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Night10194 posted:So what's the deal with this Homo Omega guy they mention like, once in the Jammer book as Battlechimp Potemkin's 'greatest foe'? He and the Seed of the New Flesh aren't actually in Seed of the New Flesh and I'm thinking he's probably a legacy mention from Shadowfist or something. He's in Back for Seconds, which was the "general setting info and people from the card game" book. He is pretty hardcore, with a unique shtick that lets him turn his arm into any weapon or arcanowave device he wants.
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Nov 12, 2013 03:46
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 11:10 |
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Chimp Shack is a database that's got info about every single Shadowfist card ever printed. There's no artwork, but it does have flavor text, and might be useful for anyone putting a Feng Shui game together. Whoever maintains it is still keeping up with things, it's been updated within the last couple of months. This is also probably the first time in ten years that my username is relevant to anything: This guy has singlehandedly won games for me on more than one occasion. 
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Nov 12, 2013 20:38
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Man, I really want to relax and enjoy Feng Shui for the robort wizard kung fu fest it is, but the fact that there's a metaplot and all these canon characters, canon locations and canon motivations of factions bothers me so much  Fun fact: the first game I ever played at a RPG event was Feng Shui. Of course, playing with people I don't know, my GM ended up being three times larger than me, looked like he hadn't taken a bath since 1985, and wore a white shirt that somehow shone in a bizarre shade of green and brown, the same shade as his teeth, incidentally. It was still fun!
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Nov 13, 2013 17:37
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Shadowfist has the metaplot. Feng Shui doesn't - they basically stopped the plot right after the Dragons got themselves torn to bits and didn't advance it at all after that.
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Nov 13, 2013 17:50
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Cyphoderus posted:Man, I really want to relax and enjoy Feng Shui for the robort wizard kung fu fest it is, but the fact that there's a metaplot and all these canon characters, canon locations and canon motivations of factions bothers me so much Hell, in Back For Seconds they have Operation: Killdeer, which wipes out all the major Dragons except for the Prof and Kar Fai so the PCs can step in as the next iteration of the group. They even off a bunch of major NPCs from the card game. They do a good job of saying that canon really isn't that canonical, and you can mess with the timestream as much as you like.
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Nov 13, 2013 17:52
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Feng Shui lets you spinning backfist continuity and in fact expects it.
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Nov 13, 2013 18:14
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:Feng Shui lets you spinning backfist continuity and in fact expects it. Yeah, I completely wrecked the continuity in just about every campaign I've run. You're totally free to make up entire new factions, shut down junctures and open new ones, or do whatever you wish. The only real constant is that you're supposed to have fun and someone is supposed to do a running backflip and get tossed up to a big, heavy statue by the Big Bruiser so they can push it over onto the snake demon or whatever other insane stunt your PCs need to do at the moment. Kill off canon characters, rewrite them, have them never have existed, etc. It's like how the game specifically provides material for playing as or against every faction that exists; you could tweak anyone to be the Good Guys if you want to play from their perspective. Want a game about reforming Buro from inside as a couple TacOps who really believe in the whole freedom and equality thing? Do it. Want to run a game that ignores the Secret War and is just Big Trouble in Little China: The Game? You've got the stuff to do it.
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Nov 13, 2013 19:24
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So alright, folks! It's officially ON. I'm running Feng Shui for my group next week as our anti-D&DNext. A palate cleanser before getting back to Dark Sun. I have never run Feng Shui. My players have never played Feng Shui. I plan to run the basics for them - only core book archetypes and rules, running through Baptism of Fire. Do you have any tips for all of us newbies? Any rules I should pay attention to or ignore? Any awesome archetypes to steer players towards or troublesome ones I should ban? Any advice would be kickin'.
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Nov 14, 2013 06:03
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Remember the rule of "if its plausible for a prop to be there, it is" and don't sweat the small stuff, keep the action going. Also remember the Big Bad of the adventure is basically a variation of this guy:  (Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China, and if you haven't seen that... you should!)
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Nov 14, 2013 06:07
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Galaga Galaxian posted:Remember the rule of "if its plausible for a prop to be there, it is" and don't sweat the small stuff, keep the action going.
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Nov 14, 2013 06:10
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I have a copy of Big Trouble and will be watching it.  I am thinking of a rule where basically an attack without any fun behind it - "I will kick him" or something - works at a -2 penalty, much like a stunt. Is this moronic?
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Nov 14, 2013 06:17
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Don't punish people, reward them for doing cool poo poo.
