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Fabula Ultima: Game Sheets and Preview
🕑 Added 2018-07-02 16:41:45 +0000 UTCHi! If you're thinking "hey, that logo looks suspiciously like a JRPG logo" you're... very right!
Fabula Ultima is a big project of mine, one you'll be able to see from its early stages (which is to say, the current state of the game) to its completion (hopefully within a reasonable time)
So what's gonna happen? Well, first of all each patron (vanguard, hunter and shaman) gain access to a special drive folder containing notes and files concerning the project. Your thoughts and feedback will be key to shaping the game into its final form (pun intended!)
Once the game is complete, all patrons will get the .pdf version of the full game (with or without artwork, largely depending on my budget - I'd love to recruit some amazing artists for this) and a physical + .pdf bundle will be made available for sale (or Kickstarted! That would be amazing!).
Today, I want to show everyone (patron or else) what the alpha-stage character and group sheets will look like, what a character class looks like, and give you a brief summary of what the game is about.
Here's what a class spread looks like: the huge blank space will contain full-figure character designs for the class, one male and one female. The layout draws most of its elements from typical JRPG guides, but the book will be small-sized and easy to carry around!
While it's way too early to go into details, know that each Player Character will have many classes - they are more like "skill bundles". Each class can be raised up to 10th level, and each time you take a level in a class you'll gain one of its four skills. Skills marked with a (+) get better if you take them multiple times. You're not forced to take each skill at least once: you might raise Rogue to level ten and take Unfair Fighter every single time.
Your total character level will be equal to the total of your class levels: at character creation you'll get five levels to distribute among two or more classes. You might be a Rogue 3 / Weaponmaster 2, or a Pathfinder 1 / Tinkerer 4, and so on. These initial classes will be the ones shaping your character concept, but nothing prevents you from drastic changes later on - your Elementalist / Orator might take Guardian levels and turn into an armored spellcaster with a silver tongue!
The amount of customization is going to be pretty impressive, and designed to enable players to build iconic JRPG-style characters without being constrained into one class or the other and without classes taking up hundreds of pages. Also, the total character level can go up to 99... which means you can get a pretty crazy character. But hey, I don't expect your games to last that long - you'll probably play until level 45-50.
This might look like a weird design choice, and we definitely need to see how things work once the game hits the table, but it's an homage to the genre Fabula Ultima draws inspiration from - JRPG titles such as Final Fantasy (especially II, III, IV, VI, IX, X, XII, Tactics, Four Heroes of Light), Bravely Default, Bravely Second, Tactics Ogre and many others.
What to expect from the game? Well, the downloadable sheets linked below can give you some hints about what's to come - but I think the Fabula Ultima project can be summarized as a classic high fantasy game, but with modernized rules, an experience system that encourages playing to your character's traits and drives, and a shared setting and group creation process which makes sure everything in the game world is relevant to your players and their characters - no wasted elements!
In play, the game runs in a fairly typical way - but the procedures contained within the book strengthen the premise and make everyone's role at the table easier.
It should also be mentioned that part of the game's core engine will be based on Ryuutama - Natural Fantasy Roleplay, an amazing product translated into English by the awesome folks at Kotodama Heavy Industries. You can find it here - and trust me, it's adorable and tons of fun!
As always, I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about this - I know this is a bigger project than what I usually do, but I've been tinkering with this for years... heck, I've been wanting to design such a game ever since I played Final Fantasy Tactics A2 for the very first time.
I hope you'll be with me for this ride <3.
Comments
Emanuele Galletto
I'll answer both comments here! :) First, let's talk about combat: Fabula Ultima aims to recreate some mechanical elements of JRPG games, and "random battles" are one of those (there's a travel mechanic which allows for unexpected dangers or useful discoveries - the Pathfinder class improves your odds). Combat will not always be against bosses (in fact, there's a method for abstracting mass battles by representing whole units with a single "figure") and will have stuff like HPs and the likes - that's simply part of a series of JRPG tropes I feel have to be in the game. However: the "combat" mechanic is actually called a "conflict" mechanic - much like in Torchbearer or Mouse Guard, you can resolve any adrenalinic scene with it - such as a chase, court ball, or infiltration scenario. Bosses will not necessarily be faced in battle (though most of them will be capable fighters or mages, of course) and the game borrows Blades in the Dark's progress clocks to allow for creative solutions. Concerning your second post, while I am not familiar with Fate/Stay Night, I very much understand what you mean - we get a similar situation in shows like Avatar: the Last Airbender, where heroes who are defeated get taken out of the action, but only risk their life in the climactic end of the season/campaign. There's a system for this in Fabula Ultima, but it's not 100% done; in fact, it will be the subject of future polls here and on social networks. As of now, PCs simply cannot be killed unless they sacrifice themselves or a Boss gets them when they're taken out of action (0 HP). I am also considering a "limit break" system where, once reduced to 0 HP, the player chooses to either be defeated/taken out, or escalates the conflict to a battle to the death, regaining some strength but risking everything. What are your thoughts?
Andrea Parducci
Another example: with a "standard" RpG system, you couldn't run a Fate/Stay Night campaign. That anime should be a last-man-standing royal rumble, but at the series end about 80% of the characters are still alive, and they fought at least 3 or 4 time, and every time they 1)retreat 2)postpone 3)do it only to show their strength 4) make curious alliances, 5) let the enemy escape the scene, etc. I think a good RpG emulating that kind of narration should try to emulate that kind of "mechanics", while almost all J-RpGs (or anime based, like Besm or OVA) fail that cardinal principles.
Andrea Parducci
Fantastic idea, Emanuele. I see, you know well J-RpGs too! My feedback? Try to push Narration towards the classic Boss tropes, ie. No "standard" combat with standard HPs, and when you beat it the combat is over (as D&D does), but a more "scene driven" mechanics, so you find the Nemesis, you speak (or fight) with her/him/it, you beat her, she escapes with monologuist' speeches, you find her again, she fights with "only a 10% of her Real Strength, she go away again, etc. Etc.
