JRPG style TTRPGs

jian

Explorer
Hi all,

Recently* I’ve been on a kick to explore and consider TTRPGs aimed at games like Japanese console RPGs (JRPGs) like Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, Trails of Cold Steel, etc as well as adjacent genres such as isekai manga.

*for the last year at least.

This is quite a growing genre in TTRPGs recently. The big dog is probably Fabula Ultima, but there’s also Break!! RPG (still haven’t been able to get hold of a copy - I preordered the pdf but there’s some sort of holdup) and Cloudbreaker Alliance. There are also actual translations of Japanese TTRPGs such as Challenge Dungeon, KonoSuba (based on Arianrhod, one of the two biggest fantasy TTRPGs in Japan), and Sword World (the other one; there’s a fan translation of Sword World 2.5 out there).

Has anyone played these and what do you think of them?

We’ve played Fabula Ultima a bit and it works pretty well, though I find the lack of setting material in the main book a bit frustrating (I know, you’re supposed to make up your own). Cloudbreaker Alliance comes with its own quite eclectic and well-developed setting and is different but also interesting.
 

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aramis erak

Legend
you missed Final Fantasy XIV tabletop. And Magical Land of Yeld.

I've not gotten any to table... but my sunday group has played and endorsed Fabula Ultima and Yeld... in their saturday group.
 
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jian

Explorer
you missed Final Fantasy XIV tabletop. And Magical Land of Yeld.

I've not gotten any to table... but my sunday group has played and endorsed Fabula Ultima and Yeld... in their saturday group.
Is FF14 out yet? You’re quite right about Yeld, though it’s a slightly weird thing of its own, but it has a lot of JRPG tropes.

I haven’t covered Console (ancient indeed) either, or Mazaki no Fantaji (or Anima Prime, which it closely resembles). There’s also Infinity’s Edge (which is more MMORPG but it’s got some overlap with Sword Art Online style shenanigans) and This World Summons Too Many Heroes (isekai parody using LUMEN).
 


CandyLaser

Adventurer
Break!! is worth reading. My thoughts, in brief, were that it's got tons of cool ideas, although they're not always fleshed out. The setting is pretty distinctive and features half the world being trapped in permanent night after the destruction of the Sun Machine in an earlier age, so it now hangs motionless in the sky. There are cities in the night side built around some of the Sun Machine's fallen shards. The classes and ancestries available are also neat - Battle Princess and Murder Princess being the obvious standouts. It feels more like it's designed to emulate Zelda, or perhaps the Secret of Mana games, since the combat is significantly more tactical than, say, Fabula Ultima. The book is gorgeous, well laid out, and full of characterful art that's used not just to set the tone but also to convey information.

Obviously, I'm quite fond of it, but I'm not likely to get it to the table soon. My group just finished a game with some JRPG inspiration, and if I do go back to that well, it'll probably be for Fabula Ultima rather than Break, in part because I'm more interested in creating my own setting with my players than playing in the default setting for Break, and in part because I'm more interested in playing something closer to FF6 than Secret of Mana.
 

I've been running Sword World 2.5 for a while.

