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Josh_Kablack
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Red_Rob wrote:Time travel is always a good way for a setting to shoot itself in the foot. It seems that the game takes the rather ballsy view that if one of the factions goes back and takes some Feng Shui sites the present is just changed and you get to deal with it?
Yes. That's what a Critical Shift is. Someone has captured enough sites to alter the flow of Chi and that changes reality and rewrites history. The only people who even notice such changes are Innerwalkers - characters who have traveled through the Netherworld before such a shift happened. The conceit is that said Innerwalkers remember the original timeline, but did not get the new history patch, so PCs will have a session or so of temporal confusion and figuring out what exactly happened, who to punch to undo it, and whether it's truly worth undoing.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Post by DeadlyReed »

So having a near complete Feng Shui 1E collection (Architects, yey), I think I'll continue just playing that.

Is there anything worth backporting?
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Post by OgreBattle »

After Robin's already discussed sidebar disclaimer that doing a Nazi juncture cheapens the reality of Nazism
That seems like an odd thing to say when one of his suggestions is:
Shanghai 1937 - Like the intro fight in Temple of Doom, but more Chinese because Hong Kong.
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Post by Schleiermacher »

DeadlyReed wrote:So having a near complete Feng Shui 1E collection (Architects, yey), I think I'll continue just playing that.

Is there anything worth backporting?
If you haven't already arrived at it independently, you should backport Defense being separate from Main AV.

But apart from that I sadly can't think of anything.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

There's actually quite a bit that is outright improvement over 1e. However a lot of those improvements are still problematic enough to drive me to drink. If I were to run a serious semi-long term campaign of this I would want to rewrite a large part of the system.....but for the sake or argument let's say I forgo any new houserules or rewrites and instead limit myself to choosing things to backport or not, here are things I would consider:

Mechanics
  • Statline Simplification
    (which includes the following sublist)
    • Defense Seperate from AV
    • Skill Defaulting rules
    • Powering all mojo off of Fortune (but with different names) instead of having multiple Fortune substats to track independently. This also makes all mojo stats per session instead of 1e's deal where Fu got to be per Sequence but Fortune and Magic were per session. (Sadly the fs2 schtick lists make this resource management scheme really iffy in play, but the idea of standardization is an improvement)
  • Giving all archetypes at least 6 Fortune to start is better than FS1's setup where you had a Fortune subsytem that many archetypes did not interact with until after advancement.
  • Giving all Guns archetypes a backup Martial Arts AV is better than FS1's setup where some disarmed Guns archetypes had no backup attack and if disarmed, such a character has to justify stunts based on their Guns AV to do anything in combat.
  • The 2e Advancement system where your first four advancements let you pick a new schtick, pick a new skill at a low rating; improve a noncombat skill or boost a backup AV to one less than your primary AV and then every fifth advancement lets you boost Attack, Defense, Fortune, Toughness or Speed is leaps and bounds better than 1e's catastrophic triangular advancement. FS2's implementation still has major problems with mismatched skill names, schticks nobody can ever take by the rules-as-written and unnecessary dierolls to determine advancement, but those problems are less than FS1's deal where a Killer buying more Guns schtciks was objectively wrong and the usually optimal choice was to save up for more AV.
  • The stunting rule where you can retroactive add an extra benefit to an attack when you get an outcome of 4 or more. This works more in the spirit of action movies where hostages are freed, evidence is recovered, and macguffins are snatched during a fight without penalizing the players for wanting to achieve such non-damaging secondary objectives the way a -2 Stunt penalty does.
  • Splitting named opponents into Featured Foes who just go down at 35 wound points and Bosses who have more wound points and may or may not go down when they take enough is worth considering. I don't like the specifics of how FS2 handles it, but it's possible to have increase enemy asymmetry from FS1 without being outright assy about it.
  • The rules for tied initiative, characters acting on the same shots are improved in 2e (PCs go first, seating order is tiebreaker) over 1e (GM wings it as per page 151).
  • Adding a specific rule for "Cheesing It" is probably better than 1e's not having specifics for fleeing combat
  • FS2's armor rules are meant for players to occasionally wear armor. FS1's armor rules were intended to be such a bad deal for PCs that only Stormtroopers would wear armor.
  • Handling Adverse conditions as an "Immunity Bonus" is a worthwhile simplification of the math that has to be done at the table, at the cost of losing the ability to do fights where everyone is more/less defensive than normal.
  • Using Reload rolls instead of tracking individual shots is an improvement
  • The addition of more Guns Schticks is useful. Bank Shot, Blam Blam Epigram, Flesh Wound, Reactive Fire, Scattering Fire, and Soul of the Sniper can all be backported into 1e without backporting or editing anything else.
  • Having rules for Rearm checks may be better than using default stunting rules. Or it may not, but this is a list of things I would consider
  • Likewise the differences between the 2e player-rolls Deceit modified by Concealment ratings against a fixed target number and the 1e NPC-rolls-Perception against the total Concealment ratings of weapons carried are something I'd have to consider before deciding either way.
  • The FS2 Fu Paths are shorter, simpler and more comprehensible than the 1e craziness like Path of the Storm turtle. I still have major issue with a bunch of individual schticks and the names and layout of many FS2 paths, but the FS2 stuff is undoubtedly an improvement over the 1e stuff and I would backport most of the FS2 paths.
  • The FS2 Chase rules are a trainwreck. Yet they are still better than the rules Greg Stolze wrote for 1e in Golden Comeback. So if I wanted to use actual rules instead of just winging it with general Stunt rules I would go with the FS2 version here.
  • FS2's Sorcery rules are much improved as it has a lot less "Primary AV against a difficulty of substat autowin" than FS1 did. FS2 still has way too much of that sort of thing and too many problematic schticks, and now adds the issue than Sorcery Archetypes without Scroll of Spells can get bogged down having to take an assortment of near-useless schticks, but overall I think the rules are an improvement.
  • Sorcery JMods being minor heal / minor damage on the expenditure of a Magic Point is more flavorful, allows players to make tactical choices and means that you are doing the math-in-combat less often than 1e's flat Bonus/Penalty setup. On the downside FS2 uses different JMod systems for different AVs, which is stupid overcomplication. I would want to just backport the FS2 Sorcery JMod system into 1e for everyone -- but that might violate the "no houserule / rewrite" limit I set for myself above.
  • As much as 2e fucks up on Creature Powers, I would definitely backport the 2e autosucceed version of Inevitable Comeback over the 1e roll a slightly different Death Check and take wound penalties version
  • I would backport the omni-schticks available to all Tranimals. FS2 doesn't go nearly far enough with these and has too many overlapping and reprinted animal schticks, but having them is still better than not having them.
  • I'd probably also backport the FS2 Transformed Dragon - having schticks in the first session is way more fun than having just high stats and the ability to buy schticks from a bunch of different menus as the game goes on.

