What is the common flavor found on final fantasy games? i want to create a campaign based on the first games

I'm doing the same. I'm using FATE. & each character is a "warrior of Light" linked to one of the World Crystal.

There are many major themes to many final fantasy games.

These tend to be:

1: Get four crystals (or 5 summons or something.) Now, these are mostly tools to pace the game, to give players forward momentum and to be aware of roughly where they are in the story as they know it. It gives players clear goals from the beginning and helps them know what they're doing. This tends to be a gameplay tool.

Appearances: FF1, FF3, FF4, Subverted slightly in FF5, utilized slightly in FF7 (the jumbo materia section), referenced narratively in FF9 (the four elemental temples), and in FFX (though its the five story aeons)

2: Evil Empires. They're great. Well, not for the resistance, or anyone not in the empire, but they're still interesting for stories. Evil empires work great with games where you kill a bunch of baddies to get strong enough to kill a bigger baddie and then up the totem pole.

Appearances: FF2, FF4, FF6, FF8, FF9, FF12, FF15

3: Conceptual Evil. Final fantasy loves big evil monsters that are embodiments of concepts, either metaphorically or literally. This is a bit of a thematic hammer that slams over the head what the game's about. Or makes it look like its about something when in reality it isn't.

Appearances: Maybe FF1 (Chaos. I lean on not.) FF2 (the embodiment of imperialism is more evil than hell itself) FF3 (The concept of darkness) FF4 (Literally someone's anger) FF5 (literally someone's urge to destroy) FF9 (Literally the concept of death) FF13 (The concept of how the entire game is an abortion)

4: Another World Awaits You. After a certain point, you have to travel to another world. That or the world changes so much that you should explore again. I've divided this up into tasting and full course.

Tasting: FF1 (the final dungeon takes place 1000 years in the past, victory changes the course of history), FF3 (the final dungeon is in another world), ff8 (time kompression), ff9 (Gaia)

1/?

Are there dragoons in ad&d

Full Course: FF4 (You visit multiple realms of existence, even ride a whale onto the moon) FF5 (Twice, first you visit another world, then the two worlds are fused) FF6 (The World of Balance and the World of Ruin) FF10 (Arguably to the point where "home" is only a tasting.)

5: Backstory Rivals. Final Fantasy loves Rivals. They're reoccurring faces that players learn to hate or love on sight. Final Fantasy Rivals though tend to be core components of a protagonist's backstory.

Appearances: FF2 (The Dark Knight), FF4 (Kain and Golbez), FF7 (if you have to ask, I am surprised), FF8 (Seifer), FF10 (Jecht serves as the deeply entrenched rival)

6: Airships. In some final fantasy games, Airships serve as new ways to travel across the world map not only faster, but also through avoiding random encounters on the overworld. In later final fantasy games, airships acted a bit more as story moments because final fantasy needs airships. Add airships. Some airships are naval vessels with propellers on. Others are alternative technologies like dirigibles or spaceships... or spaceship whales. Then you can decide to have a convertible convert into a plane

Appearances: FF1, FF2, FF3, FF4, FF5, FF6, FF7, FF8, FF9, FF10, FF11, FF12, FF13, FF14, FF15

7: Suicide by Omnicide. Okay, sometimes Omnicide is used as a slight metaphor for a raging tantrum by a villain sick of it all. They don't just want to end the world, they want to end themselves with it. This appears rarely in final fantasy overtly, but it appears enough that it paints some of the other games villains as seeking to destroy everything, even themselves.

Overt Appearances: FF5, FF9, FF13 (well, less suicide by omnicide and more omnicide by suicide/abortion. Did I mention the final boss of FF13 has a weird abortion subtext?)

Implied Appearances: FF6, FF8, FF10 (Seymour)

2/?

Dragoons as they're known in FF appeared in 3

8: Summons. Summons are amazing aids to the heroes! They're... things... sometimes explained, sometimes not, other times given almost hand-waved explanations.

Appearances: FF3, FF4, FF5, FF6, FF7, FF8, FF9, FF10, FF11, FF12, FF13, FF15

8: Star Wars References. Oh man. Did I ever tell you that Final Fantasy loves Star Wars? Not even slightly. It drops references all the time. From Biggs and Wedge to the cutscene composition of FF12, Star Wars influences Final Fantasy in many subtle and not so subtle ways.

I won't list appearances.

9: A shitton of jobs. Like. Wow. FF has many iconic jobs that get referenced. Outside of the White Mage, Black Mage and Red Mage trio starting with 1 (as well as the three frankly boring Warrior Thief and Monk), we have many many iconic classes. Just to sample:

Dragoons: Spear using dragon themed warriors, they're known for their iconic Jump. They leap into the air and dive onto their foes with their spear.
(First appearance: FF2, but they didn't JUMP until 3. This is probably the most consistently referenced class in FF history outside of White mage and black mage. Jump, or a jump like move appears in every FF from 3 onward except 12.

