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Fantaji Universal Role-Playing Game $12.00
Publisher: Anthropos Games
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by Gustavo L. F. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 02/13/2016 19:48:49

Ok, I’ll try to review the game as best as I can, do excuse the fact that English is not my native language.

Fantaji and how I became exposed to it

Fantaji is a Roleplaying game developed by Anthropos Games, the creators of Early Dark, it was originally called Mazaki No Fantaji, but after the project failed on kickstarter the author tried again rebranding it as a Universal Roleplaying System, from what I gather while the kickstarter succeeded it was a small disaster since the author had to write his dissertation while developing the game (at least we got the final product).

I came to know of its existence in this very forum, when a poster referred to it as “Fate for people who don’t like Fate”, I like narrative games, but my group is very traditional so I’m always looking for new ways to bridge the gap and this sound like something I could find interesting.

The Premise

The author describes Fantaji as a qualitative roleplaying game, as in, it doesn’t define the world in terms of numbers but rather traits, so instead of having a Physique of +3 a character has Strong as an Ox, in this sense, traits are like aspects, with the exception (and this comes directly from the book) that a trait should always be “played to” and not invoked in certain situations by spending a metagame resource (and this is probably my biggest criticism of the game, the author voice comes off as condescending at times both against story games and traditional roleplaying games).

But how, one may wonder, is a trait played to every single time?, Fantaji answer to this is to make the traits as vague as possible, they are “poetic” if you will, in the sense that Strong as an Ox may mean hundreds of different things, so for example, you could play to it by narrating how you flex your muscles to intimidate someone, how your strength helps you to lift a gate, how your animal like intuition (the ox part) lets you travel through a forest, and well, pretty much anything that floats your boat, the idea is to stretch the meaning of the phrase as far as possible.

Every character, obstacle or meaningful thing in the narrative that needs a mechanical representation is a Tile (you know, like pieces in a table game), so we have 4 different kinds of Tiles:

Character Tiles: Basically the PCs Character Sheet Obstacle Tiles: Anything the PCs are up against Theme Tiles: Universal traits that anyone can play to in a scene Condition Tiles: Situational advantages or disadvantages created by other tiles that may hinder their actions, they are special in that they are not open to interpretation but are rather objective, so if someone creates the condition “The floor is on fire” it is exactly that and nothing more, when a Tile does something that is made harder by a condition in play (or doesn’t narrate how they are avoiding the condition) they immediately lose a Drama Token.

Drama Tokens are how Fantaji builds up the action, for each drama token a Tile has it rolls an extra D10 when making a challenge, so a Tile with 5 drama tokens rolls 5D10 plus any other dice, Drama Token aren’t a metagame mechanic, a character with a lot of Drama is bursting with energy, invested and aroused, a Tile with no Drama is weak, disconcerted or unfocused

How does it play?

Scenes are played in rounds, every Character or Obstacle Tile gets one action which they may use for a check or a challenge

On a check the Tile plays to a single trait (let’s use the strong as an ox example), and rolls a single D10 against a difficulty of either 3, 5 or 8 depending on how hard our “out there” the task is, on a success the Tile either earns a Drama Token or manipulates a condition.

When you manipulate a condition you can create a new condition, destroy a condition in play, or force a condition, that means forcing another tile to trip it and immediately lose a drama token.

For example, if Regar is a barbarian with the Strong as an Ox trait the player can narrate how the character is rampaging, destroying everything in its path like a raging animal, the GM deems this a difficulty 5 task, so the player rolls, on a success he can either earn a Drama Token (he rages even more), create a new condition such a “Debris on the ground”, destroy a condition “I break through the Barricade barring the door” or force the condition (In an urge of rage I throw the goblin against the Barricade barring the door) immediately removing a Drama Token from the Tile (Goblin swarm in this example).

When a Tile interacts with another tile, it’s called a challenge, both players narrate how they are going to deal with the exchange and build a dice pool with: 1) each trait from their tile played to, 2) each themed played to, and 3) a die for each Drama Token, both Tile roll the dice and compare the results, for each die that scored higher than the opponent the Tile has a success point that they may spend to deal damage to the opposing tile or manipulate a condition like I explained above (Ties are called a clash and both Tiles gain a Drama Token).

