So my brain has been a whirl recently. Work (real work) is busy as heck, as we’re currently at about half the staff levels we need to be. But with the whole GenCon thing going on, my thoughts have again turned to gaming.

Here’s a quick status of Tenra Bansho, that game I’m translating for release into English. It’s coming along fine. The last of the translations will be complete in September, after which begins the slow, painful editing process. It’s during that time when we’ll be adding the New Text to the game. New background, New setting explanation, New rules, Name lists, Microfiction, that sort of thing. Early next year is DTP and layout, and late spring come printing and publishing. I’m fully expecting the game to be ready by GenCon 2007 if all goes well at these early stages.

Speaking of which, I posted an enthusiastic post about the thing over on the Tenra developers journal here: http://www.tenra-rpg.com (follow the blog link in the text section). As we get closer to the game’s release, we’ll be leaking more and more information about the game. Next I expect to upload a sample character or two.

Anyway, it’s hard to keep doing this when my brain is firing off impulses and storms about my own games that I’m trying to develop myself- Where I have to push those thoughts down until later, or Tenra will simply never come out in time. But I’m taking some of that creative energy into reworking the Tenra rules. For the most part, they’ll stand as they are. However, there are some areas that will simply have to be rewritten for clarity, others revised because in the intervening 7-10 years since these revolutionary rules were made in Japan, over in the US we’ve found some ways to do the same thing, but cooler or easier (some scene framing; getting rid of needless dice rolls; setting stakes in conflicts; making “singing” and “leadership” do damage, just as swords do (to the spirit rather than the body), to make the rules-y parts of the game be used for more than simple combat, etc).

Anyway, I’m putting together a playtest package right now. I expect to have it done within a week, and from there I’ll be running around the area running sessions of it to further understand and refine the game (and test out alternate rules).

That’s what my creative brain has been up to recently.