FFRPG 4th Edition (Not D&D-related)

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Bruno Carvalho
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FFRPG 4th Edition (Not D&D-related)

Post by Bruno Carvalho »

First, let me introduce me. My name is Bruno Carvalho and i've been playing and GM'ing since the nineties (1994, to be exact). I'm from Brazil and a huge fan of the Returner's FFRPG (been playing it since the First Edition - and yes, it was EVEN WORSE than the dreaded second). Upon the death of the Returner's group and SeeD's decision to move to computer-assisted gaming (as they openly recognize FFRPG SeeD is optimized for IRC gaming and not for tabletop), there was a Brazilian game designer called Fernanda Parker who took the third edition and translated it to Portuguese, maintaining it alive here in Brazil... until 2014. That year, she decided to abandon the project to real life issues.

So I decided to keep the steam going, and to do that I'd rather adress some of the glaring problems with Third Edition. And after looking at it for a while, it seemed that the best course of action was to start it anew and create a new game, instead of trying to fix its myriad of problems. So, since January 2015, I've been creating what I (without any modesty, I confess) call the FFRPG Fourth Edition. I've taken inspiration not only from Returner's FFRPG, but also in SeeD, Zodiac, FFd6 and other FFRPG sources available.

And it's done. Let me detail its key features:

a) Compact, rules light gaming
The actual game book have 125 pages total, in comparison to 3rd Edition's over 400. And with most of it being lists for Jobs, spells and equipment, you'll be amazed at how quick and easy you can do character creation and the actual gameplay.

b) Collaborative narrative
In character creation and during play, the players can use the built-in collaborative mechanics to drive the story foward. This way, the GM get inputs before and during play to what story better suits its players - and while the GM still have the final word, the players have the tools to really feel in the driver's seat of the story.

c) Intuitive task resolution
The task resolution mechanics uses a intuitive system, without tables or abitrary difficulty scales. Characters of all levels can contribute to meet the party's goals, without creating the situation where only optimized characters can have a chance of sucess in their area of expertise.

d) Customizable characters
Albeit still working on a class/level structure, the job system presents 17 unique jobs with multiclassing rules that allow over 80 unique job combinations. Also, the job descriptions present several different abilities and spells who can be chosen or not - no more "every swordmaster knows the same skills" from 3rd Edition.

e) Inverted leveling up system
Instead of the traditional "Gain XP -> Level Up -> Improve Stats", you invert the logic, and you "Gain XP -> Improve Stats -> Level Up", akin to systems like L5R (but simpler). In this way, characters of distinct levels can exist even with the same XP, and that leads to better balanced spels and skills that use Character Level (no more Lv.5 Death kiling either no one or your entire party)

f) Fluid combat initiative
Instead of having fixed combat initiative orders, the system uses a phase-based system(akin to the 7th Sea combat mechanics) that allows for another level of tactical combat. Due to the increased complexity of this mechanic, the combat movement is very simplified and the use of tactical maps and miniatures is discouraged.

g) Character-driven advancement system
Instead of just awarding XP for "killing monsters and completing missions", the character advancement system depends on the players character's motives and personality. This allows the players, as a group, to signal to the GM the kind of adventures they want to play. "Killing monsters" and "Completing Missions" are still valid options to earn XP, but it's not mandatory or the sole way.

Anyway, thanks for your patience reading this long post! Hope you all have fun and good games!


DOWNLOAD SECTION (I'll try to keep this updated as I release more books)

FFRPG Complete 4th Edition: http://bit.ly/FFRPG4CE

Final Fantasy IV Worldbook: http://bit.ly/FFRPG4thDLC2

Final Fantasy VI Worldbook: http://bit.ly/FFRPG4thDLC3

Final Fantasy Tactics Worldbook: http://bit.ly/FFRPG4thDLC4

Character Sheet: http://bit.ly/FFRPG4eSheet

Version History:

2017-10-19: FFT Worldbook Uploaded
2016-10-04: Original Post
Last edited by Bruno Carvalho on Sat Oct 21, 2017 12:06 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

To those not following the game's subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRPG/): there is a new Secondary Job in the oven, to be released with the upcoming FFT Worldbook. So, in a Unearthed Arcana, here you got its first version (DISCLAIMER: This Job is not yet playtested. Use at your own risk):

New Secondary Job: Squire

While many believe that a squire is just a knight in training, some Squires never leave this status. Forgoing formal training, they never progress beyond the basic training of another Job, relying on their innate talents and intuition to progress. Be a Squire if you want to control the battlefield using offensive actions instead of reacting. Abilities marked with # requires the Map combat rules.

Basic Skill: Core Ability earned at level 1. Choose another Secondary Job. You earn that job’s first level Core Ability. Regardless of the chosen Job, the Specialties for Basic Skill are:

Throw Stone: Requires Earth and Air 2. You gain the Ranged Quick physical action !Throw Stone. You gather a rock and throw at your opponent, making an Air vs Air, dif 40 attack. If you hit, you deal Crush-elemental damage equal to the level-appropriate Throwing Weapon’s damage.

Equip Axe: Requires character level 1. You may equip Heavy Weapons.

