N00bnoir
Follow me here for a moment, I know the title is a bit…off. However, it has a purpose, trust me!
What the Heck Am I Talking About?
A little background. I started watching Naruto last night on Netflix, and was a bit taken aback by the first few episodes. From what I’d heard, Naruto was this epic ninja. Well, the first few episodes (I’ve seen 1-6 so far) has Naruto has a ninja-in-training. Heck, his first real fight he choked!
What does this have to do with anything, you ask? EVERYTHING!
The Point
As I said, Naruto is a n00b. I was wondering how to portray that in Technoir, and it hit me. Technoir has cool dice, right? Action dice, push dice, and hurt dice. So why not add noob dice to the mix?
The reason I’m doing it this way instead of just upping the power level to 9,000! is because Technoir has a limited range for your Verbs. After the verbs go higher than a 5, it’s near impossible to roll higher! Remember, a 7 in defense can not be defeated, no matter how many dice you have!
Another reason I’m doing this is so you can have one character (say, a mentor/reacher/sensei)be noticeably stronger than the rest. It gives the noobs something to aspire towards!
Adding N00b Dice
Now we know why, so let’s dig down into the how. Noob dice are treated just like hurt dice. They’re rolled in your die pool, and they remove like action and push dice.
However, they don’t count for hurt dice when rolling to remove a sticky/locked adjective…well, unless you’re the one rolling, of course! Noob dice are always included in your dice pools.
How Many is too Many?
Depending on how noobish you want the protagonists to be will determine how many noob dice to start with. Noob dice are rated in [-]adjectives like hurt dice. So come up with adjectives that describe your ineptitude. Things like [-]clumsy, [-]over confident, [-]secret coward, etc.
For fresh off the farm noobs, I’d go with 2 noob dice. Just graduated would be 1, and the complete underdog “how on earth can they possibly win?” would be 3.
Removing Noob Dice
Ok, now we know how they work. But how do we get rid of them? They are, after all, here to be gotten rid of! That’s how we show growth from noob to epic!
You need to work at removing each noob die individually. Spend a significant amount of time (no less than 2-3 sessions) working on removing the [-]adjective. If the table agree that enough progress has been made, you may remove the noob die.
However, the GM is well within his/her rights to require the sacrifice of a [+] (locked) adjective to show your personal growth. Your GM should inform you right off the bat if that’s the case. Otherwise, you might not have an appropriate [+] (locked) adjective.
There you have it, how to go from zero to competent in as short as you want to!
