Fight Locations — Outdoors and Underground

Amusement Park

Fights at amusement parks give you two basic kinds of contrast:

1. Blood and mayhem surrounded by cuteness.

2. Blood and mayhem surrounded by thrill rides.

In the first case the contrast comes from turning a safe, friendly place for goofing off into a danger zone filled with gunslinging goons, leaping martial artists, and snarling monsters.

Cool Things That Could Happen

• Props everywhere! Balloons to shoot or get entangled in, ice cream cones to throw or slip on, cotton candy to do face plants into, and pavillions to slide down or collapse onto combatants. Not to mention whatever goodies the bystanders drop (see next.)

• Hostages galore. Or if you're not feeling so brutal, huge mobs fleeing the scene in every direction, making it hard for ground-bound combatants to make headway.

• Fights in the middle of non-thrill rides, like a bumber car arena or a kid's spin ride, requiring Agility rolls or an extra shot cost to navigate.

• Killers have a running gunfight through a shooting gallery, scattering bystanders and bursting prizes — stuffed animals, goldfish bowls, cute hats, bags of toy soldiers.

• Bystanders mistake the battle for a show, and start clapping. People want to get their picture taken with the Old Master. Adults mistake supernatural creatures for guys in cartoon-character suits, and little kids demand to know what cartoon they've been missing.

• A real guy in a cartoon-character suit Suddenly Has Enough and starts pounding some combatant with his mouse head, or whatever.

• Ironic juxtaposition. Martial artists battle inside an arcade stuffed with combat games; characters from the 1850 juncture stumble into a Wild West stunt show; characters from the 69 juncture fight beside the obligatory pagoda in the International Showcase. Transformed Sharks get to fight during the marine mammal show, or Transformed Tigers battle in the middle of the state fair's petting zoo.

On the other hand, some people go to amusement parks to get the living daylights scared out of them for a few minutes at a time. Here the fun comes from giving the people more than what they want.

Cool Things That Could Happen

• Flying menaces. That sorcerer, creature, or abomination can have a fine time menacing roller coaster cars or people strapped in for a freefall ride. A chance for PCs with movement schticks to show their stuff!

• Unpredictable timing. So you're fighting the bad guy on the roller coaster track. Unless you built the thing, how are you going to guess when that car will run over the combatants? Smile evilly in the middle of the sequence as you say, “By the way, that car will be here in, oh, 5 shots…”

• Weird rides. Rides can have shadowy interiors, catwalks, strobe lights, water plunges, and ironic juxtaposition (send your 2056 characters into a fight on the Alien Wars 2001 Death Ride.)

• Save the innocents from Plummeting Doom! Let the villains damage the track on that roller coaster or explode the machinery on that ferris wheel — who's going to rescue the hapless riders? Abundant Leaps aren't the only answer: suppose everything hangs on a well-placed bullet or throwing star to a brake lever…

Inspiration

My Lucky Stars, Double Team. Also: Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Marine World, the Puyallap Fair in Washington State (“Do the Puyallup!” Just had to say it) and many more.

Building Site

Building sites offer a wide variety of possibilities for staging a combat, and so they tend to crop up in Feng Shui games — note the construction site set piece in Baptism of Fire. Construction sites work well as fight locations for a number or reasons: they feature precarious footing, lots of props — dangerous and otherwise, heavy equipment, ample potential for destruction, and few bystanders. Since building sites are empty at night, it's easy to stage a battle there without the bother of police interference — at least until things start blowing up.

Building sites vary tremendously from location to location. I've based the following examples on a skyscraper, but that's only because that offers a lot of possibilities. A building site can be for a home, restaurant, office building, gas station, supermarket, shopping mall, or what have you. Each will offer their own unique possibilities, but there's also enough similarities that the suggestions below can be applied, more or less, to each one.

Cool Things That Could Happen

• Building sites feature the skeleton of a partially completed structure. This provides enormous opporunites for characters to excercise their acrobatic potential to it's fullest. This is especially true of skyscrapers, which are essentially a latticework of steel beams. Your characters, particularly martial artists, should be utilizing the scenery to the fullest, as they jump, dive, dodge, and leap through the building. What's more, the building itself will contained scattered materials and the like that can all be utilized as cover during a battle.

