Ninjas & Superspies Review

Ninjas & Superspies is a contemporary role-playing game of espionage and martial arts. It is written by Erick Wujcik and published by Palladium Books for the price of $17.95. It is a game designed to provide opportunities to play different facets and styles of martial arts combat with cinematic powers thrown in combined with espionage agents equipped with gadgets, spy cars and cybernetics. I find that Ninjas & Superspies has excellent potential as a role-playing game in general and a system, however, flaws in execution and editing leave the system badly unsupportive to the average GM.

New players and GMs will find that the basic system mechanics take a while to learn, due to the in-depth coverage of combat within the game. Experience GMs and players on the other hand, especially those already familiar with the "Palladium Megaversal Game System" will find many key differences between how Ninjas & Superspies combat works and how it works in Palladium's other games. For one thing, the combat options, especially for hand to hand combat are much more involved than the standard Palladium combat system, included several new combat moves, attacks, and other options (many of which have found their way, in modified form, to other Palladium games). Another point of interest is that Ninjas & Superspies, unlike many of Palladium's other games, has yet to have any major rules upgrades and remains the oldest example of Palladium's "Megaversal System" still in print. The final difference is that, despite it's best effort, the game mechanics for combat (and several other areas) remains woefully vague in many aspects, and has a few inconsistences as well, notably the difference in the result of successfully Rolling with Punch/Fall/Impact vs a Death Blow, however several of Palladium's standard combat inconsistences are present as well, such as the comment that the defender always wins against ties, yet certain combat results can't be effectively beat with a tie result.

So, new and experienced gamers alike will have to do some work and indepth reading of the system before it will truly playable. Another facet of this is that several of the martial art powers, especially those concerning Chi, are quite vague as to how they actually work. I've seen numerous problems and questions, particularly for the entire Chi section, some Martial Art Techniques, a few of the Atemi abilities, Arts of Invisibility, and Special Katas. Zenjorike, often seen as Zenjoriki, has also caused some confusion, though not as much as the previous types of martial art powers. The Vehicle Combat rules, particularly those for Air & Space also suffer from a missing element, namely the rules for TMF (Transient Maneuvering Factor), a vehicle rating used in the game, but unfortunately never explained. However, the inclusion of Boat Combat Rules almost works to balance out this lack of an important ingredient, since it's one of the few games produced by Palladium which actually has rules for boat combat.

Overall, the book itself is well laid out, a basic introduction to the game, followed by the rules for creating characters and then the information on the different types of characters. Next come the rules for cover identities, creating spy agencies, cybernetics, super-vehicles, martial arts and martial art powers, all useful for further fleshing out the characters created. Finally we come to combat rules, weapons, equipment, and then the Game Master section, which includes some useful, though generic, setting information, sample opponents (both individuals and groups) and an introductory adventure. Outdated and incomplete conversion rules are also included in the Game Master section and the book is finished off by a glossary (which unfortunately isn't in alphabetical order for ease of reference due to what appears to be a cut and paste error), small recommended reading list, ads for Palladium's other games, and (depending on which printing you have) a character sheet of some use.

The technical aspects of the book, including artwork, writing, and editing are all of varying quality. The artwork itself, though with some less-than-stellar pictures is, for the most part, well distributed throughout the book, and more importantly, appropriate to the written material in it's style and material. The writing is generally, good, though some bad spots are apparent due to the writer's unfamiliarity with the Japanese language, though these spots manifest generally as language spellings, contradictory information presented on the Japanese writing systems (in my own copies of the book, I've deleted all but the first sentence of the last paragraph of the Language skill description due to it's great inaccuracy, a somewhat surprising find due to it being directly contradicted elsewhere in the book), and flip-flopping word spelling. The editing, well, it isn't the best, with several typos, British spellings used instead of American spellings, missing information, vague information, and contradictory information. I believe I've already listed examples of all of these problems except for typos and British spellings, the former of which can be found in oddly hyphenated words, superimposed characters where one letter should be, errant letters such as the "fDoor" under the S.D.C. table, and the occasional misspelled word, the later can be found in the use of such words as "calibre," "anaesthetic," and the double "l" spellings of the various tenses and modifiers of the word "travel."

However, one shouldn't let all the negative aspects of the material be an impediment to playing this game or using it to run a wide variety of scenarios and settings. Due to the limited information presented on the setting, GMs are forced to pretty much create their own game world in which to run games and campaigns. Since the setting is ostensibly contemporary (remember, this game was written in the late 80s), one can easily use information out the existing world to flesh out many of the details for any game, handling several movie genres admirably, such as action/thriller, espionage, mystery, martial arts, law, crime, intrigue, etc. However, the potential this game offers is not limited to contemporary settings, as this game can be adapted (with varying levels of work on the part of the GM) for futuristic, space, cyberpunk, fantasy, historical, or time travel settings with great success. The martial arts and espionage information available, while understandably limited, can handle games set in these genres quite well, though modification will have to be performed to get the game to be a useful system for those rules. In fact, over the years I've played the game (since 1989, shortly after it came out), I've managed to create and run several games that worked well with N&S as the primary system using all of these genres and settings. I've also found that the utility of this game makes many people find it a better supplement to their games, however, I've found that it works equally well, often better (once the flaws have been addressed) than many other games that I've played.

While suffering from flaws of ambiguity in many areas, the overall setup of many of the facets of the game, such as martial arts, are provided in complex enough detail, though kept playably simple when one is familiar with the system, that gamers should be delighted by this addition to their gaming collection. Unlike many games, where the combat moves or abilities known determine what martial art style is known by a character, N&S has the style itself define what moves and abilities are known, something I vastly prefer for martial arts in my games. With only 37 styles (the 41 listed on the back cover and advertising summaries isn't entirely accurate, since the standard four Palladium hand to hand combat skills are included in that), this game doesn't provide as much variety as other martial art games such as GURPS Martial Arts or Ultimate Martial Artist for the Champions/HERO system, however, there are enough styles present to give most characters a style that they'll like to play. The martial art powers included are also great additions to the game, providing even more detail and complexity (unfortunately a bit too complex, given the vagaries of this section) to the game. Skill programs, cover identities, the spy agency and super vehicle creation rules as well as a few sample gadgets and gimmicks also help to provide complexity to this game, though many gamers will wish there was much more information, since the vast amount of material on martial arts overshadows the espionage aspects of this game.

Overall I recommend this book as a great addition for anyone who wishes to play with espionage or martial arts material. The book also has the potential to work as a decent basic system for many games. However, I don't really consider this book great stand-alone material since it just isn't large enough (being only 178 pages long) to contain everything it could and because of that, it leaves an empty place in the gamer's heart where all that great potential is ruined by lack of support for the game. I also understand that a new printing of the revised edition has also been published, hopefully correcting the many minor flaws throughout the book. Still, it would be nice to see a Second Edition, preferably with several sourcebooks to help fill out the potential of this game.