At the edge of the Rainbowlands stands the Violet City, the last bastion of civilization upon the edge of the ultraviolet grasslands. Even the civilized lands of this world are strange and alien to our eyes — teeming with a multihued humanity (of greenlanders, bluelanders, etc.), porcelain princes (who simultaneously live in multiple bodies psychically linked), body-hopping ultras, and cat lords — and here, where it comes to an end, the setting teems with a fever dream of the fantastic.

The premise of Luka Rejec’s Ultraviolet Grasslands is that the PCs will form a caravan which journeys out into these strange lands and then returns.

The group will start by selecting their reason for journeying into the grasslands. In addition to obviously motivating the expedition, this also determines how the group earns XP. Twelve default options are provided. For example:

• To make money. Provide the party with a financier that loans them the money for their first caravan (and creates a debt), then consider awarding 1d6 x 100 XP for every new profitable trade route discovered, and for every profitable trade completed.
• To learn the ancient secrets. A reason that should appeal to wizards. Give each destination a 20% chance of having lore and remains that lead to the discovery of an ancient secret. Once five pieces are recovered, a wizard can spend a week to research the lore and figure out the Teleportation of Innocents or perhaps the secret of Liquid Stone Lamps. Consider awarding 1d6 x 200 XP for every such secret learned.

The grasslands themselves are not trackless wastes. There are established routes and the players will have a map of 32 branching locations leading from the edge of the grasslands to the strange ruins of the Black City on the edge of an oily sea. Here’s one slice of what this map looks like:

The destinations indicated on the map are vast distances apart (the numbers on the trails between them indicate weeks of travel to reach them). You can think of each destination as a distinct point of light; or as the hub of a wheel, with different discoveries (i.e., adventure locations) available as spokes off of them. A simple structure is given for the PCs to make discoveries from the destination they’re currently in, and the intention is that they will add these discoveries to the map. (You can imagine it slowly expanding in detail as the campaign continues.)

Caravan travel itself is given an elegant, streamlined system consisting of:

• Time (simplified to weeks of travel, with each week given a specific resolution sequence you can easily walk through while making meaningful decisions)
• Inventory (with a simple system of “sacks” that make it easy to manage a caravan without getting bogged down in bookkeeping)
• Supplies & Survival (again, simplified to make it easy to manage an entire caravan of hirelings and pack animals)

The beauty of this is its robust simplicity. What I’m going to call Rejec’s caravan-crawl deserves to be ensconced alongside dungeoncrawls and hexcrawls as a pillar of the RPG artform. It’s an elegant and compelling scenario structure: Rejec provides a clean framework which GMs can fill with content, coupled to a clean set of default actions linked directly to a plethora of potential default goals.

The key insight, in my opinion, is the expectation that the PCs will travel these caravan routes again and again and again. If the goal of the structure was to simply travel from one end of the caravan route to the other (e.g., from the Violet City to the Black City), then you’d be looking at Choose Your Own Adventure prep, and it would be difficult to justify prepping all this branching content when most of it would never be experienced. But because the PCs will constantly be engaging and re-engaging the Ultraviolet Grasslands, all of that material become relevant.

In theory, this is obvious: Both megadungeons and hexcrawls follow similar principles, justifying expansive prep with the expectation that the material will be constantly re-engaged. In practice, though, this is non-trivial to achieve. Although you could simply mandate that the PCs mount multiple expeditions, this can easily decay into a monotonous grind. (You can see a similar problem crop up when people try to run megadungeons as if they were traditional dungeons and expect the PCs to “clear the dungeon.”)

Rejec structures and incentivizes re-engagement with the grasslands in three ways:

First, the Supply & Survival system forces the PCs to return to civilization to resupply (or to explore the trade routes in order to find places where they can re-supply along the way). Even if their ultimate goal were to simply “reach the Black City,” they would still need to repeatedly engage the grasslands in order to achieve that goal.

Second, by making each point on the branching routes an exploration hub surrounded by a cluster of discoveries (which could be theoretically expanded infinitely), Rejec ensures that the PCs don’t exhaust the routes. Like (Re-)Running the Megadungeon, re-engaging the material is always fresh and interesting; not simply a rote repetition.

Third, as a final fillip, Rejec adds a simple Trade & Goods structure. Using this structure, GMs can procedurally generate demand & supply, while the PCs can use market research to figure out the best places to sell their stuff. I have a few minor quibbles about this system (see below), but it creates a systemic pull that encourages players to explore the totality of the trade network.

Then, on top of that, Rejec provides a system for Milk Runs! “If the heroes figure out a milk run, where they can just travel the same journey over and over for profit… let them, but this is boring. Abstract this into a route a henchperson can handle, and roll for cash and complications every year.” So if the system designed to encourage the PCs to explore ever produces an error state where it starts encouraging them to do stuff that’s boring, Rejec provides a solution! This is brilliant!

Oh! Also! Starter caravans! Rejec provides a selection of pre-built caravans custom-tailored for specific purposes (scout, small trader, dungeon exploration expedition, etc.), so that you can just pick one and immediately start playing.

GLORIOUS GRASSLANDS

Laying aside how excited the book makes you to put a caravan together, the setting itself is absolutely enchanting. The book draws you in and conjures the grasslands before your mind’s eye in an alluring, all-captivating vision. It’s not just the art — which is gorgeous; landscapes like a young Hal Foster on an acid trip with characters designed by P. Craig Russell. The text positively vibrates from all of the rich ideas and evocative imagery Rejec has crammed between the covers. By the time I finished reading, I wanted to be out there exploring immediately.

Honestly, just a sample of the place names should be enough to stir the imagination:

• The Bone Mines of Moy Sollo
• The Death-Facing Passage
• The Cauldron of Revitalized Divinity
• The Grass Colossus
• The Porcelain Citadel
• The Cliff Villages of Ghost and Clan

There is a distinctive attitude and vision which simply leaps off the page. Groping for antecedents to compare the grasslands to, I suggest that this might be what you’d end up with if Hayao Miyazaki adapted Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun: It embodies a seemingly impossible nostalgia for something so alien it shouldn’t be able to resonate with our own sense of a lost past… and yet somehow does, capturing a serene beauty which is nevertheless filled with pulse-pounding savagery.

