NINJA!

[Jeph]

The Premise:
When you're more awesome than everything ever, you win.

Characters:
Ninja have an Awesomeness, a couple Awesomernesses, Ninja Power Points (NPP), and, most of the time, Doing Cool Stuff Points. For each point of Awesomeness, they have one NPP and two points to spend on Awesomernesses. An Awesomerness can not excede a ninja's Awesomeness. Characters get Doing Cool Stuff points by doing cool stuff. When they have 10 of them, they lose all their Doing Cool Stuff points, and go up a level of Awesomeness. It is reccomended that the PCs begin at Awesomeness 5.

Example character: Saul Schochter, the Rabbi-Ninja!

Saul the Rabbi-Ninja
Awesomeness: 5
Ninja Power Points: 5
Secret Hassidic Ninja Lore 4
Super Ninja Leap 4
Dominion Over Darkness 2

Doing Stuff
When ninjas do stuff, they roll 2d6. (If you look closely, all ninja carry around black velvet dice bags.) They add the rolls up, counting rolls of six as zero, and then add their Awesomeness, and a single relevant Awesomerness. If they did the thing in a cool manner, they may roll 1 extra d6, and either regain a spent Ninja Power Point or gain a Doing Cool Stuff point. If they did the thing in a really cool manner, they instead gain 2 NPP/DCSP. They then compare their total to either another ninja's roll, or some number that the GM arbitrarily decides upon, but should be like pretty high for hard things. If the ninja won, they won.

Ninja Power!
Ninjas are awesome, and have Ninja Power Points. Whenever a ninja does a thing that would be impossible for an un-awesome person to do, they must spend a NPP, or they lose. If the thing is physically impossible, they've gotta spend 2. Whenever a ninja rolls some sixes, they can spend a NPP to keep the sixes as a sixes, instead of turning them into zeroes. Whenever they are struck in combat, they can spend an NPP to ignore all levels of Hurtness that the attack would give, which is a pretty awesome use for NPP, which is why you can do it.

We've already discussed getting NPP. As a recap, when you would roll an extra die because you did some stuff in a cool way, you can choose to replennish a NPP instead of gain a Doing Cool Stuff point.

Dim Mak
Ninja kill things in an awesome way. This is a logical conclusion based upon two facts: ninja kill things, and ninja are awesome. When ninja attack stuff, they make a roll, and so does the thing that they attacked. if they roll higher, than the thing they attacked becomes Hurt, and treats rolls of fives as rolls of six, and therefore as zeroes. Things then get Very Hurt, Very Very Hurt, and Very Very Very Hurt. Then they die. If the attacker rolled at least 5 pts higher than the defgender, the defender takes two lefels of hurtness.

Guys who are Very Hurt treat 4s and 5s as 6s (so as 0s), guys who are Very Very Hurt treat 3s, 4s, and 5s as 6s (so as 0s), and guys who are Very Very Very Hurt treat 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s as 6s (so as 0s).

Ninja can spend a NPP to negate all hurtness. Other guys can't, because they don't have any, because they aren't ninja, because they aren't awesome, because they aren't ninja. In fact, normal people become Very Hurt when ninja would be Hurt, and die when ninja would be Very Hurt, they suck so much.

Normal People
...aren't awesome, so don't have stats. They just suck. If they ever become awesome, then they become honorary ninja, and get some stats as a prize.

A Bunch of Ninja!
...aren't awesome either. Have you ever noticed that 2 ninja always screw up, while 1 can rip the living hell out of heavan? If 2 ninja work together, subtract 1 from all their rolls. If 4 work together, subtract 2. If 8 work together, subtract 3, and so on.

Ninja that are special, such as the one with the cool sword, and the PCs, are immune to being less awesome around other ninja, because they are.

[Mike Holmes]

You've designed a game specifically for El Disgusto? :-)

Mike

[Sylus Thane]

Your missing something to make NINJA even more awesome.

NINJA Rock, when ever a ninja does something cool theres always music playing, eventually you know what NINJA is doing what when you hear the music. They must have theme songs. Whenever the NINJAS theme song plays the NINJA ROCKs, making them even more awesome.

Why? Cuz their NINJAS and they ROCK. NINJAS that ROCK are even more awesome.

[Sylus Thane]

You've designed a game specifically for El Disgusto? :-)

Mike

Long live ab3! If it wasn't for his stories I might have given up on gaming. he proved there's always someone worse off with their groups.