Blue Mages. Appearing in FF5 first, Blue mages are masters of mimicking monstrous magic. They learn enemy spells either through getting hit by a monster's attack, seeing the attack in the fight, stealing power from or consuming the monster, or simply learning the spell from an item the monster drops.

Time Mages. They manipulate Time, and since spacetime is a continuum, space. Goofy hats. fun spells.

Ninjas. Hey, they can use two swords! TWO SWORDS. And they can throw items at enemies. Great way to get rid of weapons you don't need. After all, selling them is worthless later on in the game. You make way too much money from killing monsters.

And many many more (like my personal favorite, the Mystic Knight)

3/?

it kind of remind me of the hero journey of the hero with a thousand faces

>What is the common flavor found on final fantasy games?

Seriously androgynous characters

10: Interpersonal Drama. Oh by, Final Fantasy loves its Drama. Sometimes it's familial, other times it's those Rivals I mentioned. For every Final Fantasy nominally about discovering a world and adventuring in it, there's two where the main draw are the characters and their plights. I won't say HOW these stories tend to work, but they work. Drama was hinted at with 2's barebone story, but the drama train started with 4 and it's been going on almost without breaks.

11: Small heroes and big heroes alike go on to big destinations. Sometimes Final Fantasy is a zero to hero story, other times Final Fantasy starts characters with bigger histories. Sometimes you start as the destined heroes of light. Other times you're a trio of youths running from an evil empire who are rescued from death or near death. Either way, you rise up to great things like killing a conceptual evil. (Funny enough, this is actually a mechanical impact on the story, it'd hardly make sense for a game about getting stronger mechanically doesn't have characters growing stronger in the story or at least exercising their newly gained power by punching god)

Zero to Hero and Beyond: FF2, FF3, FF4 (Rydia), FF5 (kind of), FF8 (Sort-of? It has a story where you're zero to hero but does the mechanical trick of starting you above level 1) FF9, FF10 (Tidus mostly), FF12

Hero straight to beyond: FF1, FF4 (Cecil. The game is really good on both sides, They assigned Rydia level 1 when she first appears, and Cecil starts at... 10? It may not be a big difference by the end of the game, but FF4 used levels to represent the story slightly), FF7 (Like FF4, Cloud and crew have levels higher than 1, but you never meet anyone with level 1 or 2 so it's kind of just starting at level 1 but higher!!!), FF13, FF15

You're really thorough with this. Just want to say that FFT also have alot of what you're explaining. The only thing it doesn't have is 6 (strangely since it's one of the more general) and 7 (kinda).

12. Technology. Final Fantasy isn't really that big on medieval stasis. Really, a lot of japanese fantasy seems actually pretty big on technology being in their fantasy worlds. Sometimes technology is the relics of a long past era, or it's the cutting edge of development or both! Final Fantasy also loves itself some magitech. Magic isn't exclusive from technology. Even if its not overtly magitechnological, final fantasy technology interacts with magic. Sometimes it can nullify magic, or it can scan magic directly, or whatever. The line between science and magic is often blurred in Final Fantasy.

Examples of technology in Final Fantasy:

Cid. Cid. Cid. Even if Cid doesn't operate the airship, he's still regularly involved with machinery and technology.

Wind Temple in FF1
Going to the Moon in FF4
FF5's world is on the cusp of steam technology
FF6's entire everything
FF7's entire everything
FF8's entire everything
FF9's Gaia
FF10's entire origin story
FF12's entire everything (Funny enough, 12 is a technologically advanced society that deeply resembles a fantasy culture to its core. It's really fascinating to see)
FF13's entire machine god abortion
FF15's entire everything

I think I'm going to call it here for now.

Shinra wasn't an evil empire?

Thank you for that. FFT actually does reference airships though. The final battlefield is the Airship Graveyard (which ties to Ivalice's version of 12: magic was necesary for the ancient technologies and magic is dying out overtime in Ivalice).

Hm, well, in spirit it was. But in effect it was more hyper-focused on being a big evil business. Yeah, it even has the parades. Add 7 to the empire list

Funny thing is dragoons is supposed to mean brigands or infantries who moved around with horses.
It's not until FF came around that we view the word dragoon as knights, which is their own made up word for dragon knights (in old FFs the dragoon jobs are named dragon knights).

I forgot about that, but you don't get to have an airship. And for 12, there are also guns and mechanics/engineers like mustadio.

Gotta say, really thorough. Kudos.
And yeah, if I'd give tech-examples in, say, FFXIV, there is magitek of Garlean empire powered by ceruleum (Garleans can't into magic themselves) and the Allagans with ancient scifi: starships, cloning, genetic manipulation and AIs.

Actually, 1 More:

13: Oddly Humanocentric. Final Fantasy is oddly human focused for a fantasy series. The vast majority of player characters are human with nonhumans as exceptions. And this isn't just the main characters the players play. Entire parties seem composed only of humans. Why? Iunno. Could be that some games didn't want to include race mechanics. IN addition, quite a few "races" when they matter are functionally human like the Lunarians, the Ancients and the Al Bhed. Maybe Square thinks fantasy races get in the way of Interpersonal Drama?