What impresses me most, though, is how incredibly accessible it all feels. The RPG industry is filled with any number of incredibly ornate and wonderful settings that are incredibly difficult to bring to the table because of how much effort it takes to onboard the entire group (Tékumel being the granddaddy of them all). But despite how fresh and unique and deep the Ultraviolet Grasslands are, I nevertheless feel that I could sit down and start playing this with little more effort than any other game of D&D.

Maybe there’s something alchemical about the borderlands — about the place where civilization (any civilization) falls away — that frees us to explore this strange and wonderful wonderland with eager and open eyes. Or perhaps it’s because Rejec encapsulates so much of the setting into immediately utilitarian elements (like equipment lists) that the players will engage with in play while making the discovery of the rest of the setting de rigeur the object of play itself.

But whatever the case, what Ultraviolet Grasslands overwhelmingly instills in me is a sense of not only how gameable it is, but how much I want to game it right now.

WHERE TO BEGIN?

There are a couple ways to begin exploring the Ultraviolet Grasslands. First, there is Ultraviolet Grasslands: Introduction, which is a free 80-page PDF. Second, there is the full-fledged Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City which is the full enchilada.

Theoretically, if you buy the full book, you should have no need for the Introduction. But I am going to STRONGLY RECOMMEND that even if you rush out and buy a copy of the Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City immediately upon finishing this review (and you should), that you should still start by reading the 80-page Introduction.

Why? Well… Remember that beautiful, crystal clear structure I was raving about? In the full book it gets a little… muddled.

First, the full book has opted to move all the location descriptions to the front of the book “for easier reference during campaign play.” Which makes sense from a certain point of view. But without the context of the structure for which this material was designed, it’s somewhat dizzying in its presentation.

Second, even once you get to the mechanical portion of the book, the material has lost focus on the core structure. In Whither the Dungeon? I talked about how D&D originally included a clear structure for running dungeon adventures, passed through a middle period where the rulebooks still included all the rules without the clear structure, and then eventually arrived at 5E where knowledge of the structure had so atrophied and/or become engrained in the designers that they even forgot to teach DMs how to key a map. It’s interesting watching UVG more or less jump from Stage 1 to Stage 2 of that process for caravan-crawls in roughly 18 months.

If you’re already familiar with the caravan-crawl structure (which you can easily be by reading the Introduction), then it’s easy to see where all of the mechanical gewgaws in the full book — including a lot of new mechanical options — fit into that structure. But if you aren’t, then the full book notably lacks that guidance.

Here’s one small example: Remember the Starter Caravans I mentioned above? In the full book they’re relabeled “Sample Caravans” and the explanation of their purpose (“if you want to skip planning and optimization”) is no longer found in the text. This may seem like a small and perhaps even insignificant change, but in practice I think it’s actually very significant. And even moreso when we’re talking about larger, more pervasive, and more innovative structures.

Similarly, there are a few places where I think the simpler systems of the Introduction are to be preferred. The system for market research is a notable example that I mentioned above: In both versions of the system, it’s problematic that the character’s skill check determines the demand for a trade good in a location (rather than discovering that demand). But the system in the full book really doubles down on this, completely eliminating the aspect of the system where players investigate specific markets. (Instead, they just make a check and get results like, “They need it, but three stops away a place pays x4.”) Systemically this both flattens the results and is significantly less useful to me as a GM.

The full book also includes the SEACAT system, an OSR fantasy system with a fair degree of deviation from D&D. It seems fine, but mostly leaves me cold, so that the best thing I can say about it is that it only takes up about twenty pages of the book. Your mileage may vary, however, and, in any case, it is easily ignored: Ultraviolet Grasslands is easy enough to use with any OSR game, and not particularly moreso with 5E. (With 3E you’d probably need to adjust some of the skill check DCs.)

My last quibble will be that the discoveries are under-developed, being more adventure seeds for the GM to develop than full-fledged content that’s ready to be run at the table. (But considerably less so than most hexcrawl products you may be familiar with, so take my critique with a grain of salt.)

Is any of this to say that you shouldn’t run out and buy Ultraviolet Grasslands the Black City?

Good lord, no! You absolutely should!

Take your first step with the Introduction, but then you need to LEAP into the full book, chock full of Rejec’s beautiful art and the incredible setting guide that will unlock all the glories of the grasslands.

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: Luka Rejec
Publisher: WizardThiefFighter Studios & Exalted Funeral Press
Cost – UVG Introduction: Free (PDF)
Cost – UVG & the Black City: $40 or $25 (PDF)
Page Count: 80 (Intro) / 200 (Black City)

UPDATE: As I was writing this review, word came out that Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City has been nominated for two 2020 ENnies Awards!

Go to Part 1

As with our previous installment of these capsule reviews, my goal is to just give a very high overview of my thoughts/impressions of each book. These reviews were written as part of my survey of Descent Into Avernus-related material on the Dungeon Masters Guild while working on the Alexandrian Remix of the campaign. Unless otherwise noted, the material has not been playtested.

You may also want to review this Guide to Grades at the Alexandrian. The short version: My general philosophy is that 90% of everything is crap, and crap gets an F. I’m primarily interested in grading the 10% of the pile that’s potentially worth your time. Anything from A+ to C- is, honestly, worth checking out if the material sounds interesting to you. If I give something a D it’s pretty shaky. F, in my opinion, should be avoided entirely.

WARLORDS OF AVERNUS: This supplement caught my attention particularly because I’m hoping to beef up the warlords of Avernus (we have title!), and it delivers quite nicely with four new warlords with very cool concepts supported by a full suite of stat blocks. I would have perhaps liked just a touch more flavor (more fully drawn personalities for the gang members in addition to those given for the warlords themselves), but Rodrigo Kuerten has presented a really great, tight package with high utility. Warlords of Avernus is very much worth $2.

• Grade: B-

BALDUR’S GATE – CITY ENCOUNTERS: When I was running Dragon Heist, I got a huge amount of quality play from Waterdeep: City Encounters (lead design by Will Doyle). That book contains 75 different encounter types, most of which have 3-6 variations, and a random table that splits them up across the different neighborhoods of the city. Borrowing a technique I brainstormed while writing Thinking About Urbancrawls, whenever the PCs went somewhere in the city I would just roll a random encounter for the neighborhood they were going to. It filled the city with life.