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Nov 14, 2013 06:18
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dwarf74 posted:I have a copy of Big Trouble and will be watching it. Don't do that. Ask the player what they're kicking the guy into! Surely a Chinese Restraunt has a Massive Gong Decoration sitting around. Who can punt/slam/smash the most mooks into the gong? Winner gets an extra temporary fortune point!  (Bonus points if the first mook so Gonged stumbles off the gong dazed and collapses, slumping onto the jukebox which starts playing "Get it on (Bang a Gong)" by Power Station)
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Nov 14, 2013 06:21
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Zereth posted:Don't punish people, reward them for doing cool poo poo. Galaga Galaxian posted:Don't do that. Ask the player what they're kicking the guy into! Surely a Chinese Restraunt has a Massive Gong Decoration sitting around. Who can punt/slam/smash the most mooks into the gong? Winner gets an extra temporary fortune point! Thanks, folks. Better mindset. D&D Next has warped me for a few
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Nov 14, 2013 06:25
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If they have a character gimmick and stick with it, give them a bonus. I was in a one-shot Feng Shui adventure years ago where one PC was basically Jack Burton by way of Arnold Schwarzenegger, complete with overwrought and intentionally terrible "Austrian" accent. He did not break character or accent even once, and it was glorious.
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Nov 14, 2013 06:43
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You may want to steer people away from the Big Bruiser as he is simply not that good without houserules. One HR'd I'd basically internalized and didn't realize was not actually a thing: One archetype (Ex-special forces) has the ability to switch the AVS around between his two combat skills to decide whether they're more focused on martial arts or guns. Most others with two combat skills don't. I'd at least give the others the option.
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Nov 14, 2013 11:01
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unseenlibrarian posted:You may want to steer people away from the Big Bruiser as he is simply not that good without houserules.
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Nov 14, 2013 16:43
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They start with a 12 combat AV, making it really hard for them to take down mooks or hit major villains at all. They're tougher than nails, being able to take 0 Outcome assault rifle shots and barely take damage, but they can't do much in return. In short, they're mechanically pretty good at their thing (soaking up a ton of damage) but Feng Shui really isn't a system that promotes sitting there and taking it, and it can be kinda frustrating to be unable to do cool stunts right back on the enemy. On the flip-side, they're also not much fun to fight because they take for freaking ever to kill unless you have really heavy ordinance.
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Nov 14, 2013 16:48
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Yeah, the biggest problem with the system is that the combat system is based around the assumption that everyone has an attack value and defense value of at 15. If your attack value is less than that, you're going to have a hard time hitting anything. If your attack is 15 and the target's defense is 15 (standard for starting PCs and NPCs), then you've got a decent chance of hitting. But if your starting attack is 12, then you're effectively at -3 to hit anyone, but everyone else is at +3 to hit you. The other side of the problem is that it renders mooks a complete non-threat, because with an attach of 7, they'd need at least a +8 to hit a starting PC. And while I get that having ineffective mooks is thematic, it also means there's no point in having them attack PCs since there's no way for them to be anything but speedbumps. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 17:38 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 17:20
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dwarf74 posted:What's bad about them? The lack of shticks? Three problem archetypes - almost all because in Feng Shui AV is king. 1: The Big Bruiser can't hit the broad side of a barn door and gets hit by everyone. AV12 simply doesn't cut it and they don't even hit that hard compared to e.g. shotguns. And although they can take 0AV shotgun shots and take almost no damage they get whittled down. (Big Bruiser antagonists of course flail ineptly at PCs because the PCs Active Dodge meaning that the big bruiser will need a minimum of +4 on the dice to hit). 2: The Old Master is ridiculously overpowered especially in the hands of someone who knowns the system. Cut their AV to 14 and give them seven schticks and they'd be fine - but with an AV of 16 they are almost as tough as the Big Bruiser despite their terrible Body. AV is king. 3: The Thief. AV 13 (i.e. second lowest in the game) and the only archetype to have no schticks at all. Might work pretty well one-on-one with their infiltration score, but there are only so many times you can steal the clips out of peoples guns and the belts from their trousers before it gets annoying. If someone wants to be a thief point them towards either the Ninja (itself slightly weak on schticks to try to cut down on the Ninja-Cultists of the 90s) as the infiltration specialist or the Scrappy Kid as the annoy the bad guys specialist. Edit: AVs translate as follows. 12: Hopelessly outclassed (Big Bruiser only) 13: Semi-combatant there for other stuff (journalist, thief, transformed animal, ghost) 13+: The Scrappy Kid and the Everyman Hero for practical purposes have AVs of 14 and are deliberately a lot tougher than they look. 14: Solid combatant with other skills (Ninja, Ex-special forces, Karate Cop) 15: We Just Fight (Martial Artist, Killer) 16: Legend (Old Master) Alternatively as the system is d6-d6, cut 12 off all the values and imagine it was a Fate game where one skill was overwhelmingly more useful than the rest. Edit: I'd have said that 14 was the default assumption, not 15. neonchameleon fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 17:29
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It should be pointed out that if you're doing Baptism of Fire, Happy is effectively a Big Bruiser, and is pretty much a huge bucket of hit points. He still has an AV of 12, so he has that "can't hit well but is drat near impossible to hurt" issue.
