Postmodern Feng Shui
AKA Redecoraters
You’ve always been a bit anal about where things go, how they’re arranged. If some poor bastard moved the contents of your desk by so much as an inch, he had bad things coming his way/ You never really thought of it as a compulsion–you just like things being in order, no matter whether they’re in your room, your boss’s office, or a perfect stranger’s living room. You never put thought into why you did it–you just knew that putting things in your order would make them better.
You laughed a bit when you first heard about Feng Shui. Redirecting the flow of some quasimystical energy by moving furniture around? Please. What’s more, the prices those Feng Shui “masters” charge for their services tell you what they are: nothing but con men who know a bit of mysticism. But eventually, someone got you a book on it–it may’ve been a birthday present, but you can’t entirely remember–and, eventually, you got bored enough to read it.
You had an epiphany. You realized that, although the dressings and diagrams of Feng Shui were bunk, the core was true. Organizing rooms, forming patterns, could change the world. The way you arranged your room hasn’t changed a bit–but now, you know why you do it. Every pattern completed, every room brought into perfect order, is a gateway to power. You have embraced Schemancy, the magic of shape, pattern, and arrangement. The room is your domain, and you are its lord.
The symbolic tension of Schemancy is the perfect order of its patterns and arrangements, spawned from the random whims and compulsions of its practicioners.
Schemancy’s blast is a bit like Urbanomancy’s, in that both are indirect attacks. Schemancy’s tweaks synchronicity so that the person hit by it manages to trip, fall, or otherwise hurt himself on an object that “just happens” to be in this way. The Schemancy blast works better in areas arranged by its caster, and worse in places without organization. In places utterly devoid of objects, the blast doesn’t work at all. Outdoors, the caster takes a -15% shift to his roll when casting it, and a -10% shift when casting it in rooms that he has not personally organized. In a room he has organized, however, the caster gets a +10% shift, which stacks with the +5% shift of the Good Feng Shui spell if he’s cast it on that room.
Gain a Minor Charge: Spend at least four hours arranging the contents of a room properly. No skill rolls are needed for this, nor do you need to consult any books–the proper arrangement is that decided upon by you, nothing else. A room must be completely enclosed–walls, ceiling, and floor have to be there–although temporary openings like doors or windows are fine (Note that, technically, things like a car count as rooms for this purpose, which is gonna be important if you want to be able to get around without breaking taboo). In addition, some spaces are just too big to be considered a room. If it’s bigger than about 400 square feet, it probably doesn’t count as a room. Once you’ve arranged a room, you can’t get any further charges from it unless something completely de-arranges it.
Gain a Significant Charge: Arrange or pattern something large and significant to your liking.. If you’re a city planner, you might arrange buildings or roads to fit your likings; if you’re an artist, you might put up a huge mural of patterns and shapes on a notable building (helps if you get permission for that one, though). Generally, as long as its something that takes lots of time and effort, and is going to be noticed daily by hundreds of people, you’re probably good.
Gain a Major Charge: No one’s sure what exactly you’d have to arrange to get a major charge, but most Redecoraters would say the world. If you could somehow reshape, say, the locations of every capital in America, or something similarly impossible, to form a pattern without using magick, you can be almost assured of scoring a major charge.
Taboo: For starters, once you’ve arranged something or created a pattern, even if you didn’t do it for charges, you can’t undo or destroy it without losing all charges you’re carrying.. In addition, if you spend more than half an hour outside, or in a room that you haven’t organized, you break taboo. There’s something of a loophole to the last part of that one, though: time spent arranging a room doesn’t count against your half hour, even if you don’t arrange it for long enough to score a charge.
Random Magick Domain: Schemancy can mess with thing’s spatial positions, rearranging them or creating new patterns.
Starting Charges: Newly created Redecoraters have four minor charges.
Charging Tips: For starters, odds are you have a house or apartment. That ought to be good for a couple minor charges at the least. If you’ve got a car, you’re going to want to arrange that–not just for the charges, but so you can get around breaking taboo. Once that’s done, you can probably get a minor charge or two a day by just arranging friend’s houses–most people, even those not clued-in, will probably be pretty cool about this. Now, significant charges is an entirely different matter. There are several different ways you could go about getting them, but getting some sort of authority position or grant is probably going to make things a lot easier. No matter how you go about getting them, you’ll probably get a significant charge a week at most.
Home’s Where the Heart Is
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: A person’s room say a lot about them. When you cast this spell, you must be in a room belonging to the person you wish to find out about. They must have made at least some personal contribution to the organization of their room. By observing the arrangement, patterns, and feel of the room, you get a sense for that person. You may find out one of the following facts about your person: their obsession, one of their passions, whether their an adept, an avatar, or a normal, or what state of mind they were in when they last occupied the room. If you spend two extra minor charges, you can instead find out all of the above.
