Robin D. Laws has been playing role-playing games since he was a teenager and has worked as a game designer since the early 1990s. John Nephew of Atlas Games convinced Jonathan Tweet to publish a game he had been writing about in "Alarums & Excursions"; Laws talked with Tweet about the game in "A&E" and contributed to the final product as well, the result of which was "Over the Edge" (1992). Daedalus Games began when Laws approached Jose Garcia in 1993 with an idea for a Hong Kong Action Cinema RPG; while Garcia liked the idea, his first priority was his own setting, "" which was published in 1994 with Garcia as the main designer and developer, and Laws, Bruce Baugh, and Rob Heinsoo as additional authors. Daedalus Games was incorporated as Daedalus Entertainment in preparation for publishing in the Hong Kong action setting Laws had designed, but beginning with a collectible-card game to take advantage of that then-booming market.; Laws therefore designed the collectible card game "Shadowfist" (1995). Daedalus Entertainment subsequently published Laws' role-playing game "Feng Shui" (1996), which used a variant of the "Nexus" game system, and began to publish supplements. However, Daedalus filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1997; when the company sold off a few of its properties a few years later, Laws re-acquired "Feng Shui". Nephew told Laws that he would be happy to bring "Feng Shui" back into print, so when Laws was able to free up the rights he brought it to Atlas Games, in a deal announced on March 22, 1999.