Epic stories of larger-than-life heroes destined to accomplish great deeds fighting against fearsome villains and tragic antagonists! Fantasy worlds brimming with magic, wondrous locations, and uniquely bizarre monsters! Challenging battles that will call for clever tactics, cooperation with allies, and tricks up your sleeve to win! If you’ve played Japanese roleplaying games like Bravely Default, Chrono Trigger, Granblue Fantasy, Ocotopath Traveler, or (duh) Final Fantasy, the premise might be quite familiar indeed. This, however, is no video game. Neither will it take you through a predetermined story, however many branches it may have, thought up by writers and enabled by coders you’ll never meet. Instead, grab some dice and prepare to put your own tabletop twist on the genre you love, with a story and world of your own creation. Welcome to Fabula Ultima, created by Emanuele Galletto and published by Need Games!

Base Mechanics

Designed as a ‘Table Talk JRPG”, Fabula Ultima originally got its start as a hack of Ryuutama and remains partially based on it, to the point that it was created with the ‘advisement of, permission from, and with the complete final approval of’ original creator Atsuhiro Okada and English-translation-publisher Kotodama Heavy Industries. As a result, long-time CHG readers (and listeners) are going to recognize a lot of the basic bones of the system.

Characters have four attributes: Dexterity [DEX], Insight [INS], Might [MIG], and Willpower [WLP]. Each has a value rated as a size of polyhedral die, ranging from d6 to d12. When it comes to making any kind of check, you’re always rolling two dice, and the action you’re undertaking will help determine which two attributes you’re using. Attacking with a dagger might be [DEX + INS], resisting pain or fatigue would be [MIG + WLP], and remembering useful information can be done with [INS + INS]. You roll the two dice, total them up, and deal with any +/-X modifiers to get the final result, which is then compared to a set Difficulty Level; if the result is equal to or higher than the DL, you succeed! The High Roll, that being the higher result between the two dice, may then be used to determine the effect of the success, such as with damage: if you rolled a d8 +d10 and got a 6 and a 9, 9 would be the HR.

Generally speaking a success is a success in Fabula Ultima, but there are some nuances to it. If both of your dice show the same number that is 6 or higher, it’s a critical success which also gives you an opportunity. Said opportunity can be spent in a number of ways including inflicting status effects, gaining information, creating an emotional Bond, or a Plot Twist! If both dice show a result of 1, it’s a fumble and the opposition gets an opportunity instead (although there’s a silver lining we’ll touch upon shortly). If the activity being done might take more than one success, the game has imported in the Clocks familiar to those who have played Blades in the Dark and its Forged games. With four to twelve sections, Clocks can be used for all sorts of things. Some examples provided here include the completion of a long term task, guards eventually going on high alert as they realize the party is sneaking around, establishing pressure as a ritual nears completion, and even using one mid-Conflict to take down a foe too powerful to engage directly. 

Conflicts

Speaking of conflicts, they are defined as anything that involves  “back and forth exchanges at a rapid pace”. Right away you’re probably thinking of fights, but they could also be chase scenes, stealth missions, or a tense social encounter. Whichever it is, the game points out that not every single event needs to actually be a conflict – checks and clocks can handle many scenarios, so conflicts should be reserved for when things are truly dramatic. Once it starts, both sides make a group check (a chosen leader makes their roll and everyone else makes a roll against a difficulty of 10, with each supporting character success adding +1 to the leader’s result); in this case, a DEX+INS one. The side that gets the higher check gets to have a character go first, after which each side takes turns having a character go. If a side has more characters than the other, you alternate for as long as possible and then the side with more characters gets to have everyone who hasn’t acted go all in a rush.

Like, say, Cortex or Narrative Dice games the alternating initiative slots belong to a side, not a specific character, meaning that the players can always choose which of them goes first during a round and so on. This can lead to a lot of interesting tactical decisions – an example given is a character going last in a round and making an enemy vulnerable to a specific damage type, then getting to go first in the next round to take advantage of the new vulnerability.

Now, for any given conflict all sides involved need to have goals (maybe represented by a clock), but in a proper fight one thing to avoid is obviously running out of Hit Points. Once a character’s HP hits 0, though, things can get interesting. For player characters, there are two options. The typical one is the character has to Surrender, becoming unable to act for the remainder of the scene even if they somehow get healed. Importantly, a surrendered player character cannot be killed and yet there also must be a consequence which could be things such as losing something precious, an antagonist advancing their own plans, or getting separated from your allies.

