05-06-2017, 04:20 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
In my DF games every character just come from nearby bush.
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05-06-2017, 04:57 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
A long time ago I played with a Dragonlance based setting where martial artists were actually an order of clerics who, having lost the blessings of the gods, chose to turn inward.
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05-06-2017, 07:32 PM | #13 |
formerly known as 'Kenneth Latrans'
Join Date: Aug 2009
Location: Wyoming, Michigan
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
Before DF came out, the one GURPS campaign I was in had a "ninja" martial-artist trained in a dojo right next to Town. Both Town and the dojo were built only a few decades ago by Viking settlers, and the dwarf who built the city wall entirely by himself was still living there (we commissioned him to build our home base). The walls keep the dinosaurs we don't want out and the ones that we do want in, you see.
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Ba-weep granah wheep minibon. Wubba lubba dub dub. |
05-06-2017, 07:45 PM | #14 |
Untitled
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: between keyboard and chair
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
I'm close to that level of abstraction.
Where do ninja come from? Where do barbarians come from? Where do clerics come from? They come from the Tavern Where You All Meet, in Town. If the players want more backstory than that, then the players are welcome to invent it. I'm busy putting chests and orcs in 10'x10' rooms.
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Rob Kelk “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.” – Bernard Baruch, Deming (New Mexico) Headlight, 6 January 1950 No longer reading these forums regularly. |
05-06-2017, 09:12 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
In one version of the vaguely-defined DF setting in my head (not sure if I'll ever run it, but I could), Ninja and Martial Artists originally came from two lands in the Mysterious East (an expy of China and Japan), but most modern ones are descendants and students of folk who left those lands centuries ago, for Mysterious Reasons.
It's sort of how Barbarians come from the Kingdoms of Barbaria in the Frozen North (basically an expy of Scandinavia plus Northwest Russia - only people from the self-named Civilized Lands (Europe-expy) call the area 'Barbaria,' or treat it as if it were a single identity, rather than just a place where a whole bunch of tribes who don't like each other live). Another version has them coming from the Mysterious West, because it's set in a version of North America that had much earlier European settlement, because magic. In that version, Barbaria is the Canada expy, but still is by no means united.
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
05-07-2017, 10:36 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Feb 2010
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
Martial arts, even unarmed ones, aren't the exclusive province of far-off ancient mystics. Pankration started with the ancient Greeks, and an unarmed martial art known as Ringen originated in the Holy Roman Empire. And ninjutsu is pretty much a romanticized version of the spying, infiltration, and assassination techniques that developed pretty much everywhere where consequences for killing an important person developed - the Hashashin sect, where we get the word "assassin" from, had the fedayeen, who also had legends about them.
Also, keep in mind that Dungeon Fantasy doesn't have to strictly adhere to European history and myth. So where do martial artists and ninja come from? Pretty much wherever you want. |
05-12-2017, 08:16 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: New York City
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
I run all my DF campaigns in the world of Banestorm.
Where do Martial Artists & Ninja come from? Sahud. |
05-12-2017, 09:25 AM | #18 |
☣
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
I'm as likely to forbid them as to come up with a justification for them, especially Ninja (just use the Assassin template). If I include the Martial Artist, I tend to place the origin with an itinerant culture rather than a monastic one. Think Romani, not Shaolin.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
05-12-2017, 10:07 AM | #19 |
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
I generally play DF in a pre-existing setting, or one so nebulous that geography and culture are irrelevant.
If I needed to write a background for a MA or Ninja, I'd probably start with a western style monastery because Friar Tuck Ninja Warrior is cool. Alternately, play a Nymph Martial Artist who set out to master the "Marital Arts" for Nymph-y reasons, but messed up filling out the form. |
05-12-2017, 10:11 AM | #20 |
Join Date: Apr 2016
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Re: DF: Where do Martial Artists and Ninja come from?
In my DF campaign they come from the far east and are usually hired by wealthy folks here for nefarious reasons.
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