Inauspicious Positioning
Cost: 3 minor charges
Effect: This is the Schemancy minor blast. You gain a shift to your Magick roll when casting it based on how organized the area around you is. For specifics, see the Schemancy Blast style section above.
Instant Redecoration
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: Snap your fingers, and the room reorganizes itself to fit your demands. The reorganization isn’t as instant as the name implies–it takes about ten minutes. You don’t get a charge from this, but it lets you avoid breaking taboo or get a room ready for you to cast spells on without spending hours working on it. However, the Good Feng Shui spell cannot be cast on a room organized his way–for that, you’re going to have to spend the whole four hours.
It Says A Lot About Me
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: Pick a room you’ve organized, and that is still in that state. You can then speak a brief message–about 25 words, more or less. Anyone who’s in that room hears your message. If no one’s in the room, than the next time someone enters, other than you, they get the message. The room you send the message to has to be pretty close to you–no further than half the ten’s digit of your Soul stat, rounded up, in miles–unless you have a Good Feng Shui spell going in that room, in which case distance is no object.
Good Feng Shui
Cost: 2 minor charges
Effect: This is to Schemancy what My Turf is to Urbanomancy. However, instead of a piece of the city, you have to cast this spell on a room that you’ve arranged. This spell gets the mojo flowing in their, pumping up your magick with a +5% shift on all magick rolls while you’re in the room, including those made to cast blast spells. In addition, anyone trying to target you with magick or an avatar channel while you’re in the room takes a -5% shift to their roll. In addition, you can sense whenever someone uses magick in the room, even if you’re not their. There’s a limit to the number of rooms you can cast this spell on–they can’t exceed the ten’s digit of your Soul stat. Once cast, this spell lasts for a week, but if the arrangement of the room is ruined, so is the spell.
Relaxing Arrangement
Cost: 1 minor charge
Effect: If you cast this in a room you’ve arranged, it creates waves of good feelings, making everyone in the room calm down a bit. No one in the room can act on their rage or fear passions. In addition, if someone in the room tries to do something violent, they’re gonna have to make a rank-5 Self check. This spell lasts for half an hour, but if there’s a Good Feng Shui spell on the room you cast it on, then the good feelings last for as long as the Good Feng Shui does. Either way, if the room gets knocked out of arrangement, the good feelings end.
Anomalous Arrangement
Cost: 4 significant charges
Effect: Ever needed just a bit more room? This spell’s for you. When cast on a room you’ve arranged, this spell doubles its dimensions on the inside, but not on the outside. This makes the room’s interior far larger than its exterior, and is hella creepy to look at. Seeing such a spatially twisted room calls for a rank-4 Unnatural stress check. The expansion lasts for twenty four hours, but if the room is knocked out of arrangement, the spell ends. If there’s a Good Feng Shui spell on the room you cast it on, then the expansion instead lasts for as long as the Good Feng Shui does. Using this spell in public places makes the Sleepers very, very angry.
Door of Renunciation
Cost: 5 significant charges
Effect: Weird, weird shit. Basically, this lets you turn a room you’ve organized into a Room of Renunciation. First off, you need to get the person you have on planning renounced. Put them in a room you’ve both organized and cast the Good Feng Shui spell in, and lock them in. Close the door, and cast the spell. The poor person finds that the room he was placed in is slowly changing, warping its shape and twisting its form…until they find themselves in the Room of Renunciation most appropriate to them. The agents of the Room take the poor bastard in, Renounce him, and then drop him back off in your room. However, if you use this spell too much, the agents of Renunciation start keeping an eye out on you…use it more than once a month or so, and you’re almost sure to get Renounced.
Door of Retreat
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: This is a neat ‘un. Think of a room you’ve organized, and that is still in the way you arranged this. It has to be pretty close to you–it can’t be any further from you than the ten’s digit of your Soul stat in miles. Cast this spell, open a door…and you find yourself in that room. If their’s a Good Feng Shui spell on that room, distance is no limit–no matter where you are, you can get to that room.
Fatal Positioning
Cost: 2 significant charges
Effect: This is the Schemancy significant blast. You gain a shift to your Magick roll when casting it based on how organized the area around you is. For specifics, see the Schemancy Blast style section above.
