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BASEMENT

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BASEMENT – KITCHEN PORCH

Liquor Crates: Mostly empty crates which originally contained three dozen bottles of Minnesota 13. A half dozen or so bottles remain, unopened.

• GM Note: Gladys brought the liquor in these crates and had them dropped off at the back porch.

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FIRST FLOOR

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FIRST FLOOR – HALL

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Hall

Corpses (3): Two on the floor. One on the stairs.

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FIRST FLOOR – ART GALLERY

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Art Gallery

3 story tall pipe organ. 12 foot high fireplace on the opposite wall. Expensive art lining the walls.

Corpses (3): One playing the organ. Two in an amorous embrace on the bench.

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FIRST FLOOR – LIBRARY

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Library

Corpses (3) – One of the corpses is Frank Candide (ID in his wallet; he was married to Evelyn, whose body is in the attic).

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FIRST FLOOR – MUSIC ROOM

• Upright piano. Victorian wallpaper. Crystal chandelier.
• Portaits of James J. and Mary T. hang on the walls to either side of the door.
• Coats and purses are stacked on a divan.

 

• Simple Search: To sort through the IDs.
• Evelyn’s ID: Evelyn Candide’s ID is here, so if they haven’t found the bodies in the attic yet, this will indicate a missing woman.
• Alicia’s ID: Alicia Corey’s purse is here and a photograph inside can be used to identify her corpse. It also lists her name and address on a small “Please Return” card.

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FIRST FLOOR – TERRACE

• Evidence Collection 1 / Evidence Collection (Lucretia’s Testimony): There is a trail of fingerprints “walking” across the terrace. (Go from the house down the stairs and then vanish into the grass.)

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SECOND FLOOR

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SECOND FLOOR – BALCONY

Fluted balustrades around the edge. Lounging furniture fashionably arranged.

Corpses (1 + Alicia Corey)

ALICIA COREY’S CORPSE: This corpse still has its left hand, which is clenched in a tight fist.

• GM Note: Alicia’s purse and ID are downstairs in the Music Room.

Shattered Hamsa: Clutched in her left hand, there are shards of glass and lead. (Prop: Shattered Hamsa)

• GM Note: This was Alicia’s Hamsa charm. To prepare this prop, print out the picture of the Hamsa and cut it up into pieces. Allow the players to assemble the pieces like a puzzle.
  

Slit in the Palm: There is a strange slit or cut in the palm. No blood, but some kind of clear, jelly-like substance in the slit.

• Medicine: The liquid is aqueous humor — the introcular fluid which fills the eyeball.

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SECOND FLOOR – RACHEL’S ROOM

Prop: Photo of James J. Hill House Rachel’s Room

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THIRD FLOOR

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THIRD FLOOR – SERVANT’S QUARTERS

A simple room, but with the same rich oak trim found throughout the house.

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ATTIC

THEATER

Converted into a small stage. (For the production of amateur theatricals by the Hill children.)

Corpses (2): Located on the stage behind the curtains.

• Rupert Wild and Evelyn Candide.
• Evelyn was married to a Frank Candide, whose corpse is in the Library.

Tanit Hands (2): These hands were trapped in here.

CRAWLING HAND OF TANIT: Athletics 2, Fleeing 6, Scuffling 4, Health 4

Hit Threshold: 4 (tiny, quick moving hand)
Alertness Modifier: +1 (10% eye by volume)
Stealth Modifier: 2 (tiny skittering hand)
                Weapons: eye gouge, scratching, unpleasant probing (-3)
Stability Loss: +1
Eye of Tanit: Pupil twists into a curlicue. Stability test (no loss). On failure, establish trance like state. On second failure, can issue a hypnotic compulsion that will last until trance ends. Being controlled has a potential of 4-point Stability loss.

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RACHEL HILL

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Rachel Hill

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• In a state of shock covered only by her excellent manners.
• Dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief.
• Weakness melts away if pushed around; then she wields her full strength as a millionaire’s heiress.

BACKGROUND

• Grew up in New York.
• Had diptheria as a child.
• Married Egil Boeckmann, a University of Minnesota football hero (scored touchdown that tied first “Little Brown Jug” game with Michigan) in 1913.
• Moved back into James J. Hill House when her mother became ill in 1919.
• Recently hired a photographer to take pictures of the property before it’s given to the Archdiocese.

