Anyone got a good combat example?

Games Discussion Feng Shui
1

I've got my wife's friend coming over to game next weekend and the only thing that he's ever played was D&D back in the early 90's. He does have a love of hong kong/action films but not perhaps the narrative gaming style that Feng Shui adopts.

This being the case I was wondering if anyone has a good step by step combat guide that they've got written down somewhere? - something with a couple of players or more, some mooks and maybe a named character that shows off some wild stunting etc. More than one sequence would also be awesome. There's nothing really good in the core rules (or supplements that I am aware of).

Cheers to anyone who can help.

2

Surely, anyone who can cope with D&D combat should find Feng a cakewalk by comparison...

3

Isn't that the truth?!

I'm pretty sure I posted this before, but if this is for someone new to the game, maybe this could help, I'm not sure exactly what stance you need this from so maybe you might need to copy and paste it and rearrange it for yourself, I know you've been around this forum a lot longer than I have and have a lot more experience with this game than I do.

I ran a brief "let's all get used to the system" one-off a few weeks before running my second Feng Shui game; just the PCs hot on the trail of a wanted criminal or something that ducked into a restaurant to meet some lackeys (apparently restaurants are routinely violent in HK). We all fumbled around with the rules and the dice and mooks, stunts and multiple actions and attacks in one shot and such and eventually got an adequate feel for them during this.

The Everyman Hero was knocked down by the Named baddie, but used his turn to, while on the ground, grab a chair and hurl it into the bad guy - with his legs. Surprising and awesome, none of us had been exposed to this kind of creative game that actually had rules that not just covered but encouraged such things, I was encouraged by how well people (kids, teens actually) picked up on and got into the game's intent, with none of us even being super martial arts fans. I had a good feeling right off.

Anyway, the group chased the Named baddy down the hallway where an elevator of three more baddies were waiting for him. One PC was ahead of the others but not really close enough to quite grab him before he got in and closed the doors, so I gave the player a choice to make some sort of check to make a desperate leap into the elevator which would automatically put him through a round of attacks and leave him prone - he did it and the other PC's got to see him disappear into the lift and the doors close and the car ascend to the roof.

I don't remember exactly what happened, but the PC somehow cold-cocked one baddy and somehow entangled or otherwise removed the others from the fight, and had the Named baddy in a sleeper hold as the doors went DING and opened to the roof (yeah, directly to the rooftop, what can I say, it was a run-through). There was an escape helicopter waiting with a machine gunner inside, who, once the Named baddy got a lucky roll and made a break for safety, sprayed the elevator and PC, finally giving the damage rules a chance to be used on the PC. Semi-conscious and lying bleeding on the rooftop, he watched the helicopter zip off, with the Named baddy grinning and giving him a mock salute. I think he would be a good recurring character, too bad he was a throwaway one-shot NPC I never took time to detail.

4

You'd think, but some people who use miniatures can't possibly imagine fight scenes in their head. I had a hard enough time running a WoD game for DnD guys without miniatures and Feng Shui is a lot more open to interpretation that that.

5

Oh Gods. I avoid using miniatures for anything if I can possibly help it. (D&D 4th ed, which has made itself predicated upon miniatures, is a fab board game, but a lousy RPG)

And when people ask me why I think that miniatures cause the death of role-playing, I point them to Robin Laws's fantastic essay "The Map is Not Your Friend" in the main Feng rulebook.

6

My problem is that I love miniatures, got hundreds of 'em. Not overly fond of miniature rpg games though... - used to like warhammer before I got older and realised I didn't have the cash to sink into it.

Shame really, as I love the settings for many savage worlds games.

7

One of the now dead FS web sites used to have a look at a fight from Hard Boiled in it to show how it breaks down.

I found an archieve of it at the link bellow it might give you some ideas.

replay.waybackmachine.org/200604 ... hbteahouse

Used to use minatures when I still had my old game colection, that got destroyed a few yeras back with Katrina. The only games in which my old group used to use them on a regular basis were in Cyberpunk 2020, Mekton, and Aftermath!.

I don't have the mony to sink into them anymore and don't have any of my old ones nor the games that I used them in.

If I were to do something with minatures I'd end up making some cardboard counters or figures using Campaign Cartographer and DAZ3D or finding some counters on line I could print up as that would end up costing less in the long run. (Actually am working on something that I hope to have done provided my finances in that area that I hope to have finished by October.)