Exceptions: FF4 (Lunarians), FF6 (Half Esper, Moogle, and a Yeti), FF7 (A cat robot mascot, a Cetra, and a wolf), FF9 (There's only one Human party member in 9 actually), FF10 (A Ronso, and an Al Bhed and a half), FF12 (A Viera), The MMOs

Believe it or not, I have a hard time remembering the MMOs. See, despite loving the final fantasy series, I find MMOs to be... not my kind of game, so they're even lower on my radar than FF13-3.

(Add in that FF11 was too successful and led to the extremely experimental and almost inhumanly wildly thrown against a wall nature of FF ever since)

Hey thats a pretty great explanation of the FF flavor. I'd like to add Moogles and Chocobos, as well as some technological anachronism (bring swords to gunfights).

While we're at it, come discuss everything FF-tabletop gaming related with us @ reddit.com/r/ffrpg

Could you elaborate on that FF13 abortion thing?
I played it, and almost finished it before the last battle, when you're back at Cocoon, but my file got corrupted and I just couldn't bother

Moogles and Chocobos Kupo!

Hello bruno

After having woken up, sure!

The goal of FF13 is to kill orphan. Well, the goal is to save coccoon, but the game makes you kill orphan because.... Iunno. FF13 is an abortion itself with a story that just doesn't follow logic.

Long story short: Orphan exists to die. It was created to be killed.

Anyway, Orphan's first appearance is that of a giant sword of a man and woman cradling a small round baby face. After that, the second phase of fighting orphan is the appearance of a robotic baby. It wants to die. It goads you into killing it. You don't want to kill it. It's "parents" want you to kill it. You have to kill it.

Your entire job is to kill a baby.

I dont think anyone's mentioned it but in the early games there is this idea that the main cast are "chosen" by the Crystals or fate or gods or whatever to go on the adventure and bring balance back to the world. The one other series that i can think of that has a similar feel is that of Michael Moorcocks novels like Elric and Corum. With crazy otherworldly imagery and putting hot babes in skimpy armor kinda campyness.

So, I've taken a look at the rpg. (And might post later on the reddit proper)

While there are design decisions I don't 100% agree with (Something I didn't mention is that Final Fantasy doesn't really like locking character abilities overtly behind character level,) there's some great concepts in there.

I love how experience points are spent on stats directly and your stats are used to calculate your level. I like how you smoosh two classes together to get a unique character progression. I love how you can specialize in each ability giving you an overt customization choice every time you unlock a new class ability. That said, here are a few presentation issues I have:

Core class abilities are poorly marked. I would suggest marking them with a larger font size and mark what level you get them alongside the name of the ability.

I don't like that core class statistics like HP and MP modifiers are listed as part of a class ability. They feel more appropriate in their own columns to quickly reference.

Druid just bugs me. Classifying Summoners, Blue Mages and Geomancers all together under one class called druid really just feels... not right to me. While I can see the logic, I don't quite like it. Maybe I have a different opinion, but to me, summons are big. They're party-wide concepts even when they're a single character's focus. And honestly, to me, outside of "uses outside power" the three concepts don't even say Druid to me other than Geomancer. Iunno. I get it's a game choice to make the game easier to design and play but... iunno. It feels weird.

But in general, this leads me to a weird point. I won't talk about the game for a moment and get back to thematics of FF, this time touching into mechanical subject matters.

14. Class-based except not. Final Fantasy isn't really big on locking characters into 1 class. It happens, but then there are ways to constantly tweak character abilities like crazy. Final Fantasy 1 starts the game with you picking classes for four characters, and that's that for them. But immediately afterwards we have a classless system and then a class-hopping system. Final fantasy is weirdly big on character customization at least compared to the era of design it started with.

I classify them as a continuum of classes from Hard to Soft to No classes. Some games are hard classes. A character is that class and there's no way to change it except for when the game tells you to.

Examples:

Final Fantasy 1: Hard Classes. That said spellcasters are highly customizable. Even though spell slots are unlocked based on levels (and your class), you don''t unlock spells by leveling up. Instead you have to buy spells at a shop. A sidequest exists to upgrade your class

Final Fantasy 2: No classes. Final fantasy 2 instead had a "What you do gets stronger" system like the Elder Scrolls does. Your stats, weapon proficiencies, and even spells all go up based on what you do in the game. Like in FF1, your spells are purchased in shops. This is also the first appearance of selling spells to vendors and honestly, is extremely important for the rest of the series. This is where omni-characters started to become a thing in final fantasy, though FF2 *did* try to discourage that by way of some stat loss based on other stats (using magic lowered your strength for example)

Final Fantasy 3: Soft Classes. Classes in FF3 are a moment to moment customization. A character can jump classes suddenly and quickly, though the game's stat system encourages you heavily to stick to one style of class.