So when I saw that there was a Baldur’s Gate: City Encounters book, I snapped it up right quick. Unfortunately, this book (lead design by Justice Arman and Anthony Joyce) is considerably less useful than the Waterdeep version. It includes two sets of encounters: Neighborhood Encounters and Tension Encounters.

The Neighborhood Encounters consist of one encounter for each neighborhood in the city, which is just enough, in my opinion, to not be particularly useful. If I sort of squint at it sideways I can sort of see how you could theoretically have a one-encounter-per-neighborhood structure where the first time PCs enter or pass through a neighborhood you’d use the encounter, which would establish the tone/environment of that neighborhood for the group. (But the encounters here don’t really do that.)

The Tension Encounters are potentially more interesting: They present a five step scale modeling the current level of “tension” in the city and then support this scale with different encounters that can be had at each tension level. How the PCs choose to resolve the encounters can then affect whether the city tips more towards chaos or order!

Conceptually this sounds great, and could provide a great contrapuntal development as the PCs are pursuing their investigation and getting tangled up in Portyr politics. But there are significant problems in practice: First, the scale is supposedly between Order and Chaos, but the actual scale has Pandemonium on one side (with the Cult of the Dead Three performing blood sacrifices in the streets) and Martial Law on the other side (with a corrupted Flaming Fist declaring martial law and instituting pogroms while politicians are assassinated in the streets). It’s thematically incoherent, largely negating the whole point of the exercise.

Second, while promising a system by which the tension meter would change over time, the effort to provide such a system apparently ran aground, with the designers ultimately just throwing their hands up and saying “the DM decides what impact, if any, the encounters in aggregate had on the level of tension in Baldur’s Gate.”

Third, a lot of the tension encounters are kind of nonsensical. Like, there’s one where the PCs are walking down the street when Liara suddenly draws up next to them in a chariot, gives a speech declaring herself Grand Duke of Baldur’s Gate (not how that works), and then offers a ludicrously paltry 250 gp bounty to anybody in the crowd who assassinates any remaining dukes in town.

On that note, the biggest problem I have with the book is that many of the encounters aren’t encounters: They’re scenario hooks to much larger scenarios that the GM would then need to design. (Random encounters spawning unintended scenarios and digressions is a thing that can happen, but they shouldn’t be half-baked into the design.)

The book also includes a neighborhood map of Baldur’s Gate which, for reasons I don’t really understand, doesn’t match any other extant maps of Baldur’s Gate.

• Grade: D

MONSTER LOOT – DESCENT INTO AVERNUS: I snagged Monster Loot: Descent Into Avernus because it seemed to directly address something that I feel is, in fact, generally lacking in the 5^th Edition adventures I’ve seen: Loot. In short, Anne Gregersen supplies a loot listing for every encounter in the campaign.

The book includes two major new mechanics for equipment: First, the option to harvest body parts from foes. Second, broken items that don’t work until you repair them. Unfortunately, it’s largely on the shoals of these two mechanics that the book runs aground.

The problem with the broken mechanic, primarily, is that it’s just massively overused. Virtually every single weapon and piece of armor listed has been broken. On the one hand, this is relatively easy to just ignore. On the other hand, it feels indicative of a certain skittishness in letting the PCs get “good loot” that’s kind of antithetical to what I wanted the book for.

With a book specifically dedicated to customizing loot lists for every NPC, I was really hoping to see some unusual, eclectic, and flavorful stuff. Instead, in almost every case, it’s just “the weapons they’re carrying, the armor they’re wearing, and it’s all broken.” Which, frankly, I don’t really need. That stuff is already in the stat block.

Where Monster Loot: Descent Into Avernus really unleashes, though, are those harvesting rules: You can skin flesh, yank teeth, and cut off tails that do all kinds of crazy stuff. I was actually really interested in this because I find hunter-based play interesting in my open tables and I’m always wishing I had better support for it. But in this specific instance I found the result slightly… distasteful.

The book says that “harvesting body parts, such as hide and flesh, from humanoid creatures is not something this document covers because we don’t encourage adventurers to tear into the bodies of people.” But it means that in the most literal sense of the humanoid monster type. The book happily provides you the details on skinning angels and all kinds of intelligent creatures (including bipedal intelligent creatures).

At just $2.95 I flirted with giving this one a D, but ultimately I think I’m not going to bother having this at the table when I run the campaign. So, unfortunately…

• Grade: F

THE HELLRIDERS’ KEEP: This supplement adds a new location to Elturel. Conceptually it’s great. Not only does making Elturel a richer location for the PCs to explore make a lot of sense, but Carter VanHuss very astutely notes that the published adventure doesn’t cleanly clue the PCs into the true history of the Hellriders and designs this scenario to remedy that. The descriptions of the environment are really good, with lots of little details that are not only specific, but also packed full of lore. Exploring this space will immersively draw players into the world.

Unfortunately, the book does get a little hamstrung by a couple of structural issues. First, the hook is just another, “NPC tells the PCs to go some place, the PCs go there” affair. To some extent, I can see how his hands were tied by the published campaign itself, but it feels like with a little extra effort several hooks could have been more organically woven into the campaign to make PCs aware of the Hellriders’ Keep.

The more significant problem is the lack of a map: The entire structure of the adventure is exploring the castle, but the two maps in the product are instead battlemaps. Individual areas are keyed and an effort is made to describe how they relate to each other, but without a map it’s all needlessly confusing.

Despite this, I think it’s worth grabbing a copy of this if you’re going to run Descent Into Avernus (even if you will end up needing to draw a map).

• Grade: C

MONSTER HUNTS – AVERNUS: This book promised to be a bunch of plug ‘n play side quests for use with Descent Into Avernus. I thought this would be a slam dunk in terms of usefulness, providing all kinds of awesome content for fleshing out a hexcrawl of Avernus.

Unfortunately, not one of the one-page scenarios is actually set in Avernus. In this case, “for use with Descent Into Avernus” means that it uses the stat blocks from the appendices of Descent Into Avernus.

