First I just wanted to say hi - my first post here and wondering if anyone is still around here. Call me Lateral Reincarnation or "Lat" for short seems appropriate as I have played FS1 and FS2 off and on for years now.
In our long-term group, we play a super long campaign with products like 5E but often we need have a backup mini-series for all the times the main campaign is on hold. As an example, our GM was busy with a wedding and so I switched the group to FS, and it makes for a great replacement game for fantasy RPGs. It's very different & the combat sequence approach is generally really well liked by players. trading time for defense, etc just makes sense for most of us.
I do wish more products were available, but it seems it's not financially possible.
There are still people around but we're obviously playing other things at the moment. I've been running "Romance of the Perilous Land" for a bit of British folk-lore and "Aegean" for mythic Greek shenanigans.
Having said that I will be running FS2 at a forthcoming convention. I find it works really well for convention games because it's fun and almost instantly comprehensible. Games based on secondary worlds can be difficult to explain but "Have you seen a Hong-Kong action film?... Well have you seen any action film" pretty much gets you there.
The topic of additional material has come up and border-line economics are not the only issue. It seems that there's some complication around rights.
Yes, for the first time I will run a FS2 game at o e of local conventions (Dragon Flight here at Seattle, WA). Decided to use a version of the Red Packet Rumble. Its a shame that they are fighting over rights for a game that has a following but is probably drifting away year by year.
I don't think anyone is fighting. The rights are just split and that's how it is.
When you get right down to it I think Robin Laws is more interested in his Gum Shoe work and Atlas in their more successful products. But now I'm just speculating.
I've been running an FS2 campaign for about three years (roughly fortnightly, although with occasional missed sessions or months), although not using the entire setting, so it's primarily a modern-day conspiracy game, with occasional supernatural threats.
A local games café also has a weekly one-short RPG night, to introduce new people to the hobby and to give regular players a change of speed - while D&D5e is the most common game, we often run other games to show people that D&D5e isn't the only RPG, and I've run quite a few games of FS2 - as you say, it doesn't require introducing folk to a secondary world.
(Although, terrifyingly, I am finding that a large number of our younger (under 30) players are sadly lacking in their cinematic education - some have asked for recommended watching lists after my games. )
One of my players reminded me last week that my campaign has actually been running since 2017. Although pandemic years don't count, it's still more than the three years I thought I'd been coming up with plots to be resolved/moved forward by fights ...
Fortunately, their influences have crossed over somewhat these days, with John Woo's Hollywood work and the fight choreography of many of Jason Statham's films. They're not quite the same thing, but they can be a stepping stone ...
I've been playing with a regular campaign since roughly 2016 when version 2 was in beta! Our Dragons have been through a million different changes and the world has shifted under them many times.
Recently they were in the Future Wasteland juncture, fighting a cyborg warlord called General Grundle, and helping a mutant leader defend his settlement and activate a machine called The Engine, which restarted the flow of chi in the world.
When they got back into the Netherworld (after a massive battle, featuring several heroic sacrifices), they found that the Future juncture now pointed to a Cyberpunk 2377 juncture, and the Modern juncture could no longer be found.
Along the way, they helped the King of the Thunder Pagoda capture the Queen of the Darkness Pagoda, setting off a Monarch War of unprecedented scope, as the followers of the Thunder and Darkness Pagodas battle across the Netherworld.
The Past Juncture is now 1870, and they're based in Chicago, where they stopped an offshoot of the Guiding Hand led by Caesar King from setting off the Chicago Fire a year early. They've made allies with a branch of The Pledged, who have split from The Ascended, fought a battle at a fancy ball at The Palmer House in Chicago, and learned that the Antikythera Mechanism could be used to re-open the portals to the Modern Juncture.
Now they're underwater in the Mediterreanean after receiving a water-breathing blessing from a snake demon, about to defend some mermaids from Thunder Knights and try to locate the Antikythera Mechanism.
Hey Lat, welcome to the group! I was also at Dragonflight, and wanted to play in your sessions*, but couldn't make it work with my schedule. I should have stopped by to say hello, but I was technically there for work -- I was one of the two guys running the big 3D Spanish Fort in the main hall -- so could only squeeze in RPGs before and after our booth was open. Maybe at next year's Dragonflight we'll get to game together.
My own home campaign of Feng Shui 2 is about to have its 33rd session this weekend. Most of their activities have been in the Contemporary Juncture and the Netherworld, though they did spend a multi-session story-arc in the Ancient Juncture. There they interacted heavily with Wu Zetian, told her all about the chi war, and directly contributed to her youngest child becoming a daywalking half-vampire. Oops.
So they returned to a Contemporary Juncture that was unfamiliar bordering on alien. Emperor Wu's daughter reigned for a thousand years before the Ascended managed to assassinate her. In that time the East has always been stronger and more advanced than the West, and costumed superheroes prowl the alleyways looking for injustice to right with their fists and utility belts.
It's been fun making the changes dramatic, but over all a net positive so the PCs don't feel punished for having interacted with the NPCs. Prior to Feng Shui, I've sometimes seen this game group turtle-up and play defense all campaign, so encouraging them to take risks is critical. That's actually part of why we're doing FS, a game where starting a fight is by design never a mistake.
*Edit: Just looked back at the convention schedule, and realized that you only ran one of the two Feng Shui 2 sessions at Dragonflight. I'd assumed they were both run by the same person.
WOW! so awesome to connect on this forum. I want to do more FS2 at Orca. I love this game just because it is so different then the usual. Any thoughts about attending OrcaCon Jan 5-7, 2024?
I do Dragonflight most years, I've only attended OrcaCon once. I wasn't planning to go to OrcaCon this year, but... it's a possibility, depending on what my schedule and budget are looking like at the time. Being so soon after the holidays makes it tricky.
yes, its tight on the holidays for sure so totally understand. I am attending am even submitted a FS game already. I think I am going to submit another one as well. Had a very good experience as a "director" at DragonFlight and what to see if that was a flash in the pan or can I do it again at Orca :-).
I missed replying to this. I have a very savvy 5E player who looked at the dodge rules and the Ninja's schtick and became a turtle-err for sure. He eventually relaxed when he realized the game like any has many grey parts and taking advantage of them all the time is a bit cheeky.
Hi Kornelia! Yeah love the game and after the initial culture shock of how it plays my hardcore 5E players really like the idea of it being a backup- mini-campaign to our much longer running main campaign. We finished "campaign 1" back in September. Essentially one of the character's father was apparently in disguise and trying to take over the world from the inside of the ascended. THe plan? Help the Japanese win WW2 with a pop up juncture created by a magical amulet. Of course being the plot twist crazy game I like to run - it was not his father but his mother (who it seems had father errr... terminated) as she ascended the throne post WW2. It ends with the party stumbling back from the netherworld into post-shift New Tokyo (old Hong Kong)
Campaign 2 waiting for the break from our main 5E campaign but it will of course be about how they somehow reverse this problem.
- some have asked for recommended watching lists after my games. 
