Hey everyone, I had a great playtest of 16-bit last night.  Present was myself (as GM), my brother (Adrian) and my girlfriend (Gloria).

At first, we decided to play-out the first few scenes from Final Fantasy II (IV in Japan).  This went alright, but if felt like it was lacking something.  After that, we decided to launch into our own series, which went stellar!

Character creation was a snap (choose Hero name, starting Job and if you have 20 HP and 10 MP or vice versa).  Adrian made a Dark Knight named Lesko and Gloria made a Dancer named Feather.  Then I asked the players to say a one-liner about their character (like what you would see in a instruction booklet), including their age (either really young, young, old or really old) and what they looked like.  Right of the top of their heads, each player gave a pretty good one-liner about their character that opened up some potential plot hooks.

Lesko is an old veteran soldier of the War with blue hair and chiselled features, who is in semi-retirement although he still serves the Emperor when called.

Feather is a really young dancer and a street thief on the narrow alleyways of Jadd.

We decided the game starts in Jadd, and threw the first Dialogue Cutscene (a spotlight scene) to Lesko.  Adrian introduced Lesko as sitting in the tavern at Jadd, knocking back a bottle with "XXX" on it.  I suggested two guards rushed in and Gloria jumped in to play the guards, who (it turns out) were criticising Lesko for not visiting his wife (who is hospital-ridden due to some plague).  The story had a nice "oh snap!" moment, when Gloria's guards revealed that the plague had been caused by the War that Lesko fought by order of the Emperor.  There was some corny classic dialogue between the bitter war veteran and the guards, and we decided to cut to the next scene, where Lesko is on his way to visit his wife and buys some flowers from a flower girl on the street (Feather).

We discussed the point of the scene and decided it would just be a quick introduction of Gloria's Heroine.  Because it was a normal Dialogue Cutscene (not a spotlight of one Hero), we switched up the roles so Gloria was playing Lesko and Adrian was playing Feather.  There was a cute dialogue where Feather tries to rip off Lesko, then feels bad about it and gives him a flower for cheap.  I jumped in with some guards, and Feather fled, leaving Gloria to decided what the guards are looking for (they were looking for Feather, who is a known pickpocket and street rat, it turns out).

The next scene was the hospital, which started with Lesko (played by Adrian) and his wife, Rhonda (played by Gloria) having a heartfelt scene (to the tune of sad SNES RPG music).  The next room over, Feather (played by Gloria) had a similar heartfelt scene with her mother (played by Adrian), who was also sick with the plague.  Lesko and Feather exited, only to bump into each other and share stories.  I threw in the suggestion that Feather had heard of a healing crystal that could restore hope to victims of the plague and the players liked it and ran with it, soon deciding to band together in search of this crystal.

Now that Feather had joined the party, I let the group move around Jadd freely.  They could visit the Inn, the Marketplace and the Shops.  They chose to forgo shopping (having no Luc, the world's currency) and got some vague information from some NPCs (since this is Explore and not a Dialogue Cutscene, the NPC dialogue was strictly provided by me, the GM), revealing that Jadd had been militarising lately and that there were rumours of new monster attacks in outlying towns.  A guard also told Lesko that the Emperor wished to seem him regarding a new mission.

The party decided to sleep and save at the Inn, and then go to the castle.  Before they arrive, we decided to do a Dialogue Cutscene involving the Emperor and "Mysterious Man?", played by Gloria and Adrian respectively.  This dialogue revealed that the Emperor was enlisting the Mysterious Man's help in his plans to capture all the power crystals to unlock some "ancient power".

The next scene had the Emperor (Gloria) send Lesko off to neighbouring Figaro to remove a dangerous weapon from their arsenal, a crystal they keep in the castle.  Taking an airship, Lesko and Feather went off to Figaro to do the Emperor's bidding and hopefully find the healing crystal to save their loved ones.

Soon after arriving in Figaro, a Boss fight ensues when "Plague Beast" comes up through the well in the center of the marketplace of the desert town.  With the guards scared off, it's up to Lesko and Feather to vanquish it (which they do rather handily).  After which, the two are hailed as heroes by the town, and talking to some NPC's reveals that monster attacks have been rising for some reason lately.