Positives:
  • It's much easier to make a properly balanced encounter than something like 5e, and the 2-3 encounter adventuring day fits the pacing I like better than mainline D&D.
  • Characters are highly customizable. While they use the word "class" to describe what you're taking levels in in the translation, it's more like skill packages. Like taking levels in "fighter" gives you bonuses to attacks, access to certain feats, and that's really it. "Fighter" doesn't even give you your initiative bonus. But that's fine, because no one is just a fighter. You're expected to take at least two "classes," and this means you have a lot of flexibility. Like you can combine fighter with priest to get something like a D&D cleric, or you could instead take levels in Enhancer to learn breathing techniques to buff yourself, or you could take levels in Scout to be able to be a skill monkey.
  • Basic combat manages to be relatively simple, but still give people enough options that it doesn't feel like they're just spamming their attack every round. The simple fact that the players determine the order they go in ends up meaning a lot.
  • Speaking of combat, do you remember how the playtest for 5e indicated that it would be modular, and that like you could add in a tactical module if you wanted it to feel more like 4e combat? SW2.5 actually pulls that off. There's three forms of combat. Basic has a front line and a back line, and it works well for combats where you don't plan on having exact positioning be that important. Standard Combat has specific distances and more rules for things like movement and cover, but it's over a 1 dimensional line. I recently ran this for an encounter where the players were ambushed on both sides, and it worked great. And then there's advanced combat that expands things onto your normal 2d map. You could easily make a campaign that focused on one of those combat types entirely, or you could do something like use basic for the smaller fights and advanced for the big boss fight.
  • I rather like the setting as a whole. It has a good aesthetic (and I think the sort of fantasy world you see in most isekai stuff derives from some form of Sword World), and I'm a sucker for magitech. The default setting is one where society progressed to roughly 20th century level through magitech, but 300 years ago, that civilization got destroyed. So there's a nation trying to rebuild the old mana powered train network, and a dungeon might be the relics of a subway station or a mall.
Negatives:
  • So they decided to go the BECMI route and have multiple core rulebooks covering different tiers of play. On one hand, this allows someone in Japan to spend like $10 and get all they need to try the game out with their friends. On the other, it means things are spread out among several different sources. To make matters worse, a lot of stuff that feels like it should be core is in supplements. Like do you want to use point buy rather than rolling for stats, have work skills that represent what the PCs used to be or still do outside of adventuring, or the rules for that Advanced Combat system I mentioned above? Those are all in a supplement called Advanced Treasury that's otherwise mostly a condensed list of items from all the other sources until that point. It can be difficult to know what to read or where to find something.
  • Damage from players is weird. They wanted granularity between weapon damage, but also wanted to use 2d6 for everything. The solution is the Power Table. Each weapon will have a value, and when you're doing damage, you roll 2d6, then look at the row that matches your weapon's power and find the column that matches what you just rolled. It's not super hard (and you're expected to just write that row on your character sheet, so you're not looking at the full chart every time), but it can be a little clunky, particularly since it was made by hand rather than based on a specific formula (though the idea is that each increase does 1/6 of a point more damage on average than the previous row). That said, I play on roll20, where someone already made a character sheet with macros that handle this, so it's really no issue for my game.
  • I'm not sure I like how skills are divided. Like I said above, combat focused or magic focused classes don't get much outside of combat or magic. You'd think there might be a whole bunch of different classes for other skill packages, but not really. Almost all of them are in a class called Scout, and then there's a ranger which has almost as many, but some of their skills only work outdoors, and the Sage, which is knowledge skills. Other classes might have one or two things (like the Tactician, which lets you buff the party and reminds me of a 4e warlord, also gets the initiative skill), but if your goal is to be able to use a lot of skills, you don't have many ways of accomplishing that. That said, this game is more designed around the idea that at least one party member has a given skill to roll for the party than around everyone rolling for a check, so it's not like literally everyone needs scout levels or something.
  • The character sheet doesn't list individual skills. It wants you to just know which class to use and what stat to use with them. A new player can't just glance down to see the options they have, and they may need to reference the book to see if something is even an option for them when they wouldn't for most recent D&D editions and derived games.

    Overall, I'm happy with this game. I had been running D&D 4e for a while, but I was burning out on it and wanted something simpler, but still felt like it had more options and was easier to run than 5e, and I found it here. It has its quirks, but I don't feel like they're that hard to learn to deal with them.
 

jian

Explorer
I've been running Sword World 2.5 for a while.

Positives:
  • It's much easier to make a properly balanced encounter than something like 5e, and the 2-3 encounter adventuring day fits the pacing I like better than mainline D&D.
  • Characters are highly customizable. While they use the word "class" to describe what you're taking levels in in the translation, it's more like skill packages. Like taking levels in "fighter" gives you bonuses to attacks, access to certain feats, and that's really it. "Fighter" doesn't even give you your initiative bonus. But that's fine, because no one is just a fighter. You're expected to take at least two "classes," and this means you have a lot of flexibility. Like you can combine fighter with priest to get something like a D&D cleric, or you could instead take levels in Enhancer to learn breathing techniques to buff yourself, or you could take levels in Scout to be able to be a skill monkey.
  • Basic combat manages to be relatively simple, but still give people enough options that it doesn't feel like they're just spamming their attack every round. The simple fact that the players determine the order they go in ends up meaning a lot.
  • Speaking of combat, do you remember how the playtest for 5e indicated that it would be modular, and that like you could add in a tactical module if you wanted it to feel more like 4e combat? SW2.5 actually pulls that off. There's three forms of combat. Basic has a front line and a back line, and it works well for combats where you don't plan on having exact positioning be that important. Standard Combat has specific distances and more rules for things like movement and cover, but it's over a 1 dimensional line. I recently ran this for an encounter where the players were ambushed on both sides, and it worked great. And then there's advanced combat that expands things onto your normal 2d map. You could easily make a campaign that focused on one of those combat types entirely, or you could do something like use basic for the smaller fights and advanced for the big boss fight.
  • I rather like the setting as a whole. It has a good aesthetic (and I think the sort of fantasy world you see in most isekai stuff derives from some form of Sword World), and I'm a sucker for magitech. The default setting is one where society progressed to roughly 20th century level through magitech, but 300 years ago, that civilization got destroyed. So there's a nation trying to rebuild the old mana powered train network, and a dungeon might be the relics of a subway station or a mall.
Negatives:
  • So they decided to go the BECMI route and have multiple core rulebooks covering different tiers of play. On one hand, this allows someone in Japan to spend like $10 and get all they need to try the game out with their friends. On the other, it means things are spread out among several different sources. To make matters worse, a lot of stuff that feels like it should be core is in supplements. Like do you want to use point buy rather than rolling for stats, have work skills that represent what the PCs used to be or still do outside of adventuring, or the rules for that Advanced Combat system I mentioned above? Those are all in a supplement called Advanced Treasury that's otherwise mostly a condensed list of items from all the other sources until that point. It can be difficult to know what to read or where to find something.
  • Damage from players is weird. They wanted granularity between weapon damage, but also wanted to use 2d6 for everything. The solution is the Power Table. Each weapon will have a value, and when you're doing damage, you roll 2d6, then look at the row that matches your weapon's power and find the column that matches what you just rolled. It's not super hard (and you're expected to just write that row on your character sheet, so you're not looking at the full chart every time), but it can be a little clunky, particularly since it was made by hand rather than based on a specific formula (though the idea is that each increase does 1/6 of a point more damage on average than the previous row). That said, I play on roll20, where someone already made a character sheet with macros that handle this, so it's really no issue for my game.
  • I'm not sure I like how skills are divided. Like I said above, combat focused or magic focused classes don't get much outside of combat or magic. You'd think there might be a whole bunch of different classes for other skill packages, but not really. Almost all of them are in a class called Scout, and then there's a ranger which has almost as many, but some of their skills only work outdoors, and the Sage, which is knowledge skills. Other classes might have one or two things (like the Tactician, which lets you buff the party and reminds me of a 4e warlord, also gets the initiative skill), but if your goal is to be able to use a lot of skills, you don't have many ways of accomplishing that. That said, this game is more designed around the idea that at least one party member has a given skill to roll for the party than around everyone rolling for a check, so it's not like literally everyone needs scout levels or something.
  • The character sheet doesn't list individual skills. It wants you to just know which class to use and what stat to use with them. A new player can't just glance down to see the options they have, and they may need to reference the book to see if something is even an option for them when they wouldn't for most recent D&D editions and derived games.

