Listen up sucker I've been running FFRPG for almost a year now (my campaign should end this Wednesday) so I've got the things you'll need. Where to begin?

1) You're going to need calculators. Lots of them. I have one for each of my players and myself. The system is not like d20 or GURPS. Because of the damage formulas (particularly for spells and espers) once you go over level 20, you will need them.

Shameless self bump

2) Don't go by the seat of your pants. Final Fantasy is a big game. Lots of tropes, lots of places, exotic locales, strange locals. Decide right away whether you're going to use a established setting (I'm running in the FF6 universe, 100 years after the end of the game), or homebrew. If the prior, do your research.

DO YOUR RESEARCH.

Go to tvtropes, go to forums, go to the Final Fantasy Wiki. Look up art, maps, concept stuff. Anything you can find and then elaborate on it. One of the downsides of p&p vs. vidya is the towns that 'work' in a game, don't in pen and paper. What is their economy? How many people? Where are schools? Healers?

Yeah, in the game I played in the DM did all that shit on his computer. Probably explains why I don't know shit about the system other than I really enjoyed the character creation, combat system and our roleplaying. So calculators. I will get thosw

>>14711960
I've always wanted to run a game in the FF8 universe

Lots of unresolved questions at the end

And one of the cooler and more fleshed-out worlds - everything from the gunblade to the existence of sorceresses to why TVs don't work right is explained.

2b) If you're homebrewing. Have everything laid out. Not the plot, but your world. Final Fantasy games tend to be 40-50% linear "Go to Kalm, Go to Junon, Go to Costa Del Sol", interactive games can't (or shouldn't) be that way, or else they risk railroading. Which means, as soon as your players get out off the starting area, they are going to explore. You don't have to know all things about all locations, but have a framework for most of them and be able to improvise.

It will not work, if you use the 'broken bridge' to prevent them from getting to an area. They will find a way if they really want to get in that area.

3) Decide right now about Combat. Not how much, or how hard, that can be adjusted as you gain or lose players, and based on what the players you have desire. What I mean is decide whether you're going to scale combat or place decided levels. Do the monsters gain levels as the players do? Why? Make sure then that they are actually balanced with them. I have a thief who gets 3 attacks at 800 damage a round, I need to build around that.

If instead, you make all the enemies on x continent level 25, and all monsters on continent y level 10, then that will give the world a sense of 'danger'. This area is more remote so monsters breed there more leading to things like Marlboroes. Understand?

>>14711960

True story; I'm doing almost the exact same thing. My setting assumes that the heroes of FFVI are all dead 100 years later, and also assumes that they took the "fastest possible" way to Kefka's destruction. The Magic Tower, for example, remains unlooted, and several of the 8 Dragons are still undefeated. Doom Gaze is the primary BBEG for the campaign right now, and I've got a justification for why magic hasn't really left the world.

Also, we literally rolled a die to determine where the party would start, and ended up in Zozo. So that was fun. And my players don't know it yet, but two of the original heroes are still alive, and can potentially be found.

I'm in world building mode. A few years ago it was just a few notes on paper. I've fleshed it out and have a better feel of what I want to do, just gotta populate my world and figure out various quests and things since like you said, it can't be linear, they'll fuck that shit up given the chance.
by the way, does anything happen with returners anymore? seems like all the links on their page are broken, and the wiki is questionable too.

For anyone who's interested:
http://www.returnergames.com/
http://www.returnergames.com/ord/index.php/Main_Page
http://guildperilous.wikispaces.com/Bestiary

4) READ THE CLASSES. READ THEM. READ THEM. READTHEM.

Some classes are much stronger than others. A swordmaster or Black Mage will always be useful, and simple. Other classes like Geomancer, Gambler, Bard, or Chemist, are immensely difficult for even veteran players to run. Their abilities involve in inordinate amount of math that changes fairly quickly. Chemists are useless. Completely useless. Know what they do. Know what your players want to play and memorize those classes. I had a player (who is dick, so no big loss) who quit because he didn't understand his abilities (archer btw, easy easy class) so just attacked every turn, and got bored.

Are you going to let people multiclass? If so what do they retain? How many levels are you going up to? Are you doing Final Fantasy Tactics style (something I'd like to try someday) where you can get up to 99 levels in a bunch of classes, or are you stuck in a class like Final Fantasy 6?

Thanks for all the help Maven. I mean one of my friends told me to suck it up and make my game for pathfinder 'cuz no one will be adventurous enough to learn a new system or anything.

5) Tone.

