Ninja Burger and MLWM!

[Jake Norwood]

Last night we got together to try out two games (that couldn't seem much less compatible): Ninja Burger and My Life with Master.

Ninja Burger is a load of fun mostly due to all of the house rules that will sooner or later lead to Bill the invisible Ninja enforcer coming to chop your head off. I ran the sample delivery in the back of the book, though I played fast-and-loose with the movement rules.

This was also the first time in a long time I've run a gamist RPG and made is express that this was the intention. Of our 3 players only one survived, while one died once (being snakeyes!) and the third died twice. All deaths were the result of "you die" rolls on the Ninja Unspeakable Disgrace Chart, and not enemies.

The Good:
Funny as hell and really fast-moving. Ninja Burger employs what is in essence an "aggressive scene-framing technique" that is not unlike the one in MLWM.
High-concept--the game had me talking in short, aggressive ninja-manager sentences...even when it was just to ask for a drink. Everyone got way into character and did what they could to add to the game.
It was fun, as described above.

The Bad:
The ruleset guarantees failure for any action harder than "average," and for those, too, if you combine with any other actions. The stats need to be higher or the difficulties lower, as only the most conservative player managed not to fail almost every roll.
Also, it takes forever to kill someone. Damage is a set number, and so are "Hits," so it takes six ninja stars or 3 stabs witha spear or 4 hits with a staff to kill A Samurai Burger Bushi. This slows play and is anti-climatic. Everything else in the game is random...why not damage?

After Ninja Burger we created characters and the master for MLWM, but didn't play...we'll do that next week.

The master is a middle-aged scientist Brain/Collector. When he was in college his frat shaved his whole body bald as part of initiation, but none of it every grew back. He needs hair and scalps for his experiments and wants to have normal hair again in order to regain the respect of his college peers.

Creating the morethan/lessthan was very difficult, but ultimately very rewarding. I did feel that the organization of information needs work, as much of it still seems like stream of conscioiusness and the varioius elements aren't really in the easiest-to-use order.

Still, even our gamist player is looking forward to playing this next week.

Jake