CLUES

• She did not drink, as she’s teetotaler.
• Gladys Roy left early. She had invited a friend – Alicia Corey – to the party.
• Reassurance 1 / Interrogation 1: She asked Gladys Roy to secure the alcohol for the party (and brought it in the later afternoon). (She won’t admit this without reassurances that she won’t get in trouble. Otherwise her story is that people brought their own booze.)

NOTES

• Rachel was married in the Drawing Room of the mansion. (The dissociation between that memory and the corpses currently in there.)

RACHEL HILL: Athletics 4, Driving 2, Firearms 0, Fleeing 8, Scuffling 4, Weapons 2, Health 7
Alertness Modifier: -1 (oblivious)
Stealth Modifier: 0 (unskilled)
           Weapons: Fists (-2)

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LUCRETIA GRAY

APPEARANCE:

• Prop: Photo of Lucretia Gray

ROLEPLAYING NOTES

• Nervous around authority figures.
• Protective of members of the Hill family. Refers to them as Mr. Wallace, Ms. Rachel, etc.
• Gives a “look” to anyone she considers to be acting foolish.

BACKGROUND

• Her husband was a butler in the house. He died in a trolley accident in 1919. They had no children.
• Has worked with the Hill family since 1911.
• Last servant working in the house (the rest were assisted into other positions or given pensions after Mary T.’s death).

CLUES

• She sent the invitations out for Ms. Rachel’s party. (Has a list of addresses and could, for example, give people contact information for Gladys Roy.)
• Gladys Roy brought the liquor (Minnesota 13) to the party at Rachel’s request. She dropped it off on the back porch and Lucretia would run bottles up as people requested more.
• Reassurance 1: As she was calling the police from the phone in the den, she saw something crawling across the Terrace and disappearing into the darkness.

LUCRETIA GRAY: Athletics 10, Driving 0, Firearms 0, Fleeing 8, Scuffling 6, Weapons 3, Health 10
Alertness Modifier: +1
Stealth Modifier: +1
            Weapons: Fists (-2), Household Implements (-1)

Go to Node 1: The Black Cats

 

Go to Part 1

One of the first elements I established for the Alexandrian Remix of Dragon Heist was to have the Cassalanters approach the PCs and attempt to recruit them as their agents in the Grand Game: I found the story of their children’s plight very compelling, and the entire situation rife with incredibly tough and emotional decisions that I felt would really elevate the campaign if they were put center stage. (Whereas in a traditional run, even with the Cassalanters as the DM’s chosen villain, it’s very likely that the PCs will never even discover what the Cassalanters’ true motives are.)

But what if we went a different way?

There are four rival factions in Dragon Heist, of which the Cassalanters are only one. If it’s interesting to swap the Cassalanters’ approach from open antagonism to would-be collaborators, what might happen if one of the other factions took the same approach?

Of course, none of the other rivals have innocent children for the PCs to be called upon to save. So their approach to collaboration will look a little different.

MANSHOON’S ULTIMATUM

The timing of Manshoon’s approach can be identical to the Cassalanters (he discovers the PCs are investigating the fireball that killed several of his agents and decides they would be useful pawns), but it might be better to wait until the fallout from the Gralhund Villa raids. Assuming that the PCs end up with the Stone of Golorr, Manshoon would be highly motivated to get them onboard.

His method for doing so, however, is far less discrete than the Cassalanters: He takes a hostage.

Circumstance will determine whether it will work best to find someone in a PC’s backstory or to target someone they’ve built a relationship with during the campaign, but either way the kidnapping takes place offscreen. Perhaps the PC becomes aware of it when they find their loved ones’ ransacked quarters, but more likely it takes the form of a simple letter arriving at Trollskull Manor.

The letter explains the situation simply: They have something he wants. And now he has something they want. A meeting will be arranged (to which Manshoon will send his simulacrum rather than appearing himself), and the following proposal will be made:

• Their loved one will not be harmed. Quite the contrary. They are enjoying luxurious accommodations (If only the PCs could be so lucky.) Manshoon is personally seeing to it that their every need (except freedom) is being met.
• The PCs will seek to restore the Stone of Golorr and use it to claim Neverember’s Enigma – the 500,000 golden dragons he embezzled from the city.
• Manshoon is not an unreasonable man, of course, and if the PCs fulfill their end of the bargain, not only will he free their loved one, they will also be free to keep fully 20% of the treasure.
• The Zhentarim will also make available to the PCs the full resources of their intelligence-gathering and mercenary networks.

