Instead of dividing magic up into dozens of minutely detailed little spells, Feng Shui gives sorcerers a few basic types of effects to perform: each is a schtick. Each schtick lists a variety of special effects. These are broad sub-categories that define what spells look like and how they behave. A character can use any of the special effects given under a schtick he has: they are more like guidelines and suggestions rather than individual spells you have to learn and so they're all available to you. The one exception to this rule is for the Blast schtick: you have to learn each effect of that schtick separately, see the schtick description for details.
As a player with a sorcerer character, when you want to use your Sorcery skill to do something you should first look at the Schticks you have chosen for your character. If the desired effect is explicitly listed in the schtick description, there's no problem, even the Difficulty of the spell will be ready and waiting. If it is not listed and many common and useful effects will not be figure out how your schtick could be used to create the effect you want. Then convince the GM that the desired effect falls within your schtick. You have to be able go do this in a straightforward sentence or two: Feng Shui leaves no time for complicated wrangling between you and the GM. If the GM buys your line of reasoning, she'll secretly assign a Difficulty to the attempt and tell you to make a Sorcery task check. If she doesn't, she'll tell you that the attempted effect is impossible given your Schticks. If you prove particularly argumentative, she'll pretend to be assigning a Difficulty to the attempt and tell you make a task check, even though she's decided that the attempt will be an automatic failure. This is especially risky if you roll boxcars, since such failures still allow for Backlash.
GMs should use the examples provided under each schtick to arrive at sample Difficulty numbers. When you do this, you might want to jot down notes on what you just did and consider that to be a new special effect that you can readily use during future games. If so, then consult with your GM after the session and make sure you both agree on how this new special effect works. This doesn't cost you any experience points, since the character just figures a different way of using something he already knows.
Blast schtick is different: you can always do a basic blast without any special effects, but you can't make up a new Blast special effect on the fly.
Example of Schtick Use/Abuse
Peter and Avis are both playing sorcerers. Both of them want to persuade a distrustful bartender to reveal some information.
Peter's character's Schticks are Blast, Heal, and Movement. Avis' PC's Schticks are Blast, Influence, and Weather.
Peter says: "Movement should apply to the desired effect because I want to move his opinion."
The GM says: "Nice try, but Movement is about moving physical objects. Won't work."
If Peter persists, the GM instead of slowing down the game by getting involved in a lengthy session of rules-layering, can let him make a Sorcery check that secretly has no chance of success.
Avis then says: "I'll use the Suggestion special effect of Influence to give the bartender the idea that he trusts us and can tell us what we need to know."
The GM figures that this is right on target, and assign the standard Difficulty rating for this kind of spell, as given in the schtick description: the Willpower or Dodge rating of the affected character. In this case, the bartender is surprised and cannot use Dodge, and the Mind rating of the bartender is 4. However, Avis sorcerer has the Obvious limitation, so if he put a spell on the bartender, everyone in the bar would notice something was amiss. Breaking this stricture imposes a -5 penalty. Avis makes a Sorcery check for her character, which has a rating of 12 in Sorcery. This is modified by -5 for the subtle spell, to 7. Her roll is a -4, giving her an Action Result of 3. The bartender isn't agreeing, though he still has no clue what is happening.
Peter is antsy. "I'm going to use Blast to knock the guy against the wall, and I want it to leave him feeling woozy and willing to talk.''
Again, the GM says no. Peter can Blast the bartender and hope that's persuasive enough by itself, but he can't tack on the willingness-to-talk effect onto his Blast: that's really a new special effect, and he can't make up a new Blast special effect on the fly.
Peter tries again. I'll use a gout of fire to cause the glass he is wiping to explode, unnerving him. The GM thinks this is a fair stunt, and assigns a -2 modifier (because the glass is so small). Again the bartender is surprised, so he uses his Agility as Dodge, giving the blast a difficulty of 4. Peter comes up with a 14, minus two equals 12. That's an Outcome of 8, which the GM thinks Peter deserves as a bonus on a subsequent Intimidation. Of course, the whole bar saw the spectacular explosion, and the situation grows tense.
Some magical effects will fall between the definitions of the various Schticks. Sorcerers can combine the Schticks they know to create complex effects. Again, how well this works depends on the player's persuasive powers and the GM's judgment. The GM may allow for partial successes when one part of the combination seems much harder to attain than the other.
Peter wants his sorcerer character to reanimate the corpses of some dead henchmen he wants to interrogate. This doesn't seem to fall directly within any of the Schticks he knows. But he proposes to use both Healing (to bring the corpses back to a semblance of life) and Summoning (to retrieve their souls and consciousness from their journey to the underworld) together to create the effect. Peter's GM buys the argument and lets him try it. However, she thinks it should be pretty tough to bring characters back from the dead. She decides that he needs a 12 on his Sorcery task check to get the corpses moving again, and a 20 to get the right souls back in their bodies as the character doesnt even know their names. If he gets an Action Result above 11 but under 20, the GM decides that the revived corpses will simply stumble about mindlessly, causing trouble for the PCs. Since Peter has mentioned nothing about influencing the reanimated goons, the GM also decides that the spirits of the henchmen will be considerably less than cooperative even if Peter's character does get them stuffed back into their old bodies.
GMs have to come up with Difficulties for Sorcery checks off the cuff. They should determine what all of the relevant factors are and then mush them all together to get a final Difficulty rating.
Learning Sorcery
Characters with the Sorcery skill can acquire new magic Schticks at a cost of 20 experience points per schtick. Learning a new schtick requires no time on-stage during the game. It is assumed that sorcerers have been studying the tricks of the schtick between scenes while accumulating those experience points.
When you learn a new magic schtick, you automatically can use all of the special effects for that schtick unless it's Blast. New special effects for other Schticks don't cost anything and can be created on the fly. If you know Blast, you also learn a new Blast effect.
Single-Schtick Sorcerers
A sorcerer who knows only a single schtick is known as a single-schtick sorcerer or an adept. This includes healers, seers, animal masters and quite a lot of other fantasy archetypes. When a character learns the Sorcery skill, he also automatically learns one Sorcery schtick for free. If such a character later wants to learn a second Sorcery schtick, he must pay the full cost of both the first and second Sorcery Schticks, a total of 35 experience points.