Have you tried Fabula Ultima? I have heard good things about it. Not really sure what would fit your requirements that isn't D&D. Maybe try and modify the story teller system? There is also the unofficial d100 elder scrolls game.

>>1477 Yeah, found it a a week or two. It's been pretty good, I like the class system, and it got a lot of fun world building stuff. But, from what I gather, it's a lot of scene-specific stuff. But, I will use the books a lot

Sword World 2.5 does everything Fabula Ultima does but better. You can find all translated books, replays and supplements here, for all SW editions: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1tg3hNkIw7sgAI8PH8XTEyMy6jpUO-thD >>1477 >Fabula Ultima It's a mediocre remix of Ryuutama with a shitty homebrew combat system that takes advantage of nips not really caring about releasing SW or any of their JTTRPG in the west.

>>1591 Great, thanks for the resources

>>1465 (OP) If you're looking for advice I have one for your design process. Realistically what you do is, rather than take the time and effort to learn and make people learn an entirely new system, your primary design document is going to be the 'vibe' of the campaign, and then you bastardize D&D into it, by basically stripping away anything that doesn't fit the vibe. This is how a LOT of old JRPGs were codified. This means design your major narrative structure FIRST.Then write down a few concept encounters that are effectively setpieces you'd like to do. Then design your primary antagonist, this genre is very much carried by how impressive its villains are. Flesh out the villain's personality and motivation, and like maybe one or two powers. Then make some interesting NPCs, try to make a vertical slice of who you want players to meet to the theme of the JRPG 'feel', a giant monster for an encounter, an evil lieutenant, a mid-level friendly NPC, a comic relief NPC that gets shit on a lot, a really, REALLY weird guy(a lot of games and shows have at least one), and maybe one nice villager NPC. Stop IMMEDIATELY when you feel the least bit bored making characters, do NOT push yourself to keep making more, only work with cliches and archetypes that interest you at this point. Then define the PRIMARY locations they will be going to, go from MOST to LEAST interesting, preferably ending with your starting town. All of this is to establish your main framework of how this campaign feels, the 'vibe'. Then set your level parameters for the campaign so you limit the over the top teleport behind you powers. Next think about the most powerful abilities you want to have show up, as these are always showstoppers in these things. This is where you bastardize mechanics to fit the setting, just rips pieces out here and there from something generic like D&D, whatever everyone is most familiar with. Do NOT let the faggot urges take over and pick some obscure game nobody plays as your host system. You want something that feels familiar so that the players can relax a little and not powergame the system and descend into a boring grind UNLESS they think it would be funny to do so, which is basically the only time I would allow for it, since I prefer milestone levelling. Only mine splatbooks if you're completely out of ideas for how to make something work, and even then don't obsess. Then once you've come up with a few parameters here and there, refine your story, add characters and items and places ONLY as needed to facilitate the story that you structured earlier. Do NOT, under any circumstances, do large portions of worldbuilding and mechanics until the very very VERY end, preferably not at fucking all. THE biggest trap for being a dungeon master is working out all the mechanics, a complete bestiary, 100% of the skills and powers, the entire world map, etc first. Likewise doing too much worldbuilding will bog your setting's sense of mystery down, and discourage players from being interested in it. You have to walk a very fine line in fantasy of not overexplaining your world so that it sets off the brain itch in your players. If you build the entire world FIRST, you will run a colossal risk of generically-downgrading your campaign so that none of all that hard work you did building the setting gets cut. This is an ego trap, you will HAVE to make cuts to finish the project. Don't spend time trying to flesh out an entire world, it isn't worth it, there are video games that already do that and a lot of them suck. Coming up with what you think is a cool campaign concept and then piecing together whatever makes it work with lollipop sticks and tape isn't glamorous but it produces a better experience overall.

>>1465 (OP) Seconding Sword World. There is also Anima Beyond Fantasy, but maybe it's too high-fantasy. Don't know if you ever checked some of the FF RPG stuff, OP, they could be helpful.