FFRPG has the potential to be like GURPS. And by that, I mean it can emulate just about any JRPG well; Eternal Sonata? sure! Chrono Trigger? Absolutely! Dragon Quest? No problem! Is your game going to be serious or lighthearted or somewhere inbetween. You have to establish tone early and often because if you let it slide into animesque silliness, it'll be very hard to get it back. Make the players understand the stakes. FF games are not prosaic. They are big, bold adventures about saving the world, not stopping werewolves from stealing cabbage.

Because of the difference between vidya and roleplaying, this can be tricky. When you fight someone in combat and defeat them, are they dead? Or just knocked out? What about evil guys? If they're fighting ghosts is there an afterworld? There are many questions raised in a interactive game that will never come up in vidya (which is what keeps the hobby alive), have some sense of the answers.

Are you running a good or evil campaign? FF games are about heroes. I've you've got a budding CN or CE type, quash that in the bud before it gets out of control. In FF games featuring 'bad' guys as playable character they are always trying to redeem themselves (think FFIV, or Celes in 6).

>>14712083
Some classes have one or two 'options', but you tend to have to build towards one from the start at the expense of the other.

Dragoons, for example, MIGHT want to head up magic towards "power jump", but an elvaan dragoon that ignores magic for strength will lose out on this most excellent ability. Of course, he'll be doing far, far more from the start with cherry-blossom, and his level 64 will be far more devastating, but the latter is single-target and the former loses big chunks against lategame armor. However, he'll be a little better overall, and doesn't have to wait 50 levels to be useful.

Keep an eye on who starts with good vitality and raises it fast, and who does NOT. Because of how HP is gained as you level, someone who starts with 6 vit vs someone who starts with 8 could have a few hundred difference in the end. It gets worse if you don't think to up the thing early.

FFRPG SEED is a newer version in the works, with a fairly solid class system, though I'm none too fond of FFV style job system (which you can also use instead with it) for a tabletop. especially with 4+ people.

6) Monsters - Guild Perlious bestiary is fantastic, but eventually you're going to need to make your own monsters. You can use the stuff in the back of the book, and it works. OR you can do what I did. Once you get familiar with the system stat only what you need:
Hit Points
Magic Points
Elemental Resistance/Status Immunity
ACC/MACC, EVA/MEVA
Attacks
Exp, Gil, and Treasure.
That's it. You can eyeball experience, and tailor treasure. Want them to gain levels more quickly? More experience per kill, want them to go slower, cut down on experience, but reward more for roleplaying. If you have a thief, you need to have treasure tables for everything (pain in the ass) or if you have a blue mage you have to keep track of any of the blue magic they might use (another pain in the ass).

Final Fantasy as a roleplaying game works with lots of common monsters. Players know what they look like Marlboros, Imps, those flying eyeballs with wings from monster rancher, Ultros, etc. It gives you a shorthand so you don't have to describe them completely if you don't want, or gives you a springboard.

>>14712166

Hey, don't be hatin on CN just like that. FFVI's Shadow was CN for 90% of the game, and he was an excellent character.

Besides, look at how many "chaotic weird" or even jerkass chaotic characters fit into FF settings as PCs. Shadow, Quina, Amarant, Edge, about a quarter of named PCs in Tactics, the list goes on. You just have to make sure the players assuming such roles are mature enough to handle that without slipping into either angsty angst or psychopathy.

In that campaign I mentioned, one of my characters took Veldt Rager as his class, and he's very much a CN, but he knows that it isn't a license to act like a jackass. He's not dropping anyone's wallet off a cliff, but he might dance at inappropriate moments or decide to try feeding a docile-looking monster some rations. It works.

>>14712234

It's all a question of what the character's goals are, like in any party.

Shadow joined up 'cause he felt like it and left when he felt like it too. Until some character development and (NOT SO) MYSTERIOUS BACKSTORY kicked in.

Quina wanted to eat everything. Traveling with the party let her/him/it eat lots of things. Hence, traveling with the party aligned with it's goals.

Edge is Chaotic Good to the bone, and just wanted to beat up the bad guys in order to protect his country and avenge his parents.

7) Everything Else

How are you going to handle death? Only in cinematic manners when agreed on? When players are defeated do they faint, or die? What if the whole group is defeated? Game over for your game? Roll new characters? That doesn't really work. In general one fix I've found is, you get three deaths per level. When you're level 22, you can run out of HP three times before the death is final. When you hit 23 that counter resets. It keeps the players from feeling invincible, but doesn't kill them outright for a too powerful boss.