IF THE PCs JOIN MANSHOON: The Zhentarim response teams and safe houses are put at their disposal, with more and more resources being made available as they prove themselves more trustworthy. All of Manshoon’s lieutenants can be played as allies, and this extra muscle will certainly free the PCs up to try more daring (or, at least, direct) heists to obtain the missing eyes.

IF THE PCs REFUSE: Manshoon shakes his head sadly. Then he leaves, has their loved one murdered, and dumps the corpse on the front step of Trollskull Manor.

IF THE PCs SEEK TO RESCUE THE HOSTAGE: A heist! I love heists. The hostage is being held in Area E11 of Manshoon’s Extradimensional Sanctum. The Zhents who made their quarters there have been turned out for the moment; consider spreading them out between Kolat Towers and the Zhentarim faction outposts.

JARLAXLE’S ALLIANCE

For Jarlaxle, we’ll move in the opposite direction: When running the opening scene of the campaign at the Yawning Portal, instead of using Step 2: Friendly Faces (in which the PCs pick one of the NPCs on p. 221 of Dragon Heist to be the contact they’ve come to meet), the contact they’re meeting with is, in fact, Jarlaxle.

Depending on the approach you want to take, they might think they’re meeting with “Captain Zord” or they might know the true identity of who they’re meeting. Either way, Jarlaxle does, in fact, connect them with Volo.

This means, of course, that the PCs are members of Bregan D’Aerthe from the very beginning. Refer to the general information on p. 14-15 of Dragon Heist and the faction missions on p. 34-35.

INVERTED NIMBLEWRIGHT INVESTIGATION: If you want to radically shift Chapter 2 of the campaign, then have one of the PCs’ jobs be to sell the nimblewrights for Jarlaxle. One of the reasons Jarlaxle wanted to get on Volo’s good side was so that Volo could help make introductions to various guilds, nobles, and other highly-placed and influential people. Refer to the list of owners in Part 5C: The Nimblewright Investigation as a resource for the prospective clients Volo refers them to.

Whether the PCs are selling nimblewrights or not, they still have Trollskull Manor as a reward from Volo. Jarlaxle will help bankroll the renovation costs and is eager to develop it as a safehouse for Bregan D’Aerthe operatives.

The fireball explosion also still happens on schedule: When the PCs discover that a nimblewright is involved, they can either go to Jarlaxle and clue their whole organization into the Grand Game. Or it’s possible that they were literally the ones who sold the nimblewright to the Gralhunds. (Small world, eh?)

THE GRAND GAME: Tracking forward, slot in the PCs everywhere that the campaign refers to Jarlaxle’s agents.

At Gralhund Villa they’re able to review nimblewright footage in Jarlaxle’s crystal ball and are then ordered to set up a surveillance post. (Maybe they even end up in Artheyn Manor, just like Fel’Rekt would in a ‘normal’ campaign.)

I recommend not having Jarlaxle accompany them on the other heists (he has a lot of other projects and a busy social calendar to attend to), but they can certainly tap Bregan D’Aerthe resources (in the form of a response team). And Jarlaxle may be able to directly feed them information (and access) to Xanathar’s Lair.

XANATHAR’S GANGSTERS

For this final collaboration we’re going to radically invert the campaign: Rather than starting the campaign at the Yawning Portal, the PCs will be gangsters working for Xanathar. Their first job? Raiding a warehouse where the Zhentarim are holding Renaer Neverember, capture Renaer themselves, and bring him to a sewer hideout where they’ll be met by Nihiloor.

Of course, they discover too late that they’ve kidnapped some fuckin’ mook named Floon Blagmaar. A total disaster. Maybe they try to double back to the warehouse, but by the time they get there, Renaer is gone and the place is swarming with watchmen. (Their first inklings that a Grand Game is happening will come from the questions Nihiloor asks ‘Renaer.’)

CHAPTER 2 – WORKING FOR THE BOSS: You need some time to pass here and, in this scenario, the PCs don’t get Trollskull Manor. Run a few faction missions that introduce them to the Xanatharian faction outposts (they get outfitted by Grinda Garloth; they struggle to figure out how to get the mechanical flying beholder working before the Twin Parades; they’re charged with running security at Terasse Estate and escorting gamblers through the dangerous tunnels to the gladiator tournaments).

Their contact person for these faction missions? Dalakhar.