The other option when a player character is reduced to 0 HP is to make a Sacrifice, giving their life to ‘accomplish a seemingly impossible deed, such as putting an end to a centuries-old curse, temporarily taking away a demigod’s powers, or single-handedly holding off a small army to make sure their allies can flee.” There are some conditions before making a Sacrifice can even be put on the table, requiring at least two of the following to be true: the presence of a true Villain, your final act would benefit a character you have a Bond towards, or you believe your sacrifice would make the world a better place. This is the only way for a player character to perish, making each loss truly meaningful.

The Points

Back in Ryuutama, there were Fumble Points, a consolation prize for eating dirt that could be used to improve a roll without burning other resources. Here, however, there are Fabula Points and Ultima Points. There are many ways for a player character to gain Fabula Points: you start with three at character creation, and you gain some at the start of a session if you would otherwise have none, when you roll a fumble (as with Ryuutama, and that silver lining we mentioned earlier), when certain bad guys make an appearance, when you get knocked out of a conflict and Surrender, and whenever a Bond (an emotional attachment, good or bad, to a person, thing, or place) or Trait (we’ll cover this one in character creation) gets invoked to automatically fail a check (an optional rule, one of many in the game that can be plugged in or left out to customize the experience). There’s no upper limit to how many Fabula Points a character can possess, although spent Points increase the amount of XP everyone gets at the end of a session, so you’re incentivized to not hoard them too much.

Fumble Points got you a +2 to a roll – Fabula Points are much more versatile. You can still get a flat bonus, although in this case it’s by spending a Point to add the strength of a Bond to the check. If you invoke a Trait, you can reroll your dice. Some abilities are powerful enough to need Fabula Points to function. Finally, Fabula Points allow you to Alter The Story by changing an existing element of the game or introducing a new one. While neither is mentioned in the list of mechanical inspirations, players of the Narrative Dice System Star Wars games or Genesys will feel comfortable replacing ‘Destiny’ and ‘Story’ with ‘Fabula’. They can be simple alterations such as adding a useful item to a scene or as impactful as adding something to the world map, quite literally changing the world.

Ultima Points, however, are the province of Villains.

Villains

Villains are the Big Bad Evil Guys, the masterminds. The boss battles, basically, come on, it’s a JRPG. Cue the One Winged Angel. These are the bad guys that grant all of the player characters a Fabula Point when they show up in a scene, even if it’s a scene where the player characters aren’t present. Advancing your evil plan in a cutscene still counts, after all. There is some mechanical guidance on how to make a Villain – low level mobs they are not – but narratively speaking there are some important things that need to be considered to set them apart and capitalize their title. First of all, they have to have some sort of goal that they’re working towards, and there has to be a sense of pressure as they actively work towards them – if the player characters have to rest or deal with something else, the Villain can’t just be sitting around doing nothing. This may be another place for Clocks to get used.

Villains can’t just be one-dimensional. Not all of them will be sympathetic or redeemable, but perhaps they truly believe they’re doing the right thing, or can’t see any other way to act, or have some tragedy that’s made them the way they are. They should also try to be a dark mirror of the players characters: heroes that fight for justice face a Villain who believes it is an illusion, heroes that believe in second chances are opposed by a Villain who was denied one, and heroes that bring hope will struggle against a Villain who has fallen into despair. They should have a style and manner that sets them apart, and of course they have to make a dramatic entrance!

Now, when it comes to Ultima Points, Villains are rated by the kind of goals they have: either Minor (take over a village), Major (conquering a kingdom), or Supreme (becoming a deity). Those examples are by no means exhaustive, but you get the idea. That nets them 5, 10, and 15 Ultima Points, respectively. In a mirror to Fabula Points, a Villain can spend an Ultima Point to invoke a Trait to reroll dice. They can spend one to recover from all status effects and regain 50 Mind Points (the resource used by heroes and NPCs alike to power most abilities). Perhaps most importantly, though, is that they can spend an Ultima Point to Escape, safely leaving the scene to fight another day. There’s another big difference between Fabula and Ultima points, however: Ultima Points don’t recharge automatically. If a villain runs outs, they’re no longer a Villain, they’re just another NPC. However, Villains have another choice: Escalation.

Nevermind, this is when you queue up One Winged Angel, because it really wasn’t the Villain’s final form. At any point during play the GM can declare that a Villain has become a new version of themselves, with greater powers and darker ambitions, rejecting redemption and doubling down. A Minor Villain can become a Major one, and a Major one can become Supreme (which is as powerful as one can go). They’re treated as a new Villain, resetting their Ultima Points to the max for their new rating. They may immediately escalate even if out of Ultima Points and reduced to 0 HP in a scene, bringing them right back from the brink. The player characters will even gain Fabula Points for this, so dire are the consequences of having pushed the Villain into a corner!

