I feel as if I need to start with a disclaimer here, in that in many ways this touts itself as an unusual sort of story game, one based on tropes and techniques traditional to Kabuki Theater, and  one Luke Crane, presumably the same Luke Crane from the various Burning Wheel games, was involved with the project, while the translator (Kitkowski) makes some pains to point out that he added quite a bit of text to the original to explain difficult concepts from Japanese culture to us.   In my initial reading I was unaware of Luke Crane's involvement, but was put off by certain passages touting 'story', in particular one bit involving the way story is forced on players by means of dropping and adding Fates, which triggered my PTSD from the Swine Wars.

However, as part of the disclaimer, I have not downrated the game in any way for this perceived sin of translation, but given history of the Swine Wars and this forum, I feel it is my duty to inform you up front.

With that, on with the review.

Tenra Basho Zero: Heaven and Earth Edition (the colon is mine to distinguish the subtitle), is a Japanese made RPG, published in 2000, and translated into english with the help of Kickstarter in 2013.  It comes in a  hard slipcover box with two books, a slim but heavy (all glossy pages) world book of 240 pages, and a 450 page, but somewhat lighter per page rule book.  The World Book has a sort of mini-comic that exists to showcase the artwork/character concepts rather than actually tell a story.  The original author is also the primary artist, which will become relevant later.

This two book format winds up being our first point of contention. The world of Tenra is deliberately underdeveloped so that individual groups can easily adapt it to make their own, so the primary role is to introduce our primary character types, classes if you will, in a purely fluffy context.  While being the first book I read of the two, I found myself putting it back in the slip case and largely ignoring it as a result.  

Despite being undeveloped, the world of Tenra is not entirely open.  By default you are inheriting a world of giant robots powered by soul mirrors, obvious cybernetics, and demonic samurai.  Its extremely unlikely that you will be able to remove any of the unique elements of the world of Tenra from your campaign cleanly, so really the only things up for grabs are mere matters of geography and some, but not all, of the politics.  This is not a critique.   I'd much rather see this sort of world building than the heavy handed metaploting of the World Of Darkness, the canon-sniping of less metaplot dependent settings such as Forgotten Realms, or the over the top insistence of 'no setting' of some games.  By default you are playing in a very Japanese setting with technomagic.

The rules are a fine variation of dice pools. The standard task resolution mechanic is to roll a number of d6 based on your attribute, aiming for a roll below the relevant skill, all the way up to five and below.  This is both familiar enough that it avoids being purely gimmicky, and different enough that I can't say I've ever seen that exact combination of rules for dice.   Beyond that, however, the game insists on giving out additional dice, for being wounded, for spending Kiai or Ai-Ki points, etc.  In one of the more significant failures, the game insists that spending Kiai points is absolutely necessary to defeat strong opponents, but fails to demonstrate this with examples of bosses that need beating.  I do see a point in one 'sample of rules in action' where statistical averages are averaged, so the ability to manipulate die rolls and expand dice pools  can clearly prevent statistical bogging.

Beyond that a large portion of traditional game mechanics are abstracted or removed. Money is no object, literally. Players are expected to define their purely mundane equipment as necessary for 'good story'.  Everything else is bought with Karma.

Which leads us to the primary innovative and unique aspect of the rules, the Fate/Karma system.   Your character's power is rated in Karma, the bulk of which comes from character creation. Once it exceeds 108 (the number of buddhist sins), you become an evil NPC.  You gain Karma by spending Kiai points. Kiai points are both action points (modding dice pools/rolls) to do awesome shit, and experience, allowing you to improve your character, such as keeping that awesome magic sword you found, or improving your skills.  Ai-Ki points are special Kiai points given to the player by other players, or as bribes from the GM, that can be spent without accruing Karma, but it seems like a hidden rule that you can't get enough to spend on anything meaningful.  Ai-Ki and Kiai points don't last, they are spent or lost.