By the way, NINJAS ARE AWESOME! Way to go Jeph.

[DP]

As a pre-Ninja Craze ninja afficionado, I appreciate the careful, rational approach you've taken to these graceful, majestic creatures; you capture their essence without ignoring established facts about them.

[RobMuadib]

Hey

2 Important comments.

An important rules clarification for your Dim Mak section.

Only a Ninja can kill a Ninja. So like if someone who isn't
a ninja should have killed the ninja, and they like go to see the body,
and boom-poof the ninja's body is gone! Why? Because only a ninja can kill a Ninja.

Oh, and as a special option, don't forget that a Ninja who is about to
be killed by a Ninja can spend all his NPP to like possess some normal schmoe, preferably some hot-chick who looks like she was in flash-dance or something, thus thwarting death at the hands of another Ninja, until his rival ninja can like track down the hot flash-dance chick who is now a ninja in her sleep, or something.

Oh, and don't forget rules for multi-class Ninja with even greater Ninja powers. Like Science Ninjas (Science Ninja Team Gatchaman rocks!), or vat-grown Ninja Assasins from Chiba, or Cyber-Ninja and stuff:)

Rob

P.S. Sho Kosugi rocks

[Mighty DougHead]

This has to own.  Why is everyone so obsessed about ninjas?
For it is here: http://brianx.com/realultimatepower.html

[s/LaSH]

I see you liked my Reciprocal Ninja Coolness rule...

It's like firepower. For hath not Bruce Willis himself (honorary ninja because he's awesome) demonstrated that the man with the semi-automatic pistol is far more lethal than the man with the fully automatic assault rifle countless times? Fire rate is inversely proportional to effectiveness, therefore proving that more is less in many, many cases.

[Eric J.]

I see you liked my Reciprocal Ninja Coolness rule...

It's like firepower. For hath not Bruce Willis himself (honorary ninja because he's awesome) demonstrated that the man with the semi-automatic pistol is far more lethal than the man with the fully automatic assault rifle countless times? Fire rate is inversely proportional to effectiveness, therefore proving that more is less in many, many cases.

Then why do heavy crossbows do 1d4 damage?

[Mike Holmes]

Then why do heavy crossbows do 1d4 damage?

They don't. In Ninja they do Ultimate damage.

Mike

[Phillip]

Can we have rules for Awesome Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (like armored shells reducing damage rolls, and all of them have to take the names of painters)?

[Jeph]

Sorry, no rules for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (yet). Anyway, I'd need a license for that. However, someone on RPG.Net came up with rules for Samurai. To quote:

The Samurai

The samurai is not Awsome at _all_. They are Serious. The more Serious and Conflicted a samurai is, the more they can slaughter ninjas, which (oddly) is fairly awsome.

Samurai do not get ninja power points, except when they kill ninjas, since that's kind of awsome. When a samurai uses a NPP, it makes a ninja less awsome and negates one NPP the ninja spent. They do, however, get to spend three times their seriousness on really serious stuff, like hacking and slashing.

A samurai's stats look like:

Seriousness: 5
Stolen Ninja Power Points: 0

Really Serious Stuff:
Hacking and Slashing: 6
Running into Random Enemies in Unlikely Places: 4
Standing Very Still For a Long Time: 3
Orgami: 2

Samurai do not get points for Doing Cool Stuff. Instead, they get points for Exacting Vengeance. Whenever a Samurai gets sweet, sweet revenge, he gets either:

1 point: For exacting immediate, petty revenge. Like, if someone stomps on your toes, you get one point for cutting their head off.

2 points: For exacting revenge at someone else's expense. Like, if your master is mortally wounded, and you abandon him to die in order to kill his murderer, you get two points.

3 points: For dying while trying to exact revenge. You can pass these points on to another person by using your dying words to demand that person avenge you.

[Daniel Solis]

Can we have rules for Awesome Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (like armored shells reducing damage rolls, and all of them have to take the names of painters)?

I just did a spit take thinking of Jackson Pollock, Salvador Dali, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol dressed in poor-fitting turtle shells, leaping out of darkened corners and scaring innocent bystanders. :)

[Phillip]

Seriously, this is a very cool game to run a mini-campaign with.  
Don't be silly, gobi, Andy Warhol wouldn't be wearing a turtle shell, he would be wearing a giant soup can.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

This thread is getting silly. Focus, folks. Discuss the game, its design, and its play.

Best,
Ron