Consumer Advice

Morning Consumers

I'm going to be running a game of Feng Shui next month and have my heart set on the 2056 Juncture (I've also just bought the Seeds sourcebook and started that. Uberkid - genius!).

I want to start the game with characters not knowing about the Netherworld etc. and being Rebels Without a Clue writhing under the heal of the Buro. Has anyone else started out this way and got any experiences to share, pitfalls to avoid, journals from players, encounters that really worked or memroable NPCs to share with the group?

Obviously I'll rob the best bits (if any) for my game, but it's always interesting to hear how other people have done something...!

Work hard, spend harder.

Gaz

I'm blanking right now, but several of the early books talked about Operation (Killdeer???). Any way the Operation shut down temporarily the passages to the Netherworld. At the start of Feng Shui canon, the portals have just opened back up.

What I did was start a contemporary campaign, no Fu/Magic/Tech. Nothing to confuse the characters. They were an assorment of archetypes so long as they were 'ordinary' humans.

We don't get to play as often as we like, but what I did was tweak the storyline a bit and say the portals are still closed. No one has figured out how to reopen them. So all the players from the Secret War exist, but none of them can access the Netherworlds or resources, they are stuck with what they got. It's sort of a cold war period.

The characters will go on a series of adventures, each one exposeing them to elements of the Secret War. Eventually they will discover the cold war status and just when they think 'that's absurd', I'll reopen the Portals and toss them through space and time.

[color=darkblue]My guys knew about the Feng Shui world from playing Shadowfist, so they had an idea of what was in store. However, when we started the game, I also just ran a Contemporary adventure or four, where they played regular action heroes in 1998. They were all human archetypes, with nothing fancy like sorcerors or creatures or tranimals.

But, I did let my brother, who knew much more about the game than the others, design a former Monster Hunter who'd fled the Buro. His PC was of course aware of the Secret War, in general, but had been hiding out in the modern juncture for several years. I used him to start dropping info about the Netherworld and time travel and the factions to the other players, as each adventure introduced other factions/ material from the War. My brother played his PC as though he were looking to join up with the Dragons and fight against his former Buro bosses, and I figure the rest of the gang will go with that plan.

Unfortuitously, we rarely get to play! :angry: We have little time to game together anymore, and when we do, we cycle through a few of our favorite rpgs, so I haven't played a good Feng Shui game since last summer when I ran a Gen Con adventure. (The only Con game of FS, thank you very much!)