Last Odyssey

Last Odyssey is a TTJRPG for 3-5 players and one GM that is currently already available in SRD format at https://www.lastodyssey.net/.  This is a game that I have wanted to make for over a decade, and your contributions to my work will help make that a reality.  The goal of this Kickstarter is to create a print edition of the already existing digital ruleset with a proper cover, spot art, and a great deal of care and attention paid to the writing.  The resulting game manual will be different than merely a physical printing of the existing SRD.  Instead, it will be a written work that weaves the rules together in a coherent, digestible manner, as well as one that better expresses the true inner spirit of the game.

There are two separate products that the base cost of the Kickstarter will fund the creation of: a digital pdf and a physical hardcover, both of which will have the exact same text, art, and page layout.  Affordability is also going to be a factor here, so my aim is for the digital pdf and the softcover to cost no more than 15 dollars and 30 dollars to buy on the consumer end, respectively.

The main goal with the hardcover edition is to create a book that you can hold in your hand and write in.  It won't be cheap or a glorified notebook, but it will contain lots of space for you to put notes in, and the paper and text layout will be conducive to extensive markups.  Since the website is already up with all of the rules intact, if you're going to buy something off of me I'd rather it be something that's really yours, rather than just a glossy printout of the SRD with some nice illustrations scattered throughout.

As you might have surmised, the name Last Odyssey is an homage to a couple of different JRPGs.  There is Lost Odyssey, a highly underrated JRPG that wasn't afraid to go to darker, more political places than a lot of its contemporaries.  There is also the Final Fantasy series, which is named that because it was a shot in the dark for Hironobu Sakaguchi, who intended it to be his last attempt at a career in video games before exiting the industry.  Last Odyssey takes both mechanical and deep spiritual inspiration from those games, and also from many others, such as Metaphor: ReFantazio, Octopath Traveler, and so many more that it would be impossible for me to list them all here.  In addition, this game owes a lot of debt to previous tabletop role-playing games, including but certainly not limited to such far-reaching titles as Burning Wheel, Ryuutama, Chuubo's Magical Wish-Granting Engine, Sword World, and many, many more.  Like any other artist, I stand on the shoulders of giants.

There's this magic that happens when you play a JRPG.  I think you know what I mean already.  You lose 90 hours of your life to a game that consists mostly of beating random encounters and skipping through dialogue, and walk away feeling a sense of real emotional connection with the world and the characters.  My goal with Last Odyssey is to engineer a game which facilitates that emotional connection, but instead of having it with characters who are ultimately just pixels on a screen, it'll be with the real people at your table.  Last Odyssey is a game that is built around cooperation and coordination, both in combat and out.  I deliberately wrote it so that there is no such thing as solo play.  You need your fellow party members to have your back.  If they don't, you will lose.

While there are a lot of design principles besides this I could talk about, the other one I want to highlight right now is the game's unapologetic approach to complexity.  In recent years, there has been a trend towards making games that are rules-lite in the name of accommodating the needs of new players.  However, I maintain that the design complexity of a game is not a problem so long as players do not have to keep track of too much at once.  Last Odyssey doesn't frontload its difficulty.  Instead, characters start simple and become more complicated as they progress in tier.  Plus, there are a great deal of people who are itching for a game that captures the tactical complexity of the late game of a mainline Final Fantasy title, and in that respect, Last Odyssey absolutely provides.

This Kickstarter features a couple of stretch goals that are realistic and in line with the priorities of the base project.  The first major stretch goal, at 10,000 dollars, will be more spot art, including full-sized character portraits for each of the archetypes.  At 20,000 dollars, I will commission several more full-page spreads, each of which captures another aspect of the game and serves to inspire readers to create their own campaigns, as well as pay my artists for additional labor touching up their work to further refine the book's aesthetic style.  However, there will be no additional design work done with the Kickstarter money besides polishing and playtesting the corebook.  If this succeeds, I'll make additional, separate campaigns for any additional supplements and further print runs, especially because Last Odyssey is designed to be a complete experience in and of itself.

I know that things are tough right now.  I would not be asking for your money if I did not believe this project was worth completing.  This game is my love letter to JRPGs, particularly those that do not always get the due credit in the States that they really deserve.  Thank you so much for helping this dream become a reality.

See you on the other side,
Anna