I've always wanted to run a campaign that evoked the feel of the Final Fantasy series...

>>Leather and zippers
>>more zippers
>>EVEN MORE ZIPPERS
This stereotype has never made sense for the mainline FF series except for maybe FF10.

I love SaGa Frontier 2, but it has such a clear and specific flavour that its pretty easy to emulate. FF's appeal is a bit more amorphous.

>Blue magic
Is there any way to do this in a way that's not shit in a TTRPG?

You want your party to travel. Final Fantasy adventures are world spanning affairs. If you haven't hit every major landmark on your map by the time you're done something has gone wrong. This means you also have to keep the party moving, I think it was only 2 where you had something like a home base until you got your first airship. You can do this by having them chase a villain, or trying to get in front of his plans, or just make the journey central to the game.

You want a diverse party. Parties in Final Fantasy tend to be eclectic, coming from all walks of life. Very rarely does everyone know one another from the beginning of the game.

Characters should feel emotions very strongly. Like, opera strongly.

If something is important never use a common name for it when an esoteric one will do.

Final Fantasy is an optimistic series. It may get dark and terrible, but its always darkest just before the dawn. Even if your party is a bunch of complete fuckups they are the fuckups that are going to Save The World.

It's hard to give advice that's not just the general "gotta have crystals and chocobos and throw in a cid" Squard does a good job of making each game different from the last.

Oh, another thing: don't be afraid to go completely gonzo with the plot and setting.

Depends on the system, some are easier to accommodate than others, but I've seen it done in both GURPS (costly af) and PF if you care for d20 stuff.

Which Final Fantasy mother fucker? Do you want the upgradable classes and spell charge? Something where you level individual stats and skills like 2, or the resource based spheregrid of 10? Do you want switchable classes like 3 and 5? Do you want limit break/trance/overdrive?

>Spoony Bard
>Son of a Submariner
>Morphing time

If you're defining it by game mechanics and not by plot, character, and atmosphere, you're a fucking idiot. There's a reason each game has been distinct while still feeling like they belong together under the same parent title.

Gotta' agree with most of this. Seems like these are the really common elements beyond the obvious. I'd also add in: If you have a particularly powerful enemy, or the BBEG, it would win you points to have him rip a hole in reality and force you to fight him in some kind of weird-ass spacey netherworld. I mean, the actual devs of this shit know about that well enough to have put it in the goddamn MMO.

Generally, Blue Magic systems in Final Fantasy (and similar systems in other video games) work because they have a specific list of spells that can be copied, which can be balanced against the abilities shared by other party members and enemies.

Tabletop RPG systems that try to do the same thing don't work because they try to let you copy any power from anyone you meet, leading to a singularity of unbalanced and unforeseen combinations as well as the "power copying" character being one of the most overpowered because they can fulfill any role at any time and copy any enemy's special gimmick power.

>work because they have a specific list of spells that can be copied

"Final Fantasy 4e" (the d100 one with primary and secondary classes) does exactly this: literally having a list of blue-magic spells. Not every monster ability is a spell (though a shitload of them are.)

despite how convoluted some games can be it usually boils down to a hero having to discover himself and unlock his true power to fight the ultimate evil

terra had to overcome her doubts about her half-esper heritage and learn to love

cloud had to learn to be himself and not live in zack shadow, and to repair his self-esteem

squall needed to open up to others and not be an island

zidane was fun-loving, but he had to confront his inner loneliness and turmoil

the plots were often confusing or outright BS, but they always had a heroes journey at its core, a simple tale of self discovery

the settings are often diverse
FF6 had industrialized magic, rare to those far from the imperial, but yoked and bound to machines
FF7 had commercialized magic, available as a consumer good, and with friend and foe having magic at their disposal
FF8 had magic that people who trained hard like the guardians, could use
the others had DnD-inspired magic

the setting has magic be of varying rarity, but always available in some capacity
other things that are staples are magitek, machines and magic bound together, usually powering an airship, but other times powering a medieval mech

Final fantasy d20 is a good page.

Blue Magic would be much cooler if it were magic aikido and shit, turning you foes powers back on them when they use it on you rather than merely copying it for later

Post-6? Make the final boss the Judeo-Christian god, or something conceptually related. Remember Judge Bergan'a quote from 12? "Too late and to their sorrow do those who misplace their trust in gods learn their fate." That's basically the summary of all modern FF.

>Make the final boss the Judeo-Christian god
7, 8, 9, didn't have the Christian God as the final boss, and even 10 is a debatable example.

FF7, like FF6, had someone *adopt* the trappings of a judeo-christian entity, either out of pretense or out of mockery.

FF10, 12, and 13 are really the only ones that go full evil church. Evil Churches being commonplace in jRPGs is actually a post 2000 thing.

Gameplay wise, pretty much this. 4e feels almost like Tactics in a way, and it's a great fit.

Lore and campaign setting wise, I'd look at XIV. Yes, it's an MMO, but it has some fantastic lore. And with the various races and classes, it could give an idea of how to handle them in a campaign. Hell, to my knowledge, it's the only Final Fantasy game with a Job system that actually goes into the lore of the classes, like White Mages basically being servants of the elementals, and using the powers of water, wind, and earth to fuel their healing spells, and Black Mages basically being clerics for the god of death.

