Pyramid Review
Friends of the Dragon: A Guide to Player Character Groups (for Feng Shui)
Published by Atlas Games
Written by Keith Baker & Will Hindmarch
Illustrated by J. Scott Reeves
72-page b&w softcover; $17.95
Like so many other roleplaying games, Feng Shui can sometimes suffer from a problem. All too often, it takes a disparate bunch of characters -- say, for example, a Masked Avenger, a Scrappy Kid, a Maverick Cop, and an Everyday Hero(ine) -- then throws them together and expects them to gel. A problem more particular to Feng Shui is that while the genre it is based on usually involves solitary protagonists, the roleplaying game itself does not. Of course, in the hands of a competent GM, this is not all that much of a problem, but it is one that the game's latest supplement, Friends of the Dragon: A Guide to Player Character Groups sets out to address and explore.
Since Feng Shui is about fighting the Secret War, this supplement is about fighting the Secret War as a group, rather than as a bunch of eclectic individuals. Its central idea is not to run a game, but to create and run a themed Feng Shui game called a "Show." To do this it brings a number of new genres to the game, so that a GM could run a Cop or Espionage Show, just two of the five genres explored in Friends of the Dragon. Then it asks the players to work together in the process of not only creating their characters, but their group as a whole. This combination of group and genre works to give both the GM and the . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: July 2, 2004
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