Fabula Ultima is a tabletop JRPG that captures the emotional depth, character-driven arcs, and high drama of classic Japanese roleplaying games, while standing on its own as a flexible, collaborative system. It’s not just a love letter to a genre—it’s a toolkit for building your own. Mechanics that Reflect Growth and Struggle

At the heart of Fabula Ultima is a dynamic d6–d12 system. Your four core attributes—Might, Dexterity, Insight, and Willpower—each have a die size, and action rolls combine two of them. These dice grow as your character advances and can shrink temporarily due to conditions and setbacks, creating a rhythm of triumph, hardship, and growth that mirrors the genre it draws from.

A standout feature is the Fabula Point system, which rewards roleplaying your character’s beliefs, flaws, and bonds. These points can be spent to gain bonuses, activate powerful abilities, or push through critical moments—reinforcing emotional storytelling and narrative consequence. It’s a system that builds investment, not just power.

On the other side of the narrative, Ultima Points empower villains. They function as a GM-facing resource that lets major antagonists unleash devastating abilities, twist the flow of battle, or defy expectations in ways that make them feel truly legendary. This dual economy—Fabula Points for players, Ultima Points for villains—makes encounters feel like setpieces rather than math problems. Every battle is a story.

A Job System that Reflects the Journey Characters begin with a minimum of 2 core Classes, and over time will multiclass into others—much like the classic Final Fantasy or Xenogears systems that inspired it. Want to blend a black mage with a battle priest, go for Elementalist and Spiritist! Or maybe a trickster with a righteous knight? Try Rogue and Guardian! The game encourages expression through mechanical choices, letting your build reflect your character’s growth, choices, and identity.

Collaborative Worldbuilding One of Fabula Ultima’s greatest strengths is its Collaborative structure. Instead of presenting a preset world, it offers prompts and frameworks for the table to build their own—together. The villain, key locations, factions, and legends all grow organically from player input, making the story uniquely yours. The result? A world that feels alive, relevant, and intimately tied to your characters’ journeys.

Villains that Leave a Mark Fabula Ultima's Villain System is in a word? Perfect. Villains in Fabula Ultima aren’t just challenges—they’re ideological foils. They’re crafted to test your party’s beliefs, threaten what they care about, and shape the emotional tone of the story. Mechanically, villains can be promoted to higher tiers, giving them more ultima points, higher stakes, and more narrative weight. They don’t just return stronger—they return changed, often reshaped by previous encounters, losses, or victories. Want your rival swordsman to reappear as a corrupted demigod? Or for the fallen queen to rise again, now commanding an army of summoned nightmares? The game gives you the tools—and Ultima Points—to make those returns feel earned and dramatic. They’re meant to be remembered.

Final Thoughts Fabula Ultima is a beautiful system for groups who love drama, growth, and story-first play. It blends simplicity and depth, letting emotional investment and narrative payoff take the spotlight. With innovative tools like Fabula Points, Ultima Points, and a Job system designed for expression, it creates moments that linger long after the session ends. Whether you're new to tabletop RPGs or a veteran seeking something with more heart and imagination, Fabula Ultima is worth your time.

Played through this today as a player and its one of the best quickstarts I've encountered (and I've encountered a lot of them). We went from "it's a jrpg inspired ttrpg" to knowing the rules in an hour or two of play that felt a little like a video game tutorial but was still entertaining. Two thumbs up, grabbed the full game off the back of it.

Consistent with the quality of the previous books. a Adds more sci-fi and sci-fantasy elements to the base game but is still super useful even if your game is a low-tech, traditional fantasy. A really neat feature is the optional materia-like technospheres system that adds a crazy amount of character customisation to an already highly customisable game.

• Pros:
  • Strong Narrative Focus – The game is designed for collaborative storytelling, encouraging players and the GM to build the world together.
  • Flexible Class System – Character progression is necessarily modular, allowing for unique builds by combining multiple classes.
  • Streamlined Mechanics – The core system is simple but effective. Stats are intuitive, and combat is fast-paced while maintaining some tactical depth.
  • Cinematic Action – Inspired by JRPGs, combat and abilities are designed to feel grand and impactful. Players are encouraged to think dynamically rather than just optimize numbers.
• Cons:
  • Light on Crunch – While the system has tactical elements, it’s not for players who want deep mechanical complexity or extensive character min-maxing. Not a problem for me, personally.
  • Relies on Player Engagement – Since worldbuilding and storytelling are collaborative, a passive group may struggle with engagement. Players who expect the GM to do all the work might find the system lacking structure.
• Verdict:
  • Fabula Ultima is an excellent system for groups who love narrative-driven, anime-style adventures with dramatic combat and deep character storytelling. It prioritizes flexibility and creativity over rigid mechanics, making it a great fit for those who enjoy collaborative worldbuilding and emergent storytelling.

