System explanation - Feng Shui

The Feng Shui 1e system by Atlas Games was originally designed to emulate Chinese action movies from the 70's and 80's. It has built in compatibility for magic, cybernetics and gunplay that only require a few changes from the original. As far as source books we'll need, really only the core rule book and 'heirs of the dragon' both of which are available at drivethrurpg.com.

There is some editing to be done for flavor but that's to be expected from most systems and really relates primarily to one major Attribute and some renaming of skills to better reflect Star Wars.

In terms of other changes, things like Info skills should be interchangeable. Some archetypes have very silly choices because the system is a little silly. Some Shticks won't exist anymore in the Sorcery section as well. I personally feel like a attitude of 'yeah sure' should generally apply.

In Feng Shui the mystical forces of the universe are reflected in a statistic called Chi. Chi represents magical superhuman abilities, luck and destiny. So, yeah. That's called 'Force' now. The sub statistics underneath Chi are Magic, Fu and Fortune. Fortune we can leave alone as it represents a character's luck and some special abilities. Fu and Magic are now combined into Powers. As in Force Powers. Get it?

Arcanowave is basically cybernetics so we'll be calling it that. Cybernetics. Instead of being based off Magic, it will be based off Intelligence (Under Mind).

Other than that we will be cutting out Fu Shticks (Shticks are this game's version of feats or talents) since they no longer make any sense in the flavor of the game. If a character gets Fu Shticks they may select an equal number of gun Shticks to be applied to melee weapons or trade 2 for 1 Sorcery Shtick. For Sorcery, the skill will be renamed Use the Force for obvious reasons. And that's pretty much it aside from adding in a Lightsaber weapon to the equipment list, that's actually all the changes that are needed.

I have compiled a list of all the archetypes that could conceivably be used for a Jedi/Force User concept in this system. It looks long because it is. Feng Shui 1st edition has 49 different archetypes in total. Names are not terribly important, since this is a adaptation, but some of the archetypes are pretty obvious as to who the analogue is. IE: Old Master. All of these archetypes are listed in Heirs of the Dragon which includes descriptions of any unique abilities they have.

Athlete
Demon Martial Artist
Elemental
Ex-special Forces
Gardener
Ghost - As in a Force ghost. I'm really not sure if this should be allowed since it would be silly, but it could easily be retooled to work as a living character.
Golden Candle Agent
Guiding Hand Archer
Magic Cop
Martial Artist
Monster Hunter
Ninja
Old Master - Yoda and old Ben Kenobi. Dooku would count as well.
Science Ninja
Scrappy Kid
Shaolin Disciple - This archetype could not be more 'I'm a regular Padawan' if it tried.
Shaolin Master - And the knight version.
Sorcerer - For Jedi who are just -terrible- at using a Lightsaber. Like, the -worst-, but are really good at Force Powers.
Taoist Wizard
Two-Fisted Archeologist
Uber Kid
Viking Warrior

Some of these are more of a stretch than others but they are reasonably well balanced with each other.


I have noticed that some archetypes listed on Heir of the Dragon do not have proper information listed on them. I'll be updating which ones here and put the corrections in a errata.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/156699/Feng-Shui?term=feng is that the right one?

Yes, that is the correct edition. I would never require anyone to spend money on something for a game but . . . I can't hand you a book. If you can find a PDF don't forget Heir of the Dragon for the archetype list.

its available used on amazon for 13 bucks
https://www.amazon.com/Feng-Shui-Action-Movie-Roleplaying/dp/1887801766
I'll see if i can't find a PDF though

the dragon's heirs pdf is available legally for free from atlas games:
http://atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/FSDragonsHeirs.pdf

What's really nice about that is that it includes full rules for all the unique abilities and shticks for the archetypes, instead of just listing them and making you buy the source book.

So, time to talk about character generation. If you've gotten hold of the core rulebook then you probably have a pretty good grasp of the general rules so I'm going to focus on expanding the explanations.

Body being the character's physical strength and toughness is a measure of how beefy a character is. 5 is human average. In Feng Shui these are broad categories that have dramatic license already built in. A Body of 5 is a average human in an action movie. Let's take Sarah Connor from the Terminator series. In the first movie she was a waitress and would have a Body of 5. But in the second movie should trained herself up to be a real badass and probably have a Build of 6. 7 would be reserved for characters that emphasized physical power. These are your Jean Claude Van Dames and your Bruce Lee's. 8 would be more like Arnold in Conan, 9 is more likely to be Arnold at the top of his body building career, pushing the limits of human ability. 10 would be officially superhuman, characters that make you go "yeah no", like Batman in the comics.

The same scale applies for the other stats. If you want to compare to Star Wars then, in all likelyhood, Luke had a Body of 6, Force of 10, Mind of 6 and Reflexes of 7, maybe 8. That way everyone can scale their characters accordingly.

I don't quite get the secondary attributes and primary attributes when it comes to determining what should be what. For instance, with sorcerer, it says Chi starts out at 0, and the ( ) says that the magic either starts out as 8 or it can only go to 8... Or something. But I get the impression that they start out with 8 magic that can't be changed.

Well, wouldn't you have to have a chi of 16 to have a magic of 8? ... or something....

I don't know the system, but the description and the basic attributes from Scrappy Kid sound sort of like I picture my padawan. I didn't see it on your original list, but was wondering if it might be available.

I might have missed it but yes. That one would be great. Added it to the list.

I just want to double check...we are using Feng Shui 1...not Feng Shui 2?

You are correct. Feng Shui 2 is a distillation that unfortunately is purely combat focused as opposed to Feng Shui 1 which is actually less combat focused than it thinks it is.

ok thanks

Is ther ea place i can find the feng shui core rulebook?

I wouldn't ever advocate piracy so you can find the core rulebook is on drivethrurpg.com, just make sure to not get 2nd edition.

So, here's what I've done: I needed to look at a whole bunch of rule books because I started up like 6 diff games and I'm not even sure if I want to continue most of them... and $20+ per book just to play a game I might not even like gets costly, so what I've done is make use of a scribd.com subscription. I've found most rulebooks on there. :)

However, Cep has everything pretty well laid out. I'm certain if you just mentioned what you want the basis of your character to be that Cep could just recommend a class for you and help you with the stats. He's had to do that for me multiple times, lol.

I'd be happy to do that. Also the Heirs of the Dragon source book is a list of all the archetypes and rules for making a character and I believe that it is available for free.

Heirs of the Dragon is free, but somewhat abridged in my opinion. But yeah, look at the list of archetypes from the earlier post and then someone can walk you through the specifics.

Hmmm... demon martial artist sounds cool. What would it translate to in star wars terms?

It's more of a selection of skills and talents. This system was originally designed for action movies so that would be your Sub-Zeros or one of the demons summoned in Big Trouble in Little China. In this one it's more suited for a melee build it looks like. Don't worry too much about a template you don't like, I don't see a problem with swapping to a different one later if it doesn't work how you imagine.