Kiai points are gained by rolling your Fate(s), which are rated from one to five, and the Fates are traded in to shed Karma. So the idea is to grow your Fate scores to get them high (and get lots of Kiai), and trade them in when they are ripe so you don't become an NPC.  This happens during a highly structured Act/Intermission schedule to the play sessions, which seems to be the single strongest 'Story' aspect to the game.  I should note that you can temporarily rise above 108 Karma in the play portion, so long as you can buy your Karma back down in the next intermission.  

The entire system is both fascinating and intricate, while being to me personally irritating. This could well be a cultural gulf, but the metamechanical process of swapping out entire character motivations in a constant churn, and divorced from events in that character's arc/adventures, just rubs me the wrong way.  It would seem to make 'Fates' worthless for defining the character in any meaningful way.

However, I have not downgraded the game based on this point.

Character creation consists of buying modules with Karma, with a rough range of 50-100 Karma suggested, with the 'sweet spot' being lower. The penalty for a more powerful character is that they can't afford to spend Kiai until they've built a fate up and traded it in.  Attributes are fixed for all characters at 40, spread through seven traits, though several modules come with an attribute tax, mostly for having cool weapons as part of their equipment.  Each module suggests a Fate, and the player picks two from all his modules. The exact number of modules will vary. To play a full blown Shinobi costs 50 Karma, while being a Hard Luck case only costs 5. Most modules seem to provide one or two skills, out of a set of thirty or so general skills and a smaller host of 'Class Specific' skills.

Now, it might be possible to say there are no classes, due to the karma/module thing, but there very much is a set of classes. Given the unique setting of the game I will lay them out for you in short form.

Armor: Mecha Pilots, mostly pre-teen children.
Samurai: Swordsmen who have dozens of red soul-gems implanted into their bodies to permanently contain/control a possessing...ah... demon. They transform to fuck shit up.
Ninja: They have soul gems implanted inside their bodies to make ninja powers easier to cast. They have a lot of powers to chose from, very Ninja Scroll at that.
Cyborgs: Almost all cybernetics have an attribute tax, so they will start with very low stats, weirdly enough.
Full Body Conversions: the souls of dead Asuras (people with more than 108 Karma) trapped in soul mirrors and put in mechanical bodies to fuck shit up.
Onmyudo: Magic Users, which MOSTLY appear to summon demons, such as the ones in Samurai.  This appears to be a breach between fluff and rules, as the fluff states that Onmyoji (plural?) reshape reality according to their will, and references casual spell slinging, but the entire chapter for Onmyudo is... Shiki, or demons if you like.
Buddhist monks: Take your pick, kung fu or sorcery. Monks get a handful of spells to chose from, but so far as I can tell all buddhist monks (PCs, anyway) can cast all the spells, so the lack of choices isn't terribly limiting.
Shinto Priests: The secret rulers of the world through the shadows, and originators of the technomagic. Oh, yeah, and they've got some bad ass spells of the earth shaking kind. One of which wipes out an entire city. Not a huge list, again, but also not one that requires pruning for specific characters.
Annelidist: They have worms in their bodies that give them super-powers. Ugly, parasite based super powers.
Kugutsu: Um. Dolls. Perfect living dolls made out of trees and magic. They have one power unique to them, which is to enter dreams. They are unable to use a bunch of the other power sets, however. So no Kugutsu Samurai.
Oni: They are people with Horns and a sort of weird displaced Native American 'one with nature' vibe. They have not one but three mystical resonances with the living world of Tenra, but they lose one if they cut off their horns to blend.  Their hearts are cut out to power the technomagic, so they tend to be hunted and hated by default.
Ayakashi: sort of... fae/spirit beasts. Technically most of them are monstrous (in a western but not eastern point of view... I guess?), guardians of wild places that don't like/understand humanity. Their alien natures are stressed over and over, but the book also warns us they aren't 'monsters to be killed for xp', or words to that effect. It is possible to play one, though it is recommended to stick with the more accessible 'half-ayakashi'.

So those are the 'classes' in a nutshell. There is some mix and max to it. Seems like anyone can learn the ninja arts, but there are limits to who can get the Dark Arts implants that make them cost effective. The game even points this out gleefully by suggesting a Samurai who knows Ninjutsu, (but can't have Dark Art implants because he's already running Samurai Implants) would be super badass. Almost anyone, except the Kongohiki (Full conversions), Kurugutsu and maybe the Ayakashi can run around with annelids or cyborg parts, and so forth.

