TEXT: TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  DIRECTOR’S NOTES
  
  INTRODUCTION-IN-BRIEF
  Hey, I’m Andy. I’m the guy who translated and published Tenra Bansho Zero, a role-playing 
  game which you likely own in some capacity (PDF, physical book). Unless you have it, this 
  biography-of-sorts will make no sense, really. Well, maybe one third of it or so.
  Anyway, this Director’s Notes book was meant as a behind-the-scenes look into the game. 
  Over the eight years I’ve worked on TBZ, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about it. Everything 
  from the translation process, to stories behind the rules, to a deeper explanation of some of the 
  concepts in the game. I found myself telling some stories over and over again, and figured it’d be 
  worth writing them down somewhere for others to enjoy as well. In the process, I had a ton more 
  stories bubble up in my mind: The good, bad and strange things that happened over the years, 
  the cool cultural bits that are utterly hidden from the text like the base of an iceberg, and so on.
  If the Tenra Bansho Zero text was a movie, these next pages would be the vignettes I’d be 
  sharing over the Director’s Audio Commentary, reliving the nostalgia of the project perhaps with 
  a drink in hand. I chose this “A-To-Z of Tenra” format because it was the one that triggered the 
  most flashbacks, got me to write with speed and clarity, stories and history and random thoughts 
  spilling from my fingers into my keyboard. I shared as many of the stories I could think of in 
  relation to the book.
  Most of the stories, anyway. I still have a few good ones, but you’ll have to hit me up in person 
  for those.
  Enjoy! If you bought Tenra Bansho Zero in some form, you helped make this happen. Thank 
  you so much!
  
  1
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  A 
  is for Aiki!
  Aiki. What a word! It’s the Aiki of 
  “Aikido”, and the characters reversed form 
  KIAI. It really has no easily transferable meaning in English 
  that doesn’t sound like hippie bulshit: Ai is “meeting/joining/
  fusion” and Ki is “spirit” (Chi in Chinese). So it can be 
  thought of as “the meeting of spirits” or “the meeting of 
  minds”, or sometimes simple “harmony”... if you squint a bit.
  Originally, in the First Localization Pass of 
  long ago, I called Aiki “Harmony”. There 
  was simply a lot of Japanese in the game 
  already, and I wanted to pull the parts 
  that were easily English-ifiable into 
  English, to reduce the stumbling 
  block of having to learn all these 
  new terms we’d be throwing at 
  people (Kijin! Kongohki! etc). 
  Problem is, in playtests and stuff 
  I kept calling it Aiki instead of 
  Harmony by accident. And players 
  just picked up on it, referred to 
  them as Aiki instead of Harmony. So 
  the term stuck.
  Which is probably for the best. I 
  was never entirely satisfied with using 
  the word Harmony in the game. Words 
  like Harmony fit into a category of words that 
  “people say too much when they talk about Japan and 
  Japanese culture without really understanding it.” Harmony! 
  Efficient! Traditional with the Modern! Samurai! It’s a cheap 
  tool to make an already asian-sounding setting sound that 
  much more asian. In the end, the Real Deal - Aiki - proved 
  strong enough to stick in people’s minds.
  A 
  is also for Aiki 
  Chits
  Aiki chits in Japan were traditionally strips 
  of paper. There was a sheet of paper in the book that you 
  could print out and cut up. There was a set of mail-order 
  supplements that were hard cardboard full-color aiki chits 
  in the same format: Long strips about the size of your 
  forefinger, a few mm wide. Honestly, it was just now that I 
  realized that they pretty much look like Mah Jongg betting 
  sticks. Huh.
  Anyway, coins, glass beads and the like make far better aiki 
  chits, though they can weigh a bit to carry around. For the 
  longest time, I used thick clay poker chips: Yellow ones for 
  1s, Black or Red ones for 10s. They have weight, feel sturdy, 
  have an excellent feel for something you give to someone 
  or receive. Only problem with them is that if you’re easily 
  distracted (raises hand), you’ll find yourself playing with 
  them, making them clink together in a stack. Clink. Clink. 
  Clink. It can get really fucking distracting as a GM or player, 
  so just be mindful of that. 
  So, in the Kickstarter campaign, I decided to make these 
  big foam sets of 50 aiki chits (40 of one color, blue for 1s; 10 
  of another color, red for 10s). They turned out to be pretty 
  pricey, well over a dollar per chip. But man, they are awesome. 
  Heavy, sturdy, soft, you can throw them at people when they 
  say something awesome, you can shuffle/juggle them without 
  making any noise. Pretty much any other RPG or board game 
  that has a marker mechanic, I bust these out for that game. 
  I got inspired by this from work, actually.  I sat for a while 
  in a cube near a sales guy, and he had a blue foam poker chip 
  as some kind of giveaway, with our company’s logo on it 
  (company colors are blue-and-white). I knew I had to have 
  a set, and went around online looking for a place that would 
  sell them. It took FOREVER to find one, for some reason 
  they’re a real minor item in the whole “plush/soft 
  corporate giveaway crap” market. In fact, it was 
  half as cheap to write “Tenra Bansho” on 
  BASEBALL-SIZED SPHERES OF THE 
  PLANET EARTH (though much more 
  space) than go with the poker chips. 
  That kinda brings a cool image, 
  though, of some guy role-playing 
  well, getting rewarded with foam 
  earth-spheres, having to herd them 
  in front of him with his arms: 
  The better he role-plays, the more 
  unweildy spheres he receives and 
  thus has to herd with his arms so 
  they don’t fall on the floor or roll 
  all over. So role-playing too much 
  becomes a handicap, as it’s hard to give 
  a dramatic speech when you’re hunched 
  over 20 woblbling, randomly-moving spheres 
  you’re trying to prevent from rolling away.
  A 
  is also for Asura!
  Asura - 修羅 - “Shura” in Japanese. 
  Asura is basically a kind of Buddhist/hindu 
  devil, powerful and rich of emotion. In the game, once you 
  go over 109 you don’t actually grow demon horns and shit, 
  you just go “dark Jedi”. But hey, maybe in your game they do, 
  that might be interesting.
  While in most of my games the “Asura limit” is thought of 
  (rightfully!) as “A wall one should not breach”, I’ve had a few 
  characters go asura usually in the very last scene or as their 
  epilogue moment. Usually it only happens if it really fits the 
  story. Since the game lasts like 1-3 sessions, the taboo against 
  going Dark Jedi and retiring from play isn’t as strong.
  I consulted with the rules designer Endo Takuji (and 
  bystander-designer Yano Shunsaku of DoubleCross to 
  lend his opinion, being a huge fan of the game) to get his 
  feedback: Have you actually had a character go full asura in 
  play before the last scene? Did they retire? What happened at 
  the table? Seems that in the end, becoming an asura before 
  the last few scenes or so is pretty hard unless you are gunning 
  for it like there’s a console game “Achiement” on the line. In 
  the end, we discussed some options like “letting the player 
  play their character, but as an antagonist”, “letting the player 
  play a side character”, etc. All solid options.
  In the end, asura-ization (it’s a word now!) shouldn’t be 
  thought of as a goal, it should be thought of as Getting 
  Cancer. But sometimes it really works for the story-at-hand. 
  See how it comes about at your table.
  
  2
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  B 
  is for Buddhism
  Wow. I could really kind of go on and 
  on and on on this topic. There’s so many 
  interesting sub-topics to explore!
  My own stuff: I’m an atheist who acts like a Buddhist. I 
  normally say I’m Buddhist, as I follow the traditions of my 
  wife and family in Japan, which is basically “being culturally 
  Japanese”.  I studied under one of the foremost Buddhist 
  academic scholars in the US (who also happened to be a cruel 
  but fair grader), so I know my scripture, don’t get me wrong 
  (pounded into me through tests and papers in college, I was 
  a double-major, one of those was Philosphy with an Eastern 
  focus). But in reality, I’m actually still Buddhist (thought, act 
  and deed), though don’t really believe any of the higher-level 
  spiritual and mystical stuff.
  Don’t be fooled, Zen practitioners will 
  tell you that there is no spiritual stuff to 
  Buddhism, but that’s a specific belief branch 
  that applies to Zen, doesn’t apply to all the 
  other sects of Buddhism all over asia.
  * Buddhism in Japan
  I’ve heard the purest, “to the scripture” 
  version of Buddhism is found in Sri 
  Lanka, followed closely by Thailand. In 
  Japan, it’s kind of a messy thing though. 
  Lots of sects, lots of sub-sects, lots of 
  in-fighting (not physical, just ideological) 
  that happened centuries and millennia ago, 
  that are pretty much over. What emerged is a 
  cultural Buddhism that is kind of a mash-up 
  of all three Buddhist traditions (Mahayana, 
  Theravada, Esoteric/Mikkyo), where some 
  certain ceremonies and observances are 
  made usually around holidays and the death 
  of relatives, but otherwise it’s more of a 
  background noise than a capital-R “Real” 
  religion for Westerners.
  For example, I’ve seen the following exchange 
  happen a lot in front of me:
  Western person: What religion are you?
  Japanese person: I’m Buddhist!
  Western: Oh! What do you do?
  Japanese person: … ….Hm?
  Western: Like, what do you do in Buddhism? Where do 
  you go on Sundays?
  Japanese: ...Go? 
  In effect, someone in the west can ask someone openly 
  about their religion (and in all the cases I witnessed, it was a 
  genuine curiosity, not a lead in to sell them on Christianity or 
  something), and if the person is Christian, Jewish, Hindu or 
  Muslim, they can reply with:
  * The tenets of their faith
  * What they “do”: Basically what they do in their religious 
  observances. Stuff they avoid, like taboos (treyf, haram, etc)
  * Where they “go” (temple, church, mosque, etc), or at 
  least where they would go if they were serious practitioners.
  But in general, you have to “do something” for your faith. 
  Go somewhere, do something, etc.
  Not so much in Japan. No one really “does anything” for 
  their faith (restrict themselves, go somewhere weekly) outside 
  of funeral observances and the like. People that actually DO 
  do something for their faith are either:
  * Actual Buddhist priests (or Shinto shrine-keepers)
  * Totally suspicious people, likely in a cult of some kind
  The latter is, of course, a stereotype, though one with a lot 
  of real news and incidents to back it up. Though there are 
  real Buddhist communities like Soka Gakkai which do meet 
  up and Do Things, aren’t really a cult, but have historically 
  organized against the government on occasion and thus are 
  viewed with suspicion from members of the government. A 
  friend of my wife, she wanted to marry this guy. His family 
  was Soka Gakkai (and again, pretty much all these guys are 
  are Buddhists who Actually Go To “Chuch” and stuff, they’re 
  not worshipping sleight-of-hand artists or gas-attacking 
  subways), her family was mostly police and government 
  officials, and her family wouldn’t allow it. I forget how that 
  turned out.
  But anyway, Soka Gakkai aside, folks who actually Do 
  Things and Go Places (outside of nationally recognized 
  cultural events) for their faith are viewed as suspicious 
  cultists (Buddhist, Chirstian, Jehovah’s Witness, 
  Animist or otherwise). Which... well... okay, I’ll stop 
  there.
  It’s interesting to come back and live in 
  America after staying in culturally-Buddhist 
  Japan for years. Some strange little 
  observances.
  * I’ve met a not insignificant amount 
  of people who say that they are 
  Buddhist (usually Zen), which is 
  interesting. The depth beyond that 
  statement being almost exactly the 
  same depth as the Japanese “non-
  culty” people I met who say that 
  they were Christian. Which is cool, no 
  reason to really stay tied to traditions 
  and teachings and doctrines and history 
  and stuff. Still, I think a more proper term 
  for both sides is “I *have a real interest 
  in* X”, until you at least dedicate yourself 
  to learning at least one actual simple phrase, 
  prayer, line from a sutra or passage from the 
  Bible.
  * I’m actually really impressed by some 
  of the temples I’ve visited in the US. The 
  communities are cool, laid back people looking 
  for something more. They run pretty kick-ass 
  meditation retreats, which I think is a good thing for people 
  of all beliefs and backgrounds. I’m surprised that at points 
  many US folk take on Japanese/Chinese monk names, but I 
  guess that’s the black belt of being a monk.
  * I have encountered a few hardcore Buddhists who 
  declare that they were seeking something more than the 
  system of rites, forms, traditions and beliefs of their familial 
  western religion. Then they found Buddhism, and now 
  adhere to the system of rites, forms, traditions and beliefs of 
  that instead.
  * I joined a few Buddhist internet message forums back 
  in the day, looking to discuss belief and meditation. I found 
  a lot of heated arguing, fighting, name-calling and the like, 
  completely unhinged from the noble eightfold path... Oh 
  well, it’s not like Buddhism would be the one religion that 
  would be free of that crap.
  Overall, I’ve had positive experiences with Buddhism most 
  places I’ve been, and the bad ones were usually do to people-
  
  3
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  issues. I guess that makes it... well... like every other religion 
  out there in those regards I guess, eh?
  * Buddhism in Tenra
  There’s three sects! That’s pretty cool, and I really loved 
  that aspect to the game. Sure, in advanced versions of D&D 
  you can pick which God/dess you believed in and that can 
  give your cleric a few different spells, but for the most part 
  religion in western games has been pretty one-sided; “You’re 
  a cleric”. In games that featured Japanese culture, you could 
  often be a Buddhist monk. A monk of Buddhism. The one 
  single Buddhism in all of Japan. Heh.
  Other games set in a faux Japan, you could be a Buddhist-
  esque-monk-analogue. They study scrolls, walk around 
  without shirts on, throw fireballs and have tattoos which turn 
  them into tigers and dragons. Rawr!
  Well, in Japan they sort of catered to various sensibilities 
  in the monks portrayed, using sects and beliefs to really set 
  them apart.
  * The Phoenix order is the classical “cloistered monk 
  who studies sutras” archetype of the Theravada monk. 
  Robes, meditation, sutras and prayer. Some of them know 
  the esoteric arts which let them communicate with or pacify 
  spirits and ghosts, heal with a touch, and shoot spirit energy 
  balls.
  * The Ebon Mountain order is the Fist of the North Star 
  slash Street Fighter slash Shorinji/Shaolin martial artists, with 
  a belief system which makes it make sense for them to be 
  wandering around learning murder arts while helping people 
  (Mahayana). The heretical monks or monks who worked 
  closely with their community in Japan.
  * The Bright Lotus sect is really interesting. I mean, 
  looking at the above, that split makes sense: How to have the 
  cloistered book-worm magic monks and the kung fu monks? 
  Make them different belief systems and backgrounds. Yup. 
  Makes sense. So what are the Bright Lotus sect supposed to 
  represent, with their strong underground base and simple 
  belief system? Hippies? 
  Nope, they’re basically an analogue of the history of the 
  Pure Land (Jodo Shu/Jodo Shinshu) sect in Japan, right down 
  to them being treated with suspicion during the feudal era, 
  and the simple “say this and you’re set” mantra. Look up Pure 
  Land/Jodo Buddhism, heck even Wikipedia has a decent 
  article on them. Might give you an interesting perspective 
  on them, enough to make you want to have them in your 
  game. Which I think is important, because they’re believers 
  who believe DESPITE not being able to shoot fireballs or 
  break stones with their fists. In a game, where everyone could 
  take the role of a walking weapons platform, that’s pretty 
  intriguing!
  * Back to Buddhism in Japan...
  Anyway, I mentioned a few times that Japan is kind of a 
  mashup of junk when it comes to religion and Buddhism 
  and the like. The best historical record of how this came to 
  pass is in Sakaiya Taichi’s book “Taiyaku Nihon wo Tsukutta 
  Juuninin”/”The Twelve People who Made Japan” (you can 
  import a Japanese/English bilingual version online, very cool 
  biography, extremely popular in Japan), who traces it back to 
  the actions of Prince Shotoku (Shotoku Taishi), who back 
  in the year 600 or so was pretty much responsible for the 
  upholding and growth of Shinto, the native beliefs of Japan. 
  When Buddhism appeared, rather than do what traditionally 
  happens in these situations like “buckle down and drive it 
  off ”, “start a religious war to crush or stomp it out”, etc, he 
  publicly came out and said, “Yeah, Buddhism’s pretty cool. 
  Now we’re THAT, too.” Or more specifically, “We’re Shinto, 
  but our *religion* is Buddhism.” 
  That level of acceptance made it really easy for relatively 
  bloodless entry of various religions (they saved the blood for 
  power/land wars in the feudel era), as well as when schisms 
  within Buddhism eventually happened. 
  Cut several thousand years to make a long story of 
  Religion in Japan short: 
  “I’m Christian!” says the Shinto Buddhist.
  B 
  is also for Bows
  Bows (bows and arrows, not “bowing at 
  the hips”) don’t appear much in the game 
  other than in the weapon list. In the setting, pretty much 
  gunpowder rifles have replaced them. Feel free to make a 
  campaign that takes place a generation or more earlier before 
  the gunpowder revolution. Also, if you want to hack Tenra 
  and set it in Tenjiku (mythic India), to keep the cultural theme 
  you won’t find katanas and soulgem swords there, instead 
  there will be massive, beautiful crimson steel/soulgem bows.
  B 
  is also for Baian 
  the Assassin
  Baian the Assassin - 仕掛人藤
  枝梅安 - Ken Watanabe! Hashizume Isao! What a friggin’ 
  awesome show, and like extremely inexpensive to buy the full 
  collector’s set on Amazon.com. You really need to get this. 
  The first episode is two hours and a little drawn out, but all 
  the rest are awesome and tight. I’ve gotten everything from 
  Names of NPCs to Descriptions of Locations to even some 
  plot points from this series.
  Also, the original book/story series it’s based off was 
  written by Ikenami Shotaro, who was like the Robert E 
  Howard of Japan with his highly pulp-like fantastical tales of 
  old Edo: Assassins, Ninjas, Samurai, oh my! He also wrote the 
  book which Basilisk: Koga Ninpouchou was based on, which 
  also (the original work, that is) totally influenced Ninja Scroll 
  as well. If there’s something you like from anime, manga or 
  movies that has anything to do with assassins or ninjas, there’s 
  a high chance it was based off a work of Ikenami Shotaro. 
  
  4
  http://www.tenra-rpg.com/
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  Sometimes, though, discussions of Buddhism through 
  the lens of gaming actually lend to a mutual sharing of 
  knowledge and ideas, and ultimately understanding!
  [From Oscar S, reprinted with his permission]
  Finally got to begin reading my pdf of the TBZ game and came to discover a faux pas. On page 50, you placed a sidebar 
  discussing Karma in Buddhism and labeled it as bad, without stating this was for purposes of the TBZ game. 
  As a real world practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism I can tell you the commentary is, at best, a gross generalization, and, at worst, a 
  falsehood in describing Karma. Shakyamuni maintained that what makes a person noble or humble is not birth but one’s actions. Therefore 
  the Buddhist doctrine of karma is not fatalistic. Rather, karma is viewed not only as a means to explain the present, but also as the potential 
  force through which to influence one’s future. Mahayana Buddhism holds that the sum of actions and experiences of the present and previous 
  lifetimes are accumulated and stored as karma in the depths of life and will form the framework of individual existence in the next lifetime. 
  Buddhism therefore encourages people to create the best possible karma in the present in order to ensure the best possible outcome in the 
  future. 
  Within the world of TBZ I would have no problem accepting Karma as bad, but I am saddened that most readers will not know real world 
  truth from game fiction.
  -=-=-=-=-=-
  [My response]
  Hey Oscar, thanks for your feedback!
  First off, I’m working on that “Director’s Cut Book” thing where I post notes about the behind-the-scenes of 
  the game. Do you mind if I actually quote your letter below, in order that the players/readers of the game get 
  a deeper, more nuanced understanding that “karma doesn’t mean just one thing to all schools?” I think it’s 
  important to share knowledged views outside of my own, and I think this is a great start.
  Anyway, good stuff! 
  However, there’s a couple things going on: 
  1) The author comes from a background more rooted in Shingon and Soto/Zen sects, vs 
  . We all know what Dogen thought about karma (basically discussions of its metaphysicality 
  were a waste of time and “not buddhism”, just rather taking its cues straight from 
  the heart sutra in regards to action/goh/karma). Nichiren isn’t as popularly known/
  practiced here it seems, more folks in general are familiar with the vajrayana schools 
  of Japanese-style Buddhism, which of course are aimed at personal vs world 
  enlightenment. 
  In most of the avjrayana and esoteric schools like shingon, and even the “out with 
  the metaphysical” schools of Zen, there’s a real strong attitude of goh (業), namely the 
  physical 身業, 口業 and 意業 (I forget what these are in English; “karma/acts of the 
  body, speech and will?”) being the things that lead to the the path of suffering.
  So, he just didn’t really consider every angle to all schools’ views on karma. Inoue 
  definitely wasn’t a scholar of Buddhism, he just knew what he knew and did probably 
  just a little more research to solidify it, but not enough to appease all sects views of 
  how karma worked (and its importance).
  Ultimately, I think Shakyamuni’s interpretation of karma stands in the game/
  writing as-is, it doesn’t say anything to the fatalistic-ness of karma (in fact, you 
  change it only through action).
  But the more fatalistic view of karma that comes from Hinduism, that there’s like this 
  “original karmic sin”, and you can get better karma from doing good things, and bad karma 
  from doing bad things, and that cycle doesn’t take you further away from suffering but 
  instead just determines what happens after you die (or to yourself in this life) is definitely 
  the view of Karma that most westerners are exposed to. That view really had to be stomped 
  out, I felt, by really calling a dramatic difference between the two (*general*, mind! We 
  already see how various sects take the beliefs in different ways) belief systems so that 
  there was no confusion. In play, folks would say things like, 
  
  5
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  “How do I build up my “Good Karma”?” 
  “If I do “good things” like kill monsters and evil people, will that lower my “Bad Karma”?” 
  stuff like that. 
  I needed to really instill some Four Noble Truths (in the form of the vajrayana sect view of 業/goh to get folks not to focus on the Hinduism 
  view of karma.
  Ultimately, hacking the game to a more mahayana/nichiren spin probably wouldn’t be hard at all (just a careful balance of good/bad acts, and 
  what things constitute them: “Is violence a bad act if it ultimately destroys true evil?” etc. And if the vajrayana/zen (soto, mind) view of karma is 
  kind of a show stopper, I’d really urge you to, in your game, DEFINITELY hack it to suit your beliefs if it helps you find that easier to work with. If 
  you do, I strongly urge you to please give me your notes, I would absolutely be happy to host them.
  I’m not a huge practitioner (I don’t go to temples outside of sightseeing and traditional services within my (Japanese) wife’s family), but 
  I’ve done a lot of research on various schools of Buddhism (mostly mikkyo and some zen; but I’m kind of a zen debunker, there’s so much 
  misinformation about zen going around), and always welcome the chance to talk to another scholar!
  -=-=-=-=-=-=-
  Oscar was a great, stand-up fellow, and we followed up by thanking each other for our comments and participation.
  Oscar’s comments hold real weight, though: Buddhism is deep and varied; every country and culture has different practices and methods, 
  and even within one culture (like Japan) something called “Buddhism” can be very different from sect to sect. The meanings of the terms, 
  and their importance, varies dramatically as well! (Scholarly Buddhists will maintain that there’s no such thing as “heaven” or “going to 
  heaven”, at least not as a thing of real concern for the faith; and yet a lot of texts reference “heaven”, and even laypeople will commonly say 
  that the ultimate goal of ending suffering is not annihilation but “getting into heaven”).
  While the author of the game Inoue Junichi says “Seriously, guys, don’t sweat the details of culture and beating yourselves up about 
  “getting it right” if it’s going to prevent you from having fun.”
  But at the same time, don’t think that you “get it”, that you can jump into a discussion of Buddhism (culture, practice, beliefs, etc) based 
  on the limited information presented in the game book alone. Get out there and read! Even Wikipedia is surprisingly scholastic as an entry-
  level text to Buddhism and Buddhism in Japan. And movies like Zen (2009) about the life of Dogen Kigen are solid in the basics of history 
  and practice as well.
  
