Feng Shui

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Feng Shui is the name of two separate things:

• A faggy new-age thing that allows neurotic control freaks to look spiritual.
• The only RPG where the first session can open with a kung-fu master, a loose-cannon cop who plays by his own rules, a sorcerer from the mists of Chinese history, and a cyborg gorilla eating noodles in a restaurant staffed entirely by ninjas, all with absolutely no homebrewing on the GM's part.

This game is designed in homage to Hong Kong action movies, so expect ridiculous fight scenes and a plot that exists primarily to give the PCs opportunities to show off their Weeaboo Fightan Magic. The system is like a very early precursor to the FATE System, using the "wilder curve" of rolling two differently-colored d6s and subtracting one from the other before adding skill modifiers that some FATE games use as an alternative rolling scheme. The main source of PC abilities is by taking schticks, special powers and features (and also the crunchier counterpart of FATE's Aspects) which range from secret techniques handed down from the old masters to demon limbs grafted to your body to just being really good at shooting guns. There were two versions of the first edition, one by Daedalus Entertainment in 1996, the second by Atlas Games in 1999, which kept the original text, rolled in some extra archetypes from the Back For Seconds supplement, and gave it new art and layout. It is very, very 90s. A full second edition, Feng Shui 2, came out in 2015, updating the mechanics and setting to fit modern design sensibilities.

Feng Shui was a pioneer in the field of action-driven, rules-light RPGs. Some mechanics and ideas that Feng Shui was the first or among the first to implement are:

• Simplified crunch for random thugs (known as "unnamed characters" or "mooks") that act as living props for the PCs to go ham on
• Getting mechanical bonuses for describing the awesome thing your character is trying to do
• Encouraging the players to decide what happens when they fail or suffer some plot-mandatory setback instead of having the GM dictate it to them
• Outright telling the GM to avoid making players roll for things unless the consequences of failure would be fun to play out
• The "ninja rule"-- if the PCs don't know where to go next or the plot is starting to drag, just throw ninjas at them, they'll come up with something

Setting

The setting of Feng Shui revolves around, well, feng shui. Chinese geomancy is real, it works, and not only does it improve your stock returns, it controls the course of history. Attune yourself to enough locuses for the world's chi (called feng shui sites even if they're nowhere near China) and the chi flowing through them bends to your will, granting you fortune and power over the masses. PCs are various types of action movie protagonist dragged into the Secret War (or Chi War if you're playing Feng Shui 2) for control of these sites, which extends across time thanks to the ethereal realm known as the Netherworld. You see, while time looks linear to you and me, it's actually more like a canal shaped like a pretzel. It bends and twists around on itself, and the "knots" become portals to the Netherworld. The Netherworld is a... place of damp, mist-filled caverns which may or may not be made entirely of solidified chi, and by walking through it you can find another portal which will take you to another place in time and space. But mostly China. Don't get clever and think you can use this to fix fights in your favor or send messages to yourself; time travel in Feng Shui is only there for genre chop-suey and the GM is outright told to fuck you up if you try anything. The times that (almost) all Netherworld portals open to at any given moment are fixed, called junctures by those who use them. There are usually four at any given moment, but this is not a hard and fast rule of the setting, and the GM is given permission (through "rumors" in Feng Shui and the new pop-up junctures in Feng Shui 2) to have a portal open to anywhere, anywhen.

Here's where things get crazy. Because time is anchored to the flow of chi, if you control enough of that chi you can induce a critical shift in the timeline. If you try to do this without the chi being in your favor, it accomplishes jack shit as events bend around your changes. (Say Johnny Wong goes back in time and kills his ancestor. When he gets back to his own juncture, he finds that his name is now Johnny Fong, and he has a different personal history, but everything else is pretty much the same and as far as anyone outside of the Secret War is concerned it's always been that way. This is called a superficial shift.) Critical shifts have the power to completely change the timeline, so there's a lot riding on gaining and defending your feng shui sites lest your rivals in the Netherworld create a critical shift that leaves you and your buddies as bums or something.

Feng Shui

The main junctures in the original versions are:

69 AD: A juncture straight out of Hong Kong wuxia movies, the Hong Kong of this juncture is nominally ruled by the Han Dynasty, but officials have become corrupt, and a secret faction of evil eunuch sorcerers known as the Eaters of the Lotus have taken over the administration of the empire, quashing dissent with kung fu warriors, summoned demons and powerful sorcery.

