I very, very nearly never comment about stuff like this. And 100% of the time I laugh and laugh when nerds get upset about canon changes or challenges or whatever.
But I gotta say: Flipping through my swanky hardback of Feng Shui 2 and discovering the Architects of the Flesh faction was eliminated from the setting? And replaced by what looks like a duplicate of the Jammers storyline (my absolute least-favorite bit of the Shadowfist continuum)? Has greatly cooled my interest in actually playing the game.
I literally closed the book up and shelved it when I read up on the current state of affairs. Ugh. A double-monkey future but no Vivisectionist? No Buro?
I want my dystopic chrome future back.
Lol nerd.
Oh shit, I hadn’t gotten that far, I’d only flipped through. I didn’t realize they were gone. That sucks.
Brand Robins no u
Feng Shui fans be all like: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=75yTfBFX5gs
What no Buro? and therefore no Godhammer?
NO BURO
But plenty of stupid future monkeys.
Where do techno-monkeys come from now that there were no Architects to make them?? Is this a PARADOX or just a retcon?
PS Beakley, you seem to be building toward a secondary mutation, let’s pile on the pressure and maybe it’ll spark a design revolution.
Yes! A Revolution in Feng Shui Gaming Affairs! Detournement!
Just put them in. No reason you can’t put them in as one of those pop-up junctions. I miss their exclusion but not enough to dismiss the rest of the goodness.
Except for the templates, schticks, weapons and all the rest of the mechanical stuff, i.e. all the design work necessary to run them, sure, I could totally include them back in.
It was my favorite part of the original setting. And I’m sure I’ll get past it! But right now I’m like…I’ve got at least 10 games ahead of it in the queue.
I haven’t sat down to see how 1st Ed compares to second. It may be simple enough to drop hem in from 1st Ed rules. If you just want them as bad guys the rules for creating bad guy schticks have you covered.
I always thought the chimps were one of the less useful features of the setting. A bad joke to use once (maybe). Not something I’d want to magnify in the setting. Are there more junctures, at least?
There are pop-up junctures, and lots of them. Not totally solid on what they mean or how they work.
Agreed re the chimp jokes. Battlechimp Potemkin was good for one round of laughs.
Pop up junctures? Interesting! The junctures concept is one of the lipstick traces connecting this game to Nephilim. Looking forward to getting a copy so I can see how they do it
Pop-up junctures are less stable and are good ways to do one shots or mini-adventures in a different setting. Want to fight techno Vikings or motorcycle samurai. That’s what they are for.
I too was pretty mystified that one of the most interesting RPG setting developments of the whole of the 90s was gutted to make way for… Planet of the Apes. Really??
Yeah.
Might as well have replaced with “Zombies”.
Alas.
Still, most of the sessions I ran were almost all contemporary, though I also did some Ancient ones, I never really set sessions in that future setting, but I had characters and antagonists from it.
Ultimately, they have the abominations as characters so I think the rules from that setting are still tucked in the new book, just not evoked by the setting as much. Shouldn’t be too hard to bring it back.
Note: I never read the setting book for the Architects of the New Flesh or anything, so I don’t know about any expanded rules or anything like that, just what was in the revised core book.
missed the market on that editing choice