However, this does bring me to a major problem I do have with the game. Recall that the original author is also the principle artist, as noted earlier.  While there seems to be an awful lot of options for characters, in reality it largely seems to boil down to representing whatever cool looking ideas the artist drew. There is a massive list of shiki powers for building an onmyudo's summons, but when weeded down to the samurai you really have your choice from a tiny handful, most of which are mandatory or sorta-mandatory.  There aren't a lot of differences in the upgrades to the giant mecha-armor, the implants of the cyborgs, and the things a Kongohki uses.  Each of the spell casters has a small list of spells, and everything comes down to one skill on the sheet.

In a way it feels like the illusion of choice, rather than a wide open setting with lots of choices.  This is compounded when you start to realize that the rules provided to 'make your own modules' is a little TOO simple. I'm reasonably sure that you can 'break' the module building system by using it to build a large number of single skill modules, as the skills have an inflated cost, offset by as single 'end stage' deduction. Thus make a module with one skill at level 4 costs 20 points of karma, while a two skill module with 2 skills at four would cost 55 karma.

This leads to the next example, in equipment. Essentially it works out like this: Simple, mundane weapons are essentially free, but there is a sort of 'attribute' tax in the form of 'Station', which is a threshold you need to clear to own a cooler weapon. Since I haven't seen any other use for Station, other than a sort of formal signifier of your character's social class, this strikes me a poor design. Moreover: Being some street punk who likes to dress up his fancy sword with a leopard skin boa, or drives nails into his baseball bat to make it look meaner and hurtier... or simply uses a much bigger baseball bat... all drive up the required Station of the weapon, which just seems... odd, and oddly forced.

But more that that: the primary focus on weapons are 'soulgem swords', which look a bit like swords with revolvers, but they don't actually shoot. You do have 'charges' that allow you to upgrade your damage for that attack, and apparently you can expend all of them at once. These are the signature weapons of the game, featured in all the artwork, and occupy the bulk of the equipment section. There are also soulgem (and gunpowder) guns, though no real details except for slightly modified reprints of the cyborg and mecha weapons from earlier.

Again: What the artist drew gets rules, any effort for creativity beyond that is lacking.  There are strangely lacking rules for the various cool things mentioned, such as varja steel, scarlet steel, magic weapons that are possibly cursed.

I mean: I can stat out a magic weapon for your character. Take a mundane weapon, add the fixed 'magic' modifier from the list, increasing its damage and station requirements.

Done.

In short, being magical isn't much different than being extra large, or having lace glued to it in defiance of good taste.  The only differences are the exact numbers.

In short, it just feels lacking.  Illusion of choice territory levels of lacking.

Unlike some games I've been thinking of lately, at least Tenra Basho Zero provides a number of prebuilt characters, and a character creation example, to show you how its done. Given the relatively small number of moving parts for characters, however, I actually don't think this is very necessary. What is lacking, given the earlier mention about the necessity of spending Kiai, is an example of starter adventure, maybe with a few sample boss npc or something.

Before I sum up, I will note a few mechanical... oddities.  These are not flaws or bugs, but deliberate choices that stand out.

It is a very player centric game in many ways. The giving away of Ai-Ki points is largely on the other players, for example, and the GM is encouraged to bribe players into putting their characters into scenes or harms way.

On that note, it is mechanically impossible to kill a character without the player's consent.  This has to do with the allocation of damage between vitality points and wound boxes, and the fact that checking off the 'dead' wound box is entirely up to the player.  

Likewise, I would suggest that this is not a game for GMs who don't trust their players to muck about in the system. On the subject of Ninjutsu powers, only half of them are assigned to one of the pre-built schools in the book. The assumption here is that someone (players possibly) will build ninjutsu schools that appeal to them.  Onmyoji design their own Shiki whenever they summon, and so forth.

