DAEDALUS GAMES
WRITTEN BY BWM A. RAUGH, CHRIS PRAMAS, GREG STOLZE J014N TYNES AND ALLEN VARNEY
12.95

Daedalus Games has wasted no time in pushing its newest product onward. Marked for Death is the first expansion to its Feng Shui line, released a scant month after the basic rulebook hit the shelves.To call it a campaign sourcebook is a bit misleading; strictly speaking, it's simply a series of five Feng Shui adventures, designed for fast play and easy digestibility. But to treat it as just an adventure book is to miss one of its principle strengths. Marked for Death does what many reach for, but only few accomplish: it provides an honest-to-God springboard for a full blown campaign.

The adventures themselves are fairly straightforward. The first two, "Brinks!" and "Blood for the Master," are essentially extended gunfights, the first taking place in a bank, the second in a pizza parlor,tumed-demonic-temple. The next, "Pai Lai," is a bit more subtle, as the characters come between a jammer and the feng shui site he wants to destroy. "The Shape of Guilt" gives us Shakespearean tragedy through the eyes of bad Netherworld TV, and finally, "Shaolin Heartbreak" presents the perils of a time, travelling monk and the exotic modem day rock star who just happens to look just like her.

In and of themselves, these adventures are all engaging, if a little cliched. If one read them separate of each other, one probably wouldn't think them anything more than standard by- thebook material. But looking at them together, they become much stronger, both as overt role- playing sessions and as more subtle foundations to longer campaigns.

The scenarios are strongly mixed between standard "action movie" fare and more specific references to the arcane milieu of Shadowfist. For example, while both "Brinks!" and "Blood for the Master" make references to the Buro, their scenarios could be part of any action RPG. "The Shape of Guilt," on the other hand, couldn't be run as anything but Feng Shui. This mix allows for a surprising amount of texture and variation. Each adventure has its own unique style (they had five different authors), which allows GMs to easily select whatever scenario he or she's in the mood for.

What really makes the book work so well, though, are the hooks and extensions beyond the simple "Point A to Point B" adventure in five scenarios discuss NPCs, settings, and ideas for further adventures at length, providing a blueprint for an on-going Feng Shui campaign. Many of the NPCs are endearing and well-fleshed out, as are the Hong Kong boroughs and Netherworld caverns which they inhabit. Two of my personal favorites are "Blood for the Master's" Rikki Ko, the harried and obnoxious owner of a cultinfested pizza parlor, and IKTV, the rerun-obsessed television station in "The Shape Of Guilt." Marked for Death is full of characters and- settings like these, with a style all their own. They're specific enough to give inexperienced GMs a solid footing in the Feng Shui world, but open enough to keep veteran referees from feeling too restricted.

The result is a simple and painless introduction to the Feng Shui world, one which sucks you in, then opens the full possibilities of the world before you. An adventure can be run with little preparation over the course of a single evening, but once you finish, you suddenly find a plethora of directions to progress in. Before you know it, you've got a complex, well-paced campaign on your hands, all with only a few reasonable projections from the material presented here.

As a Feng Shui product, Marked for Death isn't intended to be entirely serious, and the text has a very lightweight feel to it: the authors have no compunctions about elbowing their readers in the ribs and letting them know just how goofy it all can be. But the attention to detail and the understanding of role playing structure gives that feather- lightness some steel, and makes Marked for Death more than just a follow-up fluff piece. This fledgling line is off to a very strong start.