Last year in the flurry of Kickstarters I involved myself in was the one for this game; Tenra Bansho Zero (TBZ) and its now available for general purchase in PDF format (the print books are on a boat from China currently) so I thought now would be a good time to share my thoughts and experiences with the game now that we have managed to play a few sessions (advantage of being a backer)
So what is TBZ?
In simple terms its a narrative and role play focussed Japanese RPG designed to allow you to encapsulate most of the tropes that were common in manga and anime at the time it was produced, so if you like anime and manga that’s a good reason to start looking at it.
However the underlying system is very powerful and the mechanics are intended to be repurposed or re-skinned to suit the needs of your campaign. It can be used to tell everything from simple no magic stories with basic medieval weapons through to hard sic-fi mecha and cyborg stories, or all of those at once (as its default is)! How things look and work are all a matter of description and role play in the game because the way the rules are set up makes this the most important part of the game anyway.
Karma System
The heart of the system is the Karma System which has 4 “moving parts” that are all interconnected, and getting to grips with this part of the system was/is the hardest part for us “old school” gamers used to systems like DnD, Storyteller and L5R. If you are used to systems that have players give “bennies’ or other rewards for RP then your transition to TBZ will be easier.
The four parts of the Karma System are, Karma, Kiai, Aiki and Fates. During a story (adventure) your character gains Aiki and Kiai which are used to get temporary boosts, buy successes and improve your character permanently. Spending Aiki is good and you earn it when you are rewarded for playing your character well and doing cool stuff in the game by other players – its essentially a mechanic tied to rewarding your for making the game fun for everyone. At the end of a session (or perhaps during it) you can turn Aiki into Kiai (its more than a 1 to 1 trade). Aiki and Kiai are used for the same things mostly but Kiai expenditures change your Karma while Aiki do not, so any permanent change to your character is effected through Kiai. This then leads to Karma, if your karma is 108 or higher at the end of an interlude (think extended rest in 4E DnD terms but its not quite the same) your character turns into an NPC monster bent on destroying everything they used to work for (usually starting with the other PCs), if its 0 you also turn into an NPC but its less detrimental to the rest of the party. Which brings us to Fates, fates are the things that drive your character through the story, they can be a goal or even an emotional state, and they help you and others understand how to RP your character. As part of an interlude you can decide that a fate was achieved, that it has become part of your character and no longer drives them, doing this reduces your Karma total and can stop your character from going over the edge into becoming a monster.
The net effect of these four things is that you can make characters that are very powerful at the start of a story, but they risk turning into monsters or not improving much during the story, or you can make a character that is weaker at the start of the story who has a lot of flexibility to do awesome things during the game. The degree of how awesome your character can be is then driven by your RP and participation in the game. Sit back and do nothing and things are going to be dull, get in there and do cool things that make the game fun for everyone and not only is the game more fun but your character gets more powerful, but that power is ultimately balanced by the risk of the PC turning into a monster!
This ultimately sets up a very balanced game, where the game is not balanced by the numbers on the board at any given instant but by the total interaction of the system. This systemic balance then allows great flexibility in individual character power levels and use of the game mechanics to do a wide range of things.
Getting Hurt Is Great!!
Aside from the Karma System the other big thing that makes TBZ an interesting game system that is very different from most other systems is that once the weapons are out and the fighting starts it isn’t bad to get hurt, in fact the more you get hurt the more powerful your character becomes! What makes this even better is that you decide how much you get hurt!. The game has hit points (vitality) and wounds. You can take vitality damage and when you run out of vitality you are unconsious if you take no wounds eventually you will get up dust yourself off and walk away none the worse for wear, which lets you get very heroic/action movie with your injuries if you want. The advantage of vitality damage is no permanent effects, the disadvantage is you don’t get any bonuses.
