d6 RPG

INTRODUCTION "The world is veiled in darkness. The wind stops, the sea is wild, and the earth begins to rot. The people wait, their only hope, a prophecy...." - Final Fantasy

The FFRPG originally began life as a project founded by Scott Tengelin in February of 1995. Development began with a small initial group of designers and administrators consisting of Tengelin, Martin Drury, Chris Pomeroy, and Matthew Martin. After many years and changing of hands, it became a fully-realized dream – the current third edition is hosted at http://www.returnergames.com/ - a project spearheaded by Samuel Banner as the lead developer. I highly recommend it.

However, I found that the ruleset presented in the Returner’s FFRPG was too difficult for tabletop use and frustratingly restrictive. Thus, I began a slow conversion of the rules systems into something that I felt was more conducive for casual play. But, as things often do, the more work I put into the system the more complex the rules became, until finally they took on a life of their own and became a total system modification. I forged on ahead. I attempted to replicate combat rules that accurately reflected the feel and style of the Final Fantasy series. I attempted to create a world of epic battles and grand possibilities, but most importantly, a world of heroic action. Titanic struggles between good and evil for the fate of the world is an accurate summary of the typical adventurer's day, and that's just before breakfast.

Whether or not I succeeded is up for debate, but I find myself mostly content with this ebook in its current incarnation. At least for now.

This work is free distribution and not for sale under any circumstances.

I hope you enjoy playing the Final Fantasy 2d6 as much as I enjoyed creating it.

The Final Fantasy Role-Playing Game is not affiliated with or owned by or any of its affiliated companies. Much of the material here is copyrighted by Square Enix and its various contributors such as . A portion of the copyrighted material that appears here (such as images) are asserted to be Fair Use under international copyright law.

ACCREDITATIONS

I would like to thank the following contributors for their artwork and assistance: Kediodrick Artico Mikajima Pu-sama Moon Goddess Studios Arvalis B. Jador Aikurisu ni6htmare01 UdonNodu RJ. Palmer Zoken Nibelwolf Xiaman Stefana Tserk Lurazeda Rusty001 Inkvenom Jedi Art Trick Kanoe-Kun Rhineville Shadow-Shasuka Ex-HK CBJ3 Khaamar AnHellica Blurmage Chibiniko Dsasec Pamansaz Grrrod Amansazz Kurko Boltsi WhiteRaven90

Chris Hunsberger (http://questingraven.deviantart.com) graciously re-provided the images for the racial profiles used in this book, having previously been designed for the original Returners’ system.

Additional very special thanks to Lovelydagger of deviantart.com, who is a true genius.

“Black Mage” (p.23) and “White Mage” (p.64) images courtesy of Dustin “OZKai” Wilkinson (ozkai.deviantart.com/)

Beta testing took place on http://www.rpol.net, and many enthusiastic members of the Giant in the Playground forums assisted greatly during the design process. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the following users of both online communities for their support, interest, and feedback throughout.

False Truce Shei-kun ArenTrel Ggrypwolf ThienCatVu Iron Pyrite Ironox Yurim Wings of War Yomandas Dark Siren Sally Kazuki Jack of Sticks The Daily Nissan RPGFantasySquare Tabby Kat Shogunboy Irish Ninja Chappu Vagrant Angel kckolbe

Extra special thanks to Steph (Tacit), Monica (Mitsu), Derek (DirtyDeerock), Gabe (Tezghul), Joe (Phyrrus) and especially Josh (Uter). No thanks whatsoever to Troy.