Final Fantasy 4: Diamond Hard Classes. 0 customization in characters outside of gear. A character is only ever going to be what class the game says it is.

Final Fantasy 5: Soft Classes. Like FF3, this is a job change system. Introduced now though is the concept of leveling up jobs separately from character level as well as unlocked abilities you can use in another class (and a hidden mechanic where equipping an ability alters the stat mods your character has).

Final Fantasy 6: Hard Core, Soft Progression. In this final fantasy every character has a unique core ability or abilities and their own progression as well as giving them a strong unique identity, at least until magicite gets involved. Every character can then be groomed to be whatever style of mage you want them to be and hint: magic is fucking strong in FF6.

Final Fantasy 7: Slightly Hard Core, Soft Progression. In this final fantasy, a character has their own unique special set of commands called Limit Breaks that are charged by getting hit by enemies. This gives a core identity to them that encourages certain playstyles, but moment to moment gameplay is vastly influenced by the choice of materia the characters have. Like FF2, spells and abilities level up on their own and are pretty much equipment. What materia you equip alters the characters stats in slight ways which if you aren't careful can hinder the core gameplay the character has with their limitbreaks (or would if the impact materia had on stats wasn't so small)

Final Fantasy 8: Slightly Hard Core, Soft Progression. Like FF7, FF8 has characters with unique core lists of limit breaks but with summons serving once more as psuedo-classes. Though now you can junction as many summons to one character as you want! Then equip spells to specific stats to enhance those stats however you want! And each summon has unique abilities you can equip like in FF5! What was supposed to be a bizarre cross between FF5's and FF6's systems quickly becomes a mess that alongside the level scaling the game uses encourages weird, nonintuitive strategies.

FF9: Hard Core. FF9 was when Final Fantasy started getting referential and started playing with the formula in a more teasing way compared to other final fantasy games. Each character has a core class identity, but many have a "second" class sticking to them. Zidanne is clearly a thief... except his Trance involves his entire skill-set being swapped out for another set involving laser beams and weird death powers... huh, what's up with that? Vivi's clearly a Black mage and doesn't really have a strange sub-class to him... but him in the same party as Steiner let's Steiner use Sword Magic, allowing Steiner to be a Mystic Knight as well as a standard Knight. We get two "White Summoner's," a Dragoon who has some red mage tendencies, a monk who can throw like a ninja, and a Blu Mage.

FF10 Standard Sphere grid: Hard Core with Semi-hard progression. Like six through eight, characters hard a hard set of overdrives unique to them and could be freely customized through the spheregrid. That said, in the standard spheregrid, characters have their own unique pathway that the game pushes down as the path of least resistance. If a player wants to though, they can use many items to break through the progression system and turn it instantly into a soft progression system. Like FF9. characters are a mix of previous FF classes (Blue Dragoon, Time Warrior, White Summoner, Samurai Knight, Alchemist Thief, Archer Gambler, and... Black Mage)

FF10 Expert Spheregrid: Hard Core with Soft Progression. Unlike the standard spheregrid, characters are much more free to customize how they want, though the core overdrives remain.

FF11 is an MMO.

FF12 Standard License Board: No Classes. Characters start in different starting positions of the license board, but you're free to progress however you want with spatial distance serving as the soft restriction. Quickenings *would* seem like a core to characters but honestly they're just cosmetic for the same concept.

FF12 Zodiac Job System: Hard Classes. When you gain a new character to the game, you pick a Job for them to play through, but once you pick it, it's almost as locked in as FF1. How you progress through the job's licenses is completely up to the player, and in the most recent version, you can pick up a second job with a license.

FF13: Uh... Hard Classes presented as Soft. Wew. So remember how FF10 had those singular paths of least resistance in the standard sphere grid but with "advanced" play that can be broken through and characters can mostly be what you want? Well FF13 is like the opposite of that. Each character has three core classes to them that you can swap during fights. That said, in the end, characters have such strict progressions that even though you constantly choose to progress in one of those core classes constantly, the game already constantly demands you to swap them and since progression is capped until you advanced past certain story beats (something Final Fantasy actually loves doing, just not as painfully apparent) that you're often "forced" to advance a paradigm you may not really wanted to use. Eventually characters get all six paradims available to them but the grind to get even the first ability was so painful that... gahhh.

FF14 is an MMO

FF15 is... okay, I won't lie to you. I haven't played FF15. I don't really plan to. Mostly because I don't have a console for it and if I DID, I'd just rather play Persona 5 instead. Maybe one day.

The trance modes were poor in FF9. Some like the dual spellcasting stuff was fine but a super attack that does one lot of 9999 damage when your normal attacks already do that is dumb.

Obviously late game they are pointless. Early on they're fine.

That was a symptom of the design paradigm of 9999 for much of final fantasy's life.