Getting straight to business, the party does a little shopping with the 200 Luc they won from the Boss Battle, getting a Drake Helm for Lesko and a Ballerina's Sash for Gloria (both armour).  They save at the Inn and then break into the Castle Figaro via a secret entrance in the garden.  Creeping through the waterways under the castle (Figaro was built on an oasis), the party overhears a Dialogue Cutscene by the King of Figaro (Gloria) and his Sage (Adrian), where the Sage warns the King that the great crystal cannot keep these monster attacks at bay much longer.  The King retorts that the great healing crystal was the only thing that kept Figaro safe during the War and the plague, and that it is all powerful... right?  Continuing on, I play some creepy music when they break into the Fane and steal the beautiful blue glowing crystal.  Magic alarms then go off and the two flee through the aquaducts again and then out of the castle.  In the town, more plague monsters have arrived and are swamping the town.  Unable to escape by airship, the party flees out into the desert on foot.  With real doubt in their mind, they look back on Figaro as it is overcome by monsters.

We had been playing for several hours at this point and had lost track of time, so I opted to make this a good stopping point so we saved and discussed some cool things to happen next in the story (we all agreed the Emperor's troops had to swing by in an airship and snatch the crystal from Lesko as a "job well done", then fly off, leaving him in the desert to die).  It was a lot of fun and both players said they would like to play again.

Some things I noticed; I didn't realise that the game could easily become mostly Diaglogue Cutscenes, with a little explore and a little battle thrown in between scenes.  This worked very well though, and was really a plot-generating machine.  The players agreed that playing other heroes in general dialogues helped cross-invest interest in all the individual stories, while the spotlight scenes (where you played your own Hero) were necessary to make you feel like its your character.

Okay, now, I hate nearly all of the games you're inspired by in this, but for some reason this sounds appealing. I don't know how to reconcile those two facts, and I'm not going to attempt to; let's just hope it's a good thing :)

What sort of system are you using to handle the battles?  Did they go down smoothly?  Were they actiony or kinda dry?

-Marshall

The battle system tracks initiative meters much like in the "active time battle" of the Final Fantasy series (more accurately, it is like the "conditional turn-based" battle system found in Final Fantasy Tactics).  See the Wiki entry for more information on that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Time_Battle#Conditional_Turn-Based

Each combatant gets to act when his meter is full, choosing from a list of special moves specific to that character (I stumbled a bit here, and just had the monsters do "generic attack", which made them rather boring opponents - next time I will have a bunch of interesting battles and monsters planned out to insert in the game when necessary).

The actual combat flowed really well though, as your to-hit roll tells you exactly how much damage you do (it's always in the upper range of some numbers, so 50-100 rather than 1-100).  Thus you just roll dice and announce "Hey, 36 points of damage!" or "Damn, I missed".

Next time I'm going to try out tactical battles too (where you move around on a grid, instead of fight in fixed battlelines).

From your report, its pretty obvious you managed to capture the essence of the old CRPGs. The split between scene types adds a lot to that, excellent choice.

For the battles system you mention the list of special moves. Did the players choose these during character creation, get assigned them based on Job, or invent them on the spot?

Between having players taking NPCs dialogue roles and discussing future plot points with them, it seems like that might diverge from the highly scripted (one might say "railroaded") plot structure of CRPGs. Was that your experience in the playtest? And is that the intention?

Cheers!
Landon

Hi Landon, thanks for the comments.

Landon wrote:
From your report, its pretty obvious you managed to capture the essence of the old CRPGs. The split between scene types adds a lot to that, excellent choice.

For the battles system you mention the list of special moves. Did the players choose these during character creation, get assigned them based on Job, or invent them on the spot?

Landon wrote:
Between having players taking NPCs dialogue roles and discussing future plot points with them, it seems like that might diverge from the highly scripted (one might say "railroaded") plot structure of CRPGs. Was that your experience in the playtest? And is that the intention?

