Feng Shui (the roleplaying game) describes itself as an Action Movie Roleplaying Game.
This means that this game is entirely built around the cinematic action game rather than attempting to emulate anything like real life.

The world of Feng Shui involves time travel to give you 4 main tech and magic settings.

You have 69AD (mostly China), 1850s, Contemporary (i.e. present) and 2056.

69AD is high magic China, ogres and demons roam the countryside and China is secretly ruled by demon-summoning Eunuchs call the The Eaters of the Lotus.

1850s and the present are low magic and secretly controlled by a conspiracy of transformed animals called The Ascended, that are deliberately supressing magic because high magic levels would return them to their animal forms forever.

2056 is utterly controlled by the Architects of the Flesh and the Buro which control the world and attempt to make the world a single monoculture, right down to attempting to eliminate racism by making everyone the same colour (how? Penalise people who many others of the same racial background).

These time periods are linked by the Netherworld, a strange series of tunnels and wide caves (complete with an ocean) which can be molded by its inhabitants.

The key to power in the world of Feng Shui is its namesake. The geomantic art of Feng Shui determines fortunes in the world, if one controls and is attuned to sites of powerfully good Feng Shui events naturally flow to their favour, if they are a crime boss, their enemies will naturally fall for ruses and raid your warehouse the day after you moved your goods and your boys will manage to get their stuff by chancing upon attacking their stores just as their defences are down.

Those who control the most Feng Shui are able to control various aspects of the world including the power of magic and technology. (Hence how the Ascended can keep down magic).

Character creation in Feng Shui is remarkably simple, one simply picks one of the archetypes from the various sourcebooks, goes through the short, archetype dependant customization process, picks guns/spells/fu schticks and comes up with a name and melodramatic hook that pulls them into the plot.

For this I have decided to create an Old Master, I'll have him come from the present.

Attributes:

Bod: =4 (cannot change this at chargen)
Chi: =10 (Fortune =0)
Mnd: 6
Ref: 8

Skills:
Info/Calligraphy +5 (11)
Info/Chinese Painting +4 (10)
Info/Chinese Philosophy +7 (13)
Info/Chinese Poetry +7 (13)
Info/Noodle Making +5 (11)
Leadership +2 (8)
Martial Arts +8 (=16) (My martial arts skill was actually REDUCED from default due to increasing reflexes, since the final stat+skill must =16 at chargen, this is to make everyones combat abilities set by archetype)

Schticks: 5 fu Schticks, fu Schticks are done in trees, so I have decided to use the The Path of the Broken Island path from Blowing Up Hong Kong for most of my fu schticks
- Fist of Disharmony Chi: 1*/Shots: 2
- Typhoon Season Strike Chi: X/Shots: 3
- Angry Mountain Chi: 5 + X/Shots: 3

My last 2 I shall grab from another tree, Path of the Passive Wings
- Crane Stance Chi: 1/Shots: 1
- Wing of the Crane Chi:2/Shots: 1

This guy does a lot of property destruction, and it was tempting to get the next schtick in the PotBI chain which lets him to destroy a vehicle with a punch or a kick straight off, but Angry Mountain is an area effect knockdown type attack with stuff based on strength, which old masters are fairly low on (Str being a substat of Bod), but Wing of the Crane lets him substitute his Str with his Chi on tests for a while, which gives it a significant boost.

Now, all we need is a name and a hook.

We shall name him Angry Chen.

And for a hook, well Path of the Broken Island is taught only by monks from a remote monastery on a volcanic island to the east of HK's SAR, who only head into HK once a month for supplies. So his brief background will be:
When visiting his grand-nephew and gathering the monthly supplies, his grand nephew was gunned down in the street.

Making the hook: Finding his grand-nephew's killer.

Sadly Feng Shui lacks an errata or FAQ and is mostly out of print so if anyone wants to point out any chargen mistakes, please go ahead.

Tags: character generation, create a character, feng shui