  6
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  C 
  is for Cluney 
  comma Ewen
  Ewen Cluney is awesome. Long story short 
  (you can read the long version in his book “Yaruki Zero”, 
  it’s interesting! You can also get it on Amazon), he translated 
  most of the Maid Role-Playing Game. I helped a little, did the 
  eventual (re)localization, and published it. Ewen was testing 
  out what it meant to be a translator, and I was testing out 
  what it means to be a game publisher. We were both looking 
  to cut our teeth. 
  It worked out well. While it pushed back Tenra-work about 
  half a year, I got to explore everything from managing a book 
  production project, to seeing all the aspects of layout, writing, 
  and printing. Then, the other side of the project, publishing, 
  managing print and electronic book copies, working with a 
  fanbase, handling feedback. All in all, a great experience (filled 
  with potholes of crappy stuff, but whatever, that’s life), and 
  it couldn’t have been done without Ewen Cluney coming up 
  to me saying, “Hey, that crazy “Maid RPG” you and I have, I 
  translated it to run at a convention! Want to see?” 
  C 
  is also for Curry 
  Doria 
  This is my meal of choice for Sunday 
  afternoons or early dinner, when I’m on a writing or 
  translating bender. Maximized ease of cooking vs taste. You 
  need:
  Delicious fresh vegetables: Standard is onions, green 
  peppers, potatoes, maitake mushrooms (if available), maybe 
  small tomatoes. Cube them all up so that you have like one 
  to two fistfulls of vegetables. If you have time, sautee them 
  plain in a pan for a few minutes.
  Cooked Rice: Rice cooker rice is okay, but pressure cooker 
  rice is the friggin best. Seriously. If you’re thinking about 
  buying a rice cooker, but you already have a good pressure 
  cooker, STOP, You’re Done. Better rice and in only 5 mins.
  Shredded cheese: Any blend will do. I prefer just a very 
  light amount of white cheddar or mexican blend.
  You can cut up some sausage or veggie-burger if you want. 
  and mix it in. I prefer straight veg, but sometimes some spicy 
  or fruity sausage is nice.
  Ready-made curry rice pouch: Go to your local asian/
  Japanese market. Of the big three (Golden Curry, Vermont 
  Curry, Java Curry), Java medium is my fave, but if you can 
  find other brands, or minor brands, aim for those. You might 
  hit something crazy-awesome.
  Get an oven-safe bowl. Dump in a standard rice-bowl of 
  cooked rice. Throw the vegetables on top of that. Then, the 
  curry sauce on top. Cook it at 400 degrees (200 celcius) for 
  15-20 minutes.
  Then, take the bowl out, drop the cheese all over the top, 
  and cook again at the same temp for another 10 minutes.
  OISHII!
  C 
  is also for Crane 
  comma Luke
  A good friend for almost 10 years now, 
  Luke was at the wrong place at the wrong time: That being 
  the GenCon where I told friends I was translating the game, 
  upon which he told me that he would love to do the layout.
  Now, he curses my name in his sleep.
  Luke’s an awesome human being (extremely kind and 
  generous when people aren’t poking him with a stick online), 
  a whirlwind of perfection and layout power. He had a vision 
  for the book, and hot damn did he pursue it like a madman. 
  He ended up discarding two layout drafts before finishing 
  his final vision of the game, which took him several weeks/
  months of straight, solid, no-nonsense work to get it as good 
  as it was.
  Luke’s designed a number of role-playing games, like 
  Burning Wheel, Burning Empires, Mouseguard, and 
  Freemarket. Personally, Freemarket is my favorite because I 
  love transhumanist science fiction and imagining what future 
  societies and culture would be like. If you like long-form 
  fantasy (running long games over several weeks/months/
  years), definitely give Burning Wheel a look. I helped out on 
  the Kamakura-era supplement for it called “The Blossoms 
  are Falling” (mostly the items on Buddhism/Shintoism). It’s 
  the only Non-Sengoku, Non-Edo, Japanese historical setting 
  out there: The rise of the samurai, basically.
  D 
  is for Diaper Girl
  That’s the affectionate name we’ve called 
  the character on the front cover of the slipcase 
  book, the original Japanese version of Tenra Bansho Zero. 
  In reality, that dress is based on a the kimono of a classic 
  kimono that Kunoichi (female ninja) used to wear. If you 
  go to a cheesy historical theme park like Edo Wonderland 
  Ise or Nikko Edomura, you’ll see a ninja show or a tour of a 
  trapdoor-laden ninja housse by women in outfits like these, 
  though for some reason classically they’re purple. There’s a 
  reason for purple, I just haven’t learned why yet. 
  Oh, except those ninja shows don’t feature gun-swords as 
  big as people. Otherwise, I would never leave.
  Anyway, due to licensing and legalities and things and stuff, 
  that was the cover, we couldn’t change it (even though the girl 
  was a layer of the cover that could be removed) for aesthetic 
  and legal reasons. The folks at FEAR, who I have a lot of 
  love for, were extremely open to changes in the game text and 
  rules and content, but the art was the one point that was not 
  negotiable. In America, which is far more conservative on 
  what goes on the covers of books, there was a real sentiment 
  (from both strangers and friends!) of being uncomfortable 
  to imagine carrying the book around town or on public 
  transport.
  It’s not an accident that the covers of the softcover books 
  *inside the slipcover* feature a different centerpiece. That 
  was our compromise. 
  
  7
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  D 
  is also for Dunlap 
  comma Drew
  My best friend since childhood and the 
  Original Assassin from ‘Nam, together we broke down the 
  heavy doors of this hobby and marched right in. Take good 
  care of Seth, he’s an awesome kid.
  D 
  is also for 
  D-Addicts Dot Com
  The sponsor of my ongoing Japanese 
  language listening education and upkeep for many, many 
  years now. If only more J-dramas were legitimately available 
  over the web via Hulu, Crunchyroll or similar service... 
  One may dream... Dream that Japanese traditional media 
  conglomerates get their heads out of their butts and join the 
  21st century.
  Anyway, until that time comes, Japanese television dramas, 
  with their short seasons and complete stories, with their range 
  from “crap starring crappy idols” to “historical dramas” to 
  “bizarre but awesome late-night conceptual dramas”, there’s 
  at least something each season that a language learner is 
  bound to find compelling enough to watch for several hours, 
  keeping up their listening skills.
  E 
  is for Eight Years
  Eight years ago, I worked at a company (I’ll 
  just make up a word, and refer to them as Sisco 
  Cystems) known for creating internet routers and switches, 
  doing deep-level support. It was a good day’s work, I wasn’t... 
  too... bored. But some of the work was repetitive, so it left 
  me with time to think and plan. It wasn’t so exhausting, so 
  I would come home and be ready for my Second Day: For 
  a time, when we were poor as shit, I would work a night job 
  as well. But over time, I no longer needed to, and thoughts 
  turned to game design and translation of games. 
  Right around that time, Kenneth P contacted me (see 
  P) and we blasted off. 
  Contacted FEAR, DING, 
  scored the rights. Awesome. 
  At this rate, I’d have the 
  translation done in less than 
  two years, considering how 
  much free time I had at 
  nights.
  ...but then traged...er, 
  AWESOMENESS struck. 
  A few months later I 
  scored a job at the storage 
  computing company where 
  I work today. An awesome 
  job, much more interesting 
  than my previous one. A 
  job where literally I spend every day working and learning 
  for 10 hours a day or more, a job involving so much daily 
  learning that I would wager people would pay to work here 
  just to get the knowledge and experience. Anyway, awesome 
  things.
  Except for hobbies, namely the hobby activity of the 
  translation of Japanese RPGs. The new job and learning 
  took its toll, daily: I quickly understood why most of my 
  colleagues took on the hobby of installing/watching satellite 
  TV: You get to a point where your brain just can’t learn more, 
  you can’t do anything more in front of a PC; you’re *done*. 
  That’s where I was for a few months as I got up to speed 
  started learning my job. Then, things got under some control, 
  and I found more time to translate. Awesome! Then I got a 
  promotion. And more responsibilities. Then moved teams. 
  Then switched specialties. Then switched teams again to a 
  superteam, which was a huge pile of new responsibilities. 
  Then switched specialties again to the single hardest 
  specialty in support-computing (performance). Then another 
  promotion. And team switch. And another team switch. 
  And now, as I write this, yet another team switch to the team 
  which the future of this company rests on: A rich, deep, OS 
  with tons of features and a depth so utterly deep not even 
  light can escape.
  And I love it! Man, I love the work (owning solid work, 
  seeing it through to completion! What a rush!), the company, 
  the co-workers, good stuff all around. But it is brutal on 
  hobby time. Bru. Tal. Long hours in front of a computer 
  mean that I often get home after 9, 10, 12, on rare occasions 
  14+ hours with zeeeeeeeero desire to look at a screen, much 
  less spend more hours typing/”working” in front of one. If I 
  sit in front of a screen after a long day of work, it’s to control 
  a hero as he shoots evil in the face for XPs.
  So that’s the underground story of why things took eight 
  years instead of two, as I originally planned.
  There was some good sides to all that time lag, though! 
  * First off, all this Kickstarter stuff was a huge boon to 
  self-publishing. 
  * In those 8 years I never stopped running sessions of it at 
  cons and the like. That was a lot of seed time to get the word 
  out about the game, though it was also frustrating to make 
  new fans wait that much longer.
  * I got to cut my teeth with publishing Maid, to avoid 
  crappy potholes that could have sunk the game or made 
  things a lot worse.
  * The biggest dodged bullet was that the game is coming 
  out at all! Several years ago, I signed a contract to publish 
  the game through a solid RPG company known at the time 
  for releasing anime-themed games, and even had the Game 
  of Thrones RPG license. A year after that was signed, the 
  company collapsed, all product lines dead, all contracts 
  locked or severed, all books printed but rotting, unsellable, 
  in warehouses. That could have been the fate of Tenra if I 
  didn’t change jobs, and wasn’t as much of a lazy shit as I am!
  Speaking of changing jobs, 
  
  8
  http://www.tenra-rpg.com/
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  E 
  is for a three-
  letter-long 
  company I used 
  to work at that began 
  with E
  Don’t get me wrong, that job I had when I scored the 
  rights to Tenra wasn’t a classic shit job, the kind where you’re 
  so bored that you do hobby shit, writing, or game design at 
  work because work is boring or dumb. No, that was what 
  I was doing at my job previous to that, when I worked at... 
  okay just checked they no longer exist... EXY (that’s not their 
  real name, but they started with an E. A one-time presidential 
  candidate was the man who founded this company, but 
  admittedly in his day as CEO it was an solid, industrious, and 
  honorable place to work, not a grey, tasteless mashed up paste 
  of a business/information company). Man, what a shithole.
  When I came back to the US in the early 2000s, I was 
  looking to crawl into a professional field - IT/Computers - 
  that was collapsing in on itself at the end of the bubble, with 
  people in that industry trying to crawl their way out. I had a 
  wife, three cats, a car, and a few thousand dollars saved up 
  in Japan which was hemorrhaging out as I looked for work. 
  For about a year I had to work 2-3 jobs at once (only one of 
  them remotely computer/technical-related), and at the same 
  time I put my car up as collateral against a loan to go to a 
  local school for more technical training to get back into the 
  workforce.
  EXY hired big in the area for new folks looking to get 
  into the industry. They were basically a business casual meat-
  grinder for the soul. They didn’t so much use you up and 
  spit you out as assimilate you, make you do boring busywork 
  while telling you that the interesting work--the work you 
  joined the company on the expectation of doing--would be 
  coming soon. Soon, don’t worry about it. Real soon now. 
  Then fired you when numbers looked bad.
  I was part of a small team which was comprised of people 
  who left a shittier, larger team, so for the most part they were 
  okay. The job was easy and boring. Every time I tried to start 
  projects to automate manual aspects of the job, to correct 
  broken data, to write documentation, research potential cost-
  saving replacement systems, etc, I was told that wasn’t my job, 
  and that I should just stick to my job. Don’t get me wrong, it’s 
  nice to be paid a salary of an 8-hour day for at most 90-120 
  minutes of work. I spent a lot of my day surfing RPGNet 
  and other RPG hobby or technical forums. It was that time 
  that led me to get interested in possibly publishing or writing 
  RPGs in the future. 
  I was already cashed out, but the wake-up call was when 
  I got called into my manager’s office. I was wearing white 
  socks one day (all my blacks were in the wash, I didn’t think 
  anyone would notice). And our business casual dress code 
  clearly stated that only black socks were allowed at EXY. In a 
  position/area where clients never, ever appear. 
  “Just make sure it doesn’t happen again, or there will be 
  consequences.”
  “Absolutely. It won’t happen again.”
  I went back to my desk, found that much better job, quit 
  that place within a week.
  They were a great springboard, though.
  E 
  is also for 
  Emotion Matrix
  The emotion matrix (in Japanese “Kaikou 
  Matrix” or “Reaction Matrix”) was the first thing I stumbled 
  upon back when I picked up my copy of Tenra Bansho Zero 
  in Japan back in 2001 or so, that struck me as special. That 
  TBZ wasn’t just another bog-standard “stas and skills” RPG 
  with some pretty Japanese-themed window dressing. It would 
  be later when I would stumble upon the Karma and Zero Act 
  systems which clearly distinguished itself from other games, 
  but the first thing I clearly remember seeing that led me to 
  think something interesting was going on was the Emotion 
  Matrix. I remember what I remember thinking the first time I 
  understood the implications and rules surrounding it:
  “... … ...wut?”
  For real, the Emotion Matrix was kind of a paradox in 
  roleplaying, and it took me a little bit to actually understand 
  what it was saying. “You... don’t control... what your character 
  feels?” That’s sort of anathema to classical role-playing, 
  which pretty much has at its core “You control everything 
  about what your character does and feels”. It was a pretty 
  new idea, even in Japan. And admittedly, even as the emotion 
  matrix determined “how your character feels about another 
  character”, you ultimately have control over the results by 
  spending kiai. Still, pretty weird.
  But I was into ‘pretty weird’, when it came to gaming.
  
  9
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  One thing I noticed as I started playing in America, 
  though, with other friends that were into ‘pretty weird’ games: 
  Many friends  wanted the “Punch me in the gut, I’ll show you 
  what I’m made of” experience of sticking to whatever result-
  -no matter how strange or far-fetched--that the emotion 
  matrix presented and taking it as a personal skill challenge. 
  Don’t get me wrong, accepting a challenge is awesome, and 
  can really help you push your RP skills. Plus, since the game 
  only lasts 1-3 sessions or so, strange role-playing twists aren’t 
  that big of a deal since you’re not stuck with them for weeks 
  or months or play.
  Still, as a GM there were a few times where I had to pry 
  players into settling on a more appropriate emotion. The 
  system of buying with Kiai and giving Aiki offsets the totally 
  nonsensical results that may happen from time to time (“I 
  feel that my young daughter... wants to kill me?”), and in 
  Japan it’s a total natural thing to say “Hmmm, I’m up for a 
  challenge, or a twist, but this result really doesn’t make much 
  sense for my concept of this character. But that result seems 
  pretty cool, so I’ll spend Kiai to take that result.” But for a 
  time, when playing with friends, it seemed like the emotion 
  matrix was a wheel-of-fortune of challenges, like a game 
  show result: “You rolled X, you get X. Your challenge is to 
  play it. The end.”
  Anyway, just remember as you play, not to treat it as a 
  straightjacket. It’s just to provide a spark. Still, challenges can 
  be fun. 
  F 
  is for Fuck You, 
  2ch Anonymous 
  Dipshit
  Smug assholes are universal!
  When I originally announced the rights to Tenra and 
  eventual release, it made some waves in the Japanese RPG 
  community as well, including on 2ch, the largest internet 
  message board in the world, kind of a giant Yggdrasil-sized 
  mind toilet. Anyway, over on 2ch, there was a lot of interest, 
  some fanfare, a few flamewars about how awesome/shitty 
  FEAR games were (including “Don’t get me wrong, I like 
  FEAR games, I just hate the people who play them”). I didn’t 
  participate in any of these discussions, I just watched them, 
  and in the process learned a little too much about Japanese-
  style anonymity-driven sarcasm, ennui, memespeak, and other 
  general internet bullshit.
  Anyway, there were some smarmy anonymous turds 
  (anonymous people being anonymous; they just happened 
  to be Japanese RPGers) taking potshots at the potential 
  audience for the game. 
  One person was convinced that no one outside of Japan 
  could *possibly* want to play such a Japan-centric game. 
  Another person agreed, and lamented that no one picked 
  up the English rights to a bog-standard Japanese-made 
  vanilla-with-vanilla-sauce (elves and dwarves... but they wear 
  interesting hats!) western sword-and-sorcery game. Like we 
  have a need of more plain vanilla western fantasy in the US, 
  like we can’t go to any shelf of any game store, pick a game 
  book at random with a blindfold on and not have a 70% 
  chance of hitting that..
  But the third guy, the third dude got on my nerves. His 
  response, loosely translated was basically,
  “Guys, guys, you’ve got this all wrong. These sweaty 
  foreign otaku just looooove all this Japanese shit. It’ll capture 
  their little hearts, they’ll eat this shit up! Samurai! Sushi! 
  Geisha! Ninja!”
  Yeah, fuck you too, dude. Remember where your hobby 
  comes from: At least the folks at FEAR do. (^.^)
  F 
  is also for FEAR
  FEAR is short for Far East 
  Amusement Research. They’re the number 
  one company of tabletop RPG production in Japan. They’re 
  also really laid back, chill guys, though make no mistake: They 
  are hardcore workers. Fingers crush keys. Paper flies. The 
  DTP guy’s hands fly around the mousepad like he’s blocking 
  bullets in realtime.
  There’s lots of regulars who work there. I don’t know who 
  is a permanent employee and who’s a full-time freelancer, but 
  here’s the folks I’ve met:
  - Nakajima-san, AKA Suzufuki Tarot (pen name). He’s 
  the CEO of FEAR, and also an RPG writer and designer. 
  If you’re an RPG player from way back in the day, and have 
  the old Cyberpunk 2020 game books, he wrote the material 
  (in the English game!) for the Asia-Pacific supplement about 
  Japan. He’s really awesome. His vibe is totally laid back, jovial, 
  and kind. But he also has an undertone of being a cunning 
  businessman, a shrewd decision-maker, and an ambitious 
  developer, which is basically the combination that (with the 
  aid of some awesome games in the mid/late 90s) brought 
  the Japanese Tabletop RPG scene back to life from its dying, 
  vegetative state. It’s said that FEAR is the reason for the 
  revival of the gaming scene in Japan, which was dying from 
  lack of availability and pervasiveness of console gaming. But 
  I’d credit it to Nakajima directly. He would totally not take 
  credit for it, though.
  Two of the big games he designed were Tokyo NOVA, 
  a very Japanese-centric cyberpunk game, which uses Tarot 
  cards and playing/trump cards for system resolution (and 
  incidentally the first Japanese RPG I ever played!); and Blade 
  of Arcana, a spiritual high-fantasy RPG which also uses a 
  system of special Tarot cards to create characters and drama. 
  Tokyo NOVA really made waves when it came out, as 
  it was the first game to really picture RPGs as a play, TV 
  show or movie, with a real feeling of “scenes”, “acts”, 
  “main character for this scene” and the like. Likely this was 
  influenced by his work developing TORG RPG supplements 
  in Japan, but where TORG just use scenes and acts as a 
  namesake for encounters, he took that step forward and tied 
  it even closer to media. That was 1994.
  - Inoue-san, the creator of Tenra Bansho Zero. Self-
  proclaimed unredeemable otaku, he has recently gained huge-
  -HUGE--success after publishing his autobiographical manga 
  about living as an otaku with a Chinese wife. Very kind soul. 
  He illustrated and designed numerous RPGs, like the “You 
  are a monster hunting other monsters” game Beast Bind;  
  the revolutionary Norse-myth-inspired Final-Fantasyesque 
  
  10
  http://www.tenra-rpg.com/
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  INTERVIEW WITH JUN’ICHI INOUE
  (originally appeared on the tenra-rpg.com blog; preserving here in print)
  About halfway through the Kickstarter campaign, I gathered some questions to ask to Tenra’s original designer Junichi 
  Inoue. I added commentary where needed in parenthesis.
  [1) How did you get involved in the tabletop RPG design business, and what was the first RPG project you 
  made?]
  The first RPG I’ve ever designed was the original version of Tenra Bansho (1996).
  When I was in college, I joined up with the company Hobby Japan, where I worked by doing illustrations for them. I got a foothold into this 
  company because I often contributed art to their in-house TRPG-themed magazine. That was my fateful beginning.
  (called “RPG Magazine”, Hobby Japan published it from 1990-1999. They had a monthly “submit your fan art” section, where aspiring or 
  fan artists would submit color and B&W prints with an RPG theme to them; Inoue apparently submitted a lot of art to that magazine, enough 
  quality art to be recognized)
  [2) What was the first RPG you ever played? Did that RPG influence Tenra Bansho Zero?]
  The first RPG I played was of course Dungeons and Dragons! It was the “Red Box” edition (4th version, 1983; Japanese 1985).
  My first experience was the pretty typical starting adventure: A plain goblin extermination. But when that short session ended, I thought, 
  “I’ve never in my life heard of a game as wonderful as this!”
  Heh, I actually still think that today! Technology has changed so much since those times, but game-wise nothing comes close to tabletop 
  RPGs. I guess it was inevitable that I would end up making them.
  [3) The English version of Tenra Bansho Zero is finally being released. Please let us know your thoughts on that. Also, 
  please say a word to the fans of the English version, if you will.]
  Wow, it’s been a long time hasn’t it*. I really think that all the hard work has been worth it. Thank you, Andy.
  For those folks who are looking forward to the English version, I’ll loosely borrow some words that appeared in the Avengers trailer 
  here in Japan:
  “Hey, America! This is what Tabletop Role-Playing is all about!”
  I hope people enjoy this game, that would make me so happy!
  * In the time after I made Tenra Bansho, I created the game Alshard (a game equal parts final fantasy and Norse myth), which 
  has become the de-facto standard RPG in Japan. I’ve also made dozens of wildly popular supplements for it, and even witnessed the 
  second edition of that game. A world (Alshard) was born, Ragnarok came, and the world was resurrected. That’s how long it’s been!
  [4) As people play your game Tenra Bansho Zero in English, is there anything regarding the rules, setting etc that you 
  want people to be careful of?]
  Tenra Bansho Zero isn’t a game where you beat up your friends over being correct about being properly Japanese.
  For example, if you are playing with some friends, and one of them says in character “I want to eat a Big Mac!”, you shouldn’t 
  get on their case: Rather it is important to develop an attitude of forgiving that sort of thing, and giving it a pass.
  That’s harmony.
  Hah, actually I say that but even at my own table we totally beat each other with thick rulebooks about rules nuances and the 
  like. But hey, I’m still in the process of learning and training as well!
  [5) You are extremely busy these days with your manga “An Otaku Husband and a Chinese Bride”. Are you 
  planning on returning to game design? Or perhaps even revisiting Tenra?]
  Well, it’s true that my blog (with some 24,000+ views a day) has kind of become the center of my life.
  
