Timewaster's Guide Archive
Games => Role-Playing Games => Topic started by: Mad Dr Jeffe on June 05, 2003, 04:39:40 PM
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Finally Saint did the review....
He's had my book for almost 3 months... scratch that since before the war.....
errr like three months..
Some interesting tid bits about Feng Shui
It holds the distiction of being one of the few RPG spin offs of a card game. (Shadow Fist). The first edition had a lot of color pages and was published by Daedalus Games.
There have been a few changes between the Daedalus and Atlas editions with some minor annoying stuff and some great new stuff....
It has something for everyone....
No really
it does
Few games tackle sci-fi, fantasy, and the modern era so seemlessly.
Its easy to customize. Make your own guns, design your own schticks, create new fu or transformed animal types... Feng Shui has it all.
Eric doesn't want to look at Golden Comeback, but its a great resource too filled with info of vehicle chases, new fu, guns, stat schticks, and other goodies that'll make you want to cream the badguys and kick some abomination butt.
If Saint wants I'll definately play in a mini game.
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Actually, I wrote that a month ago. It's the one I originally emailed to Fell but then he didn't touch so I submitted by the form. Lo and behold, the next day it was posted. The Punk.
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This game is ideal for the Matrix setting.... in fact its an immensely quick fix...
Remove all references to the secret war and chi... insert new references about machines and a virtual world.
The Underworld then becomes the real world..... and the junctures become well you get the picture.
Initially I thought about using Nobilis for a matrix like game... but lets be honest the Matrix is nothing but a really high budget hong kong action flick (with or without the spoon)
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El Jeffe - if you want, i can email you a bunch of rules that the nobilis mailing list came up for playing matrix games in nobilis. it involves combining the aspect/domain rules.
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I would like that,... but I have a lot on my plate at the moment... maybe in a week.
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Yes, FS would be nearly perfect for the Matrix. Takes very little customization at all...
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Imagining my character mowing down mooks and discarding used weapons like party favors...
Mmm carnival of carnage......
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"First rule of fight club,.... no one talks about fight club..."
No one said anything about Feng Shui. D20 could learn a lesson from this game. I realized that D20 fights are boring even with feats. It wouldn't take a genius to rework the stunt rule for d20 and make it into a fun game....
You'd have to jack down XP on unnamed baddies and lower HP too. Then give PC's a bonus for each stunt instead of a penalty. Named baddies need to be tough thoough or it won't work.
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Hate to break it to you, but stunts are not the purpose of D&D. Epic Sword and Sorcery fantasy is.
And the various other games do not have it since it does not fit into their games - Cthulhu D20 with stunts? No thanks.
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Thats a lame argument....
How can you use the word "epic" and not include stunts....
I know you've seen Fantasy movies. I also know you arn't telling me that Conan, Willow, and even Hawk the Slayer weren't filled with stunts....
Of course the idea of stunts for d-20 its not great fit for all d-20 games but now that you mention it Call of Cthulu could be cooler with stunts. It would certainly make me want to play more than one game of it.
Or would you rather your players jusst say I hit him with my sword...ugh.
Me personally I'd rather hear, " I leap about in a flurry of steel furiously beating my opponants sword away from me. I roll uner his blade and twist my wrist just so trying to slide my blade between his fifth and sixth rib.
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*Sigh*
Or would you rather your players jusst say I hit him with my sword...ugh.
Me personally I'd rather hear, " I leap about in a flurry of steel furiously beating my opponants sword away from me. I roll uner his blade and twist my wrist just so trying to slide my blade between his fifth and sixth rib.
Thats a problem with your players, not the system.
Call of Cthulu could be cooler with stunts. It would certainly make me want to play more than one game of it.
Try playing a game you actually understand the point of... CoC would be destroyed by stunts.
I know you've seen Fantasy movies. I also know you arn't telling me that Conan, Willow, and even Hawk the Slayer weren't filled with stunts....
Aye. Power attack. Whirlwind attack. Lightning reflexes. Dodge. All basic D20 feats, all doing what they are meant to do - replicate epic fantasy maneavures.
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Thats the fault of the players and not the system...
No not really D20 doesn't challenge your players to think of new and unusual ways to skewer their opponents.
They can do it on their own, and sometimes they do, but you never get the carrot that FS give the players.
The cooler the stunt the better chance you get of getting bonuses. If the players keep using the same stunt... like whirlwind attack or great cleave or dodge... well the dont get squat. For what I want to do D20 feats suck, their schticks but not very good ones IMHO.
"Try playing a game you actually understand the point of... CoC would be destroyed by stunts."
Wow someone needs to take a chill pill and stop assuming he knows more about COC than anyone else...