CHAPTER 3 – THE TRAITOR: Then comes the day when Dalakhar vanishes. Turns out he’s betrayed the Boss and stolen something. Boss won’t say what, but it’s clearly important. The PCs need to find him.

They track him to the Inn of the Dripping Dagger. The timeline is slightly different in this version of reality, and they end up finding the letter from Kalain. They track Dalakhar to Kalain’s place, and she tells them he’s headed to some place called Trollskull Manor. (You’ll want to buff this up a bit to fully satisfy the Three Clue Rule.)

The PCs head over to Trollskull Manor. As they’re heading through the alley, a huge explosion goes off just around the corner up ahead: Rushing forward, they discover Dalakhar and a bunch of other people dead!

THE TROLLSKULL MANOR TEAM: From this point forward, the campaign more-or-less follows the normal track. Investigations will lead the PCs to Gralhund Villa; they’ll find the Zhentarim and Jarlaxle’s team watching the place.

But here’s the twist: There is a group of heroes who rescued Renaer Neverember and moved into the Trollskull Manor. And they’re doing what the PCs in a ‘normal’ Dragon Heist campaign would have been doing: The PCs likely first spot the Trollskull Manor Team at Gralhund Villa, but they’ll keep turning up:

• They raid one of Xanathar’s sewer hideouts.
• They perform a heist at Xanathar’s Lair. (Maybe the PCs can foil it. Or maybe the PCs foil their attempt, only to have Jarlaxle simultaneously steal the Eye. Guess it’s time to pursue them back to the Eyecatcher for a heist-in-kind.)
• While the PCs are trying to perform a heist at Kolat Tower, the Trollskull Manor Team is simultaneously active onsite.

And so forth. Play the heroes actively, and figure out what faction(s) they belong to and bring those into play, too.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The cool thing here is that, once you’ve restructured the campaign components into scenarios instead of plots, you can use those components in myriad ways. These examples push that to an extreme, but it demonstrates how much flexibility this approach has and how easy it is to take material prepped in this way and actively play it in order to respond to player choice.

Compare this to the approach taken by the published campaign, which attempts to give you flexibility and ‘reusability’ by, for example, giving you three different versions of an Old Tower. But the truth is that you don’t need multiple versions of a tower in order to get different utility out of it during actual play.

The other thing I’ll point out is that in all of these collaborator scenarios – including the original remixed version with the Cassalanters – we have no idea what’s going to happen. Do they take the Cassalanters offers or refuse it? Do the Xanatharian gangsters take the money and use it to take over the organization, launching a bloody gang war in and below the streets of Waterdeep? When Jarlaxle’s agents tweak to his true identity, do they remain loyal or turn on him?

Just as the flexibility of the material allows us to reframe the presentation of the campaign, it also provides infinite variability in the actual running of the campaign, providing you (and your players) with a constant stream of surprise and wonder.

 

Go to Part 1

STINK

Stink was the heir to House Greygloom, but Stink was naughty. Stink’s father – Lord Baleen of the Tinfoil Ilses – was naughty, too, and as punishment Stink became the ward of House Snark. The Snarks were nice to him and, looking back on that, Stink is pretty sure he didn’t deserve it. Stupid, stupid, Stink. He abandoned his brother by another mother, abandoned his sister by the same daddy, and abandoned his oaths. He deserves to be Stink. He did terrible things. Turned on his friends. He killed… those boys. Now the pretty lady is asking him to do nice things, but that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing Stink is good at. He doesn’t have the balls for it.

SULKWELL TUBBY

“I know who yer daddy is.” – Sulkwell Tubby

But Sulkwell wishes he didn’t know his. Randy Tubby was Lil Finger’s frat brother, and he’s the sort of guy who heard the saying that, “The true path to the Porcelain Throne lies through books,” and thought it meant that the only place worth using a book was the privy. Sulkwell ended up thinking the same thing, but only because the privy was the only place he could read without being tormented by his father and his brothers. As soon as he turned eighteen, Sulkwell got the hell out of there… and it was definitely his own idea, he’ll swear to it. Josh Frost is best friend in the whole world.

LIL FINGER

Lil Finger is the sort of fellow who believes that the best pickup lines are all Yo Momma jokes. He could never understand why this hadn’t worked with Waitin Snark, and with all the logic of a werewolf in heat he concluded that it was because he was fated to fall in love with her daughter, Sanserif. Oddly, however, the Yo Momma pickup lines aren’t working on her, either. He thinks the problem might be that he has a wife, but the Yo Auntie jokes aren’t working, either. Women are weird.

