General discussion if any of you are running/playing this great system right now.
I'm currently running a Feng Shui game for some players right now on a bi-weekly basis. We alternate GMs and people seem to really love it, so I keep running it.
The current plot line is a revenge story where one of my players had a brother and kung fu master who were killed by an assassin. Or so he believed until he runs into the assassin and after getting his butt kicked it's revealed that his brother is alive, working for the assassin and faked his own death to hide it.
As it turns out after he defeats his brother that there are eight students of the assassin who are all linked to him, to receive his awesome training you have to go through a ceremony where you connect your chi to his, thus giving him some of your power. Ultimately for him it's a fail safe of sorts so that no student of his ever becomes powerful enough to take him out should they ever get the gumption to take it upon themselves to do so. To weaken him they have to take out, or as they just found out there is a reversal ceremony that can be performed as well, on all 8 of the students that he currently has. So far including the brother they have taken care of 3 of them or at least know of their whereabouts and have them co-operating. So far they've only really taken out one of them.
I think I have a link in my signature to my blog where I have a more in depth write up going on.
Anyone else with some exciting campaigns going on?
I'm currently on hiatus, after having run it more or less continuously since I bought it back in.. hmm... '99 was it? I've got To Go lined as an Unknown Armies campaign this year (and it will be the first time ever I have run any campaign out of a book), but what with trying to get the things I've been writing playtested poor old Feng has been left out in the cold. Although I prefer playing it to running it; I only ended up doing the latter so much because no-one else wanted to run a regular game.
Got a campaign planned out, got players. Now I'm just waiting for our current game of Rogue Trader to finish (a month or two yet) and I'm gonna start running good old Feng Shui.
General plans (edited in case of players coming across it)
Portals closed in 1996, no explanation why. Open again 2010 (when the game starts). I have actully got a reason for it. All will become clear to the players as we play.
First 3 sessions will be each characters introduction (other players will handle major NPC's for me to make sure they are not bored).
Session 1 : The Ninja's origin story. Orpahan Ninja, nuff said. Will introduce reoccuring bad guys and some hints about the secret war.
Session 2 : The ex-special forces story. Much like the main character from 'Shoot-em-up'. Will be introduced to the secret war APPEARING DEMON TEMPLE STYLE!!
Session 3: The everyman hero story. This will hint (well, one character will know for sure) why the portals closed, give the players a reason to join up with the Dragons and will introduce the Lotus and Ascended.
Session 4: First adventure as a single group (Gonna use Baptism of Fire for this one, with some changes of course)
There will be a proper reason for them to stick together and get involved in the war and I'm planning to run it much like a season of Buffy, with a big bad and characters being build up (backstory-wise) to a 'season finale'. Maybe about 12 adventures worth for the 'season'.
Been so long since I've GM'ed though. Hope I'm not putting too much planning into it, as I known all too well the havok PC's can cause to well laid plans.
Looking forward to it though. should be fun.
Bondidude, I am of course following your adventures. and
Queex, your website (including house-rules and 'Out for Blood') is an awesome resource and will be getting used for sure.
So thanks to both of you. I'm sure my players will appreciate the enhanced gaming because of you two.
My gaming group in general dissolved, though if it counts, FS was the last game that was played, and I was running it... wait, that doesn't sound good... nah, it was my friend and his stepson and nephew and their friends and they went off to GM games for their friends so we kinda lost our base, unfortunately. I started up a game online pbp on another site but all four players simultaneously lost their internet (three I can believe maybe), as one had the power go out in his neighborhood for a week, another lost his phone service, another's computer crashed and I can't remember what happened to the fourth. The other two, (yeah, six players) simply only posted one time. Maybe I had too much Christopher Walken in my intro - but how can that be?
This is pretty much my plan with my game as well. I started them off with Baptism of Fire first, then ran a couple of unrelated one offs to get them used to the system. After that I introduced the big bad for the "season", Arachnid, and then his league of assassins. I've got the league of assassins roughed out and the whole angle of them taking each of them out and some rough sketches of where they end up with each, etc.
Then of course we end with a final(?) fight with Arachnid. Then I'm taking a month off, we have plenty of GMs in the group who can run for a month, a few who have expressed running one offs or the like or we can play board games, while I take a break and formulate "Season 2" as it were. I've got a few ideas about where we're going to go with that one and have been dropping some clues to it in this season, building it up in some of the more minor plot points and setting things up for the major plot of the next season.
As for planning too much it depends on your GM style. I generally try to avoid railroading my players but at the same time I don't want to have my games be a total free for all. I told them early on that I want to use their characters to tell interesting and yet interactive stories. So it's a little bit of both, we generally sit down with a general direction that we're going in for the session but how we get there is up to them.