In counterpoint, however: The GM is expected to dictate the terms of the campaign, so its a given that you might play an all ninja campaign, or that Shinto Priests are banned, or Oni, or Ayakashi.  This isn't even the usual gaming assumption that the GM has final say on legal characters, but a literal expectation that the GM determines what sorts of characters are appropriate for the campaign he intends to run, up front. A minor but important distinction.

Likewise, if the GM is bribing you to do something, it seems expected that you will take the bribe, or at least negotiate an acceptable compromise.

There does seem to be a lot of this back and forth, more than I generally like (See the disclaimer above). One example is the use of the Emotional Matrix, and the use of Ai-Ki points to force changes.  Allow me to elaborate: The GM has a wandering Samurai confront character X and announce "At last I've tracked you down" (this is from the rulebook, btw). The player asks what this guy's issue is, and the GM asks for the player's idea, they then roll on the emotional matrix, and the player tries to move the matrix to his idea of what this NPC is on about, while the GM (and I think other players) bribe him with chits to move the result somewhere else.

I generally prefer my NPCs to have less player input into their motivations, but that's personal.

Final Take:

Tenra Basho Zero is a fascinating glimpse at a different take on RPGs. The world is colorful and evocative, even if the rules don't always live up to the promise. The system is robust and even innovative, if not necessarily in ways that can be easily lifted to other systems.  

I could do with a bit more, but only a bit, pinning the setting down and setting it up.  

I'd play it in a heartbeat, even replay it, and I'm not adverse to running it.  It seems for shorter campaigns and frequent restarts with new characters and story arcs, if only for the sheer power-creep potential of frequent, mandatory fate drops, provided you don't go hog wild spending Kiai on extra dice.  I do worry about its replayability, mechanically, as there are far fewer moving parts than there are ideas.

Overall I give it 8 out of 10, an excellent game I don't regret purchasing but not as good as its own hype.






Eh: Post Disclaimer: There appears to have been some internet hype on the big purple about this one, according to the credits page. I missed all that, so your humble reviewer bought, read and reviewed this without any external influences. I believe that is a 'good point' in my favor for lack of bias.

Thank you for the review!

I absolutely love the description of the classes. They sound incredibly fun and exciting. Too bad the system sounds clunky.

The system issues (especially the Forge elements) probably keep it off my to-buy list, but I would give a demo game a spin to see in actual play.

If you do run the game, please post a follow-up Actual Play discussing how it runs at the table and your player's thoughts.

I'm trying a new thing, keeping my reviews to a readable length...

As for clunky, I'm not sure. The core mechanics are sound, as noted and reasonably streamlined.  Its a small dice pool base, with opposed rolls.

Noted: There are a number of external factors, the most complex of which is the Kiai points, which can be used to manipulate the dice pool system in virtually any way imaginable. More dice? Sure. Changed target numbers? No problems. Rerolls of failed dice? Go for it.. and more.  

As for an AP... we'll see once I have a chance to put together a new group. I'm living in the back woods at the moment and I've had no luck with pbp, so logistics are my biggest issue.

Can we really think of them as "forge elements" of this is a Japanese game? The author could be entirely unfamiliar with that blip in RPG history. "Story" might just be the translation.

//Panjumanju

That is why I referred to Sins of Translation. The Translator admitted up front that he added text to help explain some of the more difficult concepts.

Now, I've long held the opinion that if you are a TRANSLATOR your sole job is to translate, not to edit.  Partly formed by the understanding that my copy of the Man in the Iron Mask was somewhat unique for english language translations in that it included, among other things, the lesbianism of the original.

I don't want shit taken out to 'preserve my sensibilities' and I don't want shit added to 'explain for you dumb ignoramuses'.

If you happen to have an agenda, then admitting to adding text just makes me wonder HOW MUCH was added, and WHAT is being "explained".

That said: I doubt he made up out of whole cloth the 'kabuki structure' to a game session, with acts and intermissions. Likewise, I doubt he came up with the emotional matrix or the idea of the GM bribing players for Ai-Ki chits.