BERRY OF TART

When she was a young maiden, Berry of Tart dreamed of becoming the Iron Chef, a title which she had significantly misunderstood. How, exactly, she wrought such miraculous pastries while using nothing but a sword is one of the great mysteries of the age. Her blueberry tart, which became known as the Sapphire Isle, was particularly spectacular. Although she was eventually named the Queen of Tarts, Berry was never able to claim the title of Iron Chef due to rank misogyny.

DAVE ONION

Dave Onion, captain of the black-sailed Unsinkable II (don’t ask what happened to Unsinkable I), delivered Tijuana Bibles and whiskey to Lord Canceled’s men during Bobby’s Rebellion, helping to keep their morale up and their resolve stiff. (Tijuana is the name of Lil Finger’s brothel in Jester’s Landing.) When the war came to an end, Lord Canceled had Onion knighted, but also sentenced him to have his nipples cut off as punishment for his past crimes as a smuggler of pornography. Sir Dave was fine with this. Male nipples are useless, and he has no time for useless things. Plus, the scars are bad*ss.

Feng Shui 2 uses an action count (or tick-based) initiative: Characters make an initiative check using their Speed to determine the initial Shot Count that they’ll be taking action on. Each action is then rated by the number of “shots” it will take to resolve, and this shot cost is subtracted from the character’s current shot total to determine the Shot Count on which they’ll take their next action. When everyone’s Shot Counts hit 0, the current Sequence ends and a new Sequence begins with fresh initiative checks.

There are some mechanical advantages to this system: It allows for Dodges and other interrupt actions to be handled very fluidly (by simply applying a shot cost that adjusts when a character gets to take their next proactive action). The ability to easily handle actions that have different “weights” (whether from a dramatic or simulationist perspective) by assigning them different shot costs can also be very elegant (and Feng Shui 2 wisely leaves most of those distinctions up to the GM rather than miring the system with a bunch of arbitrary, predetermined values that would impede play through table look-ups).

For a long time, however, I personally found that the mechanical disadvantages of tick-based initiative systems significantly outweighed the mechanical advantages:

• The system encourages a methodology of calling out initiative numbers (“Okay, anybody going on 18? No? 17? No? 16. Yes, great.”) that I find clumsy and poorly paced.
• It requires more fiddly bookkeeping from everyone at the table, which can be a drag on pace.
• It tends to interfere with or prevent me from using advanced combat management techniques like on-boarding, prep rolls, and the like.

Basically, over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that combat is most interesting when you can keep things focused on the events happening in the game world – entering quickly into the conflict; fluidly moving and overlapping action resolution – rather than focusing on initiative values. Tick-based systems tend to inherently conflict with my ability to do that.

But as I got ready to start playtesting Feng Shui 2 scenarios this month, something clicked in my head. I don’t think it’s something intentional (at least, it’s never been discussed in a published Feng Shui book to my knowledge), but maybe I’m just dense and it’s taken me twenty years to figure out something that was immediately obvious to everyone else. (A quick survey of online discussion suggests otherwise.)

Couple common misconceptions I’ve seen floating around that you should toss out in case you’re harboring them:

• A Feng Shui sequence is not a “round.” If you try to think of it through the paradigm of the typical combat round found in D&D and other RPGs, you’re going to find it difficult to square the difference.
• The “shot” in “shot cost” does not refer to the time it takes to fire a bullet. It refers to a shot in a movie. (Although, appropriately for Feng Shui, the term shot was derived from the early hand-cranked cameras; you “shot” a film the same you “shot” a hand-cranked machine gun.) “Sequence” is the same thing: It’s a film editing term referring to a series of individual shots.

And the thing that clicked in my head is that you shouldn’t just treat these as appropriated terms that lend a filmic theme to Feng Shui’s mechanics; you should embrace them fully in framing and describing the action of your Feng Shui game.

FRAMING TO THE SEQUENCE

Start with the sequence: Mechanically, when the sequence ends, everyone rolls fresh initiative and a new sequence begins.

As the GM you should also key off this moment to dramatically change the fight. The first sequence should not just seamlessly transition into the second. Instead, the first sequence should definitively conclude and the first few shots of the second sequence should establish a new paradigm for the fight that makes it feel radically different from the previous sequence.

