Returnerblog

Legends stretch back across the centuries - talking about the bold, the brave, the mighty that strove to make the world a better place. Men and women who fought for something more than themselves and who changed the world with their actions. While their deeds and their ways were as varied as the blades of grass, they were something more than the average - they were heroes.

That is the very reason they are worshiped. Whether in a small roadside shrine where they performed their deeds or in the great Hall of Heroes, they are beyond mortal. Saints. Divine.

And you? You’re no hero, but you’re no slouch either. It’s tempting, though, when you hear the call go out - from the Valhian Church itself, no less!

WANTED: Those Who Would Be Saints

The Day of Heroes approaches! To honor the Heroes of the past Her Holiness, Bishop Melisende Sarpedon, calls upon the bravest and the noblest in the land! Sponsored by Emperor Cyrus Argent himself, those who are able will be given chance to prove themselves and make their own legend! Be bold; for the great Heroes watch over us all.

—–

It is my utmost pleasure to present to you all:

FINAL FANTASY: TRIUMPH OF THE RETURNERS

This mega-campaign, following in the footsteps of RGi’s well known and well recieved Generica campaign, is about a simple thing: Celebration. With the long-awaited release of Third Edition, the RGi dev team has decided to celebrate the occasion by running the biggest, baddest FFRPG campaign we can. For the past two months, the dev team has been working hard to craft a world and a storyline worthy of our dedicated players, fans and contributors.

Using the Guild-style campaign system pioneered by the Generica Playtest campaign, Triumph of the Returners is set in a rich Final Fantasy world. With an elaborate plot ahead stretching from level 1 to level 65, it promises to provide great times and allow the RGi dev team to give back to those who have supported us over the years.

I invite you all to visit the wiki we have constructed and to use the new subforums dedicated to this campaign. Isn’t it time for some heroes?

http://returnerstriumph.wikispaces.com/

And the subforum on the boards can be found here

After years of hard work and patience, the Third Edition of the Final Fantasy Role-Playing Game is officially finished.  This post marks the end of the Beta testing period and officially celebrates the release of the full and finished Core Rules.  We here on the Developer Staff are incredibly excited and want to thank everybody who has stayed with us thus far.

We hope you are as happy as we are.

Sam “NinjaWeazel” Banner, Lead Developer

The notorious OLAD campaign’s session last night resulted in an incredibly improbable event, one in 270 trillion or so. The Archer got off 21 hits from Unlimited Shot and did something like 15000 damage before Armor to the boss the team was fighting.

You can see bits of logs related to this over in one of the player’s livejournals.

I’m calling this ‘Returners History’ for the simple reason that I think this is the most damage done in a single attack to a single enemy in an actual session (under the Core Rules). I’d love to be proven wrong in the comments - and yes I know you can get more damage out of Yojimbo with lots of Gil in theory…

Demonic Gerbil

Our Wiki outage has been resolved. Thanks for your patience.

- M R Sachs, Administrator 

As you may have already noticed, the FFRPG Wiki is currently unavailable. The most likely cause is that the database server the Wiki is hosted on has been taken down for maintenance — our past outages have all been due to database maintenance, and this one certainly fits the pattern. We don’t have an ETA for a fix yet, but hopefully things should be back up and running in another day or two.

- M R Sachs, Administrator

After several years of development and countless hours of writing, editing, playtesting, and revising, we’re happy to announce that we finally have completed the Third Edition Core Rulebook. Due to the fact that we anticipate the need for further minor tweaks, editorial fixes, and the like, this release is still being designated as “Beta Complete”, but is effectively the finished product. A formal “final” release with minor corrections will be released in another few months, once people have had a chance to extensively test-drive the game and feedback has started filtering back to us.

The Wiki’s Core Rulebook Page has been updated with links to all the individual chapters, and the Wiki pages themselves will be updated to reflect the new changes over the course of the next few days.

