Fabula Ultima Offers A Good Beginning To A Final Fantasy

Role playing games are generally inspired by other media. For many players who fell in love with worlds of fantasy, these inspirations include everything from Lord of the Rings to Conan The Barbarian and dozens of fantasy novel series since. Japanese console role playing games like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger have also influenced generations of gamers. While there have been dozens of games out there emulating the former influences there have been relatively few that allow players to make characters wearing giant pixelated wizard hats. Fabula Ultima, from Italian designer Emanuele Galletto wants to evoke that feeling of fast battles ending in epic emotional cutscenes. Is the game worthy of its name? Let’s play to find out.

Fabula Ultima features characters built from fifteen classes inspired by Ryuutama. It reminded me a little of Star Wars Saga Edition where every character dips into multiple classes to fit their concept. Multiclassing is fairly quick and easy because of this assumption and flipping through the classes and the evocative artwork makes it easy to come up with characters that pull from different classes. Roulette assassin firing guns loaded with random bullets? Build a Sharpshooter and Entropist. A brooding knight encased in ice? Make an Arcanist and Darkblade. Don’t worry if fifteen classes seems overwhelming; the game included 20 classic CRPG archetypes for folks who want to jump in and play.

The mechanics feature ranked dice attributes rolled in pairs. Attacks target a character’s HP while special effects from classes like spells and skills often use MP. This red mana/blue mana split is one of the many places where Fabula Ultima hits the feeling of playing a video game. Initiative is a group check that determines which side goes first with alternating actions throughout the rounds. After the battle, players play a small inventory minigame generating potions to restore health and energy. I enjoyed how wandering merchants work in the game: you can spend money to restore these slots with in the field but if you make it home and rest they automatically get restored.

The game’s templating reminded me of an RPG that’s often been accused of being too much like a video game: Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. Everyone’s powers are laid out clearly and cleanly on either side, often with options to spend more MP to beef up an ability or hit multiple targets. Many class abilities can be taken multiple times which makes the levels feel like maybe they could be compressed. But that’s also how I feel about some of the source material, too.

Characters in these games are often hailed for their emotional attachment to each other and the rules emulate this with Bonds. The Bonds come in three paired positive and negative sets. For messy drama, characters can have both positive and negative bonds with the same person. Your character might like Sir Ashigan as more than friends but they might also feel they are the superior blademaster. Depending on the circumstance, the bond that comes into play during a roll can prove interesting.

Fabula points can be spent to use those bonds in rolls. They function like plot candy for the most part but one of the most interesting things about them is how players can earn them. If a character is reduced to 0 HP they must choose if they Surrender or Sacrifice. If they Surrender, they get taken out of the scene, gain 2 Fabula points and accept a consequence, such as changing a party of their identity or gaining a negative bond with another player character. The only way for a player character to die is through Sacrifice. Here, the character gets their final moment in the spotlight, perhaps gets to give a teary eyed speech and ensures that a step is taken towards the heroes’ final goal. I get to make one of those speeches instead of scrolling through page after page of one! It’s a fantastic element of genre emulation.

Of course, what would be the point of having these heroes without big villains to battle? Villains get their own Ultima points that give them many of the same powers as the good guys. My favorite bit is that as long as a villain has one Ultima point remaining when they hit 0 HP they live again to battle another day. The game also encourages villains to have some sort of connection to the heroes they fight. You’re never just battling bad guys in these sorts of games. It’s always a lover, a mentor or a relative with a personal connection.

Fabula Ultima encourages tables to build their own world using a guide of several pillars which might also be called tropes. Worlds can exist without these tropes but the players should all discuss the differences they want to see in their world. Players are also encouraged to create factions and historical events to shape their worlds before play. The game seems easy to adapt to a pre-existing CRPG, but I think would could also be fun to play a game of something like Channel A, pick the best title and then make a world based on that.

There’s a lot of good stuff packed into the core book but that’s not everything I liked about Fabula Ultima. Their Press Start quickstart intrigued me enough to check out the full game. Galletto’s Patreon also has a vibrant community where they are working out new rules to add to the game, such as ones that simulate limit breaks. I enjoy RPGs that have a solid central rules system that also offers options and Fabula Ultima does this very well.

Fabula Ultima packs in a lot of great genre emulation and game advice into a small beautiful package.

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[Aldarc]

Garbage is a bit harsh but the die mechanic isn’t great if you want scaling - in other words, if you want a significant difference between starting and experienced characters, which is a common trope in JRPGs and adjacent media (indeed, many characters from such media level up to level 100+ regularly and are obviously far, far more dangerous at higher levels than at lower). This is partly because the die mechanic is based on Ryuutama (FabU is licensed from Ryuutama) which is a gentle slice-of-life travelling fantasy Japanese TTRPG which isn’t designed for combat, levelling, or tactical play.

