Dev Diary - Entry 1, 1st. Jan. 2018
CAUTION: Spoilers will abound in this dev diary regarding Final Fantasy XX/Final Fantasy 20XX. If you believe yourself to be involved in playing this game, please exercise due caution. Thank you!
To whomever is reading this,
Hello! My internet handle is Kaiser6012, and welcome to the wiki for my exploration of the Final Fantasy 4th Edition tabletop gaming ruleset! If this is your first experience with this setting, I would recommend hooking yourself up with the FFRPG Reddit over at https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRPG/. You can find the rulebooks over there, as well as the creator of the system and a community that'll be sure to help you out in creating your own Final Fantasy tabletop experience.
Now, before we begin, let me describe a little bit what my plans are. I am planning to create a game for two players in real life, played once a week over the course of around 3 to 5 hours each session. I have bold plans for this game, as seems only right for a Final Fantasy game - among other things, this game will include vast power struggles, a great change in the playing field that will end up changing the world for the players and, of course, playing card games. I will be creating a lot of content along the way - not just monsters and story beats, but equipment, summons, traits, quirks and more. I will be examining almost every aspect of the game so as to create an experience that my players (and, by proxy, you) will enjoy.
Now then - what do I have so far? At the moment, it's a lot of disparate ideas and disjointed story elements that need tying together. What I do have is useful, to be sure, but I need to be able to tie all of it together in some way. I know the general shape of the world - indeed, I have a map already of the rough shape of the First World, though I don't know exactly what will be where or the flow of the adventure.
I have, however, read through the rules and it's given me a lot to think about. For the most part I love the core concepts - the four stats, the Destiny points, quirks etc. One thing I am debating over, however, is the use of Traits in this game. For GMs that share the game design with the PCs, that seems an excellent way to start the worldbuilding and what's important to those involved. However, for this game? Not quite so much. There's no hard and fast rules as to how the Traits affect XP gain, and on a fundamental level I would like to think that I trust these PCs to not game the system for personal gain.
Going a little deeper on this, I really do like the Destiny Point system, as well as Traits and Quirks. The whole bundle reminds me heavily of the Fate Point system in Fate - to the extent where I would love to replace the Traits with some more game specific factors. I would love for, instead of one Trait, to have a character have a "Key Item" Trait. One character might bring his Signet Ring of Mensis trait into play (Is that a Spoiler I see?) to gain access to the upper social circles of a given town, but at the same time the same trait comes into play to cause trouble when said upper social circles send word back to the Mensis seat of power that some upstart kid is acting rogue. Examples of this in FF that cause me to think this way are Lightning's Anti-Grav unit from FFXIII (Guardian Gear, anyone?), Schala's Pendant for Marle in Chrono Trigger, Edgar's Double-Headed Coin in VI... the list goes on.
"But wait!" I hear you cry. "There are three Traits, but Key Item is only one! That'll leave the characters weaker!" Very true, voice-in-my-head. Which is where my concepts of the Location Trait and the Big Picture Trait. The simpler of the two is the Location Trait, and this one represents the environs the characters find themselves in. This can be as granular as a particular house or domicile (Don Corneo's Mansion, Hammerhead Garage, Zell's House etc.) or as broad as an area or certain region of the world (Mi'Hen Highroad, Lunar Subterrane, Petrified Forest etc.) and should be able to be used both by and on the PCs for interesting interactions. A good example of this would be a Magitek Research Facility trait - finding impromptu weapons and knocking foes off of catwalks are commonplace, but so are traps, alarms and malfunctioning systems. This idea also works especially well as one of the players has mentioned he wants to be a Geomancer Druid, so terrain and environmental factors are things I am acutely aware of.
Finally, we have the Big Picture Trait. This is the trait that tells everybody exactly what's happening in the plot right this second. Good examples of this in canon that I can see are things like Dagger's Mute Shock from FF IX, I Am Fal'Cie to describe the flight from Cocoon and Cid's mad devotion from XIII or Titanic Headache from XV. This is something I'm not 100% on at the moment - it seems that it puts a little too much power in my hands as opposed to giving everybody involved options - but it's a very good way of mixing things up in an area where otherwise not much may have changed.
Aaaand that's about it for this week - mostly introducing you to the Dev Diary and to what sort of scope and ideas I'm throwing around at the moment. If you came here through World Anvil, check out the Subreddit for more info. If you came through the Subreddit, welcome to World Anvil - this site is fantastic for worldbuilding of all stripes. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week! Going up at or around 0100 AEST (GMT +1000).
Have a good week, all!
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