I understand Call of Cthulu quite well thank you, I get that its a horror game and that the aura of fear and horror should build like a great gothic novel.
I also think that a COC game can get really really old.
Stunts really could liven up a stagnant COC game and arn't against the spirit of the style at all unless you really want them to be. In fact there is a Cthulu adaptation to FENG SHUI floating around on the net.
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In fact there is a Cthulu adaptation to FENG SHUI floating around on the net.
So? There is a Star Wars Call of Cthulhu crossover on Shoggoth.net. Don't read too much into it.
Stunts really could liven up a stagnant COC game and arn't against the spirit of the style at all unless you really want them to be.
So.... CoC goes from a game where there is no realistic chance of victory, where violence is a desperate tool at best... and you stick in hong kong action stunts...? Right.
I understand Call of Cthulu quite well thank you, I get that its a horror game and that the aura of fear and horror should build like a great gothic novel.
I also think that a COC game can get really really old.
Any game can get really old. Any game set in a single genre. Are you telling me you could play FS every week for a year and not get tired of it? Right. CoC would probably be best when it is inserted as a 1/2/3 session game into another game every now and again... kinda like how Slants group is using their 'Barbarian' game.
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So.... CoC goes from a game where there is no realistic chance of victory, where violence is a desperate tool at best... and you stick in hong kong action stunts...? Right.
First of all by stunts I don't always mean Hong Kong Action movie type stunts. But thanks for trying to read my mind. Waht about good old American movie stunts.
Using stunts can emphisise the desperate struggle taking place and bring it into sharp relief for later in the game. By giving your players hope early on in COC you can have a much more dramatic effect later when your players realize that all their skills don't amount to Jack vs the might and evil of the old gods. How do you do this, by making their skills and stunts fail at darkly appropriate times,... give minuses rather than plusses but dont tell them whats going on. Watch them squirm as it slowly dawns on them that the evil looking thing dripping gore and grinning at them over the partially eaten body of a fallen comrade is going to destroy them and their soul.
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Also the thing that sucks the fun out of a COC game is the fact that there is almost no real chance of victory.
I really love games where my player ends up institutionalized after a couple of games, and that if he's lucky. Great fun...
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So does Feng Shui force players to use stunts? From what I'm understanding that is a major selling point of the system. It sort of seems to me that designing a system for stunts makes them rather contrived.
Stunts in RPGs are all in your head, not another bunch of statistics.
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Stunts are not stats in feng shui, and no the game doesn't force anyone to use em... but the hefty bonus they can give you if they are original can be really useful...
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Sure whatever...
So can the game be played without stunts? Like could one of my friends use it for her Jane Austin RPG.
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easily ;D
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Jane Austin with stunts would be excellent! But the stunts would be more like, "I gracefully take a glass of champagne from the servant, provide a biting and witty reply to the thinly-veiled insult given me by a former suitor, and subtly wink at the charming and handsome stranger who has just arrived from Yorkshire and purchased land next to my father's estate. Simultaneously."
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I really like FS, but comparing it to d20 (and by that it appears we MOSTLY mean D&D, since CoC is mostly treated separately here), it unrealistic, since they're doing completely different things. If I don't want the feel of FS, it's kind of ridiculous to use its rules.
Mostly I think I agree with Entropy here. D&D does have stunts. And it may not encourage the NARRATION of stunts like FS, but that's because it has a very different approach. And not one that's bad. One that's geered to long battles. If you don't like that, that's fine, the answer is to play something else.
But I also want to note that FS DISCOURAGES the player creation of new schticks, while the PHB ENCOURAGES the creation of new feats. I think the problem is a player one. Players are only limited in their ideas for new feats.
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and since all I was saying is that D20 GM's could benefit from better fights and since they can customise the game how they wanted I suggested they take a look at FS. Let the record show that I never said it was the PERFECT system.
I did say I think d20 fights are usually boring. Slow and generally uninteresting.
But I dont see why you couldn't FS Jane Austin well since the mechanics are loose enough in FS to handle any genre.
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For the record, i would have thought that Nobilis, with its already defined rules and systems for social interaction of a noble variety would be a better choice. After all, that kind of thing is a very large part of your normal Nobilis game, dealing with other demi gods and the like.
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Im not sure where your getting demi-gods out of this...
and dont really understand what your talking about..
are you referring to COC, FS, D20 or some other game that we dont know about.
Unless you mean Jane Austin,... in which case it still doesnt make sense since the question "what system would be best to run a Jane Austin RPG?" never came up.
I was asked if FS could be used to play Jane Austin not if it would be great for it.
Very non sequitor
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You narrarate your stunts and then get bonuses and game effects.