After a certain point, you were expected to actually HIT the damage cap as a hard cap to the game's grind. And Yeah, Steiner suffers massively because of that damage cap. I do have a personal design philosophy that you really shouldn't allow players to able to consistently hit a damage cap. That said, not by raising the damage cap FF13! Instead, you should keep you damage scale to healthy values throughout the game.

Add in FF9 WAS scaling the game back! In FF7 and FF8, the best option was to use multiple attacks, because if you're hitting the damage cap with attacks, multiple hits can softly break that cap!

Yeah. Omnislash, Catastrophe, Renzokuken, Irvine's shot, always the most useful because they hit multiple times and therefore can hit the damage cap multiple times.

And Zell's Armageddon Fist (and exploit using Zell's limitbreak to spam 2 easy to execute moves in rapid succession, it's actually the best way to kill Omega in one turn)

an exploit*

Goddamn, fuck. I'm not drunk yet.

FF11 is is a class system with subclassing. From what I played it's pretty versatile too with a bit of customization. I'd compare it to FFT in a way.

FF14's class system is more like 3, except stats aren't really linked to which classes you do. Each class you do has completely separate skills and stats.

Thank you.

15: Multi-axis advancement. Final fantasy loves multiple ways to advance and develop characters and their power. This deeply weaves into he class style most games have. Now, what I mean with multi-axis is this: instead of just advancing characters with levels and gear, there are multiple avenues of advancement and strength. This can be through additional forms of XP or through unlocking new abilities as the game progresses based on actual benchmarks like sidequests or reaching new shops across the game.

FF1: XP, Money, sidequest. Fairly straight forward. Characters grow stronger based on level and class. You spend money on gear and consumables. The wrinkle this has compared to other rpgs is that magic spells are bought in shops. In addition, FF1's base spell prices are pretty expensive compared to relative gear for warriors. This means that new abilities aren't exclusively gained by JUST grinding your level in the peninsula of power. You have to travel to new locations to get new power. It also means that your party composition choice deeply affects how you interact with towns and your motivations towards money, and how you regard tents, cottages and inns.

FF2: Gain what you do, Money. Like FF1, new spells are based on buying them in locations, which encourages you to move about to get new abilities. In addition, everything you do increases that exclusively. Attack enemies with swords and you get better at attacking and using swords. Get attacked by enemies and you get better at defense and more HP. Attack your allies? You get stronger and they get more HP!

FF3: XP, JP, Money, Benchmarks, Sidequests. This is where Final Fantasy really blossomed in it's abilities as gear paradigm. Character levels are gained, and you stats are improved based on your current job. Jobs are unlocked as you progress through the story meaning that one of the higher end strategies is to keep your level as low as long as possible to benefit from the better stat gains later Jobs had. In addition, spells are equipped like in FF1 and 2, but spells can't be used unless your Job allows you to cast that spell. JP is used to enter new jobs with calculations based on how similar the new class is to your current class.

FF4: XP, Money, Benchmarks. Gone is buying spells! Now your only way to customize characters is to buy different equipment for them! Levels now work like Dragon Quest where certain levels unlock new spells for certain characters. Some spells are unlocked when a story event happens, but mostly, grinding for levels is how you get better.

FF5: XP, AP, Money, Benchmarks, actions in combat. There we are, the magic two letters we see in so many Final Fantasy games. Ability Points. In a fight, you gain XP and AP in different measures. AP is worthless until you earn Jobs though. Every few benchmarks throughout the game will eventually unlock new jobs. In addition, spells are once more purchased again, though this time once you buy them you have them throughout your entire party rather than having to equip them. AP is used to advance your job level which unlocks new abilities you can equip (often times for other jobs to encourage you to mix and match rather than just grind up one job at a time, especially for mages). This is also the first Final Fantasy to include Blue Magic where you can learn new spells by enduring attacks from foes (and later on, simply observing them). This final fantasy was the one with the largest library of blue magic spells which meant that you had more chances to learn blue magic in your travels, but if you wanted all the blue magic, what a grind! In addition, Jobs stopped being clear upgrades to each other and started being much more like ikea kits you can take apart to build your own twink build.

FF6: XP, Benchmarks, M.AP, Money: Characters in FF6 have a core set of abilities that make them unique with their own playstyles like FF4 did, but also had a few ways to tweak them. The largest of which is Magicite and Magic. When you equip a piece of magicite, it serves as a sort of Tutor, teaching a character new spells as he earns M.AP and increasing different stats when they level up. Because certain Magicites were pretty much better for stat increases, and you get magicite after quite some time of traveling the game, once more there's a general incentive for later playthroughs to keep your levels as low as reasonable to maximize your gains. Spells are unlocked once you reach 100% in a spell, which is earned by the rate of teaching a magicite gives.

The strength of magic in FF6 also ties into its story as taking place a thousand years after a magic-fueled war that nearly destroyed the world. Magic is presented as a rare and extraordinarily dangerous force that is stronger than every other option, and the game's mechanics reflect that.