Artful Dodger: Requires Earth and Air level 5. Reduce your !Dodge action’s difficulty to 40.

Dash#: Requires Earth 3. You gain the Melee Quick physical action !Dash. You bodyslam at your target, attacking with your weapon. Do a weapon attack, inflicting normal damage, and pushing your target one square backwards. If you manage to achieve a critical hit, the target is also gains the Immobilize status until after his next action.

Move-Up#: Requires Air 3. Increase your Move by 1.


Accumulate: Core Ability earned at level 19. You gain the Slow(4) Physical action !Focus. Using it, you accumulate strength for your next blows. You gain the Strengthen (Physical) status until the end of the next round. Specialties:

Mana Well: Requires Water level 10. Your !Focus action can be used to give the Strengthen (Magic) status effect instead of Strengthen(Physical).

Counter Tackle: Requires Air 8. Whenever an enemy tries to use the !Escape action against you, increase his difficulty by 20.

Magical Traps#: Requires Fire and Earth 11. You may create magical traps. When using a magical ability or Spell, you may target a square in range and any phase up to the end of the next round. At the start of the chosen phase, the Ability or Spell detonates, inflicting its effects, and using the chosen square as the origin point of the Area of Effect, if applicable. Whenever a character moves into the chosen square before the chosen phase, you may detonate the trap early.


Overwhelm Defenses: Core Ability earned at level 35. Once per phase, when you miss an attack, you may increase the difficulty by 20, to a maximum of 99, to re-roll it.

Awareness: Requires Fire level 16. You gain the Ranged magical action !Awareness. Do an Fire vs Air, dif 0, attack against all enemies. Your acute senses detect traces of enemy presence. All enemies hit lose the Vanish status effect.

Faith and Bravery: Requires Earth and Water level 13. Whenever you’re under the effects a Weaken status effect, gain a Strenghten status effect. Weaken(Armor) gives you Strengthen (Physical). Weaken (Mental) gives you Strengthen (Magical). Weaken (Physical) gives you Strengthen (Armor). Weaken (Magical) gives you Strengthen (Mental).

Ordered Retreat: Requires Air and Water level 13. When you succeed with the !Escape action, all allies can benefit from a successful !Escape action this phase.


Tailwind: Core Ability earned at level 50. You gain the Ranged Quick action !Yell. Use it on an ally. The target gains one extra initiative die with the value equal to the current phase.

Mighty Dodge: Requires Air and Earth level 16. You may use the !Attack action as a free action after you succeed with the !Dodge action.

JP Up: Requires Earth, Air, Fire and Water level 12. Choose an action of any other Secondary Job. You gain that action. This ability can not grant reactions.
Last edited by Bruno Carvalho on Wed Oct 26, 2016 11:05 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Hiram McDaniels
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Post by Hiram McDaniels »

So if I understand the task resolution system, each challenge has an assigned difficulty (ranging from 1 - 99) representing it's % chance of failure. So a difficulty of 30% requires a roll of 31 or better on a d100?

Furthermore the player may re-roll the d100 1/skill rank for each challenge?

What is the maximum amount of ranks achievable for a skill?

Also this concerns me:

"Dealing damage is the most time-consuming part of combat. If a group does notaddress this problem, it may turn combat into atedious math exercise. Some tips to speed it:" yadayadayada pg. 108.

Duder...YOU wrote this thing. If you recognize this as a flaw, then why are you suggesting fixes in a sidebar rather than just re-writing the rule so it actually works faster?
Last edited by Hiram McDaniels on Wed Oct 26, 2016 5:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by AndreiChekov »

I was 4 yrs old in 94.
Peace favour your sword.

I only play 3.x
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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

First, thank you for the feedback :thumb: . Let me try to address your questions and concerns:
Hiram McDaniels wrote:So if I understand the task resolution system, each challenge has an assigned difficulty (ranging from 1 - 99) representing it's % chance of failure. So a difficulty of 30% requires a roll of 31 or better on a d100?
You're right. That is exactly how it works. 1d100, roll over difficulty and you succeed.

Hiram McDaniels wrote: Furthermore the player may re-roll the d100 1/skill rank for each challenge?
Yes. The more skilled a character is, the more rerolls he got. Fun math fact: this makes that the harder a Challenge is, the more important is to have the skill.

When comparing, for example, Strenght 1 vs Strenght 0, the stronger character has 80% more chance of success if the difficulty is 80, 50% more chance of success is the difficulty is 50, and 20% more chance of success if the difficulty is 20.

Also, this creates diminishing returns for skill points. Lets imagine a dif 50 check. A unskilled character has 50% chance of sucess. A skill 1 character has 75%. A skill 2 character has 87.5%. A skill 3 character has 93.75%, and so on.

Hiram McDaniels wrote: What is the maximum amount of ranks achievable for a skill?
There is no individual maximum per skill, BUT the total ranks in all skills linked to a stat is capped at the stat's level. For example, the Air stat has the skills of Running, Riding, Acrobatics, Stealth, Thievery and Piloting. If your Air stat is level 10, the sum of all above skills can't be greater than 10, in any combination (so for example Stealth 10 is a perfectly fine option, as is Running 3, Riding 2, Acrobatics 1, Stealth 1, Thievery 1 and Piloting 2).