Ignoring the disappointing bait ‘n switch (which renders the book completely unusable for what I wanted it for), the scenarios themselves are also very poorly designed (so that I wouldn’t want to use them for anything): For example, most of the dungeon maps, instead of being keyed, are described in rambling, unfocused paragraphs. The text is frequently filled with prima facie nonsense (like a claim in the first scenario that it will take PCs forty minutes to walk two city blocks). And it’s almost impressive how many times they try to force a railroad on PCs even when they’re just exploring a simple dungeon.

The book also promises an “easy to use hunting system,” but I can find nothing of the sort. Instead, the majority of the scenarios lead off with some form of “make this skill check to find tracks or skip the rest of this adventure.”

• Grade: F

HELLTUREL: James Introcaso has really hit the nail on the head with Hellturel. This 32-page supplement presents four new locations for Elturel, nicely fleshing out the city for PCs who want to explore it. Not only are the locations well-designed, they are connected using node-based scenario design so that exploring one location will provide leads pointing to the others.

The only thing I would have liked to have seen would be some guidance for how clues could be added to the locations described in Descent Into Avernus in order to also link them to the locations in Hellturel. That creates a little bit of extra lifting. There are also some minor continuity glitches (for example, the first location says the Order of the Gauntlet has moved to the second location, but at the second location there’s only one member of the Order of the Gauntlet and, as far as I can tell, no indication of what happened to the rest of them) that probably needs to be cleaned up.

But, as I say, really good stuff. Recommended.

• Grade: B-

More DMs Guild Capsule Reviews – Go to the Avernus Remix

Go to Table of Contents

These tools are designed to augment the streetcrawling scenario structure used in Part 5B of the Remix. Most of them are procedural content generators that will help you fill in details of the city as the PCs crawl through it.

RANDOM BUSINESSES

The Random Businesses table is not designed to generate every single building in the city. Instead, roll on the table once per street and use the result to contextualize the street as the PCs move down it (e.g., “You turn right at the corner. On the next street you see the remains of a goldsmith’s shop on the right. A fire has gutted it.”). You might interpret the result as a single notable business, or as characterizing the type of business done on the street (e.g., a street with several blacksmiths).

Make sure to record the results on your map, in case the PCs double back.

The table found here is a fairly crude tool. It most notably excludes businesses likely to be found in specific areas of the city (like the Docks) that the PCs aren’t starting out in. (You won’t find chandlers or fishermen here.) You could also improve it by:

• Expanding the table to include more types of businesses.
• Customizing the results by neighborhood.
• Adjusting the results to more accurately model the likelihood of encountering different types of businesses.
• Perhaps biasing the results of your next roll by the previous roll. (So that, for example, the tanneries are less likely to be crowded in right next to the perfumers.)

I recommend checking out Midkemia Press’ Cities or Chaosium’s Thieves’ World as premiere resources if you want more sophisticated tables while having someone else do the work for you.

No Businesses: This usually means a purely residential street. It could also mean a green space of some kind.

Alternative: For a busier and more cosmopolitan feel, continue rolling on the table until you generate a “No Businesses” result.

BUILDING DAMAGE: Roll on the Building Damage table to determine the condition of a building. You can roll on a table whenever the PCs enter or inspect a particular building. You should also roll on the table when generating a street.

When generating a street, you can additionally roll a d6 to determine if the damage generated on the Building Damage table applies to the specific business you generated, a separate building on the street, or if the entire street has been effected. (If the original building generation roll resulted in a residential street with no businesses, then any result of 1-5 means that a specific residence has been damaged.)

Tip: I specifically designed these tables to use different types of dice. This makes it easy to generate an entire street in a single throw of the dice: Simply roll a d%, d8, and d6 simultaneously and then walk through the results using the appropriate die type for each table.

RANDOM FLOORPLANS

One of the challenges of running a streetcrawl is that the PCs may decide at any time to enter a random building. Here’s a quick method for generating simple floorplans on the fly.

ROLLING THE DICE: As with the street generator, this is a tablemat system. Take a handful of d4’s and roll them onto a sheet of paper. Most buildings are square, so you can just consider the edges of the paper to be the outer walls of the building.

The location where each die lands is a corner with a number of walls extending from that corner equal to the number rolled on the dice. The more dice you roll, the more complicated the interior of the building will be (and complexity generally equates to size). For simple cottages, a single d4 is often sufficient. Here’s an example using 3d4:

Tip: If a die rolls outside the “walls” of your building, you can ignore it, reroll it, or use it as an indicator of an irregularity in the otherwise square profile of your building. Whatever works.

After drawing your walls, you can remove the dice and add doors wherever it seems appropriate. For example:

I placed the doors here while imagining a residence (with a short entry hall leading from the front door and a master suite in the upper left corner; you can fill in the other rooms easily). But we could imagine randomly rolling a 77 on the Random Businesses table and then needing to generate the layout for a bowyer:

Here you can see how the same randomly generated walls can just as easily give us a shopfront with a door leading into a private residence at the back of the building. The master suite remains in the upper left, but here we find a bedroom with a large closet in the lower right. (Or maybe your imagination might make that a kitchen with attached larder.)

STAIR DICE: Roll a six-sided die as a d3 in addition to the intersection dice to determine the number of floors in the building. If there are multiple floors, where the die lands can be treated as the location of the staircase. If the raw number on the d6 is odd, then the building has a basement (included in the total number of floors). If it is even, then it does not.

You can increase the maximum number of floors, of course, by increasing the size of the die used and interpreting the results in the same way. (Rolling a d8 as a d4, a d10 as a d5, a d12 as a d6, and so forth.)

Rolling 2d3-1 produces a nice bell curve for the number of floors and a building with multiple stairs. (You can limit the number of buildings with multiple stairs by including multiple stairs only if the dice roll doubles, and otherwise placing the stairs at whichever die rolled higher.)

Rolling 2d3-2 (min. 1) produces the homes found in a mid-20^th century American suburb if you assume there’s always a basement.

