Final Fantasy XIV Getting an Official TTRPG

Square Enix leaked a pre-order page for Final Fantasy XIV TTRPG Starter Set on their online store on Wednesday morning before taking it down that afternoon and putting it back up again overnight.

The order page for the new TTRPG went live on Wednesday for around 6 hours before being taken down, but not before being archived via the Wayback Machine. It's likely the game was scheduled for announcement during the Letter from the Producer event on September 23 but was posted live by mistake. As of Thursday morning, the pre-order page is live again on the site along with an announcement page confirming a player and GM core rulebook along with an official preview page.

The new game will be based on the MMORPG video game Final Fantasy XIV, which currently has over 3 million active daily players available on PC, macOS, and PlayStation. This marks the first official adaptation of the popular and long-running Final Fantasy video game franchise to tabletop RPGs. From the product description before it was removed:

Based on the hit MMO Final Fantasy XIV, the FFXIV TTRPG is a tabletop roleplaying game that lets you experience Eorzea from a whole new perspective. Step into the shoes of a heroic adventurer or assume the game master's mantle, then cooperate to forge your own unique stories within the vast and exciting universe of Final Fantasy XIV. The Final Fantasy XIV TTRPG Starter Set comes with everything you need to dive into the game and includes both the Player Book and the Gamemaster Book. Gather your friends together to explore, battle, and roleplay--the only limits are your imagination, and the only goal is to have fun. Discover a realm of adventure reborn!

The Starter Set will include a Player Book, Gamemaster Book (including three scenarios tying into the FF14 main story), four pre-generated characters (Warrior, White Mage, Dragoon, and Black Mage), Rules Summary & Strategy Guide, encounter maps, character tokens, and ability markers. The set will also include custom numeric dice - 6d20 total (two red and one each of green, blue, black, and clear) with the Final Fantasy XIV logo in place of the 20 and 10d6 (four red, two each of blue and green, and one each of black and clear). No further information about the game system is available at this time.

The set is scheduled for a May 2024 release and is available for pre-order for $59.99.

Note: This article has been edited to update with new information as the pre-order page was taken down, then put back up again, then an official announcement and preview page released.

 

[overgeeked]

Are ENWorld folks who are also FF fans excited about this?

I'm excited about this on multiple levels. I'm a fan of Final Fantasy so this is great. I'm also a fan of Dragon Quest (another IP owned by Square Enix), so I'm very hopeful that if this does well they will give Dragon Quest a similar treatment.

 

[CleverNickName]

The question:

Are ENWorld folks who are also FF fans excited about this?

My answer:

That is the sexiest ad I've seen in months.

 

[Abstruse]

I got off the FF train at Final Fantasy X-2... never did the MMO ones, never got to a PS3/4/5.
So this has about half the appeal for me that older ones would have had. (US IV, VII, and X would be my choice of flavors for the fluff, but I can understand them going for the more lore available MMOs as baseline.

Doing FF14 was probably the smartest thing they could've done because they tried to cram so much of the different Final Fantasy games into the MMO that you'll have whatever you want to play in a different setting. So even if it's not technically FF7 or FFX or FF6/III or whatever your favorite Final Fantasy game is, it'll have all the jobs, equipment, magic items, Eidolon/Esper/Aeon/whatever you call them in that game, and basically anything else you'd want to play in that particular version of Final Fantasy.

 

[Gradine]

Time for the totally necessary every time there's a thread about Final Fantasy Final Fantasy Rankings.

Not Played:
Final Fantasy XI
Never tried it, can't knock it.
Final Fantasy XVI
I'll get there eventually. Gotta at least get through BG3 first.

14 - Final Fantasy XV
This game makes me so angry. It could have been good. Driving around to classic FF tunes? Incredible! The battle system? Kind of shallow, magic is useless, items are cheat buttons. Everything else? Trash. Not the designers' fault necessarily; they took Nomura's passion project away from him to turn it into incomplete slop you have to buy the DLC to understand the story for. Don't worry Nomura, Final Fantasy Versus XIII lives on... in Kingdom Hearts... which makes as much sense as anything else in Kingdom Hearts, I guess.

13 - Final Fantasy III
I'm sure if I had gotten to play this as a kid I would've been blown away. As it is, it's just kind of bland, and the scenario design really doesn't mesh as well with the potential of the job system (an example boss: make your party all Dragoons or die).

12 - Final Fantasy VIII
I don't even think the plot or the cast are even that bad. There's cool moments and neat characters there. It's just terrible to play. On every level. They tried something neat with the systems but it needed to trim about... half of them.

11 - Final Fantasy I
The first, basically D&D the video game, and a pretty solid little game for the NES. Doesn't really hold up much anymore, but it's fine for the novelty of it.

10 - Final Fantasy IV
I get why people love this, I do. It's just that... it's not as good as any of the upcoming games. That and it's pretty much the only game in the franchise that fully does away with the customizability in battle system and party that the series is more or less known for from here on out.

9 - Final Fantasy II
I get why people hate this, I do. It's just that... the remakes all fix the balance issues, it's an incredibly fun system, and the story and cast are, for the NES, absolutely astounding.

8 - Final Fantasy XIII
This one gets a bad rap. Yeah, it's super linear until the end. But I never really found that a flaw. The battle system, once I finally grokked it, is a hell of a lot of fun and can be incredibly intense. The story is, once I finally grokked it, pretty good, and the cast is actually mostly pretty great. If I were ranking sequels & spinoffs, XIII-2 would get even higher marks. Never played XIII-3 though. Timing mechanics are not my cup of tea.