• Reinforcements arrive. (Fresh waves of mooks flood in. The Boss shows up and shouts, “What’s going on in here?!”)
• A chase sequence transitions from one environment to another. (After a bunch of tight-corners and narrow streets, the cars blaze up an entrance ramp and onto the freeway. The rooftop chase reaches the end of the warehouses and the cyber-apes jump down into the crowded stalls of an open-air market.)
• A chase ends and a set-piece fight begins. Or vice versa. (Neo stops to fight Agent Smith in the subway station. Agent Smith regenerates and Neo runs up the stairs and back into the city.)
• A major environmental effect begins or ends. (Artillery shells from a naval ship just offshore begin raining down on the battle. The abandoned building catches on fire. The scaffolding begins to collapse.)
• The bad guys unveil some new attack or ability that they were charging up, deploying, or otherwise holding in reserve.

When embraced, this structure will keep your fights fresh and interesting from beginning to end. Leaning into the sequence will naturally pace the fight in interesting ways.

If you have the right sort of group for it, encourage your players to get in on the act: The PCs can also be a driving force for “and now everything changes!” at the start of a new sequence. They can grab the heavy ordnance from the trunk of their car; or decide that it’s time to skedaddle with the McGuffin; or change tactics and start trying to blow out the support beams in the abandoned theater.

Feng Shui 2 includes a beautiful Shot Count tracker, and I recommend using it: With proper tokens, it will not only simplify the bookkeeping required by the system, it will also visually cue the entire table into both what’s currently happening and the “pace” of what’s coming down the pike. This will be particularly useful as we begin looking at shot-specific techniques.

FILLING THE EMPTY SHOT

It’s far from unusual for a Feng Shui sequence to feature shots in which no characters are taking actions. Instead of simply skipping over those empty shots, you should fill them with a content. In the same way that not every shot during a fight in an action movie focuses on the combatants punching each other, you can use these shots to widen the scope and depth of the scene.

This is a good time for establishing shots: Describe the train roaring past the train yard. It’s the submarine bursting up through the ice. It’s a cut to the nuclear missile that’s reached the apogee of its flight.

Taking a moment to focus on environmental effects is a good use of an establishing shot: The wrecking ball at the construction site reversing its pendulum swing through the air. The lava spewing into the air above the Godsforge. The gasoline spreading out from the car wreck.

Or you can feature the shot where that gasoline catches on fire. Dynamic effects, like that wrecking ball crashing through the scaffolding and forcing everyone fighting on the scaffolding to make a Defense check, can add great spice to a fight, but you should try to use then in limited quantities. (A little bit goes a long way here and you usually want to keep the focus on the characters fighting, not an environment that’s more volatile than a shack full of old dynamite.)

If you’re struggling to come up with a good establishing shot, take a peek at the list of Things That Can Happen During a Fight. You’re usually not doing them on the empty shot, but you can set them up. For example:

• Someone gets pushed through a neon sign. (Describe the dramatic aerial shot that swoops past the tall letters of the neon bulletin board atop the building.)
• Confused tourists stumble into the middle of the fight. (Establishing shot of the father gesturing at a map and angrily indicating which way they should be going.)
• Cut the counterweight on the castle gate to ride it up or down. (Establish the movement of the counterweight when the bad guys are closing the gate.)
• Someone’s sleeve gets caught in the factory machinery. (Describe a shot of the machinery, its mechanical pounding seeming to act like foley for the fists flying in the background.)

In John Woo’s seminal Hard-Boiled, there’s a classic establishing shot of a nursery at a hospital:

Gee… I wonder if anything’s going to happen in there when the guns come out? Nah. I’m sure it’ll be fine.

This creates a cycle of set-up and payoff which is both satisfying when you do it as the GM, but also effective at cueing the players with elements they can take advantage of at their own initiative.

Don’t feel like any of these moments need to be overwrought. Quick reaction shots are more than sufficient to punctuate the flow of the fight. Get in, establish one cool idea in a couple of sentences, and then move on to the next shot.

Empty shots can also be used for character moments – the types of interactions (witty dialogue, steely-eyed glares, the respite in which an exhausted hero catches their breath before plunging back into the melee) that elevate the best fight scenes. Such moments don’t require empty shots (they can be woven around and through the action in general), but an empty shot may give you an opportunity to particularly highlight such a moment.

This is also a great way to get the players involved: You may encounter a little difficulty where some players struggle to understand that these empty shot moments are not a “free action,” but if you can get them onboard you’ll be able to throw empty shots their way to set up cool character moments.