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There are additional mechanics for things like travel, dungeon delving, ritual magic (as opposed to ‘fire immediately’ spells), Inventory Points (which can be spent on suddenly having the piece of gear you need), and so on – but we’ve got several more central facets of the game to cover, so let’s say you’ve got the gist of it and that if you can think of an aspect of JRPG gameplay, it’s probably covered.

World Creation

The world of Fabula Ultima… doesn’t exist. Inside the pages of the book, anyway. 

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of guidance and advice on what a TTJRPG world looks like, and there are some pretty strong principles and ideas that every game of Fabula Ultima should adhere to. Heck, aside from the very basic ‘what is this book you’ve picked up’ introduction stuff, those are the first things in the book.

Fabula describes three subgenres of JRPG, and talks a bit about the themes, heroes, villains, and so on for each of them:

• High Fantasy: “…often [revolving] around themes such as hope, friendship, and fighting together against supernatural and world-ending threats. Their protagonists often come from many different backgrounds… Together they must overcome their differences and disagreements, forging strong bonds that will allow them to save the world from a terrible fate.”
• Natural Fantasy: “…often [revolving] around warmth and community, harmony with nature and beasts, and the tragedy that befalls when the hearts of the people grow so dark that they twist and corrupt the very places they live in. Their protagonists are often very young and come from the same village… Together they must mend the hearts of their community and confront those who stir sentiments of hatred and mistrust, to prevent this darkness from corrupting the very balance of the world around them.”
• Techno Fantasy: “…often darker and more serious in tone; [revolving] around the exploitation of natural resources, unchecked and ruthless scientific experimentation, and abuse of power from the wealthy elite. Their protagonists are often people fighting against injustice… Together, they engage in a desperate struggle against those few who rule the world and the hearts of its people.”

Whichever ones of these a group goes with or puts a twist on, however, all the worlds of Fabula Ultima are linked together by the Eight Pillars: 

1. Ancient Ruins and Harsh Lands
2. A World in Peril
3. Clashing Communities
4. Everything Has A Soul
5. Magic and Technology
6. Heroes of Many Sizes and Shapes
7. It’s All About The Heroes
8. Mystery, Discovery, and Growth

If you have all eight factored in, then you’ve got yourself the framework of a game world that will function as intended. Actually populating the world with these ideas, however, starts as a group effort through a series of steps (Session Zero is very much a thing laid out as necessary in this game).

First, what shape is the world? What does it physically look like (grab a map sheet or draw a custom map), and how far across it can a group travel in a day? What is the role of magic and technology in the world (industrial development or Renaissance-like, scientific or mysterious)? With those broad characteristics settled, we get into the details. Each person at the table will contribute one of each: a kingdom or nation of the world (with some details about it, as a group figuring out how they relate to one another), a major historical event that has dramatically altered the history of the setting, a mystery of the world that they want to explore during play, and a threat that casts a shadow over the world (ranging from environmental disasters to evil empires to corrupting miasma, which the GM will use as the source of most of their antagonists and Villains). You can create whatever you wish for these, although there are some random tables that can help to get things going if you get stuck.

Character Creation

Now, as for the heroes that all of this will be revolving around (‘It’s All About The Heroes”), the first thing to figure out is what kind of Group they are. There’s not much structure to this, and appropriately the group types aren’t very restrictive – they’re mostly a statement on what broad kind of story the group wants to tell, and a handy reference for ideas when making characters. You could simply be Brought Together By Fate, sticking together largely because of your Bonds. You may be Guardians, with one character being the Chosen One that the rest are all trying to help. Perhaps you’re Heroes of the Resistance making a stand against a dark power that threatens to engulf the world, or Revolutionaries fighting against a dominant power that has branded you criminals. Maybe instead you are Seekers, trying to find something in the world that you believe to be its last, best hope to survive the threats arrayed against it.

Before you get to the what or how of your individual character, you’ll have to figure out the who. First, you decide on your Identity, “a short sentence that quickly summarizes how they currently see themselves.” Some provided examples are Tormented Veteran, Warrior Princess of the Moon People, Royal Knight, and Freedom-fighting Brawler. Next, you pick a Theme for the character, “a strong ideal or emotion driving their actions and choices.” You can create something unique, although for your first time out the gate you’re provided with a list of options such as Ambition, Vengeance, Hope, Mercy, and Belonging. Whichever you choose, you should figure out what that Theme means for your character, specifically. Finally, you pick your Origin, where you came from – this could be as easy as picking a place on the map already defined during World Creation, or you could create a completely new one!

