I made some crazy ideas back in college. Mutant Wrestling Federation with some friends. A Mega Man role-playing game that never got played. Yet, there is one that I keep wondering if I should go back to.
Ninja Never Wins spawned from realizing that even if you beat one of the Mortal Kombat games with Scorpion, he still kind of looses. He always seems to end up back in Hell and have to return in the following game. So, the phrase ‘Ninja Never Wins’ came to mind and this spawned an idea to write a book series that spoofs fighting games. I can see people running for the door already.
The overall premise is that a corporation ‘owned’ the six greatest fighters in the world for a reason that is never told. Play a fighting game and you’ll see what I mean. One of the fighters wants to show off and starts a tournament, which prompts the others to do the same in each book. Eventually, it ends with every character in a final ‘World Wide Tournament’.
I designed off the wall characters with crazy back stories and set about figuring out what I could do with this idea. One problem is that I couldn’t find a way to turn the initials N.N.W. into a decent corporation or fighting tournament name. Another problem is that I wondered how interesting a book with a ton of fighting would be. It’d be off the wall, but showing every fight would be rather ridiculous. Unless every chapter started with a fight or I skip a few of them. Sure, I had interviews, photo shoots, fan encounters, and a few real life events for the characters. Yet, when I reached the end of the series, I had about 30+ fighters in there and that wasn’t going to fly.
The big thing that I was proud of with this idea is how I planned the fights. I didn’t plan them. I wrote each name on a scrap of paper, put them into a hat, and drew them to see who fought who in the first round. Then I did a few die rolls between them and the winner moved on. So, I never knew who would be winning in these stories. I might have planned one winner only because of his back story. He was a man framed for murder by his wife’s crazy, assassin mother, who brainwashed his wife while he was in jail. So, he’s out to win enough money to fix his wife. Take a guess about two future characters in the tournaments. 😉
I have to say the six tournaments were fun to design too:
1. Normal.
2. Gathering tokens or gems.
3. Death match with weapons.
4. Women Only. Everyone was cloned back to life from last tournament. Well, you explain how they return in Mortal Kombat and Soul Caliber. (Yes, one male character dresses as a woman to get into the tournament.)
5. Teams of Two.
6. Grand Finale.
The idea still has merit and might work better in Windemere as some crazy yearly tournament that most people would consider barbaric. I just need to think of a way to tell these stories without it being perpetual slugfests. Maybe have each chapter focus on a character? That still means I could have 11 first round chapters. You can see why this idea is on the ‘maybe’ list.
Legends of Windemere 
I had a similar idea that kind of mixed professional wrestling with reality TV and takes some stuff from Bruce Sterling’s “The Artificial Kid”. The basic idea was that there was a disaster that rendered a major city mostly uninhabitable, and that live video feeds of the survivors became so popular that they gained sponsors.
The survivors (those that stayed) realized that they could get better ratings by staging exciting events, and over time more people drifted to the area to take part. So a culture based on fighting for entertainment grew up.
I was going to start with a new kid hitting town and working on gaining a reputation and a following, making deals with other fighters, and so on.
Okay, maybe not that similar, but it grew out of the same kind of idea to create a rational backstory for something like Street Fighter.
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That sounds like a better idea than what I have. This was going to be full-on spoof of the video game genre. Over the top and insane.
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Reblogged this on Hey Sweetheart, Get Me Rewrite!.
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That actually sounds like a really cool idea! I think that, to make it work, you’d have to make sure you keep the story human — as in, don’t just have the fights, give us insight into the characters. Why are they doing this? What are they fighting for? Etc. I assume the ninja will be the underdog hero? You definitely need someone that we’re rooting for — or rather, that we realize we should be rooting for by the time we reach the later two-thirds of the book. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of people fighting each other. Have you seen the Tekken movie? Kind of like that. There’s still a huge fighting tournament, but we’re rooting for a single character throughout it.
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There will be a few ninjas, but there isn’t going to be a central character. If I do that then people will know is going to win. I had some extra scenes and one of them has the original ninja trying to cheat then getting killed, so other ninjas show up to figure out what happened to him.
