Final Fantasy d6 game

[Zephyrus]

I'm withholding class suggestions until Dune can give me a better idea of what days/times he's considering. Don't want to count myself in only to find that I can't make it due to work/school. D:

[Merc]

I don't think it matters what day it is, I'll potentially be late if it starts at 6pm. If it starts at 6:30 or 7pm, I'm probably okay. Hopefully.

Work does seem to be winding down a bit at least, though not my need to stay late these past few days apparently.

I'm probably planning on a Warrior depending how this goes. Second choices include Ranger, Ninja, and Time Mage.

[Dracos]

Merc, to include me, it has to start at least that late :P

[Dracos]

Thinking Red mage, second choice thief.

Gotta admit, it feels less coherent/directional the further in I get.  Fuu.  Seems like it at least has rules for everything.

[Anastasia]

Oh wow, a new Final Fantasy! This is a great Christmas!

Chapter 1: Humble Beginnings.

Introduction

Long ago on the world of Gaya, there is a valley on the edge of civilization. Glacierwind Valley is a pleasant place to life, full of life and joy. Yet, the last few years have seen a rise in monsters coming from the mountains. Further, friendly monsters have grown hostile, resulting in yet more tragedies. Heroes gather to Glacierwind Valley to protect the innocent. Why are the monsters increasing? Does it have anything to do with the forgotten ruins of the Mysta Empire that are said to dot the mountains?

Glacierwind Valley

Map:

Spoiler: ShowHide

Glacierwind Valley is a free kingdom. The capital is Serrendale and it is ruled by King Grannot. It is split by the Zamarck River. Boats go as far south as Palsch before the river south becomes difficult to sail, and the southern swamps are unexplored due to a Malboro infestation. To the north lies the Zamarck Kingdom.

Serrandale (Riverside castle with docks): Capital and port of Glacierwind Valley. Best shopping in the valley, but the high quality shops require a special permit.
Sparrow's Tomb (Tomb in the western mountains, surrounded by snowy trees): Resting place of an unnamed hero of the Mystra Empire. Said to be haunted. At the least, it is known that zombies and ghouls favor the cave passage to Sparrow's Tomb.
Paslch (Two sided river town with the bridge): Ramshackle town of settlers. The bridge is patrolled by the military, but the town on either side of the river is much less regulated.
Pasturburg (Town in the southeastern plains): Largest collection of farms in the area. Generally quiet unless monsters come on down to make trouble.
Galimond (Forest castle): Old fortress left behind by the Mysta Empire, converted into a regional focus for the logging trade. The fortress is made of stone, but it's said that the inner parts are made of metal, of all things! But the common folk are banned from going deep within, so it's probably just bar gossip.
Various caves: The mountains of Glacierwind Valley are lousy with caves of all type. It's said they contain monsters, treasure and even unknown ruins of the Mysta Empire. The only thing for certain is the monsters, since many people who go exploring never come back.
Pasturburg Fens: To the south is swamps and rapids, infested by Malboros. There's little exploration of these lands for that reason. Malboros are powerful monsters, but they stay in their swamps.

The Heroes

You'll all start as level 1 heroes. You'll get a shop list to choose gear from once I know what equipment the party is going to use. Your background can be whatever you wish, as long as it reasonably fits into the setting and has you within the Glacierwind Valley. All classes are available to select. You can be any race you want, just run it by me first and take the Unusual Species ability if it's not humanoid.

I encourage all of you to work out a shared background so you're already grouped together. This is not essential and I'm willing to *coughrailroadcough* nudge you into a group, but I'd prefer it if all of you get together and work something out. You don't have to be childhood friends from the orphanage, just together now. Maybe you've formed an adventuring group or stay at the same inn or whatever.

House Rules

1. Rule of monster drops are special. Equipment dropped or stolen from monsters may be special and break the usual rules for equipment.
2. Rule of the drop system sucks. I'm using my own, d100 based percentile drop system in place of the flat 50% drop system. The exact numbers will be adjusted as I come to grasps with the system.
3. Rule of no grinding. You level up at fitting plot points and XP is not tallied. If this screws up any subsystems you're interested in, let me know and we'll work something out.
4. Rule of quotes and destiny. Everyone gets the 1 bonus point of destiny, as a quote is mandatory. I'd rather all of you get the point or none of you, rather than leaving it optional. It's not much effort anyway.

DM rulings

In the event of the DM needing to make a rules call, I'll generally take a quick look and make a ruling for the session. After the session I'll review it and change if it I was wrong or I feel it was a bad ruling. During the session I'm concerned with keeping things flowing, not getting into arguments over rule interpretations.