If you were patient enough, you could take someone with very low base magic and MP (like Cyan), spend a few levels with a certain magicite equipped to boost those stats at level up, teach him the strongest spells, and he'd be on par with the other best spellcasters.

FF7: Inf FF7, Xp and AP are back. This time instead of charaters learning new spells permanently from magic stones, instead the magic stones permanently get stronger (and can be swapped out to other people). In addition, Limit Breaks added a new way to gain new abilities. Each character tracks how many enemies they killed, how often they use limitbreaks, and certain special items that unlock their final limitbreak. In addition, since you buy materia in shops and your equipment decides how many slots for materia you have, you're constantly encouraged to advance forward to get stronger rather than just looking for the fastest area to kill metal slimes.

FF8.... OH BOY. Uh. There's a lot. There are a lot of different advancement avenues. It's uh...

FF9: XP, AP, Benchmarks, Money: Once more you buy abilities, though this time through your equipment. I don't know why, maybe weapons are made of magicite or some shit. As you gain AP, you gain new abilities to use or equip. In addition, there's a hidden mechanic where your stats gain minor bonuses based on your equipment as you level up. (Which once more encourages you to get the best gear before gaining too many levels, though frankly you won't need those stat gains for most of the game)

At this point, it's easy to get my point about multi-axis advancement. Of course any interested designer would go "BUT HOLY FUCK THAT'D BE A TERRIBLE MECHANIC IN TABLETOP" They'd be right.

Which is why I like what 4e returners (Going to call it that for probably a long while) is doing what it's doing with stats. A good emulation of multi-axis advancement is tiered advancement. XP is used to gain stats, then stats are are used to track advancement of levels, and then levels are used to unlock new abilities in your classes. This is really cool!

In fact I had notes for a tabletop rpg that worked kind of backwards in the same way (You spend XP on abilities and those abilities increase your level which increases your attributes in turn).

So yeah, that's really neat!

Woops, wrong post meant to quote

>FF8.... OH BOY. Uh. There's a lot. There are a lot of different advancement avenues. It's uh...
Fucking junctioning

is there a returners 4e?

at least one character should have a wardrobe composed of belts and zippers

Heya!

Thanks for the feedback. I've been toying with the idea of rewriting the core rulebook to get rid of some grammar errors, incorporate the latest Errata and upgrade the presentation. I'll take your suggestions in mind should I do it.

Hell yeah! Try hitting ffrpg4e.wikidot.com/ for some download links.

bumpity bump

Okay, let's talk about more recent phenomenon in Final Fantasy narratives:

16: Religion and God are Evil (Except it's not). Oh man, how did this get associated with final fantasy? I think it's mostly a symptom of the fact that jRPGs were getting extremely subversive on their previous traditional storylines when they were reaching peak popularity in the west. Anyway, in like, three final fantasy games, churches are evil. They seem nice, but nope, they're evil. This is mostly a more recent event in the series and frankly, it's overstated by people. Religion (and God) being evil is more a Xeno-series and SMT concept. Oh well.

Only God is Evil: FF6 (Only after a madman becomes "god"), FF7 (Well, Sephiroth only has the TRAPPINGS of an angel.) FF12 (Kind of)

An Evil Church: FF10 (Yevon is corrupt, who knew?) FF13 (Yeah, every god wants massive amounts of humans to die so big G god comes back...)

If you plan on using 5th ed this might be useful

homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/B1HBWX5j

>Wind Temple in FF1
>Wind Temple
I do believe you mean Sky Castle.

It has to involve the whole fucking planet at some point or another.

>Final Fantasy is oddly human focused for a fantasy series.
What's odd about that?

>bring swords to gunfights
Sheathed knives beat holstered guns from closer than 21 feet.

You are correct. Thank you. Its been forever since I played 1 and truth be told, I only did so for its historical impact.

>I only did so for its historical impact.
Retconned later, but if you didn't play the NES version I'd like to point out that the entire thing was mechanical in it.

gameinternals.com/post/3364162387/straightening-out-final-fantasy-xs-sphere-grid

Well, I'd say its odd mostly for modern tabletop gamers and western fantasy gamers. Emphasis on modern. In most recent fantasy games, races are considered a way to alter your stats further or just a quick shorthand summing of your character. Now in Final Fantasy, being a member of a race is used in one of two ways: to inform a class mechanic or to serve as a root of drama. Sometimes both. This is why hybrids are big in FF (Cecil, Terra, Yuna, Seymour). It allows racial drama to be emphasized. Most fantasy race characters are either the last of their kind, exiled from their race, or otherwise have the mystery of who they are as a root of drama. Or they have a unique form of combat like blue magic, throwing party members, summoning, or have exotic limit breaks that aren't just "damage foes".

So, there's one thing that article kind of missed in my eyes: choices are big. Using a key sphere influences not just 1 level, it affects the next 5 to 10 levels. In addition, FFX is generous with level ups.

