Tenra Bansho Zero

I love the setting, I love the Kiai/Aiki economy, I find the combat system so frustratingly boring.

It has all the elements to be this amazing high action roleplaying experience and then the actual combat just devolves into dull roll offs with no actual strategy or decision making. It's such a damn shame.

I have played one session of it after excitedly showing it off to my group, specifically the Lotus Blossom scenario. My players couldn't wrap their heads around the Aiki/Kiai and were too hesitant to spend Kiai on some of the important rolls. The emphasis on one shots turned me off completely even though I gave it a try. Not enough time for my players to get into their characters or become invested in the story. They ended up slaughtered by a Kohngoki before the final scenes.

>>50521810
Man, that kinda sucks. I woulda thought that the Kiai roleplaying stuff would have made for interesting fights.

>>50522009
>They ended up slaughtered by a Kohngoki before the final scenes.
Even with player control over actual death? That's impressive.

>>50521789
My beef with it has always been character generation with impassive GMs - the way any physically inclined character will generally be better than kimenko armour, while meikyo armour is restricted to children unless you bend over backwards to accommodate a clean karma slate. Or the status of oni as native american standins. Or the way you basically can't take the shinto skill above 2 before the description starts making impositions on where your character can go. Etc.

>>50522207
Well I suppose that's the problem with those sorts of GMs.

>>50522330
Yah. I just wish I could find other people to play with.

I've seen people online flip TBZ on its setting's head - turn kingdoms into magocracies with oni at the top, etc. and these other ideas seem to flow better than the original.

Still doesn't fix kimen armour for PCs.

>>50522722
Is it really overpowered or what?

>>50523040
Standard characters split 40 points between attributes. Body, Agility, Senses, Knowledge, Spirit, Empathy & Station; 1-10 each. 3 is human average.

Armour gets 16 to split between Body, Agility, and Senses. 12 if you want something human-sized instead of mecha sized. Meikyo armour gets a flat bonus based on your karma; more = higher bonus, but you pretty much have to be a child to go this route. Kimen armour has more freedom, but you split that 12/16 three ways and that's it.

Ninja, magical samurai, etc all get ways to increase their body / agility / senses - usually all three at once. It's just a horrible choice between cool mecha stuff, being a completely naive child, and sucking like a supercharged vacuum cleaner.

>>50521789
>I'm not sure how I feel about the episodic, one-shot nature of it though. Advancement seems important in a game, I think.
But that's the whole point of TBZ. You get an entire campaign's worth of character development in a single session.

I just don't understand why so many people are opposed to one-shots anyway.
With how difficult it is to get a group together in the first place and then keeping it together being near impossible, I find not having one-shot capability to be a large disadvantage of a system.

>>50522207
>My beef with it has always been character generation with impassive GMs
You mean the thing that the system explicitly points out it doesn't support?

>>50523377
Kimen Armours are fully intended to suck. They're the mass-produced knock-offs of Meikyo Armours. If Kimen Armours could keep up with Meikyo Armours, it would contradict the setting.

>>50524758
>You mean the thing that the system explicitly points out it doesn't support?
Sure, that can be your answer.

>If Kimen Armours could keep up with Meikyo Armours
They don't have to keep up with meikyo armour; they just have to be a better option than going buck fucking naked. You have to be exceptionally focused on your mental attributes for that to be true.

>>50521789
I've got the PDFs and keep meaning to read them over. I remember reading over the rolling and attribute systems and thinking they were pretty ingenious. If I could only remember the specifics of it...

>>50524959
>If I could only remember the specifics of it...
It's like you have the digital means to jog your memory, and probably on the very device you're using to bemoan your forgetfulness ...

>>50521789
I tried to get this rolling with my group, but for a one-shot (which I am GREAT with normally) the world and character creation was too much for them. Looking forward to SHINOBIGAMI. That said, I own the Tenra books and they are gorgeous and cool to pick up and read randomly. I think having a plug and play adventure to run through would have helped.

>>50527106
>Looking forward to SHINOBIGAMI
Truth.

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>>50522207
>Or the status of oni as native american standins.

>>50527886
Indigenous peoples. Whatever. Ease your vice grip on total accuracy.

>>50527924
But the Yamato people literally called them oni. Oni were supposed to be created by exposure to kegare and broken taboos and shit (as in, literal shit could do it). Because groups like the Ainu didn't follow Yamato culture, that meant that their entire people were rolling in oni-juice at all times.
Whenever the Yamato wanted to conquer more land, they'd justify it as "exorcising the land of oni, and returning its people to the correct way of life".

Getting mad about a Japanese game where oni are people is like getting mad about a Roman game where barbarians are people.

>>50527106
>I tried to get this rolling with my group, but for a one-shot (which I am GREAT with normally) the world and character creation was too much for them.
Has anyone ever tried a reskin?

>>50527994
Great. And?

>>50528087
That would be a lot of work, and maybe not super necessary unless you were going way off the ranch of hyper Japan. You can take what you want as a GM from the presented tropes and go. Want to only have Samurai and Kohngoki in the story, that works.

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TBZ works pretty great if you get the players working against each other. Since player characters don't die unless that player decides that it's time, there's ALWAYS a chance to make a comeback.

All of my best games I've run with this were ones where the players were always at one another's throats. (In game. Out of game they thought it was one of the best games they've been in.)

>>50524929
The GM prepares the plot of scenario and determines what kinds of PCs are necessary for that plot to work.
If the GM is not involved in character creation, they're doing it objectively wrong.

Kimen Armours are better than going naked. After all, you can't exactly graft Armour tech onto a living body. They're not limited to the 12/16 point total either, because appearance and gear give bonuses. And you get an extra pool of Vitality and Wounds.