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Nov 14, 2013 17:53
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Yeah, I think I see the problem. So, knowing the problem, what solutions would you recommend? Just fixing the archetypes? More bonuses for stunts? Fortune points? Because, yeah, the probabilities on d6-d6 are heavily center weighted.
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Nov 14, 2013 19:04
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dwarf74 posted:Yeah, I think I see the problem. For the Big Bruiser? Big Bruisers take out mooks on a margin of 0 - and get 10,000 bullets (i.e. may attack an additional unnamed character for free) as part of the archetype. In short they are going to do a lot of destruction as well as tanking. For the Old Master? AV14 and 7 schticks. For the Thief? Something like the following schtick: Master Thief A thief may attack using Intrusion to steal something off someone or plant something on them. Weapons, clips out of the gun, and small but important devices like belts are all favourites. To steal a weapon roll Intrusion as if it was an attack roll against their weapon AV, and they gain a +2 bonus to defend if it is something they are actively holding (like a gun but not the clip to a gun). And to steal something else that will slow them down like a belt or shoe laces roll vs their AV - they lose a number of shots equal to the margin sorting themselves out. A thief may defend using Intrusion as their AV if they are somehow concealed or in shadows. A concealed thief may backstab once using their Intrusion AV and doubling damage inflicted - but if they do that they may no longer defend using their Intrusion score for the rest of the fight.
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Nov 15, 2013 18:53
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Thanks! If Atlas tells us its too late to alpha playtest, I'll use some of those with my group. If we are playtesting, then I should stick with real rules.
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Nov 15, 2013 22:39
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That idea for the Bruiser really helps them, I think, since it also lets them fulfill an important part of their archetype in movies: The huge guy is usually shown knocking little foes aside like tenpins to establish he's a threat or badass, then has trouble with a truly skilled opponent to establish THEY are a threat or a badass.
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Nov 16, 2013 17:58
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How do defensive stunts work? Mechanically, I mean.
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Nov 17, 2013 05:20
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Night10194 posted:That idea for the Bruiser really helps them, I think, since it also lets them fulfill an important part of their archetype in movies: The huge guy is usually shown knocking little foes aside like tenpins to establish he's a threat or badass, then has trouble with a truly skilled opponent to establish THEY are a threat or a badass. The Worf Effect given mechanical weight? I like it.
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Nov 17, 2013 16:14
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dwarf74 posted:How do defensive stunts work? Mechanically, I mean. You say the cool thing you're trying to do to avoid damage, spend 1 shot, and get +3 to your dodge value, pretty much. Maybe something cool happens if they miss you if the dodge was really neat or you had a Schtick like Shattering Blow from Golden Comeback.
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Nov 17, 2013 17:01
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Alright, so it looks like house rules are out. I just emailed with Cam Banks, and we're in the alpha/beta playtest group. Late to the party, but we're in.
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Nov 19, 2013 21:12
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Is there really talk about introducing some of the Shadowfist factions? Because it would warm my heart no end if my beloved Purists and Syndicate were to be in Feng Shui after being cruelly torn away from us in Shadowfist. The game certainly needs more 1980s Gibson-esque cyberninja hackers.
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Nov 21, 2013 03:13
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Its mostly speculation right now.
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Nov 21, 2013 03:16
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Oh man, this game, I gotta say that I really wanted this game to work but had a problem when I ran the one shot for my group. I mean, I tried getting them psyche for it watching the classic Hong Kong action flicks like Hard Boiled, which is a movie any serious action film afficienado must see. Anyway, the one shot from the back of the book appeared to be fine at first but there were some problems, I had a martial artist, techie, and Detective Tequila. Combat would be swingy in the sense of scale that mooks would die way too easily such as that ambush at the construction site but the drat bruiser and such couldn't be hit at all or take significant damage alongside Sneezy and that Sorceror with the plastic toy flamethrower. Reading through this thread, I thought I optimized the characters poorly for it but in actuality they were mostly all over 15 av. I just felt that the two d6s rolling really didn't give my players a chance to be an actual Detective Tequila. I'm still not going to give up on it and I do plan on running another session but any suggestions on what to do for it so that my players can have a better time than before? Also, I only have the core book, are the supplementals good especially since I just want to focus on the Hong Kong 90s era?