Conceptual Stuff:
  • I would totally backport the concept of Pop-up Junctures and likely use several of the listed ones in this book. The idea of being able to do a single session or mini arc in a nonstandard juncture while still managing conceptual space with only four steady Junctures is very appealing.
  • I would backport the idea of Cyborgs which were not magical mutation machines. The FS1 Cyborg does not match any source material at all and should be cut for conceptual reasons - the Abomination does everything needed here. Unfortunately the FS2 Cyborg is a mechanical mess that still fails to match the concept of any protagonist cyborg in source material -- but at least it matches the concept of a cyborg thug in the source material. So both are still so bad that you shouldn't use either, but the FS2 Version at least manages to conceptually less insulting.
  • I would backport the idea of Mutant characters with superpowahs. Push, Chronicle, the Resident Evil movies, the X-Men movies, and others I'm doubtless forgetting all feature action scenes with both superpowers and gunplay and so the concept has real traction and should be represented in the game. Sadly the mechanics in FS2 are too crappy to work with.
That's actually rather a lot of individual improvements over FS1. However it's also a whole lot of qualifiers and disappointments and doesn't scratch some of the pervasive issues in FS2 like the page bloat and barely-extant editing. That's why my capsule snark is that the full title is:
Feng Shui 2 Steps Foward, One Step Back.

Overall progress but still incredibly frustrating
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Wed Aug 05, 2015 9:14 pm, edited 5 times in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

So I have been slacking and will likely continue to do so for the next week or three, but the updated PDF dropped today.

It's improved, but only in very minor ways which I have to hunt for:

Version 1.2 actually includes rules for the Illusion Schtick of Sorcery.

