This is for a game I want to put together little by little. Basically is OSR D&D but slightly based on martial arts animes and JRPGs.
One thing that didn't worked for me about the PCs being wandering fighters is that those kind of people don't seem too much interested in gold; so making XP for Gold Retrieved seemed a little dissonant about character goals / player goals. Yeah, sometimes a master can require a treasure for paying their training but is hard to justify that monks are delving in dungeons all the time and no training.
XP per monster killed, though more fitting at first, is also not perfect as it incentivizes players to fight whatever shit they're thrown. And the trope of the fighter asking another fighter to battle just to "test their styles" is cool, but is not something you can base a game upon (Also, straight sweeping hordes of monsters works in JRPGs due to the videogame mindset, but grinding during hours with no lateral approaches doesn't traslate well to pen and paper)
What I've done is to write a check list of milestones in order to guide the players through the sandbox. Every box ticked is 1 level, but doing each must involve a serious quest so as a GM you have to make it challenging
[_] Help an NPC to solve his first world problem [_] Defeat 1 monster with your same HP*, alone [_] Defeat 1 monster with higher HP*, alone [_] Defeat 1 monster with double HP*, in group. [_] Build a Dojo or other similar Settlement; and mantain it for a time (basically put a trouble on the way and make the PC overcome it) [_] Join a sect or swear fealty to a kingdom; and upheld its honor in a quarrel or defeat a rival sect [_] Train under the supervision of a master and complete his quest (the quest might be the lesson itself or just a test to be judged worthy) [_] Set up a personal quest and achieve it (decide it at anytime, GM put a trouble on the way) [_] close a wound about your character's past (a revenge, a lost love, a promise, etc. Decide it at anytime what it was, no need to do it at creation. GM put a trouble on the way, if you achieve the atonement, tick this. If you dont, a new chance will appear on another quest) [_] retrieve 800 GP [_] retrieve 2000 GP [_] retrieve 5000 GP [_] retrieve 10000 GP
There are more than 10 so you don't have to undertake all of them to reach level 10 if playing by classic standards (If you're an evil person, I'll spare you from helping that NPC, man) and some GP related points so I can still run a dungeon/heist or two if needed
I'm thinking on adding one about "[_] having your character wounded with consequences". As in losing an eye, an arm, etc; or just changing the way you play your character dramatically; but it must have mechanical (- to a stat) and narrative consequences for it to be fairly executed; and also a mechanic to make this happen in combat organically.
Other alternatives that still use XP is giving XP per victory after a battle encounter (to prevent unnecessary carnage, getting an enemy surrendering, admiting defeat or fleeing counts as victory) or XP given by Masters (Master is a "monster" on the random wilderness encounter. His special powers is giving a trial or a quest. On fulfillment, his treasure is just XP without the GP that usually accompanies it)
*Change it for HD (Hit Dice) instead of Hit Points for classic conversion, but I use it like this for some reasons I'll explain on further entries.
If I ever learnt to use RPGmaker, or found a group who did (In which I'd do the art and don't care about the rest lol), I'd love to make a Lo-Fi demake (Which is what you call a Remake when you're going into older technology) of FF8. Though the seventh is the one who I enjoyed the most at its time, the eighth is the one that comes up to my mind along the years, and sometimes I felt that it was the one that had more raw, untapped magic on it.
Can it be the story of the characters? The (larger than life and at the same time relatable to all) epic teenage love story about Squall, the guy who is too tough to show feelings; and Rinoa, the sorceress who loves him despite him being a SeeD, whose only task is to hunt her kin. How she would do anything to stay in his arms just a little more, before landing on earth in the Ragnarok; because she knows that once they land she'll be imprisoned, and never see each other again.
If you, like me, believe on the R=U theory and add time compression to the mix, you got a tale that could rival the fucking Ring of the Nibelungs. And then you get the recurring theme about the Knight of the Witch. Seldom can you find so great mythic vibes on anything set on a "modern" world.
