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Gwazi Magnum
2013-07-30, 09:26 AM
Purely out of curiosity how well do you think this would work?

Note that I don't mean a table top in a fire emblem world but a table top using fire emblem game mechanics. But outside of fights they RP and such just like any other RP. Do you think something like this could work?

Or is there too much stuff like Growth Rates, amount of XP earned etc. to keep track of in order in keep people engaged?

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-07-30, 09:48 AM
4th Edition or 13th Age? I feel like it really is that simple. They're both games with really colorful, interesting combat abilities that are balanced across classes, and they encourage some amount of tactics, especially 4th Edition. Though 13th Age has some cool roleplaying stuff in the form of Icon relationships.

Azreal
2013-07-30, 12:12 PM
But now I'm curious, is there a Fire Emblem RP just set in the world of?

erikun
2013-07-30, 05:18 PM
I've seen a custom Fire Emblem RPG system floating around the forums for PnP games. It's basically the same as the Fire Emblem games, although with a specific "point buy" for the chance of stat boosts during level up.

Sadly, I don't have a link to an example of one.

Grinner
2013-07-30, 05:19 PM
I think someone posted a homebrew Fire Emblem RPG to the homebrew subforum.

Vitruviansquid
2013-07-30, 06:32 PM
1. All the numbers in all the Fire Emblem games I can think of are possible to track or calculate with pen and paper. It might be a pain sometimes, especially when a character levels up and you have to stop the actual to roll the dice multiple times and see what stats a character gained. If you wanted to, you could probably streamline some of the game's numbers and calculations pretty easily and make a much more practical system that doesn't feel much different. I'd start by pre-rolling all the characters' stats increases from base to max level and having the GM hide it until the players level up. It would probably also be a good idea to retool Support levels and weapon proficiency levels to just get rid of 2 other stats for players to track.

2. Fire Emblem was designed from the ground up to be a single player game, and I think the greater part of the problem with running Fire Emblem as a tabletop game is less "how you could" than "why you would."

Fire Emblem characters are part of a team because most units are specialized in a way that doesn't make sense for them to be played by multiple players because the characters in Fire emblem are specialized based on the idea that no unit can defeat all the enemy unit types. For instance, Mages can't defeat Paladins, Fighters can't defeat Myrmidons, and there's no way a Knight can ever defeat someone wielding a Hammer without being totally overlevelled. In DnD 4e, on the other hand, the unit types (Defender, Leader, Striker, Controller) are specialized based on what they do for the team - the Defender can and should take attacks from Soldiers, Artillery, Minions, or whoever and the Controller can and should be incapacitating any type of enemy, and so on. This means no player ever feels useless in a game of 4e, or unable to execute his intended role whereas a game of Fire Emblem requires the team to think about which member should do the heavy lifting in one turn or another, depending on what enemies are attacking form where.

There's also the problem that the way you play Fire Emblem makes "team captaining" inevitable. In team games, it's generally desirable to have rules where every member of the team has to take individual initiative. Multiplayer video games accomplish this by requiring more attention and multitasking to be split amongst multiple players than can be accomplished by any one player. For instance, if you wanted to play 4 characters in Counterstrike, you would need eight hands and a freakishly good ability to multitask. In RPG's and board games, this is often accomplished by making each individual character hard enough to operate that it would be a hassle for one player to run more than one character - in DnD 3.5, for instance, it would be difficult for one player to track all the options available to multiple characters, especially more complicated ones like wizards. Both because Fire Emblem characters are so statistically simple, and the game is turn-based so there is no burden to operate multiple characters, you will inevitably have teams of characters that are actually just played by the smartest or loudest member.

And then we get to Fire Emblem's leveling mechanics. I think most people will agree that both mechanics are essential in what makes a Fire Emblem game, but these don't really make sense for multiplayer tabletop games. Part of the fun in Fire Emblem is developing weak characters and judging whether a strong, but slow-developing character is needed to win a fight or if it's okay to use a weaker, but fast-developing character to get him more XP and have an overall stronger team in the future. In a tabletop RPG, this would require players to accept that they will have less spotlight time throughout the different phases of the game. It'd also be awful and messy if a team played so that a character ended up not having enough XP to be relevant, and being too weak to get XP. Worse, this would mean the GM of such a game would have to carefully design encounters to give enough xp to players to keep them developing, and make sure the encounters are tuned to a difficulty the players can handle.


All that said, there are definitely people playing Fire Emblem in the PbP section of this board, and some of the games seem to have been pretty long-running, so I imagine they're having a lot of fun. You might want to check out the board for inspiration if you're thinking of running a tabletop version.

Azreal
2013-07-30, 09:32 PM
See I'd like to see a DnD/Pathfinder take on Fire Wmblem but I guess that would involve removing the weakness triangles, and addingn on stuff to the point where it's DnD anyway.

Knaight
2013-07-30, 09:53 PM
Purely out of curiosity how well do you think this would work?

Note that I don't mean a table top in a fire emblem world but a table top using fire emblem game mechanics. But outside of fights they RP and such just like any other RP. Do you think something like this could work?

Or is there too much stuff like Growth Rates, amount of XP earned etc. to keep track of in order in keep people engaged?

I think it could work, but there are some simplifications that would likely help. Growth rates are fine, precise experience tracking is probably more cumbersome. There's also the matter of equipment, as stuff like armor is liable to change (characters might well get caught outside of it in any fight that isn't an expected battle) which has implications on stats.

Still, with a few simplifications the core system could probably be kept, and provided that the maps are made well and the groups are large enough it could be pretty fun.