Tenra Bansho Development Journal

Hey all: Been awhile!

Going to GenCon in August? Give me a shout, we’ll see about meeting up and playing. I’ll be running Tenra at scheduled and unscheduled events. My buddy Jerry Grayson will be running HELLAS: Worlds of Sun and Stone (think “Tenra Bansho, but with Greeks”) in the same manner.

Got ideas for a good WordPress 3.x Theme? There was a database problem with my provider about a month ago. Since then, some of the older posts’ picture links are broken. Likely won’t have the time to go back and fix them all, but going forward there should be no problems.

Anyway, I had to choose a new WordPress blog style. I went for a combination of *What looks cool* and *What I could find in least amount of search-time*. If anyone out there has a suggestion for another WordPress style compatible with WordPress 3.x, hit me up and I’ll give it a look!

Questions Get Answered!

The other day, MadCat from RPGNet asked me in private:

“The game’s designed for one-shot adventures/speedplay, how do the mechanics encourage that?”

A quick note: Not every goal in every game is backed up by rules (the “dice-hit-the-table” kind of “rules”): A lot of this feel comes across in explanatory text, demonstration paragraphs, etc. Verbal cues and directives for the GM to make the game run fast and solid.

However, having said that, there are a number of things in place in the actual rules that encourage this kind of play:

* Through the mechanics of Kiai (bonus dice and effects gained through roleplay) and Karma (Kiai turns into Karma when spent), your character is expected to change from the first scene to the last, some 4-6 hours later. In fact, it is likely that if you as a player don’t try to change your character’s personality, relationships and goals, your character will either be retired or go crazy. In short, the more Kiai you spend, the more your character will have to pay for it later in terms of personal growth and change.

* * * Having said that, the text does encourage you to engage in “campaigns” if you want, usually centered around a large theme (a long war between nations, like the old Romance of the Three Kingdoms or tales of the Sengoku period), or around an almost TV-like repetitive serial like Zatoichi, Mito Komon, Hissatsu Shigotonin, Lone Wolf and Cub, Baian the Assassin and the like. In the first case, you’re expected to likely change characters a few times throughout the campaign. In the second case, you’re likely to spend less Kiai doing effects and leveling up in order to stay constant (or invest in relationships which often end tragically, like in the case of each and every one of those TV series listed above).

* “Improving your character”: There’s rules for it, and it’s encouraged, but in practice I don’t see it that much (instead, many people prefer the action-packed punch of using Kiai for bonus dice instead of long-term character improvements). The character improvement rules are extremely simple, and things like “attribute increases” and “skill increases” (skills are more important to success overall than attributes, so they cost more) are very easy to come by.

For example, increasing your sword skill from “pretty decent” to “ultimate legendary master”… Well, again, I wouldn’t expect to see this happen often in a game, but if you aim for it it’s not very hard. It takes “60 Kiai points” to jump from “Average” through to “Master” then to “Special”.  To make a long story short, given an average Tenra character, you would need to get about 15 Aiki chits throughout the game (through good roleplaying, entertaining the others, etc; about 5 to jump to Master, 10 to jump to Special). That’s not that hard to do in the course of a full game: By the end of the game, if you didn’t spend any kiai points the entire game and did a good job of entertaining the other players, gathering up 40-70 points isn’t that hard.

The hard thing is this: You’ll certainly be increasing your skill level in a normal game towards the end of the game, having built up all those Aiki chits and Kiai points. The end of the game is usually when the big boss fight(s) occur. So, as a player, you need to ask yourself: “Do I use these 20, then 40 more points to jump to the ultimate skill level? If I do so, I won’t have any point left to use as bonus dice in combat rolls. If I do that, I’ll have a greater chance of success, but I will have zero buffer to soak up “boss enemy” level attacks”.

Level up and risk going against a boss without a pool of fortune/luck/bonus points, hoping to overcome them with the new level of skill? Or don’t level up and keep a giant pool of points to use to make critical hits, last minute defenses, and forget long-term growth?

In actual play of one-story (1-3 session) games, most players seem to go for the latter.

