I say this being a big Chrono Trigger fan, who played the original exhaustively to the point 100% completion: I shudder to think what the average "inspired by Chrono Trigger" TRPG would look like, probably because it would be a 5E hack with counterfeit Toriyama art - ThreadSky

kaitave.bsky.social • 22 days ago

I say this being a big Chrono Trigger fan, who played the original exhaustively to the point 100% completion: I shudder to think what the average "inspired by Chrono Trigger" TRPG would look like, probably because it would be a 5E hack with counterfeit Toriyama art

Reposted from Thursday Garreau

Bionicle and Chrono Trigger are maybe the two things i'm most shocked not to see a TTRPG project inspired by yet

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kaitave.bsky.social•22 days ago

Also I love Chrono Trigger, but fundamentally it is a pretty bog standard console RPG of the era, I'm not sure what a TRPG inspired by it would really be DOING as such

kaitave.bsky.social•22 days ago

Anyway I hear lots of good things about Fabula Ultima, which wears its JRPG inspiration on its sleeve, so I feel like you could get 90% of the way there by running a game of that with the simplest time travel system ever made

basiliskonline.bsky.social•22 days ago

FU is really fun and i want to play and run more of it

boo3art.bsky.social•22 days ago

I think I heard they're getting Amano to do the book cover for them.

remick0.bsky.social•22 days ago

Yeah, Fabula is a genuinely great JRPG style game. Built in mechanics for villains going "nyeheheh this isn't even my final form!" Using the bonds of friendship between characters to add bonuses to your rolls. Fights with little rules on positioning so both sides may as well form two lines.

professorcirno.bsky.social•22 days ago

Like ultimately Chrono Trigger wasn't envelope pushing, it was defining. It didn't do much super new - it took the already existing SNES jRPG and made the best one of those they could.

armabellum.bsky.social•22 days ago

The main difference between Chrono Trigger and the most known other console rpgs of the era are: Shaped AoE skills (standard fare for TRPGs) and the combo skills (not actually interesting in TRPG format) so... yeah, I'm not sure what "A CT-inspired TRPG" would mean either.

armabellum.bsky.social•22 days ago

Mechanically, I mean. Thematically/story-wise there's nothing stopping anyone from doing a time-travel story using any existing fantasy TRPG.

zanestheargent.bsky.social•22 days ago

Sincerely i'd say something akin ICON, which is my Breath of Fire analog - bog standard social archetype + combat archetype, combos being mostly a mix of:

*Out of combat setting up;
*Chaining conditionals;
*Group pooling resources to activate anyone's ultra move.

armabellum.bsky.social•21 days ago

Yeah, but out of combat setup is already the standard for anything DnD adjacent, and chaining conditionals is just tactics (unless i'm misunderstanding). Groupal resources sounds like something that leads to some players having more chances to do cool shit, which is a common problem in trpgs!

armabellum.bsky.social•21 days ago

Oof, I meant "Some players/classes having more chances to do cool shit than others". Which is a common complaint in many trpgs.
And, anyways, "buffs with limited uses" already work like a resource that players pool together and can use to enable someone to do something cool.

armabellum.bsky.social•21 days ago

"Collaboration between party members" is generally just a natural part of a TRPG. You can try to do something like Pathfinder's Teamwork Feats where two characters get abilities that allow them to interact with each other in special ways but it's usually just gimmicky

eukie.bsky.social•22 days ago

If you could piece together the systems, mechanics to set up a campaign so changes in the past meaningfully affect the future, giving mechanical purpose to travelling back and forth in time, could go a long way.

You could probably get pretty far with charming time-period worldbuilding, too.

eukie.bsky.social•22 days ago

A setting that takes the CT mold of thematically and causally related time periods and puts a lot of effort into making them vibrant and textured might work.

darkestadam.bsky.social•22 days ago

My fear would be trying to do the different time/settings and ending up with The Strange again.

darkestadam.bsky.social•22 days ago

But as you say you could probably use the different settings books for Fab Ult to do it pretty well.

scotsdragon.bsky.social•22 days ago

I've had Chrono Trigger on an 'I should check that out' list for years, but from what I know...

1. The characters don't really have 'classes', so a skill-based system is probably better.
2. An emphasis on abilities that have bonus effects when used in combination by multiple party members.

scotsdragon.bsky.social•22 days ago

3. The multiple time periods means that there should probably be rules for a variety of elements that support those general time periods. So you can have high-tech, mediaeval, neolithic, etc. characters and a party to match.
4. A system for high-powered set piece boss monsters.

jaspervn.bsky.social•22 days ago

Now Bionicle on the other hand could result in something quite interesting

kaitave.bsky.social•22 days ago

I'm much less familiar with Bionicle and will defer to the experts on that one

jaspervn.bsky.social•22 days ago

I once watched an 8 hour long lore video and forgot pretty much all of it, but there's cool stuff there

gyrtop.bsky.social•22 days ago

Bionicle was a little neat but I have specific beef with it over appropriation, they very much did just start grabbing words in Te Reo & other Polynesian languages without much thought or consultation of anybody

flyingbison.bsky.social•19 days ago

I was scrolling through the chrono trigger tag and saw this and I have to say that it’s also very much okay to have things just be the medium they were made for

keichiokami.itch.io•22 days ago

I mean I know lots of folks who are running Chrono Trigger style games with Fabula Ultima.

kaynsd.itch.io•22 days ago

Okay but we both agree that a *4E* hack with counterfeit Toriyama art and little systems for having an advantage at dealing with your own time period and a system of building and executing tag-team moves together WOULD rock though, right? :D

chadtepes.bsky.social•21 days ago

Icon is pretty sick

byfrancita.bsky.social•21 days ago

I have been inspired by the combo abilities in Chrono Trigger for a long time and plan to somehow integrate a mechanic where you can do that with other PCs for a game I'm working on about teamwork and magical girls!

I absolutely loved that mechanic in Chrono Trigger and have to recreate it!!!

alchemist64.bsky.social•22 days ago

It would be the equivalent of "inspired by ghibli", where "ghibli" is used as a shorthand for cottagecore, and the only TTRPG that actually understands Miyazaki films is flying circus

keftiu.bsky.social•22 days ago

imagine something good instead!!!!!

kaitave.bsky.social•22 days ago

I think as other people have said, a lot of what was really good about Chrono Trigger was largely the presentation and cohesiveness, and I see it as otherwise being a little too "generic" to see what you could make a TRPG about, compared to, say, Voidheart Symphony and Persona

keftiu.bsky.social•22 days ago

i think treating several time periods as mini-settings you bounce between is a novel framework, and some simple causal mechanics (what happens to the future when you kill the medieval king?, etc) would be a lot of fun if you treated 'em like Triangle Agency unlocks

thedevteam.itch.io•22 days ago

It's funny to me when people see a video game doing very video game things and say, "This should be a TTRPG."

bryceyoungquist.bsky.social•22 days ago

the thing about chrono trigger is good art, solid pacing, and a cohesive story, none of which a TTRPG system is really positioned to capitalize on

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