Dev Diary - Entry 5, 29th. 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. Or not, y'know. Whatever floats your boat. I'm not the boss of you.
It's been something of a busy week in the Casa del Kaiser - I'm currently housesitting for relatives who have decided that a season-long trip to foreign shores (The US from Australia, if you're at all interested) would be a good idea. Since they have, among other things, three separate gardens, an ailing cat and a half dozen chickens, it's been interesting trying to get used to the schedule they keep. As such, this week's work has been more planning and conceptualizing than anything I can point at and go "Lookit. I did the thing."
That said, let's talk pacing and plot progression in a tabletop game, and what the world's shape means to any given game. The much talked about map and the general shape of how I want it to look has gotten me thinking about how Final Fantasy geography and cartography works in influencing the decisions a player makes and how the in-game World Map, not necessarily the world itself, that makes a Final Fantasy truly open world.
The open world of most Final Fantasies serves as an aspiration to players, in my experience. It's not necessarily the existence of an open world that has sparks the desire to explore and poke at the "plot order" that seems endemic to Final Fantasy - especially in the late game. No, it's the revelation that comes with the World Map that seems to drive this desire to explore. Knowing there's an open world matters little if there's no real control as to where the player is going next, and looking closely at most Final Fantasy world maps shows that most are constructed of small explorable pockets around a rather linear core, mostly lined by either water or mountains, especially in the early game. The biggest indicator that this is entirely intentional is the World Map item - a physical representation of the possibilities that will very shortly open up to the player. In V, it's found just before access to the ship is gained, and it tantalizes with the opportunities open to the player. In 9, the whole world map shows just what is meant by the idea of exploring the whole world, instead of just the Mist Continent. Heck, every diner and small town if XV serves as it's own little county map, showing what's nearby and spurring exploration down the line.
How does one reconcile this with the freedom of choice that a tabletop game necessarily brings? How does one make plots revolving around places being as much an opposing force as people are in the story without forcing the players to go to one particular place, then the next, then the next? It's a thorny question, and it very much depends on the scope of one's game. If the game is more like the Tactics games or 12 in scope, then limiting the game to a single country/continent is an option - heck, if you go so far as to include Vagrant Story as a FF game, then city-based or dungeon-based games are possible. That necessarily takes certain travel options - airships, cross-continental ships etc. - off the table, but the problem remains when the players can say at any time "Let's check this out instead!" when this could be a new town, a new suburb or a new entrance to the sewers.
I suspect the answer lies in the creation of an overarching plot that continues no matter what the players do. If they go out and hit up a city that the "plot" demands they ignore until it gets attacked three chapters later, an option is to have that city repel or survive an attack much better than they would have due to the player's actions. The city's still getting attacked, but the results of that attack are different, and the grand plot running in the background has to reconcile this setback. Now, travel options also provide an option to limit party choice in the short term, especially when starting out, but limiting the party's choice like this is never viable long term after the options have been given to them. Once you can boat around, that's a facility the PCs expect to keep a hold of. Taking it away for no good reason is a good way to cut a campaign short through a break of trust.
And that's what I've been considering this week as my ideas of what to do with the world map begin to take shape. I hope to be able to present more next week for your consideration. Have a good one, all!
P.S. Dissidia is released, technically, today where I live. If you don't hear from me next week, it'll be because I've slipped into a gaming fugue. I'm looking forward to seeing more from some interesting breadth of characters, seeing how characters from different eras react to each other and to seeing what sort of mechanical concepts the new game brings.