As the maximum Stat Level is 25, no Skill can be greater than 25.
Hiram McDaniels wrote: Also this concerns me:

"Dealing damage is the most time-consuming part of combat. If a group does notaddress this problem, it may turn combat into atedious math exercise. Some tips to speed it:" yadayadayada pg. 108.

Duder...YOU wrote this thing. If you recognize this as a flaw, then why are you suggesting fixes in a sidebar rather than just re-writing the rule so it actually works faster?
In my opinion, an important part of the Final Fantasy power fantasy is the ability to grow from measily 10-20 damage at the start of the game to over 999 damage at higher levels. It has been this way since the first edition, and I'd like to keep this kind of feeling.

However, I've seen GMs new to this game choke on the math trying to do it on the fly. This sidebar is aimed at new players, and does not proposes any fixes, only tells them to do things before the actual combat starts. Let me give you an example.

Biggs and Wedge are both Fighters and got the !Slash-All ability. It deals 75% weapon damage to 3 enemies. Both wield Greatswords (page 86) and have Earth level 14.

Biggs writes his weapon's damage in his character sheet as "13x Earth". When he uses !Slash-All, he declares "I deal 75% of 14x13 damage" and then, after rolling, proceeds to do the math.

Wedge writes his !Slash-All ability as "Greatsword: 136 damage". When he uses !Slash-All, he declares "I deal 136 damage to all enemies hit".

What I'm trying to tell in that sidebar is "Be Wedge, don't be Biggs".
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Post by Hiram McDaniels »

Bruno Carvalho wrote:You're right. That is exactly how it works. 1d100, roll over difficulty and you succeed.
So difficulty ratings range from 1-99...

Can you give me an example from the game of a climbing challenge that would be a 35% difficulty and one that would be a 36% difficulty?
Bruno Carvalho wrote: Yes. The more skilled a character is, the more rerolls he got. Fun math fact: this makes that the harder a Challenge is, the more important is to have the skill.

When comparing, for example, Strenght 1 vs Strenght 0, the stronger character has 80% more chance of success if the difficulty is 80, 50% more chance of success is the difficulty is 50, and 20% more chance of success if the difficulty is 20.

Also, this creates diminishing returns for skill points. Lets imagine a dif 50 check. A unskilled character has 50% chance of sucess. A skill 1 character has 75%. A skill 2 character has 87.5%. A skill 3 character has 93.75%, and so on.
Could you clarify the following passage for me?

"When you fail in a Challenge, if you havethe appropriate Skill, you may re-roll it. For eachlevel in that Skill, you may re-roll the d100 once.If a character re-rolls a Challenge, always use thesecond roll, even if worse than the first."

Bruno Carvalho wrote: There is no individual maximum per skill, BUT the total ranks in all skills linked to a stat is capped at the stat's level. For example, the Air stat has the skills of Running, Riding, Acrobatics, Stealth, Thievery and Piloting. If your Air stat is level 10, the sum of all above skills can't be greater than 10, in any combination (so for example Stealth 10 is a perfectly fine option, as is Running 3, Riding 2, Acrobatics 1, Stealth 1, Thievery 1 and Piloting 2).

As the maximum Stat Level is 25, no Skill can be greater than 25.
So that means that each skill check could potentially take up to 25 individual rolls to resolve?
Bruno Carvalho wrote: In my opinion, an important part of the Final Fantasy power fantasy is the ability to grow from measily 10-20 damage at the start of the game to over 999 damage at higher levels. It has been this way since the first edition, and I'd like to keep this kind of feeling.

However, I've seen GMs new to this game choke on the math trying to do it on the fly. This sidebar is aimed at new players, and does not proposes any fixes, only tells them to do things before the actual combat starts. Let me give you an example.

Biggs and Wedge are both Fighters and got the !Slash-All ability. It deals 75% weapon damage to 3 enemies. Both wield Greatswords (page 86) and have Earth level 14.

Biggs writes his weapon's damage in his character sheet as "13x Earth". When he uses !Slash-All, he declares "I deal 75% of 14x13 damage" and then, after rolling, proceeds to do the math.

Wedge writes his !Slash-All ability as "Greatsword: 136 damage". When he uses !Slash-All, he declares "I deal 136 damage to all enemies hit".

What I'm trying to tell in that sidebar is "Be Wedge, don't be Biggs".
Ok. My question is this: if damage is expressed as 0.75*(13*N) on the character sheet and your solution for simplifying this (stated in a sidebar no less) is to calculate the damage value ahead of time on a piece of scratch paper or whatever, wouldn't it just be easier to design the game in such a way that the damage value is expressed on the character sheet as a whole number in the first place? I mean damage is already a static value, but it's derived from a formula rather than simply stated.
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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Bruno Carvalho wrote:You're right. That is exactly how it works. 1d100, roll over difficulty and you succeed.
So difficulty ratings range from 1-99...