So in the end: The ability to level up and improve your character is there. It’s easy to do in one session, so you don’t need to wait several sessions to attain that higher level of power. And yet, the way that battles, conflicts and boss fights work (against powerful characters, sometimes overwhelmingly so) most people end up throwing those “XP” into temporary bonuses to overcome immediate obstacles.

DS out

That was the tagline on the back of the book, when it was originally released in 2000/2001.  Today? Probably not quite as applicable, as there are more games on the market that aim to be “a complete campaign/story/gaming experience within one session”. But it’s worth a look at the intention behind that tagline.

When Tenra came out in Japan, sessions in Japanese tabletop groups were the same as in the West: Primarily really long campaigns that went on and on for weeks/months/years. The complication in Japan is that:

1) Most gamers in Japan only meet up for gaming on weekends. At least, that’s the common way to do it. For folks in school, they’re busy with homework, cram school and club activities on the weekdays, so weekends are their only free time. For folks in the workforce, doing anything other than “going out for drinks” after work on weekdays is hard to get more than two folks to commit to, especially for a multi-hour gaming session. So they usually happen on Saturdays, for sessions of 4-6 hours (then maybe dinner afterward).

2) …which also means that, if you’re a Japanese shmoe who was just introduced to gaming and are interested in pursuing it further, BOOM you’ve inherited a huge time-sink of a hobby. Unlike stuff like calligraphy, flower-arranging, martial arts, cooking classes… which you might do more than once a week even, but only for 1-2 hours a shot. There are not many “3+ hours required” hobbies in Japan, and traditionally it’s been a problem to keep folks coming back to the hobby, even if they seem to enjoy playing.

Junichi Inoue’s solution was to create a game where you could tell an entire story – Introduction, characters, climax, epilogue – Within the span of one single gaming session. Did you have fun? Good, you can come back and do it again, either with new characters and a story with a different location and setup, or with the same (or most of the same) characters.

Great idea. There’s some caveats, though.

* The single gaming session assumes a group including one gamemaster and 3-4 players, at about 4-6 hours of rather focused play (where everyone knows the rules). If folks don’t know the rules, or there are 5 players, the time can increase dramatically. Exponentially. Reducing the number of players from 4 to 3, or 3 to 2, can give you a solid and dramatic story in less time. Adding a fifth, because of the way all the characters interact with each other, can multiply the time required for everyone to get that fulfilling story by 1.5-2 times. That’s why the standard Tenra group size is one GM, 3-4 players.

* If you were to play on weeknights instead of a weekend block, you’re looking at 2-3 3-hour sessions rather than one long sit-down session to get the same amount of play time. I’ve run both the one long session game and the 2-3 session game, and found them both fulfilling.

* You have to jump straight into the action. Less of the aimless chatting with the faceless barmaid, and more cutting to get your character in front of the King, or the Antagonist, or the major background NPC.

* You can experiment with time a lot more: One session can span two days, two years, or two decades, depending on what the GM has in mind. If you decide to run a second session with the same characters, you can set that next session a few weeks or a few years later without a lot of dissonance.

* You won’t be as emotionally attached to your character as you would be in a Long Campaign Game. It just happens that way: Attachment happens over time. However, with the fast nature of the game, players are more willing to have their characters change, or die, as they see fit. The end of a session can sometimes be an explosion of changing emotions, self-sacrifice and shifting relationships.

All in all, there’s a lot of give-and-take with the fast nature of the game. You’ll see and do things that you haven’t done in your longer campaign games. You’ll also feel a lack of things in Tenra that you may get out of a longer-running game.

The cool thing is, even though the game professes to be fast, changing, episodic, and suited for “one-shot” sessions, it also contains solid advice for (gasp!) running longer “campaigns” as well, using the same (or mostly the same) characters from session to session for an extended period of time. It suggests a campaign set up as either wandering do-gooders like the Zatoichi movies or the Japanese classic drama “Mito Komon” (a high servant to the daimyo goes in disguise from place to place with his companions, sees evil, then at the end busts out his royal seal, punishing the wicked and rewarding the good); a stationary collection of do-gooders in a major city, like “Hissatsu Shigotonin” or “Baian the Assassin” (ok, in both shows the characters are all killers, but GOOD killers); or perhaps stage out a war epic, where every adventure the world changes little by little based on what happened in the last scenario.