And despite what Jeff says, using FS for Jane Austen would lend it a completely different feel. Seriously. There is *no* character development in FS. It's action.
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I disagree, because with very little tweaking of the stunt system and the patented Back for Seconds book that has rule for Witty Reparte Stunts you could indeed play FS Jane Austin
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Like i said ElJeffe, i was noting that Nobilis, which you own, is a better choice than FS.
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First of all I agree with you about the suitability of nobilis for Jane Austin the rpg.
But that question never came up. So it seemed a little out of place...
Think of it like someone asking if "you can put cheese on your burger?" And then have someone respond " Buns are tasty"
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It was slightly more germain than your example, and considerably more helpful.
I suppose I'll have to eventually get a copy of Nobilis and read it now.
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To the question of Can you use Feng Shui to play Jane Austin the RPG, no it isn't.
Let me show you
Q Can you use Feng Shui to play Jane Austin the RPG?
A Nobilis would be better for that!
Now I'll rework my hamburger example.
Q. Can you put chedder cheese on your burger?
A. Blue Cheese would be better!
Its not that I even disagree with his statement, it just didnt make much sense at first. I wasnt trying to say FS was the best at doing it, where as Entropy's Nobilis statement was.
Oh and if you want to see nobilis You could just borrow mine.... since I know you dont have almost 60 dollars to spare on a game book.
Im also absolutely posative you'll hate it.
But I'll loan it to you.
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Er.... hello! This is the TWG forum! Digression city doesnt have nought on us.
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ohhh ....I forgot you speak the other English language...... ;D
My apologies you kipper eating, tea swilling, whiskey whistle wetting Brit. ;D
Shame about Beckham.
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Entropy's comment--including your version of it in your example--makes absolutely perfect sense to everyone on the forum but you. If I ask if road A can take me to point B, and someone chimes in and says that road C is better, that's usually considered helpful advice that everybody understands.
Now, it could be argued that your question was actually different--if you say, "I'm going to take road A, whether you like it or not; do you think I might end up at point B?" then it would not make as much sense to recommend road C. But it would still make more sense that you're allowing it to make.
Frankly, I'd like to say that a Jane Austen RPG would be killer, with or without martial arts. I'd also like to say that the Feng Shui stunt system, the way I understand it, could be very easily adapted to a "witty comment" system rather than an action system, and since most conversations in Jane Austen are essentially verbal combats, it would translate well. And I don't think the lack of character development would matter much, since most Austen characters are remarkably static (unless the character progression was "falling in love") as opposed to "becoming more powerful").
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And the equivalent of death would be marriage, then?
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Actually, I think the goal in Jane Austin RPGs is to get as many marriages as possible. The person with the most marriages wins. Divorce and "accidental death" are just fringe benefits.
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Ok, granted Fell, but WHY ON EARTH would you abstract the role playing of dialog and character interaction like that?
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Um...SE, duh? Have you ever been around a group of new RPGs players. The words "socially innept" should come to mind. Particularly if they are not yet old enough to vote.
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Which is exactly why they wouldn't be playing soemthing that doesn't require tons of gore. Let's face it, your typical new RPgamer won't even LOOK at something like Jane Austen (*I* hesitate to do so). Too much clothing.
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But wouldn't it be cool if Jane Austin whipped out a shotgun from beneath her bodice, pumped it with one hand like the Terminator, then went ballistic all over Emily Bronte?
And just to add my two cents to this whole FS vs. d20 debacle: I would love to see an epic fantasy RPG with the free-wheeling, over-the-top tone and anything-goes open ended rules system of Feng Shui.
Okay, that's it. That's all I'm gonna say on the matter.
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Yes, yes. That would be seriously cool.
And the FS fantasy would be cool too, I just wouldn't trust my more serious plots to it.
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It'd be cooler if she said " I'll be Write Back"
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Having done a great deal of research on the time period, I feel obligated to say that women in Jane Austen's society did not wear bodices. The anachronism of the shotgun, however, doesn't both me at all.
I'm not saying you would use FS to abstract the dialogue, I'm saying that you could use it to give some kind of mechanical base to the dialogue. You still have to come up with a witty remark, but the rules are ther to tell you how effective it was against an NPC.
Honestly, though, I could talk about a Jane Austen RPG all day and be the only one interested, so I will stop.
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Your interest in Jane Austin is distrubing, to say the least.
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It sounds intriguing to say the least. I'd really like to see a review on it. A non-biased one if at all possible.
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...which game?
Feng Shui just got reviewed by SE.
Jane Austin RPG exists only in the fevered imagination of our not-so-illustrious editor.
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Jane Austin RPG of course Entrophy.
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Hey, I'm as illustrious as you could ever want.