That’s one of the problems with this idea. If I want the victor to be a surprise then I have to be careful with the focus. Spend too much time on the ‘Combat Librarian’ and people will guess that she’s going to win it all. Like a fighting game, I wanted people to choose any character as a favorite even if that person loses. I tried once to outline this with focusing on one character, but then I felt like I cheating the other ones.
Each character has a deep back story and reason for being in the tournament, which works for the first 2-3 books. Even the women only and the tag team one are doable because of a smaller cast. Maybe the fights should take more of a background to everything. I think the biggest issue is that last book with all of the characters involved. Another option would be to choose a few characters from each round to focus chapters on and the other fights are put in the background.
I saw the Tekken movie. Still trying to forget it exists. 😉
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Noooooes! I loved that movie! 😀
Okay, I will change my suggestion slightly. I think you need at least a handful of sympathetic characters, so that people can latch onto their favourite one and root for them. That way we won’t know who’s going to win until the very end, but we have multiple characters to root for.
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I didn’t like what they did to Jin. He wasn’t as impressive as he was in the game. Heihachi (sp?) was badass though.
A handful is doable. There are more characters that are sympathetic and deep than others. I guess I want to pull it off like Street Fighter. Ryu, Chun Li, Cammy, Guile, and Ken tend to get most of the attention, but E.Honda and Dhalsim still have a story with fans.
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WHERE do you get these ideas from? I mean I would never have had thought of this in my whole life-time! Its an interesting background! But as you said…11 first round chapters would be huge!
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Playing video games. This is why I’m thinking of having some stuff in the background. 11 first round chapters are only the beginning book too. The cast grows as the series progresses.
Though, I do wonder about putting out a poll for the latter books (if the series gains steam) and seeing which fights people want to see in-depth.
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Writing fighting scenes is a huge challenge…(of course, not for someone as skilled as you 🙂 ) You’ll pull it off in no time!
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I have a rather easy time with fighting scenes. I could also be looking at this series wrong. Think I need to do my biking and ponder a brewing idea.
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Yup. A “brewing” idea. 😀
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“The big thing that I was proud of with this idea is how I planned the fights. I didn’t plan them. I wrote each name on a scrap of paper, put them into a hat, and drew them to see who fought who in the first round. Then I did a few die rolls between them and the winner moved on. So, I never knew who would be winning in these stories.” 😀
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= I love it!
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Thanks. That’s the key ingredient making the focus of the books difficult. Unless I discern the winner and THEN prep the story.
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its funny how some ideas stick with us throughout the years… I would say if it is still in your head after all these years it’s something you want to do… sometimes fermenting helps brew a stronger story… although the spoof spin would be a little more difficult to pull off in my opinion satire is one of the hardest literary devices to pull off successfully…but then again you are a witty guy… the idea of using clones as avatars might sound like an interesting premise, sort of done by the movie “Gamer” although “Gamer” did not use clones they, used socially disadvantaged people as their avatars.
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Satire is definitely hard, but I think the fighting game genre really opens itself up to it. For example, Ryu of Street Fighter influenced me making a fighter with only 1 move. This guy is destined to defeat a great foe, but he only knows 1 powerful move. He can’t even figure out how to punch and kick correctly. A tip of the hat to all those Hadoken-Hadoken-Hadoken players.
The clones are something else. After the 3rd book, all but one of the characters are dead. So, the champion running the 4th tournament clones all of them to bring them back and explain how they’re still around. No science behind it, but a one-sentence explanation. This is a mocking of Mortal Kombat having ANY recurring characters. The champion is based off one of my friends who is obsessed with using clones in his stories.
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Sounds like it could work. I can’t help thinking of a Samurai Jack episode where he was turned into a chicken and constantly had to fight in the arena until he defeated the champion. A great episode.
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I remember that episode. I miss that show. It never got an ending, did it?
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No, sadly. There was talk of a movie. Still waiting for that. 😦
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Cartoon Network really lets its shows just go away. Dexter and Powerpuff Girls didn’t get an ending either from what I remember.
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