Tenra Bansho Development Journal

So I was talking with Luke (who, with Drozdal, is working on the layout of the game) this last weekend after a rousing set of Roller Derby at the North Carolina state fairgrounds.

In Tenra Bansho Zero, you engage in combat just like other tabletop RPGs: You make a series of attack rolls. You take damage, in the form of a kind of Hit Points (Vitality) and Wounds. When you use magic, you use a resource called Soul, a kind of spiritual resource like Magic Points (MP) in console games you’re familiar with.

But there’s nothing deeper for Social conflicts. Social conflicts come down to in-character role-playing, plus maybe a roll: Something like “I try to convince the warlord that what he’s doing is wrong! I roll my Spirit and Persuasion against his Spirit and Willpower!”. You can still “do things” with that roll: You can spend some resources to get more dice, to lower your difficulty number and get an advantage. But the roll comes down to You vs Them, Most Successes Wins. There’s no “Social Points” to whittle down in social conflicts until one concedes.

This seems like a bit of a design flaw, really. Admittedly, the game is close to nine years old and all, and stuff like Social Combat is kind of a more recent RPG development. Therefore its lack seems like a flaw, or a Something Missing… until you look a little further.

I didn’t even have to go as far as to compare Tenra against other games from FEAR that did have some kind of social maneuvering/extended conflict mechanic to determine that the lack of such a system was a conscious choice. I simply had to Watch More Samurai Movies. I had to think back to all the Zatoichis, all the Hissatsu Shigotonins, all the Mito Komons, all the Baian The Assassins… or over to manga like Blade of the Immortal or Shigurui, or anime, or back to Kabuki Theater:

There’s Always a Boss Fight. In fact, there Must Be A Boss Fight. That’s the way the drama works. And that’s the way the game works.

The town is on fire, burning all around us. The warlord’s men are slain. He stands before you, sheathed katana at his side. He drops his Boss Speech, then draws his katana.

You can reason with the warlord. The princess (PC) can step forward and point her finger and demand that he stand down (with a contested roll). However, true to the fiction, the game will not end with the warlord sheathing his sword and turning himself in (even if that was historically perhaps more accurate). Hell no. Because there’s got to be a boss fight.

Instead, the princess convinces the warlord that he was wrong. She can destroy his beliefs. She can taunt him, or sympathize with him. She can make him believe that his quest (which in his mind was for a noble goal) was folly and in fact mistaken.

But he will still draw his sword and attack. Perhaps instead of “Shut up! I don’t believe you!” (the princess fails her social roll), he has tears rolling down his cheeks: Confessing his sins and wrongdoing as he attacks, he says, “But this is all that I am now. I have nothing. I am nothing!”

You can still have a quick-roll roleplay and social conflict. It doesn’t mean that the boss fight is avoided, though. It just means that the boss comes into the fight in a different state of mind.

And when you defeat the boss, did you kill him? Did you spare him, avoiding that final killing stike (but knocking him out)? That’s up to the players. But first they have to beat the boss in the scenario-ending boss battle. When I explained this to Luke, he nodded his head in complete understanding. The answer was there this whole time in front of us, we just had to think about the story medium to realize it.

It’s something to think about when creating a scenario. You can design a game of clever twists and raw role-playing excitement, or a bog-standard but fun Mission Quest (“Go X and Do Y, I demand it!” says the lord). But don’t get past the fact that, be it a baddie NPC, a misguided NPC, or a PC-turned-Asura, just remember: There’s got to be a boss fight.