Can you give me an example from the game of a climbing challenge that would be a 35% difficulty and one that would be a 36% difficulty?
There are no in-book examples of difficulties, and the GM is free to decide. I think just creating a difficulty on the fly (be it 35, 36, or whatever) is easier on the GM than looking through the book searching for a "TN per skill" or "TN per level" table. A dif 36 Challenge will Always represent a 36% chance of failure for a unskilled character, regardless of his stats, levels, job, or any other factor.

So I cannot give you a hard example of "this one is 35, but if you add THAT thing it becomes 36" because that is against the design principles of the game.
Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Bruno Carvalho wrote: Yes. The more skilled a character is, the more rerolls he got. Fun math fact: this makes that the harder a Challenge is, the more important is to have the skill.

When comparing, for example, Strenght 1 vs Strenght 0, the stronger character has 80% more chance of success if the difficulty is 80, 50% more chance of success is the difficulty is 50, and 20% more chance of success if the difficulty is 20.

Also, this creates diminishing returns for skill points. Lets imagine a dif 50 check. A unskilled character has 50% chance of sucess. A skill 1 character has 75%. A skill 2 character has 87.5%. A skill 3 character has 93.75%, and so on.
Could you clarify the following passage for me?

"When you fail in a Challenge, if you havethe appropriate Skill, you may re-roll it. For eachlevel in that Skill, you may re-roll the d100 once.If a character re-rolls a Challenge, always use thesecond roll, even if worse than the first."
You roll up to a number of times equal to the Skill +1. Once you roll over, you stop. If you roll all under, you fail. For example, if you got Bluff 3, you can roll up to 4 times in a Bluff challenge. As soon as you succeed or after the 4th failure, you stop rolling.

Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Bruno Carvalho wrote: There is no individual maximum per skill, BUT the total ranks in all skills linked to a stat is capped at the stat's level. For example, the Air stat has the skills of Running, Riding, Acrobatics, Stealth, Thievery and Piloting. If your Air stat is level 10, the sum of all above skills can't be greater than 10, in any combination (so for example Stealth 10 is a perfectly fine option, as is Running 3, Riding 2, Acrobatics 1, Stealth 1, Thievery 1 and Piloting 2).

As the maximum Stat Level is 25, no Skill can be greater than 25.
So that means that each skill check could potentially take up to 25 individual rolls to resolve?
That means that if a character spent 75 levels of his career placing his skill points in only ONE skill (because you gain one skill point per 3 character levels), and thus has ALL 23 other skills level 0, if he rolls a challenge from the only skill he maxed out, he may roll up to 26 times to beat it (one free, 25 rerolls from the skill). Of course, as soon as he beats the difficulty, he stops rolling.

This is also a huge overkill. For dif 90 or over challenges, this *may* be a significant investment, but for dif 80 or under you arrive around 90% percent chance of sucess at skill 10 or under and every extra skill point only wields tiny fractions of one percent.
Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Bruno Carvalho wrote: In my opinion, an important part of the Final Fantasy power fantasy is the ability to grow from measily 10-20 damage at the start of the game to over 999 damage at higher levels. It has been this way since the first edition, and I'd like to keep this kind of feeling.

However, I've seen GMs new to this game choke on the math trying to do it on the fly. This sidebar is aimed at new players, and does not proposes any fixes, only tells them to do things before the actual combat starts. Let me give you an example.

Biggs and Wedge are both Fighters and got the !Slash-All ability. It deals 75% weapon damage to 3 enemies. Both wield Greatswords (page 86) and have Earth level 14.

Biggs writes his weapon's damage in his character sheet as "13x Earth". When he uses !Slash-All, he declares "I deal 75% of 14x13 damage" and then, after rolling, proceeds to do the math.

Wedge writes his !Slash-All ability as "Greatsword: 136 damage". When he uses !Slash-All, he declares "I deal 136 damage to all enemies hit".

What I'm trying to tell in that sidebar is "Be Wedge, don't be Biggs".
Ok. My question is this: if damage is expressed as 0.75*(13*N) on the character sheet and your solution for simplifying this (stated in a sidebar no less) is to calculate the damage value ahead of time on a piece of scratch paper or whatever, wouldn't it just be easier to design the game in such a way that the damage value is expressed on the character sheet as a whole number in the first place? I mean damage is already a static value, but it's derived from a formula rather than simply stated.

You misunderstood. I blame myself for not being a native english speaker in this front. What I'm saying is exactly that "damage should NOT be expressed as a formula, but rather as the whole number". I placed it on a sidebar to draw attention to it. We're agreeing here!

That's why I used the expression "writes his weapon's damage in his character sheet" in my first reply. Wedge is not meant to calculate in a "piece of scratch paper" (albeit if he want to do it, go ahead! What are our character sheets but pieces of scratch paper?), but in his character sheet.
Last edited by Bruno Carvalho on Fri Oct 28, 2016 11:40 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by Hiram McDaniels »

Bruno Carvalho wrote: There are no in-book examples of difficulties, and the GM is free to decide. I think just creating a difficulty on the fly (be it 35, 36, or whatever) is easier on the GM than looking through the book searching for a "TN per skill" or "TN per level" table. A dif 36 Challenge will Always represent a 36% chance of failure for a unskilled character, regardless of his stats, levels, job, or any other factor.

