The only thing you need for an FRP is other people. To play Last Odyssey, you will need a Game Master,
3-5 players, and a designated facilitator or facilitators who can handle the work of planning and preparation.
This section contains guidelines designed to help you get a new campaign started.
The materials required to play a game of Last Odyssey are listed below.
When starting a new FRP group, you should have in mind what role you’d like to play in the campaign, whether a facilitator, a GM, or a player (or more than one). You should also decide on the level of commitment you’d like from each of your group members. Will this be a long campaign, a short adventure, or a one-shot that lasts for a single night?
In the age of social media, finding a group to play with is easier than ever. Here are a few options:
Before you begin your campaign, it is customary to meet with your group to decide on the course that it will take. If you are the GM, you might already have an idea of what you want your game to look like. However, everyone’s vision counts. That’s why it’s important to conduct something that’s referred to by contemporary FRPers as session 0. A session 0 is a session of game in which you do not play the game as normal, but instead prepare the materials you need to play. It’s very important that the majority of the group be present for this, as this is when you will create your characters together. In Last Odyssey, characters rely on one another’s abilities during combat and exploration, and as such it is important for the players to build their characters in ways that complement one another. If you can avoid it, try not to duplicate archetypes or elemental types, although it is okay to share starting jobs, as each character will perform their role slightly differently in practice.
If the participants in your campaign don’t know each other already, session 0 is the chance to make that happen. Before you get to business, you should go around the table (or the IRC channel, or the video call, or however you are playing Last Odyssey) and introduce yourselves. Everyone in the group should learn everyone else’s preferred name and pronouns, and it’s also recommended that you also share a few more words about yourself if you’d like to, just to break the ice. If you have a character prepped already, you should share it now as well. The author likes to allow a grace period before formal introductions begin so people can get to know each other organically. The group should also decide who will be a player, who will be a facilitator, and who will be a GM. Taking on more than one role is very common, although it’s considered awkward for the GM to also be a player, as balancing those two roles can create a level of narrative dissonance that makes the game less fun for the other players.
The next item on the agenda is to lay out what kind of campaign you’d like to run. The most important thing to establish here is not what people want, but what they don’t. If the Last Odyssey corebook were a video game, it would be rated E10+. Unless you deliberately ignore large chunks of the rules, your game will explore themes of natural peril, fantasy violence, injury, and death. Gamers, particularly adult gamers, may also want to incorporate more mature topics into their games, such as sexuality, racism, oppression, disease, war, religious conflict, or other, more serious elements. This is why it’s important to establish the outer bounds of what the participants are okay with seeing at their table before you begin your campaign. There are a lot of techniques for doing this, but one that the author uses at their games is the practice of setting lines and veils. A line is something you are not okay with encountering at the table at all, while a veil is something you’d rather not hear described in detail. For example, if you have a veil about bodily injury, the GM and the players should state that a character is injured but not describe the grislier details, while if you have a line about insects neither the GM nor the players should ever mention them at all during play.
After setting boundaries, the group should then turn to the matter of dealing with the campaign’s logistics. Everyone should have been up front about the commitment expected of the group members, but now is a good time to check in with everyone to make sure they know what they’re getting into, and in particular how long you expect the campaign to last for. Last Odyssey campaigns that take characters from tier one to tier ten might last for years if completed depending on how often the group meets, while on the other end of the spectrum a one-shot campaign will only last for a single session. After deciding how long their game will be, the group should also plan out the kind of world and story they want to participate in. There are no hard-and-fast rules for doing this, but everyone should be allowed to contribute. The GM, who is ultimately responsible for planning the world, will keep some things close to their chest, and Last Odyssey games are often about characters with a great deal of ignorance of the world around them, at least to start, but it’s important that everyone get the chance to contribute their ideas. When creating your characters it’s important to give them an initial goal, and decide why each of them wants to achieve it. Perhaps they’ve been hired by a patron, or perhaps they are a self-motivated group that is fighting for a bigger cause. See the Campaign Guide and the GM and Player Advice sections of the beginner’s guide for more tips on how to build your gameworld.
Once the initial goal of the players and the world they inhabit have been sketched out, the group should then proceed to create their characters together. Each player should follow the Character Creation Overview step by step, and should communicate with one another about what they want their characters to be. If anyone is lagging behind, the other group members should help them through the process. Once you’re done with this, you will have a party that’s ready to play. When the author plays FRPs, they like to check in with their group after this is over and plan the first session of the campaign right there and then. At the very least, the facilitator should take point and make sure that everyone knows what’s expected of them before they leave the session. After that, you’re done with session 0, and are ready to begin the campaign.
Before the end of session 0, you should:
FRP is a great medium for stepping outside of your comfort zone in a controlled environment. There are some play groups that will want to explore the darkest aspects of the human experience, such as abuse, genocide, or sexual assault. It should go without saying that, if you want your game to include these things, everyone at the table should be on board. No matter what, topics that your group considers uncomfortable but is okay with exploring should be handled with empathy, trust, and care. If your group wants to go there but is nervous about the potential consequences, FRP communities have developed tools to help you out. If you want an extensive list, visit ttrpgsafetytoolkit.com.