Scheduling

We'll run one day a week during the evenings. I'd like to aim for 7 PM as a starting time and 11 PM as an ending time, though this can be altered a bit. Monday through Friday our the days we have to choose from, let me know what days are good and bad for all of you. Advance warning, if we go with Monday or Thursday, we may need to change days come September. That's about 3/4ths of a year away, so just bear that in mind.

A tentative schedule is having character sheets done by January 6th. There's plenty of time as I know the holidays can be hectic. Sometime in the next week and a half will be a combat demo, and then we'll roll into the actual game.

In a related matter, I'd like us all to try and miss as few sessions as possible. Planar 2 died in a large part due to absenteeism. Let's not repeat that, y'all. If half or more of the PCs are absent from a session, or a PC that wholly has the spotlight that session and at my discretion, a session will be canceled. If you know you're going to miss a session at least a day before the session, you are responsible for arranging another PC to control your character in combat. I will not be running any PCs if the players are missing; they'll be handwaved away for the session instead. In the event of a sudden (day of session) absence and you don't have a chance to set up someone to run your PC, I'll set up something on your behalf.

I encourage all of you to bear this in mind and have arrangements set up and ready to go in case you miss a session.

DM nagging

Please post any questions you have to this thread (or our general discussion thread once we move to the game forum) instead of bothering me on IRC. This makes it easier for me to organize and harder to miss a question. It also saves me from answering the same question more than once in different PMs. You'd be surprised how often that happens. This doesn't apply during sessions, obviously.

Questions welcomed. So who's interested?

[VySaika]

Definitely in, of course.

I would prefer not wednesdays, but that's not a hard rule for me. Tuesday would be overall best, I think.

Primary char idea is a Monk, who fights with Battle Fan(Brawling class) and Scarf/Silk(Reach class) weapons. Has a very dance based martial art. Will be from the Autumn Temple, a training ground for monks and such in a far distant region, she's come to Glacierwind Valley as a good starting point for her big training journey. Grouping up with anyone else who isn't local would be easy for her, she'd cheerfully travel with anyone going the same direction. Grouping up with locals also easy, she's probably been bouncing from inn to inn dancing to entertain the patrons to pay for her room and socializing with p.much anyone who wants to talk to her(or looks interesting). If there's another warrior type, she could easily have gone "hey, you look strong! Let's have a match and see if it's just looks." and made friends after fighting in classic anime style.

[Nephrite]

I'd be fine with Tuesday. Monday would be all right, as well as the weekends.

I'm going to go with a Geomancer, the actual job skills TBD.

[Anastasia]

Okay, Tuesdays are off to an early lead.

Gate: Are you thinking dual wielding or having multiple weapon options? Sounds good otherwise.
Neph: Duly noted. I'd like to avoid the weekends for myriad reasons, so that tilts us towards Monday-Tuesday so far.

[VySaika]

Multiple weapon options. Definitely not dual wielding, though some ability to swap weapons without taking a turn so I can basically keep one of each on me and attack with either at any given time(though only one at a time) would be awesome. That can totally be something gotten later, though.

[Merc]

Pasturburg Fens: To the south is swamps and rapids, infested by Marlboros. There's little exploration of these lands for that reason. Marlboros are powerful monsters, but they stay in their swamps.

Damn those chain smoking monsters, ruining the south for everyone else!

You'll get a shop list to choose gear from once I know what equipment the party is going to use.

Just to clarify: We don't get to pick out starting gear and we actually have to shop it in the valley?

Or did you mean that you'll start generating shops once you know the kind of gear we're picking for our characters?

4. Rule of quotes and destiny. Everyone gets the 1 bonus point of destiny, as a quote is mandatory. I'd rather all of you get the point or none of you, rather than leaving it optional. It's not much effort anyway.

As I know your general opinion on things like hero points, which these also function as, how easy/hard will it be to get destiny in case we want to job change in the future?

I'd like to aim for 7 PM as a starting time and 11 PM as an ending time, though this can be altered a bit. Monday through Friday our the days we have to choose from, let me know what days are good and bad for all of you. Advance warning, if we go with Monday or Thursday, we may need to change days come September. That's about 3/4ths of a year away, so just bear that in mind.

My preference would be Thursday evening, although I can do any evening.

Assuming that the times are EST (safe bet), I'd also have a preference for starting 30 minutes later if possible, to help hedge bets for the days where I'm kept at work and still being able to make it on time or reasonably close anyway.

In a related matter, I'd like us all to try and miss as few sessions as possible. Planar 2 died in a large part due to absenteeism. Let's not repeat that, y'all.

