I normally prefer a liberal dash of fantasy or sci-fi mixed into my roleplaying games. So I didn't expect to like Feng Shui, but I do. I thought playing in "modern" times would be horrid. However, the key to remember is we're not trying to recreate some humdrum reality. We're recreating action movies, complete with over the top stunts, cheese and convenient plot devices.
One of the things I really loved about Feng Shui; it has the best botch system I have come across so far, because lets face it, botches can be fun. This game has just about perfect botch balance in my opinion. It's hard to explain how it's achieved, I mean I could explain the mechanics, but that doesn't really convey it, I say this because I didn't see the elegance of this simple system until I had played through a few sessions.
The other thing I love about Feng Shui is how it deals with mooks (think hoards of disposable lower level NPCs). To give you an idea the cheesy fun we had with this system, here's an actual play recap from our first game:
Ok. So let's see... My character.... His name is Bo Law. (It's an action movie. I think the cheesy name fits.) He is a big sweaty hulk of a man. I described him as large, meaty, ham-fisted, and hairy. He has dark brown eyes and dark brown hair/beard. In my mind he looks a bit like Black Whirlwind from the video game Jade Empire. He works in a warehouse down by the docks in Hongkong (circa 1996-- though we later upped the year to 2005). He's dressed in scuffed workboots, jeans and a white undershirt.
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| Black Whirlwind from Jade Empire |
At the start of our adventure Bo had just gotten off of work, and was having dinner at a restaurant in the temple district called The Eating Table.
There is a pretty young girl taking orders. Bo was sitting there mowing through his second bowl of Raman when a bunch of jacketed thugs entered the building. There was a group of about fifteen generic thugs wearing matching jackets with a picture of a hand with a thorn through the center, and one extremely tall fellow with a bad attitude named Happy Chen. Happy made some sort of proclamation, but Bo wasn't really paying much attention, and continued chomping through his noodles.
A big bruiser sort of fellow (Crush) stood up and challenged Happy to a one on one fight. They exchanged a few blows. Then this skinny little fellow in a black trench coat (Lucky Jimm) came up from behind and rapped Happy on the skull with a cane. Almost simultaneously this non-descript looking guy, draws two guns, jumps up on a table and yells out "Hongkong PD -Freeze" (Johnny).
And then all hell broke loose. First Happy says, "Oh so your friends are going to help-- get 'em boys..." and then he adds, "Oh, it's guns is it?" and everyone starts drawing firearms.
Some stupid thug comes up behind Bo, who is still sitting in front of his noddle bowl, and places a gun at his temple and attempts to fire off two rounds. There's a hollow click as his gun jams. Bo slams a fist down on the table and roars out, "Hey, some of us are trying to eat here!!" He jabs a meaty elbow backwards into the thugs midsection, as he spins around and slams his other fist into the guy. The mook goes flying across the room and collapses against a wall, snap, dead.
General chaos continues to ensue as the "named characters" stomp through the "unnamed thugs". Bo tips over the table in front of him, grabs it and runs forward, tackling four baddies in the process. He runs them right up against a wall and slams the table into them-- hard. Snap. Things go crunch. Four more guys dead. And when Bo lets go of the table it just stays hanging, embedded into the wall.
At this point a scrawny old man bursts out of the kitchen and jumps up on the counter brandishing two frying pans, screaming "You leave my restaurant! You leave now!!"
There's only about five thugs left, plus their "Happy" leader. Crush has been laying into Happy fairly successfully, while Happy has failed to leave a scratch on him.
The remaining thugs ring up around Happy and start to beat a retreat. There is this scrawny ninja guy (Hiro) that has been rather unsuccessfully trying to take down a chandelier. (He managed to knock out a few candles). One of the thugs grabs him in a bear hug like hold and places a gun at his temple. Bo yells out, "Hey!!" and charges at the guy and punches the gun out of his hand. He punches it so hard that the gun snaps in on it self and breaks as it goes flying across the room. The now gunless thug holding the ninja yells out "F**k this", and slams/throws the poor ninja out the nearby plate glass window, and also incidentally down two stories. Ouch. Hiro survives but is pretty badly torn up.
