Free Game + Awesome Ninja Borg Interview
Good morning, The Guac!
We have some good news at Spicy Tuna. Our main projects are progressing well. Greenhorns is on its finishing legs receiving all the editing love and The Hands That Feed is progressing by getting the crowdfunding ducks in a row.
Plus, Spicy Tuna has a new game to release! Technically, it’s a playtest version of the game, but it’s a straight forward system driven by a few mechanics that has had a lot of eyes on it (minus actual editing, so please bear with me on any typos). Cryo Drakus has been my “brain break” game for about half a year now and it’s ready to share! More below.
Lastly, we have our editor, Walton Wood joined by Rugose Kohn for a backflipping and guitar shredding interview about their upcoming Ninja Borg!
Let’s get to it!
THE GUAC DOCKET
Ninja Borg Interview
Cool Projects, Podcasts, and More
Public Domain Inspiration
Spicy Tuna Updates
NINJA BORG INTERVIEW
Hi, Walt! Hi, Rugose!
Let’s talk NINJA BORG! A game that leans heavily into the early 2000s ninja memes and 80s action movies. Let’s kick off by letting you two introduce yourselves and what brought you together for Ninja Borg.
W: Rugose and I have known each other for nearly four years now. In April 2023, we started working on a pure shitpost of a game based on our mutual love of ninjas and how badass they are. We got a core system sketched out, but then it languished for a few months until the next year, when Noun Borg launched. Some people started talking about a ninja hack for Mörk Borg, and we realized that we needed to finish NINJA BORG before someone beat us to the punch.
R: Walt and I are besties. We actually hate each other deeply too. It’s kinda weird. Anyway, we were grousing about stuff in DMs and Walt just kinda said, “Well, I guess we are making NINJA BORG.” Ninjas were a big part of my childhood and one of the hot things in popular culture at the time, so movies like American Ninja were a staple of cable television programming. My boyhood chum Joe and I would pretend to be ninjas and rampage around the neighborhood. Forty years later we remain friends and I think Joe still thinks he might be a ninja. I probably shoulda wrote this game with him.
Q: NINJA BORG boasts its high octane 80s action movies feel and intentional foregoing of historical pretense and “accuracy”, How does NINJA BORG teleport players into these scenes? What can players expect from the ninja experience?
W: The entire book is written in character. That cues the motherfuckin’ ninja master (or MFNM, what we call the GM) in to the tone they need to set for the players, but all of the tables for ninja creation deliver the same flavor and inspiration. In our playtests, it’s worked like a charm—every session has been more badass and batshit than the last. They rapidly became games of one-upmanship with each player trying to outdo the last.
R: Walt hits the nail on the head. If you go back and watch any of those films from last century, they are all just nuts. The ninja is an unstoppable force that absolutely wrecks everyone’s shit. Our mechanics, as well as a very healthy dose of “yes and…” from the MFNM, facilitate that attitude and playstyle. This is a serious game. Serious about laughing your face off and I can say with total confidence that is the experience players can expect. I like to call it “the blackout drunk of beer-&-pretzel games”.
Q: Next, to the character sheet. I think it does a great job of setting expectations, such as the session/encounter/combat bonuses and ability to customize your shuriken shape. Can you walk us through character creation a bit, and some of the bits that your ninja can do?
W: Obviously, we took our cues from Nohr and Pelle for the character and reference sheet—you can play the entire game with just those and occasional reference to a few things in the book. So what you see on the character sheet is what creating your ninja encompasses and what they can do in terms of mechanics: you distribute points into five stats, roll for weapons and swag and ninja magic. But those are just the basics for imagining insane attacks and stunts for the referee to adjudicate. The various tables for your ninja’s tragic but awesome backstory, their style and form, etc.—19 tables in total, all of various sizes and often with subtables—all put flesh on those bones. For example, one playtester rolled that they were transformed into a ninja by the great magnetic field, and his ninja magic was flight. So when he was fighting an evil martial-arts world champion in a Dubai penthouse full of cocaine that his fellow ninja had set on fire by wailing on his guitar massively hard, he didn’t just attack his enemy—he flew in a circle to create a magnetic whirlwind of burning cocaine that incinerated the enemy. We kept the character mechanics light because rolling dice isn’t the point of the game—it’s imagining badass shit that your ninja can do, and the MFNM saying “yes” to it.