And the whole thing about Irvine infiltrating into the church for shooting down Edea? that point in which unexpected to us all, fantasy blends with those WW2 or Cold War vibes so organically that it almost feels like taken from the real world history?
Then you have those designs: They haunt me as real places I've been in: the golden threads on the walls of the Balamb Garden, that Korean looking uniforms, the Arc-of-triumph in Deling; the art-deco trains in Timber; the massive military arcologies in which common fishermen spend their evenings. A T-Rex in the Garden. The way Seifer shows his crazy fanatism with a saber-forward stance, while Squall shows his emotionally defensive nature in his stance with the very same weapon.
So many clever, subtle things on this one, guys.
But of course, If everything was perfect about the game I would not had thought of re-making it. There were bad things on it. We just put them aside because maybe we were too much on the plot, but those factors sentence it as a hard-to-replay game.
So, this is the funny part: what is new? What goes out? what would I put on this masterpiece?
1. The interface. If I remade this, I'd like to make it look like an older, top view game. That's the main change. FFVIII visuals were top tier for its age, but now they're not spectacular for ours, neither they have the "Immortal" aesthetics that older jrpgs do. The highest aim I'd love to reach would be to copy Chronotrigger's gameplay:
-Locations are a big scrolling map, with enemies appearing in scenery instead of opening pop-up combats
-It remains turn based
-Attacks take into account the distribution of enemies: certain strikes affect all enemies on a line, while others strike all on an area)
But maybe trying to "mature" a little the aesthetics by making the characters taller and a slightly tainted palette like in Persona 1
what a party they've got there
2. The "Draw" command! yeah, the greatly hated one. There are no magics to extract here, so no more hours of endless fishing Fire+ from a random Bom. Magic is instead done through GFs (Guardian Forces, which is the name of this game's summons; not Girlfriends):
Ifrit lets you cast Fire and Berserk Shiva: Ice and Slow; Stop if character has high Mag stat. Quetzalcoatl: Thunder and Haste Siren: Sleep and Aqua Diablo: Demi and Blind Brothers: Quake and Protect (the physical attack barrier) Ruby: Heal and Reflect (let's ditch Shell, the magical barrier, right away: Reflect is funnier) Leviathan:Aqua and Silence Eolo: Aero and Float Tomberi: Venom, Dispel Cerberus: Death and Dispel Phoenix: Fire and Revive. (Note: you still find him using Shards, that was very cool) Alexander: Holy and Heal Bahamut: Artema, Regen Eden: Flare and Shell
Odin / Gilgamesh appears as a helper, is not junctionable as in the original.
All the rest of GFs (chocobofiller, mooglepeasant, uglycactuar, helltrain...) go to the fucking trash
Some magics are redundant (berserk and confuse effects go together now. Dispel removes positive AND negative status effects, as Esuna)
For more tactical implementations of magics, elemental magics have distinct treatments on how they act; they're not just Damage-that-deals-more-damage-to-monsters-who-are-vulnerable-to-this-element.
For example:
Fire is shot in a line, affecting all enemies on it.
Ice does more damage, but only a single enemy is affected.
Aero only affects flying enemies more than ground ones.
Quake only affects non-flying, but A LOT.
Aqua is a wave, affecting all enemies.
There are no distinct levels of magic (fire1, fire2, fire3 etc.) Magic damage is only increased by the MAG stat of the caster. Magics can be casted a number of times depending on the mag stat. So Rinoa, Selphie, etc are naturally best casters.
Small GF animations are shown on screen when the magics are cast. GFS ARE NEVER SUMMONED IN THE CLASSIC WAY. Instead, the whole body of the Guardian Forces, in all their glory, are only shown when you battle them (And you have to battle them to use them, more on this below)
3. Followup on magic's nature:
The story in this game makes a very clear distinction on the sorceresses being a rare thing, very dangerous and different from normal people. The fact that they can cast magic freaks out everybody, so having our PCs casting shit around is kinda anti-ambient and not even too powerful in the original game (a HEAL spell is just a POTION applied with another command). Thats why I think its very important to make magic more obviously reliant on GFs, unless you happen to have a SORCERESSS in your party (Rinoa, Edea)
4. On how the Characters command list would look:
Our guys, like in the most rooted FF1 tradition, have each 4 commands when in battle, but with little changes for everyone:
Squall
ATTACK: everything on a line, % chance of shooting the gunblade when striking a single enemy
SPECIAL: Samurai: 2 strikes of lower damage than normal attacks, distributed at random. But consumes the next turn for everyone (useful when Squall is alone or a member has fallen). Number of strikes increases with level.