These three things, Identity, Theme, and Origin, form the Traits that you can invoke with Fabula Points to reroll dice for a check, as we covered above. While Origin is probably set in stone (unless you find out your past was hidden from you or your memories were fake, the book notes), your character’s Identity and Theme may very well change over the course of play as how they view themselves and what motivates them is influenced by their experiences.

Here, though, is where things get really interesting on the mechanical side of Fabula Ultima characters. Every character starts at Level 5. However, you’re not Level 5 in any one thing. Instead, every level is assigned to a specific class as you gain them, and the rules are written in such a way that nobody ever has every one of their levels in a single class. If you like multiclassing in other games, you’re going to love this. Each class immediately grants some free benefits once you acquire your first level in it. For most this is going to be an increase in Hit Points, Mind Points, or Inventory Points. Others may also gain a proficiency or ability, such as the Darkblade being able to use martial gear, the Spiritist being able to perform Ritualism magic, and the Tinkerer and their Projects. For every level of a class you have, you also gain one of that class’s Skills, which are really what set them apart.

Some are going to be very passive: the Guardian’s Fortress skill simply increases their Hit Points. Others change how base mechanics function: the Fury’s Frenzy lets certain attacks count as a critical success on any paired die result provided it’s not a fumble, and the Loremaster’s Knowledge is Power allows them to replace an attribute die with INS for accuracy checks. Many provide completely unique actions: the Rogue’s See You Later spends an action and a Fabula Point to vanish from a scene to reappear later, the Elementalist’s Elemental Magic gives them access to spells such as the searing barrage of Ignis or the protective roaring gale of Vortex, and the Orator’s Encourage uses an action and some Mind Points to heal and increase the attributes of allies. Some skills can even be taken multiple times, increasing the effect of them by their Skill Level, including some of the above: Fortress bestows more hit points the more times you take it, and each purchase of Elemental Magic means a new spell. 

Now, there are some restrictions. At character creation you can’t have a class with more than three levels. You also can’t start with more than three classes either, though, because you can only have three ‘non-mastered’ classes at any time. In order to have four or more classes, you’ll have to get at least one of your classes to its tenth level. 

Getting a class to its tenth level and mastering it doesn’t just get you another skill for that level, though: it gets you a Heroic Skill. Some of them are universal, such as gaining extra HP or extra spells (not, it should be noted, increasing the size of your dice; that only happens when you reach a level total of 20 and 40). Most, however, are limited to a specific class or classes. You’ll have to be a master Sharpshooter to get Powerful Shot to gain extra damage on every ranged attack, a master Spiritist to learn the Hope spell that can bring surrendered heroes back into the fight, and a master Chimerist to gain access to the abilities of constructs, demons, elementals, and undead.

With 15 total classes in the core book, and getting to choose what exactly each class gives you for every level you gain in it, there’s a huge amount of character diversity (and ability synergy) to explore. Usually I’d already be locking in a Meet the Party to show it off, but there are already twenty ‘Classic Characters’ detailed in the book with classes, chosen skills, attributes, and gear. You can get a Gunslinger with Sharpshooter 3/Tinkerer 2, a Black Knight with Darkblade 2/Entropist 1/Weaponmaster 2, a spoony bard Troubadour with Orator 2/Spiritist 2/Wayfarer 1, and so on.

Press Start

Now, I’m being a bit funny with that header, because it’s a phrase common to the game. It’s the section of the core book that actually walks you through world and group and character creation. It’s the name of the game’s quickstart scenario, the digital version of which is free. The reason I’m using it here, however, is because of how Fabula Ultima is designed and how it is written.

The game obviously has a vast wealth of inspirational material on the narrative side, although it’s even larger than you might think; the books cites shows and movies ranging from Avatar: The Last Airbender to Star Wars (IV-VI and Rebels) to Vision of Escaflowne to RWBY and more as having inspired sessions of Fabula Ultima. On the game design side, however, there’s an equally impressive list of inspirations, and what’s best is that you can find the DNA for every one. Ryuutama is obvious. 4th Edition D&D’s ‘bloodied’ mechanic is here as a Crisis Point that various Skills and Villain abilities can trigger off of. The use of Identity, Origin, and Theme with Fabula Points can be traced to Fate’s Aspects and Fate Points. The clocks were Forged in the Dark. ‘Playing to find out’ from Apocalypse World is all over the place, here. The section on Group Dynamics ports in and does a good job of standalone-explaining Lines and Veils from Sex and Sorcery.

