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If you like cinematic bounce over trains with fu powers and twin guns blazing you should try to find Feng Shui. It had flaws but you could do those Jet Li kicks, wuxia style sword fights, twin gun fun, cybertronics, etc.
It was a battle for the control of Feng Shui sites by going back and foward in time, in order to reduce GM work this the players went into the Netherworld and exiting at certain junctures of which there were four.
AD69 Ancient China hopping vampires, demons, and evil eunuchs running the country in the name of the Emperor.
1869 Sholin monks fighting the British and technology. Magic no longer exists because a group of animals ascended to human form (maintaining certain powers) and won control of the sites to rule the world and now magic doesn't work very well as if magic returns to the world they become animals again.
Then present day all guns and triad bosses that are actually demons in disguise.
Then 2056 (or was that Shadowrun?) where the new world order has made a world wide police state and maintains its hegemony by going back in time to kidnap demons and cyber them up to make super soldiers, of course they are fought by a bunch of crazy terorists lead by intelligent apes (early Buro experiments).
Oh and there were the Dragons a Rag-Tag Bunch of Misfit Heroes (RTBMH) from across time consisting of all the good guys you ever saw in HK movies redeemed assassins worked with old masters and maverick cops. And there were one of the groups of original rulers of the world until a critical shift displaced them who ruled through magic and no live in the Netherworld and bicker.
It was great fun to do as you could do anything from HK movies run along buses, swing from ropes, run up trails of bullets and blow stuff up real good. Whilst it was basic it was fairly well written, lively certainly. It included basic background, films you could watch (some really good obscure ones which really got my love of this stuff going), rules were simple when you got the hang of it, the different powers were all explained fairly well, the characters were more hints. Many of them were basically the same save for the name, and it was difficult to actually create your own archetypes whichn is always a shame, but, hey ho. It was never anything we did often or seriously, it was just a good adjunct to a night of Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam films.
Paranoia was played in much the same vein, the benefit being it didn't matter how badly the rules were explained you never told the players what they were so you made up all the results for best deaths and fun.
We played Shadowrun an amazing amount - guns and spells and cyberware, we were in heaven...Kult and World of Darkness we played when we wanted to fuck ourselves up. In the case of Kult because we were always disturbed by each others mental states when we Gm'd and from the characters made (asylum escapee you say...). WofD because everyone's characters were random and often hated each other or were directly working against each other. Anyway, then we got paranoid and much note passing to the gm would be done ending in hideous firefights, but always of stage so to speak. The fun you can have when the characters sit in a resteraunt whilst outside police, FBI, Satanists, acolytes and the inquisition have a gun battle...
That was the White Wolf systems best feature. As well as the amopunt of work that went into each creatures powers and political background there were so many of them, you really could be anything you wanted (our group tended to include an Assamite vampire, a Troll, a Tzimisce Vampire disguised as an inquistion priest, a Glass Walker werewolf, and my own ghouled FBI mage-nt). The sheer number of books meant the GM could always keep suprising you everytime you played. Alln he had to do was buy the latest hunters book, or a new werecreature expansion and suddenly new roleplaying ideas, and the players running in confusion from something that none of the traditional (silver, stake, sunlight) remedies could hit. Although the huge size was partially a buy all our stuff ploy it did mean a constantly mutating playing field.
We played lots of roleplays but ulitmately we always came back to Warhammer, Shadowrun, Kult, and World of Darkness. In fact (blushes of shame) we still do...
Sorry I just realised how big this post was. Roleplays do that to me... |
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