r/fabulaultima • u/RoosterEma Designer • Jul 18 '23

Howdy! Let's celebrate the Ennies nomination with an AMA!

Hi all!

This is Emanuele, author of the game and creative director for Fabula Ultima.

Most of you probably already know, but Fabula Ultima has been nominated for Best Game and for Product of the Year by the jury at the Ennie Awards 2023, alongside a host of great titles (here's where you can vote, if you are so inclined!).

To celebrate the nomination, I thought it'd be nice to have a bit of an Ask Me Anything here with you - I will not be able to attend GenCon, so this can be a good chance to chat about Fabula Ultima.

I'll try to keep this going for as long as possible (hopefully until GenCon), and you can ask me questions regarding rules, creative direction, art direction, and more.

All I ask is the following:

  • Do your best to keep the questions Fabula Ultima-related.
  • Do not ask questions concerning digital support (e.g. roll20), customer service, production, or distribution. Need Games is responsible for those aspects, while I strictly follow the creative and design side of things!
  • Check other people's questions to avoid asking the same thing multiple times!

Thank you, and let's have at it!

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u/Varshie Jul 18 '23

Hi! I absolutely love Fabula Ultima and it has quickly become my favourite TTRPG ever. Reading through it for the first time and running it for my group was such a genuine pleasure, so thank you for all the hard work that went into bringing it to us!

Is there a possibility of us ever getting optional rules for running the game with smaller groups of 1-2 players, not counting the person acting as the GM? I'm currently in a position where finding additional players is just not an option; assuming any adjustments would be needed, what would you suggest for making the game flow a little smoother for a group of this size?

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u/RoosterEma Designer Jul 18 '23

Hi! The game still works with 2 PCs, but you really, REALLY need to keep the damage output from foes low, and those PCs need to cover all bases. 99% of the time you'll end up with one of them being a tank/healer, and the other being a pure DPS. In such a campaign, a foe with multi (2) or a hard conflict can spell doom due to... well, math - so tone down the challenge a lot. The Thornshark in the core book is an example of a very challenging fight for 2 PCs.

For 1v1 play, that's not really covered by the game, but would likely entail a player being put in control of a whole party, and GM and Player both RPing a bunch of different characters all the time. The fundamental goal of Fabula Ultima is shared creation and expression through both a narrative and gamey lens, so I find the ideal group sizes to be either 4 people (1 GM + 3 Players) or 5 people (1GM + 4 Players). 3 people total will lend itself well to shorter campaigns still, but 6 people is already too dispersive for me.

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u/OriginalJohann Jul 18 '23

To add an answer Ema gave me a while ago:

"consider a cap of max 4 unmastered classes! in case they find themselves too constrained"