So I cannot give you a hard example of "this one is 35, but if you add THAT thing it becomes 36" because that is against the design principles of the game.
So if I'm running the game, then I just pull any random number between 1-99 completely out of my ass?

Bruno Carvalho wrote: You roll up to a number of times equal to the Skill +1. Once you roll over, you stop. If you roll all under, you fail. For example, if you got Bluff 3, you can roll up to 4 times in a Bluff challenge. As soon as you succeed or after the 4th failure, you stop rolling.
Okay. But the passage says to always use the second roll, even if worse than the first.
Bruno Carvalho wrote: That means that if a character spent 75 levels of his career placing his skill points in only ONE skill (because you gain one skill point per 3 character levels), and thus has ALL 23 other skills level 0, if he rolls a challenge from the only skill he maxed out, he may roll up to 26 times to beat it (one free, 25 rerolls from the skill). Of course, as soon as he beats the difficulty, he stops rolling.

This is also a huge overkill. For dif 90 or over challenges, this *may* be a significant investment, but for dif 80 or under you arrive around 90% percent chance of sucess at skill 10 or under and every extra skill point only wields tiny fractions of one percent.
Maybe 25 skill points is in the extreme, but to be honest even 4 or 5 rolls for every skill check is too much. Have you actually playtested this?

And why is there 75 levels?

Side question...do you know WHY stats went up to 255 in the original Final Fantasy games?
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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Bruno Carvalho wrote: There are no in-book examples of difficulties, and the GM is free to decide. I think just creating a difficulty on the fly (be it 35, 36, or whatever) is easier on the GM than looking through the book searching for a "TN per skill" or "TN per level" table. A dif 36 Challenge will Always represent a 36% chance of failure for a unskilled character, regardless of his stats, levels, job, or any other factor.

So I cannot give you a hard example of "this one is 35, but if you add THAT thing it becomes 36" because that is against the design principles of the game.
So if I'm running the game, then I just pull any random number between 1-99 completely out of my ass?
Basically, yes. To be true you're the first one to complain about this.

Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Bruno Carvalho wrote: You roll up to a number of times equal to the Skill +1. Once you roll over, you stop. If you roll all under, you fail. For example, if you got Bluff 3, you can roll up to 4 times in a Bluff challenge. As soon as you succeed or after the 4th failure, you stop rolling.
Okay. But the passage says to always use the second roll, even if worse than the first.
If you reroll, you use the second roll (even if worse). But there is no need to reroll if you don't want to.

Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Bruno Carvalho wrote: That means that if a character spent 75 levels of his career placing his skill points in only ONE skill (because you gain one skill point per 3 character levels), and thus has ALL 23 other skills level 0, if he rolls a challenge from the only skill he maxed out, he may roll up to 26 times to beat it (one free, 25 rerolls from the skill). Of course, as soon as he beats the difficulty, he stops rolling.

This is also a huge overkill. For dif 90 or over challenges, this *may* be a significant investment, but for dif 80 or under you arrive around 90% percent chance of sucess at skill 10 or under and every extra skill point only wields tiny fractions of one percent.
Maybe 25 skill points is in the extreme, but to be honest even 4 or 5 rolls for every skill check is too much. Have you actually playtested this?
Yes, I have playtested and games roll quick enough.
Hiram McDaniels wrote: And why is there 75 levels?
There aren't 75 levels, but 100. Starting characters begin at level 6-8, and you can go up to level 100. At level 60-65, you get the endgame abilities, but you can progress up to level 100 if you wish.

I used level 75 as an example because you have 1 skill point per 3 stat levels.
Hiram McDaniels wrote: Side question...do you know WHY stats went up to 255 in the original Final Fantasy games?
8-bit processors can only understand 256 states. That is the number 0 and up to 255. I use the 255 number as the Stat cap to give a minor easter egg to hard math nerds like me. This guy explains it much better than I can:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umYvFdU54Po
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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

Visiting to say this project is not dead. So here's the release of another sourcebook, this time the Final Fantasy Tactics Worldbook!

http://bit.ly/FFRPG4thDLC4

It contains:

Ivalice setting, history and geography;
Campaign ideas;
Rules for Freelancer Main Job (job-changing system) and Squire Secondary Job;
Battle Map rules; and
a sample Bestiary.

Now that I got those 2 huge requests done (map combat and job-swapping), which game / mechanic should I be focusing now?
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Post by OgreBattle »

Yasumi Matsuno also created the Tactics Ogre setting, could draw from that for your FFT classes too
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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

I REALLY love Tactics Ogre (actually more than FFT), but I preferred to keep things simple and focus solely on FFT. Maybe a future worldbook about Zeteginea, Lodis and Valeria?
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Post by Aryxbez »

Bruno Carvalho wrote:
Hiram McDaniels wrote:
Bruno Carvalho wrote: There are no in-book examples of difficulties, and the GM is free to decide. I think just creating a difficulty on the fly (be it 35, 36, or whatever) is easier on the GM than looking through the book searching for a "TN per skill" or "TN per level" table. A dif 36 Challenge will Always represent a 36% chance of failure for a unskilled character, regardless of his stats, levels, job, or any other factor.