Very interesting and creative! I look forward to playing this with my friends

So my review is from my perspective as a very experienced GM (running decades of campaigns across a large number of systems), and as someone who's now run an extended Fabula Ultima campaign.

Good stuff: Fabula Ultima is a really excellent new TTRPG. The book is beautiful and the simple rules, the villain system and the modular character creation system help replicate that feel of playing a classic JRPG very successfully. The clock system is a smart addition that deals with all sorts of encounters and events in a structured way, without ever feeling repetitive. Fabula points (taken from FATE I believe?) add some mechanics to character backgrounds etc, and give players the ability to produce elements of the setting that we all found really enjoyable. In fact the game's consistent focus on collaborative setting design and player-directed sessions was one of the most enjoyable things I've experienced in a game in a long time - I'll struggle NOT to include this kinda stuff in future games no matter the system.

Not so good stuff: Around the level 15-20 bracket combat design started to become very involved, with boss encounters in particular overly complicated and with lots of moving parts (if following guidance and examples from the core book, High Fantasy, and Techno Fantasy). By this stage players can have highly effective builds so that encounters are either a pushover, a boring slog, or require the GM to be actively antagonistic towards their characters (e.g. creating bosses that invalidate or ignore their special abilities - not fun for anyone imo). It results in more and more time required to prep sessions as the game goes on. I cannot imagine the wild complexity of running boss fights at level 40 or 50.

I'll almost certainly run Fabula Ultima games again in future, but I think the game would really benefit from more detailed guidance around combat design esp. past level 20.

Amazing artwork throughout the entire book. The mechanics are all very fun - my group have been thoroughly enjoying our campaign, and to be honest the collaborative world creation might have been our favourite part!

Excellent, creative game system that delivers on the intended atmosphere, play pattern, and general table experience. Very easy to pick up and play, fast and flexible combat resolution leads to a positive mood around the table as players are encouraged to take many approaches to resolve problems and to be silly or cool. Tremendous fun, would highly recommend. The notes for taking on the role of game master are also incredibly thorough and should, IMO, be the gold standard for such rules.

Though it may seem a bit complex at first, Fabula Ultima is a very intuitive and easy-to-run, easy-to-play system. There are loads of optional rules and features to customize your game, and my party has been having a blast playing for months now.

Encounters are really easy to design (and there is an upcoming bestiary book with new guidelines to make encounters even easier to make). Creating new areas that are thematic and interesting is very simple, and the game has intense flavor.

I can thoroughly recommend this game to anyone who wants to try it. My players love the game and are already talking about future/additional games they want to run with Fabula Ultima; my other friends are currently doing a Pathfinder adventure path (Jade Regent) with Fabula Ultima rules.

Beautifully presented, very good at inspiring collaborative jrpg style stories, with easy to learn mechanics, combat reminiscent of NES Jrpg's.

This is a very refreshing system with interesting mechanics. The concept of the world is the whole groups', not only the game master's.

This was slightly shorter than the previous books; but is full of a lot of useful wisdom for Game Masters. I haven't encountered a Fabula Ultima book that I don't like so far - and this one continues the trend of being enjoyable reads that I look forward to running at my table.

I'll be perfectly frank. Read the description off the back of the book. If that sounds interesting, then go and write up a backstory and flesh out the setting of the Bastion. If you don't feel like doing the legwork...well, tough, because buying the book isn't going to do anything for you. Somehow they managed to present the entire setting, from the oppressive Bastion to what you will encounter within the Breaches, in the broadest and vaguest context possible. The game seems to think this is a feature, not a bug. I disagree. I look to game settings to fill in important details I don't necessarily have time to build into my game myself. A setting that does no world building of its own beyond the broadest and vaguest of terms is a setting that is failing my expectations. I will always prefer specificity that I can tweak or remove as needed over vaguaries I have to fill in. Otherwise I see no purpose in buying a setting book over just saving my money and homebrewing the game's history. Reading through the book is an exercise in frustration, filled with vague hints at something more robust but ultimately failing to deliver anything substantial enough to be useful. The book remains so vague I can only recommend crafting your own parallel worlds setting and perhaps taking some inspiration from the blurb on the back. I didn't find much in the way of value regarding the rules and certainly not the setting details to justify the purchase.

Brilliant example of a game that is aiming for a particular RPG experience, and tailors its rules to absolutely perfect it. It is a wonderful experience as a longtime player to read a rules system and be continually impressed by mechanics that might not work or make sense in other systems, but here truly shine. Everything from the use of inventory points to the calculation of damage based on the high dice of a to-hit roll contributes to this. The designers have achieved a truly remarkable feat through this rules system for players looking to bring the feeling of classic JRPGs like Suikoden, Secret of Mana, and Chrono Trigger to the table. Very excited to see future products in this line!

Gosh what a great system, and what a great addition to this system. This is full of lovingly made content that's pretty easy to read. I adore it and everyone who wants to play a narrative came with room for combat, this is the one to play. Get your JRPG on with your friends!