R: I want to add that we have all these wackadoo tables to roll on because there is only one class, ninja. But all those tables make every ninja so unique, our official mathematician calculated that every person that has ever lived or is currently living, could each roll up billions of characters—and never roll a duplicate. I think it was something like sixteen quadrillion possibilities (and that was without taking into account the subtables). Despite that randomness, the tables still produce some interesting ties across players. In one of our sessions, two characters both had the same nemesis for example. That creates an obvious storyline and possible mission(s). All of those tables do a really good job of informing how a player might distribute their attribute points and play their ninja, while creating some obvious archetypes.
Q: Adventures! What can these guitar wielding and one liner-dropping ninjas expect to do?
W: Um, what can’t a MFin’ ninja do? They’re basically omnipotent, but even ninjas need a good challenge. So we’ve got some advice for MFNM on running games, and an introductory adventure that will send the ninjas around the world in search of the Golden Ninja Idol of Awesome so that they can defeat Hoopin’ Baby, the evil CEO of Puppy Murder Inc. But the core book also has a mission generator consisting of 21 tables, which yields so many different permutations that the number would literally make your head explode. For example, you may be hired by the Antarctic Liberation Front to surveil freeze-dried brine shrimp in an office building at Ninja Gardens in St. Petersburg, Florida, where Ultraman was filmed. But this is no ordinary office building in a theme park—it’s protected by Wacky Wiggles Sprinklers spewing muriatic acid and armed-to-the-teeth robot vacuums, but if you get past those, there’s massage service in the afternoon. If you succeed in your mission, you get a guest appearance on Shark Tank, but if you fail, the dolphins will die in the nets. All to the dulcet tones of Wayne Newton. That’s the sort of thing ninjas should expect.
R: Ninjas go on missions. Not adventures. Take that shit back to your poopy diaper elf games.
Q: Lastly, it looks like you’re planning a lot for the game, including working with some of the biggest names in Borg based games. Can you detail what the core book will include and how you’re looking to expand on the game with stretch goals and future releases?
W: The core book will have a general introduction, all the rules, character creation (obviously), tables for weapons and swag and magic, advice and guidelines for running games and for converting and creating content, and a host of enemies. Some of these are run-of-the-mill jerks, but then you also have the ÜberCreeps, the supervillains of NINJA BORG. All enemies have Enemy Action Tables (EATs) to use during combat, but the ÜberCreeps also have Fatal Agenda Roll Tables (FARTs) that MFNMs can use to inspire a longer campaign. And then of course there’s the mission-generation tables and the introductory mission. But we’re not stopping there. We’ve already started sketching out content for the first expansion, which will include bonuses for maxing out abilities, a table of legendary guitars, at least one more adventure—ninja stuff like that.
R: This might be a good time to mention, this is not your Swedish Grandpa’s Borg. NINJA BORG utilizes a completely new ruleset, the Real Fuckin’ Simple System (RFSS). So this is not published under the MÖRK BORG third party license, but the NINJA BORG first party license of awesome. We have a bunch of planned stretchgoals that include an official soundtrack by one of the biggest names in Australian Doom Metal, BONG COFFIN! Extras for pledges, guest artists, a bunch of adventures from the aforementioned Borg luminaries, and more. It’s going to be almost as gonzo as the game. One of the biggest headscratchers we see with the Borg hack market is a lack of support. Someone releases a hack to great fanfare and then they are on to the next thing. Not us. We’ve formed Five-Finger Death Cock Games and have big plans for NINJA BORG. Lots of hot drip is ready to go in the form of tees, boxers, hats, bomber jackets, etc. and like Walt mentioned, we already have an outline of all the super badass shit that will be included in our first official supplement.
Thanks for having us! We really appreciate this chance to talk about NINJA BORG with you and dispel some of the ugly rumors swirling around. Probably started by a pirate.