You’ll be getting the best of a long campaign game: Long-term goals, attachment to characters, taking root in a campaign world. However, you’ll still note that from adventure to adventure your characters may change a lot more than you may see in your normal long campaign game: That change is written in the Karma rules. You’ll also keep the scene framing and “moving to where the action is at” (be it social action, physical action, story action) of the one-shot Tenra game as you play in this campaign mode: Rather than having one “adventure” broken up into a dozen sessions, you’ll be running a dozen “small adventures” – each with their own NPCs goals and antagonists – which tie into this larger “campaign”.

My recommendation: Try running or playing 2-3 single session games (or 2-session games) with your friends first to get used to the rules, the types of characters in the game, and the kind of stories the game creates. Then give that multi-adventure campaign game a shot once everyone is familiar with the game.

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.

How The Sausage Is Made Translated

Wow, it’s been about 4 years since I started this project, the translation and release of Tenra Bansho Zero in English. At the time, I thought it would just take about 2 years tops to knock this thing out from Start to Publish. 4 years later, and I’m on the last run of text, finishing the last of the rules sections and prepping it for layout. One thing that this work has taught me, is a new-found respect for the amount of time and care that goes into a well-translated project.

I’ve translated tech documents, manga, business emails and websites, and by far the hardest project of them all has been Tenra Bansho Zero. I believe that this is because of two reasons:

1) At first I thought my job was to simply translate from Japanese to English. As time progressed, it became clear that my job expanded: I had to rewrite whole sections from scratch, preserving the intention of the original author. I had to collapse lots of sidebars and supplemental text into sections of the main text. I had to not just translate rules that were complicated, like the rules behind crafting a magical shiki spirit or yoroi armour, but I had to understand the rules back and forth: Sometimes that alone took hours or even days to fully grasp. I had to clarify play and rule examples. I had to add a lot of supplemental text for a Western audience, in order for the game to be understood by the same “New to RPGs” audience in the West as it was understood by that same target market in Japan.

It was a lot more work than I imagined. Normally I can crank through about “one page an hour” of dense text, depending on the source material. With Tenra, though, adding in the amount of re-writing, understanding, and research involved, it was more like “one paragraph an hour” in some places, “one column an hour” in others. I realized that “one section” of the book usually required 1-2 full weekends of reading, writing and translation to complete. The project forced me to reset my expectations for translation, more than any other project.

2) I care about the source material! This can be a real pain for translators. Sure, I have a small (read “very small”) financial stake in the success or failure of this project, but more than that, I’m very proud of this game. I got pulled into Tenra Bansho Zero because of the pretty art, and ended up becoming absolutely fascinated by the theater-like structure and rules. I feel like I’m putting in as much work into translation as the original authors put into writing the book. Those nigh-obsessive “The final work must be PERFECT!” reactions of my brain creep up in every page, every paragraph, every sentence. I’ve often gone back to reread and re-edit sections I’ve earlier translated once, twice, and evern five or more times. Too bad this wasn’t a simple business project that I could wrap up and fire off when I was done: I manufacture those translations. In the case of Tenra Bansho, I’m crafting the translation.

Official release dates became as if writ on water as one, then the next one, broken or bent. I realized that the game book required more written content to be easily playable. I folded in a lot of content from the original supplement book. I’ve also had to omit or cut out other text from the core book that I intended to include earlier (like the full Replay that appears in the supplement book) in order for this project to emerge, and not simply be “in progress” forever.

But in the end, I think it will be worth it. Tenra Bansho Zero will be complete soon, very soon. I’ve seen the rough layout sketches that Team Burning Wheel have put together, and they are incredible. I don’t know if the English release of this game in the US will create the kind of gaming revolution that it did in Japan (as White Wolf’s Vampire RPG in the early 90s brought all sorts of new players in RPGs, Tenra did the same for new players interested in anime and manga over in Japan in the late 90s and early 2000s), but it will be frighteningly fun to run and play. Folks in the RPG scene who already like anime or manga will surely find something of interest. And I hope it makes the rounds at local anime conventions, and perhaps generate interest in folks receptive to roleplaying in those communities. Getting the book in print is only the first step.