Criticals (max on both dice) and Fumbles (min on both dice) are basically irrelevant because they almost never happen (1/64 chance per die roll for each assuming d8 for each stat, the average).

I do think they should have leaned much harder into modifiers - if you’re good at something you should get a +1 to +5 bonus or so as you level up, so you feel the difference. And of course some Skills do give you those, but they’re not common and often they’re not attractive because getting +1 to a check feels pretty dull compared to, I don’t know, being able to teleport your entire party all over the map or whatever. So you tend to get characters who have broad abilities and more options as they level up, but not more power. This isn’t a good or bad thing - for many games it’s pretty ideal - but it’s an interesting effect of the die mechanic.

A nice effect of FabU’s maths is that enemies don’t scale either - so a mob of 5th level monsters is still a threat when you’re 20th level and a group of 5th level (starting) PCs can generally take on a 20th level boss monster. The most important thing is action economy - whichever side has the more actions per round is more likely to win. That’s why your mob of six 5th level goblins is a serious threat to one 20th level PC, and your party of four 5th level PCs stands a decent chance against a 20th level boss who still only gets two actions a round.

Unfortunately - certainly in the High Fantasy Atlas - you then get bosses with Defences around 15 or so who are functionally invulnerable to most PCs at any level, and would be very frustrating and tiresome to have to fight, which is probably not what you want from a great boss battle experience.

All of this is said as if talents and magic didn't exist that improve your ability to debuff the defenses of your foes as well as improve your ability to attack.

 

[GreatestHonor]

Definitely need to get at least a PDF of this. Looks awesome!!!

 

[jian]

All of this is said as if talents and magic didn't exist that improve your ability to debuff the defenses of your foes as well as improve your ability to attack.

As noted, Skills that give bonuses to checks - Magical Artillery (Elementalist), Ranged Weapon Mastery (Sharpshooter), Melee Weapon Mastery (Weaponsmaster) - do exist but are a bit boring (and you don’t want them to feel like a requirement at chargen - better to have bonuses based on level or similar if you’re going to scale enemy Defences up). You can also spend a FP to invoke a Bond to gain a bonus for one check, but you need a relevant Bond for that to work (hurray for Darkblades, I guess).

Debuffs can reduce a target’s Defence or Magic Defence (the easiest way is to use the Hinder action, which has a fixed difficulty of 10) but this doesn’t work on targets with fixed Defences (such as those wearing armour). You can at most reduce a target’s Defences by 2 this way. If the target’s Defence is very high to begin with (15, say) this doesn’t help much. And of course, many enemies (especially bosses) are immune to various debuffs in any case.

 

[jian]

There are also some Skills such as Flash of Insight that require a roll of 13+ which means they rarely trigger (about 10% of the time with such checks) and make you wonder why they’re worth taking. Honestly, probably not. Ditto the Skills that let you substitute stats; barely worth it. I feel the designers hadn’t had a good look at the maths for either of these.

 

[Aldarc]

There are also some Skills such as Flash of Insight that require a roll of 13+ which means they rarely trigger (about 10% of the time with such checks) and make you wonder why they’re worth taking. Honestly, probably not. Ditto the Skills that let you substitute stats; barely worth it. I feel the designers hadn’t had a good look at the maths for either of these.

You may not realize how much Ema is continually playtesting this material in their community, including the math of the dice resolution system. I feel that you are incredibly short-changing the thoughtful work that Emanuele Galletto put into FabU. So while you may feel that Ema didn't look at the math for these things, I know that you are wrong based upon Ema talking about these issues in the FabU Discord.

I really wish that people would give designers more credit for doing their homework. Then there would be less crap-talking of designers and their work based upon bad faith assumptions.

 

[overgeeked]

You may not realize how much Ema is continually playtesting this material in their community, including the math of the dice resolution system. I feel that you are incredibly short-changing the thoughtful work that Emanuele Galletto put into FabU. So while you may feel that Ema didn't look at the math for these things, I know that you are wrong based upon Ema talking about these issues in the FabU Discord.

I really wish that people would give designers more credit for doing their homework. Then there would be less crap-talking of designers and their work based upon bad faith assumptions.

I don’t like it ≠ it’s badly designed or the designer sucks.

 

[SteveC]

I think the notion that checks are two difficult is true, but there's an important but to that statement that makes me okay with it: Fabula Points.

Fabula Points and their use is the central mechanic to driving play forward. They are as important to the game as Fate Points are in Fate. In fact, both games are named after the meta currency the moves the game forward.

You can spend a Fabula Point to add your rating with a bond with another character to any die roll. Those bonds are rated 1-3, so they are very effective. Using them is essential to playing the game.