Index Chapter 1 – p.1 – Gameplay Chapter 7 – p.129 - The World ….…p.131 – Final Fantasy I Chapter 2 – p.3 – Character Creation ….…p.133 – Final Fantasy II ….…p.4 – Races ….…p.134 – Final Fantasy III ….…p.12 – Attributes ….…p.136 – Final Fantasy IV ….…p.15 – Characters Above 1st Level ….…p.138 – Final Fantasy V ….…p.139 – Final Fantasy VI Chapter 3 – p.16 – Jobs ….…p.144 – Final Fantasy VII ….…p.18 – Black Mage ….…p.146 – Final Fantasy VIII ….…p.20 – Blue Mage ….…p.148 – Final Fantasy IX ….…p.23 – Dark Knight ….…p.150 – ….…p.25 – Dragoon ….…p.154 – Final Fantasy XI ….…p.27 – Engineer ….…p.156 – Final Fantasy XII ….…p.30 – Entertainer ….…p.160 – Final Fantasy XIII ….…p.32 – Fighter ….…p.162 – ….…p.34 – Freelancer ….…p.36 – Gambler Chapter 8 – p.165 – Magic ….…p.39 – Geomancer …….p.168 – Black Magic ….…p.44 – Monk ….…p.173 – White Magic ….…p.47 – Ninja ….…p.178 – Blue Magic ….…p.49 – Paladin ….…p.181 – Time Magic ….…p.51 – Ranger ….…p.186 – Arts ….…p.53 – Red Mage ….…p.188 – Summoning ….…p.55 – Samurai ….…p.58 – Thief Chapter 9 – p.204 – Beastiary ….…p.60 – Time Mage ….…p.62 – White Mage A blank character sheet is provided at the end of this book.

Chapter 4 – p.64 – Defining a Hero ….…p.64 – Shared Abilities ….…p.68 – Skills ….…p.74 – Destiny ….…p.76 – Summoning

Chapter 5 – p.79 – Equipment ….…p.81 – Weapons Categories ….…p.83 – Buying and Building Weapons ….…p.87 – Rare Weapons ….…p.91 – Legendary Weapons ….…p. 95 – Armor ….…p. 97 – Sample Adventuring Gear ….…p. 101 – Accessories and Ammunition ….…p. 104 – Synthesis ….…p. 106 – Cooking ….…p. 107 – Grafts

Chapter 6 – p.110 – Combat ….…p.113 – Improbable Weapons ….…p.117 – Status Effects ….…p.119 – Leveling Up ….…p. 121 – Recovery and Death ….…p. 123 – Limit Breaks ….…p.127 – Non-Combat Challenges

For Awtan

CHAPTER I: GAMEPLAY "Know, and prepare for battle." - Prof. Bordam Daravon

The following section offers an overview of the basic mechanics of the Final Fantasy d6, and includes many important concepts and game terms. Although some of these explanations may be familiar to experienced roleplayers, much of the information presented here will be expanded on in the remainder of the book. We suggest you take a moment to familiarize yourself with this material before moving on.

What Is Final Fantasy, Anyway? Final Fantasy is a series of more than thirty console RPGs and two MMORPGs that currently ranks as sixth-best selling video game series in the world. Though each story in the series is independent, there are numerous recurring themes and elements such as airships, well-known monsters and heroic save- the-world storylines. It is a series where the fundamental well-known limits of human capability are casually ignored and androgynous villains threaten the world with fully functional relics from lost civilizations, and only a ragtag team of heroes almost universally under the age of thirty are competent (or incompetent) enough to make a difference. They are stories about good versus evil, twisted technology and heroic perseverance, duality, self-sacrifice, camaraderie and love, and taking on truly legendary enemies with your seven-foot sword and magical umbrella.

What Do I Need To Play? Other than this free PDF, you mean? Like most pen-and-paper RPGs, you need dice – in this case, a handful of common, run-of-the-mill six-sided dice will do the trick. You’ll usually want two per player but having extras is a good idea, and perhaps a single four-sided dice to calculate percentile chances if you want to get fancy.

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When do I Roll the Dice? Throughout the game, your character will likely try to do things that aren’t exactly everyday mundane tasks. We rely on the random results of dice rolls for determining everything from how injured your enemies become after hitting them with your sword, to whether or not your character is able to swim against the current. From now on, we’ll abbreviates all dice rolls as d[number of sides]; thus a 6-sided die would be called a 'd6'. A number before the 'd' indicates that more than one die is used – '2d6' simply means two six-sided dice are rolled and their totals are added together. A number after the type of die, like 'd6+2', means that that number is added to the result of the roll. If the d6 comes up as a 5, for example, the total score would be 7.

Complications In many game systems which use d20s, a result of 1 is a spectacular, automatic failure, where a roll of 20 is an automatic success. In the FFd6, which uses a 2d6 roll for the majority of checks, there is a chance that the result will come up with both dice landing on sixes. In combat, this dice result means that the character performs a never-miss Critical Hit and possibly a Limit Break. More on this later…for now, all you need to know is that a pair of sixes is usually great news when it comes to combat. For skill checks however, such a roll does NOT automatically counts as an automatic success. Players can do truly preposterous things at higher levels within the rules of the system, and it takes more than just a lucky roll to make a character’s (possibly crazy) wishes a reality.

