I designed the Ninja Burger website (http://www.ninjaburger.com) about 18 months ago as a silly gag that nobody expected would last. Imagine my surprise when I got an email from the folks over at 9th Level Games (http://www.9thlevel.com), asking if we would be interested in licensing the concept to them for a role-playing game.
I had heard of 9LG from their work on the Kobolds Ate My Baby RPG, which was highly rated and stood out in a crowd of much flashier games by much larger publishers. It doesn't take millions of dollars and dozens of artists to produce a quality RPG; it just takes a few guys, a handful of dice, and a truckload of imagination. Because they had that, 9LG succeeded wildly when it came to KAMB, and in my opinion they've succeeded again with Ninja Burger: The Role-Playing Game.
It's only proper to note that aside from being the creator of the Ninja Burger concept, I did play a small role in this product. I wrote the forward, helped with the editing, and contributed some of the "flavor" content from the Ninja Burger website. But the game mechanics, the basic concept for the RPG and most everything else was the work of 9th Level Games. Since that's what I'm reviewing here, I believe I can do so in an unbiased fashion.
Ninja Burger: The RPG uses a variant of 9LG's Beer Engine called the SAKE Engine, which is an acronym constructed from your character's four stats: Strength, Agility, Ki and Extraneous. Strength is used for doing damage to people and determining how much damage (Hits) you can take. Agility is pretty self-explanatory, and is also used for determining Combat Dice, which is how hard it is for others to hit you. Ki is that magical combination of intellect, wisdom and interconnnectedness with nature that's used for mental feats and Ninja Magic. And Extraneous is basically used for everything not covered above, including speed. Each of these is based on a standard 3d6 roll.
Next, you choose a ninja clan (each of which offers various perks and role-playing options) and skills, which are divided up into four groups of five, each group associated with a specific attribute. Skills range from weapons training, to disguise and stealth, to Wujenitsu (Ninja Magic), which allows your ninja to pull off all those nifty ninja tricks you see in the movies and video games. The decision to only have four simple stats and a limited skill selection works extremely well here; generating a character takes only a minute or two, especially since all the ninja start with pretty much the same equipment package. You can literally have a half dozen novice players up and running in under 10 minutes.
The ninja with the highest Extraneous score gets to go first, with play simply passing around in a circle until it gets to the player with the lowest score. There's some slight confusion in the rules here about whether play is supposed to go clockwise or counterclockwise, but this is a minor point since you can just choose one or the other and go with it. After that point, each ninja chooses to perform one or more actions, consisting mostly of attacking or using skills. Success is based upon rolling under your stat on a number of dice; an average difficulty roll would require that you roll 3d6, while a more difficult situation might warrant 4, 5 or 6 dice. Mastery of skills, performing multiple actions or other factors can adjust the number of dice you have to roll, but it's fairly easy to figure it out and nothing at all like the advanced algebra required to play some RPGs. Its designed to move quickly, and it does.
The simplified game mechanics allow for some really fun stuff to be brought into the game, such as the Ninja Unspeakable Disgrace Chart. Ninja start with 10 honor points (and 10 fingers), and if they commit a dishonorable action (such as violating a house rule, or spilling the delivery bag on the floor), they have to roll to discover their punishment, which ranges from losing a finger to immediate beheading. The House Rules are some of the most fun, including various options for punishing silly players (such as the Delay of Game Penalty Rule) and even bringing dead ninja back into the game (as with the Haiku Rule, which allows you to compose a haiku about your poor, dead ninja). And woe betide the person who speaks the dreaded word "ninjas," since the true plural of "ninja" is "ninja".
The remainder of the RPG is designed for the Ninja Manager, consisting mostly of guidelines for deciding difficulty levels and designing Ninja Adventures. An array of ninja enemies is offered, ranging from Samurai Burger and Otaku Bell to the dreaded Lo Cal Clan, followed by a simple stat block that's easy to figure out. The last few pages introduce the first Ninja Burger RPG adventure, Delivery to Fodtekken, in which the delivery ninja are each assigned a random customer to deliver to inside a typical dot-com company. This adventure, as with most Ninja Burger deliveries, is designed to take 30 minutes or less, meaning that this is really a game that you can play on the spur of the moment if you've got an hour to kill before a game, or you're just looking for something to do during halftime.
But for all its simplicity, the Ninja Burger RPG also introduces some rather novel concepts that many larger RPGs fail to accomplish. First of all, by simplifying the rules as much as they do, 9th Level Games allows role-players more time to role-play, because there's less bickering over dice rolls and rules interpretations. Secondly, it's a light-hearted game that's designed to be played for fun, and every player goes into the game knowing that they're probably going to be rolling up a new character at the end of 30 minutes. That's because, as Ninja Burger policy dictates, every ninja has to deliver their products to the customer in 30 minutes or less, or they have to commit seppuku (Japanese ritual suicide). Suffice to say that Ninja Burger employee turnover is quite high in some areas.
But perhaps the most clever twist the game has to offer is the fact that all of your ninja's stats and personal information are secret. So not even the other people you're playing with know who you are, what you're capable of, or what your motivations are. In addition, every ninja playing is likely to have a different mission to accomplish, and at times these missions will conflict with the goals of the other players. So not only are the "bad guys" your enemies, but even your fellow ninja delivery people might be stabbing you in the back. This keeps everyone on their toes throughout the entire session, which only adds to the enjoyment.
In all, the 32-page booklet-sized rule set accomplishes everything it needs to. It takes a simple, silly concept and translates it into a simple, silly game commendably well. There are a few typos throughout, but as a whole the writing is good, the humor consistent, and the overall quality well worth the price. Like any 9th Level Games or Cheapass Games product, Ninja Burger: The RPG isn't something you're going to play with a dozen friends every week for hours on end. But it is something you're likely to enjoy, and it's enjoyable enough that you'll definitely remember it as an alternative to Pictionary when the party starts winding down.
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