This article originally appeared in Pyramid #20

Pyramid Pick

FENG SHUI

Published by Daedalus Entertainment
Written by Robin Laws
Price: $29.95

Well, I feel like most of the great things I was going to point out about Feng Shui — the new RPG on the block from the good folks at Daedalus — were said by John Tynes in the article we ran a few dozen pages back. But if you didn't get the message the first time, when we ran one of their pieces of art on our cover, or the second time, in the article, then let me say it right out: Feng Shui rocks.

There are too many interesting things in this full-color, 280+ page book than I can cover in a one-page review — John touched on most of them in his seven-page "Blowing Things Up" article — but let me see what I can do.

The game is based on the increasingly-popular Hong Kong action movie genre. It's about the various groups of sorcerors, politicos, religious zealots, cybernetically-enhanced sapient animals and what-not, battling for control over certain sites in different places and times which rule how the energy of history flows. Has flown. Will flow. You get the picture. Characters come from different places and times to blow one another to shreds.

Now, it's not what you might call a realistic game. People who are picky about their world backgrounds being somehow "real" or even "believable" might not get into Feng Shui, and that just means more fun for us, the people who prefer internal consistency in a game over a system with visible stretch marks from all the "realism" squeezed . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: July 1, 1996

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