Notice that my review did not mention any spontaneous mentions of play agendas or other forge legacies, which I believe is true of the sole Luke Crane book I have (Burning Empires).  There doesn't seem to be any of Luke's famous distrust of his own GM power.  

There is a reason I put all of the 'story game' points up front in the disclaimer rather than in the body of the review.  I honestly feel that is where it belongs in this case.

I ran a three-session TBZ adventure roughly two years ago and would be happy to at least try to answer any questions about the details of how it handles in actual play.

On the "forginess" discussion, I will say that I was extremely suspicious about all the kabuki references in the text, the mechanical structure of "scenes" and "acts", and so on, but, when we actually played, none of that was an issue.  I just ran things the same way I would run a plotted (but not railroad) adventure in any other RPG.  There was nothing mechanically pushing narrative structures - although there are "acts", it doesn't require a Three-Act Structure or any crap like that - or narrative logic.

On that last point, I believe the original review describes the use of the Emotion Matrix poorly.  The mechanical description is accurate - you roll a d6 for each axis to randomly determine a starting point, then players and the GM can spend Aiki to move to a different square.  However, the end result is the character's internal emotional reaction to the NPC, not a player-imposed change on the world.  e.g., If you end up on the "They Hate You" square, it means that, when you first see the NPC, you feel like They Hate You, but it's entirely up to the GM as to whether they actually do hate you or not.  This is another aspect of the game that my players and I were all suspicious of initially, but everyone really liked it in practice because, face it, when you meet a new person, you generally don't have control of your first impression of them and that's what the Emotion Matrix is meant to model.  You can still choose whether or not to act on that first impression, learn that your first impression was wrong, etc., even if you don't choose who you feel Love At First Sight towards or who feels Like A Brother/Sister to you.

Metagame elements (Aiki/Kiai) are definitely stronger than I normally like, but they integrate well and somehow manage to be immersive through their strong integration with the game itself.  Aiki isn't disruptive, since it mostly comes down to holding a handful of stones (we used go stones for Aiki; it seemed appropriate) and tossing one to someone whenever they say or do something cool or funny.  It's generally assumed that players who aren't in the current scene will award more Aiki than those who are present, so it's no big deal if you're too far into your character to give any out.  Spending Kiai is more of a conscious mechanical decision, but no more so than interacting with the mechanics of any other RPG - it can be pretty disruptive at first, as you learn the options and when to use them, but it's simple enough to be internalized quickly.

It's definitely not a system intended for long-term campaigns, and it would break down rather quickly in that context, which is why the rulebook suggests that, if you feel the need to use it for a campaign, you should treat it as a series of linked one-shots which happen to feature the same characters, who are re-built for each one-shot as if they're new characters.

QuoteAi-Ki points are special Kiai points given to the player by other players, or as bribes from the GM, that can be spent without accruing Karma, but it seems like a hidden rule that you can't get enough to spend on anything meaningful. Ai-Ki and Kiai points don't last, they are spent or lost.

I don't think there's really anything "hidden" there.  During play, players receive Aiki for doing things the other players or GM like.  At the end of each act (i.e., whenever there's a significant break in the action, about once per hour), you cash in all your Aiki to produce Kiai.  There's also an option in-scene to spend an action to turn one Aiki into Kiai, but the mass conversion between acts is the normal way to do it.

Depending on your Fates and your Spirit stat, one Aiki will usually become somewhere from 3-5 Kiai.  So it becomes a resource-management question:  Do I want to spend the Karma-free Aiki now or do I save it until it turns into many Kiai, but is encumbered by Karma?

In practice, it's easy enough to reduce Karma that I don't think anyone spent Aiki as Kiai in my game.  (Aiki was spent for Emotion Matrix shifts and to bring characters into scenes, since those things can only be done with Aiki, not Kiai, but I'm pretty sure those are the only things it was spent on.)

QuoteThe entire system is both fascinating and intricate, while being to me personally irritating. This could well be a cultural gulf, but the metamechanical process of swapping out entire character motivations in a constant churn, and divorced from events in that character's arc/adventures, just rubs me the wrong way. It would seem to make 'Fates' worthless for defining the character in any meaningful way.