When both dice land on 1s, this is called a Complication. In combat, a Complication means the character automatically misses his attack no matter how accurate he might normally be, but there’s never more dire consequences. On skill checks, Complications get a little more…well, complicated. Since Final Fantasy heroes are often beyond beginner’s mistakes, rolling nothing but 1s means outside influence or fluke happenstance ruined whatever the character was trying to do - such as the guards coming to investigate what all that noise is about. This is a chance for the GM to spice up the story with new problems arising to supplement the old ones. Not only is your airship spiraling out of control, but one of the engines is now on fire!...and so on. See p.69 to learn more about Complications and how they work.

Random Targets and Percentile Rolls Often, the FFd6 will call for a random target to be chosen. A fair way to determine this would be to have all eligible targets roll 2d6, with the lowest roller ending up as the target. When the system states that an effect has a 50% or 25% of occurring, you could resolve this by rolling a 1d4…or continuing with your normal 2d6 dice. A 25% chance is 9 or higher on 2d6, a 50% chance is 7 or higher, and a 75% chance is 5 or higher. Use whatever method is easiest for you and your group!

Jobs Every character belongs to a single ‘Job’ in the FFd6 to determine what they can do, and what they’ll be able to contribute to an adventuring party. Black Mages are fearsome users of destructive elemental energies, where White Mages are healers and protectors. Spear-wielding, gravity-defying Dragoons soar the skies even as Geomancers tap into the very powers of the earth.

Abilities Each Job is distinguished from others by a unique pool of talents, collectively called Abilities. These range from the capacity to cast magic, to being call forth various effects with a Gambler’s supernatural slot machines, to strike with a sudden ferocity, or steal from a hapless foe. All Jobs start with four Abilities; two of which are automatic and specific to each job (known as Epic and Innate abilities), and two of which are chosen upon character creation – either from the Job Ability list, or the Shared Ability list which all characters have access to. As they advance in their adventuring careers, characters may continue to obtain more abilities from these lists.

Sometimes abilities will even specify they can be taken more than once, and improve for each time a character chooses to do so.

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CHAPTER II: CHARACTER CREATION "Now! This is it! Now is the time to choose! Die and be free of pain, or live and fight your sorrow! Now is the time to shape your stories! Your fate is in your hands! THIS IS YOUR STORY." - Auron

Step One: Concept The first and most obvious step is to start giving some thought to the character you are planning on playing. At this point you will probably be painting with fairly broad strokes -- 'neurotic Black Mage with a troubled past' or 'narcissistic, charismatic Thief' are some basic examples of concepts that could be spun out into a well-defined character with a bit of thought. However, a concept is nothing more than the base of a character -- in order to start fleshing out the person behind the idea, details you should settle on as early as possible include:

Name In a universe populated by heroes with monikers like , Zidane Tribal or Laguna Loire, a good name can go a long way towards making a memorable character. Ideally, a good name should be evocative and a little unusual.

Age Age nearly always equates to 'experience'; often drawing the fine line between a fresh-faced adventurer brat and a grizzled, world-weary veteran. Most heroes will be of young adulthood for their species, though there are exceptions on both ends. Especially youthful characters, as a result of their age, are generally weaker but more charismatic. Conversely, older characters tend to be weaker but more knowledgeable. Aside from the effect this might have on the character's Attributes, characters of either type will encounter serious social discrimination from same-species people around them; comments like 'old-timer' and 'squirt' are likely to follow them everywhere they go, and some will actually refuse to take them seriously regardless of how many times they prove themselves.

Race Humes make up the largest population of most worlds, but there are many other races that populate the universe of Final Fantasy. With GM approval, you could play anything from a cuddly to a lizardlike Bangaa.

Job A character's chosen Job helps determines his or her Abilities, their Hit and Magic Points, and a whole slew of other factors. For this reason, choosing a Job is the most important decision a player makes during the character creation process. Jobs are presented in full detail in Chapter III.

Appearance Although a character’s physical features, height, weight, build, and hair, eye and skin color are important, remember that a character's appearance is as a much a measure of their 'style' as anything else. Do they lean towards all-concealing black cloth, or a wardrobe consisting entirely of loud pastels? What about jewelry or other distinguishing features such as tattoos? How does the character carry themselves, and what impression do the character's general posture and expression give others?

