Feng Shui

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

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Neurosis
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Post by Neurosis »

How does Feng Shui compare with the old game Hong Kong Action Theatre?
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Josh_Kablack
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Short and not-quite-fair version: they both came out in 1996. I've played a bunch of Feng Shui and even ran several sessions. HKAT! has merely sat on my shelf for the past decade and a half. And it's not just me, you may occasionally see posts here about the output of Robin D Laws, Rob Heinsoo and even occasionally John Tynes, Not so much with Gareth-Michael Skarka, (who Google informs me has most recently been fleecing the gullible on Kickstarter) or Aaron Rosenberg (Who wikipedia informs me worked on World's Largest Dungeon and many other things you haven't heard about)

Maybe if I can find time and motivation, I'll try to do a pair of OSSRs for the games.

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talozin
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Post by talozin »

Feng Shui is a self-aware pastiche of action movie elements all mixed together in one cauldron with a dash of self-parody. HKAT! is as much a game about making action movies as it is a game about simulating action movies -- it's also more complicated, and complication is not an ideal characteristic for resolving fast-paced action. There are some similarities (both of them give varying forms of credit for doing ridiculous action movie stunts, for instance)

Also, Robin Laws and Jose Garcia are both pretty nice guys, while Gareth-Michael Skarka was semi-famous for being a cock to people on the internet around the time when his game came out.
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Post by TheFlatline »

1st edition HKAT was basically a ruleset about making blood opera movies with the occasional chinese fantasy film thrown in. And when I say "film", I mean film, as in your PC is an actor that bids for roles in an adventure/film.

It's kind of cool, in that your attacks generate like raw damage that you can either divide out among mooks or concentrate on higher-ups. There's a few other neat things, like schticks that follow your character through films and stuff.

HKAT 2nd edition was basically the Tri-Stat system from Big Eyes Small Mouth. Which means it's automatically shit.
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