Like I said before FF works really well with lots and lots of reference. Throw lines that people will recognize. A Biggs here, a Wedge there. Chocobos. Mysterious strangers with mysterious dogs. Spoony Bards. You get the picture. The same could be said of a Chrono Trigger game. It lets them know what game their playing. That it's not just D&D with a different set of rules.

Get some music. I find it helps the players and I get into character. It helps establish tone for villages, caves, and creepy castles. Not just FF, but other video games, symphonies, OCRemix, all can add up to help you.

Lastly, the sheet returners uses is trash I will give you mine.

>>14712283
You're right. I was talking more about the LOLSORANDUM CN bad player we've all had. The one who in my game decided to try to kill every Moogle she saw 'Cause'.

Page Two. I will take questions if you have any, because I can't think of anything else.

oh man does their sheet ever suck. I ended up making one of my own. I'll share for anyone who wants it.
This is the front side. Based it on a lot of the DnD/Pathfinder sheets I've seen.

Last Page. It's a bit short on spell space, but I'll work for the first 15-20 levels. One last piece of advice. Buy or download a baby name book (or better yet my personal favorite Gary Gygax's Extraordinary Book of Names) FF NPC's and Villains have memorable cool sounding names. John, Todd, or Dave won't work.

My current party is:
Mogtrix the Moogle Paladin
Tanna Jo the Human Thief
Faye Reznik the Human Black Mage
and my GMPC (designed to fill the gaps they don't have) Virgil Lilywen the Human Sage.

Back side of sheet

My biggest problem at the moment is that when I read through the PDF my eyes cross and I get really confused. I think I'm gonna shell out some cash to print it out so that I can flip through it easier. I guess where I'm at is that I have to read the system a few times and start play testing some characters so I can figure out the mechanics.
I was thinking of doing some 1 shot games with my friends in my world so that we can figure out all the math and shit.

>>14712344

>Tried to kill every Moogle she saw

I hope she got her ass kicked. You do not mess with those guys.

My Dm when I first played returners thought that Summoners were broken, not black/white callers, just summoners? Anyone else feel this way?

>>14712392
The very goddesses of magic sent warnings that behavior of that type would lead to obliteration if continued.

Twas the Black Mage if anyone wants to know who.

Summoners aren't broken. Because the GM has to decide what summons they get. That said I think they're dumb and don't allow them. I think the caller system is much better than what was instituted for X and XII. I like the idea of Espers being incredibly powerful demigods, who you can call on for temporary assistance. I think the summoner class and that feature makes them into glorified pokemens, and that's not the spirit of the game.

Captcha: poplop Writers. I guess the new writers are pretty poplop, but then again I haven't played 13 yet.

>>14711975
I don't think I could do that. The setting may be somewhat interesting, but it was practically poisoned by the game. I suppose if you change all the names...

My Dm had programs on his computer that did calculations for skills and damage. I couldn't find them on the wiki. Any clue where they may have come from? I mean it was in college, and he was some sort of comp sci, suppose he could have made them himself.

http://www.returnergames.com/features.html
Like I can't download anything on this page. Says none of it exists any more T^T

>>14712540
In wouldn't be that hard to do in excel, but more likely than not he made then himself.

Wannabe, I've put my email in the field. I'm going to log off and get some sleep before work. If you have any more questions you can send them there. If you're interested, get a hold of me and I can send you my monster maker program and my turn keep spreadsheet.

Here's hoping the thread lasts til tomorrow morning.

>>14712502
See, FF8 was one of my favorites and it's got probably the most fleshed out setting barring maybe Spira or Ivalice. I can, reasonably speaking, answer almost all plot questions and give information [such as is available in the game] on just about any major term or faction.

>>14712671
>I can, reasonably speaking, answer almost all plot questions and give information [such as is available in the game] on just about any major term or faction.
Why are there three mercenary academies when there are only like four countries in the entire world?

>>14712671
Is there a reason there are monsters on the moon?

>>14712683
The world has gotten a lot smaller after globalization. Esthar, and then Galbadia, have conquered most of the formerly independent nations during the Sorceress War.

The thing you have to understand is, for a long time, Galbadia was the "good guys", fighting off Esthar's occupation and moving their army into towns in order to protect them from Esthar.

But when Adel was shot into space and Esthar disappeared into pacifistic silence, Galbadia suddenly had the most significant military on the continent, so they just kind of said, "Yeah, we're not leaving"

And in fairness, no Final Fantasy game has enough villages. Think about the distance between Midgar and Kalm and the fact that there's absolutely nothing between them. Other cities are implied, but unimportant.

