Enemies in Feng Shui — the action movie RPG of fast and furious combat inspired by the classic Hong Kong films of Jackie Chan, John Woo, Tsui Hark, Michelle Yeoh, and Jet Li — are split into four types: Mooks, Featured Foes, Bosses, and Uber-Bosses.

Mooks, in particular, are treated a little differently by the system. First, they’re significantly worse than any other foe in terms of statistics. And, second, they instantly get knocked out of the fight if they get hit. Don’t even bother rolling for damage.

(If you’re thinking, “Hey! That sounds like minions from D&D 4^th Edition!” you’re not wrong. They got the idea from Feng Shui.)

The goal is that you can — and should! — stuff your fight scenes full of disposable mooks to create frenetic action and allow the PCs to show off their badassitude. (Even in a baseline fight, you’ll have 3 mooks per PC, and the number only goes up from there. In fact, when you want to make an easier fight, you actually increase the number of mooks, albeit while decreasing the number of featured foes.)

Feng Shui also uses a 1d6 – 1d6 core mechanic, so for every check you’re rolling two d6’s. That means that the GM is going to be rolling a lot of dice to resolve all of their attacks. Despite all that dice rolling, though, it’s quite likely that literally none of those attacks will hit. (They are just mooks, after all.)

If you roll all of those attacks one at a time, this can be a huge drag on gameplay.

One option to avoid this is to roll fistfuls of dice! There’s an article here on the Alexandrian that dives in to a lot of different techniques you can use to make this work.

Another option is to use a mook sheet: A big sheet full of pre-rolled mook attack roles. They look like this:

The idea is that, rather than rolling dice, you can just use the values on the sheet, crossing them off for each mook attack.

Atlas Games actually provides an online tool that will let you generate new copies of these sheets.

A problem you can run into with either technique, though, is that — if the mooks all just make straight-up attacks — they can whiff a little too often. This is, of course, what lets you have so many of them in a scene, but if the players no longer feel as if the mooks are a relevant threat it can render the mooks moot.

Fortunately, the solution is a simple technique: combat boosts.

In Feng Shui, characters can perform a combat boost as a 3-shot action to help out another character. A boost can:

• Grant +1 to the recipient’s next attack.
• Grant +3 to the recipient’s Defense against the next attack (and all others in the same shot).

Instead of having the dozen mooks in your fight scene all flail ineffectually, what you should be doing is having each of them perform a combat boost.

You might have the mooks form up into small gangs: Five mooks working together can boost the attack value for one of their number to be roughly equal to a featured foe. A dozen can swarm over a hero, with eleven performing an attack boost and the twelfth packing a boss-size punch.

Alternatively, you can have the mooks group up with a featured foe or boss, either boosting their attacks to devastating levels and/or creating an almost impenetrable defense with their defensive boosts.

You’ll want to make sure to weave these boosts into your narration of the fight: Describe the mooks grabbing PCs by the arms and allowing their boss to land a crushing blow or throwing themselves in front of their boss to take a shot. You could even describe misses as the PCs being unable to get close to the big bad guy through the swirling swarm of mooks!

You want to make it clear to the players that the mooks are the problem, and that they’re going to continue to struggle against the featured foes until they clear out the riff-raff.

Fortunately, it’ll still be quite easy to do that.

They’re just mooks after all.

Go to Campaign Status Documents

If we’re talking about information that can be encoded in the campaign status document, then with trackers we’re getting pretty primal with it.

Literally any aspect of the campaign that you need to keep track of over the course of several sessions?

Put it on the campaign status document.

For example, I have a tendency to default to warm, sunny days in my description of the campaign world. To counteract that, I’ll use a random weather generator, pregenerate the results for several days, and then put them on my campaign status document:

WEATHER

10/20/790: Cloudy, high 43°F, low 31°F, light wind

10/21/790: Windy, high 50°F, low 40°F, moderate wind

10/22/790: Overcast, high 48°F, low 34°F, light wind

10/23/790: Fog, high 58°F, low 41°F, moderate wind

10/24/790: Clear, high 42°F, low 31°F, light wind

10/25/790: Windy, high 41°F, low 24°F, moderate wind

At the beginning of each session, I’ll take the current day’s weather, write it on a Post-it note, and put it on my GM screen to remind me.