Health in the game is measured in Blocks of 1 2 or 3 points, so a goblin swarm may have 2 1-point blocks and a 2-point block (expressed as 2[1] and 1[2] respectively), to deal damage a character has to gather enough successes to match the number of points of a block, so for example if Regar rolls 2 successes he can either damage the 2-point block, both 1-point blocks or a single 1-point block and manipulate a condition with the additional success.

(Note that I use the tems Health and Damage loosely, since Blocks may represent anything from wounds, mental stress, or any other resource that once depleted would cause the character to fail and be gravely affected)

So far one might think that draining away all Drama Tokens from the opposition would be the best tactic, and here is where Fantaji throws a wrench at things, when a scene ends: first, the table awards each Theme tile to whoever played to it the best, this is the equivalent of experience points (more on that later), and all Drama Tokens in play are totaled, this pool is used by players to heal their wounds, this is effectively the only way to heal damage in Fantaji… this might seem out there, but, buuuut, it’s actually one of the cooler aspects of the system, say that after a battle you are left with grievous wounds and need to heal but there aren’t enough Drama Tokens left, well, the GM may set a scene in the hospital where the player confronts an obstacle to gather enough Drama Tokens to heal her wounds. Say for example, helping a cancer patient during his final days, or using an “infected wound” obstacle, even healing is dramatic in Fantaji!.

Finally, most Tiles have a couple of Powers, this is shorthand for “little mechanical exceptions that let you play around with the system” akin to SFX from Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, I don’t want to get into too much detail, but I’ll just say that they can refluffed to suit your campaign, from super powers to hight-tech, magic powers or extraordinary competency in one area.

Leveling Up

When a Player Tile is created the player writes down a few milestones, short-middle-long term objectives the character is striving for, whenever one of the Milestones are reached the play may spend a certain number of earned theme tiles to unlock: a new trait, another block of health, or a new power. So yeah, character advancement is directly tied to achieving one’s goals and desires. The game encourages you to pick something that goes in hand with the Tiles you spent on the upgrade, so if a character spends “Like a cat”, “Silent Shadows” and “like the wind” themes to earn an advancement, they should buy something related to stealth or speed.

Closing remarks

The game has several optional subsystems for things like skills, spells, corruption meters, magical loot, and martial arts, they are just small mods to evoke different feelings, so, if you pick up the game be sure to check them out as they serve as inspiration for your own tinkering.

Fantaji is a great game, with incredible art and a sometimes confusing/condescending voice, the book takes you by the hand and guides you each step of the way, giving you ideas on how to model different situations with the basic rules (Using interconnected tiles as a dungeon is sheer genious), it’s a tactical/narrative game that does so many things differently that this short review doesn’t even scratch the surface, in fact, I think that this is a hard game to review as I don’t believe that there is anything quite like it out there.

Is it really universal?, yes, by managing the difficulty of checks and using the appropriate themes the game evokes the feel of the fiction its trying to emulate, so a scene in a superhero setting where the characters are fighting a cosmic horror with themes like “Bigger than Life” “Protect the Weak” lead to different descriptions and outcomes than a gritty horror game with themes like “Madness unraveling” and “Futility of life”, Breaking down a reinforced iron door might be a difficulty 3 check for superman, but an impossible task for Sherlock Holmes.

If I had to talk about flaws, I’d say that this game will not sit well with people who like concrete mechanics, traits are ethereal by nature and very abstract, they demand a lot of creativity and openness which might not be ideal for some groups, also in the end it has a single mechanic for everything, and while that may be kosher for some groups, the people that enjoy the madness of games like Savage Worlds might feel like there isn’t a lot to the game (I differ, but that’s not the point).

Finally, how out there is fantaji in my eyes…

Here is a representation Gurps……….. Savage Worls …. Fate…………………………………………………………..Fantaji



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fantaji Universal Role-Playing Game
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