Using SR Rules for Anachronistic Historical Drama, Ninjas make everything better Options

[hyzmarca]

By Anachronistic Historical Drama, I mean Anachronistic Historical Ninja Drama. By Anachronistic Historical Ninja Drama, I mean Ninja-centric dramas that take place at places and times where Ninjas should not be.

The idea comes from a long line of Historical Dramas that I have watched while imagining how much better they would be with Ninjas. The recent culmination of this came when I made a reference to Roots on the SR4 board, which inspired my most recent signature change.

The scene that I was thinking of is the one in which soldiers come to arrest the slave known as Kizzy, who used her knowledge of reading and writing to badly forge papers to help another slave escape. I was thinking that it would have been so much better if her owner grew a backbone and threatened to kick the soldiers asses on the grounds that they were attempting to illegally seize his property without due process of law. But, since he would have been both outgunned and outnumbered, such threats would fall on dead ears. How then to fix it, I thought? What if he said "I have traveled the Orient and was taught the Shadow Arts of Japan's Invisible Warriors, the Shinobi. You cannot stand against me." Before going bullet-dodging chambara on them.

And then I thought that this would make a great campaign, but one white ninja slave-owner wouldn't make much of a campaign.
Instead, I came up with the idea of having ninja slaves who were sent to the Orient by their secretly moderate abolitionist owner to "learn the Gung-Fu of China's Holy Shao-Lin and the Shadow Arts of Japan's Shinobi" to serve as his bodyguards perform guerrilla operations against the excesses of both South and North.

And, of course, I later came up with the best line of them all. "My name is Kunta Kinte of the Kinte ninja clan. You are dead!"
And then we replay the whipping scene from roots with Kunta Kinte freeing himself and slaughtering his captors with stylish empty-handed killing techniques

The are, of course, other possibilities. I distinctly remember watching an anime version of Little Women and imagining the many ways that ninjas could improve it, as well and watching a film adaptation of its sequel, Little Men, and thinking that it would be much better if a white ninja came in, ostensibly to teach Japanese at Jo's boarding school, but really to teach the boys the arts of self-defense.

But, really, practically any historical drama would benefit from ninjas. Elizabeth? It could have used ninjas. Shakespeare in Love? It would have been better with ninjas. Ninjas make everything better.

In such campaigns, there would obviously be no cyberware or Matrix and there would be very little magic, while ninjas would mostly be adepts. This creates a huge imbalance in which the PCs, being adepts, would have a huge advantage over the hoards of uncybered mundanes with no access to combat drugs that have not yet been invented.

We can adjust this problem ever so slightly by letting certain characters use Awakened Compounds and primitive combat drugs prepared by shamans and magicians from the Americas, Africa, or China, and using knowledge taken from these places. But, such drugs should be as rare as the ninjas themselves, reserved for boss characters. The real challenge for the ninjas is sheer numbers. A team of five ninjas might have to go up against a fort armed by 500 gun-wielding soldiers, which more than compensates for their inferior fighting abilities, I believe. Plus, ninjas should slaughter lowly American and European soldiers, because they're freakin'! ninjas, dammit.

So, any suggestions on this? What rules modifications do you think will help and which historical dramas do you want to see ninjafied?
I am considering anachronistic historical ninja adaptations for both SR3 and SR4 rules, though I think the SR3 melee system better emphasizes the ninja's ability to kick butt in melee.

[Moon-Hawk]

[Slump]

That does sound like an awesome campain.

[Kyoto Kid]

...hmmm, would lend a whole new spin to Jack the Ripper.

[Wounded Ronin]

I feel like not enough people today are familiar with Roots, which had a big impact on pop culture. I remember the comedy movie "They Call Me Bruce" referencing Roots, where someone starts screaming "Toby" to represent someone being beaten into submission.

I think if we had Roots: The Ninjaing it would give us a nice pop culture history enema and thus improve society.