For the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, I used a simple reputation system. That actually goes on the first page of my campaign status document, since it may be referenced during almost any social interaction:

REPUTATION

FAME: 8

INFAMY: 0.5

FAME:  Rescued Phon. Recovered Jasin’s body. Castle Shard party. Shilukar’s bounty. Association with Dominic. Tavan Zith riot. Killing of the Columned Row Killer. Freeing slaves and children from Temple of the Rat God. Paid repatriation costs for slaves from Porphyry House raid. Arrest ordered by Carrina.

Even more common than these permanent installations, for me, are bespoke trackers that get created as the result of the PCs’ actions.

For example, the PCs took one of their bags of holding and dedicated it corpses they want to talk to, either until they get speak with dead prepped or, after casting the spell the first time, until the one week time limit runs out and they can cast it again. (They call it their dead-icated bag.) Rather than scrambling through campaign journals and other notes trying to figure out the last time that they talked to, for example, Arveth, I simply added a tracker to my campaign status document indicating the last time they talked to one of their corpses:

SPEAK WITH DEAD ROSTER

Arveth: 10/19/790

Medusa: 10/18/790

Wulvera: 10/26/790

These bespoke trackers can also be more complicated. The same PCs looted twenty living paintings — paintings that are magically animated — while looting a dungeon. They ended up approaching the Winsome Gallery in the Nobles District to see if they would buy the paintings. I decided that the Winsome would buy some of them, but didn’t have enough cash on hand to buy all of them. Instead, they would put them on display and seek out buyers on the PCs behalf.

The PCs agreed to this.

Many sessions later, the PCs ended up looting Lithuin vases from a different adventure and the PCs once again decided to approach the Winsome Gallery. The result is this section of my campaign status document:

LIVING PAINTINGS / LITHUIN VASES

20 paintings total / 5 bought by Winsome Gallery

25% chance per day of selling 1d3 paintings

675gp per painting – 5400 gp on hand + 1000 gp from bidding war

Updated: 10/20/790

Winsome Owns: #13, #16, #17, #19, #20

On Display at Winsome: #19 – A figure pierced through by a great hook of iron, depending from the ceiling on a chain. Swaying gently back and forth.

Remaining Paintings: #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #14, #18

10/2/790: sold #6,

10/3/790: Vladaams purchase #5

10/10/790: sold #3, #15 – House Dallimothan, bidding war with House Cath on #3 following Interlude 2

10/11/790: sold #1

10/14/790: sold #4, #12 – House Sadar

10/18/790: sold #2

WINSOME GALLERY

• Wylsaen Faechild, owner and expert (male elf, Expert 1)
• Nerr, a friendly art dealer (original arrangement for living portraits)

CHECKING IN

• Wylsaen has noticed that the eyes of painting #20 (depicting Alchestin) opened “about a week” after they purchased the painting. They had to take it off display because the eyes would follow those in the room unnervingly.
• Paintings proved quite notable after House Vladaam purchased one on the 5^th: House Dallimothan, who purchased two of the paintings, was curious about their provenance and left a standing inquiry that the gallery is now passing along.

VASES OF LITHUIN (NOD5A, Area 7)

• Wylsaen unfamiliar with them, but Nerr identifies them correctly.
• Couldn’t dream of splitting the collection, but also can’t afford it for the gallery. Willing to pay 25,000 gp immediately and outright. Otherwise, they’ll try to find a buyer at the 40,000 asking price. (5% chance per day of a buyer presenting themselves)

Let’s break this down a bit.

(“Why bother with all this?” you may ask. First, the cashflow of the PCs is a significant element of the campaign at this point, having a major impact on the solutions they can pursue to various problems. Second, it results in some interesting roleplaying and opportunities for the PCs to make social connections.)

At the top of the section is the mini-system I created for randomly determining when the paintings sell. It starts with a quick summary of the initial conditions (there were 20 total paintings, 5 of which were purchased directly by the Winsome). Then, each day, I roll d% and see if any paintings sell. If they have, I roll 1d3 to see how many sold. After that, the prices the PCs agreed to with the Winsome are recorded, following by how much money the Winsome has one hand from previous sales (and will turn over to the PCs). Finally, I list the campaign date when I last checked sales (to make sure I don’t skip a day or accidentally check multiple times per day).

