Tenra Bansho Development Journal

In between finishing up the last few sections of the book pre-layout, I’ve been running games of Tenra, both locally for my own game groups, and at conventions and the like. It’s been fun, but also a real lesson for how the game should be run, played and some pitfalls that can happen. Here’s a few lessons learned.

Three heroes protect a prince, stop an assassination plot.

This campaign came from a complete adventure that I ran at Origins Game Fair 2009. Three people who had never played the game (or even heard of it in some cases) got together, picked some characters, and jumped straight into the action. Role-playing ensued, lots of cool character drama.

The lesson I learned here was that the players, when left to their own creativity, can come up with things that can really make a scenario flow.

At one point, near the “last boss” encounter, one of the characters catches a glimpse of the baddie, watching the heroes fromthe lip of a mountain cave. I asked that player, “…but there’s something… odd… about him, something that stands out to you. What is it?” (I had literally nothing in mind when I blurted it out, I just wanted to give the player some agency in the scenario.

That player came back with, “He’s got horns on his head. He’s an oni!”

That pretty much blew the lid off the rest of the scenario. Right then and there, the last boss went from (in my notes) just some guy that wanted to overthrow the kingdom from the shadows, and turned him into a sympathetic but vengeful enemy: An oni who is fighting for revenge against the cruelties inflicted upon his oppressed people, not caring who he hurts along the way. I even ret-conned the previous fight the players went through (“Now that you think of it, the last ninjas you fought had very angular features. You’ve heard stories of oni who file off their horns, they must have been oni as well!” and the like) to fit with the dramatic change.

Just goes to show, sometimes a random thing blurted out on chance can flip the entire narration of a story, and for the better.

In the book, player input and techniques are given examples, in order to encourage other GMs to be open to player input.

Two Brothers and a Monk Find the Last of the Silent Leaf Ninja, Kill an Enemy General

This was a scenario I ran for my local gaming group. The author intended Tenra to be played in one single sit-down session; but the assumption was that most players play RPGs on Saturdays or Sundays in 6-hour runs, and would never have the time or energy to run on a weekday. Here in the US, society works a little different, and many of my groups meet after work hours in the evening to game for shorter periods (usually 3-4 hours). In that regard, keeping focus a game of TBZ would last about 2-3 weeknight sessions. There’s no problem with keeping track of resources like chits and kiai, but keeping momentum can be a problem.

The lesson I learned here was to be better prepared. When I run TBZ, more than most games I run I try to have a solid beginning (a solid idea of what to run for players during their Zero Act scenes), and some “middle points” in mind but flexible (Names of major NPCs, a general flow of major scenes or events that may unfold), but keep lots in the air, in order to be flexible enough to change the later events depending on how the players act in earlier events.

The problem is, real life sometimes interferes, and I found that some days (where I planned to sit down for 15 minutes and plan out the next scenario for that evening) I had no time to plan, and only minutes to get things together before the game began! Unlike other RPGs I run where I can as a GM stall a bit (“You’re in a tavern!” -and encourage Tavern Chat that doesn’t push nor derail the game; “Thugs attack!” -and have a weak-enemy combat to get people fired up for what comes next; etc) in a game like TBZ that demands aggressive scene framing (to the point where you call the beginning and ends of scenes like a director for a movie) you have to be a little more on the ball. You have to have some idea of what will come next.

In the end, what I learned was to always have a few scenes or major events ready to pop out at any time. If the adventure changes because of those player actions, I’ll at least have something that I can manipulate a little and bring in anyway, or discard altogether in exchange for something else. In any case, having a few scenes in the pocket can really push a game session forward.

To that end, I’ve written some advice like this in the GM/Scenario Creation  section of the rulebook.

Three Child Mecha Pilots Save the Kingdom from Angry Kami

This is the current campaign I am running now for the same group as the above: It actually takes place at the same time as the scenario above, but looks at a war between two kingdoms from the other kingdom’s viewpoint.

What I proposed for this scenario was an experiment, and one I had a hunch about, but was able to verify: Given the exact same character (in terms of attributes, skills and even Fates), three different players will each run the character in a different and unique way.

I wanted this scenario to be one where most of the players were the same class. I settled on a Tenra-Evangelion (Tenragelion?) crossbreed, where armour-riders launch from a repurposed underground shrine and fight angry kami that threaten various cities of the kingdom. Gendo Ikari has been replaced by a mask-wearing Shinto Agent.

In any case, the character used was the exact same for all three; the only slight difference I did was one of the characters also had the “Oni” template added as well, but it was more for flavor than to make use of her oni abilities. But three girls, three mecha pilots, and what we were left with were:
A haughty, older princess-type with handmaidens, who thinks she’s the best, and is wary of the oni.
A younger, troubled shrine-girl from a homeless background who works in secret for the Agent of the shrine. She’s very mature for her age.
The youngest, an oni girl who was recruited for her unique piloting skills (she requires a special helm and armour), in an experiment to recruit oni armour-riders for the kingdom.

Three characters, all the same stats and skills, and totally different directions for each character. It really proves that a character, especially in Tenra, is what a player brings to it, not what is written on its sheet.

And yep, that bit is already in the book.

More information to come. We’ll be looking at some of the dramatic-focused rules of the game in posts to come.