Here, some nitpicks I managed to snip. Character creation and clans, straight from here:
Ennui wrote:You then choose which of 6 ninja schools/clans you belong to. They are:
Shiritsu Otogi Gakuen: An elite school that is secretly training ninjas. They search for people's secrets. They excel in the art of war.
Haguremono: Runaways, ronin and other ninja groups that are too small to be counted as a major group. They fight for their own reasons. They excel in ninjutsu.
Hasuba Ningun: They are an ancient school that believes that they ought to try to unite all the schools, by using tools that emulate everyone's Ougi (final attack). They excel in "tool arts"/using tools.
Kurama Shinryu: This group is trying to stop the Shinobigami from being revived. They excel in the "body arts"/taijutsu.
Oni no Kettou: They are supernatural beings that have existed as part of society for thousands of years. They are trying to find a way to revive the Shinobigami for their own reasons. They excel in the Supernatural Arts.
Hirasa Kikan: They are a group of ninja that want to protect Japan at all costs. They excel at the "scheming arts".
Once you pick which one you want, you mark yourself off as a "Chuunin", the middle rank, where all PCs start off at. You get to choose 3+2 skills, 4 magics and 1 ougi. More on these as we get to them.
Next you choose your character's outward appearance; what does (s)he do when they're not ninja-ing about? Then you pick (or roll) a personality type from a chart of 6 possible types. Then its off to the exciting stuff.
Skills are printed on the character sheet as a sort of grid; the 6 ninja skill "types" each have 11 skills, and each ninja skill type is tied to a school. You choose 3 skills from your corresponding school, and then 2 from any other school you'd like. These are things like controlling water (tool arts) or cursing people (supernatural arts), and can be as mundane as "money making" (scheming) or can be as out there as "eye control" (supernatural arts), where you control anyone and everyone in your vision. These skills are pretty broad, too: if you are controlling water, you can use it as a weapon walk on water, take the water out of people, use it to teleport or really anything you can come up with within the situation.
You then choose 4 ninja magics (ninpo) that can be attack magic, using your skills to actually do "damage" during a fight scene, support magic, using skills to help in drama or fight scenes, or equipped magic that is always active.
Last you choose an Ougi, a super secret final waza. You get to choose from 1 of 6 effects, from a super powerful attack to a perfect defense that cuts any damage taken to 0. You then get to assign a new skill to it, anyone that you'd like, and those are your new super secret Ougi and skill. You can use them once a drama scene or once a round in combat and it will hit automatically, but if someone sees you use it, they can use a certain skill to see what you did, and from then on, they will be able to defend against it as usual. It's really important to keep it a secret. Did I mention keeping secrets? They're a big part of this game.
That's really about it. You can throw a character together really fast, and there are a lot of options and freedom that really let you make the character you imagine.
When you make a skill check, you roll 2d6 as usual. The target number, if you have the skill in question, is 5. However, if you're trying to see what skill someone just used for their Ougi (the skill used would be miteki) and you don't have it, you need to use the closest skill you have. If, for instance, you have kunoichi no jutsu/seduction, it's 2 squares away, so the target number is 7. You roll 2d6--if you pass, you've been able to seduce the answer out of the target, but if you fail, you've just tried to seduce someone to no avail.
More on the drama scenes and fighting scenes if people are interested.
Each of these games share a number of features that form the basis for the Saikoro Fiction style of game. They include the use of handouts, the 3-phase scenario outline as well as the cycle and drama/battle scene system, (usually) 6 classes or character types, and most perceptibly, the 6×11 grid that dominates the character sheet that forms the basis for most resolutions. Click the following link to go to the Shinobigami download page to find links to character sheets (in Japanese).
http://www.bouken.jp/pd/sg/download.html
Handouts: Like most modern Japanese TRPGs, handouts are very important to facilitating play. Scenarios are almost always written in advance, with a certain balance of characters in mind. Unlike other game systems, though, handouts are more than simply an indicator of what sort of characters ought to be appearing in the scenario. This is most apparent in Shinobigami: the aim of a character and their Secret come in the form of handouts that serve as a crucial tool in the development of the story and also have important functions rules-wise as well.
3-Phases: Each scenario follows a basic outline: Introduction, Main and Climax Phases. The Introduction simply gets each character involved in the scenario. The Main Phase is where the meat of the action is; all investigation, preparation, meeting with NPCs, forming relationships, etc. occur during this phase. The main phase is usually timed to give the game a sense of urgency (i.e. no resting to regain all your magic after every battle, etc.). The Climax Phase is the final climactic battle that ends the scenario one way or another. This outline allows the game to proceed in a timely manner and still get each part of the scenario in during the gaming session.
Cycles and The Drama/Battle Scene Dynamic: Each game hurtles towards the Climax by using cycles: usually after 3 cycles the game is resolved with the Climax Phase. (With the exception of Hunter’s Moon) Each cycle is comprised of Scenes that are under the complete control of 1 player, 1 at a time. Once all players have had their turn directing a Scene, the cycle ends and the next begins. In Shinobigami and Magicalogia, a character’s Scene can be either a Drama or Battle scene, but not both.
The Grid: The most distinctive feature of Saikoro Fiction games is the use of a 6×11 grid. It is divided into 6 categories, which differ by game, and each category is filled with appropriate skills, talents, or other descriptive words. For example, the grid in Shinobigami has 6 categories of skills, such as “Body,” “Tools,” or “Supernatural,” which are filled with skills like “Running,” “Ballistics,” or “Curse,” respectively. Magicalogia has more abstract categories that represent magic types: the “Song” category has “story,” “love,” and “tears.”
The grid is utilized to settle all dice rolls in the game: basically each player starts the game by choosing 5 skills and circling them on the grid. Whenever a skill check is required, the grid is referreed to: if a character in Shinobigami has to pass a Hydromancy check and they have the skill circled, they need to roll 5 or higher on a roll of 2d6. If the same character must pass a Shuriken skill check (let’s assume that the character was attacked by someone throwing shuriken), then they check the grid; including the Gap in-between each category, Hydromancy is 2 squares away from Shuriken. For each square away, the target number of 5 is raised by 1. In order to be able to wash away the shuriken with a spray of water, the character will need to roll a 7 on a roll of 2d6. Rolls of natural 6s are criticals and Snake eyes are fumbles (usually). There are few to no stats in the way that a d20 game might have; instead everything is determined by rolling on the grid. It’s an elegant and interesting new way of making characters.
The system has some great new ideas for role-playing but also some flaws. Battle tends to take a long time, due to both attacker and defender rolling and adding numbers. I think that a lot of western gamers are put off by the scenario and handout style of play. I’ve found that players used to games like Dungeons and Dragons have a hard time adjusting to the narrative-heavy style of a game like Shinobigami.
On the other hand, Saikoro Fiction does a lot of things right. A single game can be run from start to finish within 4 hours and still be satisfying. Character creation is quick and intuitive. The games are simple enough to be played online via IRC or Skype. The concepts involved in playing are very easy for new players to pick up quickly. Each game uses the Saikoro Fiction engine in such a way that emphasizes the game’s theme: Shinobigami actually feels like you’re taking part in some badass ninja anime. The books are relatively cheap, too. At about $15 a pop, it’s easy to pick up a copy just to read the replay that comprises half the book.
Yeah, each book, including the supplements, is prefaced by a replay that fills more than half the book.
