Interesting times! What’s the latest?
* Three weekends ago, I had a mad Japanese RPG blowout at my house! The indomitable Matt Sanchez came up from Atlanta and we played the hell out of some Japanese language games, including another game from FEAR (the designers/publishers of Tenra)!
* Two weekends ago, I went to DexCon in Morristown, NJ. About 20 miles from my old home of Sparta, NJ (Sussex County Repz!) ran some games of Tenra, had a blast! The new Aiki tokens worked like a charm, and the sessions were a blast. I particularly enjoyed Andrew Morris’ “emo annelidist”, who spent one half of her time crying, the other half Destroying Everything.
* Right after, I went up to New York to hang out with friends. Spent a productive evening with layout guru Luke Crane. Much magic was made, we collapsed about 3 weeks of back-and-forth discussion about layout into 2-3 hours of focused grind, and got most of the rest of the final layout done!
And then, a week later, Luke finished! We’re shopping out the PDF of the books to printers now to get quotes. During this time, I’m putting together the Kickstarter stuff (copy, vid crap etc) and planning out the look of the new Tenra Bansho website!
I was going through the finalized PDFs this evening (well, mostly finalized: The index will be shaved a few pages, and later a long “Kickstarter thanks/credits page” will be added). Superb. Gorgeous. Pardon my language, but Absolutely Fucking Gorgeous. I’ll share some pages later. Seriously, when we made the move from the traditional Jpn B4 size to the Comic Trade Paperback size, I was a little skeptical: There’s just too much art, too much design, too much Stuff. I was kinda edging to traditional US Paper size. But man, Luke made it work. It increased the page count significantly (for the same amount of data, the new layout means less text per page and thus More Page Count) but the setting of the text is superb, spaced excellently. And in PDF form it’s perfect for viewing on an iPad or similar tablet as I’m doing now.
Anyway, while we were hanging out I took some pictures of the sausage being made in the least compromising manner I could!
Me in my Gunnar Optiks, Luke aligning some of the mini-poems that appear throughout the book
“Hey Luke, I know it’s late in the game, but I think that these text pieces should have a different font style. Can you do that, man?”
“Absolutely, Andy! Coming right up!”
Sit tight, folks! We’re nearing go-live. I’m printing out the full game at a local POD to see how it handles: That’s how close we are!
Haha can’t wait to see it ready and get my hands on it
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BTW : “I particularly enjoyed Andrew Morris’ “emo annelidist”, who spent one half of her time crying, the other half Destroying Everything.” , this reminded me of session warhammer with my friends , did something similiar , altough my emo run ended fast cause someone shoot me in the back
The crawl is painful but nice to hear that the end is close. Be waiting for the Kickstarter Announcement.
OMYGOD Im so FRIGGIN’ EXCITED!
Seriously I want to get my hands on this SO BAD! I’m crawling like a maniac over here.
Keep up the good work! I, for one, am super excited to see all your years of hard work come to fruition.
The waiting is the hardest part.
Beautiful! Waiting for the Kickstarter, will be putting serious money into it.
If I had panties to throw at you, I would have
can’t wait for this
The first print quotes are back! I’ll have to spend some time grinding out some numbers (shipping, packaging, international shipping, weights, extras, potential book costs, cost vs licensing fee, etc), but we’re close!
If we’re losing a big chunk of the index from the print version due to page count issues, is there any chance of getting the unabridged index posted online at some point?
Actually, the index is going to be there in full. But I might later make it a downloadable item for print/reference, we’ll see how useful such a thing might be.
The first of the print quotes are back! Pretty pricey (they’re comparable – actually a little higher than – when we were printing Maid at POD prices). But worth it. That’s both books, softcover, plus the cardboard slipcase they’ll be coming in!
Oooooh
Now what about all that extra material? :-p
Yeah, that new material? All there. And you will understand when I eventually reveal the pagecount, and pick jaw off floor. The books are a smaller form factor, basically American comic/trade size. Effective layout, borders and easily readable (not miniscule) text means that the books appear daunting even though they totally are not.
It was daunting to begin with!
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, ANDY, WHAT TERROR HAVE YOU UNLEASHED!!
Definitely looking forward to this.
I want to know already, you are teasing us too much
I started making my own RPG basing on the SRS system cause FEAR made it free to use for non profit , but not seeing any actual game based on this system is slowing me down . So thats why i am really looking forward to this , cause not only i get my hands on an awesome game , but i will be able to see SRS in a game and that will help me a lot with my project .
Hey Shineek, good luck with your SRS design! I too have been planning on putting together an SRS game as well.
However, you’ll be disappointed! Remember, Alshard is the game where SRS came from. Tenra precedes it, and does not use the SRS system! The FEAR game Tenra War uses SRS, but that’s a whole other game, whole other setting.
Hit me up when you have your game in a playable format!
Well i thought Tenra Bansho Zero is based on SRS cause of the multi class system , oh well still waiting for this game to come out . FEAR games are awesome no matter SRS or not .
BTW : i checked FEAR site and i saw they release a new Alshard game called Alshard Savior .
BTW 2 : I lately started to read Anima , it seems like a good RPG , a mix of japanese anime style with some european style games . You probably know this game , but if not than check it out when you have some spare time . Its kinda lika a Final Fantasy game .
Forgot to mention that the RPG im doing will be first done in polish language than translated to english so it may take a lot of work , cause im still in the woods with this . Or rather im still tapping in the dark , maybe cause i wanted too much to add some more advanced character development .
Of course, the longer after Gen Con it is, the more money I’ll have to throw at you…
Shineek: Cool man! Be creative!
nat: Hah, I’m actually going to start up the kickstarter to start before GenCon (and Mark C will be running sessions of Tenra at Games on Demand!) and last through and end after GenCon. So perhaps nail the kickstarter before you go?
I know my own spending habits at GC, so I want to try to get some days before GC in order to let people pitch in before post-GC Buyer’s Remorse sets in!
Nobody that buys these books is going to regret it. Nobody.
“I’m actually going to start up the kickstarter to start before GenCon”
Well, now you’ve done it: you’ve gone and announced a deadline. You *know* what happens when you do that.
You dont have to scare him , he is already feeling the pressure .
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