MAGIC: normal
ITEM: normal
Quistis:
ATTACK: small area with the whip
SPECIAL: Scan enemies (as a blue mage, she knows about monsters abilities and HP)
MAGIC: normal
ITEM: As a blue mage, Quistis may use collected monster parts for making attacks (Malboro tentacles for emvenom, Spider Webs for SLOW, etc.)
Zell:
ATTACK: small area if available, has a chance to counterattack when he's hit that grows each level.
SPECIAL: Gathering Ki (random boons on himself: haste, regen, barrier, dispel. multiple boons at high levels)
MAGIC: normal (probably he's got the lowest mag score)
ITEM: normal
Irvine:
ATTACK: decent damage, single guy
SPECIAL: 3-5 shots, distributed at random, with lots of chance to miss unless the pertinent stats are raised and weapons upgraded (from his official scan description: "An expert marksman, but doesn't perform very well under pressure").
MAGIC: normal ITEM: normal
Selphie:
ATTACK: small damage on area (nunchucks!)
SPECIAL: ANNOYING. Put status ailments on enemies at random (silence, blindness or berserk, maybe greater weirdness, even though her THE END is probably too much for this project)
MAGIC: normal, but good mag score
ITEM: normal
Rinoa
ATTACK: single shot, shit damage
SPECIAL: Angelo, will at random heal an ally or hit an enemy.
MAGIC: Once she gets the sorceress powers, she gets Artema and Heal. BAAMMM
ITEM: normal
SUPER SPECIAL:After she inherits the sorceress powers, Rinoa will automatically get into the ANGEL WINGS mode when hitting low HP. (The only limit break needed, everyone else is fine without them)
Laguna, Kiros and Ward will have their own specials, and instead of using your team's GFs will use No magic and just have their part nerfed so they dont have to use it (makes sense that they don't have them in their timelines. However, to hint the Laguna - Squall link, Laguna will have equipped the same item as Squall does at the moment of the dream)
I'll cover Seifer and Edea if this rambling ever gets any relevance.
5. JUNCTION SYSTEM
Hated and Loved equally. Personally I was from the second group, and once we got rid of the DRAW command and the collection of 100 magic each, we can make it minimalistic, which is something I carry in my nature:
-GFS carry each one a number (1-3) of STAT JUNCTIONS (str, vit, mag, spirit, speed, evasion, hit and luck are the original ones in FFVIII). We keep this as it is, though stats might vary.
-Instead of linking magics, you can link SPECIAL ITEMS and MONSTER PARTS to each (that it: A Molbol Tentacle again might be shit for raising vit, but cool for raising magic)
This items are won in battles or found exploring the game, like finding that savings box of that family at Fisherman's Horizon, and may have another uses as consumables or as Quistis "special" items. This makes grinding and exploring more fun and rewarding.
-It would be cool to not have an explicit, shown rating of how much does this or that item increase the stat, but make the player have to guess it by watching the numbers in combat (increasing mystery, player skill and communication between players community)
Thats all of the Junction System.
6. MORE DUNGEONS
The story of of the game is almost perfect as it is, but there are several things that I feel that could be improved in the overall progress. Here I go:
- By ditching the DRAW command, many of the GFs of the game have to be obtained in other way. The best way to put some of them along the way (you battle them, you get them) is making some of them optional and spreading them through the world map. This adds a great "middle game oasis" in which you can decide to relax, explore the world a bit, grind levels, power yourself up. FF7 had a great deal of its greatness here, having whole areas dedicated to sidequests (Sunken Gelnika, whole Wutai, Lucrecia's cave, Nibelheim's manor) and even 2 optional characters, by god!