• The other thing about building sites is that they tend to be somewhat fragile. Kick a mook through the wrong support beam, and you'll bring the whole house down. In fact, there's something about a building site that brings out the destructiveness in players. Maybe the fact the building is still being built makes the players more willing to destroy it, as if destroying a finished structure is somehow worse. At any rate, your players and GMC's alike should be trashing your building site as much as possible during the course of their fight. Remember, most buildings are largely wood, and thus are very, very flammable.

• As if the building itself didn't offer enough possibilities, large construction projects feature lots of scaffolding. Anyone who's ever watched a HK martial arts flick knows that where there's scaffolding, there will be a fight. Encourage your players to think of it as a rickety jungle gym.

• Building sites are filled with lots and lots of, well, stuff. A few examples:

  • Hammers, saws, screwdrivers, nails, screws, shovels, sledgehammers, and other tools — These can all be used as improvised weapons.

  • Heavy bags of cement — These can be thrown by strong characters, or burst open to create a distraction.

  • Yards of PVC piping — This stuff is often stacked up, which means that it makes a treacherous surface to fight on, but a great landing spot for thrown mooks. It can also be used as improvised weaponary.

  • Coils of electric wire — This can be used to entangle and trip up opponents.

  • Bricks and cinder blocks — This stuff can be thrown or dropped. It can make a great target for stray bullets, mis-thrown grenades, and well-thrown mooks, especially when stacked up.

  • Power tools — Table saws, chainsaws, drills, jackhammers, and the like. All this stuff will do a lot of damage to a warm body. They can also serve as pitfalls to the players if they're turned on. A classic scene is to have the villain wrestling with the hero and attempting to force his head onto a spinning saw blade.

• Large building sites will generally involve heavy equipment, which is always conveniently left untended. This can include bulldozers, dump trucks, steam shovels, cement mixers, and heavy cranes. A simple fight can turn into an improved chase scene or joust as the characters chase or attack each other with this equipment. Even better is when they use it to drive through the building site. Another classic move involves a sharpshooting player snapping through the line from a crane that holds a bundle of steel girders that happens to be poised just above the onrushing mooks.

• A skyscraper site will also involve several dozen floors of steel girders, along with lots of scaffolding and heavy cranes to lift them. Combat can get pretty precarious when the players are 40 stories above the ground and trying to run and dodge on a 12 inch steel beam. At least one mook should go plummeting to their demise. You should also try to set it up so that the players are forced to leap from beam to beam, and at one point (at least) you should have a player dangling from a beam after missing a jump or being knocked down by an enemy. The fact the setting itself is so perilous should enhance any fight scene.

• Finally, with everything listed here, a building site should be techie heaven. There's more than enough stuff available for a Techie player with a little creativity and a few decent rolls to jury rig everything from a crude rocket launcher to a bulldozer-battlewagon. And of course, there's lots of stuff at a building site that's either flammable or explosive. Think about it.

Inspiration

Mr. Nice Guy, First Mission, Lethal Weapon 3, Darkman

Caverns

Cool Things That Could Happen

• Darkness can be a real problem for characters in deep caves. Torches and muzzle flashes are often the only illumination.

• The warrens of interconnecting tunnels are great for ambushes and running battles.

• Swarms of bats might be a severe distraction or possibly even an assailant if controlled by magic or other supernatural means.

• Certain caverns and tunnels are flooded with water, allowing for cool underwater fights in tunnels and caves while desperately trying to find air.

• Stalactites can be shot or cut from the ceiling, falling to impale characters.

• Stalagmites can be nasty if anyone falls, or is thrown on them.

• Certain tunnels and caverns might feature huge and potentially fatal drops onto rock, stalagmites, or pools of water.

• Things can be hidden in cavern complexes, including secret hide-outs, ancient temples, and so on.

Inspiration

Moon Warriors, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Fairground

Cool Things That Could Happen

• Roller coasters are an excellent place to hold a fight, either on the tracks or within the roller coaster itself. Someone could fall from a high section of the track or get hit by a speeding roller coaster. Likewise, fights, both martial and ranged can take place on the ride itself, with characters desperately trying not to fly off the ride at speed, especially when it does a corkscrew, etc.