Fates are, IMO, meant to represent the character's current concerns and to be removed as they are resolved or the character's priorities change.  They are not the equivalent of Disadvantages, Flaws, Psychological Limitations, etc. from other games.  The churn of Fates is a mechanical representation of character development - Inigo Montoya's "The Six-Fingered Man must die" Fate starts out at a fairly low level, builds up as things progress, and is resolved after their final duel.  If the eventual removal made it worthless for defining the character in any meaningful way, then why is it that every geek who's ever seen Princess Bride can say, from memory, (all together now!) "My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father.  Prepare to die.", even decades later?

Quotethe GM is encouraged to bribe players into putting their characters into scenes or harms way.

I think this is more of a structural difference (note: not "issue") than anything else.  In most RPGs, The Party are joined at the hip and, no matter what happens or where it happens, everyone is there at all times.  In TBZ, the standard is for a scene to start out with two characters present and the other players as observers.  Aiki is then spent to bring other players into the scene, either running their normal PC or an NPC.  If the GM wants you to enter the scene, he gives you an Aiki to do so.  If another player wants you to enter the scene, that player gives you one of his "earned" Aiki.  If you want to insert yourself into the scene without someone else bringing you in, you pay one of your own "earned" Aiki.

I don't recall the system including any Aiki bribes for putting your character into harm's way, but it's been quite a while since I last read TBZ, so I may have forgotten that.  In any case, I did not get any sense of this feeling at all similar to Fate-style compels.

QuoteOn that note, it is mechanically impossible to kill a character without the player's consent. This has to do with the allocation of damage between vitality points and wound boxes, and the fact that checking off the 'dead' wound box is entirely up to the player.

Note that, while checking the Dead Box (which actually means that you can die, not that you already are dead) is completely voluntary, there are substantial mechanical incentives to do so: It completely negates all other damage from the attack and gives you +3 dice on all rolls for as long as it's checked.

QuoteI would suggest that this is not a game for GMs who don't trust their players to muck about in the system.

I would go a step further and suggest that it's not a game for people (GMs or players) who compulsively optimize in any way.  It's a game for doing a lot of over-the-top cool shit, period.  Little things like balance aren't really a major concern, so it can be broken fairly easily in that way - and, yet, the Aiki/Kiai/Karma cycle usually manages to equalize things rather quickly because the people who start off with a lot of dice to roll can't afford the Karma they'd get by buying extra dice with Kiai and vice-versa.

QuoteThe GM is expected to dictate the terms of the campaign, so its a given that you might play an all ninja campaign, or that Shinto Priests are banned, or Oni, or Ayakashi. This isn't even the usual gaming assumption that the GM has final say on legal characters, but a literal expectation that the GM determines what sorts of characters are appropriate for the campaign he intends to run, up front. A minor but important distinction.

This really is a point worth emphasizing.  TBZ suggests that you start out character generation not by asking "OK, who wants to play what?" but rather by telling the players "OK, you need to make three Shinto priests and their samurai bodyguard.  One of the priests was a shinobi before joining the priesthood."

Thanks for the input. I'm sure we could have an interesting debate about Fate Churn, but in the review itself may not be the most appropriate place for it.

You do raise a point that I can only describe as internally contradictory design elements.

If we accept, which I do, that the game is designed for essentially static characters, or characters who only improve in small ways specific to the adventure they are on, rather than growing over a long term campaign...

... which is evidenced by the general lack of breadth in skills possessed vs. skills available

... and the reasonably high ratings of starting character power vs. room to grow for many 'classes' (the Samurai, Yoroi armor and Kongohiki especially come to mind as characters that start and finish with the same general power level, regardless of xp).


Why then does it limit things like maximum skill value at under the skill cap? This is a minor point, but a salient one: skills can reach five, but no character can start with a skill above four. This forces room to grow in a game that does (admittedly) seem designed to allow fully developed, realized characters that shouldn't need (and couldn't really keep) growth.

Or is this more a case of 'we want NPCs to be able to overshadow PCs as a means of artificially preserving 'challenge'?


