If you’ve ever played games of pretend on the playground, you’ve done something close to Fantasy Role Play, or FRP for short. FRP is something like a cross between improvisational theater, a simulated video game, and a tabletop wargame. Like improv, the fiction in FRP is determined by consensus. Each participant takes on the role of either a character or set of characters who participate in a story. In improv, what happens when a character acts is determined by consensus among both the players and the audience. In contrast, all FRP games have rules that determine the outcomes of certain designated player actions, usually those that move the plot forward in some capacity. For example, if a character in Last Odyssey attempts to leap across a deep ravine, then whether they reach the other side is not decided by their player or by anyone else at the table. Instead, whether they clear the ravine is assigned a statistical probability and then determined by rolling a 10-sided die. In FRP, consensus rulings among players are up for debate, but the rules themselves are sacrosanct, thus creating a level of tension in the narrative that is not otherwise achievable.
Those who are familiar with computer roleplaying games, or cRPGs, will also be familiar with FRP. In a cRPG, players take the role of characters who explore a simulated world. The results of their interactions with the gameworld are determined by the computer, which takes on the role of the game master. The primary job of the game master, or GM for short, is to make rulings based on a set of core, fixed rules about what happens in the narrative as a result of player actions. For example, a player might choose a dialogue option that increases or decreases a follower’s opinion of them. When they make an attack against an enemy, it is the rules that determine whether they hit or miss, and the game master that interprets the rules in such a way that the outcome is no longer in doubt. In an FRP, a human being (or group of humans, depending on the game) takes this role on instead. Rather than responding in a fixed way to a fixed set of inputs, human GMs have a lot of leeway in how they interpret the rules, and players have a lot of latitude in choosing their actions. So long as an action makes sense to everyone at the table, it can be interpreted in terms of the game rules. Likewise, in an FRP the primary space of play is not a digital representation but instead the theater of the mind, which is the shared fiction inside of the heads of all of the participants in an FRP. Sometimes, the theater of the mind is also augmented by peripherals, such as battlemats or digital tools.
The audience that is most prepared for playing Last Odyssey is made up of anyone who has played what is commonly known as a tabletop roleplaying game, or TTRPG for short. To be clear, Last Odyssey is a TTRPG, and all TTRPGs count as FRP. However, in this book Last Odyssey will be referred to as an FRP as an homage to the oldest TTRPGs and also to acknowledge its broader influences, which include cRPGs, MMORPGs, LARPs (that is, live-action role plays), play-by-post games, structured improvisation, and other TTRPGs.
Last Odyssey is played primarily through dialogue between participants and through the manipulation of dice. The players and the GM improvise a narrative together, with players narrating their characters’ speech and actions and the GM both describing the world they inhabit and narrating the speech and actions of non-player characters. At distinct trigger points in the narrative, usually when the outcome of player actions is uncertain, the GM and the players temporarily shift from free back and forth to a more structured form of play that will determine the outcome of the narrative. Once this outcome has been determined, the participants then resume their unstructured dialogue. To illustrate, let’s read an imaginary transcript depicting a typical game of Last Odyssey. The players, Monica, Jaden, and Nick, participate along with Trystan, their GM, in a piece of a session in which their characters, Rake, Sir Henry, and Quirty (respectively) have just come across a door to an old ruin and are trying to figure out how to get it open. They prompt the GM through questions and descriptions of their character actions, and the GM responds by responding through both rulings and improvised and planned sections of narrative. Let’s see what they’re up to now.
Trystan: In front of you is a crumbling facade, choked by vines and damp from the rain. Much of what used to be the forgotten temple indicated on your map is just rubble, and probably has been for centuries, but the door in front of you indicates that you are in the right place.
Monica: Is it…a magic door?
Trystan: How do you mean?
Monica: I dunno. What does it look like? Is there a handle?
Trystan: The door is a large slab of whitish stone with a relief of a woman holding a spear in one hand and a fish in the other. Or, sorry, a shark. You’re not really sure which.
Jaden: Sharks are fish.
everyone at the table laughs
Trystan: Right, well, it’s a shark as far as you can tell.
Nick: Quirty is gonna take a look around, see if there are any hidden levers.
Trystan: Okay, sure. I think we can handle this as an investigation roll. That would be using your five senses. What’s your Body again?
Nick: Quirty’s Body attribute is 5.
Trystan: Okay. Go ahead and make the roll.
(Nick rolls a 1d10. The result is a 7, meaning that he may ask 1d6 questions of the GM for “free,” in the sense that he doesn’t have to narrate his character’s actions. He gets 4 questions.)
Nick: Let me think for a minute. I’m not sure what to ask.
Jaden: Ask if the door is trapped.
Nick: Shoot, true. Is the door trapped?
Trystan: How so? What kinds of traps are you looking for?
Nick: Okay, I check for tripwires, hidden panels, and anything that might shoot something at me when I open the door.
Trystan: You don’t see any of those things.
Monica: Wait! I figured it out! This is…Shoanna? The sea god? What was her name again?
Trystan: Shoshanna.
Monica: Right, sorry, Shoshanna. I have it written in the lorebook that Shoshanna takes offerings of burnt corn. That’s what we learned from that weird priest last session.
Nick: I’ve only got one more question.
Jaden: Are there any signs of ritual offerings?
Trystan: I think Nick decides the questions here.
Nick: It’s a good question, no worries. Signs of ritual offerings…?
Trystan: You see a small amount of dried up, burnt corn on the ground in front of the door.
Monica: Let’s burn some corn, then. I’m guessing that costs some Supplies.
Trystan: Yep. Reduce your Supplies by one.
Jaden: Sir Henry watches the trees in case the smoke draws any enemies.
Monica: I set some corn on fire and wave it in front of the door. Then I put it down in front of it.
Trystan: Nothing happens for a minute or two. Then, you hear a weird keening sound, like something resonating. The door shakes, and dust flies off as it opens.
Nick: Nice.
Trystan: Congrats! You all earn 5 XP for solving that puzzle.
Readers should note that the players spent much of their time talking to one another rather than talking “in character.” At key moments, the players might decide to speak directly from their characters’ mouths, but there is no requirement that this be the case. Remember, the audience for FRP is the GM and the players rather than any external observer. Whatever immerses you and your group in the fiction should be what you do. Readers should also note that, at many points, the players engaged in “imperfect” play. Monica mispronounced “Shoshanna,” and Jaden butted in when Nick had the spotlight. Neither of these two moments ruined the game, however, and the GM and the players were quick and mature enough to reassert their boundaries when they happened. It’s okay to not be perfect, so long as everyone feels respected and is having fun.
There are times in Last Odyssey when the rules call for more involved play than free dialogue. In particular, when the party experiences violent conflict and when they travel great distances, they will simulate this via combat rounds and the travel round, respectively. The rules for these will be explained in later sections, but you can think of these like mini-games within the larger game of Last Odyssey. During both of these mini-games, player freedom is vastly curtailed, and characters are only allowed to take certain actions within specific timeframes. In practice, they play out much like a board game. For each of these, there are rules for determining when and how characters “enter” combat and travel and when they “exit.”
It is highly recommended that the group use peripherals to better visualize what is occurring. The Last Odyssey SRD has some free printables you can use for this purpose, including both a battlemap and character tokens for combat and a node mapper and party tokens for travel.