• The Ferris Wheel is another excellent fight location, as characters in different cupolas shoot at each other, or clamber on the framework while it's in motion. Two characters could hold a close-in martial arts battle in a single cupola while it swings dangerously with their movements. At least one mook is bound to plummet to his death.

• The Ghost Train can be a hoot, as characters fight each other in the eerily lit gloom while the ride speeds along. For extra fun, throw in a few real supernatural creatures, and have characters make Perception checks to notice which ones are real, and which ones are fake, as they pop up.

• Log Flumes and Rapids are great platforms for a fight as characters fight within the jostled confines of a single boat. Sudden bumps might call for rolls to see if anyone loses their balance and falls into the water. Once in the water, the poor soul is swept along, banging into walls, and probably getting clobbered by the rafts. Villains are bound to hold a heroes head over the side of the log or raft, hoping that the hero's head will impact with the ride's walls before the boat does, or trying to force their head underwater.

• Carousels are fun, as characters jump from horse to horse as they move up and down and the entire ride revolves. Martial arts action takes advantage of the rods that hold the horses, allowing characters to swing around on them and forcibly “dismount” mooks with a kick in the teeth.

• Characters can also have running battles on Dodge 'ems (bumper cars), shooting at mooks in the other cars, while they collide with each other, leap from car to car, run into those unfortunate souls who fall on the floor, etc. Also, remember that the metal mesh ceiling above the cars carries a strong electrical current…

• Side-stalls are a great attraction. Shooting Galleries present lots of pellet rifles and pistols that characters can use to take out mooks, and Hooplas have balls or hoops that can be thrown at people. At least one mook will probably get his head stuffed in a candy-floss machine, and another will probably end up thrown into a Coconut Shy, winning the character a cuddly toy (or not).

• Fairground tests of strength, such as the traditional punch bag and bell, or mallet and ringer set-up are good for humor. A mook could get punched, fly through the air, and sound the ringer.

• The Hall of Mirrors provides Bruce Lee fun with a twist, as characters walk amid a maze of distorting mirrors. For a nasty twist, have an evil sorcerer cast a spell that causes the heroes' grossly distorted reflections to step out of the mirrors and attack them.

• An arcade of fruit-machines gives Big Bruisers something to heft at mooks, and allows a beaten mook to collide with one, making the machine shower him with a stream of coins.

• Aside from all these wonderful fight locations, don't forget the seething crowds of innocent bystanders/hostages that are found in a Fairground

Military Base

The military base is usually a small “city” within a secure area — just how secure often depends upon the country and what the military base houses. On base housing makes up the residential portion of our city, with the requisite service provided — the commissary for groceries; the exchange for general merchandise (clothing, toiletries, etc.); bowling, pools, movie theatres and parks for entertainment; the officer's club (or “O-club”) serves as a watering hole; and some sort of fast food rounds out the selection.

They don't put a fence up around the base to keep people out of their version of suburbia, however. Those MPs carry weapons for a reason, and they definitely know how to use them. Just what the base is set up for varies from location to location and service to service. It could be a naval or marine corps air station (NAS or MCAS), a shipyard or submarine base, a top-secret black-ops test center, or a training facility designed to scrape the green bits off of new recruits and turn them into mean, lean, killing machines. The choice is yours.

Whatever you decide your base's main function is, make sure that the security precautions surrounding it reflect the importance of the goods. For example, security for a training base is usually not as strict as that of a submarine base or covert operations base (if you can find it). Nearly all military bases are surrounding by some sort of fencing topped off with barbed wire, so that entry and exit are controlled through one or many “gates”. When entering a base, you will most often be required to have some sort of identifying sticker on the vehicle (make sure it is current) or show a valid military identification card. During heightened security, it is common for the guard(s) to request to require I.D. before gaining entry to the base for the driver of the vehicle — passengers may be guests unless otherwise noted.

Note that the base provides it's own security, and the base commander will be very hesitant to use local police investigators if they consider the matter to be an internal affair. The base is federal property, and nearly any major law violation committed on base will be treated as a federal offence.

