Author: Gareth-Michael Skarka Category: game Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order (formerly from Event Horizon Productions, Inc.)

Reviewed by Kevin Mowery on 02/06/97. Genre tags: none

(Originally posted to UseNet. Style/Substance values are a guess by the site maintainer based on the review.)

Well, I'll provide a quick review of the mechanics.

Character creation is a breeze, since you're only making the framework of an actual character--actually, you're making an actor. You decide what your actor's attributes are (random rolls with some slighting allowed), and then determine what types of skills he focuses on (it's assumed that your character will absolutely rock in combat, since it's action cinema). Each character also gets a schtick or two--little tags that show up in every movie. Maybe anyone who watches your films knows that your sidekick always dies, or you have horrible dubbing or a special move that you always work into your films.

Task resolution mechanics are fair. The basic stuff is nothing horribly innovative. The idea of a magic system based on the I Ching is nifty, though. The problem I had with the rules was that they seem to play best with "heroic bloodshed" movies a la John Woo or Ringo Lam or very realistic martial arts. Magic is darned difficult to cast, and cool martial arts wire-fu (for those who know next to nothing about Hong Kong films, think back to those kung fu movies you saw as a kid with guys jumping over trees or flying the length of a football field to attack someone) is treated as magic, meaning that it's equally difficult.

The high point of the game, though, is the Star system. Each character starts off with a certain number of Star Points. Some of those points are used to purchase roles in the "movie"--if you want to be the hard-bitten cop you have to bid higher than all the other players who want to be him, whereas the comic relief drunkard will probably be an easier role to purchase. How many star points you get back as experience is determined by how many you put into the role--if you do a great job as the drunkard, you might end up with a proportionally bigger reward than the guy who did a lousy job as the cop. Also, whatever points you don't spend on a role can be used as "hero points". You can modify die rolls, even demand rewrites. Of course, you don't get those points back, and altering the movie too much in your favor means you have fewer Star Points next time because everyone thinks you're a prima dona and they don't want to work with you. Star points can also be used to increase abilities. All in all, this could lead to games where someone after a series of movies dealing with, say, Triads gets to be a big star, then makes a period martial arts piece and is horribly miscast, resulting in his star falling but the guy who always played his superior becomes a big star after he plays the previous star's sifu brilliantly.

In addition, while the book is rather slim compared to most new role-playing games, it's actually pretty well-packed. There's little artwork (though it *is* pictures from HK movies), and plenty of text. There's also some historical info on China, the section on movie reviews that you mentioned, and some rather nifty random script generators (they provide ideas, not specifics) that I've had come int handy for Feng Shui.

So, if you're still sitting on the fence after reading this, here's my recommendation: Anyone who's really into Feng Shui or HK action films, or who is intrigued by the idea of the character-as-actor will probably like something about the game. (On the Feng Shui mailing list, one person created a hybrid of the two games, using the more elegant Feng Shui mechanics and a modified Star Point system to create his own game with characters-as-actors.)

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