2021 Day 30: Ninja Burger

[picks_at_flies]

Ninja Burger’s name is echoed around the halls of roleplaying and I imagine that when it came out it was very refreshing. And whilst all the ideas about it are cool, I found the mechanics a little dated - it feels like a microgame expanded into 100 pages. And this shouldn’t be that surprising. It was written in 2005/6, long before Honey Heist and other microgames became a thing, and I would suggest it’s more of a successor to Paranoia than anything else. It’s a great game, with a genuine respect for ninjas, merely a bit longer than it probably needs to be.



Ninja Burger is about ninjas who will deliver fast food anywhere (there’s actually a series of adverts in the UK currently which have a similar concept). So you face obstacles like locked buildings, gang wars, explosive traps - and your rival companies like Samurai Burger. If you fail to deliver on time, you lose honour and may need to commit seppuku.

As players, you select your type of employee class, create some stats and give yourself some basic equipment. For your stats, whilst there are some suggestions you can give yourself any strengths or weaknesses you want then scatter a few points between them (in stacks of 2). It’s a bit like having FATE’s aspects but that’s all you have. There are few other things to add in to give you more flavour, although they also have meaning in the game.

In conflicts, you roll 2d6 and add any relevant strength(s), against either a flat difficulty or an opponent doing the same thing. There are various way to get advantages, including doing something dishonorable (and spending honour).

The more innovative elements are:

1. The Story guide is also themselves playing a character, the Dispatcher, who can feed them live information in character. I think this is pretty cool.
2. There is an optional ninja magic section, which uses pretty silly hand gestures. But I like it, and feel it should have been louder.

And not rules-y but half the book is on using San Francisco as a setting, and an adventure.

Overall, I found it overwritten for something that could have been simpler, and vague in places like when you might take overlapping strengths (or not). But I felt it was written by someone who had a passion for ninjas and that shines through.

I randomly pick to be male, and called Toyama Manzo. This is a pseudonym. And I think Manzo is a chef, and probably has a special flask for taking long pork for future cooking.

I then have to pick his qualities (skills, really) and assign points.

Chef: +2

Ninja: +0

Long pork preparation:+2

Knife skills: +2

Patience: -2

And then some backgrounds. These all add small bonuses when relevant.

Element: Water (Sui) - includes taste, defence and social magnetism

Clan (silly version): Olive Shrunken Prairie Dog, with the motto “I will never ask for directions”.

Starting honor: 6 (about average)