Following that is a roster of the paintings available for sale. For a full description of each piece, I would need to refer back to the original adventure, but I do list the full description of #19 specifically because the Winsome has it on display (and I will mention and describe it to the PCs when they come back).

Then a breakdown of which paintings sold when, this includes — as you can see — notes about particularly significant buyers (who might be of interest to the PCs or vice versa).

Following that are some Key Info entries for Wylsaen, their contact at the Winsome Gallery, that I can use while roleplaying him next time.

Finally, since the PCs have declared their intention to bring the Lithuin Vases here, I’ve put together some preliminary notes for how that interaction will go (which also includes a reference to where I can find the original description of the vases so that I can find it easily).

It turns out the PCs have been distracted by a lot of other stuff lately, so the vases have just been sitting in a bag of holding (not the dead-icated bag, that would be be gross) and these notes have been patiently waiting for several sessions.

Next: Continuity Notes

You’ve been playing D&D 5^th Edition for awhile now and you’re starting to wonder what other roleplaying games are out there. Is there something you’d like better? Maybe you have a favorite genre — space opera, horror, detective fiction — and it’s not fantasy. Or maybe you just want a break.

Or maybe not. I’ve been playing D&D for thirty years. It’s a game of infinite possibility.

But if you are thinking about trying a new RPG, here are some options I think you should check out.

5th EDITION: IT’S NOT QUITE RIGHT

“I’ve only played D&D 5^th Edition, it’s not quite right for me, and I’d like to try something different.”

1974 D&D: The original version of D&D created by Dave Arneson & Gary Gygax. This is the opposite end of the spectrum from 5^th Edition. This may not be what you’re looking for, but it will tell you a lot about whether you should be looking at other editions of D&D. I’ve done a video series taking a closer look at this edition and how it plays at the table.

Pathfinder (Jason Buhlmahn): The 1^st Edition of Pathfinder derives from the 3^rd Edition of D&D and the current 2^nd Edition heavily revises that into a more streamlined, tightly designed package. Either or both will tell you everything else you need to know about checking out other editions of D&D.

Shadow of the Demon Lord (Robert J. Schwalb): From one of the major designers during D&D 4^th Edition, Shadow of the Demon Lord is a good example of where the concepts of D&D can be taken when designers are given the freedom to reinvent them.

GURPS Dungeon Fantasy (Sean Punch): Based on the GURPS universal RPG system, Dungeon Fantasy is for the simulationists and the extreme character customizers.

The One Ring (Francesco Nepitello & Marco Maggi): Set in Tolkien’s Middle Earth, this one is for the narrativists and those interested in an earthier fantasy. Also focused on epic journeys.

Blades in the Dark (John Harper): Everybody gets to play a rogue! Also introduces org-based play as the group builds a criminal crew together.

Ars Magica (Jonathan Tweet & Mark Rein•Hagen): Everybody gets to play a wizard! Also introduces org-based play as the group builds a covenant together.

Burning Wheel (Luke Crane): Maybe you’d like a storytelling game! With Burning Wheel you’re really only dipping your toe in that end of the pool, but it’ll open the door for you.

WHAT ELSE IS OUT THERE?

“I’ve only played D&D, but I want to see what other sorts of games are out there.”

Some of the games listed below are repeated from the list above.

Numenera (Monte Cook): A science-fantasy game seting one billion years in the future. Earth has seen eight mega-civilizations rise and fall, and a neo-Renaissance now picks through the ruins, rediscovering what was lost.

Ars Magica (Jonathan Tweet & Mark Rein•Hagen): Everybody plays the wizard! Your powerful magi have banded together to found a covenant in Mythic Europe, a fantasy version the 13^th century.

Pendragon (Greg Stafford): Step into the legends of King Arthur, playing knights of Camelot in a campaign designed to span decades.

Technoir (Jeremy Keller): A cyberpunk game with a radically inventive game system in which you change the world by using verbs to push adjectives. Also features conspiracy-driven plot-mapping.

Blades in the Dark (John Harper): Everybody plays the rogue! The players craft not only their characters, but also the criminal crew they all belong to. Features mechanics specialized for carrying out heists and other scores that are tightly integrated with downtime development of the crew.

