#Fabula ultima

[finitestateai]

Felt like doing some pixel art today, so here's "Conceptual Weapon Akashic Nevermore", a Fabula Ultima character who's actually a humanoid-android projection of a weapon wielded by another one of the characters (The weapon can transform between "Godsmasher Form" and "Reaper Launcher Form").

[sisweetmanart]

Perpetua Parties: Eastern and Western Continent

[elkinboots]

the first of my silly (extremely anime) interpretations of the perpetua characters in full - Caoimhe and Antistrophe! Thank you once again to everyone who maintains the wiki, truly the best wiki to ever exist

[maxdegames]

Have been sick these past few days, but being unable to work is depressing so I tried to kill time by making scenes in Foundry for Fabula Ultima. I think the results are turning good so here's a breakdown (as well as links for the ressources and modules used) for people who would be interested. The basis is generaly 2 to 4 tiles to represent the background, as well as a tile used as a roof tile for the character portraits.

The sort of character portraits menu is made of different interface items from Fire Emblem Three Houses. The portraits themselves are easily swappable placeholders, these ones are from Final Fantasy War of the Visions. Each portrait has an invisible tile which opens a corresponding character sheet using Monk's active tile trigger.

The backgrounds come from Fire Emblem Heroes. They all come already separated in several layers, and surprisingly most of them loop perfectly when it comes to overlays (such as dust or smoke) and underlays (ie. clouds, skies). They're an incredible ressource for Fabula Ultima combat screens! To have the skies and overlay move, I used Ripper's Tile Scroll module. It's super easy to use. If you have several overlays (like in the factory scene), placing the moving one between the immobile ones adds a sense of depth to the scene with very little effort.

For the rain and the snow, it's simply using ghost's FXMaster module. The FEH backgrounds also have a few panels of snow, cherry blossom petals, flowers, motes of light, etc... I don't think they'll look as good, but some of them can have their use. In a volcanic environment, having motes of fiery lights constantly raising from the bottom of the screen to the top using tile scroll could work to denote heat.

As for the tokens, I simply used the ones made for the quickstart by Tiny-Overlord. Flying Minotaur's portrait maker is also an incredible ressource for this kind of setup. As the name states, it can even be used to make portraits and not just token, so you could make your NPCs with it too. The mech on the left comes from Final Fantasy VI.

Have fun saving the world, adventurers!

[valtharr]

In the last few days, I've now had two run-ins with people on this site regarding the idea of a TTRPG's mechanics and rules impacting the roleplay aspect of said game. And from what I can tell, these people - and people like them - have the whole concept backwards.

I think people who only ever played D&D and games like it, people who never played a Powered by the Apocalypse or Forged in the Dark system, or any other system with narratively-minded mechanics, are under one false impression:

Mechanics exist to restrict.

Seeing how these people argue, what exactly they say, how they reason why "mechanics shouldn't get in the way of roleplaying," that seems to be their core idea: Rules and mechanics are necessary evils that exist solely to "balance" the game by restricting the things both players and GMs can do. The only reasons why someone would want to use mechanics in their RPG is to keep it from devolving into

"I shot you, you're dead!" "No, I'm wearing bulletproof armor!" "I didn't shoot bullets, I shot a laser!" "Well, the armor's also laserproof!" "Nuh-uh, my lasers are so hot that they melt any armor!" "My armor's a material that can't melt!" And so on. Because we have rules, the players can't just say "we beat this challenge", and neither can the GM say "you haven't beaten this challenge." Because the rules are clear, the rules are obvious, the rules tell you what you can and can't do, and that's it.

So obviously, when the idea of mechanics directly interacting with the roleplay - generally seen as the most free and creative part of a TTRPG - seems at best counterintuitive, at worst absolutely wrong. Hearing this idea, people might be inclined to think of a player saying "I'm gonna do X", just for the evil, restrictive mechanics to come in and say "no, you can't just do X! you first have to roll a Do X check! But you also did Y earlier, so you have to roll the Did Y Penalty Die, and if that one comes up higher than your Do X die, you have to look at this table and roll for your Doing X If You Previously Did Y Penalty! But, if you roll double on that roll..."

But like... that's not how it works. Roleplay-oriented mechanics don't exist to restrict people from roleplaying, they're there to encourage people to roleplay!

Let's go with a really good example for this: The flashback mechanic from Blades in the Dark (and games based on Blades in the Dark).

