Pyramid Review: Ninja Burger: The Roleplaying Game

Pyramid Review

Ninja Burger: The Roleplaying Game

Published by 9th Level Games

32 b&w pages; $5.95

Ninja: Silent in the night, able to blend perfectly into the shadows and penetrate the toughest security systems. The ultimate in . . . fast food delivery?

Ninja Burger: The RPG is based on the popular website www.ninjaburger.com, a fictional website for a fast-food company that employs ninjas as delivery people. In it, you play as the employees of a Ninja Burger franchise, trained from birth in the arts of stealth, martial arts, and delivering hamburgers in thirty minutes or less. Ninja Burger uses 9th Level's "BEER Engine," as seen in Kobolds Ate My Baby!, and is an extremely simple system meant for quick 'beer-and-pretzels' games. As such, Ninja Burger is more of a complex boardgame than an RPG.

Character generation is quick and random, with four stats: Strength, Agility, Ki, and Extraneous, all determined with a 3d6. The usage of Strength and Agility is obvious, with Ki reflecting a Ninja's intellegence, knowledge, and general centeredness with the universe, and Extraneous being used for anything that the other three stats don't handle. One also randomly rolls for an Ancestral Clan, which modifies your Ninja's stats slightly, and for your Ninja's skill masteries. Lastly, all ninjas have access to Ninja Magic and Ninja Pockets. Ninja Magic is your standard cinematic array of tricks, and Ninja Pockets allow you to pull random items out of your Ninja's . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: August 3, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.