Capturing the style, feel and aesthetic of JRPG

Trying to bring to the tabletop the style of the JRPG is nothing new and it is something I've loosely worked on-and-off on before. Recently I've been playing Radiant Historia and my tabletop group and I briefly discussed the idea of running a tabletop campaign which draws heavily upon JRPG.

"I like sword."

One disagreement which quickly emerged was what elements of the JRPG style were more important: one of my players argued that, if one was to run a JRPG-style game using any D&D edition or any retroclone, then that there should be some mechanical simplification as to better emulate the older games I was referring to which tend to be very static with the now-infamous 'everyone standing in line waiting for their turn' style of gameplay. Now I, on the other hand, would argue that trying to perfectly mechanically emulate JRPG is the wrong approach simply for the following: the classic-style JRPG gameplay emerged as an abstraction of the older tabletop RPG mechanics. They were meant to be a crude simplification of Dungeons & Dragons because the Famicom/NES could not even remotely handle anything more complex.

Personally I would argue trying to emulate the mechanics of JRPG is pointless because they are basically just that: abstractions of ideas and concepts already existing in tabletop decades ago. So then what would allow one to emulate the style and tone of the more classical JRPG from the '80 to the early 2000 (with a few outliers and callbacks in this decade)? Well, I would say that you can very much channel the style, tone and feel of these games and worlds with whatever edition of Dungeons & Dragons you intend to play.

The main inspirations and generally what is in mind are, in no particular order:

• Final Fantasy I to X
• Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Advance and A2
• Bravely Default
• Chrono Trigger
• Dragon Quest
• Breath of Fire
• The Legend of Dragoon
• Tales Series
• Golden Sun
• Fire Emblem (Not a JRPG but relevant to eastern RPG)
• Radiant Historia
• Xenogears
• Etrian Odyssey
• Disgaea (Not a JRPG but definitely fit more to this mold)

Brighter Worlds

Yoshitaka Amano is a goddamn master.

In spite of all the jokes in the early 2000 about 'emo protagonists', the worlds of JRPG are (barring some exceptions, especially the Shin Megami Tensei series and spinoffs) are at least ostensibly bright, colorful, full of wonder and filled with all manners of quirky elements. While these games often do become increasingly darker as the plot advance, in general these tend to be comparatively lighthearted worlds.

There's a bit of a joke about cliche fantasy settings going around, be it so-called 'generic fantasy' settings to the OSR blogosphere cliche setting. While I very much love dark, moody, grim and gritty violent sword & sorcery settings filled with cults, eldritch abominations and death where the characters are morally ambiguous mercenaries living in or around a corrupt empire and the ruins of past civilizations as much as the next guy these are a bit less in-tone with the JRPG. True, any of these elements can exist to some extent but they are invariably downplayed in most cases. Which brings me to the next point.

Archetypal Characters and Ideas

The most important work in JRPG history.
Yes, seriously.

As much as the newer Final Fantasy titles have increasingly caught flak for their convoluted-to-the-point-of-stupidity narrative, the key elements of the success of past JRPG titles was their story focus. Was the story any good or any meaningful? Debatable. The thing is, however, is that earlier JRPG (especially early Final Fantasy) copied Star Wars in the best way possible: they understood the power that clear-cut archetypes held. The best JRPG tend to generally introduce things in very broad and poignant archetypal ways even if they intended to later flesh these out in the story. That is where their reputation as formulaic or cliche come from.

A game which strives to be more like JRPG should not try to 'subvert' cliches, at least not early on. There should be a strong sense of archetypes and symbols, be they from public consciousness or having evolved in JRPG themselves as conventions. Heroes and villains should be clear cut mold, or at least begin as such. Likewise, the politics and economics of the setting or the overall culture are far less important the archetype and imagery: you have the good Kingdom/Republic, the Evil Kingdom/Empire. Maybe they have a specific style or design to them but beyond that everything is in service to that archetypal image.

Shameless (and often meaningless) Symbolism

Not only do JRPG love archetypes, they also love to heavily borrow from mythology and religion. Now this is hardly new to tabletop RPG (which JRPG did spring from) but it bears repeating for the sake of being accurate to the older and more iconic titles in the genre, especially early Final Fantasy. Words are important. Words have meanings. Now is said meaning really entirely relevant or just some fake symbolism added to pretend to be 'deep'? The answer is: it doesn't matter! One should use as many cool and obscure-sounding words as possible within reason of not sounding like complete gibberish. Sephiroth would most likely not be as a remembered if not for the fact his name A) sounds cool and B) the Kabbalah is not exactly something teenagers playing videogames in the mid to late '90 knew about.

Of course not every word which has meaning is gibberish: many ancient and outdated names often have some meaning. Drawing upon mythology and history to find some cool-sounding names can go a long to give the setting a veneer of style above and beyond using some poor random faux-medieval name generator one found off Google.

Make weird shit up

After carefully looking at all these mythological symbols and archetypes...randomly insert any idea one find cool and/or weird. Classic JRPG are notoriously bizarre at times, with weirdass monsters, oddball locations and mish-mash of setting elements which pretty much make no sense. In fact, there should be a sizeable amount of weird things which seemingly 'just exist'.