RANDOM NPCs

If you need a random NPC:

1. Roll on the Random Businesses table to generate their profession.
2. If you get a result of “No Businesses,” roll on the Other Jobs table below.
3. Pull a name from the Elturian Names list.

Tip: This is, once again, a fairly crude tool. If you want the gold standard for this sort of thing, try to track down a copy of Central Casting: Heroes of Legend by Jennell Jaquays.

GENERATING A CRISIS: Roll on the NPC Crisis table below to see what type of crisis the NPC is facing (if any) due to Elturel’s fall into Hell. If the PCs run into an entire group of NPCs, you can probably just roll once to determine the entire group’s need.

No Current Need: The NPC probably isn’t happy, but they have a place of safety and they’re well-supplied.

Food & Water: Self-explanatory.

Injured: The NPC has been injured by collapsing structures, fires, looters, devils, or some other form of misadventure.

Trapped: Most likely due to a building collapsing on or around them.

Escort: The NPC needs to get some place (a place of sanctuary, to rejoin their family, etc.) and wants the PCs to escort them there safely. If in doubt, use one of the locations in Part 5C (the NPC effectively becomes a hook for that location).

Under Attack: The NPC is currently being attacked (or hunted) by criminals, devils, or something else.

Roll Again Twice: I’d recommend against stacking this result.

Tip: Structurally, these crises are a way of drawing the PCs deeper into the city. The more need they see, the more important what they’re doing becomes. The more people they help, the more emotionally invested they become. And the act of solving these problems will force them to explore the city and draw them towards the major locations.

FRACTAL STREET LAYOUT

An advanced technique while streetcrawling is to treat the system as having fractal complexity.

By default, you can just think of the system as generating and navigating specific streets. But you could also use it to generate the “major streets” of a larger neighborhood. (For example, this could be useful when the PCs are navigating towards a Distant Goal, as described in Part 5B.) Within each of these “major blocks” you can imagine myriad side streets, and, in fact, you can drill in and generate those side streets by treating each major block as the boundaries of a locality.

For example, you might start by generating a street map that looks like this:

You could then select one of those major blocks and generate the local side streets:

And you can take this even further, using the same system to generate footpaths, alleys, or even the outlines of specific buildings on an individual block. (The latter is a great way of getting non-standard building outlines that you can then use as a seed for random floor plans.) If you did that here, it might look like this:

When I demonstrate this system for new GMs, I’m sometimes told that this fractal approach isn’t realistic. “Cities don’t work like this,” one gentleman told me. If you’re feeling the same way reading this, then you might want to know that I pulled a fast one here. Although these are street layouts which could be trivially created using the street generator, in this case I didn’t actually use the generator: I just traced the streets for Morningside Heights in Manhattan.

And you can see, looking at that map, how the other individual blocks have similar levels of detail hidden away inside of them. (And that’s even before we crack open the satellite view and street views and really start looking at the details.) This is a good reminder that the real world is always an endless font of inspiration, even for our most audaciously fantastical creations.

Go to the Avernus Remix

Go to Part 1

FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY

Feng Shui is a game about pulse-pounding action and face-pounding fights. One of your key responsibilities as a player is to describe your character’s actions as if they were part of one of the greatest action movie fight sequences of all time. (You can do this because you have an unlimited budget and zero safety concerns.) Whether you’re performing a stunt or not, what your character does should sound awesome.

Some people can find this daunting. It can feel like a lot of pressure to have to always come up with something awesome. So here’s the first secret: If you can’t think of anything, it’s okay to go with something simple. It’s okay to just say, “Lao Zhi punches Ting-Ting in the face.”

A second (and related) secret is this: Not every single attack needs to carry the weight of the entire fight. Great action sequences are exactly that: Sequences of actions that build on each other. If you have an idea for an amazing, splashy centerpiece – great! But it’s also okay to just say something nifty and pass the baton to the next player.

Passing the baton quickly, clearly, and efficiently is almost as important as the action you actually take. If you keep the pace of the fight boiling along, you’ll often find the awesomeness of the fight seeming to grow as if of its own accord.

Respect the dice. Before the dice are rolled you don’t want to commit to a description that’s dependent on the outcome of the dice. For example, you don’t want to say, “I punch Ting-Ting so hard that one of her horns cracks in half, goes flying across the room, and gets stuck point-first in the wall.” (the attack check fails) “Okay, none of that actually happens.” There are generally two ways of respecting the dice, one basic and the other more advanced:

• Hold narration. The simpler option is to limit your action declaration to something very basic (“I try to punch Ting-Ting”), possibly no more than the mechanic or schtick you’re using (“I’m going to use Pincer and attack Ting-Ting”). Once the outcome of the action is known, you can narrate its full glory.
• Narrate to the point of success/failure. The more advanced technique is to fill both sides of the attack check with cool choreography. The trick here is to correctly identify the point at which success or failure is ultimately determined and only narrate up to that point. (“As the BMW speeds past, I leap in through the open window and try to punch Ting-Ting in the face.”) Once the action is mechanically resolved, you (or the GM) can pick up from that moment and complete the action appropriately. (“You punch Ting-Ting so hard that she flies out the far side of the car and goes rolling across the tarmac.” or “You leap through the window, but Ting-Ting raises one hand and grabs your fist in mid-air, stopping all your forward momentum. You’re now hanging halfway out of the car.”)

Extra Tip: Focus on one or two of these techniques at a time. When you get comfortable with a particular technique, add another one to your repertoire. Within just a few sessions you’ll have lots of options at your fingertips.

