A player on Facebook asked me to clarify how the Prop Activates rule works in A Fistful of Kung Fu.

The basic idea is "if it works in a Jackie Chan movie, then it works in the game". Say two characters are in hand to hand and one has his back to a wall where there is a rack with Chinese polearms. One wins by 1 and chooses the "prop activates" result. One of the common effect could be that the character arms himself (he punches the opponent, the opponent bounces into the wall, one of the polearms breaks loose and falls into the attacker's hands!) or that the prop performs a free hack at the loser (the pole arms breaks loose and falls on the foe's head, roll a C2 free hack!). These are just two common effect that I made up.

Let's say the same happens when a character is adjacent to a fish tank. The character is kicked into the fish tank, which breaks, creating an area of slippery surface. The character must now pass a Q roll or fall down! In addition, the area is marked because the terrain effect is permanent.

So, in a nutshell, the Prop Activates is simply an excuse for the players to get creative and make (generally bad but not deadly) things happen to the loser of a combat roll.

When you win the roll, you become, for the space of an action, the director of the movie, and get to decide what happens. This is different from a game where you roll things up on a random table of "critical effects" because YOU, not the dice, are in charge.

Of course I did not list all the possibilities of mishaps that could happen -- it would require a huge book and it's much more fun, and creative, to let the players invent them.

Some players are overly obsessed with "balance", they are afraid that a more imaginative player will be "too advantaged" because he can come up with creative ways to annoy, or knock out, his opponents. Well -- that's exactly as it is supposed to be. Knowledge of the genre is a big help, just like knowing Napoleonic tactics should be of help when playing a well-designed, army-level Napoleonic game. And we want to encourage players to be creative. Isn't that what this hobby is all about?

So -- watch the movies, they are great fun, and relive them on the tabletop-- that's probably the reason you wanted to play AFoKF in the first place!