The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Imagine you work for a company that requires high security at all times. Now imagine that you're working late and you're hungry. You want to call for delivery, but company policy prohibits deliveries of any kind after office hours. Who you gonna call? Ninja Burger, of course.

Ninja Burger: the Role-Playing Game puts you in the role of a Ninja Burger delivery person. The Manager (GM) sends the employees (PCs) on delivery runs. Employees must beware assorted dangers, deliver the food in 30 minutes or commit seppuku, and must never be seen by the customer. If anyone else sees the employee, kill them. Never kill customers.

This game is silly. Period. I should just end the review right here. But I won't.

Ninja Burger uses the BEER Engine originally developed for Kobolds Ate My Baby! The attributes are the same, except they've been renamed so that Ninja Burger can use the SAKE Engine instead.

The system is simple and makes for fast play. You generate your attributes on 3d6. Each attribute has a number of associated skills. When you want to do something and success isn't automatic, the Manager tells you how many dice to roll and which skill to use. The more difficult the task, the more dice you roll. If you roll under your attribute, you succeed. The only other rule is that if you can't justify an action as using one of the listed skills, you can't do it at all.

There are some figured attributes as well, plus the all-important Honor. You start the game with 10 Honor, represented by 10 fingers. Every time you do something the Manager deems dishonorable, you lose a point of Honor -- and a finger. (Some of the weapons require a minimum of seven fingers to wield.) Every time you lose Honor, you roll on the Unspeakable Disgrace chart. Some of the results are fatal.

You also lose Honor if another player learns a secret about you. Everything on your character sheet is secret. If you have extra goals to accomplish, those are secrets. The character sheet enforces this. It's designed to be folded so it can stand in front of you, hiding all pertinent details from everyone else.

The best rules are the House Rules, non-dice-related things that forcibly add to the silliness. The best of these is The SNAKE-EYES Rule. If ever you need to roll exactly two dice, and they come up snake eyes, you become Snake Eyes. (If you don't get that joke and you are a US citizen, you're either female or too young to be surfing the Net without adult supervision.)

There is also a Manager section to the rules. It includes an example delivery, a list of known enemies and more. I'd write more, but employees who have information from the Handbook of Ninja Resource Management have dishonored themselves. I wouldn't want you to be forced to commit seppuku.

The rules make for hard reading at times, due to style rather than complexity. They slip in and out of bad ninja movie English with no rhyme or reason. I can't tell if they still need editing or not.

Once you get past that, you have to deal with using Japanese names for everything. All the skills are on the character sheet in Japanese, with one- or two-word English definitions. But you aren't allowed to use the English words. They're for stupid gaijin, so using them is dishonorable. A pronunciation guide and short dictionary inside the back of the cardstock cover helps a little.

If you know some Japanese, great. My players and I don't, and the English definitions are necessarily inadequate, so we were constantly flipping through the rules to determine exactly what each skill covered. Granted, more rules familiarity would have helped.

The artwork is minimal and cartoony, but well-done and suited to the game. It's all black-and-white line drawings. Some of it has been badly scanned and reproduced, especially the comic strips. The lettering in these was faint and pixilated, making it very hard to read.

Ninja Burger is unashamedly a beer and pretzels game. (It says so on page 3.) As such, it takes a certain mindset. It's a lot of fun and good for a few laughs, if you can get into that mindset. I suggest an MST3K-style Sho Kosugi movie marathon.

Ninja Burger: the Role-Playing Game
Ninja Burger: the Role-Playing Game Playtest Review by Patrick Clark on 26/08/01 Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 3 (Average) A fast, reasonably funny game for when serious role-playing isn't what you had in mind. Product: Ninja Burger: the Role-Playing Game Author: Christopher O'Neill, Daniel Landis, Matthew Hicks, Christoper Davis Category: RPG Company/Publisher: 9th Level Games Line: BEER Engine Cost: 5.95 Page count: 32 Year published: 2001 ISBN: SKU: 9LG 9200 Comp copy?: yes Playtest Review by Patrick Clark on 26/08/01 Genre tags: Modern day Comedy Asian/Far East	Imagine you work for a company that requires high security at all times. Now imagine that you're working late and you're hungry. You want to call for delivery, but company policy prohibits deliveries of any kind after office hours. Who you gonna call? Ninja Burger, of course. Ninja Burger: the Role-Playing Game puts you in the role of a Ninja Burger delivery person. The Manager (GM) sends the employees (PCs) on delivery runs. Employees must beware assorted dangers, deliver the food in 30 minutes or commit seppuku, and must never be seen by the customer. If anyone else sees the employee, kill them. Never kill customers. This game is silly. Period. I should just end the review right here. But I won't. Ninja Burger uses the BEER Engine originally developed for Kobolds Ate My Baby! The attributes are the same, except they've been renamed so that Ninja Burger can use the SAKE Engine instead. The system is simple and makes for fast play. You generate your attributes on 3d6. Each attribute has a number of associated skills. When you want to do something and success isn't automatic, the Manager tells you how many dice to roll and which skill to use. The more difficult the task, the more dice you roll. If you roll under your attribute, you succeed. The only other rule is that if you can't justify an action as using one of the listed skills, you can't do it at all. There are some figured attributes as well, plus the all-important Honor. You start the game with 10 Honor, represented by 10 fingers. Every time you do something the Manager deems dishonorable, you lose a point of Honor -- and a finger. (Some of the weapons require a minimum of seven fingers to wield.) Every time you lose Honor, you roll on the Unspeakable Disgrace chart. Some of the results are fatal. You also lose Honor if another player learns a secret about you. Everything on your character sheet is secret. If you have extra goals to accomplish, those are secrets. The character sheet enforces this. It's designed to be folded so it can stand in front of you, hiding all pertinent details from everyone else. The best rules are the House Rules, non-dice-related things that forcibly add to the silliness. The best of these is The SNAKE-EYES Rule. If ever you need to roll exactly two dice, and they come up snake eyes, you become Snake Eyes. (If you don't get that joke and you are a US citizen, you're either female or too young to be surfing the Net without adult supervision.) There is also a Manager section to the rules. It includes an example delivery, a list of known enemies and more. I'd write more, but employees who have information from the Handbook of Ninja Resource Management have dishonored themselves. I wouldn't want you to be forced to commit seppuku. The rules make for hard reading at times, due to style rather than complexity. They slip in and out of bad ninja movie English with no rhyme or reason. I can't tell if they still need editing or not. Once you get past that, you have to deal with using Japanese names for everything. All the skills are on the character sheet in Japanese, with one- or two-word English definitions. But you aren't allowed to use the English words. They're for stupid gaijin, so using them is dishonorable. A pronunciation guide and short dictionary inside the back of the cardstock cover helps a little. If you know some Japanese, great. My players and I don't, and the English definitions are necessarily inadequate, so we were constantly flipping through the rules to determine exactly what each skill covered. Granted, more rules familiarity would have helped. The artwork is minimal and cartoony, but well-done and suited to the game. It's all black-and-white line drawings. Some of it has been badly scanned and reproduced, especially the comic strips. The lettering in these was faint and pixilated, making it very hard to read. Ninja Burger is unashamedly a beer and pretzels game. (It says so on page 3.) As such, it takes a certain mindset. It's a lot of fun and good for a few laughs, if you can get into that mindset. I suggest an MST3K-style Sho Kosugi movie marathon.