So I cannot give you a hard example of "this one is 35, but if you add THAT thing it becomes 36" because that is against the design principles of the game.
So if I'm running the game, then I just pull any random number between 1-99 completely out of my ass?
Basically, yes. To be true you're the first one to complain about this.
Just because the complaint isn't popular doesn't mean it isn't a problem. After all tons of people like to try and pretend Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizard doesn't exist, but it clearly does whether they stealth-buff the problem away, hope to ignore it, or not realizing the problem has always been there (Commonly people may think it's an intended feature of the game itself).

Arbitrary Skill DC is crap like putting DC's on a Treadmill, not more set junk and/or modifiers. So say a 10ft pit is 20%, 50ft 35%, and 1000ft is 85%, those are all set opposed to having the same 10ft pit or whatever being a different DC because I level-up.

Making junk up doesn't give a sense of progression, Diplomacy with King of Cornelia just as easily be DC 20% at lv 1, then jump to 80% 15 levels later simply because I have a +70% in Diplomacy skill now. (Yes doesn't really tackle scaling of skills in your game, but these are just examples t illustrate why it's a bad design).

This also wouldn't be a case of a DM being a jerk or not by doing this, you're making them do the work of providing skill DC's, a job of the game itself. I am upping numbers towards challenges that don't exist, making the scaling a pointless exercise.
What I find wrong w/ 4th edition: "I want to stab dragons the size of a small keep with skin like supple adamantine and command over time and space to death with my longsword in head to head combat, but I want to be totally within realistic capabilities of a real human being!" --Caedrus mocking 4rries

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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

First of all, sorry for the late reply. I somehow managed to miss this post entirely. Let me address your concern.

My problem with setting DCs on the book is that you create an "oficial rule" for it. Lets use "jumping across a chasm X wide" as an example. As soon as I set the difficulty (lets say, 50) for it on the book, it creates some problems. Each time a GM does not follows the book, it'll potentially create a counterproductive discussion in the table ("but the book says otherwise"). Using this for a point where GM discretion is advisable can backfire. Also, having the DC pinned down also cater to two main objectives. Either (1) the DCs are made to create a treadmill of scaling DC to character skill (the problem you say in D&D 4E) or (2) the DCs will be scaled to simulate the "game world", so you'll have several DCs with lots of modifiers (check D&D 3.PF approach for DCs for example). Option (1) is made for a Gamist approach, where the most important is to create a level-appropriate challenge for the players, while option (2) have a Simulationist approach, where the most important is to create a internally coherent "game world" with its own rules.

Neither objective is aligned with FFRPG 4th Ed's core objectives. The aforementioned DC does not need to be consistent with the world "laws of physics", neither it needs to be "level-appropriate" (since there's no DC treadmill in this FFRPG, as you mention). The DC must be influenced by the narrative. The example jump's DC is influenced by things like "whats the reward from making the jump", "whats the punishment for not making it", and "whats the importance in the narrative for that jump", not by the jump's size or by the character levels.

This is why I avoided pinning down those DCs in the book.
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Post by Koumei »

Bruno Carvalho wrote: My problem with setting DCs on the book is that you create an "oficial rule" for it.
Yes, that actually is the point of having rules. You are correct in understanding that.
This is why I avoided pinning down those DCs in the book.
You might want to either re-think this stance, or re-think the idea of having stats and rules at all.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Bruno Carvalho wrote: The example jump's DC is influenced by things like "whats the reward from making the jump", "whats the punishment for not making it", and "whats the importance in the narrative for that jump", not by the jump's size or by the character levels.
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Seriously, I'd be less annoyed if you just told GMs to label gaps with "No problemo," "50-50 you'll make it" and "No, they're all gonna laugh at you!" and then stick with that rather than give the players no real in-character info to work with while encouraging the MC to just pick whatever based on a whim. The setup you're describing actually sounds like it's OK to retcon the same gap's DC based solely on how much paint the GM has been huffing recently.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Mon Feb 12, 2018 8:05 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Ice9 »

So if I'm understanding it, you can roll N times for each skill check? Not per scene?

In that case, you could speed them rolling mechanic up a lot, while keeping the same math, by doing two things:
1) Just use d10 instead of d100. 10% granularity is plenty for DCs that are being made up on the fly anyway.
2) Roll them all at once, take the highest.

So instead of "roll 1d100, then re-roll it up to five times trying to roll 71+", you would do "roll 6d10, see if the highest is 8+".
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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

Koumei wrote:
Bruno Carvalho wrote:
This is why I avoided pinning down those DCs in the book.
You might want to either re-think this stance, or re-think the idea of having stats and rules at all.
Whipstitch wrote: Seriously, I'd be less annoyed if you just told GMs to label gaps with "No problemo," "50-50 you'll make it" and "No, they're all gonna laugh at you!" and then stick with that rather than give the players no real in-character info to work with while encouraging the MC to just pick whatever based on a whim. The setup you're describing actually sounds like it's OK to retcon the same gap's DC based solely on how much paint the GM has been huffing recently.
There are places in the system with given difficulty ratings and where they're supposed to be followed to the letter - the combat system. If you're attacking with a weapon, barring any modifiers (like Blind status effect for example), you're gonna roll against Dif 40. In the Challenge mechanics, however, pining down the exact DCs would do more harm than good, since the objective of the system is not to "simulate an internally-consistent gameworld" (unlike simulationist games like GURPS or D&D 3.PF), and there is no math required in figuring out the difficulties (I could write something like "Easy is around Dif 20, medium is around Dif 50 and Hard is around dif 80", but isn't it clear enough when you got Dif as your % chance of failing?).
Ice9 wrote:So if I'm understanding it, you can roll N times for each skill check? Not per scene?

