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Broad Fantasy Archetypes: Ninja and Rogue


Ragitsu

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Once I was a playing in someone's campaign where there were ninjas.  The first time we encountered one the GM said "He moves like flowing mercury."  Turns out he was one badass character and proceeded to clean our characters clocks - we barely escaped with our lives (run away).  Later we got in the habit of asking "Hey does that guy sit like flowing mercury." or "Is he sleeping like flowing mercury."  That was a fun campaign.  We finally got powerful enjoy to kill the 'head' ninja.

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Ultimately, other than possible cultural associations, what is the difference between a rogue and a ninja?

 

It depends on whether you put assassin under rogue or warrior.  They generally tend to have elements of both. 

 

On the other hand, there's a pretty fuzzy divide between rogue and warrior.

 

So the answer to your question is:  yes.

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Ultimately, other than possible cultural associations, what is the difference between a rogue and a ninja?

 

I see ninjas as more of a spy and motivated by devotion to a cause or code of honor. Rogues tend to be more of a thief, and motivated by greed. Of course, there's nothing to keep the two archetypes from overlapping.

 

I should note that ninjas are more prone to flipping out and killing people.

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Ninjas are more likely to work as part of an organization, whereas rogues are more likely to work for themselves (as opposed to a guild).  Furthermore ninjas can have an element of the supernatural about them--leaping, clinging, faked death, superhuman endurance and pain resistance, enhanced senses, invisibility, and even teleportation are part of the legends.

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Ninjas are more likely to work as part of an organization, whereas rogues are more likely to work for themselves (as opposed to a guild).

 

A rogue might be more likely to be a freelancer, but there's no reason why the fantasy equivalent of the Mafia or yakuza can't exist.

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I see "Rogue" as a catch-all term that encompasses those character types that utilize stealth and/or subtlety as a part of their profession.  A Ninja is a type of Rogue, as are Thieves, Assassins, Burglars, cut-purses and Spies.  The term Rogue is very broad.  Ninja is very specific.  You would be better off asking what the difference is between a Ninja and an Assassin, or between a Ninja and a Spy.

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Indeed. spies also often do assassinations. however i believe it is a matter of specialization. assassins excel in the deadly arts. spies excel at infiltration and intelligence gathering. ninjas would be the midway between the two, better at assasinations than the spy, but not as well versed as the dedicated assassin and the same could be said about the infiltration and intelligence gathering skills of the ninja vs the spy

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Let's asl Wikpedia.

Intro Ninja:

"

A ninja (忍者?) or shinobi (忍び?) was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan. The functions of the ninja included espionage, sabotage, infiltration, and assassination, and open combat in certain situations.[1] Their covert methods of waging war contrasted the ninja with the samurai, who observed strict rules about honor and combat.[2] The shinobi proper, a specially trained group of spies and mercenaries, appeared in the Sengoku or "warring states" period, in the 15th century,[3] but antecedents may have existed in the 14th century,[4] and possibly even in the 12th century (Heian or early Kamakura era).[5][6]

In the unrest of the Sengoku period (15th–17th centuries), mercenaries and spies for hire became active in the Iga Province and the adjacent area around the village of Kōga, and it is from their ninja clans that much of our knowledge of the ninja is drawn. Following the unification of Japan under the Tokugawa shogunate (17th century), the ninja faded into obscurity.[7] A number of shinobi manuals, often centered around Chinese military philosophy, were written in the 17th and 18th centuries, most notably the Bansenshukai (1676).[8]

By the time of the Meiji Restoration (1868), the tradition of the shinobi had become a topic of popular imagination and mystery in Japan. Ninja figured prominently in folklore and legend, and as a result it is often difficult to separate historical fact from myth. Some legendary abilities purported to be in the province of ninja training include invisibility, walking on water, and control over the natural elements. As a consequence, their perception in western popular culture in the 20th century is often based more on such legend and folklore than on the historical spies of the Sengoku period."

 

Rogue:

"A rogue is a vagrant person who wanders from place to place. Like a drifter, a rogue is an independent person who rejects conventional rules of society in favor of following their own personal goals and values.

In modern English language, the term rogue is used pejoratively to describe a dishonest or unprincipled person whose behavior one disapproves of, but who is nonetheless likeable or attractive.[1]"

 

What I get:

Ninja a more of a military, formalized Form. It has stronger mystical/gadgeteer aspects. There were actuall School's for them. And Japan in general was more "Rightous" on the D&D Scale. Even "honorless" Ninja had discipline, training and the like.

 

Jargon use of Rogue often implies "out of the ordinary" or "out of normal bounds". Roge Agent, Rogue Planet - to name just two.

As such they tend to be anti-organized.

So they are more "Chaotic" on the D&D Scale.

 

However, always keep in mind that those are only rough guidelines. There might be a Ninja who just "could not work isnide the rules" or are "loose cannons". The same as there might be very organised Criminal Groups for Rogues, including having "Codes of Honor". Pirates were are form of Rogue with a Code of Honor.#

Especially player Characters tend to be out of the Ordinary.

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Ultimately, other than possible cultural associations, what is the difference between a rogue and a ninja?

A lot. Ninja are trained experts of espionage and sometimes assassination who, usually, work for the shogun.

 

About the same as the difference between a samurai and a knight.

