Feng Shui actual play thoughts

[Mike Holmes]

fwiw, that was "Face OfF", with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta, directed by John Woo IIRC

Damnit, I swear that I was going to guess that! Anyhow, same director for all these films you'll note. For Gun-Fu, Woo is the man.

Note that if you really want to crank up the action, change the rule slightly from Law's penalty, to Edwards' bonus. That is, instead of giving out penalties when players do bad, award a bonus when they do well. Give a +1 for any effort, and +2 for something really good. That'll keep them really adding effects for bonuses.

Did you get them hooked on gaining Feng Shui? Did they capture any sites? Have they tasted the advantages? :-)

Mike

[Grex]

Slightly OT, but if you or your friend want some inspiration for gun-fu, Equilibrium should definitely be on your viewing list; it has a quite unique take on martial arts and modern firearms.  

http://www.kungfucinema.com/reviews/equilibrium.htm

Best,
Grex

[arxhon]

fwiw, that was "Face OfF", with Nicholas Cage and John Travolta, directed by John Woo IIRC

Actually, it's not Face/Off, because i haven't seen that movie.

That's good to hear. Did you feel that by reminding them every so often helped motivate them to try and make better descriptions?

I definitely felt that way, yeah.
It might have been a combination of things.

One of my players hadn't been there for the last couple of sessions, and he showed up this time. The energy level was definitely a lot higher this time around for sure. The neat thing here is that he's a real n00b at RPGing, but he really groks the game and tries to do cool and wacky things with his character (the Everyman Hero) all the time.

Maybe the other two wanted to "show off", or maybe they were excited at having the new guy around again.

At any rate, the more experienced guys started off with pretty dull descriptions and i began telling them "Ok, make it cool!"  I wanted to see if a little encouragement would work before i pulled out any kind of sticks to browbeat them with (they'd resent that).

That seemed to spark them into spicing the description up quite a bit and trying for more than simply shooting a guy; they started shooting cars to make them explode, flipping out all over the place and all kinds of cool stuff. At one point, the guy with the guns (the one who seems to have the most trouble with good descriptions, actually) decided to cancel his original action because "It wasn't very cinematic" and did something else that was much cooler.

Did you get them hooked on gaining Feng Shui? Did they capture any sites? Have they tasted the advantages? :-)

Yup. They took control of the Eating Counter but ran off into ancient China after Ta Yu before they attuned to it (they finally attuned last night). After taking down Ta Yu, they attuned to one in the past as well as the Eating Counter. They certainly like the idea of (what they probably figure is) "free experience" so far. The freedom to increase abilities isn't lost on them either.

A thought just struck me:

The guy who does the best descriptions took a number of years off gaming and is the biggest "munchkin" of the group.

The guy who's been playing pretty much solid for...geez...it must be 15 years now is actually the most stumped at coming up with descriptions. Ingrained habits, perhaps?

The new guy is really creative and wacky. He is always coming up with strange things to do with beer bottles, chop sticks and cans of hairspray.

I don't think there's a real relationship in that observation, but i do find it interesting.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello arxhon,

You wrote,

The guy who does the best descriptions took a number of years off gaming and is the biggest "munchkin" of the group.

The guy who's been playing pretty much solid for...geez...it must be 15 years now is actually the most stumped at coming up with descriptions. Ingrained habits, perhaps?

The new guy is really creative and wacky. He is always coming up with strange things to do with beer bottles, chop sticks and cans of hairspray.

I don't think there's a real relationship in that observation, but i do find it interesting.

Oh, I think there's a real relationship there. I think it's very important. There's almost certainly no "perhaps" about it - ingrained habits, much like ingrown toenails.

Best,
Ron

[arxhon]

Hello Ron,

Thanks for replying.
You wrote,

Oh, I think there's a real relationship there. I think it's very important. There's almost certainly no "perhaps" about it - ingrained habits, much like ingrown toenails.

I'd actually like to discuss this a little bit, but i'm pretty sure this thread isn't the place, so i'll start one on RPG Theory.

[Deacon Blues]

Arxhon,

The Art of War, starring Wesley Snipes.

[arxhon]

Deacon Blues:

YES!!!!

That's the one! Thanks a lot!