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Quote A good quote is just as effective at establishing a character as any number of descriptive paragraphs. This can be anything from an often overused catchphrase ('...Whatever.') to a short and pithy comment typical of the character's general outlook on life ('I’m not a thief, I’m a treasure hunter!'). At the GM's discretion, simply filling out a character sheet complete with a Quote is enough to award 1 EXP at the start of a new game, as opposed to a full character back-story. (As you’ll learn later on, we don’t put a lot of stock in character backstories. While this might earn us a few disapproving looks, we feel that where your character is going and what you’ll become is far more important than what you’ve accomplished off- screen before the game begins.)

Step Two: Race The world of Final Fantasy is populated by an odd assortment of humanoids and monsters. Over the course of many games, the mantle of world-savior has variously fallen on the shoulders of rat-girls, cat- robots, feral sasquatches, moon-people, and other creatures too strange to describe in just a handful of words. The races are diverse and unique, some more powerfully built or naturally smarter than others – however, for the purposes of this game, choosing to play as a non-Hume race (if your GM allows it) does not change the character’s attributes. The most powerful yeti could have the same strength as the smallest moogle, all depending on how you choose to build your character.

Each race grants a slight bonus to a character, and if a player wishes to propose a new race, he and the GM should work together to decide a suitable bonus.

The following pages describe a handful of standard Final Fantasy races, and suggest a bonus for each one. We’re just barely scratching the surface of possibilities here however, so don’t be afraid to get creative!

Suggested Bonus Abilities Humes: Additional HP Elvaan: +1 ACC, Military Training Galka: +2 Synthesis Viera: +2 Awareness Lalafell: +1 Escape, Additional MP : +1 Negotiate, Limited Flight Android: ‘Construct’ type, Start play with biomechanical Grafts.

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HUME

Wildly diverse and infinitely tenacious, their ability to make a home in even the most inhospitable of environments has made Humes the standard against which all other races are measured. Resourceful, stubborn and proud, their goals and desires are as diverse as they are.

Typical Height Typical Weight 1.6 – 1.8m (Male) 68 – 102kg (Male) 1.5 – 1.7m (Female) 52 – 91kg (Female)

Hair Colors Lifespan Blond, black, brown, Young is 5 -16 years old. auburn, white Average is 17 - 59 years old. Eye Colors Old is 60 - 90 years old. Brown, blue, green

Society As it develops, Hume society inevitably gravitates towards government of the masses headed by a single leader. In primitive societies, this may be an elder or high priest; in more advanced circles, a president, King, or Emperor. As a result, the aspects of a given Hume society tend to reflect in its leadership; an altruistic king begets a benevolent populace, whereas power-hungry emperors typically breed a harsh and militaristic one. Stratification is a common feature of Hume civilization, pitting rich against poor, believers against non-believers, aristocracy against peasantry, education against ignorance. This often leads to deep and powerful inequalities; ‘class’ can be as much of a identifying and motivating factor as a spark for conflict.

Roleplaying Hume personalities are largely shaped by upbringing and social backgrounds, and can be as varied and complex as the cultures that spawned them. Background, too, affects choice of profession; characters from rough-and-tumble surroundings may turn to the sword – or a life of crime – to make ends meet, while those with wealth and education seek out loftier callings. Interaction between different social strata can be fraught with tension; for rich sophisticates, the lower classes are ignorant boors, while the poor view the wealthy as arrogant and utterly detached from reality.

Language Humes invented the Common Tongue, with regional accents ranging from the mild to the incomprehensible; a trained ear can often pick out a speaker’s nationality and education with only a handful of sentences. Hume scholars who dabble in various other languages often point out how the Common Tongue has picked up a smattering of slang, curses, and exclamations from different languages altogether and incorporated them into everyday speech.

Bonuses For the most part, Humes are a tough and hardy people. They receive an additional +3 Hit Points per level. In addition, they never suffer the effects of racial discrimination or automatic social stigmatism when traveling – other races have come to the conclusion that Humes are as diverse as they are many, and one cannot judge a single member of the race by the actions of another.

Jobs Humes run the gamut from sly and crafty to noble and virtuous, and there’s no distinct Job that the race favors over any other. Gamblers are more commonly Hume than any other race – perhaps this is a direct link to the carefree, chaotic lives they lead.

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