The impression that I get from reading this book is that Galletto is a student of game design who cast a very wide net while learning, and then very carefully picked from the acquired knowledge to get exactly what was needed. As a result there’s a carefully crafted balance – the basic ‘how-to-resolve-a-task’ learning curve is basically flat, but there’s a lot going on under the hood, and there’s not really anything you can take out. You can add in optional rules, and there are quite a few on offer, but pare things back and you’re losing something, not simplifying. There’s an interesting mirror on the narrative side of things as well, which becomes particularly obvious when looking at the quick start I mentioned above. 

Of course I read it before writing this. In terms of design, it does everything such a product is supposed to. It provides characters and an adventure, and teaches mechanics gradually as you go along, never overwhelming the reader. It reminded me strongly of the Star Wars Beginner Games from FFG. I’d gladly run it to introduce people to the game, and am in fact planning to at some point… but even so, the entire time I was reading it, something felt slightly off. I couldn’t put words to it though, and so I wasn’t going to mention it here. Maybe I was just tired? Then Galletto hosted an AMA on Reddit after the game was nominated for Best Game and Best Product for the 2023 ENNIE Awards.

“[Pre-made] Adventures are completely useless in Fabula Ultima, or actually, they’re straight harmful. Villains and threats must be a dark mirror to the PCs, so you can’t create them without knowing which PCs will be part of the story… Not gonna lie, Press Start is probably the single best TRPG thing I’ve ever written, but it’s not “really” Fabula Ultima. It’s a slick tutorial, but lacks the focus on self expression I want to fight for.

It was also… hell to write, really 😂.”

Now, it’s possible that I wouldn’t have noticed anything if I hadn’t read the core book before I read the quick start, but I’m just kind of tickled by the notion that the game so badly wants to be played using player input and and collaborative storytelling and worldbuilding that I could apparently pick up on the creator’s mental anguish in having to create a pre-generated scenario. Just as with the mechanics, if you start pulling the plug on player input or railroading them, the game is going to start breaking down. In fairness, I will note that this is one thing that I can see making the game a bad match for some people; if players don’t want to have to contribute to creating the world, or the GM has a very specific plot or setting they want to explore, they might find that Fabula’s narrative design choices grind their gears a bit.

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This is a game that has an extremely specific goal at the top level, which Galletto also wrote about during the AMA: get JRPG players to make their first journey to the tabletop. Everything about it (mechanics, layout, art, language) is bent towards that goal, making it extremely effective bait for a JRPG player’s first tabletop RPG. Commit, as they say, to the bit. 

It’s probably sheer coincidence that the last Italian-created RPG we looked at around here also had a bit that it committed to with laser focus, to its extreme benefit.

Anyway, as a consequence, in its quest to be the perfect onboarding tabletop RPG for JRPG players, Fabula Ultima wound up being a near-perfect onboarding game for… pretty much anyone. Everything is just so well-explained, covering not just the how but the why of each principle and mechanic. Put this book in front of someone who has no idea what a tabletop RPG is, and I think they’ll be just fine. More importantly, put this in front of someone who has never run a game before, and they’ll be just fine too. The section on being the Game Master is among the best of its kind, chock full of advice for every stage of the game, but most importantly starts by pointing out that No One Is Born A GM, that everyone will make mistakes and that’s okay, encouraging the neophyte Game Master to go out and get experience (mistakes and all) that can then be combined with the book’s advice to “help everyone both enjoy playing the game and developing an incredible story.”

It wasn’t exactly a shock around here that Fabula Ultima got Gold and Silver for those ENNIE categories.

The digital version of the core rulebook can be found at DriveThruRPG, and the physical version can be purchased in several places such as Studio 2 Publishing and Modiphius. There are also plans for further supplements: a GM’s screen and one book each for High Fantasy, Natural Fantasy, and Techno Fantasy that will include additional rules and classes. High Fantasy has already been available in Italian for a bit, and just came out in English last week! As for the others, this free-to-all Patreon post contains the current playtest document in both languages, with 100+ pages of stuff to check out. Finally, you can go straight to the game’s site for things like character and world sheets, downloadable material, and even a bit of music.

This is your world, this is your story.

Make a choice and fight for what you believe in.

Your story has just begun.