In BitD, you can declare a flashback to an earlier point in time. Could be five minutes ago, could be fifty years ago, doesn't matter. You declare a flashback, you describe the scene, you take some stress (the equivalent of damage) and now you have some kind of edge in the present, justified by what happened in the flashback. For example, in the Steeplechase campaign of the Adventure Zone podcast, there was a scene where the PCs confronted a character who ended up making a scandalous confession. One of the players declared a flashback, establishing that, just before they walked in, his character had pressed the record button on a portable recording device hidden in his inner coat pocket. Boom, now they have a recording of the confession.

How many times have you done something like this in a D&D game? How many times did your DM let you do this? I think for most players, that number is pretty low. And for two reasons:

The first, admittedly, has to do with restrictions. If you could just declare that your character actually stole the key to the door you're in front of in an off-screen moment earlier, that would be pretty bonkers. Insanely powerful. But, because BitD has specific mechanics built around flashbacks, there are restrictions to it, so it's a viable option without being overpowered.

But secondly, I think the far more prevalent reason as to why players in games without bespoke flashback mechanics don't utilize flashbacks is because they simply don't even think of them as an option. And that's another thing mechanics can do: Tell players what they (or their characters) can do!

Like, it's generally accepted that the players only control what their characters do, and the GM has power over everything else. That's a base assumption, so most players would never think of establishing facts about the larger world, the NPCs, etc. But there are games that have explicit mechanics for that!

Let's take Fabula Ultima as another example: In that game, you can get "Fabula Points" through certain means. They can then spend those points to do a variety of things. What's literally the first thing on the list of things Fabula Points let you do? "Alter the Story - Alter an existing element or add a new element." I've heard people use this to decide that one of the enemies their group was just about to fight was actually their character's relative, which allowed them to resolve the situation peacefully. I again ask: In your average D&D session, how likely is it that a player would just say "that guy is my cousin"? And if they did, how likely is it that the GM accepts that? But thanks to the Fabula Point mechanic making this an explicit option, thanks to rules explicitly saying "players are allowed to do this", it opens up so many possibilities for story developments that simply would not happen if the GM was the only one allowed to do these things.

And it's only possible because the mechanics say it is. Just how your wizard casting fireball is only possible because the mechanics say it is.

[kusogitsune]

A very lucky and optimistic girl, full sized under the cut

[dice-wizard]

I really need everyone to stop making things in 5e and start making them in Fabula Ultima instead, thanks in advance.

[fleetingmotivation]

Leda, ex-maid and hunter of porcelain wrapped void that has lived too long. My fabula character, designed entirely based on maximizing attack count!

[chaospyromancy]

my Fabula Ultima PC Maellery and her rival Artemisia, the Thorn. as soon as i saw "rival" was a trait you could pick for a PC i had to jump on that. from their complementary color palettes u can deduce there is toxic yuri afoot, obviously

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played Fabula Ultima ?

By Emanuele "RoosterEma" Galletto

Want to play a game inspired by Final Fantasy, NieR, Octopath Traveller, Tales of ? This is the game for you.

Create the world together, live an epic tale

Mix classes together to make your own character (15 classes in the base books, more with the supplements and the author's patreon).

Books coming to help you play in differents types of setting : High Fantasy, Techno Fantasy and Natural Fantasy.

[toothmonster]

benny for a fabula ultima campaign

[theinstagrahame]

Another big month of TTRPG mail calls! Got a bunch of zines, some Crowd funders, and treated myself to a book or two when I got my new job lined up.

Here's what's exciting from the last month:

Death of the Author: I've said before that we (as in I) love the work of Sam "@goblinmixtape" Leigh, and before I got into TTRPGs, I wanted to do fiction writing (I found that I got from TTRPGs what I wanted from writing). So the pitch felt like an instant yes: A solo RPG about writing fiction, and the relationship between author and character.

The World we Left Behind: Sam Leigh put this together apparently for a Ballet, which is incredibly cool, and then put it as an add-on for the Death of the Author campaign. Needless to say, I was all in.

Urban Shadows 2e: Backed this on Kickstarter before Magpie did the A:tlA campaign, and it's finally showed up now. If I'm honest, my interest has waned, but I know US 1e was really good.

Zephyr: The art and the concept behind this are great, and I know that the creator makes some really neat mechanics.

Glitch: I picked this (well, 0 edition of Glitch) up on Kickstarter years ago, because the pitch was so good, but I didn't get a hard copy then. Managed to use some DTRPG money I had to rectify this mistake. Jenna Katerin Moran's work is very philosophically interesting, but I was hooked by the notion of being a demigod who knows that there's more going on, but is going to deal with street level concerns.