Night’s Black Agents (Kenneth Hite): A vampire spy thriller, in which retired secret agents discover that vampires are real. After creating your own unique vampire variant, very creative tools like the Conspyramid empower the GM to run a vast, global conspiracy.

Eclipse Phase (Rob Boyle & Brian Cross): A transhuman kitchen sink space opera set 10 years after the Fall of Earth. With elements ripped from the pages of cutting edge science fiction, Eclipse Phase is a multitude of games in one.

Call of Cthulhu (Sandy Petersen): Based on the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft, the players take on the roles of investigators seeking to unravel eldritch mysteries.

You might also enjoy these storytelling games, which are tabletop narrative games similar to roleplaying games, but distinctly different (and not all of which even have a GM):

The Quiet Year (Avery Alder): A map-based storytelling game in which the players collaboratively create a post-apocalyptic civilization using prompts generated from a deck of playing cards.

Microscope (Ben Robbins): Explore an epic history entirely of your own making, using the rules of the game to build an ever-expanding, non-linear chronology.

Shock: Social Science Fiction (Joshua A.C. Newman): A game intensely focused on the speculative in speculative fiction, in which each player takes on the role of both their Protagonist and also the Antagonist for the player sitting to their right.

Ten Candles (Stephen Dewey): Ten days ago, the sun went out. And then They came. The survivors have learned to stay in the light. You play this game by candlelight, snuffing one of the ten candles at the end of each scene… until the last candle goes out.

MY GAMES

“I’ve only played D&D, I want to try something new, and Justin’s a shill.”

These are all games I’ve created, co-created, or oversee as either the RPG Developer at Atlas Games or publisher at Dream Machine Productions.

Ars Magica (Jonathan Tweet & Mark Rein•Hagen): The only game to make all three lists!

Technoir (Jeremy Keller): A cyberpunk game with a radically inventive game system in which you change the world by using verbs to push adjectives. Also features conspiracy-driven plot-mapping.

Magical Kitties Save the Day (Matthew J. Hanson, Justin Alexander, Michelle Nephew): Every kitty has a magical power, every kitty has a human, and every human has a problem. The magical kitties have to use their powers to solve the humans’ problems! (Warning: Problems may include witches, alien invasions, and hyper-intelligent raccoons.) This game is designed for first-time roleplayers and first-time GMs, including an introductory graphic novel adventure that lets you start playing within minutes of opening the box and a plethora of guides for running your first game.

Legends & Labyrinths (Justin Alexander): A version of 3^rd Edition which strips the game down to its simplest core. Designed to be 100% compatible with 3^rd Edition, however, allowing you to not only use any adventure material designed for the game, but to also bolt on any and all advanced options you’d like to have in your game.

Infinity (Justin Alexander): A space opera kitchen sink based on the Infinity miniatures game from Corvus Belli. Notably includes a three-part conflict resolution engine with fully integrated Warfare, Psywar, and Infowar systems.

Feng Shui (Robin D. Laws): The Hong Kong action film roleplaying game! Laws has created an ingenious setting allowing him to wed historical, modern, and science fiction settings into a single experience for your PCs, while the innovative combat system allows you to capture the high-octane fights from your favorite action movies.

Over the Edge (Jonathan Tweet): The Ultimate Democratic Republic of Al Amarja welcomes you. During your stay with us please remember that Liberty is Job One, Disarmament Means Peace, It’s Polite to Speak English, and, of course, Paranormal Activity is Perfectly Legal. Thank you for your consent. (Make sure to check out my adventure in the Welcome to the Island anthology.)

Unknown Armies (Greg Stolze & John Tynes): An occult horror RPG about broken people trying to fix an equally broken world.

Go to Part 1

We’re nearing the end of a campaign, having traced a gaggle of strange incidents in which historical events (or at least replicas of historical events) have erupted into the modern world back to an eery city on the border of the Dreamlands. As we explore the city, we discover that it seems to be somewhere between a palimpsest and a jigsaw puzzle, formed from jagged pieces of different cities around the world and drawn from different eras in history (not all of them apparently our history). The whole place is completely deserted, however, and a strange white mist drifts through the streets.

