Today we’re starting off a new Let’s Study series, this time focusing on a different kind of Fantasy Setting. Fabula Ultima labels itself as a TTJRPG, a clever take on tabletop RPGs and the obvious inspiration for the game, Japanese computer RPGs, or JRPGs.
When I first heard of Fabula Ultima, I was definitely intrigued, given that I did grow up playing a boatload of JRPGs, having been lucky enough to experience amazing games like Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI, even before the Playstation era. So when I heard someone was going to try to make a tabletop rpg whose purpose was to emulate the kind of feel in these, I just had to take a look.
Introduction
The opening chapter of the book walks through the basics, talking about what are TTRPGs, the default structure of this game being one where there is a Game Master in the group and the rest are Players. It’s a decent explanation and one that reads quickly without sounding particularly pretentious.
What I did like is a section called “What’s it about?” Where they talk about the themes common to JRPGs and the stories that Fabula Ultima is engineered to handle. The word “Hero” gets thrown around a lot, “Heroic Action” “Heroes and Villains”, “Heroic Destiny” among them, but I don’t mind it so much.
What did catch my eye though is that there is no default setting. The assumption in Fabula Ultima is that world is something that that play group puts together. To help guide things and keep thing somewhat thematically “JRPG” in flavor, we’re introduced to The Eight Pillars.
The Eight Pillars
While there aren’t any default settings, Fabula Ultima manages to guide some semblance of JRPG flavor through the core principles they’ve called The Eight Pillars:
- Ancient Ruins and Harsh Lands
- A World in Peril
- Clashing Communities
- Everything Has a Soul
- Magic AND Technology
- Heroes of Many Shapes and Sizes
- It’s all about the Heroes
- Mystery, Discovery and Growth
These common themes are found in all Fabula Ultima settings, regardless of what kind of Fantasy it is. Speaking of which, this section is immediately followed up with three types of Fantasy that the group could choose to play:
- High Fantasy
- Natural Fantasy
- Techno Fantasy
Each of these is given a paragraph that discusses the mood, before launching into themes and protagonists you’d find in these. There’s also a paragraph each dedicated to locations, magic and antagonists that you’d find in each.
It’s an interesting read, and you can tell just how much love the author has for these games to be able to put these together. Of course I don’t think you need to pick a lane, lot’s of JRPGs tend to mash these up from time to time, anyway.
Game Materials and the Roles of a Player and Game Master
The last part of this chapter talks about what you’ll need to play. Fabula Ultima is pretty traditional with the use of tokens to track some metacurrencies: Fabula Points for players, and Ultima Points for Villains. We’ll get to those later in the mechanics discussion.
As for dice, Fabula Ultima uses the full set of polyhedrals.
Players and GMs are then given a primer on how to get ready to play. This is pretty self-explanatory with advice such as “Read This Book”, which is, admittedly not something players always do. GMs on the other hand are given some rather familiar sounding advice, such as ‘Play to find out what happens” and “Ask questions, build on the answers”
Overall pretty decent starting advice, a good way to set a group towards succeeding.
Impressions
So far Fabula Ultima is off to a pretty strong start. The feel is completely spot-on, and while I’m nowhere near any mechanics yet, I’m getting a sense that this attention to detail by the author means that we’re going to see a strong sense of emulation… which means a lot more detail than your usual narrative or rules-lite game can support.
We’ll find out when we get to Part 2, where we tackle the game rules!
I hope this series has been of help to you. If you’re interested in buying a copy of Fabula Ultima, you can get it in PDF over at DriveThruRPG for $17.90
You can also purchase the books from the Need Games! Website
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