>>14712683
Addendum: how did the owner of a small orphanage on the southern part of a desolate continent start said academies? Also, what were the shelters they built them on meant to do and why could they fly?

>>14712700
It's a reference to the Red Moon from FFIV, where Zemus was. [There's a lot of those - the opening theme from the sequence with all the black-and-white portraits? That's a remix of The Red Wings]

Also, that's where they come from. If you notice, the high-level monsters are alien monstrosities, while low-level monsters tend to be mutated earth lifeforms. This is because the Lunar Cry is a pulse of energy that bombards the Earth with alien lifeforms called monsters, but the same pulse of energy also mutates life on Earth.

This is all explained in the information corner in the Lunar Cry section.

>>14712720
They conquered the formerly independent nations. All, like, two of them. Also business as usual seemed to be continuing even though Dollet was literally like their last possible client on the entire freaking planet.

>>14712725
Money. Lots of money, mostly borrowed from NORG.

I mean shit-tons.

Those Centra shelters? Well, it's not entirely clear, but:

1. The Centra built the Lunatic Pandora, a weapon designed to force a Lunar Cry by stimulating the Crystal Pillar

2. Centra civilization was wiped out by a Lunar Cry

3. Which left a huge motherfucking crater all over their shit

Ergo, presumably they were "In case of monster, GET THE FUCK OUT" shelters, which is also why they can fly. They were uninhabited because all the Centra got WIPED THE FUCK OUT by one big Lunar Cry, probably from misuse of the Lunatic Pandora.

>>14712734
Oh yeah, and this:

>>14712751
One continent got blowed the fuck up.

But you can't honestly believe Galbadia is JUST Deling City, right? You have to accept that FF worlds lack the number of cities and entities that would actually exist. There's always like, three towns in an entire continent. They don't have time to render all the shitty podunks.

>>14712720
>Other cities are implied, but unimportant.

I dunno, it kinda made sense that there weren't any other cities considering they were operating on the premise that Midgar was a hyper-populated technocracy that either assimilated townships in its sphere of influence or destroyed them ecologically. There were maybe two other functional cities on the planet because just about everyone who wanted to stay on the bleeding edge of progress was moving to Midgar.

>>14712751
>Money. Lots of money, mostly borrowed from NORG.

How'd she set up the other Gardens? Are their NORG-esque financiers in them, too?

>>14712779
Fair point

We'll use Cornelia instead.

The point remains the same - on a given continent, there will be from one to three cities, tops, depending on how important to the plot it is. Either these worlds are incredibly sparsely populated [in which case SeeD probably gets a lot of monster-killing work, because apparently there are only about 300 people [and only that high because of the crowd-fight in the Garden Fight scene] in the entire world under attack by monsters constantly], or there are other cities that weren't rendered because the player would never go there because nothing would happen to the player there.

>>14712807
Galbadia Garden might have had federal funding - Galbadian graduates become officers in the Galbadian military.

Trabia? Who the fuck knows, they don't talk much about Trabia.

It's possible NORG was paying for all three Gardens, for that matter. Dude can apparently hire legions of faceless faculty dudes.

>>14712751
>Crystal Pillar

What is it? Why does it stimulate a Lunar Cry?

>>14712858
Another reference to a previous FF - in this case, the crystal tower in FFIII. They use similar worldmaps, and the crater in Trabia [which is unexplained but full of crazy radiation and resembles the one in Centra] is right where the Crystal Tower was.

So it might well be the Crystal Tower. If we assume that's the case, then it's full of the power of Hein, and he is, within the FF8 verse

1. The god of Magic
and
2. A spiteful asshole who now lives in the bodies of countless women [but never more than three or four at a time]

So basically, a wizard did it because he wanted to kill humanity.

>>14712845
Well, it just seems to imply that the Gardens as an idea didn't exist until Squall's little time loop prophecy thing to Edea, so I'm having a tough time trying to find the justification, or wherewithal, to start three separate mercenary academies on three separate continents in less than 14 years. Unless Shumi are *extremely* gullible and will put all their jew money behind these types of projects.

>>14712902
The Shumi are wise... but kind of withdrawn and docile and not necessarily intelligent or up on modern concepts.

NORG is kind of a freak even among them because of his money obsession.

And, you know, Edea could promise him guaranteed success and profit because, hey, some boy from the future showed up and SeeD was around then.

Norg's a Jew bastard though and not particularly elaborated on in the plot.

>>14712881
I'm starting to get the impression that FF8 was more about the settings of other Final Fantasies than anything particularly included in the events of the story or the lore.