While we’re checking out the apartment that once belonged to one of the PCs, there’s a car crash outside. Rushing out into the street, we see a girl with stark white hair racing away from the accident. We recognize her: Although she had black hair last time we saw her, she was being kidnapped by some of the strange wraith-cultists who seem to be mixed up in (or maybe causing?) all of this weird stuff.

We give chase and she leads us to the British National Museum (or a copy of the British National Museum?), but then she runs into the room with the Parthenon Marbles and vanishes. Our archaeologist notes that the marble sculptures have been altered and appear to depict a map of the city. We take a rubbing and begin using the map to navigate, visiting a number of strange locations where we experience enigmatic things.

Then, abruptly, a bright white light suffuses everything.

And the world ends.

Huh.

In the post mortem, we discovered what happened: After the car crash, we were supposed to check the trunk of the car. If we’d done that, we would have found the girl — still with black hair — tied up in the back. She would have been able to lead us back to the Home Insurance Building (the world’s first skyscraper) and then… something something something. I don’t remember the details. The cities of the world had all been linked together in a ritual using key skyscrapers and the Girl With White Hair was the black-haired prodigy’s mirror-self from an anti-life dimension.

We didn’t check the trunk, though, and so the world ended.

“It was really exciting to run a sandbox!” the GM said.

THE RAILROADER’S FALLACY

The railroader’s fallacy is surprisingly common:

I ran a sandbox, but the players didn’t follow the one plot that was available!

This often results in the railroader saying things like, “Sandboxes don’t work.”

First, let’s understand the nature of the fallacy here.

A sandbox campaign is one in which the players can either choose or define what the next scenario is going to be. In other words, the experience of a sandbox is more or less defined by a multitude of scenarios. So as soon as you see someone use “sandbox” to describe a campaign in which there was only one scenario — or, even more absurdly, only one plot — it’s immediately obvious that something has gone horribly wrong.

So how does this happen? And why does it seem to happen so often?

Well, we need to start with the railroader. Checking out The Railroading Manifesto might be useful if you’re not familiar with it, but the short is that:

Railroads happen when the GM negates a player’s choice in order to enforce a preconceived outcome.

Railroading can happen for a lot of reasons, but a common one is that the railroader lacks the tools to build RPG scenarios and therefore defaults to the linear plots they see in videos, movies, books, graphic novels, and so forth. This linear sequence of predetermined outcomes is antithetical to the interactivity of an RPG, and so the GM has no choice but to railroad their players into the predetermined outcomes.

At some point, the railroader gets the message that Railroads Are Bad™. The ideal outcome would be that they learn some scenario structures and gain the tools they need to run dynamic, awesome scenarios. Unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen.

One common response is rejection of the premise: “I railroad. Railroading is bad. I don’t want to be bad. Therefore railroading isn’t bad.” (Which is, of course, a completely different fallacy.)

But the other possibility is that they hear about sandbox campaigns. They probably erroneously believe that sandboxes are the opposite of railroads. (They’re not.) But they definitely hear that, “In a sandbox, you can do anything!”

And they think to themselves, “Let the players do anything? I can do that!”

Unfortunately, they still don’t have the tools to prep anything other than a linear plot. So what do they prep?

A linear plot requiring a predetermined sequence of specific choices and outcomes.

The only difference is that the players can now “do anything” (sic), so the GM no longer forces the required choices and outcomes. In the most malignant form of the fallacy, they won’t even signpost the choices.

The end of the world is actually fairly dramatic as an outcome. It’s far more common for the players to miss one of these blind turns and just… discover there’s nothing to do. There is, after all, only the one plot; the one path. Leave the path and there’s simply nothing there: You can try to engage with characters or go to interesting places, but nothing happens. You can “do anything,” but nothing you do results in anything happening because the only thing that matters is still the GM’s plot.

“Sandboxes don’t work.”

THE SOLUTION

The solution, obviously, is: Don’t do that.

If you’re going to move away from railroading (and you absolutely should), then you need to actually abandon that broken structure, not just pretend it’s not there. Check out Game Structures and the Scenario Structure Challenge to start exploring fully functional structures for your adventure design.

