Feng Shui 2 (Apeworld on Fire!)

Spoiler Free

[EDITORS NOTE: If this is your first experience with the Feng Shui 2 Roleplaying Game, you may want to consider starting with our previous review of the Core Rulebook. -dc]

The Future Juncture of the Feng Shui 2 universe is a wild place. Picture Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of The Planet of the Apes, then advance that world into a Blade Runner-like techno-dystopian future. Of course, this is still Feng Shui 2, so you need to view that comparison through the lens of a Hong Kong action movie. Wild, right?

Apeworld on Fire is the first published full-length FS2 adventure taking place in the Future Juncture. The previous adventure, Burning Dragon, took place in the Contemporary Juncture, although it also had specific ties to the Ancient Juncture and an integral side plot linked to the Future Juncture. 

Now players find themselves in that same Future, where (according to the back cover) Pontius Primate, religious psychopomp of the New Simian Army, has sent his cyber-ape holy warriors back through time. They’re intent on kidnapping the scientists he needs to perfect a terrible mind-control gas that can strip the free will from countless victims at once!

Our heroes have chased them back to the future. In hot pursuit across the Wastelands, their journey will take them into the very heart of the simian capital of Apeworld and deep into the hidden laboratories beneath Pontius Primate’s cyber-fortress. 

It’s worth noting right off the top, and with more than a small amount of salty disappointment, that Apeworld on Fire and Burning Dragon have no specific connection to one another. Both are intended to be entirely standalone Action Movie Adventures, not parts of a larger serialized adventure path from release to release. Since, at the time I’m writing this, both adventures are available, a forward-thinking GM may want to adjust the characters and details a bit if they are planning to play regularly. Apeworld on Fire does tie in loosely to the Shadow of the Future of the Apes introductory adventure in the Core Rulebook, so that can add some additional connective tissue to draw from as well. 

But enough of what this adventure doesn’t have, let’s move on to what it does have, starting with the brilliant inclusion of a “Director’s Commentary” blurb near the beginning of the book that points to some important areas in the core rules that might be worth brushing up on before running this. Without spoiling things, the Opening Shot finds the adventure already in high gear. This is a great opening to really snare the attention of newer players, or could allow for a GM to integrate the adventure into any long-running campaign or draw out the opening to connect with other adventures that may not be at all connected.

Once you get into the adventure-proper, what you get is a heavy dose of sandbox possibilities to explore a city, while gently being coaxed towards a specific location for more exploration and a penultimate primate punchup. How well the heroes fare in the fracas will determine how they arrive at the final boss battle.

Even though it’s taken me way too long to write this review, I started reading the adventure almost immediately after receiving it, well before I started on Burning Dragon. But not knowing (at the time) if the two adventures were connected, I wanted to go through both and ended up reviewing them in order of release. In my Core Book review, I mentioned that all my games up to that point had completely ignored the Chi War setting but, after Apeworld on Fire, I would be happy to run amok in the Future Juncture all the time! There’s just something about playing with intelligent apes that speaks to me. (It’s those damned dirty apes. The apes are what speaks to me, because they can.)

I hope to be back soon with a look at the third adventure, We’ll Temporarily Have Paris! Until then, you can find Altas Games at www.atlas-games.com or on Facebook at facebook.com/AtlasGames.