  11
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  There’s no way I can become a ninja and live on eating and drinking air. I am ashame*.
  Tenra is my life work. At some point in the future I will totally return to it with a new edition.
  Absolutely, before Maitreya (Miroku-bosatsu) arrives**.
  * (I am disappoint; but opposite)
  ** Maitreya–”The Buddha of the Future”–is said to herald the end of everything, and will arrive 5,669,999,500 years from now.
  [6) It’s been almost a decade since Tenra Bansho Zero came out in Japanese. Is there anything you look back on and say, “I 
  wish I did this/that instead”?]
  In those days, the RPG world in Japan was absorbed in a boom of innovative or unusual features. Tenra Bansho Zero was sort of at the 
  spearhead of that movement. After I released my followup game Terra the Gunslinger, that boom ended, and was replaced by an era of 
  reductionism and simplification. My game Alshard became the spearhead of that movement as well.
  Because of all of that, sure, there’s a ton of small adjustments that I would have make to simplify the experience. And yet, my ideology 
  which I made the foundation of the Zero edition of Tenra Bansho has not changed one single bit since it came out:
  “Create a wonderful story together, with the people at the table, in a spirit of harmony.”
  [7) You travel a lot to China because of your wife and business. Have you ever thought about, like Tenra, creating a game set in 
  a fictional China?]
  What I see when I’m in contemporary China is not fantasy, but reality.
  Because of that, every day that I experience China, it becomes hard to make the leap to fantasy.
  It’s like, imagine if in your D&D session the DM said, “All of a sudden, SOME CHINESE PEOPLE rush to attack! What do you do?” Imagine 
  what kind of face you’d make at the DM if she said something like that.
  That’s the way it feels.
  [8) There’s a lot of cultural Japan in the setting of Tenra (Buddhism, Shinto, Samurai etc). Did you have any fear that 
  foreigners might not “get it”?]
  There is absolutely no reason to be concerned with how correctly Japanese your experience is. Leave that stuff to academics.
  You just have to have an interest in Japanese culture. That’s the most important thing. It’s all about having fun, and keeping your and 
  the players’ interest going.
  That’s far more important than being concerned with whether or not there are cheeseburgers in Tenra.
  [9) As a player or GM, is there a moment about playing Tenra that particularly sticks in your mind?]
  All of the sessions I’ve been a part of have been wonderful, and they are very cherished memories! That’s the kind of game that 
  Tenra Bansho Zero is.
  So do I then actually remember every moment of play from the last twelve years? Heh, well. The beginning of everything is belief, 
  is it not?
  You can also read an interview with Inoue regarding his new manga and lifestyle over on the Japan Times, at this easy-to-type 
  URL: 
  http://bit.ly/XGR13n
  
  12
  http://www.tenra-rpg.com/
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  game Alshard and its sequels (Alshard ff, Alshard Gaia), Tera 
  the Gunslinger (basically the Tenra Treatment, turned on a 
  Steampunk wild west America, using a playing card game 
  mechanic), and Angel Gear (high school kids in mecha kiss 
  each other and fight off the murderous alien invasion). 
  He’s a talented artist, producing everything from manga 
  art, to setting design (computer eroge like Angel Core), and 
  even several lines of figurines which are very very very very 
  very NSFW. That latter point is what made him a millionaire, 
  and also led to him traveling to China (to inspect the figure 
  factories), and getting married to a lovely Chinese woman, 
  the subject of the manga he now writes from his blog to 
  hundreds of thousands of views daily.
  He also taught me a Japanese sentence that echoed in my 
  own otaku, obsessive soul: “GenTeiBan ni Yowai”; “I have a 
  weakness for limited edition material.”
  - Endo-san, the unsung hero of FEAR. Saying “game 
  design” definitely has the implication of the actual rules, but 
  a lot of that is doing things like conceptualizing and writing 
  or drawing the setting material. Endo Takuchi is the man 
  behind the scenes who creates and tests the actual rules for 
  the various games. He’s often a one-two combo with Inoue 
  on his games, where one person designs the setting, and he 
  designs the rules which provide the backbone for the games. 
  He can also bend steel with his bare hands. I saw him.
  - Yano-san, designer of Doublecross. Very handsome!
  - Nakamura Y, a friend from long ago, introduced to me by 
  my best friend at the time Satoru (see dedication in the credits 
  page of the book). A gaming freelancer for a long time, he’s 
  a super laid back game obsessive. For instance, one time I 
  came in to Tokyo for a few days to hang out with Satoru. 
  It had been a while since I saw Nakamura, so Satoru called 
  him over for a night of eating, drinking and game/nerd talk. 
  An hour later, his girlfriend showed up. She was sent in his 
  place. “Tanaka’s making characters for Earthdawn, so I came 
  instead”. She was cute so we forgave him, but I don’t think 
  they lasted.
  The most disappointing part: I confirmed for myself 
  weeks earlier: The Earthdawn character generation system 
  was no more comprehensible in its Japanese translation as it 
  was in English. It was a fool’s errand.
  After Tokyo NOVA and Tenra Bansho made huge waves, 
  they also took the scene by storm again with Alshard (a final 
  fantasy-esque tactical-yet-rule-light RPG of high action, 
  which caused a second gaming revolution), then Arianhrod 
  (similar system to Alshard, but turned towards more generic 
  western fantasy), and DoubleCross (Japane Anime X-Men in 
  a dark conspiracy world). Just like Earthquakes, Tokyo is due 
  to another rocking from FEAR...
  G 
  is for Grayson 
  comma Jerry
  Jerry Grayson, who I consider a friend 
  and mentor, though he’d laugh if he heard that. He’s been a 
  game writer for much longer than I, with a passion deeper 
  than my own. He also has that perfect combination of 
  magnetic charisma and lack of shame that draws people to 
  him. He’d regularly just pull friends, co-workers, random 
  strangers into one of his several weekly game sessions, and 
  his enthusiasm so effective that it would unlock their ultimate 
  gaming potential.
  That hottie model over there? Jerry introduced her to 
  gaming, and now her Myrmidon warrior-oid will kick your ass 
  while she trash talks you in front of your friends.
  Also, his lovely wife Renee is not only the hotness and an 
  awesome human being, she makes exquisite sock monkeys.
  It was Jerry’s enthusiasm and encouragement that led me 
  to scream and claw and kick this project to completion, so 
  we all owe him a little for the experience. Check out his game 
  HELLAS, it really is in the same family as Tenra: A fairly 
  traditional role-playing game of Greeks in space with super 
  technology and magic, with rules that encourage character 
  change and role-playing drama. I’m still iffy on the 1d20 
  rolling system, but the setting is PHENOMENAL.
  G 
  is also for 
  Grammar
  Japanese grammar is awesome. It will 
  bend your brain like pay-doh and make you its bitch.
  Japanese grammar is horrible. It will twist your mind and 
  ruin your day, it will make you question every single sentence 
  you’re about to say, because you’re likely about to use the 
  wrong grammar or a word with the wrong nuance to it.
  Grammar in Japan at the low levels is hard. At its higher 
  levels it’s haaaaaaaaaaaard. And the more vocabulary words 
  you learn, the more opportunities you have to misuse them or 
  get them mixed up in front of other people.
  The following things are acceptable in Japanese:
  * Subject-less sentences: The downpour in April. This 
  doesn’t really work in English.
  * Predicate-less sentences: A run down street. This sorta 
  works, but still a fail.
  * Run-on sentences: He found the joke fitting, as many 
  in his condition do, because of the circumstances of his 
  situation, which he couldn’t put on anyone but himself. Nope.
  * Passive Voice: The pie was guarded by the ork. Not a 
  rules-out in English, but we’re trained to never, ever, ever use 
  it. However, in Japan, most writing is exactly the opposite: 
  People are taught to always use passive voice when possible, 
  as it is less aggressive and harsh in tone than speaking direct.
  While there are lots of unique-to-Japanese grammar 
  issues that fuck us translators up, the one that really makes 
  me run for the hills are noun phrases. A simple one is “The 
  Blue HAT”. Another: “The (which belongs to Tanaka)  blue 
  HAT”. More: “The (which belongs to Tanaka and which 
  just the other day he had sent to cleaning) HAT.” Got it? 
  That’s called a “Noun phrase”. Now, by itself it’s not a huge 
  deal, but with a few in a long run-on sentence, it’s can be 
  maddening to translate.
  Essentially, you can easily run out of memory, in very 
  much the same way a computer does, as you read these long 
  sentences if you’re not super familiar with all the words 
  within them (that is, you have to translate words in your head 
  as you go along without being familiar with them all). You’ll 
  get towards the end of the second half of the sentence, and 
  
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  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  forget the contents or point/message of the first. So you go 
  reread the first half of the sentence, and forget the contents, 
  words or point/message of the second.
  And so on, repeatedly. If you get caught in a loop, it 
  basically does to you like in that one episode of Star Trek 
  TNG where they developed this logical-loop spiral death 
  pattern that would kill all the Borg. With enough of these 
  over time, I learned my lesson: Nowadays I just will write out 
  the first half of the sentence, in word and meaning, before 
  moving on to the second half of the sentence.
  Anyway, the thing is, the more poetic the writer is 
  expressing him or herself, the more that many or all of the 
  above will be used. All together, or right near each other. And 
  Tenra’s writing is really, REALLY poetic. To put it simply, 
  I’ve translated eight-page medical specialist essays and patent 
  reports on new-type intraocular lens injectors and their 
  distribution systems in the time it takes to translate about 1-2 
  pages of the setting sections of the book. Since Tenra was 
  more poetic, it takes a few steadier, concentrated hand to 
  reassemble the words and thoughts into equally meaningful 
  English sentences. Biotech reports are complex, filled with 
  words I’ve never heard in Japanese or English, but because 
  of the matter-of-fact and direct writing, it’s so much easier 
  to translate. I’d wager a book of 10 poems would be harder 
  to do justice in a correct, thought-out translation than a 100 
  pages of medical reports.
  Back to those long sentences and noun phrases. For 
  example, Page 149 of the worldbook, the second paragraph 
  on The Fist of Acala the Immovable, is this phrase: 
  “The founder of the First of Acala was Bokusen the 
  Ebon Mountain, the originator of the Ebon Mountain sect 
  of Buddhism. It is said that he met with the incarnation of 
  Acala the Immovable while doing penance in the mountains 
  and was instructed by this bodhisattva in the essential points 
  of the art.” 
  In Japanese, that was actually all one sentence:
  不動明王拳の開祖は、墨仙宗の創始者
  である墨仙であり、山中での苦行のさな
  か、不動明王の化身に出会い、極意を伝
  授されたという。
  Let’s break that down into it’s grammatical components!
  First, we’ll do a simple passthrough  into roman letters, just 
  for kicks:
  * Fudoh Myou-oh no kaiso ha (well, “wa”, 
  for those in the know. Anyway). Bokusen-shu no 
  soushisha de aru Bokusen de ari, yamanaka de no 
  kugyou no sanaka, Fudoh Myou-oh no keshin ni 
  deai, Gokui wo denju sareta to iu.
  Now, let’s cut it up into its component English words. As 
  you know, I went with the original Sanskrit words for the 
  various Bodhisattvas and the like (Fudoh Myou-Oh literally 
  means “Unmoving Bright King”, but he’s known as Acala in 
  sanskrit):
  * Acala Fist/Martial Art (possessive/’s) founder 
  (target), Ebon Mountain  
  sect -‘s- originator (‘as it 
  exists’; indicator of  noun 
  phrase) Bokusen it is, 
  mountains in the (at) 
  (possessive) asceticism/
  penance -’s- at the 
  height of, Acala -’s- 
  avatar/personification 
  (to) encounter, ultimate 
  point (objective) initiate 
  was (passive) it has been 
  said.
  I don’t think like that 
  when I translate, mind. It’s 
  just the way the grammar 
  works. Anyway, you can see 
  the meaning starting to come 
  together. The problem is that it’s 
  a huge run on sentence. Plus, the 
  phrase “Ebon Mountain order’s 
  originator” was a noun phrase 
  used as an adjective to describe 
  Ebon Mountain himself. I skipped 
  out the “height of” to simplify the 
  translation, but the “in the middle 
  of the mountains” modifies the 
  noun “penance”, and together 
  “penance in the middle of the 
  mountain” is a modifier for 
  “height of”. The rest made 
  grammatical sense as a complete 
  sentence, so I cut it there into two 
  sentences.
  At the time, paragraph-long sentences in Japanese like the 
  above were the bane of my existence. Some of these I’d be 
  waffling on for like 30-60 minutes before it came together 
  full and baked in English. I’m a lot better at them (because of 
  these kinds of experiences), but still it was an uphill climb.
  When I went to Japan to study Japanese, we had a speech 
  delivered by a recent expat. I still remember his speech 
  opener to this day: “You begin studying Japanese. Your friend 
  begins studying a European language, like German or French. 
  You both study equally as hard. Time passes. Right around 
  the time that your friend is at a major university in a country 
  that speaks that language, giving a dissertation about that 
  language while speaking in that language to her peers, you’ll 
  be juuuuuuuuuuust about conversational enough in Japanese 
  to order a beer without messing up.”
  Yep.
  G is also for Gotcha!
  I read one of the original replays from the TBZ 
  supplement “Tenjo Tenge”. In it, I saw an experience that 
  could only happen in Tenra, and it was just so cool I had to 
  share.
  The GM ran the adventure, which involved time travel, the 
  
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  be 
  UNDERGROUND GM ADVICE - TENRA AT MY TABLE
  Some of these thoughts I actually coded into the rulebook under GM or Player advice. Others are just 
  Five friends gathered one bright spring day to indulge me in playing the first English game of Tenra Bansho Zero. It 
  went pretty well, given that there was a lot of newness (rules, setting, playstyle) for all of us.
  I ran lots of campaigns and demos over the next few years, and learned a lot from the experience. The main things I 
  learned are reflected here and there throughout the book, but let me spell them out with personal examples:
  [When running with new players, don’t do ANY skill/combat rolls in the Zero Act]
  Hey, I bought the book, I read and memorized the rules, so I totally want to bust out the rules like rolling skills and combat up front, and the 
  first opportunity is the zero act.
  RESIST!
  Seriously, the only rules that you should really focus on having everyone learn in the Zero Act is just “Hey! Remember to give folks Aiki 
  chits!” (while trying to remember to give them out yourself). Skills and attributes and combat and crap is in pretty much every tabletop 
  system out there (this is assuming you’re coming from a background of playing some other games in the past). Just focus on the Aiki chits 
  for now. It really does take a little while to get used to handing out rewards to awesome lines/roleplay to the extent it happens in Tenra, both 
  as a player and as the GM. Focus on it, like a laser... that’s... uh... really focused!
  You’ll get to the skill rolls and stuff eventually in Act One and the rest of the game, you’ll have plenty of time to use them then. For now, 
  stick to the cornerstone of the game, the Karma (Aiki Chit givin’) rules.
  In my first few sessions, I tried to demonstrate the way skills or combat work (even with a single roll) in the Zero Act, but it really just 
  ends up bogging down the character scene: Each scene will go for 2-5 minutes, but then you start explaining the rules and next thing you 
  know you’ve got one person with a 10-minute Zero-Act scene.
  Besides, in the end, I think that the Zero Act really shines best without skill rolls: This is a snapshot of who your character is and how 
  they are tied to the story. Resolve all that stuff in true-to-Tenra form: With drama. Leave the dice for the story that unfolds in Act One.
  Make the Player in the Zero Act Have a Significant Choice
  So, even in the official replay with four masters of the game that appears in the Tenra supplement Tenjo Tenge, there was this one 
  scene (the first scene, even) where the Armour Rider girl is basically having a nightmare, as if she was seeing through the eyes of her 
  crazed Armour, and blood and death all around. The player got to get a choice line in or two, but basically it was a reaction to what the 
  GM was throwing out there. A fine exposition, but it was also kinda flat: It started and ended fast. There was no “footprint” of the player 
  in that scene, it was like the GM was saying “You’re stuck in a haunted house! Scream a few times! ...Good. Okay you’re out now, Scene 
  Over!”
  Good enough if you’re at a convention or something and have limited time, but not really good enough for a game with friends. Pretty 
  much from my first ever session running Tenra, I realized that the Zero Act scene works best if you provide:
  * At least one emotionally close NPC to speak with.
  * But more importantly, a Choice of some kind.
  The NPC to speak with provides opportunities for the player to talk in character, and start building up Aiki chits. However, that 
  Choice provides the player with an opportunity for the player to make a meaningful, usually hard, decision right at the beginning of 
  the game. This basically throws gasoline on a Aiki Chit bonfire, for real: It fires up the player’s in-game dialogue (before, during and 
  after that Choice) and puts them in a natural situation to be awarded Aiki chits if they just come out of their shell a little bit.
  But it also allows the player to - right off the bat - make a decision of importance to their character, something that speaks to 
  their personality. This helps start that “immersion” into the character, to help define them a little as a person and feel a little closer 
  to them. It also gives them a chance to shine.
  Now, sometimes the choices I set up are ones where the player might feel an obvious pull to go in a certain direction: One Zero 
  Act scene in my pocket is for Kugutsu War Maiden characters; their master has finished her, she is sitting in the study with her 
  “younger sister” doing calligraphy, when basically the master - crazed - comes into the room dragging an adolescent village boy 
  or girl and a katana. The master tells the kugutsu to kill the girl/boy to complete her training. I’ve used this startup about a dozen 
  times, and every single time the player chooses to turn against the master (sometimes in interesting ways), free the child, run 
  away, etc. However, it’s the nature of /how/ they come to the conclusion of that choice that is interesting. And while this setup is 
  a little extreme and I don’t actually expect that we’ll see the kugutsu kill the adolescent, I make sure to tell the player that “Either 
  way, it’s totally up to you; the story will change depending on what you choose, but it’s still your decision.”
  
  15
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  In fact, I kinda wonder what I’ll do if a player calmly grabs the katana and -slash-... I’ll likely frame it as a flashback from many years ago, 
  where “...After that the kugutsu dealt with the consequences of the pain she brought to the world, and promised herself that she’d never do that 
  again... Right, PLAYER?” (wait for nod) Heh, I’m not interested in perpetuating a game of soulless psychopaths, so if that means railroading their 
  character’s emotions a hair to get back to a humane character, so be it.
  But most of the Choices aren’t that extreme or “It’s totally up to you” (...but you and I both know you’re going to do the Good Thing, right?). Frex, 
  many of them are like:
  * You’re a monk. You are being thrown out of your order. How do you treat your expulsion, and what do you say? What do you do after you leave 
  the monastery?
  * You’re a warrior, and competing at your domain’s annual sword tournament. Final round, your last opponent is the nephew/son of the regent. 
  Your instructor knows that you can beat him, but asks you to allow the nephew to save face by losing to him. What do you do?
  * You’re an annelidist in a hut on the outskirts of town. The drunk tough guy who has been harassing you for a year, calling you a “Corpse 
  Eater” when you walk by, brings his kid (with a high unbreaking fever) to your hut in a rainstorm in the middle of the night, begging you to help. 
  What do you do? How will he treat you later?
  And as you can imagine, a lot of these require the GM to think fast, too: Based on what happens, there’s a lot of cool dialogue spoken or 
  outcomes of the choices to describe.
  Give Out Aiki Chits
  Drill this hard into all the players at the table from the first scene. Seriously, it’s the most important fucking part of the game. More than 
  all that combat stuff and all. There’s a reason the Karma rules come first in the English version!
  I often lead in with an anecdote about how I, as a GM, also forget to give Aiki chits at the beginning. Like, how I’ll be watching this 
  awesome dialogue unfold right in front of my eyes, and then forgetting to give out Aiki chits. It’s like I have to slap myself out of a “Watch 
  awesome dialogue unfolding before my very eyes” coma in order to remember to reward them. But it’s worth it: Once the Aiki starts flowing, 
  the game pretty much runs itself.
  “Protagonize” the Characters
  “You roll your attack using your katana. You whiff and fail.” Blah.
  “Your katana strikes true, and severs your enemy in half! ...At least, that’s what you saw in your mind’s eye. If it weren’t for the fact 
  that he was trained in a style that kept him mobile, it would have been over already. When you refocus, he’s just outside of your striking 
  range.”
  As a GM, I tend to do this for all sorts of character failures. Not that the characters will never whiff, but keeping failure as a “you 
  would have succeeded if only for a factor beyond your sight/control” can be a pretty interesting way to describe failure, to keep things a 
  little exciting.
  Combat! Sparse and Meaningful!
  Holy cow, if there’s one thing I learned about Tenra by running it, it’s that combat should be limited to about once per Act, and really 
  should be meaningful: Like mini-boss fights, major boss fights, and so on. Fights with like a few weak dudes? Maybe once in a long 
  while.
  However, after playing a lot of games, one thing that I do as a GM when introducing a new system is to include a... well... for lack 
  of a better word, a relatively meaningless fight against a horde of weaklings/zako. Gets you used to the flow of the rules, helps you 
  understand the game, etc. PC success is pretty much guaranteed. The whole thing is kind of a dance that is done with all RPGs with 
  combat systems: “Gotta try it out, gotta throw a lite combat scene in there right away.”
  Ehhh, not so much with Tenra. The first game I ever ran, there was a fight between the PCs and about 5 (one per PC) mid-level 
  punks (lower in attribute/skill levels than the PCs, but not so low that they’d be taken out in one hit, so it took a few rounds to beat 
  them down). But it wasn’t at the end of an Act (which would have made it fit), it was the second or third scene or so. Basically a 
  typical RPG Rules Test Drive. It went on a little too long, and in the end didn’t really impact the storyline at all. Normally it doesn’t 
  matter, but with Tenra you only have a few hours and a few Acts to tell a story. So “side combats”, even if you want to show off the 
  system, really don’t have a place in Tenra. Get a feel for the combat system with the first mini-boss fight at the end of an Act, it’ll 
  more meaningful and you’ll get the same effect.
  Plus, by then the players will have built up enough Aiki chits and Kiai points to make a difference.
  In that first combat I mentioned above? The PCs didn’t have enough Kiai to dump dice into finishing blows, so the combat took 
  about 20 minutes (inclduing description of combat system) before I just had them describe finishing off the last two NPCs.
  