In that case, you could speed them rolling mechanic up a lot, while keeping the same math, by doing two things:
1) Just use d10 instead of d100. 10% granularity is plenty for DCs that are being made up on the fly anyway.
2) Roll them all at once, take the highest.

So instead of "roll 1d100, then re-roll it up to five times trying to roll 71+", you would do "roll 6d10, see if the highest is 8+".
I agree with you. I'm perfectly fine with GMs using this 10% granularity and rolling all dice at once. You could even extend it to the combat system and use d10s for everything. The d100 is a relic from older Returner's FFRPG editions, that I kept to match with the older games.

In the game's wiki, there is an optional rule suggestion that does exactly what you do. You can find it here: http://ffrpg4e.wikidot.com/ordrules
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Post by RobbyPants »

Bruno Carvalho wrote: There are places in the system with given difficulty ratings and where they're supposed to be followed to the letter - the combat system. If you're attacking with a weapon, barring any modifiers (like Blind status effect for example), you're gonna roll against Dif 40. In the Challenge mechanics, however, pining down the exact DCs would do more harm than good, since the objective of the system is not to "simulate an internally-consistent gameworld" (unlike simulationist games like GURPS or D&D 3.PF), and there is no math required in figuring out the difficulties (I could write something like "Easy is around Dif 20, medium is around Dif 50 and Hard is around dif 80", but isn't it clear enough when you got Dif as your % chance of failing?).
If you don't care if the results are consistent from scene to scene, and you feel the difficulty should be random, why even have variable skills or roll the die at all? The point of the skill check is to add some amount of randomness to events that aren't certain. If your difficulty ratings are random... there's really not much point to rolling a check.
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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

RobbyPants wrote: (...) why even have variable skills or roll the die at all?

The point of the skill check is to add some amount of randomness to events that aren't certain.
I agree with you! You answered the question yourself. According to the Challenge rules in the book (page 103), you roll dice for skills if the situation at hand has those 3 characteristics:

a) Failure and success chance;
b) Punishment for failure; and
c) Storytelling impact.

If you have na event that aren't certain (a), may not be retried without punishment for failure (b) and have an impact on the story (c), your GM announces a Challenge, and you roll dice. If any of those 3 points are absent, either because failure or sucess is certain (a), or because you can simply retry over and over until you suceed (b), or even because the action has no significant impact on the story, you don't roll for it.
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Post by Chamomile »

Telling the GM who read (or God forbid, bought) your book to fuck off and figure out how to make an RPG themselves is not game design.
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Post by Bruno Carvalho »

Chamomile wrote:Telling the GM who read (or God forbid, bought) your book to fuck off and figure out how to make an RPG themselves is not game design.
I'm sad you came in attacking me without even reading the book (btw, if you had spared the trouble to do it, you'd find it is a free fan-material), so let me try to help us to have a productive discussion by copy-pasting th entire Challenge rules:

Code: Select all

During a FFRPG 4th Edition adventure, the characters will face challenges created by the GM to succeed in their goals. A Challenge is a situation within the game, which has, necessarily, the following three characteristics:

a) Failure and success chance. A Challenge must have a chance to fail and a chance to succeed. Walking on the flat and solid ground is not a Challenge, as it does not have chance of failure; walking in the air is also not a challenge, because it has no chance of success. Walking on a rope in a cliff may be a challenge because it has chance of failure and success.

b) Punishment for failure. A Challenge must have a punishment for the failure, although it may be retried. This punishment for the failure may simply deny the characters the success’ reward. An attempt to open a locked door, using picks and thief’s tools, is not a challenge if the character can keep trying again any number of times to get the door open, but may be a challenge if the room is filling with acid or if the lock breaks after the first attempt. 

c) Storytelling impact. A Challenge must have a significant impact on the story. Riding a chocobo has chance of failure and success, and has a punishment for failing (the fall). But in a 10-day trip riding a chocobo to journey between two cities, the way the character will ride does not have a significant enough impact on the story to become a Challenge. However, if the character runs away from a desert castle on fire being chased by bad guys in giant robots, the way he rides can indeed be a Challenge.

To create a Challenge, the Game Master should indicate what is the Challenge’s Skill and what is its difficulty. The Challenge’s difficulty is its failure chance. Thus, the GM decides what is the Challenge’s failure chance, indicated by a number between 1 (one) and 99 (ninety nine). For a character succeed in this Challenge, his player must roll 1d100 (a 100-sided dice or two 10-sided die, one representing the tens and the other the unit) and the die roll should be greater than the established difficulty. For example, if the GM establishes as 30 the difficulty of a challenge, the player must understand that he has 30% chance of failing, and consequently 70% chance of success.