Cool Things That Could Happen

• Since we are dealing with the military, you just know that there are gong to be lots of cool toys for both the PCs and GMCs to get their hands on, even if they have to pry it out of someone else's hands. Pistols, assault rifles, sub machine guns, grenades and even flame throwers could turn up for the party's use — now we're cooking with gas!

• Vehicles of all sorts will be present, be it a simple jeep / hum-vee, an armored personnel carrier (APC), a tank, a few attack helicopters, or an F/A-18 Hornet. All of these vehicles can blow up in neat ways, or provide the PCs with loads of opportunities for mowing down mooks like there is no tomorrow (if they don't crash into the nearby fuel truck, that is).

• Air stations have large areas devoted to the storage, care, and maintenance of their aircraft. Large hangers flank the runways with planes spaced evenly. During normal operations, planes will be fueling up and starting their engines up. Jet engines themselves are hazardous — those “Danger: Air Intake” warnings are there for a reason. Have a mook sucked/kicked into the intake and watch the roasted hamburger come out the other end. Jet fuel is highly flammable — beware stray shots. If ordinance is being loaded onto the plane / helicopter, things could get very interesting! Don't forget the obligatory scene with an automobile (or three) chasing a plane down the runway at 100+ mph.

• Submarine bases and naval shipyards provide opportunities to take the fight to the water (or under water) by commandeering various types of watercraft. Perhaps a major villain is attempting to steal a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier.

• Fight can also take place in some of the other less-exotic places. Combat in the commissary, for example, would be similar to combat in any residential super market. There will probably be a few more combat trained innocents in the store to help out the PCs, if needed.

• Some large bases house their own brig as well. Should the PCs be caught in any unlawful acts, they could end up there. Of course, this is not necessarilly a bad thing if they are trying to infiltrate the prison in order to get information from a villain's associate.

Inspiration

Face Off, Under Siege, GoldenEye.

Parking Garage

Parking Garages allow for a hybrid sort of fight scene, combining gunplay or hand to hand with car chases. What's more, aboveground parking garages often go up several stories, adding the element of height to the mix. Parking garages offer open space, confinement, and plenty of obstacles for you to work with, and it's very easy to work one into your stories. In fact, a lot of fights take place in garages as the players are fleeing, or chasing someone, to their cars.

Cool Things That Could Happen

• First off, parking garages are full of cars, one of the greatest additions to any fight scene. This means you have plenty of potential for smashed windsheilds and exploding gas tanks. Martial Artists can leap from hood to hood, while Killers can dive behind them, jump over them, roll off them, slide under them, and generally use them as cover.

• Of course, with all those cars, you can always have a car chase, either by having cars chase each other or characters on foot. In such a tight location, there's a high risk of catastrophe. Cars which take turns too tightly or which drive too fast can slam into the concrete dividers or posts or into other cars, naturally causing a big explosion — and potential chain reaction. Best of all, you can have a car go sailing off one of the top levels to crash spectacularly below.

• Speaking of height, characters can climb, rappel, or jump to different levels of the garage. Of course, they can also fall or be thrown as well.

• Don't forget the gates, ticket machines, and booths at the entrances and exits. These things are made to be smashed and blown up.

Inspiration

The Replacement Killers, Rumble in the Bronx, Tomorrow Never Dies, Highlander

Rooftop

Rooftops are a common location for fight scenes, and while they may not offer a lot of props to work with, they are more dangerous than the average location. The two major factors to consider in rooftop fights are the type of roof and height. A flat skyscraper top offers stable footing and a very long drop, while the average suburban home is only two stories high, but the angle of the roof makes a fall all the more likely.

Obviously the first thing to consider is falling. On a flat roof, this is only likely to happen if a character is knocked off the edge, and this should probably only occur if the attacker makes a critcal success, or the defender a critical failure. On a slanted roof you could handle it one of two ways: either attach a penalty to all actions, or have all characters make an agility roll every time they perform a risky action or get hit by an attack, with a difficulty of 5-10 depending on the steepness of the roof. By the way, I would consider throwing a kick (or most any hand to hand attack, for that matter) to be risky, while shooting a gun is not.