And you also have the notion that you're rolling fewer checks than in a lot of games with Fabula Ultima. You're not rolling constantly to the point where you'll soon run out of the resource.

 

[jian]

You may not realize how much Ema is continually playtesting this material in their community, including the math of the dice resolution system. I feel that you are incredibly short-changing the thoughtful work that Emanuele Galletto put into FabU. So while you may feel that Ema didn't look at the math for these things, I know that you are wrong based upon Ema talking about these issues in the FabU Discord.

I really wish that people would give designers more credit for doing their homework. Then there would be less crap-talking of designers and their work based upon bad faith assumptions.

Oh, I do, and yet this stuff is still here. The writers have to balance the disruption of changing everything (the basic Ryuutama dice mechanic and many established Skills and sub-mechanics) vs what they want the game to do.

I don’t actually dislike the mechanic, it just doesn’t scale with level as some games (D&D 5E etc) do. That’s fine, and I actually think that was a deliberate choice - it means, as I said above, that beginning monsters are still a threat to high level characters and low level characters can take on high level bosses. And if they did want to scale, they could use HP, MP, and damage rather than accuracy and Defences. It doesn’t really matter if the 5th level party (50 HP each) is regularly hitting the 20th level boss for 20 damage a pop, if said boss has 1000 HP and does 100 damage every time they attack. You’ll get TPK pretty quick if that’s what you want.

It feels to me that they could be more explicit about this in the game, and part of that is not writing up bosses with high Defences, because that betrays the assumptions of the game mechanics. I think they’re probably thinking quite hard about how to do levelling but haven’t got there yet. Or maybe they have - I haven’t bought the latest supplement (Techno Fantasy).

 

[jian]

I think the notion that checks are two difficult is true, but there's an important but to that statement that makes me okay with it: Fabula Points.

Fabula Points and their use is the central mechanic to driving play forward. They are as important to the game as Fate Points are in Fate. In fact, both games are named after the meta currency the moves the game forward.

You can spend a Fabula Point to add your rating with a bond with another character to any die roll. Those bonds are rated 1-3, so they are very effective. Using them is essential to playing the game.

And you also have the notion that you're rolling fewer checks than in a lot of games with Fabula Ultima. You're not rolling constantly to the point where you'll soon run out of the resource.

That’s fine if you’re handing out lots of FP, and if you’re making a FP economy clear as FATE games try and do (I’ve had mixed results here in the past; it’s generally best to make sure FP flow like water). But you don’t do fewer checks in FabU than in other games - usually at least one per PC per combat turn, and as many as you like out of combat, whether on combined checks or other things, such as Projects and Rituals - so if the players only have a few FP each they’re probably going to hoard them and use them in every third or fourth check. Assuming at least one combat scene per session, most players in our game were making 10-15 checks a session or so.

Also, you can only use them for a bonus if a Bond applies (a Trait gets you a re-roll, which isn’t as helpful for reaching a high number) which it won’t always, especially if you haven’t formed many useful Bonds for various reasons.

 

[SteveC]

That’s fine if you’re handing out lots of FP, and if you’re making a FP economy clear as FATE games try and do (I’ve had mixed results here in the past; it’s generally best to make sure FP flow like water). But you don’t do fewer checks in FabU than in other games - usually at least one per PC per combat turn, and as many as you like out of combat, whether on combined checks or other things, such as Projects and Rituals - so if the players only have a few FP each they’re probably going to hoard them and use them in every third or fourth check. Assuming at least one combat scene per session, most players in our game were making 10-15 checks a session or so.

Also, you can only use them for a bonus if a Bond applies (a Trait gets you a re-roll, which isn’t as helpful for reaching a high number) which it won’t always, especially if you haven’t formed many useful Bonds for various reasons.

I wanted to quote what you wrote to respond to it. Frankly, outside of combat you do make fewer checks in Fabula Ultima than other games. The game encourages it in the rules. I took a little snip from the relevant page:

In combat, you make a check each round, but again, that's where your Bonds come into play. And outside of combat if you need a check, you're going to work to make them come into play as well.

You need to have a strong flow of Fabula Points, just like you need a flow of Fate Points. The game depends on it. I have only played the game recently, and how it ran was in my mind very directly when thinking about this. The GM made sure to highlight the relationships between characters both in and out of combat as they make the melodrama of the story run.

We were only playing starting characters, so I don't know if the game gets harder as you level up. I can see how that could be the case and in that case I'd have to agree with your assessment for later play. I do think that a minor adjustment and keeping opponent defenses in a reasonable scale would address it. I guess I see how it works much like how Fate does, but I've also played a lot more Fate than FU.