>>2599 this is a shit take. starting with "vibes" is how you end up with a shitty game system that isn't fun to play. what you should do is start by thinking about how it will play at the table. will it use a grid map? physical terrain? how many players? how long should each player's turn last? how many resources should players have to manage and how often should they regenerate? will you have rng hit chance or some other system? how does the turn sequence work? unless you have some kind of thematic mechanic like ammo counting in a wild west game, non-functional concerns like the name of your bad guy are completely irrelevant to how the game should be put together.

>>2759 >thematic mechanic like ammo counting in a wild west game This is an important point. Rules should always support what happens in the game. Think of the types of stories, actions, and characters that will exist, and build the rules from there. It sounds simple, but it isn't.

>>2759 >this is a shit take. starting with "vibes" is how you end up with a shitty game system that isn't fun to play. OP is talking about making a campaign, not building a game system from the ground up. Also Fun is a vibe, dummy. One that is noticeably the core of a lot of JRPGs and SRPGs, which is the vibe he's trying to emulate. >what you should do is start by thinking about how it will play at the table. will it use a grid map? physical terrain? how many players? how long should each player's turn last? how many resources should players have to manage and how often should they regenerate? will you have rng hit chance or some other system? how does the turn sequence work? This is exactly what I described as an overdesigned system, and is a terrible baseline for a campaign. >unless you have some kind of thematic mechanic like ammo counting in a wild west game, non-functional concerns like the name of your bad guy are completely irrelevant to how the game should be put together. This is a Nogames take. It's like you have no reference point for the fact that people have tolerated boring or generic mechanical systems if they serve a good story for basically decades. Not a single fucking piece of how it plays matters if the players are bored out of their skull by your autopilot writing and lack of interesting characters. Mechanics come AFTER the general concept, and only when necessary to suit the theme of the game.

>>2798 op was asking about mechanics. thinking about how a game is going to play isn't over designing, it's not half assing. saying that people have low standards isn't a defense for making games bad on purpose. if a game is fun and engaging people will want to play it no matter what the story is like. on the other hand a game that was poorly constructed without care will only drag down your best efforts at writing. a game is mechanics. without mechanics you are just doing improv theater.

>>2800 >if a game is fun and engaging people will want to play Yeah crazy how that's a vibe and that went entirely over your head >no matter what the story is like Except not in the JRPGs that were mentioned in the OP, ALL of those games have solid stories. >without mechanics you are just doing improv theater. Except I never said have no mechanics, idiot. I said to not do them first. And frankly if you can't improv you can't run a game. If you weren't a nogames you'd know that what you're proposing is a formula to have players spend the majority of the game on their fucking phones until their turn comes up.

>>2811 that's not a "vibe" you brainless zoomer. take mtg for example. the gameplay is engaging enough on its own that the game is still fun to play even using hand written proxies without any art or flavor text. in terms of jrpgs people play disgaea for the grinding gameplay even though the story is usually forgettable. or for an example of the opposite xenosaga 2 had a lot going on in terms of story, but was dragged down by the completely awful gameplay. if mechanics are what separate a rpg from improv theater than the strength of the mechanics are what make a rpg better than improv theater. if your story and "vibes" are at level x than all of that plus mechanics has to be at least x+1 or else there's no point to adding mechanics and being a rpg. story isn't what keeps people paying attention when it isn't their turn, it's in depth mechanics that encourage players to pay attention to the game state.

>>2913 >mtg player tries to weigh in on anything outside of his lame card game yeah no you're a meat calculator pretending to be a person and there's a reason no one plays with you.

>>2931 >narrativist fag trying to pretend he knows good mechanics when he's just going to rule 0 everything anyway

>>2931 Have to agree with the other anon. You could take basic bitch D&D 5e and play a campaign similar to Unicorn Overlord. You wouldn't need to change anything about its story and characters, there is nothing inherently "grounded JRPG" about it, it's a very basic fantasy story. You can't just go for "vibes" and leave everything else untouched. It isn't a JRPG campaign just because all players use anime avatars. You need to look at these video games, their mechanics, character progression, classes, spells etc. and try to replicate what truly differentiate them from western fantasy.