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  son of Makuu Nindo, and high-fiving the Oni Earth-Speaker. 
  There was a big bad enemy warrior who had a showdown 
  with a PC samurai. All the players gave it their all, kicked 
  some serious ass, spent a dumpload of Kiai, and everyone 
  ended the session just a few karma south of 108.
  GM: Great job guys! 
  Everyone: Yeah, that was awesome.
  GM: Okay, so now we’ll start right into the next adventure, 
  which I have prepared right here.
  Everyone: WHAT????
  Basically, the GM planned out a full 6 or so hours of 
  gaming, and the scenario he ran was about four hours long. 
  Solid and fulfilling. But then he surprised the players by 
  popping a second, smaller, 2-hour-long scenario on top 
  of the first. There wasn’t a lot of combat, it was mostly 
  roleplaying-focused, centered on the decisions the players 
  made in the previous scenario. But he really got the players 
  by bringing them into a second session when they had almost 
  all their karma maxed out. The players had to play and spend 
  Kiai very carefully in order to manage their Karma.
  One of these days, I’m totally gonna do that too.
  G 
  is also for 
  Gunma Prefecture
  I’ve lived in Tokyo, have traveled from 
  the wilds of northern Hokkaido down to the southernmost 
  parts of Kagoshima and everywhere in between; I’ve been to 
  Kyoto more times than I can easily remember, have hiked to 
  the top of Mount Fuji, got lost and found again in all sorts 
  of wonderful places. While I think my favorite place in all of 
  Japan is the Kamakura region, Gunma is my home.
  Gunma, two prefectures north of Tokyo (about an hour by 
  train) is where I lived after college for nearly five years. I met 
  my wife there and made many friends. I spent many weekend 
  nights with Rafi or Yoshi in the lively shutter-town of Kiryu, 
  eaten my way from one side of Maebashi to the other 
  (Goemon Ninja Soba, White Gyoza, and God King Burger), 
  and watched in a kind of curiosity-and-horror as my town 
  of Azuma and my wife’s town of Sakai-machi were absorbed 
  into the larger city of Isesaki. Many times I’ve gone up to 
  the top of Mount Akagi (famous internationally for drift 
  racing), even when it was too stupid-cold and windy to think 
  rationally. From shopping at the crazy charming variety goods 
  store Humpty Dumpty or the mesmerizing hobby center 
  complex of Joyful Honda in Ota, or the cultural dumping 
  grounds for all the cool shit that is (admittedly a chain store) 
  Village Vangaurd. Thick forests, high mountains, steep valleys 
  and long rivers, Gunma really has it all.
  Well, except for trains. Everyone gets around by car, so 
  that trains suck ass. Like, 2 trains an hour in some places. And 
  walking several miles to the nearest station. 
  And downtown life. Isesaki had a culturally rich downtown 
  that in a few quick years turned into a countrywide-famous 
  brothel area because the city council couldn’t get it through 
  their fucking heads that Gunma culture is car culture, and not 
  providing parking meant people would go to the car-centric 
  areas of Isesaki, leaving the downtown to rot.
  And warmth in the winter. Gunma is famous for its face-
  ripping cold, dry wind that blasts the area all winter long. 
  It’d be nice with a load of snow like the northern parts of 
  Gunma in the mountains, but the place I lived felt pretty 
  much like Minneapolis at times. Combine that with Japan’s 
  historic lack of solid home insulation on traditional homes, 
  and you have long, cold, dark, dreary winters.
  But hey, Gunma’s my home in Japan. 
  H 
  is for Hayami 
  Rasenjin
  He’s the guy who did the rules manga that 
  appear in the book. He’s been doing his unique, comical 
  manga art for RPGs for years now, mostly featured in the 
  RPGs “Satasupe”/”Saturday Night Special”, a self-described 
  “Asianpunk” RPG, and “Meikyu Kingdom” (Labrynth 
  Kingdon). He’s recently released an actual capital M-manga 
  called “Stamps and Cannons”, a somewhat half-comical/
  half-serious war chronicle of a fictional Eastern European 
  country analogue in the early 20th century.  I really love the 
  individualistic style he brings, and it’s kind of a dream to one 
  day work with him, perhaps illustrating something I work on. 
  We’ll see.
  Incidentally, a few years before I even considered picking 
  up the rights to Tenra, I showed the book to a bunch of 
  game designer friends. For folks like me, rules illustrated 
  through manga was a real winner. So easy to learn. It inspired 
  a bunch of people, most notably Mike Miller, who released a 
  superhero drama game called “With Great Power”. Its card-
  based mechanics were illustrated through a 4-page comic 
  spread not dissimilar to the way done in Tenra!
  H 
  is also for 
  Hyougen (Japanese 
  Expressions)
  So, at one point I got involved with providing real Japanese 
  phrases for the RPG “Blood and Honor”, a game about 
  conflicting Japanese nations and their leaders (it’s actually 
  really good!). The inspiration, like most projects I get 
  involved with, was something like “It looked like someone 
  pulled random English shit and stuffed it into a hand-
  dictionary and called it Japanese; it hurt my eyes and my 
  brain, so I told them I’d do it for a copy of 
  the book”. This experience has happened 
  about four times to date. Anyway.
  I was going to provide the 
  Japanese kanji for some English 
  phrases and put them in 
  Japanese. I received the list of 
  phrases.
  Thing is, they were 
  all kind of awkward, 
  stilted. Like if 
  someone said 
  “I want to get 
  
  17
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  a kanji tattoo of AWESOME POWER EAGLE, what would 
  that be?” Well, I can do it, but it wouldn’t look, seem or 
  sound right, really.
  Anyway, I started looking at a few of the phrases, and they 
  just weren’t working out well in English. I decided to see 
  if the author would instead be up for using, you know, like 
  actual historic Japanese cool expressions that really existed.
  “I don’t understand what the problem is?? These ARE 
  Japanese expressions!”
  ...what?
  Turns out, he had gone to some website long ago that 
  specialized in “Well known Japanese phrases. From Japan”. 
  Like a website of cool phrases from around the world, with 
  a section for Japanese phrases. He grabbed the ones he liked, 
  added in a few he had heard of before, and that’s what the 
  list was. That’s what the original weird Japanese I saw was, 
  too: Someone was trying to recreate them in Japanese without 
  finding their original form.
  So I went hunting for those well known Japanese 
  phrases. Since they were so well known, I could just look 
  up expressions on Japanese websites, or use a couple words 
  from the expression to find it. First, I hunted for sites that 
  contained the “Japanese phrase” (in English) but also had the 
  original Japanese next to it, for proof.
  Yeah, long story short, of a list of about 13 phrases, 3 of 
  them actually existed! (“Ten men, ten colors” was one of the 
  ones given; yep, it was exactly that, in a Japanese-but-likely-
  originally-Chinese form, actually used in Japan. “To each their 
  own”, “Every person is unique”, that sort of meaning). The 
  other 10 were TOTAL BULLSHIT. I did about 12 hours of 
  (admittedly fun) research before coming to that conclusion.
  How could that be? Well, best as I could tell, someone 
  just made shit up, cause it sounded cool to attribute it to 
  Japan. They then put it on a website. Someone else, creating 
  a similar “quotes of the world” website, lifted all the quotes 
  attributed to Japan, and included them in an even bigger site. 
  Someone else did the same. There are dozens and dozens 
  of “cool quotes from around the world” sites, and for most 
  of them, the Japanese sections are all identical, having been 
  copied from each other and propagated on and on until they 
  stuck.
  ...which kinda sucks, because there are a lot of really 
  awesome expressions in Japan: “Curse a person, dig two 
  graves”. “After the rain falls, the ground becomes stronger.” 
  “Even the bright halo of the statue of the Buddha statue 
  depends on the amount of gold it was made with.”  “Neither 
  the spirit of justice in prostitutes nor square eggs exist.” 
  Okay, that last one is a little weird.
  So I ended up using those three actual, real Japanese 
  phrases from the original batch, and then about 10 more I 
  found on various Japanese language expression sites, verified 
  ones that had meanings similar to (almost impossible to 
  get “the same as” between English and Japanese; too much 
  nuance differences) the ones they wanted to use in the first 
  place. In cases where a meaningful match couldn’t be found, 
  I went with something that was (well in Japanese anyway) 
  cooler than the original suggested phrase.
  Anyway, if you ever hear the word “famous Japanese 
  expression”, more often than not it’s bullshit. If you want to 
  check look for expression sites that have both English and 
  original Japanese together.
  H 
  is also for How 
  to Win at Tenra
  Matthew had a really smug face when he 
  came to our second session of Tenra.
  Matthew: “Hey Andy, I think I figured out how to win at 
  Tenra.” (big grin)
  Andy: (without a pause) “Oh, you mean pick a character 
  with a high Empathy like the Kugutsu, load up on Fates that 
  target the other players, and roleplay your ass off?”
  M: (smile fades) “Um... yeah.”
  A: “Here’s the thing. To do that, you still have to do step 
  three: Roleplay your ass off. Does everyone at the table 
  try to win by roleplaying their asses off? Then FUCKING 
  MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!”
  M: “Heh. Well, what you can do is see who the scene 
  judge is, and make sure you role-play in a way that they’ll 
  reward you. Or, if everyone gives out chits, then target people 
  specifically and roleplay in a way that they’ll reward you.”
  A: “Um... yep! Oh, and if you want to score a basket 
  from the three point line, all you have to do is just put  the 
  basketball in the net. Also, if you want to create a database 
  application, you just need to program it with your fingers 
  until it works with no bugs.”
  M: “Hmmm?”
  A: “It’s far more complicated than just saying “I roleplay in 
  a way that they like”. If you can read your players, then  tailor 
  the role-play of your character to hit the reward-nerves of 
  every player at the table individually, and still find fun playing 
  them, then you need to step away from the table and book a 
  flight to Vegas, NOW.”
  M: “Hah. Touche!”
  Still it was fun, because I got to out-Matthew Matthew 
  (who is really good at finding broken rules in games)
  
  18
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  I 
  is for It’s Finally 
  Fucking Finished
  Done.
  *claps dust off of hands*
  J 
  is for Japaaaaaan
  As RPGs in Japan go, there’s not that many that 
  are truly Japan-focused. Games like Dungeons and 
  Dragons and Tunnels and Trolls were what introduced 
  Japanese people to the world of TRPGs (on the coattails 
  of Lord of the Rings being translated into Japanese and 
  released only a few years previously). From the start, “TRPG 
  == Western Fantasy, based on a European vision” was a 
  thing that was locked into the mindset in the scene. In Japan, 
  “grognard” gamers aren’t necessarily concerned with rules, 
  but they usually do have a preference for western-themed 
  games. 
  Tenra was the second successful Japanese historical (well, 
  “ish”) game released in Japan. The first was “Daikatsugeki”, 
  “The Big Action Movie”, which came out in 1992. It was a 
  game set in the Edo era of Japan, and came in a boxed set 
  that featured several booklets for rules, scenarios and the 
  like. It featured the kind of play that was half role-play and 
  drama, and (commonly) half brutal combat and infiltration. 
  Stuff like walking around town and seeing the injustices at the 
  hands of the evil magistrate, then infiltrating the magistrate’s 
  compound and dispensing justice.
  There were games set in modern or future Japan, like 
  Tokyo NOVA (cyberpunk Japan) and the like, but it wasn’t 
  until Tenra Bansho came out that a second real “Japanese 
  game set in Japan for Japanese gamers” came out. Between 
  that and the drama-focused rules, it really started a revolution 
  in Japan, even dragging new butts into seats.
  K 
  is for Katakana
  So there’s three syllabries in Japanese: 
  Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji. Most of you reading 
  this probably have heard of them already, but the quick is 
  this:
  Kanji are the intricate Chinese characters, imported long 
  ago into the Japanese language.
  Hiragana is the softer brush-stroke-like phonetic syllabary 
  that everyone learns when they start reading Japanese, 
  including Japanese children.
  Katakana is the more sharp stilted-looking syllabary, 
  created long ago (originally carved up from kanji into 
  phonetic components). These days katakana is used for things 
  like:
  Foreign Loanwords - Pasta (パスタ), Remote Control (リ
  モコン), 
  Foreign Names - Andy (アンディー), Germany (ドイ
  ツ), etc
  Onomatopoeia - ガラガラ (sound of a sliding door 
  opening), プリプリ (the sound of violent diarrhea)
  Anyway, Tenra is punctuated by katakana in an interesting 
  way. For example, the words “Armour”, “Shinobi”, “Samurai” 
  and “Oni” are always written in katakana, even though there 
  are absolutely kanji characters for each (which is how they’re 
  normally written). The reason is that the author wanted to 
  make it clear to the Japanese reader that, for example in the 
  case of the word “samurai”, that they were seeing a word 
  with a “warning bell”: That is, that by the syllabary used to 
  write the word, it was an indicator that “this isn’t the word 
  you expect”. In a single word, they conveyed the meaning 
  of “This is written ‘samurai’, but this is clearly not the 
  samurai that I’m used to seeing in other writings and fiction, 
  otherwise they would have just used the kanji”. It was done 
  to excellent effect in the original. Other words, like Onmyoji, 
  Annelidist, Kugutsu and the like were written as-is in kanji, as 
  they were ‘exactly as written’.
  In English, though... well, we only have one lettering 
  system, the Roman alphabet. The least I was able to do, 
  though, is to draw attention to the difference between armor 
  (that you wear) and armour (the mecha of the setting) by 
  using the Queen’s English/UK English version of the 
  spelling for that word, and the American English for “regular 
  armor” and the rest of the book. Unfortunately it couldn’t 
  be done with the other words. The little differences between 
  languages can sometimes create a real gulf between them.
  K 
  is also for Karma
  Another aspect to the Buddhism that appears 
  in Tenra and through the book... Turns out that 
  a lot of practicing Buddhists took issue with the Buddhism as 
  portrayed in the book! This I thought was pretty interesting: 
  The Buddhism in the game was pretty clearly made up, but 
  also researched as well using some real world sects, beliefs, 
  and of course the Japanese cultural background as the 
  foundation to how it was all written. 
  The main point of contention was Karma, and how it’s 
  mostly “bad”, where having too much causes you to turn evil 
  and having zero causes you to transcend. It became a point 
  of discussion for lots of folks! I’ve included a really cool 
  and charitable discussion of the issue with a believer on the 
  subject of Karma in the game, it was a rewarding exchange 
  on both sides. 
  While the Karma in Tenra is not a perfect example of 
  pure straight-from-the-sutras manifestation of the Karma 
  of classical (read: as written in the original sutras, as opposed 
  to as practiced all throughout Asia), the distinction definitely 
  had to be drawn between Buddhism and Hinduism for the 
  purposes of play. In America, in the 60s, we had a wave of 
  eastern mysticism enter the mindspace. The tip of the spear 
  there was Hinduism, and soon “karma”, and the concepts of 
  “bad karma by doing bad things; good karma by doing good 
  things” was a household concept. In my early games, using 
  Karma (in Japanese “Goh”, which simply means “Acts”, 
  and implies neither good nor evil inherently), sometimes the 
  players became confused. 
  
  19
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  “I’m just trying to influence this person, it’s not evil. Why 
  am I getting (bad) karma for it?”
  “If I get (bad) karma for adding dice to attacks, can my 
  character buy it off by doing good things, like giving to 
  charities or helping the common people?”
  Well, Goh is Goh, acts are acts. The only way to stop 
  suffering is to release the cause of that suffering’s hold on 
  you. The Noble Eight-fold path is the basic way to that. But 
  simply to “stop caring about the things that make you mad, 
  the things that drive you to do hurtful acts, etc” is the way the 
  game gets to the same endpoint. 
  It really baffles in the creative way it handles the Buddhist 
  condition. And yet, all the designers were going for at the 
  time was a system of Awesome Power Points where if you 
  use too many you “go to the dark side” (“Hey, we could 
  set the upper limit at 108 because of the 108 buddhist 
  sins/bonno! Hah, cool!”).
  But I’ve seen other comments here and 
  there on the InterSpheres, with folks saying 
  “Scoff! Destiny? Real Buddhists don’t actually 
  believe in destiny!” “There’s Good and Bad 
  Karma, I read all about it in some books! Why 
  don’t these Japanese people understand that?”, 
  “I know better than these buffoons”, and so on. Basically 
  calling out the beliefs of the writers of the game (who called 
  on common knowledge, plus did additional research from 
  source material) who have identified as Buddhist *all their 
  lives*, because their description of their faith as applies to a 
  couple of dials and coins in a game differs from what some 
  western hardcore believers read in books about Japanese 
  Buddhism - in English - somewhere.
  Anyone with a sociology background might find this 
  fodder for an interesting essay on cross-culture/cross-
  religious experiences vs academia. But to simplify it into 
  a single sentence: At the end of the day... religion’s messy. 
  Christianity and Judaism aren’t the only religions that get to 
  claim endless discussion--and schism--on written minutiae.
  K 
  is also for 
  Kugutsu
  So a few people (westerners, that is) have 
  been perplexed about what the Kugutsu is all about. Some 
  think “Pinocchio story”, others think “Realdoll/sex robot 
  with feelings”. Their existence seems a little off, and certainly 
  can be seen as problematic: A figure (mostly women) created 
  by an artisan, then sold for lots of money to a lord, to be 
  treated as at best a second wife, at worst a “thing” to look at.
  Not to hand-wave those concerns away, but I think an 
  understanding of the cultural context of doll culture in 
  Japan can frame the kugutsu within a deeper, richer cultural 
  background that may fill out the picture a little more, or 
  help the reader come to a more thorough or personal 
  understanding.
  So, it’s really easy for Westerners to look at the result of 
  what kugutsu are 
  in the fiction and leap to 
  thinking of them like the 
  fantasy game equivalent of 
  Realdolls/sex dolls. There’s 
  certainly material there to 
  deconstruct and understand, 
  in terms of gender and 
  status (human ownership, 
  for example). However, I 
  think a pure “living sex doll” interpretation without looking 
  deeper would be a cold misrepresentation, perhaps at worst a 
  western monocultural attempt to judge an asian culture.
  Japan has a rich and long history of doll culture, from 
  ancient doguu statues to classic kokeshi dolls, to traditional 
  princess/royalty dolls, to modern ball-joint dolls (look up 
  “Japanese dolls” and “ball-joint dolls” on wikipedia), and of 
  course the steampunkish self-moving karakuri dolls of the 
  18th and 19th century. So it’s really not that much of a leap to 
  understand why they might appear in a Japan-themed game: 
  Dolls have been a huge part of the culture since - at least - 
  one thousand years before Christ. Likewise, magical “doll 
  comes to life” stories and folklore tales are present as well 
  (like our Pinocchio, for example).
  One of the interesting focuses that Tenra has, aside from 
  the dolls (in this case, kugutsu) themselves, is the relationship 
  between the doll craftsperson and the doll. In Japan, there’s 
  the tradition of the shokunin, or craftsperson, complete with 
  apprenticeship and living one’s life focused on honing one’s 
  craft. This is explored in the movie “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”: 
  Potters, weavers, brush-makers, doll-makers, all who basically 
  live their life doing one traditional craft and over again, in 
  order to perfect the art. In bunraku doll plays, for example, 
  it’s said that it takes 10 years to learn to manipulate the legs. 
  Then you graduate to spend the next 10 years learning the 
  
  20
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  FAVORITE PLACES IN JAPAN
  When I think about Japan, I think fondly on...
  Places in General
  Kamakura - I may in fact retire here. Orie and I traveled here for the first time a few years back, and after wandering 
  the city and forests, the towns and valleys, we both independently came to the conclusion that the Kamakura area of Japan 
  (home of the ancient capital of Japan, after Heiankyo, before Kyoto and Tokyo) is our favorite. You know all that crap you see 
  on TV about “Japan is a blend of old and new, of tradition and modernity, blah blah blah?” Well, it’s really true of Kamakura. There’s so much 
  natural beauty, situated next to modern(ish) towns and transportation. When we came here, we both felt a sense of a “deep Japan”, a richness 
  here we couldn’t put our fingers on, but didn’t experience even in Kyoto or Nara. Old temples, old roads, the feeling of Japan of long ago, a 
  certain slowness, restfulness, mindfulness. Wonderful ancient temples and historical sites, great places to eat and do things, and oh my: The 
  mountains, valleys, forests and ocean, all in one spot. Plus, the island town of Enoshima is nearby, and also fairly fun to walk around, if a little 
  touristy.
  Of course, the spell is broken if you go to the great Buddha statue when there’s a million elementary schoolkids running all over the place 
  and screaming, but still it’s a pretty kickass place.
  Nara - Come for the nature, history and hiking. Sure, there’s the big-ass Daibutsu statue, lots of temples and historic sites, but there’s 
  just simply lots to see and experience. Grab a map, pick a direction and start walking. Definitely has a more “in the forest” feel than 
  Kamakura, and far more recognized temples and ancient buildings. I dunno, might be gaijin catnip, but lots of Japanese love this area too.
  Kagoshima - Why? No idea. Something about the fact that Kagoshima city is the southernmost prefecture of mainland Japan, that it 
  faces an active, always-smoking-day-and-night volcano that erupts lava regularly THAT PEOPLE ACTUALLY LIVE ON, that it houses lots of 
  cool scenic spots south of the city on the coast... Between that, the food, the warm people, and the scenery change from “everyday Tokyo”, 
  makes Kagoshima a place I find myself returning to a lot.
  Kobe - Kind of the best of all worlds, and the place I determined to retire before i visited Kamakura. Kobe is a city surrounded 
  by forested mountains, right on the coast, near Osaka and Kyoto, surrounded by small towns: It’s like a snowglobe that has a little of 
  everything in Japan right in one little area.
  Specific Places
  The Top of Mount Akagi
  The famous mountain which frames my home prefecture of Gunma (and known internationally for its “perfect for drift-racing” 
  curved mountain paths), the topmost part is quiet and serene on the way to the top, and at the top offers an overlook over what seems 
  to be half of the Kanto region. If it’s a hot summer day, try a swim across the lake in the dormant caldera, a great picnic spot. And at 
  night, a starry night is so bright you feel warmed by the stars above, and the distant specs of light from Maebashi city below.
  Hakata at Night
  It was a toss-up. I also like West Shinjuku and Kasumigaseki at night over in Tokyo, but there’s something about Hakata: You can 
  start at one end of the river and eat and drink your way through like a dozen food stands before it’s time to go home. Hakata ramen 
  is also famous for being heavy on taste and delicious. Oh, missed the last train? Hakata is also where the first capsule hotels were 
  built. Try one out if you don’t get claustrophobic. 
  Kamakura Hiking Trails
  You owe it to yourself that if you come to Kamakura for hiking: Get yourself lost. Take a trail not on the map. You’ll find yourself 
  emerging in (roll 1d6)
  1-2 a hidden temple/shrine/statue/overlook not noted anywhere in any known guide
  3-4 the middle of a relatively modern suburb town, with houses in clutches along roads bordering ricefields
  5-6 the back of a super-huge and temple, with no idea of how you go there
  Plus, it’s kinda interesting to watch young women you pass navigate the several-km-long hiking trails in high heels. Hey, I didn’t 
  say anything, when they see me they usually apologize for being underprepared as they slip all over wet rocks and dirt. See if they 
  need help, and move along.
  Sanjusangendo, Chion-in and Kyomizudera
  I can’t fail to drop a few temples from Kyoto in here, right? Sanjusangendo is home to a huge, quiet hall of over a thousand 
  Buddha statues. It’s showy, and yet ancient and peaceful. The cool breeze, the reek of old wood and incense, the feel of the 
  creaking floors and thick beams, all add up to an awesome experience. Chion-in is a temple that never makes it into the 
  guidebooks, but is awesome (and not crowded for that very reason): Huge steps lead up to a Jodo-Shu temple compound, quiet 
  and actually used. Kyomizudera, sure, everyone goes there and it’s awesome... but on your way to the ticket counter, veer off 
  