To go along with this release, there’ve have been a few significant changes to the site and boards. “RGI Dev Labs,” “Playtesting,” and “Balance Errata” will be merged into a single section devoted strictly to feedback on the Beta release material. A few days ago the Resources page was updated to cull all the old, outdated material and replace it with convenient download links and explanations of the current crop of player aids and GM tools available in the “Players’ Corner” section of the boards.

I think that about sums it up for this announcement. There’s been so much going on behind the scenes recently that it’s hard to keep track, but today is the pay-off for all that hard work. On behalf of all the RGI Devstaff, I’d like to take this moment to thank you all, the loyal and devoted players and fans that have stuck with us this long. Its been a long and rocky road, and we’re not done yet. But with today’s public release of the Beta phase, we’ve made significant progress forward.

- Sam ”NinjaWeazel” Banner,  Lead Developer

If you are reading this on the main page, our latest technological venture has been successful — we’ve integrated the feed from ReturnerBlog, our Wordpress blog, into the main page. As sporadic as our news ‘updates’ have been in the past, all that’s about to change; in future, expect plenty of posts from developers, GMs, and community members on all things FFRPG in this very space.

- M R Sachs,  Administrator

I decided I’d already said most of what needed to be said about player-feedback, so this post won’t really be about that… minus this: in I-DEMON, I always ran a little survey (about 15 questions) over the week of Thanksgiving. I’d usually ask stuff along two lines: “How much fun are you having?” and “What would you like to see next?”. A pretty big majority of players responded, and a big majority of those comments would give me a little inspiration - and a little inspiration from a lot of people piles up pretty fast.

Now, that ties into what I actually do want to talk about today. I-DEMON lasted for four years and change, and that’s a long time to stay on one project with no actual ‘end’ in sight (at the rate we were going, 15 levels per 4 years, it would’ve been well over another decade until we hit Level 65; that’s part of why I ended it ‘early’). So I ended it ‘early’… But now that I’m itching to get back in the GM saddle, I’m exploring one last facet of GMing: How do I move on from the old game, stop resting on my laurels, and get started with something new?

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For some time, artifact items have been in a bit of limbo. Like other artifact- or legendary-level objects, they can only be given out by the GM, and then should only be given out at high levels. The only problem is that by their nature, artifact items are one use only. Needless to say, few to no players would ever take a single use of an artifact item over a piece of artifact equipment that lasts forever. A recent change to the guidelines on giving out artifacts, as seen in Chapter 9, is intended to fix this problem and to make the choice of an artifact item feasible.

There are two options available for giving out an artifact item. The first is a lump sum method: when a PC gets an artifact ’slot’ filled by an artifact item, that PC would get four to five artifact items instead of just the one. Once those items are gone, they stay gone. This way, a player won’t waste their artifacts in one shot, but won’t get an effectively unlimited supply either. The other method is like an annuity: A PC only gets one artifact item now, but when that item is used, the GM replaces it a session (or a few sessions) later. This would go on for about five or so times, until the source is finally exhausted. While this method would encourage even more careful use of artifact items and ensures that they will be available for some time, it also requires the GM to keep careful track of when an item is used and when, or if, it should be replaced. In either case, a player should no longer have to worry that getting a Megalixir means getting shortchanged.

Newbie X

Most games you see around Returners are IRC games, played ‘live’ over a chatroom. That’s fine, that’s dandy, and when I’ve done it I’ve enjoyed it (as much as I might complain about it). But there’s another method that doesn’t get nearly as much attention, and it’s the method I-DEMON used: PBeM, Play by E-Mail. Not that there haven’t been PBeMs besides mine; they just have a much higher rate of fizzling out, and they tend to do so much faster than IRC games (if that’s possible).

So, I figured I’d talk about running a PBeM today; specifically, the ‘rules’ I’ve stumbled upon while running my own for a ‘good’ (read: able to reach the end) PBeM.

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