The Feng Shui rules provide damage values for falling on p. 161. Note that a fall of 5 stories or more is usually fatal, while any thing over 40 stories should automatically mean death. It's not only kind, but dramatically appropriate to allow characters who fall to have a chance to grab a ledge, flagpole, or what-have-you to save themselves from splatification. This is especially true if the players are conducting a rooftop chase.

Cool Things That Could Happen

• Many rooftops have antennas. These can be uprooted to use as improvised weapons. Some may have satellite dishes, which fall more into the category of scenery to be destroyed.

• Some rooftops will have chimneys. Not only can these be used as a vault, but you can always have fun stuffing mooks down them as well.

• Really cool rooftops have skylights. It is almost mandatory that someone get thrown or jump through it. Naturally, in the former case this will do damage on top of that caused by the fall.

• Some rooftops may sport anything from clotheslines to greenhouses. This all depends on where the fight is occuring. Be inventive and have fun.

• Church rooftops may have steeples and gargoyles. Cathedrals have these, plus the added bonus of being both tall and having a slanted rooftop. This is great for those of you who want to add a gothic element to your game.

Inspiration

Die Hard, The Crow, Batman

Sewer

Cool Things That Could Happen

• Sewers make great hide-outs for freakish supernatural creatures, twisted masterminds, and bizarre transformed turtles…

• The most important thing to remember is that the sewer is dark, and many areas are completely unlit, especially the deeper you go. The only light will be the torches the character's carry and the flashes from guns being fired. Obviously, characters with Friend of Darkness or similar abilities, will be at a real advantage.

• The narrow walkways on either side of the main channels with be covered with slippery guck, calling for rolls to avoid falling into the effluent, especially during combat.

• Certain areas might contain pockets of flammable gas (methane) that can be easily sparked off by any flame, including a gun's muzzle flash. BOOM!

• The interconnecting tunnels can be a real labyrinth, with distorted echoes, and great places for ambushes are running battles.

• Fighting in the knee-deep (or higher) effluent, can be a real problem.

• Smaller tunnels might act as water slides, dumping characters into deep pools.

• Other flows might rush with force as nasty grates, slamming characters into them.

• The ladders that lead up to the surface are great for martial arts action.

• Swarms of rats might attack unsuspecting characters, especially if controlled by supernatural means.

• Let's not forget the rumours of giant albino alligators either…

Inspiration

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Ski Resort

Your typical ski resort can be a cornucopia of good action. Everything below generally assumes that it will be winter and there will be lots of snow on the ground, but there's nothing to say you can't go to a mountain resort at any time during the year. Attending a ski resort in a Feng Shui game could be included as part of a mountain-based campaign or just as a quick vacation for some hard-working PCs (well, it won't be a vacation for long!)

Fancy resorts will typically have a huge foyer with comfortable couchs, a grand fireplace, and possibly a large chandelier made of elk antlers or something (these are great for swinging on). Extending from those will be a kitchen and dining room, hot tub room, and corridors that lead to elevators and other suites. Inside the suites themselves will usually be one or two beds, a television, small bathroom and other items. Use the apartment write-up from the Baptism of Fire adventure on page 264 of the main rulebook for this.

It should be reletively easy to rent or steal spare ski equipment should the need arise. Don't forget to bundle up! It can get really cold out there, especially at night when you're lying on a snowbank bleeding to death.

Cool Things That Could Happen

• The very best resorts will have large trams that run up and down the sides of the mountain face. Extensive hand-to-hand battles should take place both inside and on top. The more nefarious villains will use these to hold hostages too.

• On a smaller note, ski lifts also run up and down the mountain face, but can barely support more than 3 or 4 people and provide no cover against gunfire. Still, if you manage to get into a shoot-out while riding on one, don't forget it's a long drop down.

• One of the classic staples of ski battles are mooks riding on a set of skis and carrying a machinegun. These guys are crazy enough to attack at high speeds, yet are experienced enough to ride with no poles. Be careful.

• Or perhaps a ski pole can substitute for a makeshift fencing weapon.

• Let's not forget snowmobiles, which will likely provide you with your greatest chases. If you are on the run (or chasing), watch out for trees, rocks, cliffs, and other debris. If you want to get really wild, have some mooks ride out with front-mounted machineguns on their snowmobiles.