You can also blend multiple empty shots together into a single moment, but challenge yourself to resist that impulse and see what happens. If you have three empty shots in a row, try to find three distinct things to do with them, perhaps looking ahead to see who’s action is coming next and using those shots to ramp up to or shift the focus to that character’s situation.

SUBJECTS IN THE SHOT

At the opposite end of the spectrum, you’ll often have shots with multiple characters taking action. As described in the Feng Shui 2 rulebook, these actions are resolved:

• PCs first, in clockwise order from the GM.
• All GMCs in the shot.

Here, too, take a cue from what the shot system is telling you: These actions are all taking place in the same shot. In movie terms, that means they’re all happening on screen together. This does not necessarily mean simultaneously (shots extend over time), but it does mean that they’re all related to each other visually, spatially, and probably causally.

Generally speaking, the trick here is to mechanically resolve all of these intentions and only then weave the full description of what happens in the game world. This allows you to pull discrete mechanical interactions together in order to give the fight a wider scope and richer narrative flow.

Circumstances won’t always make this particularly easy and you may need to occasionally abandon ship, but I encourage you to challenge yourself: If the Shot Count is grouping together characters on completely opposite sides of the fight, is there a way that you can widen the shot? Or cause something happening over there to shoot across the fight and impact what’s happening over here?

DESCRIBING THE SHOT

Finally, embrace the filmic conventions of Feng Shui – the original love letter to Hong Kong action flicks – and lean into using actual shot terminology to describe your framing of the action.

One way of categorizing shots is by subject size (use the number of subjects appearing in the current shot as an easy guide for setting this, but break away from the obvious answer occasionally and see where that leads you):

• Extreme close-ups frame just one small part of the subject. (A single eye glaring; an entire fist filling the frame as it lashes out; a ghastly wound pouring blood down someone’s side.)
• Close-ups feature a single subject; the focus is on their facial expressions and the details of their emotions.
• Medium close-ups keep the focus on a single subject, but capture their head, chest, and arms. Surroundings are vague and unimportant.
• Medium shots can be focused on a single character, but can often capture several characters in the same shot (two-shots are common). One variation of the medium shot is the cowboy shot, used in Western films to frame subjects from the thigh-up in order to fit the character’s gun holsters into the shot.
• Medium long-shots are more likely to capture multiple subjects, and the environmental details became significant.
• Long shots or wide shots are used to either capture large groups of people and/or put the primary focus on the environment in which the characters find themselves.
• Extreme long shots or extreme wide shots feature characters (often multitudes of characters) who are dwarfed by the environment or the totality of the crowd. These will often be used for establishing shots.

You can generally just use close-up, medium, and long shots to convey most of the meaning you need verbally at a game table. This also makes for a good starter palette as you’re getting a feel for the technique.

You can also classify shots by camera position and movement: Eye level, low angle, dutch angle, over-the-shoulder, bird’s eye view, point of view, dolly shots (dolly in or dolly out), aerial, pans, tilts.

Also think about the quality of the shot: Handheld, steadycam, or a swooping crane shot can all convey different emotional connotations (even when evoked verbally).

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Virtually all of these techniques can be implemented without the mechanical frame of the Feng Shui shot-and-sequence. But embracing that structure and pushing it hard will (a) give your Feng Shui fights a unique and distinctive flavor, and (b) serve as good practice for incorporating the best and most universal of these techniques into your other games.

Use the strong frame of the Feng Shui sequence to push you out of your comfort zone and, as I’ve suggested several times here, challenge yourself.

If you find yourself struggling, try this tip I presented in the very first Random GM Tips column here at the Alexandrian: Take a really great fight film – like Hard-Boiled or The Matrix or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – and narrate the action as it happens on screen, as if you were describing it to your gaming group. It sounds corny, but it builds your repertoire and helps loosen up your descriptive instincts. This is particularly effective for Feng Shui, because it will help you see fights through a filmic lens.

By the same token, don’t let yourself get fuddled by treating any of this as a straitjacket. For the first half dozen fights or so, lean into the structure hard and treat these as immutable “rules” so that you’ll force yourself to learn from the structure. But once you feel like you’ve mastered what the technique has to offer, be aware of when the structure needs to bend to the exigencies of what’s actually happening and what would be most effective. Push yourself to truly expand your horizons, but then remember that you learn the rules so that you know when to break them.