Product Review

Picture this: your playing a game and your character has messed with the wrong crowd, which has resulted in a chase through the streets of a city with an armed gang intent on your destruction following hot on your heels.

GM: As you turn the corner you realise what you’ve done… the alleyway is a dead end and a high wall topped with barbwire blocks your escape. What do you do?

Columbo (player): I’ll try and find a rubbish bin to hide behind, I’ll get my pistol out, and I’ll start shooting as they come round the corner. They’re gonna pay in blood before they get me…(the character is heroic but dead)

CUT! Now we’ll take a look a Feng Shui player in the same situation.

GM: As you turn the corner you realise what you’ve done… the alleyway is a dead end and a high wall topped with barbwire blocks your escape. What do you do?

Columbo (player): I’ll run up the wall. Actually on second thoughts, with the barbwire at the top I’d better run up most of it and then leap the last metre or so.

Feng Shui is a roleplaying game of action movie stunts set against a secret war being fought by various groups across time itself. This is the second edition of the game, but very little has changed from the first book, and the stuff that has changed is all for the better. So strap on your 9mm, load you shotgun, draw your sword and follow me in.

Feng Shui… That Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen bloke does that on Changing Room’s doesn’t he?

Yes he does, and in the Feng Shui game someone like him would be called a Geomancer and would be very useful. Feng Shui is all about buildings that have been arranged to be in harmony with the chi that flows through the world. This harmony can is achieved in several ways, such as where things are built and how they look inside.

And why do I care?

Sites that are in tune will generate good chi and hence give their owners good luck, power and control. The more Feng Shui sites you have the better things get for you. But the game doesn’t stop there. You can access four time junctures through a place called the Netherworld (or the Inner Kingdom). To get into the Netherworld you will need to locate one of the magical doorways, known as Portals.

These secret doors can only be seen by people with strong chi, like the players… and their enemies. The Netherworld is largely comprised of dim tunnels and rooms made from a strange grey substance, which some of the Netherworld residents can shape and change into loads of weird and wonderful things.

Most of the people in the Netherworld are time-casualties of the secret war and the repercussions it has had on history. You see, the four time junctures you have access to in the game are 69AD, 1850, 2056 and our own time. This means that if you change something in the 1856 juncture it will have an effect on the future. So it’s entirely possible for someone to be completely wiped out of history and when that happens you get dumped in the Netherworld until things are put back again. There are also only a few time junctures accessible at a time from the Netherworld, which has led to some people becoming trapped and unable to find a way home (kind of like Sam Beckett in Quantum Leap).

So, who are the Secret factions you mentioned?

In the game there are various groups who know about the power of Feng Shui and they’re all fighting a covert war to gain control of the best sites, eventually hoping to come out on top. The players will usually hail from a group known as the “Dragons”, who have recently taken a severe beating when all the other groups attacked them in all four times and the Inner Kingdom (ouch!), leaving them in desperate need of heroic help.

The other groups are as follows. “The Four Monarchs” were wiped out in a change of history and are now a minor faction who live in the Netherworld. They’re not all bad and could even be linked to your characters in the grand scheme of things. “The Eater’s of the Lotus” are based in the 69AD juncture, where they have gained control of the Chinese government. They are made up of eunuch (snip snip) sorcerers and are generally not very nice chaps.

“The Architects of the Flesh” (great name) are the controllers of the 2056 juncture, which they have turned into a totalitarian police state. They have also mastered arcanowave technology, which is a really nasty way of manipulating magical energy through technology. This is then used to create Abominations, which are monster-based super-soldiers that they hope to use when they conqueror the other time junctures.

“The Jammers” are a group of revolutionary rebels from the 2056 juncture who are trying to fight back against the Architects. Unlike the other groups they dislike the idea of chi controlling things and have decided to try and eliminate its hold on things. In their utopia there is no Netherworld, leading to no secret war, and possible leading to the death of the human soul.

“The Ascended” control most of the Feng Shui sites in the 1850 and present day junctures. They have mastered various supernatural chi powers, but they usually rely on their more mundane but hugely powerful political sway.

“The Guiding Hand” are masters of Kung Fu and are working towards a disciplined and obedient future based on the teachings of Confucius. They may seem to be leading towards a greater good, but it’s not the kind of world any free thinking individual is going to want to live in.

These are the factions your characters are likely to meet in the game. Whether you’re on speaking terms or at each other’s throat may change from day to day. The rulebook tells us that the default plot hook will be based around Feng Shui sites and this is oh so true. They make it really easy to come up with any type of game you want. You can have action or mystery, exploration or romance and each of these can be in any format you like, from one-off throw away games to huge campaigns where the characters have to achieve things in all four of the time Junctures.

Are the rules just basically “do what you want” then if it’s an action game?

The rules are excellent. They show how simple a system can be and yet still retain a good set of rules, which are effective and fun to use. I ran this game for the first time after only a brief skim through the rulebook, and we had very few problems.

Skills have been stripped down and instead of having loads of specialised skills you will have things like Police or Guns. Each skill comes with a knowledge and contacts bonus as well. This means that if you take the Guns skill you also have a good idea what the gun being pointed at you by the mook is. Mook, by the way, is a Feng Shui term for henchmen, lackeys and cannon fodder – generally the guys who get killed by the dozen in action films. The contact aspect of the skill means that you probably know someone who is also skilled in the area of the skill. Guns for instance may mean you know someone who can get hold of firearms for you and could even have info for you from time to time.

What about Combat? I want to be like one of the blokes in the films!

Combat is (as it should be in an action game) really easy. Everything has been designed to make you do cool things instead of the usual I’ll fire my gun. Now you can have abilities (schticks) allowing you to do stuff like “both guns blazing” and “lightening reload”, this is gun combat as it should be, John Woo would be proud.

The martial arts aspect of the game has been given some serious thought as well. Your character can follow various paths that let’s them learn new moves or powers as time goes on. This features ass-whipping classics like “Flying Windmill Kick” and “Fire Fist”. These all help make combat feel more exciting and fluid than it does in most other games and characters will (should…) act more heroically now they have special moves and abilities to use.

So can I pull off moves like Jet Li?

The rest of the rules have been designed to make sure that nothing you’ve seen people like Jackie Chan, Jet Li or Van Damme do in a film is out of reach. Some of it may be hard but that just makes it more impressive when you pull it off. The game basically tries to lead you into a different style of roleplaying. Where most games have things like flying a helicopter in the wind as a “real tough” difficulty example, Feng Shui has things like leaping from a speeding car and intimidating an undead monster. This is good to show your players, as it reminds them that they’re playing an action game, and let’s them know that your expecting a little more than usual.

I feel I should mention my love for all things Feng Shui so you know where I stand. I think the game was a breath of fresh air when it was first released and I own the original rulebook and two of the sourcebooks. I was ticking over angry when it went down, but overjoyed to find out that Atlas Games had picked it back up and were going to return it to our shelves. I think the writing style of the books is excellent, I like the brief mention of real world things (like Civilisation, and the X-Files) and the love of the action movies that inspired the game. Just thought I’d let you know.

At first Feng Shui may come across with a 'one off when you’re in no mood for serious gaming' style game, like Og! or Puppetland. But trust me, this game has the scope for epic scenarios and monstrous storylines, in fact it cries out for them. So, if your getting bored rolling your agility every time you go up some stairs, I’d recommend you add a little adrenaline-pumping, pulse-raising, teeth-clenching action packed gaming to your book shelf and invest in this game.

Hey if it goes wrong you can always use it 'Jackie Chan Style' in the out- takes at the end…

Reviewed By Jon Simpson