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Right then! This page has been taken over by Feng Shui!

Feng Shui is a game which you can use to roleplay Hong Kong Action Movies. Cinematic Roleplaying is a reasonable term for the act of roleplaying using 'movie logic' as a guide to how things work in the game.

Feng Shui is copyright and trademark Robin D. Laws, used under license by Atlas Games. The use of this or other trademarks here is without permission, and does not constitute a challenge to the ownership of those properties.

'"Action" [in Chinese movies] used to mean martial arts action almost exclusively, until the "new wave" swept HK in the mid-eighties. Directors like John Woo and Taylor Wong started packing their films with hyperbolic gunplay -- a populist move -- and the ability to handle a Beretta or AK-47 became as important as well-tuned drunken monkey technique. After all, it was the Chinese who invented gunpowder. . . for the purposes of entertainment.' -- Sex and Zen & A Bullet In The Head

Links: Local Feng Shui Pages | Other Feng Shui Pages | HK Film and TV Pages | Firearm Pages

This page: HK Movie Books | HK Action Combats | Feng Shui Gun List fixes

HK Movie Books

Hong Kong movies have spawned numerous books. Two of them are Sex and Zen & A Bullet In The Head and Hong Kong Action Cinema, both of which are worth buying.

Sex and Zen & A Bullet In The Head
by Stefan Hammond & Mike Wilkins
ISBN 0-684-80341-0
US $12.00, CAN $16.00
Published by Simon & Schuster, 1996.
272 Pages.
Informally written, SAZABITH (coincidentally the name of a town in Bosnia) is the perfect companion book for Feng Shui. It's a broad overview of Hong Kong cinema with sections on John Woo and Jackie Chan, supernatural movies, etc. It's a great starting point if you're new to HK films or are having problems finding them in your area. In the back are two extremely useful sections. The first, Access, lists places where you can rent or buy HK movies. The second, the Appendix, lists the names of HK movies in English and in Chinese to help you rent movies from those stores run by non-english speaking Chinese.

Hong Kong Action Cinema
by Bey Logan
ISBN 0-87951-663-1
US $21.95
Published by The Overlook Press, 1996.
191 Pages.
A more formal history of the films and those who created them than SAZABITH. HKAC has in-depth interviews with the stars and directors of HK cinema. It covers the history of the HK movie business and is filled with stories by people like Jackie Chan and John Woo. Lots of great pictures, too!

HK Action Combats

Here are some thoughts on running combats in the tradition of Woo and Chan in Feng Shui, based on their movies and comments made on the net. Some of this is covered in Feng Shui; this is more of a checklist than a Master's thesis. :-)

Directly from the movies

Set the fight in a 3-D area if possible. Have lots of ledges, stairs, etc. This lets characters do leaps from above, come up from below, etc. Start the fight on the middle level of a three story mall, or in an indoor rollercoaster ride at Disney world.

Provide for entrances and exits, generally windows and doors. A fight rarely stays in one room with all the combatants already there. Combatants leave and show up all the time, sometimes taking the fight (or part of it) with them.

For gun battles, lots of cover is a must. Crates, furniture, etc. should be plentiful and able to stop bullets.

There should be lots of objects to use or destroy, especially for Jackie Chan-style stunts. One person punching another isn't as exciting as someone using chopsticks, plates of food, and pots of tea to abuse his opponent. Have things that can explode or are fragile. Have explosions and lots of fragile things broken.

Use rings/layers of mooks instead of a giant mass. Characters rarely encounter all the mooks in the area at once. There are always a few more around the corner or behind the door. Try and split mooks up into small groups and have these groups attack individual characters. Have some hold back until the first wave is shot up. In the movies this happens because it's more interesting to watch one character deal with multiple attackers than to watch an entire 30 on 4 fight using a wide-angle lens. In Feng Shui it should happen because it happens in the movies. :-)

Suggestions which have not been tested

A Feng Shui fight is much more collaborative than a fight in most other systems. It is not tied to a GM-produced map, characters are freer to act, stunts and 'going with the flow' are encouraged. These suggestions are designed to help make combats closer to the movies.

(And not just for combat) Tell the players what music (if any) is playing in the background. For example, an opening scene where the characters are looking over the aftermath of a Triad/Triad battle might have "a slow & sorrowful Jazz improvisation noodling in the background." A frenetic (are there any other kind?) combat sequence might have "industrial music almost overwhelming the bursts of gunfire." This is a movie!

Reality is only 'set' when necessary. The book touches on this, but there are some fairly distinct elements of it:

What the players suggest is available should be there if 1) it doesn't destroy your plan and 2) what the player wants to do sounds cool. GM's can't think of everything.

Rolls determine reality. Don't let players try and lay out too much in advance. In an example given on the net (I have the reference somewhere :-) a character tries to leap up from a tunnel, holding on to the covering grate. He should not waste his time checking to see if the gate is hinged or free to move before attempting his action. The result of his roll should determine it.

Without maps, the position of characters relative to one another and to everything else in combat is vague. Players should be allowed to do the following:

Allow players to perform movement which can be reasonably described in a single simple sentence, such as "I'm getting behind cover," "I'm moving from cover to cover to get near [other character]", "I'm circling around," etc. Don't sweat exactly 'where' this cover is just let it happen. Mooks can do this too, they just tend to be a little slow on finding characters who have successfully snuck away (they generally figure it out right after they get shot by the sneaky character).

Mooks like windows and doors. They like them so much that you _may_ want to allow your characters in a fight to say something like "I shoot the goon behind the door" and if his attack succeeds, have a dead/incapacitated mook come crashing through the door. This shouldn't be used on the last few mooks or as a main point of dramatic fights, just to whittle down the number of mooks when there aren't lots of them in a character's face.

Mooks know where to find characters, and are summoned by the death of other mooks. When a character kills three mooks in a hallway he can be certain there will be 7 mooks pouring out of the elevator which just arrived.

Feng Shui Links

Other:

A great place for villian faces http://www.mostwanted.org

Corrections to the Feng Shui Guns section

Gun list corrections/suggestions:

Correction?: 10mm should be damage 11, not 10 for the E.T. "Series One Laseraim. The other 10mm guns are damage 11.

Correction: Colt 380 Gov't Pocketlite is your basic diet .380 autoloader.

Correction: Colt 1911A, Llama Large Frame, Norinco Type M1911: .45s

Correction: Glock 17 is not small. It's a little wider and a little shorter than a Colt 1911A.

Suggestion: I think the Benelli Montefeltro Super 90 should be the one ideal for black tie and other formal events. Expensive, fast, and a classy walnut stock. See: http://www.recguns.com/IIIE3a.html (The Beretta 1201 I've seen is rather poorly put together and looks like something you'd take to a turkey shoot instead of the opera.)

Right then! This page has been taken over by Feng Shui!

HK Movie Books

HK Action Combats

Feng Shui Links

Local pages

FS Gaming links:

HK Entertainment news and pictures:

Firearm Images:

Other:

Corrections to the Feng Shui Guns section