I think it’s fair enough to say that everybody likes (or is at least ambivalent towards) ninjas. If at this point you’re thinking to yourself “I don’t like ninjas” then you are a) simply being contrary, b) insane or c) the victim of real life ninja violence (which you likely brought on yourself for being a or b). I’ve liked ninjas for a long time, since I was a wee fellow watching the wildly age inappropriate Sakura Killers (which I’ve just found on Isohunt), up through a slew of other terrible movies (most of them starring Michael Dudikoff), Ninja Assassin choose-your-own-adventure books (while googling for a link it turns out the series was called The Way of the Tiger), various comic book’s, films and then on to stuff like Ninja Scroll, Tenchu and various other anime, manga and video game franchises. Though upon reflection while I feel ninjas are omnipresent I find it rather hard to call specific examples to mind (no doubt because they’re so stealthy!)
Anyhow specific examples aren’t particularly important. The key point is that I like ninjas. Another thing that I’ve liked for some time is role-playing games. While there were occasional “dry spells” for the last decade running or playing role-playing games is one of the few activities that I’ve done with any kind of consistency. Given the nature of how role-playing games work it’s quite common to see popular media influences make an appearance on either side of the screen i.e. introduced by either a player or the game master. Obviously this is somewhat influenced by the nature of the game of hand (not many mecha show up in traditional western fantasy worlds). But usually it’s easy enough to drop stuff in largely unchanged or with minimal re-skinning.
That’s not to say everything can be included, to date there are still several things that I’m a big fan of that have I’ve yet been able to run a game off or play in a game where they’re present e.g. giant mecha, Maid The Rpg, etc. But ninja’s seem so broadly popular, or at least setting agnostic, that its rather strange that they’ve been nearly entirely absent from any game I’ve ran or played in (may have appeared briefly as antagonists in some L5R game).
I think it’s fair to say that over the last year or so I’ve become something of the boy who cried wolf when it comes to saying that I’m going to run a game. I had resolved to rectify this situation and the game I intended to use to do so was a Dark Sun campaign using the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons rules. I chose the system as a) it’s fairly simple, b) its supposedly excellent for introducing new players, c) I like the way it works (and d) to recoup on my investment ;) ). I chose the Dark Sun campaign setting as a) I’ve always been interested in it but never had an opportunity to play in or run it and b) it offers a unique take on traditional fantasy while retaining enough core genre elements to appeal to fantasy fans (which are arguably the largest fiction demographic). Of course after deciding on this I had to wait till this month for the fourth edition version of Dark Sun to be released.
In the interim I kept ideas for the campaign ticking over in the background and as time passed I put together the rough outline of a story that would take the players from level one ignominy to level thirty (perhaps literal) godhood. After the books were released I sat down to “firm up” these ideas. Whereupon I largely scrapped the entire framework and came up with a new more open plot that bore little resemblance to the original. But will, I feel, provide a better play experience. However I don’t want to start the campaign until the Dark Sun material is added to the online tools (in particular the character and monster builder). This won’t occur until the second week of September. So this left me at something of a loose end.
Luckily earlier in the week I’d stumbled across a new game called Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusade. Wu Xing was set in a world that was a mash-up of a fictional version of ancient China and Japan. The players took on the roles of ninjas from one of the ten great clans (or an unaligned ronin) and tried to stave off the Emperor’s genocidal ninja pogrom. The ninjas in this game are masters of chi manipulation which allows them to emulate the physical and mystical feats so often seen in ninja fiction. The setting and system for the game are heavily (and admittedly) inspired by anime/manga properties such as Naruto, Basilisk, Ninja Scroll, etc. As all of these properties were greatly to my liking it’s fair to say that I was quite excited about seeing what this game could do.
Fired up by the previews I purchased the pdf and sat down to read it/plan a campaign. That’s where the problems started. For some reason the world presented just doesn’t work for me. I don’t know what it is as I’ve no problems with the fictional worlds presented in any of the “source material”. But for some reason the manner in which the world is put together just rankles. I also think the basic campaign setup is a little awkward. Ideally the game should have been set in the lead up to the Emperor’s “Get the ninja” war, as that would have provided a broader scope. As it is any “canon” game has to deal with the on-going war to some extent, even if it is simply ignoring it. Also, and this is super nit-picky, I’m not crazy about the names for some of the clans (and I get the feelings the clan advantages/drawbacks aren’t super balanced). On the other hand the game does do some things that I like. It starts with a one page summary of the setting which I fucking love. The history of the ninja and the details of their day to day live are all well done; as are most of the clan descriptions.
I haven’t yet dived into the game mechanics so I can’t really comment on them at the moment. As it stand what I’m likely to do is to take the mechanics (and combine them with the game companies other game Apocalypse Prevention Inc) and use them to run a ninja game in a different setting (likely modern world). It’s at times like this that I wish more Japanese pen and paper role-playing games were available in English (e.g. Shinobigami). Briefly glancing over the game mechanics they seem to be relatively crunchy. Something akin to White Wolf’s new World of Darkness. I’m sort of torn as to whether a crunchy system is best for bloody ninja antics or whether something lighter like BESM or even FATE would be better.
Over the weekend I plan to finish reading Wu Xing and then either run a few sessions of it or throw together a different setting entirely, though one that still showcases ninjas, and run that instead. The only issue with a new setting is that coming up with new powers is going to be a bit of work, especially if Wu Xing’s system is as close to the world of darkness as it seems – as balancing new powers/disciplines/whatever is always a pain in the hole. So if I do go that route I may switch to something like the aforementioned BESM or FATE.
Listening to: Queens of the Stone Age - Auto Pilot