7- Final Fantasy XII
The Zodiac Job System version earns this rank, otherwise it'd be quite a bit lower. I'm still not a fan of the "it basically plays itself" combat (FFXIII handles it much better, IMO), but I like the character builds you can make. The plot and cast pretty solid, mostly. Probably one of the best localizations of a FF game, period. Fun fact; my daughter caught me playing this game on my Switch during all the final airship battle cutscenes and asked if I was playing a Star Wars game. Me: "...Yeah, kinda."

6- Final Fantasy VI
Considering all of the ways the game is essentially broken (the programming is held together by chewing gum and good intentions) it's kind of a miracle that it all still works so well. I have my quibbles with it, especially in the game's second half when they more or less abandoned all pretense of character interaction in the name of non-linear exploration (not and equal trade, in my estimation) but it's still fun as hell.

5- Final Fantasy IX
Beloved by many. This would be higher ranked if it for one problem and one problem alone: the battle system is too damn slow. Okay, two problems: the absurd steal rates mess with my broken completionist brain. Okay, three problems: the umpteen secrets meant to push traffic to their online traffic also messed with my broken brain. But Vivi!

4- Final Fantasy XIV
I'm not very far along in it, but I have a feeling I'm going to end up loving this. I can see the bits where the better storytelling is peaking through in A Realm Reborn that's going to pop in once I hit the expansions. It's definitely the funnest MMORPG I've ever played.

3- Final Fantasy VII
The Remake would top this list, and Rebirth is looking likely to top that, but the original game is still incredibly excellent, and hard to top.

2- Final Fantasy V
Does it have the best story? No. Does it have the best cast? Also no (but it's closer!). But is it the best made game on this list? Yes, absolutely. The job system and the scenario design are top notch. I've probably played this game dozens of times, and I'm sure I'll keep coming back year after year.

1- Final Fantasy X
The best story, the best battle system, the... the cast, FFX remains and will likely always remain my favorite. Yuna is definitely my favorite Final Fantasy Protagonist (SHUT UP TIDUS for the last time IT ISNT YOUR STORY). The worldbuilding is absolutely phenomenal.

 

[aramis erak]

I have never played the MMO, but from what I understand, all the other FF worlds connect to the world in FF XIV and there are in-game crossover events, so the lore of all the FF games may be fair game.

Only if they're covered in the system does that mitigate the FF XIV based interest loss.

Doing FF14 was probably the smartest thing they could've done because they tried to cram so much of the different Final Fantasy games into the MMO that you'll have whatever you want to play in a different setting. So even if it's not technically FF7 or FFX or FF6/III or whatever your favorite Final Fantasy game is, it'll have all the jobs, equipment, magic items, Eidolon/Esper/Aeon/whatever you call them in that game, and basically anything else you'd want to play in that particular version of Final Fantasy.

My experience with crossover FF games (there's one for android that has you bouncing between worlds) is that they don't do justice to the alternate worlds.

US IV, VII, and X are the ones most requested from what I've seen.

I mean if it were just the jobs and gear, I've got Magical Land of Yeld, which is a cartoony hybrid of FF and Narnia, with a fairly light d6 dice pool engine.

 

[gban007]

Are ENWorld folks who are also FF fans excited about this?

Definitely excited. I haven't played other FF games really, but I love FFXIV for its world, characters and story. I tend to play it as a huge single player game with some forced group content (joined a great free company to help with that though), so don't play it continuously like I do LOTRO, I tend to instead buy the expansions and subscribe until finished expansion storyline, then take a break until next expansion. But idea of TTRPG inspired by the world and story sounds great, challenge will be convincing others to play it, but that latter part has certainly never stopped me buying games, I just have a rather large collection (mostly digital for storage sake) of games never played.

 

[jdrakeh]

I'd still like a TTRPG version of Richard Garriott's Ultima series.

A former ENWorld/Circvs poster (hong, perhaps) created a pretty nifty Britannia homebrew for D&D 3x based on Ultima Online.

 

[Abstruse]

My experience with crossover FF games (there's one for android that has you bouncing between worlds) is that they don't do justice to the alternate worlds.

US IV, VII, and X are the ones most requested from what I've seen.

I mean if it were just the jobs and gear, I've got Magical Land of Yeld, which is a cartoony hybrid of FF and Narnia, with a fairly light d6 dice pool engine.

I'm talking more about the choice for tabletop. FF14 includes so much stuff that, if they stat out most of the stuff in the video game, it'll cover anything you'd want to do in any of those. And anything that isn't covered, they could release a single sourcebook for that specific game (which would likely sell to fans of the game whether they play the RPG or not just because it would double as a world guide and artbook) and have that one covered too.

 

[Superchunk77]

Why exactly ?

Its a tabletop rpg for Final Fantasy XIV. That is a MMO that is longer running than 5E and still has more then 3 million active players per day. I assume that the developers know their audience very well and know what they want or like in their game. They don't depend on D&D 5E to make a successful rpg as they already have a big enough customer base.

Also if they do the effort of actually make a P&P RPG as a side project (I doubt that is is more then that) for their game the they will probably try to actually emulate Final Fantasy XIV with it. I doubt that 5E as a rule engine does that well. You would need heavily rewrite a lot of stuff. MMOs don't do 5E linear Fighter/exponential Wizard class balance. Or long/short rest attrition mechanics, spell slots and so on...

There's tons of games out there that don't need to slap a "5e" logo onto their game because, believe it or not, 5e isn't a great fit for a lot of games besides D&D.

 

[MichaelSomething]

There's tons of games out there that don't need to slap a "5e" logo onto their game because, believe it or not, 5e isn't a great fit for a lot of games besides D&D.

You obviously never played Doctors and Daleks!