Let’s Roll: Hong Kong Action Theatre!

Siskoid and special guest Furn go 10 years back in time to when they were playing Hong Kong Action Theatre! (or HKAT, 2nd edition) on a kung fu fightin', gun fun shootin', wire fu flyin' episode of Let's Roll! Action film emulation! Actors taking on roles! Martial arts madness! Order out for dumplings and grab the edge of your seat for some role-playing podcast action! (Depending on what you're doing while you listen.) And in the GameMaster Advice column, Siskoid discusses Cinematic Points! with an exclamation point!

Relevant images and credits in the Let's Roll Supplemental.

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8 responses to “Let’s Roll: Hong Kong Action Theatre!

    1. Only 5, with 3-5 appearing on any given day.

      The most players I ever had involved in a game (where attendance wasn’t mandatory like this one) was Dream Park: 18. I’m a community builder, what can I say?

  1. Great episode. I hope Furn is invited more often!

    HKAT had a really cool mechanic of having players bid for role kits. I know you’ve used/suggested kits to your players for other games. What has been your experience with this? Do you feel like suggesting skills that work well together has improved everyone,’s game experience?

    1. I still use them for guest appearances where it wouldn’t make sense to make the guest player do all the work of creating a character from scratch for all of one session, though yes I’ve done it for that DC Adventures campaign because players might very well play different characters from session to session. I do it after discussing with them what they’d like to play, so I’m essentially cutting out the min/max rulesy stuff a newbie won’t necessarily wrap their heads around. Of course, if they know the system and want to do it themselves, the option is available.

      The main advantage is getting to play more quickly. You know how many games die right after character generation? Well, what if we got to session 1 first?

  2. This sounds like a game I need to try! Re: your discussion of a martial arts mechanic using cards “War” style. My group once did something like this, and it worked pretty well. Back in the d20 boom, we played Solid, the Blaxploitation from Super Genius. For gunplay, we used the normal combat rules, but when hand-to-hand broke out, we used the Lunch Money card game from Atlas games to have the quick beat downs.

  3. I love learning about these games that I’ve never heard of before. In this case, I enjoy the meta aspect of playing an actor who is playing a movie character. It’s an interesting way to play the same character from session to session, while still keeping things fresh.

    This episode also inspired me to start stream some martial arts movies. I started out with The Last Dragon (1985) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), but hope to move on to some classic films.

    Thanks for another remarkable episode.

    1. There’s of course a greatest hits list that would include 36th Chamber of Shaolin, King Boxer, My Young Auntie, Five Deadly Venoms, The One-Armed Swordsman, 14 Amazons, and Come Drink With Me… just Shaw Brothers classics from the top of my head.

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