From screen to tabletop: how Octopath Traveler ended up as a pen-and-paper RPG ruleset
Those invested in videogame RPGs have learned since the earliest days of this genre to expect tabletop RPGs being adapted into digital adventures, a trend whose most obvious exponents ended up being Dungeons & Dragons and a number of its campaign setting, like Dragonlance, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Mystara (including Capcom’s side-scrolling arcade adaptations) and, last but certainly not least, Forgotten Realms with a number of key CRPG franchises such as Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dale.
This trend also involved a number of rulesets created in different countries, like with Germany’s Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye) and its sprawling genealogy of CRPG spin-offs, or Japan’s Sword World, linked with Ryo Mizuno’s Forcelia campaign setting (which included a number of IPs like Record of Lodoss War, Crystania and Magic Knight Ryou), which also spawned a number of JRPG adaptations in the ‘90s.
Then again, partly due to the growing popularity of tabletop RPG streams and shows, the last decade or so has also seen the opposite trend growing momentum, with a number of videogame RPGs getting spin-off tabletop rulesets meant to expand their appeal to a new audience while also fleshing out their settings and lore in a way the games themselves couldn’t do, like with Dragon Age RPG (2010) by Chris Pramas, who already worked on Warhammer Fantasy’s 2nd edition, or Fallout RPG (2021) by Modiphius, not to mention an attempt to adapt Pillars of Eternity that, unfortunately, ended up not being released aside from a small alpha-stage teaser.
While often falling prey to the lack of official localization, Japanese RPGs have also benefited from this wave of adaptations, with Square Enix licensing a number of its IPs to different game designers, hoping to strike gold in the analog RPG space it had traditionally failed to pursue. One of those efforts was predictably aimed at its most successful current title, Final Fantasy XIV, bringing its class-focused, multiplayer roots to a customized d20 environment while also localizing it in English, with its 2024 first print getting out of stock unexpectedly fast and a second one being released next year.
While Final Fantasy XIV’s TTRPG, a combat and class-focused, d20-based system, had been mostly outsourced to Hobby Japan, its narrative section were assigned to one of Japan’s foremost contemporary tabletop RPG companies, Yura Kubota’s Far East Amusement Research (FEAR), which had also worked as an outsourced scenario writing outlet for Square Enix during the development of a number of Team Asano’s flagship titles, from Octopath Traveler to Bravely Default II.
Given their involvement with the Octopath franchise, it’s no surprise they were also tasked to work on a number of side materials, the most notable of which ended up being its tabletop RPG adaptation, Octopath Traveler TRPG, back in 2022, which has just been announced for an English October release by Dark Horse.
Yura Kubota, whose connection with videogame RPGs started in the late ‘90s with some contracted scenario work for the all-ages versions of Dragon Knight IV and Siesta’s forgotten PS1 JRPG, Sarara, has been a tabletop RPG enthusiast since the days of Ryo Mizuno and Group SNE’s Sword World ruleset (itself getting an English localization soon), and it’s likely that unique Japanese tabletop lineage that informed some of his design choices for Octopath Traveler TRPG, like its focus on a 2D6 system, which shouldn’t be confused with the Western strand of 2D6-based tabletop RPGs that developed separately in its own context, like with the Powered by the Apocalypse line.
Set in the continent of Orsterra, TRPG apparently doesn’t just include material focused on the first Octopath game, but also some references to Champions of the Continent, its gacha spinoff which ended up being adapted and remade into Octopath Traveler Zero a few months ago. Obviously, though, the timing of Kubota’s work also meant Octopath Traveler II and its world, Solistia, couldn’t be discussed in this volume, even if that would likely still have happened even if OT2 had already been released given the extremely loose connection between those two settings and, indeed, their many differences in a number of noticeable ways, like their pantheons.
While providing a generous helping of Orsterran lore, including a detailed chronology, regional guide, calendar and plenty of other interesting tidbits expanding on the game’s original material, Kubota’s effort also tried to address an issue pen and paper RPG adaptations of properties born in other media have had since decades ago, when Weis and Hickman’s Dragonlance setting, itself born as a D&D campaign but popularized by its novels, had to work around its focus on its main characters in order to open up the world of Krynn to other adventures.
Likewise, Kubota compromised by allowing players to retrace the JRPG’s eight scenarios by picking up a number of pre-built characters, including some known faces, while also making it perfectly viable to start an adventure in a different timeframe with a party of completely original characters, mostly defined by their backgrounds and classes.
Given the peculiar traits of Octopath Traveler’s combat system, let alone Champions of the Continent’s, I’m looking forward to finally discover the finer details about how Kubota managed to adapt the unique Brave\Default flow of the tabletop version’s combat system, and how deep the systems will end up going regarding its narrative and social elements, especially considering how Hobby Japan’s FF14 TTRPG apparently ended up de-emphasizing those very relevant contexts, almost as if it was trying to appeal to the enthusiasts of the OSR (Old School Renaissance) movement focused on old school dungeon crawling, albeit in a fairly unique way given its MMORPG theming.
While an amazing effort by the English-speaking community allowed Octopath TRPG to get fantranslated last year, the team chose to held back on its distribution, only allowing those who could demonstrate to have bought a Japanese copy of the manual to download its translated version.
Ultimately, this choice was vindicated with Dark Horse’s unexpected localization announcement, which, alongside the success of Octopath Traveler II and Zero, could end up revitalizing an interesting system that has seen no updates in its home market in the past four years and, possibly, open up the gates to a number of other JRPG tabletop adaptations, even just in the context of Square Enix’s lineup, with Akitoshi Kawazu’s SaGa franchise as one of the most obvious, and potentially interesting systems-wise, choices.
I’d be really interested to see how Octopath pans out in the TTRPG space. I feel like it lends itself to the genre with its rich lore and well scoped out map.