Off the top of my head I'm not really sure how much Karma it takes to raise a skill from four to five, so I could be fretting needlessly over a trivial cost.

Quote from: Spike;848596If we accept, which I do, that the game is designed for essentially static characters, or characters who only improve in small ways specific to the adventure they are on, rather than growing over a long term campaign...

I agree that this is the design intent.  Aside from the rules and the GM notes on running extended campaigns, I've also seen the Andy K. frequently compare the game to the Zatoichi TV series/movies, which use a very episodic structure, with everything returning to more-or-less staus quo at the end of each episode and no larger plot arc or other character development from one episode to the next, which also suggests the "essentially static characters, or characters who only improve in small ways specific to the adventure they are on" model.

Quote from: Spike;848596Why then does it limit things like maximum skill value at under the skill cap? This is a minor point, but a salient one: skills can reach five, but no character can start with a skill above four. This forces room to grow in a game that does (admittedly) seem designed to allow fully developed, realized characters that shouldn't need (and couldn't really keep) growth.

Off the top of my head I'm not really sure how much Karma it takes to raise a skill from four to five, so I could be fretting needlessly over a trivial cost.

I just looked it up and raising a skill from 4 to 5 costs an additional 40 Karma, for a total cost of 75 Karma.  Aside from forcing characters to have at least a little room to grow, it's also possible that this could be due to the practical concern that the 108 Karma cap wouldn't allow you to get much of anything else beyond your one "Supreme"-ranked skill.  Flipping through the sample characters, none of them have a total Karma higher than 85, which would be equivalent to a rank 5 skill, two rank 2 skills, and nothing else.

Quote from: Spike;848596Or is this more a case of 'we want NPCs to be able to overshadow PCs as a means of artificially preserving 'challenge'?

Yeah, that's a possibility, too, given that this is an explicit part of the design:

Quote from: Kiai and the Unbeatable Foe sidebarBut in general, many "end game bosses" are too strong. You can roll dice against them all day, but you'll only win if you're really, really lucky.

That's the way it's supposed to be! Strong enemies simply can't be beat using normal means. That's where Kiai comes in. Kiai lets players perform extreme feats of skill...  This is the only way players will be able to defeat strong enemies or "boss" opponents.

But also note that the "NPC Stats and Abilities" section warns to "Be careful with NPC combat skills rated 5", even as it suggests that "boss" NPCs' combat stats should generally be about 3 dice higher than the highest-ranked PC's stat.  So even among NPC "bosses", I don't think it's expected that rank 5 skills would come up very often.

Quote from: Spike;848483That is why I referred to Sins of Translation. The Translator admitted up front that he added text to help explain some of the more difficult concepts. Now, I've long held the opinion that if you are a TRANSLATOR your sole job is to translate, not to edit.  

I'd rather read a translation which adds extra words to explain necessary cultural concepts rather than a translation which either leaves meaning incomplete or (worse yet) attempts to bridge the understanding gap by changing things into "cultural equivalents".

In fact, I would consider that an essential part of translation. A good translator is not just a human version of Google Translate: Their function is more than a slide of the dictionary.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against a translator pushing the words around into idiomatically correct forms, and other minor bits of interpretation.

I specifically, in my response, called out the excising of entire chapters from the Man in the Iron Mask in the name of morality, and the unknown amount of additional text as 'explanation' claimed by Kitkowski.  

If a translator really feels like some cultural concept needs explaining to us peons who don't know the original language, the proper way to do that is a footnote, not paragraphs of additional text.  Personally: I feel too heavy handed of explanatory changes actually impedes the raising of cultural awareness.


Ultimately, however, I have no idea how far Kitkowski went. Maybe its a bare minimum, perfectly acceptable. Maybe he emphasized a philosophy of gaming that was barely extant in the original (doubtful, if only due to Inoue's comic inserts explaining concepts).  Since nothing in the text itself marks Kitkowski's additions from the original text, the only reason we even know he added is because he admits to it in the translator's introduction.  Its that heisenbergian uncertainty that has me questioning.