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Mark Causey

Found on the tenra-rpg blog:

The Bad First:

Later than I thought. February 2009.

The Realistic:

This is a Hard Date, and Attainable. And worth the wait, because…

The Good:

I have a Motherfucking Superhero pegged to do layout and put the book together. The book will be so hot, it will make your eyes burn.

The Other:

There will be pre-play packages this Summer.
There will be a demo kit available at GenCon 2008.

Mark Causey

So, everybody:

If you know about Tenra Bansho, what would you want to see in the demo kit?

Diamond_Sutra

Yeah. Just marking this thread, so I can come back later this week and regale you all with the tale of Tenra Bansho Zero, a naieve Andy, a project that took too damn long, the kindness of FEAR, and the pressure of working on something that hundreds of people are excitedly waiting for.

Jarrod

I demand nothing less than sex in a bag.

Playable rules, some teaser art, basically a functional ashcan to tide us over. That oughta make 'em beg for more.

Mark Causey

Posted By: JarrodI demand nothing less than sex in a bag.

Playable rules, some teaser art, basically a functional ashcan to tide us over. That oughta make 'em beg for more.

With a full-on adventure, or just advice on how to run the game? Pregen characters, or rules on two to three classes?

Jarrod

For brevity's sake, I could see either a) a full-on adventure with pregenerated characters, or b) simple rules for basic classes and some informed assistance as to "proper execution" as a GM. Depends on whether you want to present a) what play will look like, or b) a microcosm of your system. If it's more of a story game, I think the first option would be a better "trailer."

Mark Causey

I like the trailer concept. But, I would love love LOVE for this to be the equivalent of a quick start guide that GMs could give their group to start play. Then the investment could be more than an ashcan, you know?

Jarrod

Oh, absolutely. As a GM-More-Than-Player, that's what I always would rather have as a resource than something pre-planned. For hitting a wide audience, the trailer seems the best; but for a focused, high impact demonstration, quick start rules save the day.

GURPS Lite benefitted GURPS in ways no one had guessed, because it made the mechanics seem accessible and engrossing. That said, what I would put a strong emphasis on for a story-based indie-style RPG would be the setting and tone. For that, I'd use the Exalted demo as an example. For the record, I'd rather run Exalted's quick start rules than the actual core ruleset. :) That's my $.02.

Diamond_Sutra

Heya: I'll do the tale-telling about the history of me and TBZ in another blog post sometime (perhaps once I get further in its translation). But for now, here's what I'm thinking about on that front:

Quick-Play Guide: After Rob Donaghue (Evil Hat/FATE) mentioned how awesome the original quick play docs were to a chorus of nods, I checked them out. Holy crap. Yeah, the Quick Play docs were streamlined, imminently playable (with a bit of reading, admittedly), and fun! WTF happened between then and the full game release? (^.^;

OK, I kid: I played a lot of Exalted (mostly running it): Three small campaigns. But after seeing the quickplay version, I so wish I had used that back in the day.

But yeah, it's a good template for what I hope to build and distribute for free before the release of the game. A quick adventure, a full (or mostly-full) session replay, a few sample characters, and "Go!".

Whereas the thing I want to make for GenCon, though... I'm seeing that as a 90-95% of the text, fully available. A few (not many, to keep costs down) pics from the game. For sale for like, I dunno, $10 or so (or "Cost, plus $2.00") to the folks who Really Want to Play, Now. Yeah, an ashcan, or "Beta release" of a game that's 100% ready, just not "pretty yet". Candy to tide us over until the big day.

First, though, I have to check with FEAR to see if that's ok in their book.

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