If you want to get pumped up you need to take a wound, the more dangerous the wound the more of a boost you get, but the harder it is to heal. In fact the highest level of wound you can take is “Dead”, yes you can choose to take a wound that might result in your character being dead at the end of the encounter! That makes the fight a critical moment for the character and symbolises your willingness to die to win this particular fight, rather than necessarily if you took a deadly wound. However because you are prepared to die it is possible for you to win the encounter and still end up dead at the end.
Overall this makes combat all about choices, how do you attack, do you cheer on your friends (there are rules for this), how badly are you hurt? This makes fights a lot more interesting than counting down hit points and just swinging your sword.
Getting Emotional
The final aspect of the rules that are interesting is the Emotion Matrix, whenever your character meets a new (important to the story) person you roll on the Emotion Matrix, a table of possible results that range from “True Love” to “Mortal Enemies” and all sorts of things in between. These are not binding states, they are supposed to give you a starting point for RP. Perhaps you meet the Ninja PC for the first time and you become discomforted, this person gives you a bad feeling, perhaps they are here to kill you? What will you do? How will you roleplay in response to this? Its not a binding thing, you can spend Aiki and Kiai to move the result, or perhaps another player gives you some of their Aiki to get a result, or maybe the GM wants a result and offers you some Aiki to make it more interesting. That’s the key moving it to things that make sense and promote the RP at the same time is far more interesting than just assuming the PCs get along.
For example in our party my ninja, working undercover as a street thug has the following results now:
Yuki aka Light of Heaven: Chains of Fate (for now he must guard her, but their destinies are intertwined)
Matsuba-kai: They Hate You! (the man who sent him on this mission hates him!)
Fellow PCs:
Shiro-Mizu: Admiration – for protecting Yuki (despite his apparent interest)
Hiroshi - Dark-Dreams – A Warning
Tadakuan – Unsettled Mind – what it the truth of the priest?
Tenkawa – Worthy Rival – there is something about him, he may be a worthy rival in attaining my goals.
So my untrusting Ninja on a mission given to him by a man who hates him and wants him dead (blaming my PC for the death of his son) is teamed up with a guy he likes because he protected my PC’s charge, a mysterious priest who could pose a great threat but is travelling with the guy he trusts, a man who he sees as a possible rival (perhaps the man intended to finish my PCs mission once Matsuba-kai has forced him to fail?) and the cyborg monk who leaves him unsettled with dark visions of destruction. Its a bit more interesting than the usual basic “lets all get along and work together” start to a game most parties have!
As a result of all of this in the last game when our air ship was attacked by ninjas (:)) my PC left Tenkawa to face a ninja alone, Tenkawa was either more than capable of killing the enemy or he was not truly a worthy rival. How often does that sort of stuff happen in your DnD game?
Well Worth A Look
Graphically the game is very nice with great consistent work that holds up the anime/manga feel that the authors were aiming for making it visually consistent. Fonts are mostly fairly easy to read and the game is cleanly laid out. The core mechanics are explained on about 3 critical pages, one for basic game play, one for the karma system and one for combat. These pages are actually presented as a comic. If you just printed the comics that explain the rules you could hand them to new players and have them up and running quite quickly.
The dice rolling mechanics of the game are very straightforward making it simple to learn that element of the game allowing you to build system mastery quite quickly. However the real power of the games mechanics come from how they encourage you to RP and make the game interesting, even if some members of the party actually want to kill each other.
Overall it is one of the more interesting systems I have encountered in the last few years and has the flexibility to be the game I and the players want it to be, which is the ideal outcome from an RPG.
You can read more here: http://www.tenra-rpg.com
You can buy it at:
Drive Thru RPG here: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/111713/Tenra-Bansho-Zero%3A-Heaven-and-Earth-Edition
Indie Press Revolution here: http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/product.php?productid=18728&cat=0&featured=Y
Or direct from the publisher’s webstore here: http://kotodama.bigcartel.com/product/tenra-bansho-zero-pdf-version