Hi, folks, it's your regularly scheduled Brianspamspamspamneggs. I've only heard a "yes" from Aaron about a game tomorrow, so if you're not Aaron and planning on playing, please let me know -- very little works with <4 pcs. For those who are interested, I've got some pregens just about done, but also welcome player-made characters. Notes are below. -Brian Feng Shui follows a method of character creation similar to D&D: you pick an Archetype (like "Wizard" or "Paladin" or "Big Bruiser"), and fill in some blanks and choices. A lot more of the flexibility comes in your attribute choice, so once you've picked thar everything else goes quite fast. The first thing to do is to print out a character sheet from http://www.innocence.com/fengshui/worldbook/fengshui-sheet-1.pdf, then set it aside: there's a bit of arithmetic to do during character creation, and I don't want to have to read through erasures. So please do your scratchwork on scratch paper, and write the finished character onto the character sheet: in particular, if your Archetype says you have Dex 7, and a Guns (+6) =13, or Guns (+6) [Max 15], write down those Max and = numbers too! They do matter. At some point in here, you may want to read the rules (all three pages of them!) at http://www.atlas-games.com/pdf_storage/fs_briefings.pdf . They really are all you need to know to play. Start with an archetype[1] and pick four high fantasy schticks from http://amurgsval.org/feng-shui/schticks.html (Race is a high fantasy schtick). You get your native language and Tradetongue at 4 or 5 depending on your level of sophistication (you be the judge for your character). Note that the average person has all 5's in their attributes, save for a Chi (and all substats) of 0; highly competent professionals have a skill AV of 9. (Apprentices tend to have a 5, journeyman 7. PCs tend to start around 12.) All archetypes have combat skills; note that if you take one whose combat AV is only 12, you may feel a little left out at first when other people are making mooks pop off every action. You may be able to offset this with gun or sword schticks. Note that unlike normal Feng Shui, there is a new Secondary Attribute under Chi: Attunement. This represents your attunement to the forces of the universe. Magic is command over them from without; Attunement is the power of oneness with them. Priests use Attunement for Theurgy just as wizards use Magic for Thaumaturgy. Read up on the skill descriptions at http://amurgsval.org/feng-shui/skills.html to check for variance with the regular Feng Shui rules. In particular, notice that there is no Guns skill, but there is a Melee skill. Anybody with Guns should replace it with Melee, and those with Martial Arts can replace it with Melee if they like. Melee is just like Martial Arts, but doesn't have penalties for wearing armor (indeed, it encourages it) and doesn't let you do Fu schticks (it grants Sword schticks instead, natch). If you're a warrior, there are all manner of interesting weapons available, and they're pretty much interchangeable by type (i.e. all swords do about +4 damage). Pick something that sounds cool, and you can get its numbers on Thursday. If you're not a caster, you're now done: copy things onto your sheet, making sure you didn't violate any Max or = requirements on skills. If you're a spellcaster, you'll need to pick your spheres of magic and a realm of power; if a priest, you'll need to pick a god from the pantheons of The Children of the Dragon, the Pyramid pantheon, a group of Dwarven gods, the mysterious pantheon of Argsal, or make one up and get GM approval, then pick your spheres. Heck, if you want to be a caster, a) let me know, and b) go to http://amurgsval.org/feng-shui/creation.html and start playing from there. Footnotes: [1] There are some D&D-like ones at http://amurgsval.org/feng-shui/archetypes.html, but they don't have much in the way of Fighter/Monk/Barbarian/Thief, because those are so well covered in the Feng Shui book -- let me know if you want one of those, it's pretty simple.