  21
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  to your left, go to the gate, and head into the forest BEHIND Kyomizudera. The forest there is something out of a Miyazaki anime or Endor reel: 
  Gorgeous, rich, sensual. Walk about a km and you’ll come to some scenic views of the ancient capital city of Kyoto: Try to imagine it as it was a 
  thousand years ago.
  Himeji-jo
  The most badass of all of Japan’s badass castles. It’s a huge castle compound where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a tale of 
  history. Currently being restored, which is awesome because now’s the time you can climb up and actually touch the outside walls and roof of this 
  massive, beautiful castle.
  Harajuku
  Yeah, I’m kind of a fan of fashion, even though I don’t look it myself. Sometimes I wander through Harajuku’s Omotesando street or the side-
  alleys with all the clothing and fashion shops, sit in a cafe and soak in whatever the year spewed out onto people. Punk, dance, club, sporty, high 
  fashion, reggae, hippie, goth, it’s all here. It’s like a dance party for your eyes.
  Sento/Onsen
  I actually prefer public baths to hot springs. Hot springs are special and expensive. Sento/public baths are there to remind you that you’re 
  tied to a community of people who live (and bathe) together. They cut through any level of stress like a Global brand knife through rice porridge. 
  Plus, they’re slightly cooler (tempwise), cheaper, and more local (location-wise, and homeliness-wise) than hot springs.
  New
  And while I’m comfortable in many places in Japan, I got that way by going to new places, setting off in new directions. I’ll circle a place 
  I’ve been before, then actively look for new directions to go or paths to take. Or I’ll just pick a new location I’ve never gone before, to some 
  prefecture I know nothing about, and just show up. Cause shit, there’s almost always something interesting, cool, or weird in every locale 
  from one end of the country to the other. My home of Gunma is pretty boring in comparison, but even within Gunma there’s all sorts of 
  crazy cool things under the surface: Gunma’s enormous flower park, German Village, Yabusuka Snake Center, Maebashi’s Yasuragi-no-Yuu, 
  the old shops of downtown Kiryu, the old hot springs towns of Ikaho and Minakami... It’s like that everywhere. You just have to point yourself 
  in a new direction.
  Food
  Everywhere
  Seriously. If you can’t find something to eat in Japan, you may have real dietary restrictions, and thus I feel bad for you and would like 
  to try to offer you help. Otherwise, if you’re just picky, go home. I can’t walk a kilometer in any direction without stumbling upon 2-3 places 
  I’d love to eat at. Particularly Japanese taverns/izakaya: I don’t think there’s a foreigner alive who’s lived in Japan for any length of time 
  who didn’t get the idea to build a Japanese-style izakaya in their own town or city... then realize it wouldn’t work, since US public transport 
  sucks, so no one could get home after drink-eating without a messy and expensive taxi system.
  With Coworkers on a Friday
  Nothing beats heading out to an earned break of eating and drinking with coworkers on a Friday after a hellish week of hard work. 
  Since my own office (the Tokyo branch, that is) is in downtown businessman and government worker central, it’s easy to find delicious 
  food and sake in a warm environment for not-so-crazy-expensive. Just make sure you don’t... well, overdo it. See the train station at 
  Shibuya after 11PM on a weekend to see what I mean.
  Tonbo (Tokyo)
  A restaurant in Tokyo that has ties to a specific ricefield in the boonies, where every single dish is build upon a foundation of rice 
  (from rice tea to riceballs to rice soup to rice-made desserts)? Wow. I try to come back once every year or two.
  Goemon Ninja Soba (Maebashi)
  Like 10 types of soba and udon, from Kirishita Mountain soba to Tea-cut udon, with do-it-yourself toppings for your bowl, this is 
  my favoritest soba place to date.
  White Gyoza (Maebashi)
  Fat, hot, juicy potstickers that have the texture of compressed marshmallows. The most delicious souldfood I’ve ever eaten, and 
  yeah I’m counting Gindako-brand takoyaki in there too.
  Ohgiya Ramen (all over Kanto, mostly Gunma and Saitama)
  Sure, I like all kinds of ramen, usually miso-based, from all over Japan. But Ohgiya Ramen’s miso is like a high-powered garlic 
  kick to the face. Perfect noodles, rich broth, great vegetables and toppings, this is like the best that fast food has to offer.
  
  22
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  left arm. Finally, after ten years of that, some schools will 
  finally let you manipulate the right arm and head, seen as 
  the “master level”. Spending 30 years learning a craft before 
  calling someone a “master” is kind of a big thing in this 
  Japanese shokunin culture, and that piece also comes out in 
  Tenra as well. 
  In fact, in the earlier version of the game, “kugutsu 
  craftsman” was a standard skill, as the author expected 
  not only kugutsu characters, but also kugutsu craftsperson 
  characters, as well... but ultimately players found the kugutsu 
  themselves more compelling, the kugutsu craftspeople best 
  left to be NPCs, and thus the game went that way.
  A recent development in Japan is a hobby culture of doll 
  crafting with ball-join dolls, especially Super Dollfie (search 
  for Super Dollfie on wikipedia). This is a highly expressive 
  culture that both women and men participate in (including 
  my cousin, who has made two when he became temporarily 
  interested in that hobby culture: He even sewed the clothing 
  they wore carefully by hand over weeks). The cost, care 
  and craftsmanship make them as much an “otaku” culture 
  item as building elaborate plastic model mecha or highly 
  customizable RC car kits. They are very lifelike, and limited 
  edition dolls or dolls made by talented shokunin can even 
  cost $2000-$5000 USD sometimes. Doll culture has really 
  exploded in Japan since particularly the mid-90s, and I’d say 
  that most folks who are into deep visual culture like manga 
  and anime have dipped their toe into the BJD/Dollfie culture 
  (be it pricing them out or looking at them on display at stores, 
  if not actually buying or crafting one). Including, well, both 
  female and male game designers.
  Now, to combine the above statements on shokunin 
  culture and contemporary doll culture back into the game: 
  It’s often the case that the story of a kugutsu becomes inter-
  twined with the story of their craftsperson, the person who 
  gave them life. For example, in the setting, the undisputed 
  master craftsman on the planet is a woman named Sho-
  Un, whose works are so beautiful that people fight wars 
  over them. In Japan, many games of Tenra that involve 
  Sho-Un aren’t just about the kugutsu herself, but about her 
  connection to Sho-Un: Why did she create me? Why did she 
  craft me so that I age like a human, or alternately not age like 
  a human does? Why did she make me a master swordsman? 
  Why did she make me blind, but give me the ability to tell the 
  future? Why did she hide me, releasing me “into the wild” 
  rather than risk a war being fought over me, wouldn’t it have 
  been better not to make me at all? In many ways, the story 
  of a kugutsu is the story of a doll and her maker/god, with 
  rich questions of personal existence that actually might be 
  answered in game (not to mention the whole idea of “does 
  my character try to become human? It’s rumored that such 
  miracles can happen” ala Pinocchio). 
  That’s a good “Japanese” kugutsu-focused game. A “bad” 
  kugutsu-focused game would put the PC in the roll of a 
  kugutsu forced into a situation beyond her control, forcing 
  them to live out the life of a piece of property, focusing 
  solely on the misery of the kugutsu and not their inevitable 
  escape from their situation, their confrontation with their 
  master (or previous owner), their deeper understanding of 
  who they are in relation to humanity, and so on.
  I hope that adds depth of understanding to this discussion.
  However! Now that kugutsu have been clarified in more 
  depth, at the same time I definitely agree with a feminist 
  look/deconstruction of the kugutsu: It’s plain that there are 
  elements in play in the game that feature the fact that they 
  are not treated as people, that they are basically the luxury 
  items and slaves of human lords. There are many kugutsu 
  stories which are less “philosophical discussion of what it 
  means to be made, and to be human”, and more “get revenge 
  upon a cruel former lord” or “escape from slavery and hide 
  while the lord scours the land for his ‘property’ “, and other 
  tales which are more along the lines of “kidnapped princess” 
  or “runaway Replicant” style narratives. And yet, even in 
  those reports, there always seems to be a point at which the 
  kugutsu’s player explores those issues of humanity. 
  Anyway, in the end, the question of “What is a kugtsu, 
  anyway?” is deeper than it appears when you take into 
  consideration the very Japanese cultural background 
  components of the kugutsu (doll culture, craftsman/
  shokunin culture)... and yet, that doesn’t change the fact that 
  the narratives are what they are, or where a deconstruction 
  of the kugutsu from another cultural context (in our case, 
  Western) might make them that much more palatable to us, 
  or even more interesting as a story element!
  L 
  is for crap there’s 
  no L in Japanese
  There’s no L-sound in Japanese. Which is why 
  I chose to relocalize all the oni words to make the L sound a 
  strong component of their language. Frex, originally Yi-Yil 
  was “I-iru”. Laz-Dii-Go was “Ra-Dei-Go”. I used a sound 
  set that was almost a blend of Korean and French to emulate 
  the quick staccato sounds of the words of their language, but 
  with a richer consonant tone and L-sound of French.
  L 
  is for Learning 
  Japanese
  I highly recommend that if you’re interested 
  in learning the language, that you find a community class or 
  local college (take it as an audit, that way you can attend and 
  learn without having to pay for full enrollment). If you really 
  want to get better quickly... the best option would be to move 
  to Japan.
  Seriously. I took Japanese 101 as a freshman in college 
  because I had been interested in Japanese forever but didn’t 
  have the discipline to learn on my own. I had a free credit, so 
  I started learning Japanese. A week later, I made it my minor: 
  I was that interested in it. Sure, it was brutal, but it was fair. 
  You got out what you put in.
  Still, by the time I went to Japan for the first time to live 
  and study in Tokyo (at Sophia University), I had studied 
  Japanese for about 2 full years, and was one of the better 
  students in my grade. But six months living and “working” 
  (studying) in Japan with a homestay family made my 
  
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  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  schooling up to that point look cheap and meaningless 
  in comparison. The learning scale basically was a steady 
  arithmetic climb until I went to Japan, and then it shot up 
  like a parabola. Just being surrounded by it at all times, even 
  if you’re not actively studying, is enough to hammer in the 
  language if you’re receptive to it.
  After college I went to live, teach and work in Japan for 
  about four more years, right in the early days of the Internet. 
  Since then, I’ve gone back to Japan once every year or every 
  other year or so, usually for somewhere between 2-4 weeks 
  (sometimes for work, sometimes for family). I’m still learning 
  today, and even though I read Japanese pretty much daily 
  (short stories and manga before I go to sleep), I still have so 
  far to go before I get to the level I want to be. 
  If only I could just take a year off and go back to being a 
  student for one single year; I think that would do it, put me 
  at the “Level One of the old Japanese Language Proficiency 
  Test” level that I’m aiming at getting before I die. 
  In the meantime, though, I’ll maintain and grow slowly. 
  Reading and translating Japanese games has helped greatly 
  with that.
  L 
  is also for 
  Localization
  Localization is the art of taking a translation, 
  and making it make sense for the target culture. Normally we 
  use the shorthand of “localize” when we mean “standardize 
  a few terms or names that repeat over and over throughout a 
  work”, but it also means things like, “take a poem, and rewrite 
  the poem so that the meaning is still the same even if the 
  words are a little different”.
  Here are some terms that we did a little localization dance 
  with, where it was actually hard to determine how to actually 
  treat the words for some time:
  - Yoroi became Armour, although we say “Armour” or 
  sometimes “Yoroi Armour”. For a time I waffled between 
  using many Japanese terms as-is, and localizing as many 
  Japanese terms as possible because I feared that with too 
  much Japanese the game would be that much harder to play. 
  Still, the mecha were called the Japanese word for “armor”, 
  and I thought that was a pretty friggin sweet image, so I went 
  with “Armour”. Mind, this was a rare term where I actually 
  also referred to “Yoroi Armours” in the game, effectively 
  straddling both sides of the fence: Using the English word 
  yet still keeping the Japanese word around, just in case.
  - Mushi-tsukai became Annelidist  in much the same way. 
  Mushi is “worm/bug/insect” (the word does not distinguish 
  between annelids, bugs, flying insects, and worms of the 
  earth; they’re all “mushi”, and thus it was hard to pick one 
  word), “-tsukai” is “-user”. I started off with worm-user for 
  some time, but annelidist just had a ring to it.
  - Kiai became Focus, then later went back to Kiai again. I 
  figured I wanted to keep the symmetry of the words AIKI 
  and KIAI that exist in Japanese.
  - Aiki became Harmony, then went back to Aiki. Same 
  reason.
  - Karma was “Sin” for a while, but figured it was best 
  to keep it as Karma and provide an explanation. Although 
  Karma (literally “act”, as in “people taking action”) can 
  sometimes be translated as “Sin”, it sounded too Western-
  religious.
  - Tenka was Tenra, then became Heaven and Earth, then 
  became Station. Station was the closest thing to what the 
  attribute Tenka was trying to represent.
  - Makura-jutsu became Pillow Arts, a straight-up 
  translation of that word. It can surely mean sex itself, but it’s 
  mainly the art of seduction. I only saw one guy freak out at 
  seeing the skill “pillow arts” on the character sheet. Fuck that 
  guy.
  Funny thing is that I remember seeing the word “Pillow 
  Arts” long ago in a magazine or something, and I thought, 
  “My, what an interesting expression!” I recently tried to find 
  it again in Google, but Google just gives me tons of listings 
  of “how to make a PILLOW: ARTS and crafts projects.” Urg. 
  Adding other words, though, turns of searches for references 
  in books, usually involving “Chinese tantric sex stuff”.
  Side note: I re-translated/localized the original descriptions 
  of the “use this attribute with this skill for these situations” 
  for pillow arts. The description of the skill was clearly a 
  seduction-like skill, but all the attribute pairing descriptions 
  were kinda goofy and immature. They sounded slightly less 
  immature in Japanese, but only just. 
  - Fudoh Myou-oh became Acala or Acala, Lord of Light 
  (a combination of the Sanskrit and English words. I love 
  Buddhist iconography. Fudoh/Acala is a badass.
  - Kongohki stayed Kongohki, though I waffled with 
  “Vajrid”. Just didn’t roll off the tongue correctly. Kongoh is 
  the Chinese/Japanese word for “Vajra”, which is the ancient 
  Sanskrit word that is sometimes translated as “Diamond”, 
  but is basically “Admantium” or “an unbreakable mystic 
  substance”. Vajra is also the name of the buddhist symbol/
  object that looks like a hand-crank with 2 or 3 curved 
  prongs on the end (the chapter opener for the Buddhist 
  Monk section shows a pic of a monk holding one). Anyway, 
  Kongohki is “Vajra/Admantium” and “Machine”. Android... 
  Vajroid? Didn’t stick, so I went with keeping the original 
  term.
  - Bokusen, Hou-oh and Myouren became Ebon Mountain, 
  Phoenix and Bright Lotus sects, respectively: Using the 
  straight translation of each of the sects characters from 
  Japanese to English. I really waffled on these. I really like the 
  way Myouren sounds, and Bokusen, too. But Hou-oh, the 
  Japanese word for Phoenix, just wasn’t as slip-off-the-tongue 
  for English speakers. Feel free to use the original words if 
  you want. Anyway, Bokusen and Myouren were monk names, 
  and monk names are always natural or poetic, so I figured 
  the poetry came across in the English translations of the sect 
  names.
  - Onmyouji went from Taoist Sorcerer, then back to 
  Onmyoji, since the word had picked up popularity recently. 
  Still, I alternated between Onmyoji and Taoist Sorcerer, cause 
  that’s what they are.
  
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  - Ohjuu became Gems, then Soulgem/Soulgems. This was 
  my working word for a few years, and then I noticed that 
  in the video game Skyrim they were using the word “Soul 
  Gem” as a resource object in the game. My “I don’t wanna 
  get sued” drop of sweat rolled down my head, but the words 
  are common enough, the actual ways the terms are used are 
  different, and Tenra’s spelling has them as one word, not two.
  - Jingu-ke (Shinto House/Family) became “The 
  Priesthood”. It just sounds ominous and awesome.
  - Shura became demon, then Shura again, then Ashura. 
  When in doubt, stick with the Sanskrit.
  - Fuujutsu became The Seal became The Dark Arts. 
  Fuujutsu literally means “the art of seal/sealing away 
  (through magic)”. It just didn’t work well as-is. But the text 
  referred to it as a kind of dark ritual that few survive, so I 
  went with that interpretation. Dark Arts!
  - Everything else was pretty much translated as-is into 
  English, without a lot of waffling of terms.
  M 
  is for Martial 
  Arts
  If you can get to the 5th rank of 
  Celestial Form Kung Fu in one game, you can basically 
  get to that “+40 damage” effect in one round by spending 
  “additional action” and “interrupt” over and over again until 
  you do 5 attacks in one round, the 5th doing the +40 damage.
  Using the word “Fist” for a few of the monk martial 
  arts hopefully evokes Fist of the North Star, which they are 
  clearly inspired by. But “fist” is just one interpretation of the 
  kanji “ken”, and honestly a poor interpretation. It usually 
  means “art” or is shorthand for “kung fu”. Like “suiken” 
  (drunk, “fist”/”art”/”kung fu”) is the word for “drunken 
  style kung fu”. Anyway, it’s the fault of the first localizer 
  of Hokuto no Ken: It should have been called “North Star 
  Kung Fu”. However, “Fist of the North Star” is pretty damn 
  evocative in its own right.
  M 
  is also for 
  Mushi-Tsukai
  Ahhh, the Annelidist aka 
  Mushi-tsukai - 蟲使い - Not sure where the 
  original inspiration came from, but there’s plenty 
  enough to be found in media, just between the 
  animes Ninja Scroll (remember Mushizo? The 
  dude with the colony of wasps in his back and 
  throat-needles) and Nausicaa. Note to Japa-
  nese speakers: Not just mushi 虫, but TRIPLE 
  MUSHI 蟲, so that’s like totally exXxtreme and 
  stuff for realz.
  It’s a pretty compelling character class, always torn between 
  two worlds: People are afraid of them because they’re 
  “unclean” like the burakumin, but when it comes to broken 
  limbs or nasty diseases all of a sudden they’re the ones to 
  turn to. They also have this “on the outskirts of society” 
  thing going, living out away from others usually or traveling 
  around, yet they also have their organized almost yakuza-like 
  “Hive” organizations they can join and find a place among 
  others of their kind.
  Personally, my favorite kind of annelidist to play is not 
  so much the “healer who controls his abilities”, but rather 
  the “Oh shit I was a normal guy who stepped on something 
  weird in the woods and now it’s buried in me and I can barely 
  control it/myself anymore” annelidist.
  Oh, quick aside: The “Demon-of-Battle” bug, which 
  basically can shoot blasts of electricity. That demon-of-
  battle bug was in the earlier version of Tenra (1997) and was 
  CLEARLY (based on the art and description in the old book) 
  an opportunity to have a Sentai/Ranger hero type: They can 
  even transform to look like Kamen Rider (or a really bug-
  like Iron Man suit), with a chitinous “helmet” and laser..er...
  LIGHTNING blasts from their arms. However, in play I like 
  to re-describe the lightning (since lightning is just “something 
  that does damage” without special “lightning rules” or 
  whatever) for my own character as “chitinous 1000-needle/
  spike attacks” and other gooey/horrific bug-like things. I 
  run my demon-of-battle less like Kamen Rider and more like 
  “Clive Barker’s Kamen Rider”.
  N 
  is for Ninja
  Ninjas are awesome.
  If someone tells you that ninjas are not awesome, step 
  back cautiously, and when you’re at a safe distance, run the 
  fuck away. You’ve just met a sociopath who may try to eat 
  your face.
  Now, I can get it if people think “Ninjas are awesome, but 
  they’re played out”; or “I used to like ninjas, but they’re so 
  overused that I’m tired of them.” Okay, I get that.
  If you want to know more about “real” ninjas and ninja 
  history, there’s a great little book that’s come out recently 
  called “Ninja Attack!: True Tales of Assassins, Samurai, and 
  Outlaws” by Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt. It’s really interesting, 
  and gives a historic look at the records of ninjas in history. 
  It’s much better than anything that came before it, like all the 
  bullshit books from the 80s that taught you how to learn “real 
  ninjutsu” and the like (yeah, Stephen K Hayes, I’m looking 
  at you too mister “Quest Center”. Mikkyo’s cool and all but 
  it’s not Ninja Stuff). How about some random shotgun ninja 
  stories?
  - My friend Seiji recalls one of the first movies he saw 
  as a kid in an actual movie theater (a pretty rare and special 
  occasion). It was the original Hollywood “Ninja” movie 
  (likely “Enter the Ninja”). It made a huge impression on him, 
  