1850 AD: A juncture straight out of period kung fu cinema, where the Chinese and the Western powers clash in Hong Kong. It's also the period for Victorian adventures and Wild West action. One of the groups seeking power is the Guiding Hand, a group of Shaolin monks and other kung fu types who want to get rid of foreign influence in China and bring about a world of enlightenment, which in their mind means a boring and stagnant bureaucracy in which everyone does exactly what their parents and superiors tell them forever. They fucking hate the contemporary juncture.

Contemporary ("1996"): The modern day, such as it is in the Heroic Bloodshed genre. This juncture (as well as most of 1850) is controlled by the Ascended, an Ancient Conspiracy made up of the descendants of animals who defied the natural order and transformed themselves into humans long ago. The only thing that can turn them back into their natural animal form is magic, and thus, the Ascended and their human agents, the Pledged, are actively involved in the suppression of magic and the discrediting or destruction of sorcerers. The Ascended control the government, the police, the military, and most of the major crime syndicates of the world.

2056 AD: A dystopian future, this juncture is ruled by a one-world government called the Bureau of Tactical Management (or "Buro" in short), monitoring its civilians by a sophisticated surveillance state that is equal parts the World State from Brave New World and Oceania from 1984. The group that was instrumental in bringing the Buro to power are the Architects of the Flesh, a group of mad scientists who use arcanowave technology, an unholy fusion of magic and science that warps its users beyond recognition, and who capture monsters from 69 AD and alter them to create cyber-demonic commandos called Abominations, which the Buro uses to fight its wars.

In addition to the factions listed above, three more factions exist:

The Jammers are a group of Bomb-Throwing Anarchists who are among the few people born with immunity to the influence of chi. They started as rebels against the Buro and the Architects in 2056, and have developed their own brand of junkyard tech that doesn't rely on arcanowave science. Among their number are a good number of intelligent cybernetic apes, the results of the Architects' first experiments. The Jammers want nothing less than to destroy every Feng Shui site in existence so that humanity can be freed from the "tyranny" of chi, something which could have some very bad consequences for the world at large if they succeed.

The Four Monarchs are four siblings and powerful sorcerers who once ruled the world up until the 20th century, when the Ascended captured enough Feng Shui sites in the medieval era to trigger a Critical Shift in time that brought about the world we know and removed them from power. Each monarch has carved out his or her own little kingdom in the Netherworld, and they continually plot and scheme against each other and against the other factions.

The Dragons are the good guys, a collection of maverick cops, redeemed assassins, martial artists, Ninjas, big bruisers and other heroic types rising from among the humble and the outcasts of the world in order to fight for freedom, justice, and the right to look extremely cool. The Dragons rise again and again throughout time in order to help people and keep important Feng Shui sites from falling into the wrong hands, but like the heroes of many a Hong Kong action movie, the fate of anyone who takes on the mantle of the Dragons is often a tragic one.

Feng Shui 2

In Feng Shui 2, the detonation of a Chi Bomb triggers a major shake-up in the junctures. The main junctures now are:

Ancient (690 AD): The closure of their original era thanks to the bomb forced the Eaters of the Lotus to find refuge in this new juncture, during the time of the Tang Dynasty, where Empress Wu Zeitan, China's only official female ruler, has begun her reign. Unfortunately for the Lotus, the Empress is not about to tolerate any threats to her power, and has purged her court of sorcerers, so the Lotus seek to undermine her and claim power for themselves.

Past (1850 AD): Uniquely among the main junctures, this one remains attached to its original year, with the Guiding Hand seeking to remove foreign influence from China.

Contemporary: The contemporary juncture advances with the passing of time, so it's always the present day, and the Ascended continue to maintain their dominion over the world.

Future (2074 AD): Thanks to the Chi Bomb, this juncture has gone from a dystopia to a post-apocalyptic wasteland along the lines of Mad Max, with cyborgs, mutants and road warriors struggling to survive in a devastated world. In 2069, the Jammers detonated the bomb in an attempt to eradicate chi in all major junctures. Fortunately for the timestream - if not for those who survived - the worst effects were chiefly limited to their time period, killing 97% of the population, mutating many of the survivors, and laying waste to the environment. The Architects of the Flesh, as holders of most of the planet's chi sites, were wiped out. The Jammers, faced with the horrific disaster they'd brought about, split into two factions. The original Jammers now seek to claim sufficient chi sites in the past to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, no matter how many innocents have to die in the process. The New Simian Empire, meanwhile, seeks the establishment of a new cyber-ape empire, whether in this era or the past.

In addition, the Chi Bomb's explosion has also triggered the creation of pop-up junctures, temporary portals leading to other time periods.

Why You Should Play It

It's an easy-to-learn, fast-paced system that encourages over-the-top action. Also, cyborg gorillas.