Feng Shui: Kakurega

This project has made it across multiple social media haunts, and now that it's getting a small update I figured why not christen the new blog with it as well. So the first tabletop RPG that I fell in love with as a game master was Feng Shui. It was a natural fit for me, given my rabid fandom of the cinema it was inspired by/an homage to, and its ruleset that inspired creative combat in wild setpieces. I ran my first game of it when I was in high school, and it became the first long-running campaign I managed, with a game that started in college and eventually continued when I moved out to California.

For the longest time I'd planned on doing a follow-up to that campaign, but due to a variety of factors (friend group fallouts, folks moving away, the perils of organizing game nights as an adult) I haven't been able to manage it. That hasn't stopped me from building a nice little nest of material for the game that I'd run if given the chance. I've developed a campaign based on my previous games and inspired by the John Wick and The Raid (especially the sequel Berandal) films called Kakurega. I wrote up a whole setting guide for Atlanta within that campaign called The Dirty South (it's on the web if you know where to look). But one of the biggest things I've done so far for Kakurega is my character archetype redesigns.

This started in earnest when the second edition (technically third if we count the Daedalus Entertainment version as the first) of the game came out, and while I was pretty stoked about it overall, there's was a lot about the archetypes that didn't sit right with me. The major issue was tone. When I would pitch the game to other folks, it was a blend of hard boiled crime drama with the wild action of Southeast Asian action flicks. You're going to get bombastic setpieces, be capable of incredible feats that could only happen in a movie, but I'm also going to treat the crime and politics stuff pretty seriously. Not quite going to the level of The Wire with it (that's another game, for another time), but I've always got Something To Say™. There's supernatural stuff and weirdness going on in Feng Shui that I won't spoil, but I lead with a pretty grounded premise. Meanwhile, whenever I'd bring the books around for folks who were unfamiliar with the game, the imagery and the copy would completely override what I was talking about. To say nothing of some archetypes that just plain wouldn't work with my games at all. So with a fresh copy of Affinity Publisher to learn how to use, and a lot of time on my hands, I put together the Kakurega Archetype Project.

Sixteen archetypes, John Wick-inspired styling, descriptions all rewritten with my setting in mind, some archetypes renamed entirely. I'm pretty proud of the One Good Cop and Maverick Cop ones, as the idea was to seed a character that would allow a player to consider those archetypes in a not uncritical way (spoiler alert: it's highly unlikely for you to stay a cop in this setting). You can cop by clicking the image above or at this link, with an update today to include a new version of the Ninja, courtesy of my Sunday morning screening of Timo Tjahjanto's new banger THE SHADOW STRAYS:

Want to give them a spin with your own gaming group? Feel more than free if you're already familiar with Feng Shui, but if you've never played the game at all? I've got you covered there, with an intro adventure I wrote set in Detroit called Motor City Shakedown.

The premise: The PCs are hired by a mysterious organization called The Conglomerate to steal a diamond being auctioned off to a bunch of criminals. Inspired by Elmore Leonard novels and their adaptations (you win a no-prize if you can guess which ones), and designed to serve as a prelude to The Dirty South. It says you need the core rulebook, but I give you a rules primer on page 5 that should hold you down.

Let me know if you give it a look or even run it for your friends, and feel free to gab at me about crime and action flicks.

P.S. There are alternates for the Thief, Bounty Hunter, and Private Investigator archetypes (you can probably guess the Thief one pretty easily). Ask me nice and I'll show 'em to you.