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  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  namely because after the awesome credit sequence featuring 
  almost Shaw Brothers-style martial arts performances by Sho 
  Kosugi, the opening scene features the Temple of the Golden 
  Pavillion, Kinkakuji, with the legend, in English: “TOKYO”. 
  Kinkakuji is such an utter hallmark of the ancient capital city 
  of Kyoto, it would be like seeing a Japanese movie where the 
  scene opens with Big Ben and Parliament on the Thames, and 
  the legend “NEW YORK” appears.
  - The first RPG I ever made was in 7th grade, in the back 
  of Math class. I used the West End Games Paranoia rules as 
  a foundation to make a game about ninjas. It was awesome. 
  Almost no role-playing at all occurred, but the skill spread 
  was badass.
  - GI Joe was pretty dumb, but there was one part where 
  Storm Shadow basically punches pressure points on a tank 
  to make it explode. Funny that I can remember that some 
  30 years later, and I don’t remember my online banking 
  password every time I try to log in. Oh, another time Storm 
  Shadow opens a letter by throwing the envelope in the air 
  and slicing it open with his sword: But lengthwise; basically 
  cutting the letter so the front of the envelope and back of 
  the envelope fall away cleanly, and he snatches the floating 
  message from mid-air. Badass.
  - Tenchu was one of my favorite games for the original 
  Playstation. I played the hell out of it. Actually I still highly 
  recommend the soundtrack: Utterly devoid of digital bleeps 
  and bloops, the soundtrack features a rich Spanish guitar 
  and strings over a subdued acoustic-electronic blend. The 
  first Tenchu game for the PS2, by the same studio, was also 
  pretty incredible. It also featured a third playable character 
  based on Fujieda Baian (doctor by day, assassin by night) 
  which was doubleplusawesome. Unfortunately, that studio 
  (Acquire) gave up the 
  rights to the game (to 
  From Software, as 
  well as others), and 
  subsequent versions 
  of the game made by 
  other companies were 
  inferior: No evolved controls, 
  dumb storylines, etc.
  The original studio went 
  back to make an even better ninja 
  game experience through the game 
  “Shinobido: Imashime” for the PS2, and it 
  featured some wicked gameplay (albeit a little 
  repetitive at times), cool character designs and 
  a decent story basically lifted from The Bourne 
  Identity, and a completion mechanism that 
  required you to work with three opposed feudal 
  lords while covering up your activities to the other 
  lords, so they round-robin hired you over and over 
  again. Unfortunately, for some reason it never came 
  out in North America (it did in Europe), but man it’s 
  almost worth learning Japanese to play it. 
  If you run out of ideas for a ninja-themed Tenra 
  game, go back to the original Tenchu: Stealth Assassins, 
  Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven, or Shinobido if you can find 
  it.
  - I’ve seen westerners taken to task for glorifying the ninja, 
  “hollywood-ifying” their abilities and the like (from skilled 
  infiltrators into “flying dudes with ninja magic”). Which, hey, 
  I get it. Cultural appropriation and all that, it’s always good to 
  be on the lookout for it, to make sure you’re not doing it too 
  much unreflectively. 
  And yet, whatever appropriation a westerner applies to 
  ninjas, it’s nothing--NOTHING--on what the Japanese have 
  themselves appropriated from ninjas. Heck, even in Japanese-
  made tabletop RPGs, ninjas almost always appear in some 
  capacity, even in games without a strong Japanese setting or 
  feel! The roots of all the dumb 80s Hollywood ninja crap 
  comes from movies made in Japan which over-glorified the 
  powers and abilities of ninja. And when you trace it back far 
  enough, most of the stories of ninjas flying around, using 
  magic and crazy arts, comes from folklore and the like of 
  course; however, you can put a focal point on the prolific 
  writings of Ikenami Shotaro and Yamada Futaro, early 20th 
  century “pulp fiction” writers who wrote about samurai and 
  ninjas and assassins instead of sword and sorcery. But the 
  stories are similar: Larger-than-life figures with too-incredible 
  realistic and mystical powers. Fighting. Power. Status. Rawrr.
  It was Yamada Futaro’s writings which led to the works 
  which led to Hollywood-ification (and the Japanese branch, 
  of course, what was stuff like Ninja Scroll and Basilisk: Ninja 
  Scroll/Shinobi: Heart Under Blade). Anyway, I too long 
  ago used to harp on folks for over-glorifying the history of 
  ninjas in Japan, reading/watching too much pap pulp. Then 
  I understood the full extent of how much that pap pulp 
  originated from Japanese authors, and took on a life of its 
  own, and realized that no matter how much weirdness we 
  attribute to ninjas, it’s not as weird as you’ll find in the text 
  of the country they came from. Still, while kinda universal 
  (there’s all sorts of myth surrounding the kukri knife in 
  Nepal, for example), it’s still good to know the roots. Maybe 
  
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  give some Yamada Futaro a read, but also check out that 
  “Ninja Attack!” book.
  - What the hell is up with that giant monster toad that 
  high-level Ninja can summon? Look up “JIRAIYA” on the 
  net. It’s a cool story, bro.
  - When I came back to the US, I got into a local dojo for a 
  while. It was a school teaching “Ninjutsu”, officially “Ninpo 
  Taijutsu” (“Ninja-esque Exercise”) of the Genbukan school. I 
  ended up quitting after a few months, too busy putting my life 
  back together and all (I’d later move on to Wing Chun, then 
  recently Aikido again after 15 years). But my friend Jurgen in 
  Germany for years now has been training in Bujinkan, and is 
  actually pretty high level now. Since Genbukan and Bujinkan 
  are technically rival dojos, I’ve been telling Jurgen for years 
  now we ought to settle the clan struggle in a fight. A cute 
  little joke that is meaningless at this point, since I’m so out of 
  shape. Ahhh, the little rivalries.
  O 
  is for Original 
  Plans
  2004. That was when I originally talked to 
  the guys at FEAR about an English release. The scene was 
  so different then. Originally... we were going to release a d20 
  rules hack for Tenra Bansho Zero! 
  Yeah, d20 was pretty huge in those days, and there were 
  more than a few games with original rules that also had a 
  “d20 hack” or “d20 compatible rules in the back” section, 
  to ride the wave of Dungeons and Dragons 3e’s rising tide. 
  Although Ken (see below) made the suggestion, it seemed 
  right at the time. Amazingly enough, the folks at FEAR were 
  totally cool with it. While we couldn’t really toy with the art, 
  they suggested we change the rules as much as we wanted to 
  make the game work in the West.
  Well, cut to about a year later, as I’ve dug in and 
  understood the implications of the rules and style 
  of play. At that point I had realized that a true d20 
  conversion would have been... well, at the very 
  least misguided, at the worst unreflective and 
  dumb. Still, there were a few really solid d20 
  conversions that played up the strengths 
  of the original material and setting in 
  new ways: Namely the post-Christian-
  apocalypse game “The End: Lost 
  Souls Edition” (which is one of 
  my favorite settings ever; I highly 
  recommend buying the PDF if 
  you come across some cash) and 
  the superhero game Mutants and 
  Masterminds. 
  For a time, I invested a lot 
  of thought into a d20 rules hack/
  conversion for the back of the book. I 
  actually made it work, too: Aside from the Hit Points, 
  Saving Throws, levels, abilities and the like (which are not 
  that hard to build in a balanced format, as long as you keep 
  things relatively simple), I even had a nascent frame for 
  converting the entire Kiai-Aiki-Fate system into d20 (basically 
  just kind of tacking it on, though it fit remarkably well), as 
  well as Tenra’s “one session, campaign over” style of play 
  (of course you could level up your guy and bring her back in 
  another campaign or session later). 
  After some time, and realizing the scope of the 
  interworkings of the game and the complexity of the text, 
  I had to back-burner those thoughts. And back-burner 
  eventually led to discarding them entirely once I realized how 
  much extra work it would be, and the d20 tide started to fade 
  out.
  Still, if the game was released when we expected it to be 
  released... Well, it wouldn’t have been released (see Peters, 
  below); but if it had, it might have had this d20 section 
  stapled to its ass. 
  O 
  is also for Other 
  Stuff I’m Working 
  On
  Since Tenra started coming together hardcore in the last 
  two years, I made a friend who’s become a writing/publishing 
  companion, Matt Sanchez. The dude is a translation rocket, 
  and an awesome human being. Because of his enthusiasm 
  and work ethic (admittedly, at the time it was because he 
  was still career-hunting and hadn’t landed the awesome--and 
  busy--job he has now) which fueled my own, we were able to 
  make plans, translate the shit out of some stuff, contact some 
  dudes, set up some contracts, and line up the next few works.
  - Our next game will be “Ryuutama: Natural Fantasy 
  Roleplaying” by Okada Atsuhiro. It’s a western-themed 
  feelgood game of travel and wonder. You play “normal 
  people” in a fantasy world like bakers, farmers and the like, 
  who get this bug and feel the inescapable need to travel 
  (every character gets this feeling, so 
  everyone understands). You find 
  some people who also have the bug, 
  and set sights on faraway lands. The 
  game has cute monsters, focuses 
  on travel over combat, most of 
  the adventures are about helping 
  people (vs loot or death)... and yet, 
  you can still get Total Party Killed 
  by two 4th level poisonous bees 
  (*shakes fist in the air angily*). You 
  also have to rigorously maintain 
  equipment lists for your travels, in 
  a way similar to the old computer 
  game “Oregon Trail”. 
  It’s a game where the GM 
  also has a character sheet, for a 
  shapechanging dragon who watches 
  over and protects the characters from 
  a distance. It features magic spells like 
  “Create a cubic yard of dead leaves” 
  and “Turn any possible edible thing 
  into a jam-in-a-jar”. It also features rules 
  where having a delicious meal the night 
  
  27
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  before can save your character from an untimely death.
  It features awesome, simple, “happy” art by a few talented 
  female artists, and it’s quite a departure from the style of 
  play of Tenra; with its Western theme, long-term play, and 
  generally “feelgood” attitude.
  By the time you have a copy of this physical book in your 
  hands, we’ll either be weeks away from or into the Kickstarter 
  project to fund the printing of this game.
  - After that, we will be releasing the small-form-factor 
  story-focused RPG “Shinobigami: A Modern Ninja Battle 
  Game” (“God of the Shinobi”) into English. This is a hand-
  sized book with simple rules, which produces a single-session 
  story with your friends. Every player creates a ninja of a 
  warring ninja in contemporary Japan, with their own abilities, 
  strengths, weaknesses, and open and hidden secrets and goals. 
  From there, the players have to both co-operate and compete 
  with each other to achieve a goal or take the single “prize” of 
  the scenario. Who you ally with, who you make your enemy, 
  how you seek out information and what you do with it, these 
  are all the themes of this wonderful, charged game. It’s the 
  closest I’ve found to a tabletop role-playing game that plays 
  out with the mindset of a German-style board game. It, too, 
  is a very different game from Ryuutama and Tenra (not only 
  are the authors and companies different, the themes and 
  styles of the games are totally different as well).
  - In the future after that... who knows? The folks at FEAR 
  are wonderful to work with, and once the dust settles and 
  we have a long rest, I’d love to consider translating another 
  game from their collection. Or perhaps write our own 
  FEAR-style game, using FEAR’s house rules system called 
  the “SRS system” (basically a high-action anime-themed 
  d6-based alternative to a d20 style Open Game System). If 
  we don’t do so ourselves, we’d love to assist other earnest 
  people in contacting FEAR or other companies to translate 
  more games into English. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who or 
  which company gets the rights to the English translation of 
  Japanese RPGs: Just by the fact that they come out in English 
  at all enriches the entire hobby.
  O 
  is also for Oedo 
  Onsen Monogatari
  This fakey hot-springs theme park over in 
  odaiba is one of my favorite “Contemporary Tokyo” places 
  to go in Japan. I recommend it to anyone and everyone, 
  especially if you don’t have the time or chance to get out to 
  an old resort town in the mountains or a local public bath/
  sento. It will kick all the asses out of your ass, and leave you 
  so refreshed you’ll be able to return and tackle a project... 
  say, the translation and publishing of Tenra Bansho Zero... 
  without curling up into a ball and giving up.
  P 
  Peters comma 
  Kenneth
  Ken is the reason you’ve got Tenra Bansho 
  Zero in English. Well, sure, I did all the work and all, but 
  without Ken I never would have considered picking up the 
  project.
  I bought TBZ back in Japan in 2002 or so. I was so 
  enthralled by the art and style that I scanned a bunch of 
  pages to show to friends and acquaintances on various RPG 
  message boards at the time. A lot of folks became extremely 
  interested in it. We all lamented, “Man, if only we could read 
  this in Japanese” or “If only some big company would pick 
  up the rights to translate it!”
  Translation of “fun media” (rather than say, things that pay 
  the bills like medical/science/tech translation) is a hard game 
  to get into: The pay is cheap as shit. Translating a manga or 
  an anime is a pretty easy thing in comparison to a short story 
  or novel. I remember grabbing the output of the subtitles 
  of some anime I was watching with a pretty solid amount 
  of talking (Fruits Basket, perhaps?), a good 30 minutes or so 
  of anime dialogue. I tossed it into word and compared that 
  to the size of the Tenra setting book. The anime episode 
  was something like the equivalent of a single page and a half 
  (maaaaaybe two pages) of Tenra’s more dense spots. And 
  the anime was of course much more converational, and fun 
  to work on. That, in short, is why all the Japanese RPGs out 
  there (as well as solid novels, academic works etc) don’t end 
  up in English at all. But I digress.
  Anyway, for about two years after that initial post (or 
  followup posts about other Japanese games, with scans 
  of illustrations from those), every few months someone 
  would contact me. “I represent a new up-and-coming RPG 
  company”, they would say, “and I’d love it if you could 
  translate this for us.” Most of the talks died right then and 
  there, with no followup replies after I explained how long 
  the book was. The longest the discussion ever lasted was 
  with one person who said, “I can free up about four hundred 
  dollars for this project” They said it with such an air that 
  I’m sure they felt like that was a lot of money, and not like 
  the cost to produce less than 40 books, much less pay for 
  their translation. Hell, at the time, both they and me were 
  poor as shit, so a hundred dollars was a lot of money... ish. 
  Real translation is a whole different game, though. The 
  
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  The Gun Goes Off Way, Way too Early...
  From November 10th, 2004:
  Z-Builder Design* proudly announced today that it will be translating and publishing one of the most revolutionary RPGs 
  ever created, the Japanese RPG Tenra Bansho Zero. It was originally designed by Junichi Inoue and produced by Far East 
  Amusement Entertainment (FEAR) and Enterbrain in 2000, a revision of the original 1997 release. Junichi Inoue is highly 
  regarded as one of the best and most prolific game designers of our time, having designed, written and even illustrated 
  several blockbuster games. Coordinating the Tenra Bansho Zero translation and production will be Andy Kitkowski, under the 
  supervision of project lead Kenneth Peters.
  “This is the first ever Japanese RPG to be released in English”, said Z-Builder Design Head, Andy Kitkowski**, 
  “and hopefully English players will find it as revolutionary as the fans of the Japanese version. Thanks to the support of designer-
  illustrator Junichi Inoue, and Shinichi Nakajima of FEAR, Inc, and their tireless enthusiasm, we’ll see an English version of the game that 
  caused Japanese gamers to rethink the way they roleplay. We’re blessed to have such cooperation on all levels, from designer to producer to 
  distributor. This game will turn heads with its jaw-dropping gorgeous interior art, both color and black and white, as well as the mode of play 
  it encourages”
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  Tenra Bansho Zero (TBZ) is a relatively rules-light game of high fantasy and science fiction that takes place in the Sengoku (Feudal 
  Warring States) Era on another planet in the far future. High magic and technology is commonplace in a world where Taoist demon 
  summoners interact with mecha-rider children and high tech Ninja. There are dozens of archetypes from which to choose a character for 
  quick and easy play, and rules are provided for people who want to make their own.
  TBZ uses a light rules system of small pools of 6-sided dice. The game received much critical acclaim because of the core rules which 
  focus on turning the gaming session into a theatrical production. Players gain abilities, skills and powers, as well as perform heroic feats, 
  by spending “Kiai Points”. Players get these points through roleplaying; Playing their character well, coming up with witty lines, and generally 
  entertaining the other players. With the theatre motif, the game uses Scenes, Acts, and Intermissions to drive the action. And like a play or 
  a movie, an entire campaign or story arc is meant to play out in one 4-6 hour gaming session.
  The players are encouraged to give their characters various inner struggles, which they try to overcome throughout the roleplaying 
  session. At the beginning of each session, the GM assigns the characters objectives called “Destiny” which they must meet over the 
  course of the adventure. This friction is what drives the stories that are created in Tenra Bansho Zero sessions.
  Over the coming months, Z-Builder Design will provide more information about the game, including translator notes, interviews 
  with the designer and publisher, downloadable playtest files, sample character sheets, and more information about the world of Tenra 
  Bansho Zero, including glimpses into the world of Junichi Inoue’s Tenra Bansho through his fantastical and gorgeous manga art. The 
  game is currently scheduled for release in January 2006***.
  * That was the original name for my little RPG and Internet Consulting company at the time. Z-Builder, short for “The Ziggurat 
  Builder”. Ech. I so much more love KOTODAMA HEAVY INDUSTRIES, but maybe in 10 years I’ll be going “yech” again.
  ** “said Z-Builder Design Head, Andy Kitkowski”. LOL. In those days, everyone wrote their own press releases, as if some reporter 
  with a pencil and the word “PRESS” taped to the side of his fedora was eagerly writing down my every word. Man, we were total 
  chumps. I never want to write a press release like that again. Just info, entice, details, dates, and exit. No self-fellatio.
  *** 2006. Two years. Holy hell was I naive. . 
  
  29
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  
  30
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  average price for a technical/”hard” translation is about 
  20 cents per word. That’s about what I charge when I do 
  freelance translation on the side (give or take; far less if it’s 
  “fun”, 20 or more if it’s extremely technical or ‘poetic’). 
  This dude was effectively offering to pay me the rate I would 
  charge for about 2,000 words (this Director’s Cut book is 
  currently about 9 times that size, Tenra, at last I counted, 
  was Way Fucking More), plus deal with all the international 
  conversations, contracts, etc.
  I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I DO I 
  remember being extremely polite when I said “no”.
  Ken was the last of the folks to approach me. He grabbed 
  my attention by immediately proving himself:
  * A fan of the genre.
  * Having a lot of idle money (being single at the time and 
  working for the government can create quite a stash).
  * Having the will to commit the money to Tenra.
  It was he who got me out of my “Politely dismiss yet 
  another fool” mode and into more of a “Wait a minute, I 
  wonder if this actually CAN be done?” Ken took me very 
  seriously. Which made me take him very seriously. And got 
  me to look at the project as not something that’s wishful 
  thinking, but accomplishable in my lifetime (only just, heh).
  So we all have Ken to thank for this being out. Ken 
  dropped off the project a few years ago and has focused on 
  going back to school since, but he’s been a huge supporter all 
  this time, and is one of the high-tier Kickstarter backers.
  Thanks, Ken, for getting the ball rolling.
  P 
  is also for Press 
  Release
  The original Press Release I made for the game 
  back in 2004 is included in here. Wow, it made me laugh with 
  nostalgia.
  P 
  is also for Phoenix 
  Sect
  鳳凰宗 - Hou-oh Shu - The 
  traditional “shaved-head monks in quiet training, giant 
  temples, chanting, and mysical magic” sect of Buddhism. 
  Also, totally not a stand-in/metaphor for historic real-world 
  Japanese Shingon Buddhism. Wink.
  Phoenix Sect was the problem child in my translation/
  localization effort. I liked the sound/tone/hibiki of the other 
  two sect names: The Bokusen sect, the Myoren sect (and heck 
  I think I included the words in the text so that people could 
  draw upon them if they really felt it). However, then we get 
  to the Phoenix sect: Hou-oh. That’s the best romanization 
  I could apply to it to make it sensible, traditional Hepburn-
  shiki would have me write “Houou”, which looks like a trick 
  word to use in the game Hangman. I asked about a dozen 
  people, some of them Japanophiles, and no one could really 
  wrap their heads around or remember the word for Phoenix, 
  so instead of having Bokusen, Myoren and Phoenix (which 
  when read triggered some OCD or some shit), I went for All 
  Englishificat’d.
  If you play at my table, though, it’s Myoren, Bokusen, and 
  Phoenix.
  If you want to play a monk character, at some point try to 
  make a Phoenix or Bright Lotus sect monk with no kung fu. 
  Everyone jumps for the kung fu monk (which usually means 
  Ebon Mountain, or Phoenix), which is awesome because who 
  the heck doesn’t like kung fu monks (I’ll tell you: The people 
  on the opposite side of a Shaolin monk’s spear/staff/sword, 
  that’s who). But try just a down-to-earth practicing monk 
  (even one with magic is cool), trying to sort her shit out as 
  she travels the world and sees the sights. It would be a fun 
  challenge, I think.
  
  31
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  Q 
  is for 
  Questioning My 
  Sanity
  This happens after trying to perfectly translate and capture 
  the nuances of poetically-written sentences for like four or 
  more hours straight. 
  Luckily, my wife has been really supportive at those times. 
  She would gently come over to me and say, in soothing 
  Japanese, “I told you this project was much bigger than you 
  thought. Didn’t I say that? Yeah, I said that.”
  Sometimes a slap of reality in the face like this is enough to 
  summon a few more hours of hysterical, raw focus. “I’ll show 
  them!! I’ll show them ALL!!!!”
  R 
  is for Rules 
  Changes
  There were a few!
  In some cases, I realized that some of the rules 
  weren’t particularly thought ahead (like the Kongohki 
  transformation), and really were lopsided in play. Others were 
  just too fiddly. I documented a list of all the changes made 
  to the rules that I can easily recall. There weren’t that many, I 
  didn’t carve it up into my “ideal set of rules” or anything like 
  that: It would have turned Tenra Bansho Zero into a totally 
  different game. I might write up a skinned-down rules-set at 
  some point and make it a supplement, but I didn’t want to 
  change the core book any more than necessary to make the 
  game more playable, more fun, sliiiiiightly more streamlined.
  At the same time, I made absolutely sure to preserve the 
  feel of what Inoue (setting, feel) and Endo (rules-smithy) 
  were *aiming* for with the game. I also read their later games, 
  most notably the wildly successful Alshard, taking queues 
  from those and applying them back to their older work Tenra: 
  Just enough, not going too far.
  In one case, the rules for distribution of Aiki chits, I got 
  straight from Inoue himself. The original Japanese game 
  only had the “Scene Judge rules (plus GM)” for aiki chit 
  distribution (for fear of being “fair” and “ensuring balance 
  in distribution”), and the “anyone can distribute Aiki at any 
  time” rule was a very common house rule many people 
  simply created and used themselves, and was not mentioned 
  in the book.
  When I met Inoue years ago, I asked him at one point, 
  “Is there any section of the rules that you wish you could 
  change?” He thought about it, mainly coming to the 
  conclusion of it being hard to change one thing, as it was 
  created as a whole (though he did mention vagaries of 
  wanting to slim things down just a touch). But one thing he 
  did say was that he wished he wasn’t as strict with the Aiki 
  rules, that he just let the players and GM give Aiki chits 
  whenever they wanted without all the overhead rules of the 
  Scene Judge. 
  I took that as my cue to make the change that I was 
  hoping to add as a mere house rule, and instead rewrite that 
  whole section in alignment with the author’s wishes: Aiki 
  chits distributed by anyone, with the original Scene Judge 
  rules relegated to an “optional rule” status. I’ve tried both 
  ways, and honestly, I’ve played with friends, I’ve played with 
  strangers, I’ve played with folks deliberately trying to dink 
  with the system, and have never had a problem with the 
  “everyone gives Aiki” approach. As long as they follow Rule 
  Zero of roleplaying (“Don’t be a dick”), there should be no 
  problems at your table. 
  Still, the Scene Judge, which it requires more handling, 
  might be a fun switch-up if you are looking for a different 
  way to play.
  Oh, speaking of rules changes: One of the major changes 
  in formatting of the book was the splitting up of the book 
  into rules and setting books or sections.: For the most part, 
  the rules for the characters (the character-focused rules-sets 
  in the rules book) were put in at the end of each character’s 
  setting description. It was a little strange, because it basically 
  presented all of the character-centric rules before it got to 
  the rules section where it told you how to roll dice or use 
  skills. So there was a lot of flipping back and forth between 
  the sections of the book. We pulled all that text into the rules 
  book, each into its own section (and splitting some further; 
  the Kongohki and Armour rules were actually one cojoined 
  section, but ultimately a little hard to reference because of 
  the minute differences that appeared between each character 
  type; so we split them into their distinct sections, even though 
  some of the rules overlapped and thus were duplicated).
  Hopefully, the setting-rules split produced a version of the 
  game easy to read (setting) and easy to reference (rules).
  R 
  is also for Reverse 
  Death Spiral
  I love that rule. Seriously. It messes with 
  everyone the first time they recognize exactly what it 
  represents. The swelling of music while the hero stands back 
  up; the “This is my Final Form!”
  In fact, normal “Death Spirals” 
  in RPGs kinda piss me off. If I 
  wanted hardcore reality, I’d be out 
  Doing Things and not Making 
  Stories with friends. It got to the 
  point where when I ran Legend of 
  the Five Rings (the most famous 
  asia-themed RPG; overall a cool 
  game but holy shit the setting’s 
  place and people names are so 
  wrong they grate on my nerves) for 
  about six months, the first thing I 
  hacked onto it was a kind of Fate 
  system, and Tenra’s Reverse Death 
  Spiral.
  
