towards your action, bearing in mind that Fortune is also the basis of luck rolls and the expendable resource required for magical abilities (should you have any).

Mechanically the element of Feng Shui newest to me is its initiative system. At the start of every combat ‘sequence’ (essentially a round) each character rolls 1d6 and adds their Speed stat. This is the ‘shot’ you start on, with the highest shot going first. Most actions take 3 shots. So if your total was the highest with 12 you would start on 12, if the next highest was 10 that character would go on 10, then you would get another action at 9 and so on. Once all shots are used up a new sequence begins and initiative is re-rolled. There are also modifiers to combat outcomes based on how long a fight has gone on, presumably to try keep things from getting too drawn out.

As with OTE a substantial chunk of the book is dedicated to the setting, providing a solid basis for just about every flavour of HK action flick. There are 4 time zones; the ancient, the past, the present and the future, over which different factions vie for control. Power is exerted by controlling ‘Feng Shui’ sites. Portals facilitate movement between these zones which behave more like places than times, making paradoxes impossible, although you can still change an entire zone by taking enough of the Feng Shui sites of another zone upstream.

This looks like a really interesting and fun game with innovative, fairly light-touch, player empowering mechanics. Cowabunga!

Over The Edge (05-09-20)

More setting than system, OTE takes place on a fictional island in the Atlantic, like Interzone from Naked Lunch but where every conspiracy you can think of is true. Psychic powers and sentient baboons share space with aliens, demons and celebrities. I was thinking it was very Robert Anton Wilson inspired, but then they call out William Burroughs as their main muse towards the end of the book. It was Ron Edwards’ notes in the annotated Sorcerer which led me here, I think he explicitly mentions some rule from the first edition.

Mechanically the game it reminds me of the most is Sorcerer (and FATE) - the rules are very simple, built for storytelling and drama, it’s an elegant system. There is very little in the way of character stats - you decide a Main Trait (Heretical Exorcist say) and a Side Trait (with Jihadi combat training) and can do anything that would fall under these to a numerical extent defined by your level (1st to 5th). Critically you also pick a Question Mark which defines your character and will likely serve as a tool for the GM (Hard hearted? Wise? Determined etc) and similarly a Trouble (I let curiosity get the better of me, I always have to show off). There are no mechanical aspects to these but they do serve as a way for the player to say to the GM and other players 'these are the kind of situations I want to deal with'. And that is pretty much it for characters.

Dice rolls are referred to as ‘lots’ and the idea is that you throw them rarely - generally one roll would cover a whole combat or action. It works like this - throw 2d6, if you have the initiative you succeed on 7+ otherwise it’s 8+. For each level difference between you and the difficulty of the task you either get to re-roll a die or have the GM force you to re-roll. A 3 will you get a ‘Bad Twist’ and on a 4 you get a ‘Good Twist’. Rolling a double gets you Karma; a free re-roll to use later.

I like it, especially the rules (out of a 250 page book the rules make up the first 50 pages) but if I could only play one RPG out of all the ones I’ve read lately this wouldn’t be it.

Your Adventure Starts here...

 

A little over 2 years ago the company I was contracting with pitched a video game concept to a publisher based on a tabletop role playing game that the publisher owned. To our surprise they showed an immediate interest and asked for more information, usually these things take ages. I had nothing to do with the actual pitch, but given I was working there as a designer I needed to catch up fast and come up with that ‘more information’.

Back in the day (as they say on the Grogpod) I played a lot of role playing games, starting with the Moldvay Basic D&D boxed set which I’d asked from Santa in, hmm maybe 1982. Basic soon led to Advanced, then Traveler, Call of Cthulhu, Middle Earth Role Playing and on and on for the next ten years. At some point we switched to playing games of our own devising, Frankensteined things cobbled together from many systems. My first forays into game design I guess. 

I was an obsessed and shameless rpg nerd. One time I even managed to get my whole 2nd year English class playing D&D for a lesson (thanks Mr Strachan!) and I was a founding member of the school D&D club at a time when there were no other such after school clubs* due to it being the height of Thatcherism.

The game IP for which my colleagues were pitching was not one of those I had played however, so I started reading. My response to the material went from cringe to obsession in a few days. By the time we met the publishers in person I had gone fully native, speaking its abstruse language with confidence. The project got signed, so it turned out my research was just beginning. 

 

Although I was loving the material we were working on, it was reading this reddit thread - that got me looking at other systems. The thread asks for examples of rules which didn’t sound great on paper but were brilliant in play. The details people listed blew me away - it was the first time I got an inkling of how far things might have moved on since I last played. As a result I ordered Mouse Guard, then Dungeon World, then Blades in the Dark, then… well see the pic at top, plus there's more in the post not to mention a bunch of Kickstarters still to be fulfilled.

I wasn’t actually playing these games though, only reading them and trying to imagine how the rules would play out and glean whatever I could for the work project. At some point I realized I needed to start taking notes or I’d forget what I’d read in a few weeks. So starting with Over the Edge I would jot down my thoughts on each system when I finished reading it.

 

 

Sadly the work project got canned at the start of this year. I’m not at all sure what I can say about that so I’m going to play it safe and say nothing. It was a great opportunity which just didn’t work out. So it goes. The key thing here is that it rekindled my love of ttrpgs and now I'm always in the process of reading some system with at least one or two more laying in wait on the living room table.

I am also still writing up my thoughts which is why I’m writing this. I thought I might (gradually) post all the notes that I’ve taken to date and then post new ones as I write them, this being instigated as much as anything by the fact I now follow and read a lot of great rpg blogs. These notes are not reviews, and at the time of writing them the main thing was to outline the key rules and features for ease of comparison later. I have not played any of these games, well other than the solo journaling ones, only read them, which is ironic given that reddit post which nudged me into buying Mouse Guard and set me off on this adventure in the first place….

Thanks for reading :)

*there was one other club - a martial arts one run by a teacher who was eventually fired for pointing an air rifle at a pupil, but that's another story