Ninja name:
Choose a proper ninja name. For example, SuperNinja, The Ninja Dragon, Death Dealer, Awesome McNinjapants etc.
Public identify:Choose a proper 'real life' name. Like Bob Jackson. Or Michael Smith. Occassionally, ninjas might have Japanese names, though this is very, very rare.
AffiliationPick one: Red, black or blue. These will be your teams. Note that having more ninjas on your team is not necessarily an advantage due to the
Conservation of Ninjutsu. If one player is attacked by two players, he will have all his stats relevant to the battle
multiplied by two until one of the attacking players has been defeated. But neither is having lots of players on your team necessarily a disadvantage since you can choose to work individually.
At the present time, player slots are limited to 6 and no more than 3 players will be allowed on any one team.
Stats and gearThere are 5 stats, each of which start at zero and may be upgraded to infinity: combat, toughness, movement, stealth and ninja magic. You start the game with 10 ninja bucks to be spent at the ninja store. See the spoiler below. Every point of stat costs points equal to its value, cumulatively. For example, 1 stealth costs 1 point, upgrading from 1 stealth to 2 stealth costs an additional 2 points, etc. It is not necessary to spend all points, and any surplus ninja bucks may be retained.
Stat descriptions:
Combat: Your skill at doing damage in combat. This applies both a to-hit and to-damage bonus.
Toughness: Your ability to resist damage from any source, like combat, being run over by cars, falling off of buildings, being eaten by sharks, etc.. Toughness is added to your base health total of ten, and any incoming damage is reduced by your toughness. Toughness does not reduce damage incurred by using ninja magic.
Movement: Your skill at negotiating terrain, like climbing buildings, jumping between rooftops, etc. This is also your raw running speed.
Stealth: Your skill at being sneaky and going undetected, as well as your ability to notice others using stealth.
Ninja Magic: Your ability to do super awesome cool ninja magic. Note that using ninja magic
directly depletes your health, and this damage is not reduced by toughness.
Starter gear commentary for new charactersNote that all melee ninja weapons are treated equal and all ranged ninja weapons are treated equal. Unlike
non-ninja weapons, like machine guns which are clearly inferior. Also note that at game start, armed melee combat and unarmed melee combat won't be particularly different, as base damage is 1d6 in either case, so this is largely an aesthetic choice. It's not necessary to spend one of your starter bucks on a weapon if you don't want to, and unarmed combat is a reasonable choice in the early game but because of the way the upgrade paths will work, in the long run weapon combat will generally beat unarmed combat.