The Flood: Also a Moran game, and came to be as part of The Far Roofs (which I'm sure will be featured in a future mail bag post). There's a beauty to Jenna's work, a blending of metaphor and reality that I'm really drawn to, so I'm very curious about how farming poetry will work out.

Reach of the Roach God: When I landed my new job, I pretty quickly landed on what I wanted to pick up. I found out about the Thousand Thousand Island books a little too late, so I wanted to make sure I snagged this beautiful volume before I couldn't find it anymore. It's a real triumph of a book, and I can't wait to dig deeper.

Ironsworn: Sundered Isles: I am on record as loving Ironsworn and Starforged. What if instead of Space, we had Pirates?! Hell yeah, sign me up. Ironsworn/Starforged are probably the solo RPGs I've had the most success playing, in that I got furthest into these before getting distracted by other things. So maybe I'll get myself into another one?

The Wizard's Library: I've been really intrigued by Vincent Baker's Wizards Grinoire series, although I've read (and not yet played) only the first. It's got a neat reverse relationship, where the "GM" player is the titular Wizard, and the other players run the supporting cast, helping the Wizard delve into the grimoires that they discover Fortunately, this book contains more grimoires for the titular wizard to go through, and with them, more dangers for the wizard to face.

Fabula Ultima: I've heard only good things about this self-billed "TT-JRPG" and I'm really curious about it. Final Fantasy and the Pokemon series both being such long-term loves of mine, I'm very curious to see how this one runs. (Also picked up the Quickstart for a future Mailbag.)

Wet Grandpa: Listened to an episode of RTFM about this, after seeing the name around for years, and finally picked it up. I always found the title off-putting, and really couldn't get past it until my favorite TTRPG Book Club Podcast dragged me through the cover. The physical edition is a beautiful, rugged-looking book and my mind keeps reeling at the possibility of making players make hard choices.

Psychodungeon: I really dug the pitch, and Kayla Dice makes some really fun and interesting games. Be part of a team that helps people manage their trauma after it manifests into a psychic dungeon. What intrigued me most was the use of the Belonging Outside Belonging system for this, which I think really opens up some interesting possibilities for the Workplace Drama angle, and the GMless aspect could lead to some extremely fascinating dungeons.

Stewpot: This one as a no-brainer. I've got lots of friends who are into the "cozy" genre of game, and Stewpot has been The Name in fantasy coziness for a while (for lack of a better terminology, as I know it's a loaded term). The special edition (and wooden dice) were too tempting, even though the crowdfunder hit during my Freelance Era, and cost a few extra...

Any%: I watched the HBomberGuy video about Speedrunning (shortly after his Plagiarism video dropped), and developed a soft spot for the hobby. I genuinely couldn't do it, I'm too ADHD to try the same thing over and over again in hopes of shaving a fraction of a second off of my response time. But, I'm glad that people are doing it. So, a solo RPG that plays with speedrunning and its terminology seems like a great way to feel like I'm doing it without all the Bad Brain Juices.

Pregame Lobby volumes 1 and 3: I also wanted to grab these before they became too hard to find (I can't find anywhere that has Volume 2 at the moment). I really like the vibes of .Dungeon, it feels like a game that evokes a period in my life where I was curious about the Internet and tried just about every MMORPG that wasn't WoW or EverQuest. I'm honestly struggling to not pick up the recent Spiral Bound edition, despite getting the hardback 2e, because the art and layout looks goddamn incredible.

And these books are from the Plus One EXP Zine Club, which is a Zine of the Month Club, hand-picked and hand-curated. So I'm excited because I don't actually know much about them.

Metalepsis

Fire & Stone

Hapsy Kordo's Kitchen Horrors

This Old House

Hive of the Crawling Creeps

Fallen from Grace

[nightshadowcat]

Yesterday our master introduced the villain of our rpg campaign and I drew the character design

[dead-finch-420]

comm for @beyondcreation.bsky.social !! thank you for letting me paint your blorbo 🥹🫶 I had a lot of fun with this!

[genpitre]

been playing fabula ultima with some friends for a couple months now and it’s been fun to try a new system and style of gaming! Seven’s an occultist sky pirate on the run with classes in spiritist, entropist and wayfarer

recently she had a dream that seems to be from someone else’s eyes - Ena Kydan…. wondering who that could be….

[dragonkid11]

Fabula Ultima Atlas: Natural Fantasy is an official Fabula Ultima supplement focused around Natural Fantasy theme, where the ecosystem is rendered imbalanced by an outside factor, whether magical, technological, or just humans. As the common folks that live a simple life in these lands, you seek to set what was wrong right again, and keep the living world, living.