Pre-Orders

Eventually, the writing will be finally done (at a guess, 4-8 weeks). Layout will be finished from there. I’ll find some printers and get some print proofs. Then I’ll open the game up to pre-orders.

Pre-Ordering is an interesting mess, one that until recently I never got involved with. I would often see announcements, like “Game X is Coming Soon, We Are Now Taking Pre-Orders!”, and be confused by what exactly they were asking for. “The game is going to come out eventually anyway, so why don’t I just wait until it’s out and then buy it then, even if I’m positive that I want to buy it?” Some companies would even start taking pre-orders before the work is even finished, or before it’s ready to print, only to be delayed months/years.

Pre-Orders on the small-press level represent something else: It represents how much money the publisher will have to print their first print run. It’s no secret that the more copies you can have printed at once, the cheaper each copy will be. You could find a printer to print 100 copies of your book for $16/copy, where they would only charge $9/copy to print 1000 copies of the book. And I’ll be honest, I’m shooting for at least 1000 copies of the book for this first run.

At a guess of about $10/book (full color), not including shipping fees and tarriffs, 1,000 copies will cost $10,000 USD. The traditional model for small press publishers is, of course, to take out a loan against their house or car in order to fund that print run. Tenra will be no exception. The more pre-orders I can secure directly (when the time comes), the less money I’ll have to pay from my own pocket up-front for that first print run. If pre-orders go well, then perhaps a few hundred more copies of the book could be ordered at the reduced price. It’s a delicate balance.

The only problem I’ve found with pre-orders is that, even knowing the above and “wanting to support the small press publisher”, you’re paying the full price of the book up front, only to wait a few weeks/months for those orders to be fulfilled and sent.

To that end, I think Luke Crane (of Burning Wheel) does pre-orders right. When he takes pre-orders of his games, the pre-order copies usually are limited, and come with something “extra”. When they sold Burning Empires, they upped the price a little, but each copy came with a limited signed art print from the author of the original comic. The recent pre-orders of the Mouse Guard RPG each came with a free full-color comic.

To that end, I’m currently deciding what extras I could add to a pre-order of Tenra Bansho Zero. Optimally, the extras will be something special, that will help the buyer get a little more out of the game: A free supplement. Some limited-run items. Play aids. I have a few ideas which I’m currently looking into, we’ll see how they work out. With 100-200 pre-orders, I could fund much of the initial print run without worrying about losing my car, so that’s a plus. We’ll see how this works out in the coming months.

Playing the Game

I’ve been running an extended game of Tenra Bansho with my weeknight gaming group. I’ll post more about our adventures and surprises in the upcoming weeks.

For now, I gotta get back to the books: There’s translatin’ to be done!

Are you coming to ORIGINS this year? If so, event registration has started, and the events are set. Here are the TBZ-related events coming up at ORIGINS Game Fair 2009:

6056 Tenra Bansho Zero – Shinobi Ultimatum Lord Buren has made use of your ninja clan for generations. This time, everything falls apart as one betrayer threatens to turn against the lord and destroy the clan. One soulgem-studded samurai hulk, a ninja, an worm-using annelidist and a fearsome cyborg must ferret out the traitor before it’s too late. Experience the first ever English translation of this Hyper-Asian Japanese Role-Playing Game! New players, anime and manga fans welcome. Playtest an upcoming RPG release from Japan. New players welcome.
WED 2:00 PM 3:45
1.45 hours: This session will be “a taste” of the game.

6308 Tenra Bansho Zero – Shinobi Sacrifice Lord Buren has made use of your ninja clan for generations. This time, everything falls apart as one betrayer threatens to turn against the lord and destroy the clan. One soulgem-studded samurai hulk, a ninja, an worm-using annelidist and a fearsome cyborg must ferret out the traitor before it’s too late. Experience the first ever English translation of this Hyper-Asian Japanese Role-Playing Game! New players, anime and manga fans welcome. Playtest an upcoming RPG release from Japan. New players welcome. THU 12:00 PM 3:45