For more insight on how the scenario selection/creation dynamic at the heart of a sandbox campaign works, check out Advanced Gamemastery: Running the Sandbox. You might also find the extended practical example given in Icewind Dale: Running the Sandbox enlightening.

ADDENDUM

This post has been live for a couple of days, and I want to clear up a point of confusion:

The scenario described at the beginning of the essay is not a railroad. If it was a railroad, the GM would have enforced a preconceived outcome.

The scenario described at the beginning of the essay is what happens when a railroader preps a scenario that requires railroading to work (because that’s the only thing they know how to prep), but then doesn’t railroad.

This is why I’ve said that railroading is a broken technique attempting to fix a broken scenario.

The fallacy is believing that non-broken scenarios are impossible (or bad or impractical) because your broken scenario doesn’t work.

Go to Part 16: Don’t Write Down Initiative

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 32B: Shaped by Venom

A beam of scintillating energy shot out from a second door – only slightly cracked – and struck the barbarian in the chest, paralyzing him completely. Agnarr was completely defenseless as one of the thralls thrust its lance-like claw through his chin and up into his skull, killing him instantly.

Oh no! Agnarr! I can’t believe this! How will his death reshape the campaign? What will be the emotional fallout? What new character will his player create?

With the entryway cleared, Dominic came around the corner, looked at Agnarr’s grievous wound, and sighed heavily.

(…)

As Tee came back inside, she saw that Agnarr was shaking his head gingerly – Dominic had resealed the bond between his soul and body.

Oh. Never mind.

For the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, and other 3^rd Edition games, I used a set of house rules for death and dying designed to narratively smooth out the “you’re dead, you’re back, you’re dead, you’re back, you’re dead” up-and-down cycle that can emerge in D&D, but it’s nevertheless true that once you start hitting the upper range of what we’d now call Tier 2 the PCs’ relationship to death shifts.

Raise dead really is a game changer.

This used to be less true. In AD&D, for example, a character could only be returned to life with raise dead or resurrection effects a number of times equal to their Constitution score. (This could eventually be surpassed with a wish spell, but obviously only at a much later point in the campaign.)

(At least in theory. The fact that 3^rd Edition began eliminating such consequences because they weren’t fun is largely because a wide swath of people were already ignoring them because they weren’t fun. But I digress.)

Regardless, most D&D protagonists will reach a point where their relationship is largely unique in storytelling. Superheroes often experience a revolving door of death, but it’s rarely seen that way by the character except for comical asides or fourth-wall breaks. Video games will have stuff like phoenix down that will “revive” companions who are “dead,” but this is usually ludonarrative dissonance with these games nevertheless featuring actual death in their cutscenes.

The same sort of ludonarrative dissonance — a disconnect between the story of the game and the mechanics of the game — is something that will often crop up in D&D campaigns: You instinctively want death to have the same meaning that it does in stories or real life, but the reality is that it doesn’t. Dominic’s reaction to seeing Agnarr’s impaled corpse may be distress, but it really shouldn’t be the same emotional reaction that someone in the real world seeing their companion’s corpse would have. Because the reality Dominic and Agnarr are living in is just fundamentally not the same.

And, in my opinion, that’s OK. It’s fascinating, even.

I think there’s kind of two ways to deal with this.

First, you can try to treat death in a mid- or high-level D&D game as if it were emotionally and factually the same as death in the real world. If you take this approach, though, I think you’ll be best served if you actually house rule the game to match the vision of what you want (and sustain ludonarrative harmony). That would mean getting rid of spells like raise dead, and if you do that, you’ll probably also want to modify the mechanics around dying, your scenario design, or both.

Second, lean into it. Death doesn’t have the same meaning. So what meaning DOES it have, both emotionally and factually? And what are the unique stories that you can tell with that meaning?

A sentiment I often see in a variety of places (discussions of prequel movies, for example) is that if a character can’t die, then there’s nothing at stake. This can be a particularly alluring belief when it comes to a D&D because, other than the outcomes of specific die rolls, death IS the only mechanically defined thing at stake in the game.

But it’s not really true, of course, because the experience of playing D&D is much more than just the sum of its mechanics. And, particularly in fiction, life-or-death is often the least interesting thing at stake.

Campaign Journal: Session 32C – Running the Campaign: Non-Combat Goals
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index