 

Cheers, Mark

Um, no. Samurai and Knight are pretty much the same thing. They're both trained to fight in heavy armor, they both train to use a wide variety of weapons, they are both trained to ride horses and how to fight from horseback, they were both a military class; the biggest difference is that Samurai weren't train in shield fighting.

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Um, no. Samurai and Knight are pretty much the same thing. They're both trained to fight in heavy armor, they both train to use a wide variety of weapons, they are both trained to ride horses and how to fight from horseback, they were both a military class; the biggest difference is that Samurai weren't train in shield fighting.

 

Really? Which knights are we talking about? The highly-trained mid-period military orders, or the barely trained (but hard as nails) thugs who looted their way down Byzantine italy? Or the hungarian knights with their light horses and bows? The aristocratic french knights or or the common-born, unfree German ministerales?

 

For that matter, which samurai? The proud, but poorly-trained samurai of the Bojin war? The lightly-armed skirmishers of the Genpai war? Or the heavy, organised forces of the Sengoku Jidai? The aristocratic, cultured warriors of the 1600's or the boorish, country bumpkin sword-swingers who created the first shogunates?

 

All of these - both knights and samurai - are very different one from the other in terms of training, weapons, attitudes and history. All they have in common, really is that they were professional warriors: and that's my point.

 

The same is true of ninja. The Iga and Kōga clans may have produced professional spies and assassins, but the bulk of the ninja seem to have been recruited from among ordinary commoners, and often were apparently thugs and highwaymen. "Ninja" were't just (or even mostly) spies and assassins. Many ninja in the sengoku era were simply military scouts, who fought openly alongside regular military and the word was also used for agitators, who were apparently often recruited from among the gangs and gamblers that were the Yakuza's forerunners. In the later period, "ninja" were also recruited from among condemned prisoners. So in many regards, they are not that different from the spies, assassins, military scouts and agitators recruited by European nobles throughout the centuries - just with better press. After all, most of what we "know" about the ninja was made up by popular playwrights long after the ninja had ceased to be relevant. Even the famous ninja costume probably comes from there: as far as we know it was simply an adaption of the Bunraku puppeteer's costume, which was used on stage because the audience knew it meant the person wearing it was "invisible"*.

 

If you prefer your ninja more fantasy-oriented: mystically powered members of secretive organisations, that's fine ... but they still don't seem all that different to me from the assassin's guilds of more western-oriented fantasy. It's more a question of style, attitude and how the GM and players want to spin it. This shouldn't be taken as negative: I loves me some old-fashioned anime-style ninja action. But really, for me, rogue/ninja is more question of how you want your special effects presented.

 

cheers, Mark

 

*an amusing side note: this is still a practice today. The Ise shrines are so sacred that only the high priest and (on special occasions) members of the imperial family can enter. So who keeps them clean, repairs the thatched roofs and weeds the grounds? Officially, nobody. In practice, however, it's done by temple staff, dressed in the black ninja/bunraku outfit, which makes them "invisible" - when performing their duties, they are referred to as "crows" and are considered to be "not there" :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ninjas are more likely to work as part of an organization, whereas rogues are more likely to work for themselves (as opposed to a guild).  Furthermore ninjas can have an element of the supernatural about them--leaping, clinging, faked death, superhuman endurance and pain resistance, enhanced senses, invisibility, and even teleportation are part of the legends.

 

 

A rogue might be more likely to be a freelancer, but there's no reason why the fantasy equivalent of the Mafia or yakuza can't exist.

 

In most campaigns with significant urban involvement it would be highly unlikely for some sort of organized crimes not to exist -- and with the presence of law enforcement sporadic at best crime lords are a law unto themselves. Organizations like the Mafia or Yakuza form when the authorities cannot or will not protect "common" people and so the people must find less agreeable means to protect themselves -- and find they have nobody to protect them from their protectors.

 

You might get mileage from turning some of the common tropes regarding ninjas on their heads. One thing you might want to keep, though, is that they are deniable assets. You hire ninja to do a job that you don't want to get your hands dirty with, and leave them to their (usually grisly) fate when things go south. An "honorable" ninja is one who stays bought.

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Some claim that before there were schools or clans of assassins that ninja/ninjitsu started as commoners who weren't allowed to have swords or armor but needed to defend themselves from the less scrupulous samurai.  That's why weapons like the kama, that are also tools were supposedly favored. So it wouldn't take much to have noble ninjas if you went with that take on it. 

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That the ninja started out as mercenary commoners is extremely likely, but I think disguise was the real reason that they continued to train with weapons like the kama or kunai.  For infiltration and assassination they tended to prefer actual weapon weapons, like the katana; highly versatile weapon/tools, like the kusarigama; and easily concealed/transported weapons like shuriken and blowguns.  Either way, though, there was plenty of both good and bad to go around in both the nobility and peasantry in feudal Japan.  Ninja could easily be the good guys in any given situation, in a Machiavellian sort of way.

 

Another thing that sets the ninja apart from a more generalized rogue is the degree of formalized training that they went through.  Ninja learned codified techniques for stealth, disguise, espionage, assassination, infiltration, and combat, whereas one tends to think of rogues as being self-taught on the street, or at most apprenticed to a master in more organized environments.

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Thematically speaking, when the gloves come off (in my experience), ninja tend to be overall flashier in regards to body movement. Rogues are just as dextrous "on paper" but tend to be more reserved with their full-body feats of agility.

 

This seems to be a consequence of cultural flavor.

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