6727 Tenra Bansho Zero – The Ten-Blade Samurai Lord Kagetora has gone too far. His machinations for control of the Dragonscale Territories have consumed too many innocents, and his war plans must be put to an end. One Buddhist monk, a conniving geisha, a sleek mankiller robot, and a female warrior with a sword as long as her body stand against the tide of war. Experience the first ever English translation of this Hyper-Asian Japanese Role-Playing Game! New players, anime and manga fans welcome. This session is a special session of the game, comprising approx 5 hours of play. You will experience a complete full-length campaign of Tenra Bansho Zero from start to finish. The role-play in this event is gonna be turned up to 11. Play a full campaign of an RPG release from Japan. A 5 hour session, run as a complete campaign in one sitting. New players welcome!
FRI 12:00 PM 4:45

While the book won’t be complete by ORIGINS (it’s still in final editing/layout), we will be attending the fair, sharing a booth with Khepera Publishing (makers of the excellent game HELLAS, which I often equate to “Greek Tenra” because of the rules and setting). We’ll have Tenra-related material, and likely a mock copy of most of the completed sections of the book.

Still on road for a 2009 release, gotta update the FAQ from 2007 to 2009. I will do so with much shame. (^.^;

…the preliminary layout is being worked on now. I’ve seen some drafts, and it’s fucking gorgeous. The things that can be done with B&W line art… incredible.
That is all for now.

Hey all: Just in case you see the site go offline for a big, or the blog become unresponsive: I’m moving back-end web storage to a new server. Something always breaks when I do so, so I’m just giving everyone a heads up!

EDIT: And moved! Holy crap that was painless. That’s a first.

…didn’t happen. (^.^;
As for a “pre-release ashcan” for GenCon, I’m afraid those plans were stymied. In the eyeball, with a knife. About a week before the con, I came to the realization that it wasn’t going to happen unless:

* I charged too much for what amounted to a collection of unedited text and notes.
* To make it clean and understandable, with all the rules needed to play the various character archetypes, I’d have had to Not Sleep at all for almost a full week.

Instead, I decided to refocus in the time right before and right after GC finishing the rest of the game text. Another case of us (me) trying to bite off more than we can chew.

However, because I refocused on the game text, more sections have been completed. The only thing left to get together is some of the new notes for rules, and new play notes. I’ve also decided to draft up a few scenario hooks, which will take an evening or two. We are also collapsing the editing and layout into one passthrough, so instead of Writing, Stop, Editing, Stop, Rechecking, Stop, Layout, Print, Publish, we’re doing Writing-Editing-Layout, then Recheck, Print, Publish. While I don’t want to jinx myself, it looks like we’re still in line for a February/March release for the final version of the game.

Also in the news of the wide world of Japanese roleplaying, Maid RPG was released at GenCon 2008. I was involved in this project as a publisher/director (Ewen, who helped translate a few sections of Tenra, was “the man” in charge of translation), but otherwise the games are released by different companies, etc. It was a bittersweet experience, rushing a game through for a GenCon release: Lots of sleepless nights. Also, whereas I wanted Inoue Jun’ichi’s Tenra to be the “First Japanese RPG Ever Released in English”, that honor now goes to Ryo Kamiya’s Maid RPG. Here’s how all this relates to Tenra, though:

* I wanted the experience of publishing a game BEFORE Tenra, so I know what pitfalls to avoid, and what to do right. I wanted to get my feet wet on another project so that we wouldn’t, to use a vulgarity, fuck up the release of Tenra Bansho.
Luckily, it was a real eye-opening experience, and I gained a lot of solid knowledge which I’m applying to Tenra now: Everything from how to promote the game, to things like editing, layout expectations, printing problems, expectations of time and delays, creating and harnessing a Tenra community, and even some thoughts on how to promote Tenra at GAMA/GenCon next year.
* Also, all of the profit I’m making from MAID for my involvement in the project, I’m funneling into the first (expensive) print run of Tenra. The silly/cute Maid RPG is helping fund the release of the dramatic/hardcore game Tenra! This means that we can produce more copies on a lighter budget.

Soon, my major involvement in Tenra will simmer down for a bit (once editing is complete, it’s going to be much int he hands of our layout gurus). When that happens, that’s when I’m going to turn to creating quick-play guides and the like.