Add one cool detail. Start by adding just one cool detail your description. So if you’re thinking, “I want to punch Ting-Ting in the face,” you might add one detail and say, “I punch Ting-Ting in the face so hard that one of her teeth flies out.” Things to think about if you’re having trouble thinking of a cool detail include:

• Invoke your weapon (“I smash my fist into Ting-Ting’s face; as I pull my hand back we can see blood dripping from my brass knuckles”) or your schtick. If all else fails, you can just name your schtick (“I’m Strong as an Ox when I punch Ting-Ting in the face!”).
• Use the environment (“I leap up onto the railing and then even higher, pile-driving my fist into Ting-Ting’s face with all the force of gravity behind me”). This can include amazing lighting and sound design by master cinematographers and the best foley artists in the biz. (“My fist plows into Ting-Ting’s face and the boom of the impact echoes through the empty warehouse like a cannon shot.”)
• Describe hair or costuming. (“I punch Ting-Ting in the face, then step back and smooth the front of my bespoke suit from W.W. Chan and Sons.”) This can include the hair and costuming of your opponent. (“Ting-Ting’s head snaps back so quick her hair can’t keep up and her face disappears into a swirl of glistening black.”)
• Use quippy dialogue. (“Looks like you’ll have to move up that dentist’s appointment.”)
• Describe the camera move. Seemingly impossible camera moves are great because you don’t need to figure out how to actually film them. (“The camera whips around as we exchange blows, then zooms down my arm, following the arc of my fist as it plows into Ting-Ting’s face.”) Slow motion will almost always awesome something up, but is best used sparingly. X-ray shots (showing internal damage) are innately awesome, but need to be used even more sparingly.

Extra Tip: Looking at your character’s personality and schticks, you can actually prep some of these cool details before play begins. (For example, a Bodyguard has the Fast Draw schtick. You can brainstorm cool ways to describe how your character fast draws their weapon before ever sitting down at the table.) This can be particularly true for characters with Sorcery schticks, where this brainstorming also begins laying down the rules for how your particular brand of magic works.

Don’t let this become a trap, though: The best descriptions are still going to be those that arise organically and spontaneously out of the immediate circumstances. The best fight choreographers come prepared, but continue to collaborate and develop ideas.

Describe awesome misses. In The Matrix there’s a shot where Agent Smith throws a punch at Neo, misses, and his fist plows through a concrete column. Earlier a host of mook cops unleash a wall of machinegun fire at Neo and Trinity. Not a single bullet hits, but the barrage of gunfire completely annihilates the room — marble panels explode, rock goes flying through the air, Neo does a cartwheel through the rubble.

These are all examples of awesome misses: In an RPG we have a bias towards dismissing missed attacks because nothing changes mechanically, or we describe them as embarrassing failures for the attacker. But in action movies missed attacks are often just as impressive as the big blows (wreaking environmental damage), and near-misses are often highlights of the awesome martial arts ability of the person avoiding the blow.

Improvise props. As Robin D. Laws says, “If you want to hit somebody with a pair of skis, you say there’s a pair of skis there, and there is.” This is a central principle of the game: If there’s something that can make the fight a little more awesome, the camera can always pan over to reveal it. This extends to scenery, too. If you need to jump out of a third-story window, then of course there’s an awning down there to break your fall. If you need a trampoline to launch yourself up to the demon’s head and land a roundhouse kick, then of course there’s a gymnasium just on the other side of the wall.

Think about the environment where you’re fighting. What would be there? How could you use it to whup ass? If that particular object hasn’t been mentioned, you don’t need to ask the GM, “Are there any cars parked on the street?” You can just describe your character running over the top of them in order to jump up and reach the demon’s horns, yanking its head down and slamming it into the wall.

Reuse props. Once skis or a trampoline have been introduced to a fight scene (whether by you or by somebody else), look for ways to use that prop again. And again. And again. This works best if there’s a new twist to the action each time you reuse the prop.

Jackie Chan is a master of this, with many of his movies featuring a fight sequence in which a single everyday object (like a ladder or refrigerator) is constantly reinvented to attack, defend, or simply get in the way.

Tie actions together. Similarly, you can tie your current action to another action that just happened. The easiest example of this is ganging up on a single foe. (“Now that Ching has pulled the demon’s head down towards the ground, I deliver an incredible uppercut that sends it reeling backwards! It falls onto a Ferrari, crushing it flat!”) But more elaborate combos are possible, like scooping up the gun Bai Lin kicked out of the triad mook’s hands and firing it at the sorcerer Xiong Xuegang.

Off-turn collaborations. If someone is materially assisting you, that’s a Boost and needs to be mechanically accounted for. But the battlefield is a dynamic place and you shouldn’t picture the other characters all standing in freeze-frame while you’re resolving your action. You can describe yourself as switching weapons by sliding across the floor and scooping up a sword dropped by the recently deceased OR you can shout, “Bai Lai! Toss me that sword!” and then then let Bai Lai describe executing a perfect roundhouse kick that sends the sword swooping into the air so that you can snag it mid-flight. You can describe yourself running up a wall OR you can describe jumping off Bai Lai’s head to reach the balcony.

Extra Tip: Describing other characters (PCs and GMCs alike) battling in the background of your shot is another effective way of tying the action together. This background action isn’t mechanically resolved and will never inflict wounds (if it was significant it would be the focus of the shot, right?), but it once again emphasizes the fluid nature of the battlefield.

Flexible action descriptions. You have a great deal of leeway in how you choose to describe your attacks and schticks. This may be obvious with Martial Arts, but it’s equally true for Guns. Don’t forget the rules for Unconventional Attacks (Feng Shui 2, p. 110) which spell out that you can use your normal Attack Check to take advantage of the location to do straight-up damage with the same Smackdown as your default weapon. So, yes, you can shoot somebody. But you can just as easily shoot the chandelier and have it fall on them: The mechanics are identical; there’s no penalty for this.

Extra Tip: These are sometimes mistaken for stunts. Actions are only stunts if they do something more than damage the target: So slamming a chandelier into someone and causing them damage isn’t a stunt. Dropping a chandelier onto someone so that it pins them to the ground and they can’t move IS a stunt.

Elaborate your supernatural theme. This flexibility of action description extends to Sorcery and Creature Powers, too. What can be most effective for this is to develop a consistent mystical motif or set of arcane rules for your character. Maybe they inscribe spells onto slips of paper and then burn them for effect. Maybe they unlock sorcerous powers by pushing needles into specific acupuncture points on their body.

You shouldn’t feel tightly bound by these “rules.” Quite the opposite: Developing a supernatural “language” for your characters gives you a rich toolkit for improvising new material. For example, maybe you start by scribing spells on slips of paper and burning them. Then you slap one of these onto a hopping vampire to bind it in place. Then you place them around a building to ward it against evil. Then you paint the symbols directly over the acupuncture points of an ally in order to mystically aid them.