When you fail in a Challenge, if you have the appropriate Skill, you may re-roll it. For each level in that Skill, you may re-roll the d100 once. If a character re-rolls a Challenge, always use the second roll, even if worse than the first. A player may always forfeit a Challenge. If he does, his character automatically fails. Notice that this does NOT means the character wants to fail. A character may still try very hard to achieve a forfeited Challenge but will fail nonetheless. When a player choose to forfeit a Challenge, he may describe how his character fails. 

So, what the game asks of the GM when designing a Challenge (a skill check) is to choose one of the game's skills (there are 25 of them, listed earlier in the book), then assign a DC between 1 and 99. The Player rolls a single d100, unmodified, and must roll over it (with rerolls allowed if the character got the relevant skill). This is, in summary, the rules.

I would love if you could now explain me how this is " to fuck off and figure out how to make an RPG themselves".
Last edited by Bruno Carvalho on Tue Feb 20, 2018 2:38 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Because you don't have an internally consistent game world and don't even see the value of attempting to do so. If you're not trying to enforce some level of consistency and predictable results it'd be much simpler, cleaner and intellectually honest to play cops and robbers instead.
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Post by Chamomile »

Bruno Carvalho wrote:I'm sad you came in attacking me without even reading the book
Asking people to read your entire goddamn book before they make any comment on it, even though your stated design goals are already awful, expresses such thorough contempt for other people's time that I don't care how sad you are. And hey, on second glance, it turns out your game rules are exactly as vapid as your initial pitch made them appear, because you still have no guidelines for how hard a specific challenge actually is, which means the numbers players write on their character sheet is completely meaningless because it's being compared to a number that could be literally anything in literally any situation. You leave it to the GM to actually make the game by defining what actions require a roll of which difficulty, and you advise them not to even bother doing that, at which point your entire "system" is smoke and mirrors around what is actually a freeform roleplay.
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Post by Pariah Dog »

Bruno Carvalho wrote:
Chamomile wrote:Telling the GM who read (or God forbid, bought) your book to fuck off and figure out how to make an RPG themselves is not game design.
I'm sad you came in attacking me without even reading the book (btw, if you had spared the trouble to do it, you'd find it is a free fan-material), so let me try to help us to have a productive discussion by copy-pasting th entire Challenge rules:

Code: Select all

During a FFRPG 4th Edition adventure, the characters will face challenges created by the GM to succeed in their goals. A Challenge is a situation within the game, which has, necessarily, the following three characteristics:

a) Failure and success chance. A Challenge must have a chance to fail and a chance to succeed. Walking on the flat and solid ground is not a Challenge, as it does not have chance of failure; walking in the air is also not a challenge, because it has no chance of success. Walking on a rope in a cliff may be a challenge because it has chance of failure and success.

b) Punishment for failure. A Challenge must have a punishment for the failure, although it may be retried. This punishment for the failure may simply deny the characters the success’ reward. An attempt to open a locked door, using picks and thief’s tools, is not a challenge if the character can keep trying again any number of times to get the door open, but may be a challenge if the room is filling with acid or if the lock breaks after the first attempt. 

c) Storytelling impact. A Challenge must have a significant impact on the story. Riding a chocobo has chance of failure and success, and has a punishment for failing (the fall). But in a 10-day trip riding a chocobo to journey between two cities, the way the character will ride does not have a significant enough impact on the story to become a Challenge. However, if the character runs away from a desert castle on fire being chased by bad guys in giant robots, the way he rides can indeed be a Challenge.

To create a Challenge, the Game Master should indicate what is the Challenge’s Skill and what is its difficulty. The Challenge’s difficulty is its failure chance. Thus, the GM decides what is the Challenge’s failure chance, indicated by a number between 1 (one) and 99 (ninety nine). For a character succeed in this Challenge, his player must roll 1d100 (a 100-sided dice or two 10-sided die, one representing the tens and the other the unit) and the die roll should be greater than the established difficulty. For example, if the GM establishes as 30 the difficulty of a challenge, the player must understand that he has 30% chance of failing, and consequently 70% chance of success.

When you fail in a Challenge, if you have the appropriate Skill, you may re-roll it. For each level in that Skill, you may re-roll the d100 once. If a character re-rolls a Challenge, always use the second roll, even if worse than the first. A player may always forfeit a Challenge. If he does, his character automatically fails. Notice that this does NOT means the character wants to fail. A character may still try very hard to achieve a forfeited Challenge but will fail nonetheless. When a player choose to forfeit a Challenge, he may describe how his character fails. 

So, what the game asks of the GM when designing a Challenge (a skill check) is to choose one of the game's skills (there are 25 of them, listed earlier in the book), then assign a DC between 1 and 99. The Player rolls a single d100, unmodified, and must roll over it (with rerolls allowed if the character got the relevant skill). This is, in summary, the rules.

I would love if you could now explain me how this is " to fuck off and figure out how to make an RPG themselves".
When climbing up Mount Fabul is DC 40 and climbing Mount Ordeal is DC 55 when the only difference is you're 10 levels higher, both are steep mountains with no other significant differences.
Last edited by Pariah Dog on Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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