>Emphasis on modern. In most recent fantasy games,
>Eastern "Western Fantasy" resembles Western Fantasy from 30 years ago
And again, what's odd about that? That's in line with everyone's expectations.

I really liked advancement in FFCC.

Because every time I try to run a tabletop ff game, everyone wants to be a fucking elf and catgirl. So the "oddly" is because holy fuck, it's tough going "look, races are the exception, not the rule" to people.

(Also honestly, this was something that 3e Returnees got wrong. Massively.)

If you're talking about Returner's 3e, there were absolutely NO incentives to playing human. In that game, Humans were all "we're the middle ground" but the design promoted min/maxing and going for the best races you could to match your job was a big part of that.

All jobs had at least ONE non-human race that was better than humans at it (except, MAYBE, the mimic).

>What is the common flavor found on final fantasy games?

For I-VI, it's kitchen sink medieval fantasy with steampunk elements, splashes of Asian myth and culture, and some anime style love story stuff.

For VII-XII, it's anime twilight with ham fisted environmentalist messaging.

XIII seemed to be some kind of thought experiment style deconstruction of the nature of storytelling, as if they were exploring the fundamental elements that create a narrative and generate character motivations, and then inverting each one of them to see if a story could still exist when you violate every single rule of storytelling. I'm not even being sarcastic, I really do think it was some kind of experimental narrative shit they were trying with that game because it was literally the most illogical and nonsensical storytelling I have ever seen.

I haven't played any since that.

>do you think it is easier to make a game based on the fluff or based on previous systems?
Pick a system you like, and just do some minor adaptations and lay the fluff onto it.

Middle-ages setting with highly advanced steampunk (and maybe dieselpunk), the world held together by the four crystals, the absence of which rots the land, stops the wind, chills the world, and stagnates the sea. Also the fact that jobs are not just skillsets, but actual in-universe concepts much like how alignment and spell slots are a concept in D&D as well as being a game mechanic.

I recommend playing Bravely Default, at least until you learn the significance of the When The Fairy Flies subtitle, its flaws aside I consider it a perfect representation of "classic" Final Fantasy. 4 Heroes of Light is also good if you want something more oldschool.

I like the Races from Tactics Advance

and I really like that some people can use other another race's classes

>FF13 (The concept of how the entire game is an abortion)
Though for FF9, while Necros was the final fight, I'd argue he wasn't the main driving conflict. I'd argue that instead of death, everything was mostly driven by the story's narrative of making peace with mortality, and Kuja's rage over the concept of mortality, before he succumbed to nihilism at the end.

Man, Kuja was such an excellent villian. Easily one of the best in the franchise

While I do agree, I think Necron is more the concept of the call to the void than death itself. Necrons text isn't about how all things WILL die, its that all things desire to die. Of course, its still pretty damn sudden to appear. And really, its just a thematic fight rather than an actual fight.

(Though really, I don't think a metaphoric fight is really FF's strong suit. It tries. A lot. But they fall flat more often then not.)

Superbosses

So here's a question. Since you obviously put much time and thought into Final Fantasy, and you also despise 13 like any sane person does, how would you go about fixing that shit?

Personally, I would have just scraped most of the original game, and instead exclusively work with the characters and stories that were talked about in 13-2. Mostly because I thought Caius was a cool villian who deserves much better than he got, since he was effectively just your typical Hero character taken to a darker extreme. If he hadn't been shackled to such a shit franchise and narrative, he would have easily ranked much higher on my list of favourite villians

tech doesn't beat nature?

Final Fantasy is about the triumph of style over substance so much so that the story and system are vertically integrated into the theme of the art.

You got four crystals are the things that keep the world in balance and maybe the things that created the world.
You got gods (or demons) that have a connection to the crystals, as well as chosen ones who also have a connection to the crystals.
You have a mixture of greek/roman, medieval, modern and futuristic level technology.
Every city is a City of Hats and function as nation states mostly.
Evil is mostly personafied by flat, death seeking, nihilistic characters.
It often deals with apotheosis and theocide.

FF1 had time travelling and temporal loops on a medieval magic setting with a group of anons saving the world.
FF2 had an evil emperor that takes
over the world, takes over hell and heaven eventually and is brought down by a group of charming rebels/terrorists
FF3 had the personification of "balance" turn into a cloud of destruction and a bunch of anons save the day
FF4 has space romans from the moon trying to destroy everything and a dark knight/paladin guy and his group of weirdos save the day
FF5 is a parody of the series but plays some of it's tropes straight
FF6 has Joker with super powers and a bunch of weirdo heroes "save" the day

7 and up I don't consider as being part of the "first games", but they keep the concepts of weird team of heroes, power of friendship, nihilism, ecofriendlyness, becoming gods and murdering the shit out of gods. And things escalate from a small problem into world/reality anighilation scenarios.

youtube.com/watch?v=35P_9MgxlQU

Well. First off: don't let suits demand you make the next Compilation of FF7 or Ivalice Alliance. The game had its cart put before the horse.