- So, every optional GF has a place on the map in which it can be found, some additional items and some monsters that keep it (you get Levels, items AND GF!). Leviathan near a coast, Shiva near a snowpeak, etc. Ifrit is still on the intro mission, and Diablo and Phoenix feel nice by appearing using their special objects. This expands the game in a natural and fun way. Also, any kind of Easter Eggs are better applied on this areas than in the canon-plot parts of the game, that are to remain as unchanged as possible.
This fanart looks so awesome man. This but real is just perfect.
-Original sidequests that originally gave you something as shitty as a "Spd UP" (big bad rascal in Balamb Town) can instead give you the chance to fight a Guardian Force. No more shitty filler quests. Time is golden, quality is better than quantity. Characters without a proper arc (I mean everyone but Rinoa and Squall) can show some background by giving hints in the proper places in order to find the hidden secrets of them (Zell is supposed to be very interested in world history, and Irvine looks like a deep, philosophical guy. Maybe he can trigger NPCs giving you interesting hints and that)
7. GF abilities:
The passive abilities such as Diablo's Steal are instead achieved through worn items (such as the famous Ribbon). I loved how oldest RPGS had more emphasis on this objects: from early game "ring of anti-silence" to "ring of cover allies"(that traditionally combos with the counterattack), "ring of steal", "bandana of increased GIL" and "Necklace of Protection against Ice"
8. Floating Balamb Garden is recursive with the other airship. There is no need for it. Any plot-oriented flight up to the recovery of the ship can be solvented by DUNGEON TUNNELS with a GF on it, or any other quick plot device.
9. I'm playing FFII right now and, though I love the genre, its really astonishing how prevalent is to present challenges as a trillion combats every for every ten steps, and then making those combats totally filler that can be overcome by clicking attack a few times. I think that every single of these could be improved by droping the enemy rate down to a quarter, and then making this fight four times as hard.
Also, as in old Dragon Warrior / FF1: A lowest dependancy on magic and a higher one on ITEMS for healing oneself, makes money and equipment more important than it was. Items have not been too important in late FFs, but maybe with a little effort we can crunch the numbers (MAX HP, Monsters HP, Earned Gil) until the curve of risk is a little higher, but not up to grindfest that is Dragon Warrior or similar.
10. TRIPLE TRIAD
Is fun and all, and I loved it, but it has no place on this project. I don't want that level of micromanagement, and I feel is not necessary to have it just because it was there on the original. If its for the sake of playing it, I'd even print it and play it with friends. As I said above, FF8 lacked a proper Middle Game Exploration Phase; and Triple Triad was a patch for that. But it becomes unnecesary because we can explore the world and gather up resources with our RAGNAROKKKK.
(Quistis needs a new quirk to make up for her not having her alter-ego as KING OF CARDS. Suggestions are open)
11. Cutscenes are kept as faithfully as one can, even though the technology we are using is pixel-art based and the animation has limits. Probably Edea's presentation at the parade ends up into something more static, but that is not a synonim of lame. I could go down to THIS RETRO, if I could still capture her perfection essence
The Intro and the Outro should be transcribed as literally as possible, as they are weird and ripe of symbolism and I'd love to keep all our fan theories intact.
12. A l l m u s i c i s v a p o r w a v e d n o w
13. This is just a dream written by a 35 year old Kid during the quarantine. You're free to join me and dream with me, but I love to do pixel art, and maybe, if I set myself to practise programming or find anybody who helps me... who knows?
And if somebody else reads this and wants to steal "my" idea, well, you'll make me so happy! Let me know when I can play it!
(all art on this entry is taken from a google images search of "FFVIII pixel art")
Due to my previous account has been lost, and that I have a lot of new awesome ideas and/or I'm quarantined and with lots of time, I felt like opening a new one. Once again, my plan is to use this as a sketch notebook, but open to feedback (if anybody really reads this).
About the name, I rolled it on this table some years ago:
Dare to roll yourself if you feel like opening one!