(This is in many ways like reusing props or tying actions together, just over the long term.)

If you ever need to do something completely new? Well, it’s a good thing you visited that secret Tibetan monastery in the Ancient Juncture between episodes. Or studied those ancient tomes you found in the ruins on Taiwan island. Or maybe it’s just something you learned from your master but haven’t mentioned before.

Extra Tip: Improvising awesome fight choreography is a skill. And, like any skill, it can be learned, practiced, and improved. Here’s an exercise you can use to practice away from the table: Take a really great fight film — any of the ones in the orientation list work, but also stuff like The Matrix, Rocky, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or John Wick – and narrate the action as it happens on screen, as if you were describing it to your gaming group. It may sound silly, but it will build your repertoire of action descriptions and push you to improve how you connect and transition between actions in a fight.

SPEAKING CINEMATIC LANGUAGE

In Feng Shui the characters don’t break the fourth wall. They don’t wink at the camera, get thrown into the stage lighting, read the subtitles, or anything like that. (This tends to degenerate the game into farce or parody, which isn’t what we’re aiming for.) As players, however, it is frequently effective to express things through a cinematic lens. The GM will introduce a scene by describing how the “camera” pans across it. As a player, you’ll talk about the extreme close-up on your magic cop’s Colt .45 as they jam it into the squealing face of a cyber-chimp.

When you first start doing this, it may feel like an awkward or artificial conceit. But it’s just a different way of communicating character, intention, and the narration of fictional reality. As you become more familiar with the technique, you’ll find that it naturally evokes the heightened reality and the particular types of story beats from the action mash-up genre we’re seeking to emulate.

In speaking cinematically, there are any number of techniques (close-ups, smash cuts, slow motion) that are common in films on both sides of the Pacific. Here are a few that are particular to the Hong Kong action genre that you might be less familiar with.

Inner Dialogue with Micro-Flashbacks. Instead of using voice-over or narration, Hong Kong films will often communicate the inner thoughts of their characters through a very quick sequence of flashbacks. These micro-flashbacks are usually only one or two seconds long, and often consist of footage or snippets of dialogue seen earlier in the film.

For example, if someone sees their friend get riddled with bullets, you might get four or five shots in rapid succession summarizing the entire course of their relationship. Or if someone is at their boyfriend’s bedside in the hospital, there might be a quick flash of the scene where they first met at the beginning of the film.

You can use this same technique to communicate your character’s inner thoughts to the table. Instead of saying, “Ying thinks that this is a terrible idea.” You might say, “We cut from Ying raising an eyebrow to a shot of Chunky falling down that pit in the Tomb of the Jade Emerald. And then a shot of Chunky tripping the infrared lasers at the Met. And then a shot of that time Maggie hit him in the face with a cream pie. Then Ying says, ‘Sure. Why not? What could go wrong?’”

Visual Emotions. Just as you create scenery in a fight scene to do cool kung-fu tricks, you can create scenery in interstitial scenes to express emotion — family photos, religious iconography, a flower vendor selling jasmine blossoms, the smell of a burning leaf.

As with micro-flashbacks, it’s usually best to keep these short and punchy. But if your character’s anger fills the whole scene, then it’s just fine if you keep coming back to the image of the flames in the hearth behind them roaring up and filling that end of the room in a reddish light.

Freeze Frame Emphasis. Freeze frames (usually close-ups of a character’s face or moments of group celebration) are used to emphasize emotional beats of particular importance. They are often used at the end of a film, and such scenario-enders are most likely to be invoked by the GM. But they can also be found elsewhere, usually at particularly important emotional turns or moments of transition, and you should feel empowered as a player to describe such cinematic freeze frames to highlight significant personal milestones to the rest of the table.

Ensemble pieces will sometimes feature a series of such freeze frames at the end of the film, emphasizing each character in turn. GMs may use a similar technique, framing up each freeze frame and prompting each player to fill it with their character’s current emotional state.

This technique was more popular in classic Hong Kong films and seems to have become less used in recent years, but that’s no reason not to include it in the Feng Shui mash-up.

Bullet Time. True bullet time (as opposed to just slow motion) is almost virtually exclusive to The Matrix. (Even the Matrix sequels didn’t actually use it.) But it nevertheless deserves a call out here.

Cue Music. Movies are not strictly a visual medium. The soundscape is also a vital part of the artform. You can invoke the audio of cinema at the game table just as you can camera angles and cuts. Describe the music playing in the scene to invoke your character’s emotional state, signal how important the current moment is to them, for humorous effect, or for any of the other myriad signals music can send.

(If you’re feeling ambitious and it’s appropriate for your table, you could actually select a hero track for your PC and then literally play it at key moments during the game. Over time you and the rest of the group could develop a rich variety of leitmotifs.)

A NOTE TO THE GM

If you’re planning to run Feng Shui for a new player, consider sending them the link to this essay to quickly orient them to the game. You may find a lot of the techniques described here are also useful tricks to add to your own toolkit.

The cheat sheet below is designed to be serve as a quick, at-the-table reminder of the techniques and expectations described here.

FENG SHUI – NEW PLAYER CHEAT SHEET

DEFAULT ACTIONS:

• Hit up a contact
• Attune to a feng shui site
• Pursue a melodramatic hook

CINEMATIC LANGUAGE:

• Inner dialogue with micro-flashbacks
• Visual emotions
• Freeze frame emphasis
• Bullet time
• Cue music

FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY:

Remember:

• Pass the baton
• Respect the dice

One Cool Detail:

• Invoke your weapon
• Name your schtick
• Use the environment + light/sound
• Describe hair or costuming
• Use quippy dialogue
• Describe the camera move
• Slow motion & X-ray shots

Advanced Techniques:

• Describe awesome misses
• Improvise props
• Reuse props
• Tie actions together
• Off-turn collaborations
• Flexible action descriptions
• Elaborate your supernatural theme

FURTHER READING – FENG SHUI
System Cheat Sheet: Feng Shui 2
Feng Shui: Filling the Shot
Feng Shui: Using the Shot Counter
Prep Notes: Hong Kong Task Force 88

So you want to play Feng Shui? The roleplaying game of Hong Kong action films? The game where you can:

• Get caught in the middle of a gun-fu shootout between corrupt cops and righteous Triad rascals.
• Lock eyes with the samurai who killed your sister, dew glistening on the edges of your blades.
• Travel through temporal portals to the 19^th century, fighting British oppressors seeking to corrupt Chinese civilization.
• Serve as court detectives to Empress Wu, rooting out the seditious conspirators who would destroy China’s only female regnant.
• Slide down the gleaming black side of a pyramidal arcology while locked in a furious melee with a dozen cyber-ape ninjas.