I'm on a break of runnng games at the moment, mostly as it is very hard to cordinate with my players, and I don't have all the RPG resources I had years ago. (House got destroyed with Katina. FS stuff survived as that was in the car.)
I'm currently trying to get some stuff for a Nexus/Feng Shui Game set up in the Keep program Nbos makes and am going to try and run it with the Screen Monkey program they also make.
For the game in the works I'm going to make an Immortal archetype using the ones that are in Nexus. (The ones in Nexus are close enough to duplicate one from Highlander.) The other character type that I'm having someone want to play is a faerie or elf. (They aren't sure of which one they want to be.) Was thinking Supernatural Creature might be able to handle it or I'll see what I can do with Nexus.)
Dear friends, I'm running a FS rpg campaign in Italy.
We just started yesterday, playing the first part of Baprism of Fire.
It was an exciting game session because my players are not used to spectacular fighting style of FS.
They just said: "Cool!"
Unfortunately most of Italian players are bounded to D&D rules and FS stunts risk to be GM'ed like:
"You cannot do all that!What do you think your PC is like? Bruce Lee?"
The answer of that PC's player should be simply: "yes!"
The only problem was the fact that we had to play by chat and, you know, it could slow down the game.
I was playing by forum on a yahoo group with American players, but we are in an impasse situation so I decided to "export" it in Italy.
Wish me good luck!
One thing I'm pretty sure of:
it's the first time Feng Shui is played in Italian, by all Italian players.
I need everyone's suggestions because it's my first time GMing a game like FS, but, oh men, it's really explosive!
Gamemastering a small campaign here, with changing players due to shift problems (co-workers all around). Hopefully the next time its going into the special world between worlds.
Glad to hear from KungFuPizza and Apple - hmm two foods.
KungFu - just ask, post and I'm sure we'll all be happy for some activity on the board here, any questions or clarifications, etc. That is great about an italian group of FS players - so continental, for an action movie game! Tell us a bit about your game you're running and the characters involved, if you are inclined to do so.
I understand Apple's problem, even without scheduling problems, even when I get to go to my friend's, sometimes people are just doing other things, so I haven't got to game in quite a while, so even when you "win" you "lose".
With two young kids and having just moved house I find that my roleplaying time is limited as I get older. I tend to do a lot of one on one Feng Shui games with my wife. A lot of fun, but we wish we had more uninterrupted time to bounce of other players once and a while.
Have you tried online gaming, either play by post or using chat or virtual tabletops like Maptools, Apple? Ive been able to get the very basics down for maptool for one fantasy game I'm in and have been working on setting up a framework for running other game systems.
Personnaly? No and no. I have run Teamspek-Sessions for Shadowrun, but in my experience it only works good for 1 or 2 player at max. I know some friends who are using a professional client/server system for map/roll/information distribution.
My wife manages to play, of all games, Exalted over ventrilo (well now something else I believe) and does so admirably. Her groups is 5-6+ players and it seems to work for them (they do have an excellent GM) despite being one of the most rules heavy games I know. However I've never managed to get a hang of online pen and paper gaming, either by post/email or live server. I think I prefer to react off peoples faces and gestures- which with something like Feng Shui (at least in the fun games I've played)is something that really helps build the excitement of the game. - I have actually have someone round house a vase off the mantle piece in excitement as unbelievable as that might sound.
Don't know if this is the best place to write it, but I really need an online Feng shui adventure group.
As I wrote some messages before, I do not have the chance to play FS rpg in Italy,
but - how to say - it's a pity that such a game is less known than it really worths.
So, after our group game is deadlock because of players' lack of interest, I would like to ask if anyone would be willing to let me join his on line group.
Otherwise, is there anybody who'd like to play FS online -possibly playing by post - if I created a group?
One good thing came out of jury duty - that plus cheap prices on Amazon and eBay allowed me to recover the Feng Shui books I stupidly sold 13 years ago, plus a passel of new ones. Still need Iron and Silk, Friends of the Dragon and Glimpse of the Abyss but I have the rest, I have started running it again and so far we are having a great time It has also sparked a minor Shadowfist revival as well (Those I would have a harder time recovering)
I have run one or two games (literally just one or two games) of FS many years ago but now planing to run a one off game for two players, hopefully leading to a longer term campaign if they like it.
Just trying to read through the book now, its been a while and thiking of what kind of game I want to run for the players.
My basic concept at the moment (feel free to add ideas) is to start a contemporary game with the players as descendants of a Dragon group ie children/grandchildren etc. They will start off as mooks, but "inherit" their powers/abilities in the first game once they are exposed to the "secret war".
I was originally thinking of having the players as mobsters, or cops which would be a good reason for them to stick together as a group, since there are two players, and depending on what character types they go for, I might make one a cop and the other a mobster just to mix it up a bit.
Will probably link the first game into the book adventure.
It has also sparked a minor Shadowfist revival as well