Ragnarok. Did they just leave it up there? Was it because the genestealers at the crew? Where did the genestealers come from? How come nobody decided to recover it? Was there a reason they couldn't push Adel into the Sun?

image board

>>14712977
It was one of the ships used to push Adel into space, but it drifted too close to the moon, and then, yeah, genestealers ate the ship. Expense, danger and not needing it any more are probably the big reasons they didn't bother to recover it.

They can't push Adel into the sun because Sorceresses are immortal until they find an heir for their power. Pushing her into the sun just ends up with a wizard... in the sun, or her power ending up in the hands of some new target who might end up deciding to carry on her legacy [and Adel was doing her best to track down someone to succeed her in taking over the world, ergo her kidnapping Ellone]

This is also the point of Time Compression - to gather all Sorceresses across time and force them to surrender their power to Ultimecia, reuniting the scattered power of Hein, God of Magic.

>>14713008
>They can't push Adel into the sun because Sorceresses are immortal until they find an heir for their power.

They're immortal, but you can still incapacitate them. Sun seems a logical place to put someone into a perpetual state of disuse, considering it'd be physically impossible to do or think anything.

Failing that, though, why not deep space? This whole radio interference thing seems like a shitty thing to put up with when you could conceivably eject someone into nothingness, quite possibly forever.

>>14713054
In either of these cases, Adel could just will her powers away, name a new successor, and die in space.

They needed her completely incapacitated, and unable to die.

You have to understand, Sorceresses as a concept are pretty terrifying to the people of FF8's world - Adel nearly conquered everyone, and the stories of other Sorceresses are no more flattering. The possibility that another Sorceress Adel would rise demanded that she be absolutely prevented from choosing a successor.

>>14713101
>They needed her completely incapacitated, and unable to die.

Which is why perpetually drifting through deep space in a cryoprison or being molecularly destabilized in the outer layers of the Sun, out of range of any potential saboteurs, is seeming like all too reasonable an option.

Also, does her power have a range? Because it kinda trivializes the horror when these sorceresses can do everything forever, no backsies. Why, then, would she have to search for a successor?

>>14713150
Succession is a spiritual thing and she could have done it on the way up as long as she had a target.

Sorceress power is limited but significant - nobody else has magic. Everyone else has paramagic, which involves collecting ambient energy and reshaping it - Sorceresses have true magic, and can basically freely use their magic at incredible power levels to devastating effect, not to mention being functionally immortal.

But they do have limits. Which is what Ultimecia was trying to overcome using her machine and her time-space magic in hopes of gathering the powers of every sorceress at once, making her the equal of Hyne [from whom all sorceress powers derive] so that she would, effectively, be a god.

just checking in

>>14713173
Man I love FFIV

It's got redemption and love and MOON PEOPLE and magic and tragedy and revenge and MOON PEOPLE and airship battles and that moogle who gets everywhere somehow and tits and MOON PEOPLE.

>>14713160
>Succession is a spiritual thing and she could have done it on the way up as long as she had a target.

Where are you getting this? All it says in the game tutorial is that power is handed down via embodiment.

Then again it also says the Lunatic Pandora was made by Esthar and that the Crystal Pillar came from the Moon. And that the Ragnarock was the Esthar flagship; seems a bit unseemly to set it drifting in orbit.

>But they do have limits.

That's what I'm trying to set. You basically said they can do anything, except not really. I want to know what they *can't* do, besides be beat up by a bunch of teenagers.

>>14713297
They can do what spells can do, all the time

Which is a lot of shit, especially in genres like Time-Space magic

And it depends on their specialties - Edea seems to pretty much only use Ice magic, Ultimecia focuses on Time/Space, not sure what Adel's is - but they are limited, in terms of action, by their specialty and the limits of the spells they can conceptualize [As to the can Sorceresses do anything thing? If Ultimecia willing Apocalypse into existence because it seemed like the sort of thing that would be the strongest magic so it was and summoning Griever entirely based on Squall's belief in strength and his lion symbol, yes. Though she was rocking god-like levels of power in that scenario, just short of finally hitting true godhood]

>>14713329
>They can do what spells can do, all the time.

Jesus, that makes Laguna's scene of kicking Adel in the prison even more retarded.

I just can't see any situation where the sorceresses wouldn't form a ruling coven a la Silmarillion to bring judgment over all the Earth (what is the name of the planet anyway?) and its creations. That kind of power is ridiculous, especially considering that they can control minds en masse in the tens of thousands.

man, hijacked by FF8 discussion.
Yeah, I'm still around.