User:Bill/Shinobi/Session Notes

Preliminary Meeting - 2 July 2009

Though I had put a significant amount of work into creating the rules necessary to run Shinobi, I wasn't married to the idea. I presented it along with several other options to Mary's Thursday group and between their ambivalence towards all of the ideas and Miles' enthusiasm for playing a game based on Naruto, it won out. So, for the next several weeks, I'll be running this.

Once the decision to play Shinobi had been finalized, we discussed character concepts and decided on which hidden village the players would owe their allegiance to. Naturally the Village Hidden in the Sound was immediately tabled as an option. I was willing to go that route if it was really what the players wanted, but after everyone present had settled on a particular power theme it didn't seem like a good fit; not enough mutations and no sonic attacks at all. The only village that I put completely off limits was The Village Hidden in the Leaves; it is simply too detailed out in my opinion and therefor too easy to fall into traps where we violate canon. Ultimately, the group settled on The Village Hidden in the Clouds. The Cloud Village has had very little screen time in the anime or manga, making it a perfect choice in my opinion. Less than a dozen cloud ninja have names; the Kazekage not being among them.

Here's what's known about the Cloud village:

• Ten years ago they attempted to kidnap Heuga Hinata to gain the Byakugan; violating a treaty with the Land of Fire in the process
• The Cloud village is currently on good terms with the Land of Fire
• The Cloud village has two jinchuriki
• Cloud ninja frequently favor swords over other weapons
• Dark skintones seem to be more common among the Cloud ninja than other villages

We're making up everything else as we go.

So far the group composition is looking pretty good. Mary will be playing a girl with partially controlled intangibility. Chief will be playing a boy capable of slowing or stopping the passage of time for a single target. Mike has elected to focus his character on swordsmanship. And Miles will be playing a character with telekinetic hair. Though not physically present, Brad communicated his desire to play a character capable of manipulating his own blood to create solid weapons and other objects. By my estimation that gives me two melée characters, one short range attacker, one support character, and one infiltrator. We expect to be joined by one more player, either one of Miles' coworkers or my girlfriend. I am inclined to recommend that he or she make a long-range specialist of some sort. At this stage the characters are very much defined by their abilities, but I expect that will change as everyone has time to develop their back-stories.

Due to the background team organization, six players gives me two teams. I could look at that as a major pain in the ass because I have to write two jonin level NPCs to act as team leaders and come up with twice as many missions, but I'm going to try and see the potential for friendly competition between the teams and the chance to deliver some more complex plots.