Utilitarian Arrangement
Cost: 1 significant charge
Effect: When you cast this on a room you’ve arranged, it subtly shifts the pattern, maintaining your organization, but also serving a practical purpose. When you cast this spell, choose a skill. All rolls of that skill made in the room are made at a +10% shift. If you choose Magick, then this shift stacks with the bonus from Good Feng Shui. Alternatively, you may choose to hamper that skill, instead giving all rolls a -10% shift. This spell lasts for half an hour, but if there’s a Good Feng Shui spell on the room you cast it on, then the spell last for as long as the Good Feng Shui does. Either way, if the room gets knocked out of arrangement, the spell ends.
Transform a room you’ve arranged into your own personal Otherspace. Rearrange a city to your whim. Lay a Good Feng Shui effect on every room in a city.
The taboo seems needlessly dibilitating. What about characters that don’t own cars? They’d never be able to go anywhere. Hell, they couldn’t even go to buy a car without breaking taboo. You wouldn’t be able to go grocery shopping. You couldn’t go to the movies, and in many cases, couldn’t even hold down a job wiothout breaking taboo.
Other than that and the fact that the school overlaps in theme with Geomancy, it looks like a fairly solid school.
Well, if the Redecorator in question has a bike, they can probably get around within a single city by island-hopping. That is, they set up “rooms” all over the city, each one less than a half-hour bike ride away from the next. Even if one of them is disrupted, the time spent re-arranging it doesn’t count towards taboo. If you’re on a tight schedule, just sort things for long enough to reset the clock, then continue on your way.
Traveling over long distances is harder, but if you’re willing to carry around one of those big cardboard refrigerator boxes and plop it down as a “room” wherever you stop, it’s possible. Since time spent organizing doesn’t count toward the time limit, you could just pretend to have a weak bladder and rearrange the bathroom in every truck stop you pass.
If you’re willing to go for Project Mayhem-style acts of epic public vandalism, you could avoid the long-range travel issue completely by just using Door of Retreat to teleport between bases in different cities. Of course, you have to set up those bases first, but with the right security, that only needs to be done once.
That strategy would work best if it was possible to extend the duration of Good Feng Shui, perhaps by pumping additional charges into it.
Holding down a job is pretty easy. Just count a cubicle as a “room” and arrange it appropriately.
Yeah, everything he said is good, and better than what I was to say. An adept should have to bend his life to fit the needs of the taboo – magick must have a cost, after all. As for extending Good Feng Shui, I’d say perhaps a significant charge could be dropped to expand it to a month.
I suggest the following changes:
Scratch the blasts. there is very little about interior decorating that suggests being intrinsically able to hurt people, thera are other schools that get by fine without blasts, this should be one of them. (weak logic, but still…) Replace the blasts with a fairly cheap “bad luck” spell, something to force re-rolls of successful rolls or turns all your matches into failed matches… something!
Scratch Door of renunciation. The bit about “no more than once a month” is pretty redundant consiering the cost, and it is awfully powerful and really weak at the same time (the target has to actively help you redecorate? Not something an even remotely clued-in target would do.
Add a “door to otherspace” spell.
Add a “ritual room” spell where one single ritual (per room) is significantly easier to cast (one ingredient requirement less, or a bonus or something).
The blasts…yeah, I think the school might be able to do without them.
As to the comments on Door of Renunciation, I think I need to clarify. I meant that you need to both A) arrange the room and B) cast Good Feng Shui, not that both you and the victim have to redecorate it. The once a month thing is a bit redundant, but I wanted to have someone to stop a duke from hoarding a bunch of siggys and then Renouncing people left and right.
I was thinking about some sort of Otherspace door, but I didn’t want to tread on Tractomancy’s toes.
The ritual room idea is a good ‘un. If I ever revise this, I’ll probably put that in.
You know there already is a Feng Shui school, in Break. Today, right?
Anyway. Looks okay, except maybe for the Taboo and Door of Renunciation spell.
For the Taboo I’d suggest that spending four hours in a room you haven’t been able to glean a minor charge off (by spending four hours rearranging it) would break taboo.
This keeps Redecorators from travelling, attending long meetings or even going out to concerts without a lot of hassle.
Similarly, I’d suggest that their spells fail in public places where many people disrupt the environment. Basically anywhere more than ten people pass through daily is too easily disrupted.
As for a spell, how about something like the Kleptomancer “Switcheroo” spells. Like maybe it swaps items around within appropriate contexts. You may use it to move CDs from one case to another, swap letters contained in two envelopes or switch the the full magazine in enemy’s gun for your empty one.
The first part of the taboo could use a bit of clarification. First, what constitutes undoing a pattern? The purpose of feng shui is to make a space easier to live in, after all, not to arrange a tableau. Can you, for example, pull a chair away from a desk to sit in it if you put it back afterwards?
Second, if someone or something else undoes your pattern, any changes you make in fixing it don’t count as breaking taboo, correct?