>>50531260
Agreed. If GMs aren't willing to work around things then they need to be involved in character creation, otherwise the game just gets needlessly prescriptive

>>50531260
>Kimen Armours are better than going naked. After all, you can't exactly graft Armour tech onto a living body.
You can get ninja magic / samurai shiki / mechanica tech and do better for the same investment.

>They're not limited to the 12/16 point total either, because appearance and gear give bonuses
Still not an improvement over taking anything other than kimen armour.

>And you get an extra pool of Vitality and Wounds
Again, just not a good PC option unless you put all your points into mental attributes and your PC is physically shite.

>>50535717
Also, don't forget that if you break your kimen armour, it's broken forever.

>While characters can eventually heal their own Dead Box after combat, a Dead Box on an armour or kongohki cannot be recovered during a game session: Tey’re stuck with it for the rest of the game!

>>50535717
I don't think Tenra is really a game that was designed with care for Character Optimization. It's a game about telling a good story and making sure everyone gets involved, has a good time and does cool things.

Maybe you can get better for the same investment number-wise, but it's not a giant fucking robot.

Furthermore, I think it's the GM who sets what characters are required for their Scenario. So saying "But I could take X and it's better than Y" starts and ends with the GM.

>>50532403
It's not about being unwilling to work around things.
The GM, as per the rules, is supposed to come up with a strong scenario. Archetypes and Fates are themselves strong narrative elements that can work against the scenario or be outright incompatible.
This is, by design, pretty much the opposite of a sandbox game.

>>50535717
>>50535813
>You can get ninja magic / samurai shiki / mechanica tech and do better for the same investment.
But not without being born as a disposable tool / undergoing life-threatening surgery to be forever regarded as an inhuman monster / slowly losing your humanity as you replace parts of your living self with cold, dead steel.

>Also, don't forget that if you break your kimen armour, it's broken forever.
So? If you tick a Dead box, you indicate that you're willing to sacrifice that thing, be it your PC or his Armour. Not to mention that Kongohki have the same limitation.

You seem to be labouring under the misconception that TBZ is a sandbox game where every single option is meant to be equally viable on a purely mechanical level.
In case the Karma system and the references to Kabuki theater haven't clued you in, this is an RPG that puts much more emphasis on the "roleplaying" part than the "game" part.
Archetypes are narrative structures first and mechanical structures second. Kimen Riders are the only archetype that allows you to play a genuinely human being other than the magical Onmyoji and the spiritual Monks.
And it's not a trap option either, because the rules and the setting very much spell out that Kimen Armours are strictly inferior to the original Meikyo Armours. The rules also highlight that they lose the Meikyo bonus in exchange for requiring less Station.

And as >>50538584 pointed out, the GM determines what kind of characters are allowed/required at the table.
If you get a Kimen Rider in the middle of a Samurai, a Kongohki and a full Kijin, then the fact that they're still a weak human is relevant to the story.

>>50535813
If you break your Meikyo Armour, it's broken forever, too.

>>50539916
I think I misunderstood, I was talking about on a purely mechanical level. Of course the onus is as much on the players to create characters that fit into the scenario. Sorry!

>>50542383
Wait, which part exactly are you apologizing for?

>>50542506
See when I run games I don't mind having the mechanics a bit looser, for example, friend in a D&D game wanted a giant ball and chain as a weapon, so just had it use the stats of a maul, no big deal. When I said work around I meant in that sort of fashion, making mechanical stuff work better for players, but you were talking more in a purely story context. The story stuff has to be give and take, trying to invent a scenario that accounts for 4 completely different player characters is gonna be contrived at best. I was apologising for misunderstanding, that's all

>>50542506
Has anyone in the thread seen or used a moment of truth? That always seemed badass to me while reading the book. I'm curious to see if it holds up in actual play.

>>50542560
To be fair, I kind of overlooked what came after "impassive GM", because they were complaints about the setting and I don't really understand what an impassive GM has to do with not liking the setting.

>>50542895
oh I'm not that guy. I love the setting.

>>50522207
Yeah, they checked their final boxes and tried to do their final glorious acts but they fucked up all their rolls and they were left in pools of blood while cherry blossom petals fell all around.

I love the setting but the system could use some work.

>>50544211
>they fucked up all their rolls
How did that happen? Did all of them roll all sixes?

I like a lot of this system, and I dislike a lot of this system. I love a lot of the systems, the focus on roleplay and character control...but on the other hand, I hate the setting and the "fates" system. Like backgrounds in 5e, i really hate any part of character creation that reaches in and makes your character have to be a certain way (outside of alignment of course). Also, the way the book is laid out is awful, and the archetypes really need to be in a table, not a list.

>>50544346
>i really hate any part of character creation that reaches in and makes your character have to be a certain way (outside of alignment of course).
So stuff like classes, attribute limits, stat arrays, races, feats, etc.?

Is there an IRC with any kind of active user base that plays TBZ? I need to like, sit down with someone who has the slightest idea how to fucking play this thing. I have the physical books from the KS and I've never been able to satisfactorily figure out how Kiai and Fates interact, and while I could just jump ahead, it offends my sensibilities too much to read the book out of order and without understanding a mechanic. I practically need it explained on a whiteboard or something. I just cannot fucking understand how and what fates do no matter how many times I reread the section.

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>>50544757
Here's your diagram.
For more specific explanations, ask more specific questions.

>>50544211
Did their "blaze of glory" consist of just rolling regular checks without spending Kiai?

>>50528087
There was an "alternate campaign setting" as a stretch goal, iirc, which turned out to be nothing more than a SJW tract talking about how TBZ's default setting and artwork are terribly evil, bad and wrong.