  32
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  RULES CHANGES
  Here’s where I catalog all the rules changes made from the original Japanese version TBZ (the ones I can remember 
  anyway), and why.
  ADDITIONS
  I compiled most of the expanded information and rules from the official supplement and extra rules-packs into the 
  core book. I figure this was a one-shot deal without that whole “release fat supplements” thing that we tend to do on major 
  tabletop game releases in the US, so I wanted to cover as much ground in the core book as possible. That’s like an extra 
  $120 worth (in the extra supplement and rules packs) of pure, raw data into the core book. Not to mention folding about 8 
  pages of errata and Q&A text into the core rules, to fix it all straight from the gate. You’re welcome!
  OTHER ADDITIONS
  I also scavenged the “How to make your own archetypes” appendix (p416) out of an RPG magazine I had to hunt to find, released around the 
  same time as TBZ in Japan. That article didn’t exist in the original game or supplements.
  PUNCHES AND KICKS
  Punches were 0 damage, Kicks were +1 damage. This naturally led to everyone saying “I kick!” in unarmed combat, ALL THE TIME. I 
  figured the simplest fix was reducing all hand to hand damage to 0, and letting the player describe them as kicks, punches, grabs-and-
  throws, jabs, elbows, and so on.
  WAR ART: Dragon and Tiger Under One Sky Style, Supreme Rank
  This originally let you add both the damage ratings from each sword together when you hit, before they exploded. I’m like, “The swords 
  EXPLODE. The gemblade that is your soul is devastated. That’s all you get??” So I tweaked it a tad after playtesting, I changed it to making 
  two rolls, piling on the bonuses/differences, and adding that difference plus damage twice. Far more damage, a one-shot attack worthy of 
  making your swords into slag.
  WAR ART: Clarity of Heaven Style: A Lot
  I had to rework this art a bit, as this sword art was little used in the original Japanese game from what I could read. In the original 
  TBZ, NPCs pretty much had all the stats of PCs, including Vitality and all the Wound boxes. Since they no longer did, this style had to be re-
  adjusted. Originally the low level power let you auto-target the enemy’s Light Wounds. Then Heavy. Then Critical. But that no longer made 
  any sense. I still kept a reference to wounds ala the Advanced Rank, figuring that this technique could be used by major NPCs. The master 
  technique essentially lets you double the damage done against NPCs. 
  KUGUTSU-JUTSU:
  There was a skill on the original sheet for Kugutsu-making (carving, training, etc). But the Kugutsu-maker was such a rare archetype 
  that it was rarely used. Killed it, made it an optional fill-in skill in case anyone ever did make or play a kugutsu-maker.
  STRATEGY:
  This was a skill originally only used for the mass combat system. Since the mass combat system wasn’t going into the main book, I 
  reworked the skill into something that a friend inspired (I think the idea was borrowed from Clinton Nixon’s The Shadow of Yesterday): 
  Where you “roll in advance” to save up successes to bring into play later through description. It’ll get more skill-ish used in the Mass 
  Combat system supplement.
  MASS COMBAT SYSTEM:
  Removed. It’s an awesome, well-planned system based on the Chinese 36 Strategems, and I planned on pushing it out as a simple 
  few-page supplement. In the core book, though, it was simply out-of-place. Just a “Blap! Here’s some mass combat rules! Yay!” 
  They’re cool and all, but weren’t really “placed” as to how to use them, when to not use them, what they really do, and ideas on bundling 
  them into scenarios that won’t fall apart if the wrong side wins. None of the “advice” that I had carefully written into a lot of the rules 
  was there, so I felt that to write it into the mass combat system would take up more time and space than was necessary. Since most 
  of the game is individual-level stories, I figured on expanding them with scenario ideas and real advice/”placement” in their own 
  supplement eventually.
  NINJUTSU:
  Extra Successes: ...Yeah, that too. It felt dumb to roll 9 Agility:Ninjutsu dice on a skill that only took 1-2 successes to get off, plus 
  had a target resistance (for the NPC roll to escape, like Shadow Stitch) so low that bosses could easily get out of them. Carryover 
  successes: Problem solved.
  NINJUTSU:
  Hmmm. So the original Japanese rules say that when building a school of techniques, that you had to take the lower and higher 
  version of the same skill in one school. I kept that as-is in the corebook, but in my houserules I say “you don’t have to take both”.
  KARAKURI/MECHANICA:
  I have a feeling that after playtesting I might have adjusted some damage up or down on maybe 1-2 mechanica. Not positive, I 
  just remember thinking about doing so, thus likely did.
  MARTIAL ARTS:
  Nothing! But cool side story: So Hokuto Shinken, the martial art from Fist of the North Star, is the basis for the Fist of Acala. 
  Kenshiro’s real “secret power” in that manga was not his “I make people explode” thing, that was sort of just the effect of his 
  martial art. His real secret power that he used all the time was “mikiru”, or “see-cut”, or “seeing the attack come in, and counter-
  attacking at the last possible second at blinding speed before their attack lands”. That’s his real superpower, the exploding heads 
  thing is just gravy.
  
  33
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  SAMURAI LOADOUTS:
  Created all those myself in order to make custom samurai creation fast and easy.
  ONMYOJI:
  I didn’t hack/change anything here, but if I ran an onmyoji-centric campaign, I might make some house-rules to make them a little more 
  powerful. Perhaps more creation points: Instead of Knowledge time X (skill), maybe (Knowledge+4) times X (skill). Give them the power to create 
  some truly horrific, awesome random shiki.
  ARMOUR/KONGOHKI CREATION RULES:
  These were originally one ruleset, with a lot of side-references to “if Armour, do this; if Kongohki, do that”. It was confusing, so I split them 
  apart into two sections.
  SCENARIO CREATION SECTION:
  Lots of little rules changes, including:
  * All the scenario advice from page 160 onwards. Especially the Creative Task Rolls bit.
  * All the rules on creating NPCs from 154-156, focusing on fast-made NPCs for quick creation and play, plus careful advice on how to 
  balance them.
  Those are it from that section, but that latter one on NPCs was very important. TBZ was created in an era where designers and players still 
  thought that NPCs had to feature all of the stats and complications of regular characters. Thus it took a long time to create even simple NPCs, 
  much less a cast of several important NPCs. While TBZ created a revolution of play in Japan, with new people stepping up to GM who never ran 
  a game before, a common complaint for that era is “Man, NPC creation takes too long, I have to prep so much to run these games!” I wanted 
  to remove that barrier, utterly.
  Furthermore, Inoue and Endo themselves came to that same realization a few years later, and when they sat down to create the Final 
  Fantasy-inspired game Alshard, all major NPCs and monsters had very simple stats, since they were just flavor and opposition in the end. 
  I took the spirit of what they developed later in other game lines, and reverted it back into the “TBZ code line”. I think it worked well, 
  especially since I’d been playtesting the heck out of it for years!
  SCENE JUDGE:
  As mentioned elsewhere, the core of TBZ had the scene judge rules, which was changed to an “optional rule” after talking to the designer 
  about what they liked and didn’t like about the game. A new players of the English version commented that he used the scene judge rules 
  only for the first act, to get the players used to giving each other Aiki, then went to the default “everyone gives” style. That’s an awesome 
  transition idea!
  PROTECT/TAKE BLOW (in Combat):
  The rules were fuzzy in the original version of the game. Official replays showed three different takes on the Protect rules:
  1) If you protect, you must take all the damage, you cannot defend.
  2) If you protect, you can defend to reduce the damage but you cannot counter-attack.
  3) Same as 2, but you CAN counter-attack.
  Option 2 came up the most in the rules, so I changed them all to reflect that clearly.
  DAMAGE BONUS FOR RANGED WEAPONS:
  Yeah, this originally was a confusing description-only example of how if you through 5 shuriken, 3 at one dude and 2 at another, 
  they can give you little damage boosts and stuff. I created the chart on Page 95 to graphically explain it better. In truth, this rule kinda 
  confuses everyone, and in Japanese replays I read often houseruled out. I simply houserule it that if you throw or shoot your weapons 
  at multiple targets, no bonus. If you shoot or throw a lot at a single target, +2 damage (shuriken, uzi, machine gun, whatever). Simple. 
  Unfortunately, by the time I came around to thinking that it would be a good idea to replace that rule like others I had done, it was too 
  late. Oh well. Now you at least have my own houserule.
  KONGOHKI OVERDRIVE:
  The original formula for Kongohki Overdrive was “Every day, you can start overdrive a number of times equal to your Spirit score, 
  and it would last for a number of rounds equal to your Body score”. One... day? Most games of Tenra have a pattern of play where the 
  ‘day’ can change every other scene or so. So I changed it to “session”, to keep it part of the overall play experience. Even then, it was 
  too overpowered: The sample Kongohki could activate Overdrive six times a “day” (now “session”), and it lasted for 10 rounds. 60 total 
  rounds of Overdrive capability. I’ve never run a combat in TBZ to my knoweldge, in about 100 or so actual games, where combat ever 
  took more than five rounds. Certainly not more than six. Total overkill. The solution I had (activating it for a number of *rounds*) is still 
  pretty much overkill for 99% of your games, but at least there’s the *remote possibility* that the Kongohki won’t go full Overdrive, all 
  the time.
  So that was it. Ultimately, not a lot: Just a tap here and a tap there to knock some dust off and make it more interesting and in 
  alignment with the own designer’s thoughts he would have later in future designs, backporting those ideas into this game.
  
  34
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  S 
  is for Satoru
  Satoru “Hottsu” Hosono, was my best 
  friend in Japan until his untimely and totally 
  unexpected death from heart failure in 2006. He’s the little 
  dedication that appears in the credits section of the books.
  I met him by pure accident in late 1995 when I was 
  living in Tokyo and attending college. It was the days of the 
  Yoyogi/Harajuku-area street shutdowns on Sundays, where 
  indie musicians, artists, rockers, DJs, and dancers would 
  bring their gear and rock out, free concert style, on Sundays. 
  I was aiming to be a DJ at the time, and thus made a lot of 
  techno DJ friends, and spend many Sundays dancing all day 
  in the streets of Harajuku in a giant open rave. Long story 
  short, I happened to be wearing a “Cyberpunk 2020” hat, 
  and he happened to be a gamer. We ended up talking a lot, 
  and became fast friends; speaking mostly in Japanese, with 
  some crazy English punctuation (his English speaking was 
  okay-ish, but he had a crazy-high vocabulary from all the 
  academic reading he did, he could pull out crazy English 
  words like “post-structuralism” or “ethnomethodology” and 
  the like at the drop of a hat). 
  He took me to the Tokyo game stores, got me into my 
  first Japanese RPG session and convention, and introduced 
  me to all sorts of cool visual culture: He ran with lots of 
  manga artists (many of them indie), and I found myself upon 
  my return to Japan for the long term regularly being dragged 
  to Tokyo’s Comiket to help his friends set up or run their 
  indie manga booths. 
  Met lots of interesting folks, including Japanese RPG 
  industry freelancers, female pornographic manga artists (I 
  met the lovely and talented Yonekura Kengo and helped 
  her set up her booth, although later she and Satoru would 
  have a falling out of sorts), philosophers who specialized in 
  critiquing modern media (manga, anime, pop culture) from 
  a postmodern philosophy/sociology lens, and all sorts of 
  awesome weirdos and normals in between.
  He was doing so much - editing philosophy periodicals 
  for a famous professor, organizing media and gaming events, 
  writing literature, playing bass in a punk band, working as an 
  assistant of sorts for the artist of the Hellsing manga, and 
  dragging his white gaijin friend to meet cool people and go 
  cool places when in town. His family became a foster family 
  of sorts to me, too, always pleased to see me when I came 
  over, letting me stay with them for days at a time (convenient 
  for downtown Tokyo, but they were such lovely people, from 
  his mother, aunt and grandmother), asking me questions 
  and telling me all sorts of cool things about their areas of 
  expertise (his aunt was a clothing designer, which I found 
  fascinating). He was planning on taking me to a cabaret club 
  his friends (male and female) worked at the next time I came 
  to Japan.
  Alas, he left the world too soon. In January 2006 he passed 
  away very suddenly from heart failure, 
  so fast I couldn’t book a ticket in time 
  to return to Japan to be at his funeral 
  (I instead had flowers and a message 
  for his family sent remotely). He had 
  always had long-running heart issues, and 
  unfortunately didn’t take good care of his 
  body to compensate (he was always kind 
  of rail-thin, but moreso the more he got 
  involved with various projects; he was the 
  kind who sacrificed his health to get that 
  booklet written and printed on time, to 
  make sure that the event was organized, 
  to make sure others were taken care of).
  Satoru was the one that introduced me 
  to the Japanese gaming scene, and Tenra 
  Bansho in particular (and so much more). 
  While I’m forever grateful for that, 
  enough that I dedicated the book to him, 
  I really wish I could just turn back time 
  to seven years ago and hang out with him 
  for one more week, just talking culture, 
  
  35
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  society, philosophy and shit, roll through Tokyo tearing it up, 
  hitting up a giant-ass rave at Laforet in Harajuku or Jeff Mills’ 
  club in Shibuya. Even after all the blood and sweat I’ve put 
  into this translation project, I’d trade in all the money gained 
  from it if that were possible. Alas.
  The least I could do is share his story with you. Ultimately, 
  that was the desire I had which led to the idea of creating this 
  whole Director’s Cut book.
  gestures. He looks like a mentat, it’s awesome. When I see 
  him conquering math in his head, I’m kinda jealous I never 
  learned soroban, actually.
  Anyway, that’s the kind of thing that the shiki-slingers 
  do: The kimenkyo (mechanica mirror) is a “computer”, the 
  abacus is the “keyboard”, and they store/cast shikigami with 
  it. Kablow! Murder By Math.
  S 
  is also for Shitty 
  Translation
  I aimed to not do that. I think I succeeded.
  You can see there there are other translators credited in 
  the book: At one point, I realized that I would have to start 
  recruiting some help on the initial translation pass in order 
  to get the work done faster. So I recruited a handful of folks 
  with talent and free-time to assist, and had them go through 
  some of the sections of the World/Setting book, translating 
  entire sections.
  In order to see if their translating mindset was compatible 
  with the project, I had each person kind of... well, it sounds 
  crappy to say “audition”, but that’s basically what I did: I gave 
  each person one column of “poetic setting text” and one 
  element of “rules text” to translate, to see if we were on the 
  same wavelength in terms of:
  * Striving for perfection.
  * Attempting to translate as close to source as possible, but
  * When impossible, to change the words and creatively 
  reinterpret rather than a rote, unbalanced, stilted but exacting 
  translation.
  And for the most part, the exercise was hugely successful: 
  I got back good work, sometimes excellent work. In the end, 
  it all had to be relocalized, so some translations I used as a 
  springboard to re-write the entire section by hand in a better 
  way; others were used almost (80% or so) as-is, with more 
  localization and editing to get it perfect.
  Each translator was paid promptly, like within 3 days of 
  finishing if possible (that’s my policy). Not “I’ll give you 
  money when I recoup it from publishing” or other old 
  industry standard crap, I paid with my own pocket cash long 
  before publishing was an option. If the translator turned in 
  their work before the deadline (most did), also immediately 
  got a 10% bonus added.
  With one exception (which I paid for, because I screened 
  the translator myself; but ultimately had to totally trash the 
  translation and start over because it was just poor. Not even 
  numbers were translated correctly, no idea how they passed 
  my test) it was an overall awesome experience, and it added a 
  little turbo boost of productivity.
  Ultimately, translations of work this big either amount to:
  * One person doing a monstrous amount of work by 
  themselves. If they have a day job, then they now have two 
  jobs. (raises hand)
  or
  * Many people (usually with a central organizer) cutting up, 
  distributing, and translating the work in small chunks, then 
  reassembling it back together.
  For Tenra, while I did most of the rules book myself, the 
  world book had both distributed and central work, a hybrid 
  of the above two.
  S 
  is also for 
  Shakujo
  Shakujo - 錫杖 - In sanskrit it’s Khakkhara 
  (sounding staff), this is the Buddhist monk staff with the 
  head with all the rings hanging off of it. “Ringed staff.” In 
  the great movie Versus (Versus is my favorite martial arts 
  zombie yakuza gun-battle samurai time travel prison break 
  post-apocalypse brotherhood supernatural horror movie), in 
  the little “ancient era” clip, the bad guy has a katana hidden in 
  his ringed staff: That scene, because of the cinematography 
  involved (no SFX, just cheap/creative camera handling), is 
  awesome, and it’s a scene I’ve replicated more than once in 
  my games. Look for it.
  S 
  is also for 
  Soroban
  Soroban (算盤) in Japanese is the word for 
  Abacus. Look up soroban videos online: Moden schools 
  of soroban are set up like martial arts schools, complete 
  with black belt ranks. There are videos (on Youtube, and on 
  findable shows like “Begin Japanology” which had a soroban 
  episode) where a master soroban dude outperforms huge 
  mathematical functions (nine digit number times nine digit 
  number) vs a guy with a calculator. Soroban are awesome. 
  Plus, remember that one dude from Crouching Tiger, Hidden 
  Dragon? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about.
  I have a scientist friend that learned soroban at an early 
  age, he basically does pretty high-level math in his head, 
  visualizing the soroban beads, sometimes flicking them in 
  his mind and at the same time making hand/finger physical 
  
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  T 
  is for Tenjo Tenge
  Tenjo Tenge is the Chinese characters for 
  “heaven above heaven below”. It basically is 
  another expression which means “everything in heaven and 
  earth”, usually used when some famous general or leader yells 
  out to the masses what he intends to take control of.
  Aside from being the title of a graphically pretty but totally 
  hollow and fanservicy martial arts manga, it is also the name 
  of the original supplement book that came out a year after 
  Tenra Bansho Zero. It featured:
  * A replay, with the designer of the game (as a player), 
  where the players travel through time with Makuu Nindo’s 
  son and beat up a dude. Followed by a second scenario 
  involving an evil Shinto cult priestess. Together, they were 
  a series called “Demon in the White Mask”, and it took up 
  about half the book.
  * Two scenario outlines in rough detail.
  * Zero-Act Scene ideas for various character types: A total 
  of 18, which I used as a base to create the Zero Act Ideas for 
  each sample character in the book.
  * Revised Yohjutsu (Ayakashi) rules. The rules for Ayakashi 
  in the original TBZ Japanese book were a little rough. This 
  totally revised those rules. I used these revised/perfected 
  rules as the core Ayakashi rules in the English version of the 
  book.
  * 17 New Archetypes: All of which appear in the English 
  rules book’s Archetype section.
  * A few new Arts of War, which were included in the 
  English book as well (the “Advanced Arts of War” are these).
  * Ninjutsu rules, Mechanica, and Annelids, all again which 
  were imported into the English version of the core book text.
  * A bunch of extra sample characters. While the character 
  descriptions themselves do not appear in the book, many 
  of their character illustrations do. These gorgeous brush-
  stroke illustrations are the ones that make up each character-
  focused rules section’s preceeding character sketch. The ones 
  that didn’t make it into that book are being moved into a 
  “character collection supplement”.
  T 
  is also for Tree 
  Geisha
  That was the shorthand that Mark Causey 
  used to refer to his Kugutsu character (“So, I’m basically a 
  Tree Geisha?”) as a player in the first ever game of TBZ I 
  ran in English, long ago. The name stuck. I remember Lisa’s 
  horrifying annelidist, Eric’s old gruff cyber-shinobi, Remi’s 
  brutally huge but emo samurai, and Matthew’s young up-and-
  comer ninja.
  Also: That first session is where I learned that throwing a 
  lot of medium-strength fighters at the heroes is good for a 
  more tactical-combat game like Dungeons and Dragons, but 
  in a game like TBZ it can really drag things down. I tend to 
  stick to fewer, stronger enemies (usually 3-4 max; then only 1 
  or maybe 2 for major boss fight). Speaking of which, 
  T 
  is also for There’s 
  Gotta Be A Boss 
  Fight
  So, a few years ago I was talking with Luke one weekend 
  after a rousing set of Roller Derby at the North Carolina state 
  fairgrounds. At the time, he was the manager of the Gotham 
  Girls from Brooklyn, and they were fighting at the east coast 
  conference. Roller Derby is badass: Far from just a spectacle, 
  there’s really so much strategy and skill that goes into... ah, 
  but I digress.
  Anyway, in TBZ you engage in combat just like other 
  tabletop RPGs: You make a series of attack rolls. You take 
  damage, in the form of Vitality and Wounds. When you use 
  magic, you use Soul, just like Magic Points (MP) in console 
  games you’re familiar with.
  But there’s nothing deeper for Social conflicts, no further 
  expanded rules of social maneuvering and conflicts. Social 
  conflicts come down to in-character role-playing, plus maybe 
  a single 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 Kiai to get more dice, to lower 
  your difficulty number and get an advantage, etc. But the roll 
  comes down to You vs Them, Most Successes Wins. There’s 
  no “Social Points” or “Station Vitality” to whittle down in 
  social conflicts until one concedes. 
  This seems like a bit of a design flaw, really, and Luke 
  questioned me about it. “This game needs some kind of 
  social conflict and maneuvering system” (perhaps with an 
  undertone of, “Perhaps kind of like the systems that are in all 
  the games I designed, from Burning Wheel to Mouseguard!”). 
  Admittedly, TBZ is about a decade 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 , in order 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. 
  
