Tenra Bansho Development Journal

Must rest.  Here are the highlights:

Got a lot of awesome new games.

Ran 3 awesome sessions of TBZ: Seriously, the players were GREAT, kept the action and drama popping, it was phenomenal.

One of my sessions was quasi-cancelled because three of the players didn’t show: But instead, I ran a one-on-one with the last player, giving him a whirlwind tour of every piece of the game.

Good food at GenCon! What the hell happened in the past two years? Like, good restaurants (get that Steak and Shake s*** outta my face) were everywhere: Also cafes and the like.

Time to sleep. This is going to be a busy week. Layout will begin soon, so more on that in a bit.

So over on a group blog I share with some friends, I discuss other Japanese RPGs. Mostly previews, fanboy ravings and the like punctuated by cultural elements. That site is http://www.j-rpg.com .

Recently, someone asked what was so revolutionary about Tenra Bansho in Japan over at RPGNet. I discuss the details there, as well as why that claim isn’t just mere hyperbole:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=526626

Check it out!

So a few questions and comments folks had:

* What is that “ZAKT-8″ weapon on the character sheet from the last post? What does it look like?

A ZAKT-8 is a unique weapon to the setting of Tenra. It’s the only standard “typical big-ass anime sword” that appears, most weapons are… well, *normal sized*. In short, it is a heavily modified yoroi armour (mecha) shortsword. It is modified for a higher rate of fire (see below), and it was basically created for one purpose: For warriors (rare warriors, usually ex-riders who understand armours better) to be able to go toe-to-toe with armours, and kill them. It is the most dangerous hand to hand weapon on the planet.

ZAKT-8 or “ZAKT Ultimate Edge” is an abbreviation of the original Japanese full name for the weapon: The Hachi-Ren ZAn-Kou-Tou (8-repeating ultimate cutting sword). 8 refers to its 8-soulgem revolver barrel.

The pic from the character sheet was a scaled version that appears in a two-page art spread from the book. Here it is in larger form (sorry about the choppy edges):

“One Hit Kills All!! The Hachiren Zankoutou”

* I love that the sword has ammo.

So do the warriors that wield them.

Soulgem weapons don’t actually fire bullets or anything. Essentially, it is a ball of rare metal (also known as “crimson steel”, or in some foreign lands “orichalcum”), loaded into a katana via revolver (reliable) or automatic (faster, though not as traditional) chamber. When the trigger is pulled, a soulgem is crushed, and the sword will vibrate, heat and even increase in mass. If the warrior makes a critical strike, she can pull that ZAKT trigger 8 times (8 Rate of Fire, as there’s 8 soulgem “bullets” in the revolver chamber) and tear pretty much anything in half. Namely, the yoroi armours they go toe-to-toe with on the battlefield.

Compare that against Kirie’s backup weapon, a shortsword (likely a wakizashi or dagger): +2 damage (vs the base +6 damage of the ZAKT, which can increase up to +14 total when unloading all soulgems at once), and does not hold soulgems.

Also, interesting fact that won’t make sense now, but will later when you read the rules: Your characters won’t buy ammo (soulgems) with money; they buy ammo with /karma/.

* I’m liking the character and it’s too bad when I get the game I’m going to be GM’ing as I would like to play a character like Kirie.

- I’m hoping that once you run it 1-2 times for your friends, they’ll see how easy it is to play and run, and be able to eventually run their own sessions. All the real skills in Tenra for GMing are “soft skills”: Not really needing to crunch numbers or determine abilities for competent enemies (there are processes that will help in the rules), but understanding when to start and end scenes, how to create a framework for a cool adventure while still giving the players freedom to do what they want, etc.

In fact, one of the players of many of my demo and campaign Tenra games, Mark C, is going to be running a game for us (and I get to *play*, yay!) in… a little over 15 hours. Crap, gotta get to sleep!

* When will Tenra be released for sale?

- When it’s ready!
- OK, so that’s a kind of vague. But stay tuned, I hope to address this in a post this week.

The sample character from the book is Kirie, an ex-yoroi armour (mecha) rider. It’s written on one of the alternate character sheets: The game will include several sheets depending on orientation preference and the like (pulled from the winner of the Character Sheet Creation contest, from two years back).

Kirie used to ride a 3-meter tall steel killing machine, until it rejected her: Expelling her from her piloting-meditation, casting her out of its frame, and no longer responding to her commands. She took the rejection poorly. Drive, anger and martial prowess are all that fuel her now. She wields a huge modified armour shortword called a ZAKT-8 Ultimate Edge (aka the Hachiren Zankoutou), a melee weapon so powerful that a skilled user can go toe-to-toe with the steel giants of the battlefield.

She’s trained well. She can murder mecha. She lives by the strength of her own arms, and rejects all weakness. But what will happen when her enemies threaten the one thing left that she loves? What will happen when acquaintances become comrades which in turn become close friends? Can she cut out her own feelings like she can cut the hearts from the steel guardians? Find out… in play.

Little life issues interrupt the translation process, post X-Thousand.

So I took a few days off in order to get some home stuff together, rejuvenate, and finish the last bits of Tenra Bansho translation.

I use many tools for the translation (might be a good post for later). I do a lot of my translation effort with the assist of online tools in order to help the workflow go faster (Jim Breen’s J-DICT for kanji lookup of unfamiliar/new kanji; or lookup of Buddhist/Ancient terms), or for excruciating accuracy (internet lookups of concepts, 4-kanji/character-proverbs, etc  to make sure I understand the nuances, etc).

So today I put aside some of the new content I’ve been working on (most recently Player/GM advice) to focus on the last bits of trnaslation work. Unfortunately, I woke up to find that my home internet is down. Oops. I headed to the local neighborhood coffee house to plug in and work a little more, but the place is packed: Turns out the internet is down in pretty much the entire subdivision.

Checked on stocks/finances, reader articles, emails, but unfortunately there’s not enough space here to scatter all my Japanese paper documents around me and continue on unfettered.

Time to head home and fall back on manual materials to get the job done, including the Kodansha Advanced Grammar Dictionary (have the thing about memorized, but there’s some times I need a consult), Kodansha Kanji Learner’s Guide (THE best resource for Kanji lookups, bar none, often faster than online lookups), and a few Japanese-focused dictionaries. I’ll have to “asterisk” items that look like they have deeper meaning for now and look them up online later (Buddhist terms, etc). But since the last section is rules-focused, I doubt I’ll hit as many as in the world/setting sections.

One more coffee, then hitting the road.