Now then... Lets start with the surgery:

Player Motivations need to line up with character motivations: before we even start with any gameplay pickups, lets get the first moments out of the way.

Holy fuck, tell us why we're doing what we're doing. Characters CAN have secrets. That's fine. Main characters even. But a player needs a clear reason to want to do what the game wants him to do. It doesn't even have to be big, just make it clear.

In FFX the player starts with "survive Sin's attack." The goal is simple. It's clear. It ends fast, but even after all the twists and turns of the game, the goals the game wants you to accomplish are mostly clear.

7 starts off with right away telling you you're going to blow up a reactor, every time there's a twist, your goals shift appropriately in reaction to the twist.

9 starts with a heist and the game keeps clear goals in mind.

13 starts with Lightning (the main character) wanting to go somewhere but not explaining why. (To save her sister.) Then the game constantly jumps characters without any proper motivational explanation. Everyone's going to the same place but you have no idea why. It makes no sense.

Whenever the game attempts a twist, it falls flat because there was zero investment in the assumption and zero shift in motivations.

Honestly, the game doesn't feel like it ever properly runs on the motivations of the characters at all. "We've got a literal mission statement in our head and if we don't do it, we get turned into zombies" is fucking tertiary to what characters do. Honestly, the entire "make humans kill Cocoon so we can get God to come back" villain motivation just doesn't work.

In fact. Fuck it, my solution to FF13? Stop walking it to Lightnings armpits you creep of a director.

Wanking it* not walking it

>Stop wanking it to Lightnings armpits you creep
The only part that I disagree with

You have shit taste. Lightning has even less interesting character than the fucking WoL.
And I'm including both Dissidia and Mobius versions in that comparison

Heck, Snow is a more interesting character, and his only defining traits are "white knight" and "SERAAAAAAH!"

My issue isn't the fans. Its the fucking creepy ads affection her creator has to her. It's to the point that she's on the cover of 13-2, a game she's not even in except for a pointless series of quick time events at the start.

Also, stealing her emotions (for a stoic character) and THEN trying to appeal to her emotion of love just proves the cast of the FF13 trilogy still have retarded motivations.

Sadly, Lightning's not even the worst character in that game. That goes to Hope or Vanille.

But we can all agree that Sahz was the best character

Yep.

>13 starts with Lightning (the main character) wanting to go somewhere but not explaining why. (To save her sister.) Then the game constantly jumps characters without any proper motivational explanation. Everyone's going to the same place but you have no idea why. It makes no sense.
>Whenever the game attempts a twist, it falls flat because there was zero investment in the assumption and zero shift in motivations.
>Honestly, the game doesn't feel like it ever properly runs on the motivations of the characters at all. "We've got a literal mission statement in our head and if we don't do it, we get turned into zombies" is fucking tertiary to what characters do. Honestly, the entire "make humans kill Cocoon so we can get God to come back" villain motivation just doesn't work.
I feel like this sums it up nicely, but there also needs to be a point raised about what this awkward handling of the characters vs the plot does for the story.
The first time I played FF 13, I legitimately had no idea what the fuck was going on, or why half of the cast was on the same party bus as Lightning and Snow. I had only the foggiest idea why the space pope wanted to kill everyone, and I had almost no idea why Cocoon was important or bad. Nothing sunk in.
A while later, I read up on some stuff explaining what was actually happening, replayed it, and shit made more sense.

The fact that the characters don't seem to give a fuck about the plot makes it hard to follow if you don't know what you are looking for from the beginning. To someone not incredibly invested into deciphering this shit, the story is impenetrable, and none of the characters are carrying the story.
A story can have those more complex layers that take a bit of research and a second playthrough to "get", but it also needs that driving narrative even someone playing the game for an hour every weekend can follow.

13 sounds cool

How does Final Fantasy XIII compare to Mother 2?

I am thinking D6 from weg or savage worlds,even 5e

I feel you've made some mistaken points at times, but I'll hold off on nitpicking your post unless you'd like to hear them. Nice post though.

Mother 2 is a masterpiece. FF XIII is a bad game.

There's is a 3.5 build that combines jump boosts, Leap Attack, Drop Attack and general charge cheese. It stacks so many damage multiplies you're great cleaving everything in reach for thousands of damage.

Has anyone played this 5e conversion? Is it good?

3.5 i am not sure i want to comeback to that
i am intrigued to play it but i haven play ff post 8

A lot of the classes, especially the casters, are pretty well-done, but some of the archetypes (Scholar, Bard) and classes (Machinist is the big offender, but also Dark Knight and Dragoon) are a little clunky or poorly-built. If you're thinking of using it in a game, you should definitely read through any classes you're interested in using and try to get a feel for how they would play mechanically.

From that one game, yes, absolutely.
But he is still a weird character, in that weird way that Japanese write black people.

Do the problems of FFXIII's even matter in a tabletop setting? I'm pretty sure even a bad GM and a bunch of dumb players can make a better story, even if it takes place in the same setting.