  37
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  Why? 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!” (which may have been the 
  result if the princess had failed 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.
  U 
  is for Underwear
  I used Kickstarter to back Tenra Bansho 
  Zero, and it was an awesome success.
  I’ve backed a lot of Kickstarter projects, but one of the 
  ones I’m most proud of is “Flint and Tinder” helping start 
  a new underwear company who makes underwear from 
  durable, solid fabric and 100% produced (down to the 
  packaging) in the USA: That’s not jinogism, that’s thinking/
  acting local. 
  Plus, the underwear is awesome high quality stuff. I’ve 
  never been so excited to purchase underwear in my life. My 
  8-year-old self would punch me in the balls with contempt 
  then go back to his GI Joes and LEGOs if he heard me say 
  that.
  U 
  is also for Usack 
  comma Nikolai
  My other best friend and hero. Don’t die 
  before I die or I’ll kill you. The world would be a fucking 
  dumb place without you.
  Cho thumbs up.
  V 
  is for Video 
  Games
  So, when I get stressed out at work or 
  whatever, I should really hit the gym. I’d be in rad fucking 
  shape. Instead, I unwind by mostly playing video games. 
  Sometimes I surf the web or read, but mostly it’s video 
  games.
  At one point, stress was so high that I had gone about a 
  month without touching Tenra (a few weeks at a time was 
  common here and there), I was in a marathon session of... 
  something. Likely at the time another runthrough of Final 
  Fantasy X. I had the thought to make a journal of all the 
  video games I was playing when I should have been working 
  on Tenra or other creative projects (side game ideas, etc). I 
  had a running total in my head, but over time (plus numerous 
  Steam PC game sales) I just totally lost count. I can offer a 
  “catalog list of notable games I played far too much (20+ 
  hours at the very least) when I should have been doing 
  Tenra/creative stuff”, though!
  PC
  Borderlands, Borderlands 2. It doesn’t get better than 
  shooting evil in the face for laughs.
  Thief, Thief 2 and Thief 3. Hard mode. 3 times each.
  Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Skyrim. Crazy hours at first, 
  quickly tapered off
  Majesty Gold: That’s about as deep as I go into simulation 
  games, but man it hit the sweet spot.
  Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale. Never had it in me to 
  unlock all the hidden characters, though. There’s obsession 
  then there’s Obsession.
  Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike. For almost a decade 
  Counter-Strike was my go-to when I needed to retreat from 
  life, off and on. Team Fortress replaced it eventually. 
  Terraria: Never got into Minecraft that big, but man my 
  world-tree which I designed in Terraria was an object of art.
  PS2
  Final Fantasy X, over and over. Including the Japanese 
  version, and the International Version with the (unfortunate) 
  English voice-overs but the far-better grid system. My 
  favorite of the franchise. Others are free to disagree and cite 
  others as their favorite. That’s fine, the world is big enough 
  for WRONG PEOPLE too! 
  Final Fantasy X-2 at least twice. A wonderful followup. But 
  man, the random encounters. Ugh.
  SIREN 2: Probably five times. With respect to FFX, Siren 
  2 is the single best game for the PS2 generation. Unmatched 
  in story, depth, suspense and graphics. Ending is a total 
  “WTF?”, tho.
  All of the Fatal Frame games. Actually, more accurate to 
  say that I watched my wife Orie go through these games 
  while I sat on the couch clutching a pillow. Someone said they 
  were scarier than Silent Hill, and I laughed at them... until I 
  played the first, and then apologized to them with a low 90 
  degree bow.
  Shinobido: Imashime. The best ninja game on console, 
  ever. It’s so disappointing that it never came to North 
  America (EU folks lucked out on that one!).
  Persona 3. Wow. I played the crap out of Persona 4 as 
  well (and liked some of the rules/system a little more), but 
  the setup, the situation behind Persona 3 is just too rich. It 
  
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  quickly became one of my favorite series. It was no surprise 
  I saw a connection between P3 and Tenra, enough of one to 
  create a setting based of the Persona series.
  Yakuza 1 and 2. 
  Shadow Hearts: Covenant... I actually played before I 
  picked up Tenra. So it technically doesn’t count. But since it 
  was such a long, involved, rich console RPG, I had to give it a 
  mention. Stay away from Shadow Hearts 3, it was shit.
  PS3
  Yakuza Kenzan!, Yakuza 3, Yakuza 4, and right now 
  Yakuza 5 (though I took a break from it for a little while 
  to do things). What an incredible series. Story-wise, I think 
  Yakuza 2 is the strongest, Y3 is the weakest, but Y4 is solid, 
  and Y5 is proving to have the story-mass of a dying star. 
  Yakuza Kenzan was great, though, as it reskinned the series 
  in the age after the Warring States period. A damn shame 
  it never left Japan, never picked up for translation by an 
  international studio.
  Valkyria Chronicles: The first ever strategy/war game 
  I actually was interested in, enough to dedicate the time 
  required to go through its long and deep story.
  I put in the hours to finish Final Fantasy XIII (and XII on 
  PS2 for that matter), but man. Letdown.
  Other
  Muramasa for (borrowed) Wii. I referenced this in the 
  media section of Tenra. Badass game, great developer, a little 
  repetitive but otherwise awesome.
  3D Picross, Style Savvy for Nintendo DS. Great stress-
  relievers!
  Man, so glad I never got into MMOs. That could have 
  been the end of it all!
  W 
  is for Writing
  I’ve gone back to Japan at least six 
  times since I got the rights to the game, 
  maybe seven. The trip is like 12-16 hours by plane, total 
  “door-to-door” of almost exactly 24 hours. I always bring 
  my laptop or writing materials in order to translate and write, 
  both on the actual travel leg, or in the downtime of my trips 
  (business, personal, etc). Heh, never happens. I dunno, as 
  soon as I sit in the plane I zonk out. Every time I think “I’ll 
  get it done this time, there’s 12+ hours”, every time I crumple 
  and sleep.
  Anyway, that aside, folks have asked me how much I 
  contributed to the actual writing of the game. Well, I rewrote 
  the thing from scratch, but of course I was basing that on 
  the translation. In short, my own contributions come in the 
  forms of:
  * Explanatory text: Discussing the very basics of Shinto, 
  Buddhism, “Killing Intent/Ki Presence” etc for folks who 
  have never encountered them and didn’t know the difference.
  * A lot of rules examples, or expanded text on existing 
  examples. It increased the page count, but reduced confusion.
  * A lot of expanded explanations or added sentences in the 
  rules books, to add clarification.
  * Many of the Combat section sidebars, which were 
  learned and forged in actual play.
  * A lot of expanded text in the Type Zero/Zero Act 
  section, including many of the Emotion matrix examples.
  * The rules in the scenario section for creating NPCs. 
  In the original game, there was no real advice here, it was 
  expected that GMs created them like players did PCs. But in 
  practice, most GMs simply wrote down the relevant numbers 
  that were important, guessing at strengths, without creating 
  full characters. This disconnect caused some confusion in the 
  Japanese game with new players, and caused a lot of people 
  excited to run the game take pause because of the sheer 
  amount of work to create good NPCs, while their RPG-savvy 
  counterparts were simply ad-libbing the enemy stats to great 
  success. I cut straight to the ad-libbing, but in a structured 
  way. The methodology behind this was pulled largely from 
  reading the enemy/NPC/monster sections of Inoue & 
  Endo’s later games like Alshard.
  * The entire second half of the Scenario Creation section 
  from Scenario Advice onwards (again, all forged in actual play 
  over the years).
  * I didn’t write the Against the Tide playset, but 
  commissioned it from talented game writer TS Luikart. 
  Nothing like that existed in the original game, instead it was 
  just a sample scenario. It was a Japanese game for a Japanese 
  audience, no one imagined the difficulty of a foreigner trying 
  to create a Japanese-ish setting from scratch! My contribution 
  in there was simply in adding all the “bullet point questions” 
  at the end of each text section, to get people thinking about 
  how to actually USE the setting. To not memorize it and use 
  it as canon to discuss, but to actually pull parts out and put 
  them into the actual game.
  * The Glossary, Media Resources (of course), Advice, 
  Setting in a Nutshell, 222 Things to Do, and Names sections 
  were all my own creation for the English translation of the 
  book.
  * The ordering of archetypes into groups rather than sort-
  of randomly.
  * The original sample characters were in the book, but 
  the Roleplay Ideas and Zero Act Ideas for each one was my 
  contribution. Also, the original game didn’t have a sample 
  Ayakashi character, which I found puzzling given all the 
  attention and special character build rules for them. So I 
  added that one at the end.
  That was “my stuff”. Hope it helped make the game 
  playable!
  W 
  is also for 
  Whitewashing
  Am I a professional translator? Well, 
  I’ve translated a lot for money, so I guess so. Although it’s not 
  my core day job, else I’d be a lot faster at it than I am now.
  “Voice and Flow” is supremely important when making 
  a text easily accessible to a new audience. The text has to 
  flow and not “stutter” (with things like constant obvious 
  grammatical mistakes, constant switching of perspective 
  from 3rd to 1st person, etc); and it should have a voice, or a 
  consistent method in which it speaks to the reader.
  So interestingly enough, after two solid runthroughs of 
  the text by guys with solid editing (in terms of grammar 
  for both, and one (Grant Chen, credited in the book) had a 
  
  39
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  lot of skill with ensuring consistency across the text, asking 
  questions that a reader might ask, and doing some copy-
  editing) skills, I tossed the text to a friend of mine who had a 
  lot of experience with editing, including for various tabletop 
  role-playing games. He was going to help with a third round 
  of editing, but slammed on the breaks.
  BUDDY: Andy, um… About the text. It needs a lot of 
  editing.
  ANDY (ME): Huh. I thought the text was pretty solid, save 
  for the grammatical pieces we missed. What in particular?
  BUDDY: Well… basically… um… This text needs to be 
  totally rewritten from scratch.
  ANDY: … … … … … … …wut?
  BUDDY: From scratch. All of it. Needs to be totally 
  redone in order to be Perfect.
  QUE ANDY HAVING A STROKE.
  So after we hashed it out for a bit, my shock and horror 
  turned to “Ooooooooh, so THAT’s what you’re talking 
  about. Yeah, never mind that.”
  Basically, my friend was coming from a place of Total, 
  Exacting Perfection (for English grammar) for the text. He 
  said that the content was okay, that the organization was 
  fine, that there certainly wasn’t too little and if anything 
  there may be Too Much text and explanation. But what he 
  was concerned about was the grammar. Specifically, the fact 
  that there were some sections--most of them throughout 
  the World/Setting/Characters material where the “voice” of 
  the original authors in Japanese is strongest rather than the 
  Rules sections--that didn’t flow perfectly. A few sentences 
  that seemed stilted. A few sentences that were almost run-on 
  sentences. More than a few places where Passive Voice (“The 
  kingdom was conquered by the Oni” rather than “The Oni 
  conquered the kingdom, etc”) is used.
  This feedback was great! But I quickly realized something 
  interesting about the text.
  The text *feels* Japanese! It’s not a stuttering mess of 
  classical Japanese grammatical problems with English ala 
  Engrish and the like (if you’re interested in what that looks 
  like in an RPG, go Google a game setting I wrote called 
  “Take Back of Freedom!” an experiment in this kind of 
  “translation from no source” from a few years ago). But 
  as I went through the text in the original and subsequent 
  translations, I actually did something subconsciously that 
  I later--when it was pointed out by my friend--made a 
  deliberately conscious effort to continue: I preserved the 
  Voice of the original text as much as humanly possible in the 
  English translation.
  Instead of tearing it down to its raw meaning and 
  reconstructing it back in always-perfect English writing form, 
  I instead made the decision to keep a few of those “telling 
  grammatical choices”: A few run-ons, a few predicate-less 
  sentences, some healthy Passive Voice, etc. In the end, the 
  author of the original Japanese text was, throughout the 
  writing, really giving you the feeling of the sheer largeness of 
  the setting, the sheer awesomeness and limitlessness of the 
  characters and world. I did everything possible to keep that 
  tone while at the same time preserving English grammatical 
  rules so as not to kill the Flow (which would have made the 
  text “Cool” but at the same time “Frustrating to Read”).
  In other words, I didn’t want to “Whitewash” the text: To 
  remove everything uniquely Japanese about the writing in 
  order to make it fit our classical English literary-form buckets. 
  To keep the essential meaning of the text yet totally sift out 
  the tone because it got in the way. I’ve read some translations 
  of various novels in English that lost the tone to appeal to an 
  English-speaking audience (probably due to a conservative 
  and aggressive editor), and honestly to me the effect ranges 
  from “rubbing me the wrong way” to screaming “this is 
  BULLSHIT!” and throwing the book across the room. Just 
  like the art and setting and rules, the actual writing itself is a 
  unique and distinctively Asian/Japanese piece of work, and I 
  wanted to make sure that showed!
  I think I did a good job of this. For if nothing else, when I 
  explained this clearly to my friend, the light instantly went on 
  in his head (he’s a huge fan of anime/manga, but just wasn’t 
  “in that zone” when his “English grammar editor cap” was 
  on on his first readthrough), and he totally Got It. He too 
  agreed that whitewashing the text would really deter from the 
  goal of publishing the game. We agreed that while it might 
  give English majors some fits in places (although of course 
  I did my best to ensure that it was as grammatically sound as 
  possible, and flowed as smoothly as possible given the voice/
  tone of the text), the only reply to those criticisms--sans the 
  few actual grammatical errors that make their way to print 
  (and to date I have not seen)--is, “That’s the tone of the 
  Japanese authors. Deal with it!”
  W 
  is also for 
  Whale comma 
  White
  My White Whale is Slain. Your patronage is proof.
  ...By the way, you should really try it. Cooked like a steak, 
  it has the extremely soft texture of filet mignon, but with 
  the rich flavor of a ribeye. You can’t get that combination 
  in cowflesh; it’s either the deliciousness of the ribeye, or the 
  super-soft texture (but relative flavorlessness) of filet mignon. 
  Put down the sign, people in Japan eat a fraction of the 
  meat that Americans and Europeans eat. Don’t get me wrong, 
  I was a vegetarian almost a third of my life: But when our 
  own abattoirs slow to 1/10th production, I’ll join you in 
  protest.
  
  40
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  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  X 
  is for X
  Batsu! Batsu-Batsu! Baaaaatsu!!! I...Ichi! 
  Ichi! Saaaaafe! Ichi! Saaaaafe! Ichi!
  Y 
  is for Yellow 
  Submarine
  This is the name of the chain of stores in 
  Japan which sell tabletop RPGs. There are some that focus 
  on RPGs, others that focus on CCGs, yet others that focus 
  on anime trading/collectible cards, plastic models and airsoft 
  guns.
  It was the (at the time largest) RPG-shop Yellow Sub in 
  Shinjuku’s west side where I picked up Tenra Bansho Zero 
  back in 2001, and where I’d go back again and again to get 
  more. That is, until they opened an even larger RPG-shop 
  Yellow Sub in Akihabara. That has become one of my go-to 
  places to pick up the latest and greatest games when I return 
  to Japan.
  The other store that has grabbed my heart is the Role and 
  Roll station, also in Akihabara, only a few years old. They 
  have a great play space, clean but small interior, enthusiastic 
  staff, and the owner or a senior staff member updates the 
  store’s blog DAILY with pictures of the latest news and 
  releases in the store’s RPG, board game and fiction areas. I 
  used to have to scramble all over the net to find out what was 
  coming out and where, and they have it all in one place.
  Z 
  is for Stop 
  Reading Now
  We’re done. Thanks for following along!
  
  41
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  
  42
  http://www.tenra-rpg.com/
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  THIS GAME BROUGHT TO YOU IN PART BY...
  Coffee –
  Lots of it. For a while I switched to Yerba Mate tea (bought online by the 5-pound bag), which is its own majesty: All the 
  effects of coffee without the blood pressure increase, the caffiene ass-kick; it’s caffiene, just in a different chemical 
  form which leads to a gradual rise rather than a kick.
  But ultimately, I switched back to coffee: Through the magic of the Raleigh/Durham area Japanese community, my wife 
  was able to get an excellent espresso machine for like 50 bucks. Turns out the owner was Takayoshi Sato, the lead artist, CGI 
  director and writer on the games Silent Hill 1 and 2. I tell every fucking body this when I make them their espresso or cappuccino. To date, I 
  haven’t had any powerful hellworld-inspired nightmares, but each sip I have my fingers crossed that Tonight’s The Night.
  Gunnar Glasses –
  Holy shit, seriously. I am such an advocate that I ended up contacting Gunnar Optiks to hook me up with demo sets of glasses I could 
  pass around the office (and got a few dozen more people hooked, too). So these are basically self-overhyped computer glasses with a yellow 
  tint marketed as ExXxtreme Gamer Glasses, but they are MAGIC. I was kinda worried that they were snakeoil until I read a compilation of 
  favorable and negative reviews together. Gave them a shot, have worn them pretty much every work day ever since.
  The slight magnification keeps you from leaning into your monitor (though I wear magnification-less prescription versions). The anti glare 
  does its anti glare thing. But for me, the magic is in the yellow tinting. I can work or game for hours with pretty much zero eyestrain. At 
  work we have a typical heavy flourescent light environment, and between these and something called a “CubeShield” I’ve been able to rock a 
  PC 8-14 hours at work, then come home to do more writing and translation. I’ve got two friends at work who used to get migraines all the 
  time when using the PC, and who have both had them stop completely when using these glasses regularly.
  Some people don’t get anything out of them, but man, for me they saved my eyes, kept me in computer work, and kept me productive.
  Kitties – 
  Yuki, Maya, Nacchi. Mostly Maya, she’s the one who sits near me when I write or hangs out with us when we game.
  Hearts of Space – 
  I’ve got a yearly subscription to www.hos.com. I love ambient/space music, it’s the perfect background music for me when I work: I 
  just can’t listen to anything with lyrics when I’m trying to work or translate, and even a strong techno beat can be distracting (I dunno, 
  it’s just me). If you don’t want to buy in hard, check out the iPhone app that gives you access to the weekly program.
  Favorite programs to date: My fave list has 039, 464, 545, 552, 571, 593, 750, 769, 782, 862, 867, 871 (Sakura!), 878, 879, 885, 890, 
  894, 906, 909, 910, 911, 932. Got everything from space to melancholic to asian to otherworldly.
  While my music taste ranges all over the board (usually electronic, experimental, soul, metal and hip-hop), so called “Space Music” is 
  my Work Tunes.
  IceKey Keyboard- 
  Typing, typing, typing, typing all day at work and home. Even though I use a PC at home, I’ve used Macally’s IceKey keyboard with it 
  for... wow, about 11 years now (on my third). Super light touch with a tiny bit of resistance, so much better for my style than rigid keys 
  or the no-resistance of the newer Mac keyboards (plus those keyboards have keys that are a tad too small, too crushed together). 
  Choice!
  AirOBic Mouse – 
  Years ago I was actually worried that my tendinitis (not really carpal, just in my “mouse hand”) was going to make me leave or 
  re-evaluate my computer career. In constant wrist pain, my doctor basically gave me the “Computer User Bowling Glove” and that 
  was it. Then my friend showed me his “Quill Mouse” (later remanufactured and remarketed with the kind of silly name “AirOBic”) 
  and let me use it for a few days.
  It took me an hour to get used to the mouse. Within three hours my tendinitis went away and stayed away. Works so well that I 
  can use this AirOBic mouse at work, and then come home and play crazy amounts of Team Fortress or Borderlands or whatever 
  using a regular mouse, and my hands will be fine. This thing was a miracle, both a wrist and career-saver.
  I thought it was kinda pricey, though, so I tested out like 5 alternative ergonomic mice (trackballs, stick-mice, upright mice, 
  etc). Then I returned each and bought the AirOBic/Quill Mouse. That was 8 years ago, it’s served me ever since.
  
  43
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  Aeron Chair - 
  If you work in front of a desk, you’re gonna be at that thing like up to a quarter of the day, every day. That’s a lot of time. Getting a chair that 
  will be extremely comfortable yet support you is critical. I bought mine (one for home, one for work) on eBay way back when I was shit-poor, but 
  it was worth it. Beds, chairs, eyeglasses, stuff you’re going to use for hours every single day, it’s worth spending a little extra to prevent your body 
  from being mangled up, eyes ruined, daily exhaustion, etc.
  The aeron chair is kind of the standard for work chair excellence. I got tuned into them back when I worked at a company that sounds like 
  “SchmAOL-Time Schmwarner Cable” as a cable modem support guy, one of my first tech jobs upon returning to the US from Japan. The place 
  was a fucking tomb of humanity and careers, but even us barely-above-minimum-wage hosers all were sitting in aeron chairs. Let me tell you, 
  the reason that we could remain so calm and collected while dealing with the most stupid of stupid customers? That supporting, comfortable 
  work chair. It probably prevented suicides and riots. It’s the epitome of “things that startup companies buy” (and in fact I got my first two on 
  eBay from collapsing dotcoms in Houston: “Hey want a fussball table too? We’ll throw it in.” “UHNOTHANKYOU.”), but they’re not just some asshole 
  status symbol, they really are (for me anyway) the perfect intersection of support and comfort.
  Aikido, Yoga, The Gym – 
  Sitting in front of a computer all day isn’t healthy. If it weren’t for going to aikido or yoga... yikes. Mind and body aren’t two separate things, 
  if you want to keep your mind healthy you have to keep at your body as well. Internet folks (like me!) tend to forget that. Most of my bursts of 
  insane creativity usually come within 0-2 hours of visiting the gym.
  Orie – 
  My wife. Uh, I could just start writing and not stop like ever, so I’ll just say that she’s awesome all over.
  
  44
  http://www.tenra-rpg.com/
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  T
  his book was made beautiful from ugly by 
  Jerry D Grayson (www.hellasrpg.com)
  This document’s art primarily consists of art submitted by players and fans. Thank you all! Some of the art was pulled from 
  the original TBZ books, please see credits there.
  Submissions from:
  16, 31
  S Hagen 
  kakuboi.deviantart.com 
  26
  Robert Burson 
  coyotegrey.deviantart.com
  17
  Cary “Tetsu” Watson
  2, 13, 19, 25
  Craig “Shiro Kuro”Judd
  27
  TheFIN
  hyakujihigh.net
  9
  Eric_H
  dudereno.deviantart.com
  29, Inside Back Cover
  Glharmon
  5, 8, 30, 43, 44
  Tebs Yap
  
  45
  Director’s Notes
  TENRA BANSHO ZERO
  
SOURCE: textdata/thevault/Collections/Anime & Cartoon RPGs/3) Common Tropes & Themes/Mecha & Kaiju/Tenra Bansho Zero/Tenra Bansho Zero - Directors Notes.pdf