Inspiration

Police Story 4: First Strike, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Raiders of the Lost Ark, True Lies, Willow, For Your Eyes Only, A View to a Kill

Skyscraper

Skyscrapers tend to offer a lot of different fight possibilities, simply because there are so many different environments to be found within them. Offices, apartments, laboratories, restaurants, shops or minimalls, piazzas, balconies, staircases, elevator shafts, you name it, it's probably in there. Many places to hide, many ways to cream unsuspecting mooks.

The defining characteristic of skyscraper combat is that it's confined, delimited by the walls of the skyscraper. This is usually because the bad guys have the entrance or the lower floors barracaded somehow, and they have hostages, so there's no way out except by beating them. The good guys usually have an advantage in this, since at least some of the bad guys have to stay out in the open if they want to keep their hostages — which means the good guys can strike from concealment.

Speaking of concealment, skyscrapers offer their own ways to get around if you don't want anyone to see you. Ventilation shafts and ducts, elevator shafts (as long as nobody tries to use the elevator at the same time!), dumbwaiters, and the like.

Why would the characters be in the skyscraper? Be creative! Perhaps they were attending a party, or eating out at a restaurant with a superior view of the city. Perhaps this is where one or more of their day jobs are, or perhaps a contact called them in. Perhaps they're just taking a touristy day off when trouble finds them, as it invariably does.

Cool Things That Could Happen

• Bungee jump off the skyscraper

• Parachute jump off the skyscraper

• Throw a bad guy through a skyscraper window

• Climb through the top hatch of an elevator, then shoot down through it as the bad guys come in.

• Battle up (or down) a staircase, trading shots with mooks on the next flight lower down.

• Ride a motorcycle down the stairs.

These are all fairly obvious, but they're at least good for starters.

Inspiration

Die Hard, High Risk, Terminator II, City Hunter: Bay City Wars, Bubble Gum Crisis 8: Scoop Chase, and the Trek TNG episodess “The Hunted” and “Starship Mine”.

Swimming Pool

I don't really know why you would stage a battle here, but hey its Feng Shui and the Secret War can break out anywhere can't it. Maybe its a Feng Shui site.

Cool Things That Could Happen

• The First obvious thought is air. Unless you have the Aquatic Schtick or SCUBA gear, you can and will drown. The rule book doesn't contain any rules for drowning, so I suggest this; At the start of each Sequence, all characters roll their Constitution vs. the Number of Sequences Submerged. If this is failed they start taking 1 WP of damage per action they take. If the character gets to even the smallest source of oxygen they can get a lungful of air and start the tests again. Drowning damage is only temporary (until you die), and WP's return at the rate of 1 per 2 shots when on the surface.

• Public Bathing pools are popular with the public,and so there are a lot of hostages or innocent bystanders. Maybe some of them can be Scrappy Kids or Everyman Heroes

• Swimming Pools are public Amenities and as such run by the Lodge, maybe the manager is a Transformed, Shark, Octopus or Turtle. Are the lifeguards Pledged?

• Fights that take place underwater should go to the relevant fight location.

• The Dragons will be in bathing costumes and probably without their prized weapons and guns.

• Floats, and toys used to amuse younger children can be used to take out mooks. Floats can be thrown like a Frisbee.

• The area around the pool will be slippery, Players shouldn't run, a rule vigorously enforced by the lifeguards.

• Diving boards can particularly be fun, instant Prodigious Leap, maybe a battle can be run with the combatants leaping from one diving board to the next.

• Flumes can also be fun, maybe a missed Blast or gunshot can tear a middle section out of the flume, endangering the little kiddies.

• Acoustics are especially strange in a swimming Pool, with all sound reverberating and magnifying around the pool. This is especially confusing for the Blind Martial Artist (tm). A Sorcerer or Supernatural Creature that uses Sonic based weapons could possibly gain an increase in effect.

• A game of cat and mouse can be played through the changing lockers, maybe one of the locker doors can be used to smash a mook in the face, and the clothes within can be used to blind or confuse an enemy. This is probably where the Dragons weapons will be.

• Swimming Pools also sometimes have a restaurant attached and you can use the relevant Fight Location for this location.

Inspiration

Years of covert battles around and in the pool during childhood.

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