Cheers!
Landon

By which I mean ANNA Kreider, sorry it's been a long day...

What about players making up Jobs?  Having a set list of Jobs bugs me; what if there isn't one that matches what I want the character to be? 

"I want to have a sort of hunter, woodsman character"
"So you're a Ranger."
"No, I don't want to be a Ranger; I want something with more edge, even more unshaven.  He knows herbs and tracking and stuff, but he doesn't have that whole 'Balance of Nature' thing going on.  He's about survival, not nature.  And he uses guns."

For that matter, what was Barrett's Job in FF7?  What was Cless' Job in Tales of Phantasia?  Harley in Chrono Cross? 

I think it's significant that FF started with a handful of Jobs that gradually increased over the next two or three games (I forget exactly which), and then they abandoned the Job system entirely.  Well, until Tactics, but (A) that's a tactical game and (B) it owes a great deal to OgreBattle.  And I also think that it's significant that the SaGa series has always had Job-like descriptors for the characters but they were all unique.

It's fine if you like it the way it is; just something to chew on.

-Marshall

That's a really good point, and I have to admit only a small fraction of classic 16-bit RPGs have a "job" system.  The vast majority of those games rather have an "archetype" specific to each character (for instance, Barrett of FF7 is a Barrett; there's just no one else like him in the game).  16-bit could definitely run this way, in which case it's up to the GM and player to negotiate the advancement of new moves.  I will have to think of some rules to support this (my guess is that you would make your archetype during character creation, then develop it as the game progresses), but the default game in my mind will likely involve the job system.

Galadrin wrote:
That's a really good point, and I have to admit only a small fraction of classic 16-bit RPGs have a "job" system.  The vast majority of those games rather have an "archetype" specific to each character (for instance, Barrett of FF7 is a Barrett; there's just no one else like him in the game).  16-bit could definitely run this way, in which case it's up to the GM and player to negotiate the advancement of new moves.  I will have to think of some rules to support this (my guess is that you would make your archetype during character creation, then develop it as the game progresses), but the default game in my mind will likely involve the job system.

jag wrote:

First, let me say that despite the fact that neither FF-type games nor the initial description of this game particular grab me, your playtest looks great, and almost makes me want to find some old Sega and play...

I think that is definitely a very flexible way to handle how unique characters advance, thanks for the suggestion jag!  I could already imagine the basic archetype trees ("damage magic", "status condition magic", "buffs", "breaks" etc).  At the same time, I want to avoid the dread D&D 3.0 "pre-plan your character's feats till you hate your min-max munchkin character" disease, so I will have to tweak this form of advancement heavily away from its D&D origins.

Ideally I would like to support BOTH the early Final Fantasy "Job list" type play and the later Final Fantasy "unique character archetype" play style, so maybe they should stay two separate options (which the GM and players decide on one or the other before the first session).

I will be running another playtest this weekend, time permitting.  Would you guys like to hear a recording of play rather than a write up?  Or both?

Evan wrote:

Ideally I would like to support BOTH the early Final Fantasy "Job list" type play and the later Final Fantasy "unique character archetype" play style, so maybe they should stay two separate options (which the GM and players decide on one or the other before the first session).

I will be running another playtest this weekend, time permitting.  Would you guys like to hear a recording of play rather than a write up?  Or both?

I wouldn't be able to listen to a recording (my bitrate's not up to it), but I'll sure read the next write-up.

Also, James' idea (or at least how I'm understanding it) of picking and choosing from fixed sets of trees rather than having trees from which you can pick-and-choose individual elements sounds like a good way to get the flexibility without the min-maxing.

-Marshall

Hey Evan,

You sent me your early playtest document for this game after I read your First Thoughts post on it. After I read over it I didn't have an opportunity to play it though, and I'll admit I forgot about it. This playtest report was awesome though! It sounds like a really great game. I'll see if I can get my group to playtest it some time soon.

Jag's idea about choosing from power-trees to build your own unique job, but having pre-made jobs as examples and quick-start options, sounds really good. In fact that is very similar to how I'm doing character creation in one of my own games.

I'm looking forward to your next playtest report.