Quite frankly, I would have preferred White Mages being more divine casters, throwing out Dia and Banish everywhere with the occasional Holy, but the whole elementalist angle is interesting too.

No main FF game has the Judeo-Christian God as the final boss. Not even X. Yu Yevon was basically just some ancient summoner and not a creator god.

Closest was probably Tactics having not-Jesus being the host of some ancient demon who you fight at the end, but again, not the creator God with a capital G that "Judeo-Christian God" implies.

Granted, I never played anything past XI, sans XIV, so XIII and XII might have some shit there.

FFXIV really grew on me story-wise. Which is weird, as I never really enjoyed most FF games.

Though it kinda helped that I spent most of the 'Tiny assholes don't want refugees' arc laughing my ass off as they sounded exactly like what Tony Abbott was saying at the time.

XII's plot revealed Everything was being manipulated by the Occuria, a bunch of floating guys who basically wanted history and humanity to be easily manipulated. They even gave humanity artifacts like Nethicite (crystals that amongst other details, absorb magic) to keep them under their metaphorical thumb.
One Occuria betrayed the others and decided to free humanity, teaching them how to make their own Magicite.

Unfortunately, you're on the wrong side, because the people that are trying to free humanity are the Evil empire who invaded your home.

ye belts

I love Lightning and desu XIII was a neat setting and story but CHRIST those sequels ruined everything.

best dragoon girl coming through. Not best Highwind tho.

Best Highwind goes to "shut the fuck up and drink your god damn tea" Cid

OH THIS IS IMPORTANT OP!

Anachronisms. Final Fantasy is fantasy at its purest. So throw any sort of "historical accuracy" out the window.

Castles that have enormous machine bits that can burrow and move under deserts, guns anywhere from old muskets/rifles to automatic machine guns, and hovercrafts in a medieval setting all should be commonplace. How common is up to you. But every single one iirc has at least one anachronism.

Towns should feel like safe havens. They should all be warm and cozy. They should feel safe, because everywhere beyond the walls are hordes of things that want to tear you apart.

to add to this, as well. If you want to make sure your campaign is going on for a long time, have the newly-revealed BBEG destroy the entire world, turning it into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Have the party need to reunite, hide away, train and prepare to take on the BBEG in their citadel of evil terror built out of chunks of debris and biomechanical stuff.

>Evil Churches being commonplace in jRPGs is actually a post 2000 thing.
Well, SMT existed pre-2000, in Japan at least, and had a lot of Evil Church bullshit. Granted every faction in SMT was full of assholes either way, so the demons/Gaians weren't better than the angels/Messians anyway.

XIV has some fun political themes, which is interesting since most of the other main FF games don't really get into the politics of their settings.

You go from FF1 where the deepest politics are "this king is good, this king is bad", to FF14 where it's "tiny jews dicking over other tiny jews", "How the fuck do we get our people to accept the enemy we've been fighting for a thousand years so we can actually end this retarded war?", and "How does the Church reestablish itself as a legitimate institution and regain the trust of the people after a core tenant is found to be a fucking lie?"

And possibly my favorite "flying whale fortress from the moon."

Also it would be nice to have each character have at least one skill or ability only they possess.

youtube.com/watch?v=JbXVNKtmWnc

also super long bbeg themes

Any system in mind?

Some ideas:
>The world was once united by a great magitech using civilisation that was peaceful and wonderful.
>Some massive cataclysm happens, civilisation is destroyed.
>Humanity eventually recovers, forms into city states.
>Now an Empire, using old and reverse engineered magitech, is forcing everyone to join them, often by sword point.
>Trying to defeat this Empire will probably be a goal.

Locations:
>Mysidia - a town focussed heavily on magic. Likely its origin.
>Deist - Home of Dragon Knights.
>Doma - Capital of Japanese themed island nation. Worship the four directional guardians: Leviathan, Phoenix, a tiger and a tortoise.
>A massive desert filled with magitech ruins, including a giant sky-reaching mechanical tower.
>Ancient half-sunken ruin inhabited by Tonberries.

Monsters
>Magitech robots and vehicles.
>Ancient biomechanical war engines, like Behemoths, and Ultima Weapon.
>Living plants, like Ochu, Malboros, and Cactuars.
>Mutated, reptillian Dark Elves.
>Royalty-seeking Ant-lions.

So the mime class?

>Summoned Monsters have an otherworldly home, some realm much like faerieland that they bugger off to for some privacy.
>Mist is fucking everywhere, and helps power magic.
>Some places just float. Cities, castles, island, continents.
>Bringing a knife to a gunfight is a really good idea.
>Somewhere, somehow, an ancient king has become Odin and gained a love of very short fights.
>There's a wandering Samurai Ronin with a weapon fetish called Gilgamesh.

>I love Lightning and desu XIII was a neat setting and story but CHRIST those sequels ruined everything.

>sequels
>ruining 13
>not 13 being 13

Not really, the mime mimics allies while that user is talking more about like a magic counterattack