Character Creation: Tenra Bansho Zero

Or, as I kept mistakenly calling it for a while, Tenro Banshee Zero.

The Game: Tenra Bansho Zero
The Publisher: Kotodama Heavy Industries 
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: The core book is actually two books, and they're both helpful, but I guess technically you only need the "Rules" book to make a character

TBZ is billed as "hyper-Asian kabuki fantasy" and yeah, that's about right. It does something that very few RPGs do for me: makes me want to play it (as opposed to my two most common responses, wanting to put it back on the shelf or to run it; it's pretty uncommon that I specifically want to play a game). The system looks really interesting and the world is fascinating, but I think it's a game that would benefit from a GM with a bit more grounding in the culture it's from, at least at first.

I thought at first that there wasn't a chargen system, because it encourages players to use a pre-gen at first, but no, there is indeed a way to create characters, so here we go.

Creating characters from scratch involves picking a few archetypes, and then doing a little customization. I know I want to play an annelidist. These are folks that host colonies of parasitic worms in their bodies, but typically act as healers and doctors. A lot of them travel, selling their services as they can, and that sounds like fun.

Since the "Annelidist" archetype is the one that's going to give me special powers, I'll take that first. That's a Karma cost of 65, it gives me 4 dots of the Wormcharm Skill (why do I gravitate to the "worm" parts of the settings of games, anyway?), makes my primary Attributes Body and Senses (meaning I should put 6 points into both of those, but that must be a later step), and gives me a package of starting Annelids, which I should look up. Oh, and I also get a Fate: Affection for Annelids. 

Ooh, that's dope as fuck. I have a giant centipede that lives in my guts that can leap out of my mouth and sting people, and I have bugs that can change my limbs into sharp weapons or fire quills from my flesh. And I have a colony of Rejuvenation Bugs, that can swim through my body and repair. All I gotta do is eat some rotten meat now and then. Oh, and blood. And animal meat.

Neat! OK, next Archetype. Well, Doctor/Healer sounds about right. That put my Notice up to 2 and my First Aid up to 3, costs 10 Karma, gives me a Medicine Box, and a Fate of Goal: Protect the Weak.

I would like one more Archetype, I think, and just to give it some flavor I'm gonna take Fallen Monk. My character was a member of the Phoenix Sect, but left the order over disagreements about Annelids and their utility. Healing, sure, and he's a big proponent of healing people's bodies, but he also believes that the worms can heal a person's mind and soul - if you let them. He pushed the issue hard enough to cause some disagreements with the higher-ups, and finally left the order over it.

Neat! So, a Fallen Monk Archetype puts my Karma cost up to 85 (which is where I'll stop, as the book recommends not going over 90 at chargen). I get 3 dots of Buddhist Magic, two in Information and two in Persuasion. I get clothes, magic components, and a staff, and a Fate of Goal: Revel in Danger.

And that's all my Archetypes, so what now? Attributes! I get 40 points to throw around, and Body, Senses, Spirit, and Empathy are all considered Primary, so they should all be 6. I also need a Station of 2. That's 28 so far, so I'm fine. I need to put points in Agility and Knowledge yet.

OK, so 6 is basically at the high end of average for PCs. Let's think about this. If I put 5 into Agility, I've spent 33. I feel like Knowledge shouldn't get shortchanged, so I'll put 6 there. Only one left. I'll put it into Senses.

My Vitality is Body + Spirit, my Soul is twice the total of Spirit + Knowledge, 12 and 24 respectively My Wound track is all base don Body.

I can only have two Fates to start, so I'm going to ditch the Doctor/Healer one and just keep Emotion: Affection for Annelids and Goal: Revel in Danger. One gets 3 dots, one gets 2, so I'll put the three into the Emotion.

And I think that's all the numbers stuff I have to deal with. So let's do some character stuff!

Monks get a name from their elder when they enter the order, and there's a handy table to roll on. Ooh, cool. So, when my character entered the Phoenix Sect, his elder stayed up all night meditating to find his name. It was the night of a new moon, and at midnight, the elder noticed the sky was so dark it looked blue - hence, Azure Midnight.

Azure Midnight followed the teachings of the order scrupulously, but then he met a traveling annelidist and doctor, and they got into a conversation about the worms and what they could do. Becoming an annelidist, though, required that Azure Midnight would have to eat meat in some form, and he wondered if this was an acceptable trade-off for the ability to heal. Encouraged by a friend of his from the Ebon Mountain sect (who are much more lax about this kind of thing), he accepted the worms, and was promptly dismissed.

Azure Midnight is a somewhat complicated guy. He believes that the path to enlightenment lies within the animal purity of the worms, and likewise believes that the symbiosis achieved by hosting them is in what's in everyone's future. He also firmly believes that they must be accepted willingly, and so while he'll evangelize, he'd never force someone into taking worms (ew).

Secretly, Midnight also realized that the violent, hungry abilities that becoming an annelidist opened up within him feel...pretty good. As a monk he had to eschew violence, but now, he's fully capable of killing if he needs to. He's currently wresting with where being hungry falls on the scale of "need," as far as people are concerned.

Azure Midnight is in his late 30s. He's bald (his hair stopped growing after he took on the worms), he dresses in traveling clothes and wears a wooden carving of a worm around his neck so that everyone knows exactly who the hell he is when they meet him.

And that'll do it, I think.