As you've requested 4-5 players, I'd like to hold myself as a reserve player, I'll grab a slot if there's any open at the end. I can't wholly guarantee full availability due to work suckiness, although it should be clearing up around the time this game gets off the ground and running.

Questions welcomed.

Can we get dual wielding through the "Weapon Training" ability? The ability lets you get additional weapon categories, but Dual wielding section claims it's not a weapon category itself.

Then again, it also claims that besides Ninja, there's some job abilities that grant it...but I couldn't see any others from the universal list, and if one has to job change to pick up ability to dual wield (only ability I saw that grants dual wield was "Double Up" from Gambler btw), why not just go Ninja in the first place and not have to use up a job ability to get access to it? Seems odd.

Multiple weapon options. Definitely not dual wielding, though some ability to swap weapons without taking a turn so I can basically keep one of each on me and attack with either at any given time(though only one at a time) would be awesome. That can totally be something gotten later, though.

The Homebrew thread for that system has a Quick Draw property, though it's tier 2. You'd also need it on both weapons to get use out of both the way you want to.

Another option is the Gemini property, treating the fan and the silk are part of the same item...say, that the fan is the weighted end that does damage when the silk is used at a range. Gemini is not written very well, but it seems like it lets you get other weapon group properties as part of the weapon.

This also lets you consider the silk portion as a Ranged weapon instead of Reach weapon, which is probably what you would prefer if Monk normally had access to Ranged weapons. "Distance" property probably makes more sense for your intended use of a scarf/silk than "Critical Attack", I think?

Anyway, while Gemini is tier 2, because you're dealing with just one weapon now, you can combine it with the Heirloom job ability to let you get a tier 2 weapon and because it comes with two properties... Get gemini as one of the properties to get the scarf's default property, and the fan's default weapon property as the other property.

Lets you get both the scarf and fan at level 1, and later on when there's access to tier 2+ weapons, you can split them up and rely on quick draw instead so you can start to differentiate them. Has the minus side of eating up one of your job abilities though.

[Anastasia]

Damn those chain smoking monsters, ruining the south for everyone else!

Fixed. Thanks!

Just to clarify: We don't get to pick out starting gear and we actually have to shop it in the valley?

Or did you mean that you'll start generating shops once you know the kind of gear we're picking for our characters?

Level 1 characters start with 500 gil. You'll be able to buy your gear and supplies with that.

As I know your general opinion on things like hero points, which these also function as, how easy/hard will it be to get destiny in case we want to job change in the future?

There are built in ways to gain destiny points. Page 110 goes into detail here, but defeating a boss, job abilities, dramatic heroism (okay, that one is at my discretion), and goals all provide destiny points. I'm generally inclined to play destiny points as written, rather than hacking at the system with houserules. We'll see where we're at after the first chapter regarding destiny points. I may, and I emphasize may, allow class change with a reduced or eliminated destiny point cost.

Assuming that the times are EST (safe bet), I'd also have a preference for starting 30 minutes later if possible, to help hedge bets for the days where I'm kept at work and still being able to make it on time or reasonably close anyway.

That's fine with me. 7 to 11 or 730-1130 makes no practical difference for me.

Can we get dual wielding through the "Weapon Training" ability? The ability lets you get additional weapon categories, but Dual wielding section claims it's not a weapon category itself.

Then again, it also claims that besides Ninja, there's some job abilities that grant it...but I couldn't see any others from the universal list, and if one has to job change to pick up ability to dual wield (only ability I saw that grants dual wield was "Double Up" from Gambler btw), why not just go Ninja in the first place and not have to use up a job ability to get access to it? Seems odd.

No, Weapon Training doesn't allow dual wielding as far as I can determine. I agree it's odd but fitting with the games.

[Merc]

No, Weapon Training doesn't allow dual wielding as far as I can determine. I agree it's odd but fitting with the games.

*nods* I will probably be playing a ninja and job changing to warrior first chance then.

[Taishyr]

Post of interest being dropped. Debating between White Mage, Samurai and Dragoon Entertainer on my end - willing to hear arguments either way. (If I run White Mage, it's going to be somewhat offense-oriented.)

EDIT: Myeh, overdebating myself. Uncertain right now what I'm going with.

EDIT 2: White Mage it is, actually. For now.

[Anastasia]

As a note, I'd like to remind you all this is a new system for everyone. If your build ends up falling flat or not working how you thought it was going to, I'll allow tweaking at level up. So don't sweat experimenting with the system.

[Nephrite]

For the weapons, I have written down for myself a Tier 1 weapon and Tier 1 armor which comes out to 250, I assume that's just going to be the case regardless of what actual items you come up with?