Turns out, the critically-acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy 14 is popular. Popular enough that its surprise foray into the tabletop RPG (TTRPG) market has sold like hotcakes.
As spotted by Dicebreaker, the FF14 TTPRG has already proven so popular, in fact, that it's sold out without a single book shipped—though the first wave of pre-orders will be arriving later this month.
This has been confirmed by the official Square Enix merchandise account on Twitter, which writes: "Wave 1 of the FFXIV TTRPG has sold out and will be released later this month. If you Pre-Ordered Wave 1 of the TTRPG, it will start shipping later in May."
Fortunately, a reprint of the system is en-route, with pre-orders for "Wave 2" available on the Square Enix Store at the time of writing. There are some genuinely funny parallels to draw here—considering Final Fantasy 14's most recent expansion, Endwalker, was so hungered-after that Square Enix had to just stop selling it for a while. Luckily this thing only requires an internet connection if you're playing it on Foundry or something, and it's far cheaper to print more books than it is to update your whole server infrastructure.
The system was announced back in September, with precious little details surrounding it, prompting a flurry of dice detectives to try and extrapolate meaning from a blurry jpeg of some character sheets and dice.
Some playtests have actually taken place, though, primarily with Japanese outlets such as Famitsu—still, some kind enthusiasts have already taken the opportunity to translate and summarise these reports, so I'd be a fool not to bring them up here. All of this information comes courtesy of omgwtfhax_ on the game's subreddit.
According to their write-up, the FF14 TTRPG will have a lot of standard D&D staples—there's ability checks, you roll dice to hit, etc. Interestingly enough, outlets report that you always hit when you roll—however, rolling high provides a "Direct Hit" (a term lifted straight from a substat in the MMO) that confers additional bonuses.
This feels like an interesting blend of something like the "Fray" mechanic in Massif Press's ICON, blended with Pathfinder 2e's rules for scoring a critical hit (where 10 above a creature's AC counts as a crit, regardless of what your dice says). Naturally, limit breaks are also a thing, though it doesn't appear as if the playtesters had access to them.
Honestly, as wonky as videogame TTRPG tie-ins can be (although there are several good ones) I'm cautiously optimistic. I've considered what it'd be like to run a D&D campaign on Etheirys, but there are so many Final Fantasy-isms—iconic spells, items, jobs, and limit breaks—that just don't translate well into spell slots and saving throws. Also, I want to stab my players with a tonberry. Just for fun.