Then you’re in for a rollickin’ ride!

This article is not designed to teach you the game. Nor is it a rules reference or a setting guide (there’s a cheat sheet for that and the entire rulebook besides). We’re here to orient you into awesome. It’s kind of like a strategy guide, but only if you remember that this is a game where the only winning move is to make the game more memorable and fun for everyone at the table. It’s a little bit about what the game expects of you, and a lot about getting into the mindset of Hong Kong action flicks.

As such, it’ll be particularly useful for those who aren’t already familiar with these films. But even if you’re a long-time fan of the genre, you may still find some useful tips in here.

ORIENTATION: FILMOGRAPHY

The best way to get into the groove of Hong Kong action movies, of course, is to actually watch the films themselves (and the films they’ve inspired around the world). Feng Shui 2 includes an extensive filmography in which Robin D. Laws provides a fantastic overview of the entire medium/genre. It lets you to pick any of a dozen different sub-genres/actors/directors and dip your toes in, but it can still be easy to feel completely overwhelmed by the dozens and dozens and dozens of films it discusses.

So here’s my essential/idiosyncratic list of twelve films to watch if you want to grok the unique mash-up of genres and the language of action in Feng Shui:

• Hard Boiled (1992, John Woo)
• The Killer (1989, John Woo)
• Chinese Ghost Story (1987, Ching Siu-Tung)
• Mr. Vampire (1985, Ricky Lau)
• Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010, Tsui Hark)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Ang Lee)
• Big Trouble in Little China (1986, John Carpenter)
• Kung Fu Hustle (2004, Stephen Chow)
• Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, George Miller)
• Once Upon a Time in China (1991, Tsui Hark)
• Armour of God II: Operation Condor (1991, Jackie Chan)
• Police Story 3: Supercop (1992, Stanley Tong)

If you want to narrow this list even further:

• Pick Hard Boiled OR The Killer
• Pick Chinese Ghost Story OR Mr. Vampire
• Pick Armour of God II OR Police Story 3
• Skip the Hollywood films (Mad Max: Fury Road and Big Trouble in Little China)

It’s likely you’re still looking at this list and thinking, “This is way more stuff than I want to do before my first session.” That’s no problem! That’s why we’re here, actually. But if you like the game and want to go deeper, you can start here. And if you find stuff you like, then you can use the filmography in the rulebook to continue exploring.

GETTING STARTED

Let’s start with the basics. You’ll need to have some basic understanding of the setting. This text is partially excerpted and adapted from “Getting Started with Feng Shui” on page 5 of the rulebook:

You play heroes of the Chi War, protecting humankind’s destiny in a titanic struggle across space and time. Victory depends on your gravity-defying kung fu powers, your ancient magics, your post-apocalyptic survival instincts, or your plain old-fashioned trigger finger.

Chi warriors grasp the fundamental truth of existence: the power of Earth. Certain sites that harness and intensify chi, the life force that animates man and nature, extend across the planet. Those controlling these sites benefit from the increased flow of chi, and gain great fortune in matters both mundane and mystical. Since ancient times, the Chinese have honed their knowledge of Earth magic — or geomancy — into the discipline known as feng shui.

History belongs to those who have attuned themselves to feng shui sites, forging a mystical bond harnessing their chi energy. When the Chi War ends, the victors will use their control of chi to rewrite history — past, future, and present. We will live the way the victors want us to, and we will have always done so.

Chi warriors have also learned how to access a mysterious realm known as the Netherworld. This Inner Kingdom lies between times, and by traveling through the Netherworld you can literally walk into other time periods: 690 AD (home to sinister magicians), 1850 AD (an era of imperialist oppressors), the present day (controlled by a secret conspiracy), and 2074 AD (ruled by cyborg rebels-turned-tyrants whose excesses collapsed the future). Some participants in the great struggle take their cue from this and refer to themselves as Innerwalkers.

Fortunately, the world of Feng Shui rewards heroism: You can dodge machine gun bullets, run sideways up a tree, bounce off a branch, and then clash swords with your opponent. In your best moments you might even run up the stream of oncoming machine gun bullets or cling to the bottom of a bad guy’s Maserati as it screams through the midnight streets of Hong Kong.

DEFAULT ACTIONS

If you’re playing Feng Shui and you aren’t sure what you should do next, what can you do? The default action of a game is something your character can do to trigger cool stuff when all else fails.

Hit up a contact. Possibly literally. Either approach one of your existing contacts or create a new one, as detailed in the rules tucked away on page 114 of the rulebook. This works whether you’ve gotten lost in the middle of a scenario (and just need a new lead or a little help to figure out how you can do the thing you want to do), but it’s also a great way of setting things up for your GM to hook you into new scenarios.

Attune to a feng shui site. This is the default goal of the game. If there’s nothing else that your character particularly wants to accomplish right now, you can always fall back on identifying a feng shui site and trying to attune with it. (If you don’t know where any appropriate feng shui sites might be, refer back to hitting up a contact to get a lead.)

Pursue a melodramatic hook. This is the default goal of your character (see page 22 of the rulebook). The GM will use your melodramatic hook to draw you into scenarios, but it will also often be something you can actively pursue when nothing else is currently on your plate.

Extra Tip: Look for ways to invoke your melodramatic hook in small ways throughout the game. For example, if your melodramatic hook is searching for your lost daughter then you might declare that a GMC looks just like them. Or in a quiet moment you might describe your character pulling their daughter’s photo out of their wallet. Going overboard with this will wear thin, but invoking your melodramatic hook thoughtfully will help unify the campaign into one cohesive heap of awesome.

Go to Part 2