SR needs 80s shurikens, [drama chords from Revenge of the Ninja] Options

[Wounded Ronin]

Remember how back in the 80s shurikens, and not handguns, swivel mounted machineguns, or rare Walther sniper rifles were the most likely thing to make a person die in a single hit? Remember Sho Kosugi in, "Revenge of the Ninja" telling the police detective about how rare, special, and deadly a shuriken is? It was something to the effect of, "The construction is very precise! Only by passing through the gate of the eye can it kill!" They went on about how in this day and age a person couldn't possibly own t3h r34l shuriken becuase only "a master" would know just how to make one. And then the film has people getting one-shotted and dying all over the place with shuriken.

Well, many years ago, what was the reason that I wanted to start playing Shadowrun? It all started with a Shadowrun novel. I've long since forgotten the title of said novel and all the details about the stories. Except for two. There was a guy wearing a yukata that had a Japanese beer company's logo on it. And a little earlier the guy was having his asian mentor flashbacks and then he ran into a fence. It was the lure of the 80s that made me do everything that I could at that time to learn about Shadowrun, at a time when I didn't know the location of any game stores and the only references I could find after being interested for over a year to the game was the SNES game...

So, it always struck me as a little odd that while the katana gets a manly STR + 3 M damage code, to show how its 80s asiaticness makes it more AWESOME than the piddling non-JAPANESE BEER COMPANY LOGO YUKATA WEARING regular Sword (STR M, fool!) that the shuriken had but a lowly L damage code. I mean, if 80s ninja films are any indication, shurikens were the leading cause of American industrial decline in the areas of of automobile manufacture and high tech in the 80s. Probably because JAPANESE NINJA ROBOTS would go around flinging shuriken at midwestern auto workers and MAKING THEM DIE IN ONE HIT. There's a reason that American cars sucked at that time and it had nothing to do with the auto workers; the blame is squarely on Japanese ninja robots with shurikens.

Many players have chosen to equip their player characters with dikoted shuriken, which makes more sense in the 80s movie paradigm, but it still leaves me as unsatisfied as a big plate of rice with no meat. Sure, a troll with maxed out strength flinging a dikoted shuriken is pretty fun, but what about "Revenge of the Ninja"? Sho Kosugi didn't need dikote and giant green troll arms to kill...

The ONLY SOLUTION TO THIS CRISIS is to introduce a new item called the "Revenge of the Ninja Shuriken". Here we go:

ROTNS
Damage Code: 2D
Range: Heavy Pistol
Cost: 1000 nuyen
Avail: extremely rare; only available if you have some ninja master to help you
St. Index: 5 (very rare, but limited knowledge of product and utility)

The way I see it, the ROTNS damage code of 2D reflects how "only by entering the gate of the eye may it kill". Your strength doesn't matter. Only your skill does. If your skill with the thrown weapon is really high everyone drops like flies. But if your skill is crap you will have a much harder time killing anyone than you would if you were just using a gun. Also, the extended range reflects how the shuriken flies with unnerring magic into all the suits who are unloading their pistols at you and makes the DIE. To balance all this out, however, throwing the ROTNS is actually a Complex Action since the character must carefully raise his arm, pose, and then throw for the deadly shot.

In keeping with what was fashionable back in the 80s the ROTNS must be a star shuriken and not a kunai. Furthermore, whenever a player character throws a shuriken, the player must vocalize, "FWWSHHOOOOWWW!", which represents the deadly shuriken sound effect from "Revenge of the Ninja."