D&D meets Feng Shui

[Kail]

Am I a total nut job or has anyone tried running a D&D type game under the Feng Shui rules? I've offered to run a game like this for some firends I role play with to help a burned out DM friend of mine. I've pulled some schticks{SP} off the net for the fighter/melee types and eye-balled conversions. Now I'm just wondering if I'm a fool or if any other brave soul has tried this? If you have tried it, what sort of pit falls did you hit. Or, if your just experienced in both games D&D/Feng Shui, what sort of problems do you see arising from the experiement?

Thanks in advance,

Kail

P.S. I swear I've had my medication, I'm not nuts for trying this one.

 

[dave_o]

I've ran a few fantasy games under the Window system, which is similar. It could work really well, you just need a group of open-minded, rules hating punks like myself.

It can work really, really well. Just make sure you keep an open mind and don't fret about balance, and the like. And keep the combats interesting, more than wacking back and forth with swords.

Cheers for giving it a shot! Maybe a story hour?

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

Go for it! Just make sure you post a little something over in story hour for the rest of us to hear of your exploits (or explosions, perhaps...)

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

They actually published a set of DnD as Feng Shui rules for an adventure by Atlas games. Damn nifty it was.

I intend to implement them in my current game. I can let you know how they go.

There was a free posting of them at one time.

 

[Dave Blewer]

Go for It!

Feng Shui, in my experience, can create some really great fantasy style games - just not in the traditional D&D style.

The Feng Shui Archetype system allows players to make up all sorts of great characters that wouldn't fit in the standard 3E game (well, now with Savage Species out they might).

Sentient Earth Elementals, Demons looking for redemption, Immortal Vampire warriors and more have all been played in our games alonside legendary warriors and wise and powerful wizards.

The other thing is that Feng Shui does not really support the standard dungeon crawl type D&D game. FS is more suited to epic sweeping storylines where the villians are black hearted, terrible and very powerful.

But I guess that you already know this

 

[Someone]

I did! well, sort of. I played with pretty much standard D&D rules, but encouraged pepople to make Manga-ish characters and designed combats like film action scenes, not "encounters". A battle in the roofs, or jumping between boats sweept away by a flood are much more interesting that a fight in a 30 ft by 30 ft room.

I tinkered a little with the rules, changing somewhat jumping rules, designing the Cannonfodder template, changing gold coins to Hero points (hero points buy item-like abilities) and allowing players to make amazing moves with fairly low DCs.

 

[Synicism]

I've played fantasy games with Feng Shui, and I have also tried bringing some of the elements of Feng Shui to D&D.

It's mostly a matter of your willingness to toss out a lot of the "conventions" of D&D, especially dealing with magic. Because so much of Feng Shui deals with creative description, many of the concepts can port over.

We did a bit of Feng Shui crossover in a D&D game featuring fairly powerful (like 13th level) Planescape characters. We did some things like ditching range increments and making certain skills like Balance largely irrelevant (everyone can do that in a wuxia film, after all). Everyone was also proficient with everything, and so on.

Basically, just throw out a lot of D&D's "details" and let the players just go with it.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Burning Shaolin was the name of the cross-over adventure and it was super nifty.

Everyone got better jumping rules and virtual feats for laying the smack down on mooks.

Improvised weapons got great support as did stunts and rules for the faceless horde template.

 

[nharwell]

I've played in such a game. The GM and I created variant archetypes for the game (it was an Al Qadim setting). I think I may still have those archetypes, as well as the "traditional" fantasy archetypes we used...

The problem I had with the game was that the GM tried to meld the two magic systems, converting D&D spells to stunts off of sorcery. While a neat idea in theory, it didn't work well in practice. I'd suggest simply fleshing out the existing Feng Shui magic system a little -- maybe weaken it slightly.

 

[barsoomcore]

Barsoom is a little Feng Shui-y. Nowadays, anyway. At the time of the current Story Hour it's more Call of Cthulhu.

And those of you who think Call of Cthulhu and Feng Shui don't make natural partners -- fie!

I'll give a bonus (usually +2) to anyone who comes up with a nifty move or clever retort. I try to stage fight scenes with a little more imagination if I can (I don't always because somedays I suck).

I haven't gone with the a) extended jumping, b) the faceless horde or c) the improvised weapons rules because a)um, dunno, just haven't, b) haven't actually introduced any faceless hordes but might -- what d20 Feng Shui really needs are SCALABLE faceless hordes -- and c) what few magic items there are on Barsoom are really really important and the PCs generally have a lot more to lose on that end.

Scalable faceless hordes -- anyone?