Ninja Borg prelaunch page can be found here. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/waltonwood/ninja-borg
CRYO DRAKUS RELEASE
Cryo Drakus is an exploration game enhanced with ship upgrades and lethal alien adversaries. It’s inspired by classic shoot ‘em ups like R-Type, Gradius, Raiden-X, and Galaga. Truthfully, I don’t know if I would have been inspired to make the game without Carly A-F’s art pack – which I instantly wanted to make something with as soon as I saw it.
Character creation takes about 10 minutes and gives players their previous trainings, qualifications, and purpose of exploring the alien clusters. Pilots then choose their ship which is uniquely designed to excel at different tasks, including their own choice of upgrades.
Risk Rolls and Combat Rolls work off of a dice pool system inspired by Trophy Dark and further inspiration was pulled from Cairn for player and GM principles.
As said in the introduction this is a playtest version of the game. It sits at 10 pages of rules and character creation, plus some character and reference sheets, and a bare bones one-page cluster to explore. If you’re the type of person that loves to play games that are in the testing stages we’d love for you to check it out and/or hear from you about the experience! If you just want a sneak peak of what’s to come from Spicy Tuna in the future, we’d love for you to check it out too! Here’s the sneak peak. And the DOWNLOAD LINK to the Google Drive that holds the document.
COOL PROJECTS, PODCASTS, and MORE
The Weekly Scroll
These are the two episodes from The Weekly Scroll I want to highlight this Guac. I really enjoyed seeing how differently Bläckfisk Publishing and Coolwayink tackled their games despite having the same Legend of Zelda influence.
PLASMODICS by Will Jobst
This book’s design is beautiful. It’s right up my alley in what I love in graphic design – and being a fan of Will’s game TORQ, I’m excited to see what the game has to offer as well. “In the remnants of the world, play in the smithereens.”
Plasmodics just launched on Kickstarter on 8/20.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/goodluckpress/plasmodics
One Page RPG Jam
https://itch.io/jam/one-page-rpg-jam-2024
At the time The Guac publishes there will be just over 3 days left to submit to the jam, but there have already been 412 entries which is insane. I haven’t gotten to read too many but there are a number I have that I think are worth mentioning.
A PERFECT ROCK by Deep Dark Games
https://deep-dark-games.itch.io/a-perfect-rock
*I’m planning on playing this one this weekend!
From the itch page:
“
A Perfect Rock is a sci-fi worldbuilding game for rock collectors. Search for a new home by exploring planets made from the rocks, gems, or crystals in your collection.
Create your explorer and their lost homeworld. Discover the strange lands, the cursed skies, or the deadly life on each planet. Debate how you would survive and, when everything has been explored, choose a planet to be your new home.
“
CAVEAT EMPTOR by Exeunt Press
https://exeuntpress.itch.io/caveat-emptor
From the itch page:
“
1541
You are an Assistant Demon selling secretly cursed items to humans in Wittenberg, Germany.
A solo journaling game.
Greet new customers as they enter. Offer them an item from your inventory that seems too good to be true. Secretly twist it with a curse, and close the deal. Avoid suspicion that you are a demon. Maximize sales before your Manager returns. Avoid annihilation.
Inspired by Needful Things by Stephen King and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis…
“
AUCTORATUS by M. Allen Hall
https://m-allen-hall.itch.io/auctoratus
From the itch page:
“
Auctōrātus is a 1- or 2-gladiator game of mechs vs. monsters. The 3 files include the one-page (2-sided) rules sheet, the character sheet, and the map of the arena.
Battle monsters over six rounds to win the tournament. From the lowly Scale Wolf to the monstrous Crescent Wyvern, you will need to carefully choose your mech's components if you want to survive.
Featuring a diceless, zero-luck mechanism, Auctōrātus is an experiment in tabletop combat. If you find the game interesting, please let me know in the comments on this page, as I am considering turning this into a larger TTRPG/tabletop war-game.
“
DIGITAL NIGHTMARES by Uncharted
https://unchartedworlds.itch.io/digital-nightmares
“
DIGITAL NIGHTMARES is a solo, table-top, rogue-like about hacking into a cyber security vault all on one page.