And I don't have time to comb through all the mismatched schtick names between "Awesoming Up" and actual sections, but a quick check of the Gene Freak reveals that: Causal Leakage is still before Camoflague in the supposedly alphabetical advancements list, but Mushy Head, Reactive Epidermis, Shift Coordinates, Titanium Mind and Shift Coordinates a second time are still all listed in the Awesomeing Up section despite not being in the chapter. Oh and the mismatches the other way are still there, so the joke about the Impossibilist schtick being Impossible to actually take still holds (as it does for several others)

I wasn't really expecting design fixes, but having that sort of lack of proofreading in a version after the physical print run is just insulting.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Mon Aug 17, 2015 7:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Post by ghost whistler »

Have any of these points been put to Mr Laws or any of his representatives?
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Post by Orca »

ghost whistler wrote:Have any of these points been put to Mr Laws or any of his representatives?
Josh mentioned making a kickstarter comment about one of these back on the first page, so yes.
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Post by ghost whistler »

Orca wrote: Josh mentioned making a kickstarter comment about one of these back on the first page, so yes.
Sorry i'm not seeing anything like that.
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Post by Username17 »

ghost whistler wrote:
Orca wrote: Josh mentioned making a kickstarter comment about one of these back on the first page, so yes.
Sorry i'm not seeing anything like that.
Josh wrote:Words cannot express my fury right now,
but I have copypasted that last paragraph to a KS comment, so I still lose since I now have actually given playtest feedback after paying for a project.
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Post by ghost whistler »

Ok thanks, so what was the response, if any? Did they listen?

I backed the pdf, but i haven't read it.

The only errata on the website is a few archetype adjustments which I presume/hope will be included in an updated pdf.

this is all rather depressing, but there are few rpg's that can withstand this level of scrutiny anyway. That's cold comfort.
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Post by momothefiddler »

[url=http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=447102#447102 wrote:Josh_Kablack[/url]]So I have been slacking and will likely continue to do so for the next week or three, but the updated PDF dropped today.

It's improved, but only in very minor ways which I have to hunt for:

Version 1.2 actually includes rules for the Illusion Schtick of Sorcery.

And I don't have time to comb through all the mismatched schtick names between "Awesoming Up" and actual sections, but a quick check of the Gene Freak reveals that: Causal Leakage is still before Camoflague in the supposedly alphabetical advancements list, but Mushy Head, Reactive Epidermis, Shift Coordinates, Titanium Mind and Shift Coordinates a second time are still all listed in the Awesomeing Up section despite not being in the chapter. Oh and the mismatches the other way are still there, so the joke about the Impossibilist schtick being Impossible to actually take still holds (as it does for several others)

I wasn't really expecting design fixes, but having that sort of lack of proofreading in a version after the physical print run is just insulting.
Listening to comments and fixing things doesn't appear to be the way this works.
I'm pretty sure Josh has made other comments about things not getting fixed (including, iirc, stuff he pointed out in the playtest that wasn't changed in the first release), but I don't feel the urge to go digging for you when this quote was on the same page as your question so...
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

I'm generally approaching this as a drunken rant by a yahoo on teh interwebs, and not as any sort of feedback I expect anyone to listen to. And that works out because it is mostly stuff written and read for entertainment. It's not like any no srs gamedziners are even aware of this, let alone is my drunken trash talking tone anything they would going to credit even if they were aware of it.

But after I get off my semi-sober ass and finish up reviewing the last few chapters, I do intend to do a final coldsober pass through, clean up, and condensation down to a normal sized review, and that I will fling at Robin on G+ or somesuch to see what he says.

But to answer the question actually being asked: Back in my post(s) dated the 2nd of May 2015, I do list some things I explicitly emailed them in response to their request for crowdediting and which of those got fixed. It's telling that only the most obvious mistakes like wacky cApitAlization and missing bookmarks in the PDF got fixed, while things that required complex math like adding 8+1 to get 9 or actual reading comprehension like advancement options for schticks that are not listed in the book were not addressed.
Last edited by Josh_Kablack on Wed Aug 26, 2015 5:09 am, edited 3 times in total.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
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Post by Username17 »

On the subject of NPC villains, the genre does need a monster manual. Sometimes in action movies a character will be dropped into a pit. And that pit will have a Tiger, or a Rancor, or an Orangopoid, or whatever. And these creatures are things a character has to fight that don't have the depth of a real character. It's a villain that only meaningfully exists for a cinematic set piece battle - like a 4th edition D&D monster.

Which means that while I agree with Feng Shui 2 that you need three kinds of enemies, I am totally not with the game on the choice of the latter 2. You have Mooks, then you have Beasts and proper NPCs (who are just like you but either slightly better or slightly worse, depending on the needs of the action). There is no need whatsoever for two flavors of NPCs who use not-quite PC transparent rules.

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