    Overall, I'm happy with this game. I had been running D&D 4e for a while, but I was burning out on it and wanted something simpler, but still felt like it had more options and was easier to run than 5e, and I found it here. It has its quirks, but I don't feel like they're that hard to learn to deal with them.
I quite like SW 2.5 (or the fan translation) and agree about the world-building, which is more substantial than in KonoSuba or FabU.

I wasn’t sure about some of the mechanics, such as the damage mechanic or the way classes work (though like you I do like that they’re basically skill packages and not much else). I’ve written my own version taking ideas from KonoSuba (damage is 2d6+, HP increased accordingly), Cloudbreaker Alliance (Analyze and Neutralize) and FabU (each class has a bunch of associated Feats which you can pick from if you take that class). I may never run it but it was a fun exercise.
 

Aldarc

Legend
My partner and I have had a great deal of fun playing FabU. The absense of world-building in Fabula Ultima is the big plus for me, as I find that in many JRPG-style TTRPGs that come with a world, there is often something about their world-building choices that rub me the wrong way for one reason or another.
 

jian

Explorer
Beginner box, yes. Corebook, no; Preorder up at Sony.

It's Narnia as a Final Fantasy setting...
I’ve now read the downloadable pdfs of FF14 starters kit. It’s very sparse, isn’t it? I wasn’t expecting full character generation or anything but it’s quite light on rules and the example PCs have very little narrative detail. It’s definitely taking a lot of cues from D&D 5E but that’s hardly surprising.

It weirdly reminds me of Feast of Legends, that 5E-alike that Wendy’s (of all people) put out for free a few years ago. Still somewhere on the Internet Archive, I think. It was a perfectly functional D&D style game and I occasionally wonder about slightly rewriting and reskinning it so that you don’t have to play a milkshake.
 
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aramis erak

Legend
I’ve now read the downloadable pdfs of FF14 starters kit. It’s very sparse, isn’t it? I wasn’t expecting full character generation or anything but it’s quite light on rules and the example PCs have very little narrative detail. It’s definitely taking a lot of cues from D&D 5E but that’s hardly surprising.
Yeah, but where it differs, it's clearly to move towards a FFT base.

Most of the design discussions revolve around 3 poles: D&D current, D&D OSR, and AWE/PBTA (and its derivatives).

It weirdly reminds me of Feast of Legends, that 5E-alike that Wendy’s (of all people) put out for free - few years ago. Still somewhere on the Internet Archive, I think. It was a perfectly functional D&D style game and I occasionally wonder about slightly rewriting and reskinning it so that you don’t have to play a milkshake.
I've read Feast of Legends. It's made it into many troves, too. It's not particularly divergent from 3.X; it's different enough to avoid copyright and for humor; it's not trying any truly new ground. Great sales gimmick, but there was no Wendy's in my vicinity
That said, FF XIV TT looks to be a different approach from FoL. It's trying to use familiar mechanics in slightly different ways to make for a feel like the videogames.

I've one concern from the free PDFs I've glommed onto for FF XIV TT... it's got essentially two difficulty mechanics: CR change (TN or DC change), and advantage/disadvantage. Given that it doesn't cap, and does cross cancel, it's effectively a second difficulty changer. Without seeing the fuller options, and I'm only now doing a detailed read to decide whether or not to grab the core...

I just haven't been able to force myself through the second skim pass on Fabula.
 

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