Produced for the One Page RPG Jam 2024
Everything you need to know to play the game is on a single sheet of A4 but I've also included some reformatted A5 pages for the Vault Map and Encounter Tokens.
“
Make Your Own One-Page RPG Series by Exeunt Press/Skeleton Code Machine
It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Exeunt Press and Skeleton Code Machine. And, I’m a big fan of this 6-part series! I thought it was a great read and break down of making games in general. I think the best parts are the actionable steps/homework it gives you after each part.
Here’s Part One:
PUBLIC DOMAIN INSPIRATION
John Uri Lloyd’s Etidorhpa (1895)
Émile-Antoine Bayard’s Illustrations for Around the Moon by Jules Verne (1870)
Spicy Tuna RPG Update
Greenhorns: We are trucking along and getting close to print! Writing is 100% done and final edits for the planet layers are happening now. Unfortunately, it looks like we have to change illustrators for the final few pieces. This will probably cause a few weeks further delay, but we’re close.
The Hands That Feed: Kickstarter campaign is pushed back to mid September. This will better allow me to both finish and have Greenhorns at the printer as well as make even further progress on illustrations for The Hands That Feed.
Overall Spicy Tuna Update: First and foremost we want to get Greenhorns out to backers. After Greenhorns is sent to the printer my main focus will be to finish the illustrations for The Hands That Feed and everything that is going into the Kickstarter for so that we can get into the final stages of layout asap. We will be avoiding stretch goals that add any significant time to production, so no extra materials or sections in the book other than what is already planned. We currently have the estimated delivery date as March 2025…but given it’s the project we’ve had closest to the finish line, I’m gonna do my darndest to beat that goal.
In the multi-month future, we have some final decisions to make for the order of releases. We have a number of exciting projects that we have began developing slowly or that have been put on hold until our current two major projects are pushed through. Here’s the bullet list:
>Cryo Drakus. The 28-40 page zine version + starting adventure(s). This will include at least 3 more starting ships, all new missions – maybe an extended version of The Lizard’s Mouth –, and rules to engage as pilots out of the spacecraft including *at least* a small setting and some random tables.
>Greenhorns Bounty Hunting Missions. Greenhorns ended up with ~36+ hours of planet layers to play inside the core book, which I’m incredibly happy with. And the starting bounty hunting mission written by Christian Sorrell is incredible, but the only bounty mission in the book. Bounty hunting is the first place I want to invest in Greenhorns. I’m thinking 3x ~12-24 zines, each with 1-3 shot missions!
>The Crisis Engine. This started as a pebble of an idea in late 2023, but is now about four pages and pretty close to playtesting. The Crisis Engine is being built to power high-octane, one-shot games with rewarding moments while players attempt to survive terrible situations. It’s a play-to-lose style engine, that we want to publish games for in several genres. It takes inspiration from Mothership, Trophy Dark, Psykers, and Cloud Empress. It’s the game that started from my want for Mothership to have more consequences from Stress during one shots, which in my experience of running at conventions and with a number of different groups needs house rules to really make stress consequential. Trophy Dark was the system that light bulbed how to make this work, while Psykers and Cloud Empress provided more light bulb moments. I’m pretty excited for this ruleset, but that’s all it is right now. The next step is to write an actual game around it and playtest.
>Tinfoil Hats. This is a 2d6 or 2d10 system a bit different from the dice pool systems of Cryo Drakus and The Crisis Engine. This one also sits at 3-4 pages of rules, but it’s another rules-lite game I’ve tinkered with. The premise is the tinfoil hats were right and everyone but the tinfoil hats were assimilated by the aliens. Players dispatch from makeshift headquarters and search for power sources and other needed materials while trying to both survive and avoid assimilation. Tinfoil hats works with a GTA inspired “alert” system and a straightforward assimilation track that makes players make difficult decisions to continue helping their crew or separate for good when their assimilation markers get past “a point of no return.”
That’s all of the behind the curtains for today. Thank you for making it this far if you did! I hope it’s a beautiful day ahead. Till next time!
Marco
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