I am a new member to these forums, but I signed up to ask for guidance and possible inspiration. I spent my youth playing role playing games, but the group scattered around the country, and I picked up war games and miniatures later in my gaming career. I am familiar with the original Feng Shui rules and have played them, so I thought this engine would be ideal to run the kind of game I'm contemplating.
Some might consider it blasphemy, but I want to use miniatures with a free-form system to emulate the action from the movie Boondock Saints. Feng Shui seems ideal for that. Few stats, guns and action plus the emphasis on attitude and badassery. The brothers MacManus certainly fit into the action movie template.
I don't have the FS2 book so I'm basing this on my knowledge of the first edition rules. There are some issues to cover. Firstly, the "static" nature of miniatures battles on the table versus the high-flying action of imagined role playing combat. I need to assign movement values to figures, something like Speed = movement in centimeters. Stunts would simply expand on this and provide extra movement whenever a good narrative (no reason to ditch descriptive combat just because there are miniatures on the table) is provided. Simple enough. Range bands for shooting? I don't remember that from the original rules. Ammunition count and reloading is there, AFAIK. Scenery is tricky but doable with a little imagination. The "battles" in this war game/RPG adaptation would be based on the fights and shootouts of the original movie, plus extended content when the campaign has been going on for a while, down time decisions before and after scenarios (opportunities to use skills and shticks outside combat), and an expansion on the lore of the movie (haven't seen the sequel yet).
There might be a point I want to expand the game into the realm of regular Feng Shui lore in a limited sense, or just choose other movies to base the game sessions and characters on. The other possibility is to take other RPGs and steal a setting or characters from them, just to provide some variation to the campaign. The game will probably be a mix of different cliches with the undercurrent of religious vigilante violence.
In 1st Edition, I frequently used maps and had a lot of success with them. I find for some players, the maps help them visualize the battlefield and can help them think of stunts. For example, if I draw a map of a construction site and I deliberately label something as a "backhoe", then the players start thinking of interesting things to do with the backhoe.
So, it's possible. Under 1st edition rules, the characters actually have a "Move" stat, but it's tied to Body rather than Ref, which can sometimes create annoying quirks, like really fast speedster-types losing a foot race to a big bruiser. However, this isn't always counter-intuitive... big bruisers, for example, do have longer legs than... uh... a koala... I kinda lost the metaphor there.
In 2nd edition, there is no Move or Ref stat, just Speed. So... you could probably just use Speed. Or default it to 7. You can move up to your Speed in meters, let's say, for any 3-shot action. As far as movement and actions go, telling the players "you can move and do something (attack or stunt), or you can do something without moving (attack or stunt)" should cover 95% of everything. If a player really needed to move faster than their speed, then they could "double move" or do an "all out sprint" to get wherever they need to be for their action. Rather than measure out actual inches, I would try to "eyeball" it as much as possible.
The 1st edition and 2nd edition rules say basically the same thing (paraphrasing): "Range might sometimes be important, but mostly it's just a pain in the butt. Just ignore it unless a special situation demands it." There's a table in the book, but anything within 20m has no modifier. Out to 40m it's +2 difficulty, and after that the 1st edition/2nd edition numbers diverge a bit.
Battlemat or dry-erase board with dry-erase markers works well.
1st edition rules uses the same system as Nexus: The Infinity City, but that is more detail orient in regards to ammo, range, and other things. FS 1st edition simplified a lot of stuff and streamlined things. I'll dig out my Nexus rule book an see what I find s just adding back in some of the stuff from FS parent game looks like it would help.
Also, quick comment on 1st edition FS and maps. The Marked for Death module anthology has maps in it, so FS most likely was going to have maps at one point.