Crush runs out the door following Happy and his remaining thugs as they flee in a limo. The make is noted, the license plate is jotted down. Crush tries to shoot out the tire, but fails to stop the car. Hiro manages to knock two of the retreating thugs unconscious. He strips them of their wallets, cash and ids. Crush attends to Hiro's wounds, as well as to those of any of the bystanders that haven't already fled.
Meanwhile inside, Bo looks around, surveys the damage, and finding an intact bowl of noodles, sits down and resumes eating. In a wee bit everyone has gathered inside, "Uncle" (the owner of the restaurant) is ranting on about who is going to pay for the damages?! but also thanking us for taking care of the thugs. Hiro hands him the money he took off of the thugs and Uncle simmers right down.
Bo starts helping to clean the place up. He pries the smashed table out of the wall and seems rather sheepish and embarrassed about the bodies. He mutters something along the lines of "Laura's going to kill me.."
Johnny receives a phone call from police HQ giving him a chewing out. He's fired. One off duty fire-fight too many. Disagreement about the definition of "acceptable loses". Johnny and Crush exchange a few less then friendly words as to who started what.
Uncle asks us to look into things for him. We discover the thugs are know as the Poison Thorn gang and are bothering patrons of the "good" protection agency run by Fast Eddy. We head to Eddy's HQ, a "tittie temple" called "The Buns Festival". Bo seems abashed by the "ladies" and when asked to order a drink he says, "But Laura says I'm not supposed to drink ..." Bo sits with a coke and hums along to the music, bobbing his head, and staring at his shoes.
After a few words with the bartender, we eventually gain audience with Eddy. Eddy passes around cigars. Bo says, "Um... no thanks." To which Eddy says, "What my cigars aren't good enough for you?" And Bo looks confused, scratches at his beefy neck and says, "But Laura says I'm not supposed to smoke..." Eddy seems amused/confused and says, "Oookay fair enough."
We gain the location of the Poison Thorns HQ and agree to do Eddy a favor by taking care of them. We all pile into Johnny(the now ex-cop)'s car and start driving to this construction site in the industrial zone. Crush and I are in the back seat of the car, knees up to nose. Lucky Jimm is in the front passenger seat. The skinny little ninja is stuck in there somewhere as well. And Johnny, well he's driving his car.
Suddenly a bunch of Poison Thorn thugs appear in the middle of the road... the only problem is, they are the SAME thugs we "met" at the restaurant and they are quite obviously dead. Bullet hole in middle of head kind of dead.
Johnny swerves to avoid running the car into them and slams instead into a telephone pole. We all take a few bruises from that and "Lucky" Jimm goes flying out the front window of the car and skidding down the road. Once again, ouch.
Jimm quickly comes to his senses, draws his sword/cane and starts to lay into the baddies. In the meantime the rest of us are trying to climb out of the wrecked car. A dozen zomboids surround the car and tip it over. Bang. A few more bruises and the car looks like it's threatening to explode with Crush and I still inside. Johnny has gotten out of the car and is laying into anything still moving. Crush kicks the door on his side of the car off... it goes hurtling into a few baddies. By the time poor Bo figures out which way is up the combat is pretty much over... He really liked the way Crush knocked that door off, so he copy-cats him on the opposite side of the car. Bo rolls out of the car gets up and stumbles off as the whole thing explodes.
Johnny swears that the waking dead aren't zombies, but merely undead puppets being controlled by a puppet master. We pile the re-dead bodies on the flaming car in the hopes that they won't return a second time.
We are still plenty far from the construction site... about a day and half's walk. Johnny uses his cell and convinces a friend on the force to pick us up after work. We spend about an hour sitting around and talking. Crush and Johnny start getting a bit heated in their exchange of words. Crush takes a swing a Johnny but misses, just as Johnny's cop friend arrives. We all pile into the car and get a rather squished ride to our destination.
Overall, I enjoyed our campaign immensely. Feng Shui has now earned a spot on my favourite RPGs list.
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| Feng Shui R-map or relationship chart showing all of the myriad and convoluted ways the various NPC and PCs were interrelated through the plot, several weeks further on into our sessions. |
Which is why I was really crazy excited to learn that Atlas Games has announced a Feng Shui reboot. I can't wait to see where they go with this.
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