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Nov 21, 2013 04:23
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Man, we had our intro session tonight and basically everyone thought it was loving awesome. Maybe that will change with more experience under our belt, but it met universal applause tonight. The part I was most worried about - the shot counter - was way, way easier than I expected it to be. Everyone grasped it more or less immediately. We had a ghost, an old master, a maverick cop, and a transformed animal (rat). The only maybe iffy one (so far) was the rat; he didn't have much he could do against mooks. We haven't seen how the old master is broken yet, but I can completely believe an expert in the system could use him to break it in half.
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Nov 21, 2013 06:57
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C'mon man. Don't just say "we played, it was fun and awesome!" What awesome things happened?
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Nov 21, 2013 07:05
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Galaga Galaxian posted:C'mon man. Don't just say "we played, it was fun and awesome!" What awesome things happened? * OK, so we started out in the Eating Counter, naturally. The players aren't really sure about starting up violence so they try a few other things first. The ghost in particular decided to try and Enchant one of the Poison Thorns that was going after Kar-Wai. She ended up exploding her die like 3 times and getting a 24 or something. So I ruled that that one was just completely infatuated. She tried it on another mook to similar results, right when the fight started, so those two ended up punching each other the whole fight. Having had such success, she tried it on Happy. I used the "completely derail the plot" modifier for this one ... and told her that it was the saddest thing in the world. Here was a man ... who couldn't love. My players somehow thought this was the best possible thing, kind of to my surprise. * The rat tranimal figured out he'd need money to pay for his meal. So we decided to use Deceive for picking pockets. He went after the coinage, since the paper was just some kind of wrapping or padding or something. * The ghost player was tickled pink that the bad guys were named Sneezy and Happy. She spent the whole time asking where Doc and Grumpy were. * So the players tracked down Fast Eddie Lo, eventually. They needed to be pushed a bit because they have a tendency to dither. And once they got there, they were kind of rude to the Aussie bartender and got stonewalled. Hearing "stonewalled" gave the ghost an idea. She just sauntered to the back door, phased through it, got shot at in an antechamber (immune to bullets), phased into the meeting room, then waltzed straight into the room where Fast Eddie was making a getaway. Fortunately, he decided this walking-through-walls bit was interesting enough that he invited the party back ... but only after apologizing to Bri. This caught me really by surprise; I didn't expect her to just ... well ... saunter in like that. She played the "bullet magnet" bit at the construction site, too. * Lots of good times with the maverick cop. I had a blast throwing cliches at him. Even had his straight-laced Lieutenant show up, talking about how he's a "loose cannon," and whatnot. The player just slid right into character, too, which was great - this was one of my players who only minimally roleplays, and he was doing the "grizzled cop ... who follows his own law" bit perfectly. * The Old Master launched into a flying bicycle kick against a mook after the mook cut him just to see how far he could keep it going. (The answer was three attacks.) * On seeing Mr. Lawyer run away, the rat player dove right into the "you describe the scene to me" bit and threw some conveniently placed tires around him. Worked splendidly. * Much discussion on how the waitresses at the Bun Festival (great name for a titty bar) had huge feet, given the whole foot-binding thing. The ghost thinks she likes 1996 better than 69 so far. Some other observations... * Fortune points are a big deal. Very big. Insofar as the Old Master has a balancing factor, that seems to be it. Everyone else arranged their stats to get a few. * Shots and mooks... I handwaved a lot. I didn't want mooks going on different shot counts; screw that. * I am so goddamn confused about how advancement will work.
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Nov 21, 2013 08:09
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When in doubt throw the Architects having a shoot-out with some Jammers in front of them. Gorillas with energy weapons make everything better 
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Nov 21, 2013 09:10
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The old master -really- gets broken when crane style gets into the mix. All of a sudden he's using his chi instead of strength for damage, and with his +6 fists he's hitting almost as hard as a big bruiser with a signature melee weapon, while having a much better AV. The ghost in my playtest session was MVP, as walking through walls+flying made rescuing Carina and evacuating tenants in the burning building a lot easier.
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Nov 21, 2013 13:17
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Yeah, those plus bullet immunity make one hell of a package, I gotta say.
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Nov 21, 2013 16:34
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:When in doubt throw the Architects having a shoot-out with some Jammers in front of them. Gorillas with energy weapons make everything better This chap gets it. The Jammers exist to just show up, apropos of nothing, and start shrieking 'BLOW IT UP!' while their missile launchers are warming up. If you're ever bored in Feng Shui, a Jammer strike team teleports in via Gatemaker and just starts to wreck up the place.
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Nov 21, 2013 16:51
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Night10194 posted:This chap gets it. The Jammers exist to just show up, apropos of nothing, and start shrieking 'BLOW IT UP!' while their missile launchers are warming up. If you're ever bored in Feng Shui, a Jammer strike team teleports in via Gatemaker and just starts to wreck up the place. I recommend having a truck full of ninjas crash into wherever the PCs are.
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Nov 22, 2013 00:46
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