GoCorral

Feng Shui 2‘s cover does a pretty good job of telling you what the game is best used for. Action movies with guns, martial arts, sorcery, cyborg monkeys, or any combination of them. The system was designed with Hong Kong action movies in mind, but it works for the wider action movie genre as well. Jackie Chan and Tony Jaa or Jason Statham and Tom Cruise movies all work. Feng Shui 2 also works for episodic stories like Jackie Chan Adventures, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or 24.

Character creation in Feng Shui 2 is so simple its a bit disappointing. The only mechanical choice you make at character creation is your class or the book’s word for classes, archetype. There are 35 archetypes to choose from that represent cliché characters in action movies. Karate Cop for Kung Fury, Scrappy Kid for Jade from Jackie Chan Adventures, or Ex-Special Forces for Rambo. Obviously your specific backstory remains your own to decide, but each archetype’s starting powers are set. You could do some customization, but only if your DM approves it. It seems restrictive, but with 35 archetypes its not that bad. And you still have plenty of agency when leveling up your character.

Leveling up has two different methods. One is tied to Feng Shui 2‘s prepackaged setting and the other exists outside of that. Either way, the intention is that players level up once every three sessions. When you level up you get a new skill, a new ability to use, or increase one of your existing skills. There are lots of choices, but they are determined by your archetype. Rambo can learn how to use guns better while Kung Fury’s advancements are more focused on Martial Arts. That said, there’s nothing stopping your table from allowing a character to choose something from another archetype if wanted.

There’s a small list of skills for non-combat roleplaying. The skills have a few uses, but the rulebook is honest that skills are sometimes included just to provide flavor for who your character is. The list includes: Deceit, Detective, Driving, Fix-It, Gambling, Info (and many subsets), Intimidation, Intrusion, Leadership, Medicine, Police, Sabotage, and Seduction. There are also a the combat skills of Martial Arts, Guns, Defense, Toughness, Fortune, and Speed that everyone gets.

Feng Shui 2‘s main mechanic is rolling two six-sided dice. One of the dice is positive and the other is negative. If you roll a six, you roll the die again and add a six to its total. So for example, I roll my 2d6 and get +6, -5. I roll the 6 again and get a 4. My result, called the “Swerve” is 6+4-5=5. I then add that 5 to my skill value to determine my final result. Heroes usually have skill values of 7-10 in every skill and 12-15 in their specialties. Skill check difficulties range from 5 (a little tricky) to 25 (impossible). Your Fortune stat also provides bonus dice that can be added to the Swerve. Fortune dice do not explode on sixes. Your pool of Fortune dice resets at the beginning of each session.

Combat is where Feng Shui 2‘s system feels most cinematic in its resolution mechanics. Combat is split up into sequences and shots like a film. Each sequence consists of a few shots, usually about 15 depending on the Speed and initiative for each character. Sequences provide a way of tracking the duration of long-term effects while shots are the more like rounds in other RPGs. Each sequence starts at shot ~15 and counts down to 0. On each shot characters take actions that consume a number of shots before they can act again. Typical actions like attacks use 3 shots. Special abilities can use any number of shots. Attack resolution is similar to non-combat skill checks. You roll your Swerve and add it to your Attack skill (Martial Arts, Guns, or something else special). If you beat the opponent’s Defense value you hit. You deal damage equal to your attack’s damage value plus the difference between your Attack result and the foe’s Defense. So if I roll a modified 17 to hit a foe with defense 15 using my damage 9 attack, I would deal 11 damage. Mooks go down in one hit while more important characters usually have between 35 and 50 wound points. Additionally, going below a certain threshold of wound points impairs the victim, causing all their stats to have a penalty until they are healed.

The special abilities are what really make Feng Shui 2 shine. For example the Sword Master archetype has several abilities that focus on taking down large amounts of mooks before focusing on important enemies. They get a +1 to Damage for each mook they hit, but lose half the bonus when they hit an important foe. Additionally, when they hit an important foe they can use 1 Fortune to also hit some mooks. Each archetype has a similar focused combat style that expands with options and power as the characters level up.

Feng Shui 2‘s default setting was the weirdest part of the book for me. Everything about the rules screams, “Martial Arts movie set in the late 20th century,” but the setting actually has four different time options. Ancient China around 600CE, Colonial China around 1880CE, Modern Times, and the Future. Ancient settings have wizards and magic. Colonial and Modern are pretty similar with different guns available. Future has genetic monsters and cyborgs. Connecting these four different time settings is the Netherworld, a physical space between the times that allows for players to travel between and interact with characters from all four. Theoretically you could use a single time period and it seems like the best choice would be Modern Times as most of the PC archetypes are from that period.

There are several shadowy organizations that exist across different times that are trying to attain power. This is not just political power, but real mystical power through the control of feng shui sites. These sites have mystic chi flowing through them that grants special abilities to those who control and attune with them. Organizations vie for control of these sites in the Chi War that spreads out across the four eras of time and space Feng Shui 2 is set in. Controlling feng shui sites is how characters level up in the established setting. There’s plenty of detail on the organizations and their space between the four time periods and Netherworld in the book. If you’re interested in that kind of time travel setting there’s bond to be some good ideas there. That wasn’t my goal though, so I mostly skimmed those sections in my reading.

Which brings me to my point about Feng Shui 2, is it a good system for running the kind of ancient Chinese mysticism RPG that I wanted? Pretty obviously, no. There is no five element system. The zodiac is irrelevant. If I were to run a ancient only campaign I’d be cutting out more than half of the details in the book. The game is so focused on modern setting that the ranged attack skill is called Guns instead of Ranged. While Feng Shui 2 seems great at its stated goal of playing out scenarios from martial arts or action movies, its not quite right for what I wanted. I could make it work if I had to, but the same could be said of D&D or Pathfinder. The search continues!

Personal negatives aside, Feng Shui 2 is just a fantastically written book. Each chapter has a clear focus. The order of the initial chapters gives a good organization for learning the basic rules of the system and the intent behind its rule design choices. There’s tons of good rules for gun fights, martial arts duels, sorcery, car chases, cyborgs, or even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. On a more granular level the book is very well organized. There’s headers and bullets points and sidebars all over the place to format the information, tell you what’s important, and guide you in understanding everything. It felt like a breath of fresh air reading Feng Shui 2 after Legends of Wulin. Additionally, Feng Shui 2‘s writing style is casual. For example, the chapter on combat is called, “Butt, Kicking of.” The game is about having fun and just reading the rules has a bit of fun in it.

So if Feng Shui 2 sounds like something you want to run, head over to Atlas Games and check it out. It’s certainly worth a look if you want to run an action movie-like game. That’s not my cup of tea though so I’m going to keep looking.