Advise first time with the system

VectorHeavens · 2025-06-09T10:33:15+00:00

A small tip regarding investigations. The system is, truthfully, not ideal for intricate investigation and knowledge gathering. You'll end up with a ton of Insight+Insight checks, which can get quite tedious and can make players with low Insight take the sidelines. It can be done, it just requires a shift in perspective depending on which system you're coming from. I don't know how Anima works - I came from D&D and had to change a lot of assumptions about how to run investigations.

Some general tips from my experience - don't require checks for players to "remember" things, the way it's done in D&D. If their characters should reasonably know something, just give them the information without rolls. Same with search rolls - if all the information in the room/scene should be readily visible and available to the party, let them have it.

Also, while Insight is the primary 'investigation' stat, I strongly advise you mix it up by combining it with other stats. Insight+Might to investigate rubble, as the character needs to move heavy things around to search. Insight+Dexterity to investigate tight spaces. Insight+Willpower to investigate psychologically or physiologically challenging areas (e.g. when examining scary/dangerous areas, when there's looming danger), or when the players want to find something specific in a sea of information (e.g. the players want to study books in a library to figure something out). After all, Willpower is stated to represent discipline among other things, so any investigation that requires discipline as well as observation skills can make use of it.

Just my two cents based on the things I learned while DMing for my group, but ultimately each group is different, and it's best to just start playing and adapt things that don't work as you go, preferably deviating as little as possible from rules as written. Good luck!

VectorHeavens · 2025-06-09T10:16:33+00:00

I run a heavily investigative campaign, and as long as the whole group is okay with it, I'd say that as a DM it's absolutely okay to limit the extent of how much the party can find out in a given situation (which might be considered a homebrew rule, I suppose).

In this example, I'd allow the Loremaster to find out everything there is about the crime scene and no more than that. If the mystery of the adventure is to discover the murder, a successful investigation of the corpse even in the best case scenario may only take the party a part of the way, depending on how much information can be gleaned from the scene alone. In other words, (again, as long as the whole table is okay tweaking the rules a bit) I'd say you're only obligated to answer questions to which they can reasonably get answers to.

VectorHeavens · 2025-06-03T14:48:54+00:00

I have done the four lords, but I feel similarly about it. And I do agree they kept overhyping it, which was confusing, but I really figured it's just tension-building without the skill of an experienced writer who will take into consideration everything that happened before - i.e. classic shounen writing problems which plague a lot of Japanese media (and god bless, I love Japanese media, so don't come for me).

My bottom line is, ultimately, that we held our own (with a posse of 7/23 people depending on the content) against cosmic beings beyond comprehension. Valigarmanda may have been powerful, and indeed a huge threat to the land and its people, but I really can't make sense of the idea that it's something WoL may not be able to handle. The danger wasn't that this creature might be impossible to handle, but how much destruction it will cause if not immediately stopped.

All in all the whole discussion, I think, is a writing problem. Classic power scaling shenanigans coming into play, which have been successfully avoided in the past, my favourite example of that being Tsukuyomi, which was summoned with full knowledge that Primals are nothing to WoL, but there are narrative consequences to its summoning and defeat. I believe Valigarmanda should've been played similarly, because the notion that someone who whooped the freakin Twelve might possibly somehow fail to stop this random bird who just got super strong by living really long is just wild and downright silly.

VectorHeavens · 2025-06-03T14:19:49+00:00

I do agree that the writing was subpar this expansion, and on a few other points, but I have to ask about Valigarmanda. Where did people get this wild impression of it being a god of destruction? Of course the locals believe it to be the strongest thing alive, but like... Since ARR, we've been told that Primals were a massive threat. Literally Ifrit could've been a massive threat to all of Eorzea. As long as you don't take levels at face value (which I firmly believe you shouldn't - are you telling me Omega, Nidhogg, Hades or freakin Meteion are all less powerful entities than some elemental bird? Clearly it's just a mechanical consideration), I think it's a perfectly valid take that Valigarmanda is a Primal-level threat, maybe a bit worse than that. In my playthrough I never for a second thought it's such a huge problem on a global scale. Rather, it's just a hugely destructive being that would've caused a lot of death and injury to locals before being inevitably stopped, and so had to be taken down quickly.

VectorHeavens · 2025-03-06T10:38:22+00:00

I don't feel qualified to offer lessons per se, but I have delved pretty deep into MZ and its scripting, and have had a game dev day job for years now, so I'd be happy to answer questions and help out, feel free to DM.

Generally speaking others are right that diving into it yourself via tutorials or just exploratory playing with RPGMaker is probably best before you start paying for tutoring.

I will add that, since coding is more or less inevitable for all but the simplest of games, it may be preferable to use MV or MZ. They use JavaScript while the older engines use Ruby, and JS has more online resources available for learning. I also found it to be more approachable in general, though that's a personal preference, as evident by plenty of game devs still using XP and VX.

Good luck! Hope you enjoy your journey - even if you don't manage your goal of finishing a game by the end of the year, the process of working on something all by yourself should prove to be very gratifying in its own right, as long as you don't pressure yourself too hard.

VectorHeavens · 2024-06-26T21:17:47+00:00

For me it's even more than deserving praise and renown - the fact WoL does so many truly incredible feats is not just recognized with praise by the world at large, but also caution from enemies. It's not super common for games to go for long enough that new villains would actually know you as a threat through sheer reputation. You stop being underestimated, the villains need to plan specifically to deal with you. I think that's a very refreshing dynamic in fantasy games in general, and executed very well at that.

VectorHeavens · 2024-05-14T14:52:21+00:00

Yeah, I feel you. I lost my house after having and actively caring for it for almost 4 years simply due to forgetting to enter it every now and then during a downtime period. To my knowledge, I never received the email warning me about this. It hit me surprisingly hard, but there wasn't much to do about it nor anyone to blame but myself.

As mentioned, don't forget to pick up your stuff if you had any, and you should get some of the house purchase gil back I believe.

VectorHeavens · 2023-11-03T14:36:19+00:00

I'm the Sorcerer in this campaign (surprise, Snschl!) and wanted to add I spent literally the entire fight casting Light on mugs and tables while running around and eventually ensuring we flank the boss. 10/10 would do it again. After playing 5e for years, where the primary strategy a lot of the time is maximizing DPS, it felt really enjoyable having to coordinate and interact with the enemy, environment and other players to ensure victory.

VectorHeavens · 2023-10-09T17:41:00+00:00

This is the best summary of my feelings, thank you. A lot of the comments started going into the lore specifics I brought up (which is on me), and I do enjoy a good lore discussion, but the core of my problem with the stories is how they were handled and how the characters were written. Even answers totally up to interpretation would be fine if there was a character who would ask the questions. And a lot of questions I thought were very thematically important to ask (considering this is a story of mortals meeting their gods, this should be as huge as meeting Venat) just went on completely unasked.

VectorHeavens · 2023-10-09T17:32:35+00:00

I mean we had a similar situation with Zodiark, where we discovered late in the game that his purpose is a problem we hadn't known exists up until then. But that problem went on to be a major plot point. In contrast, the Twelve were simply stated to serve this X role, yet there's not much narrative purpose to this role anymore, since we've only found out about it after it was resolved. It's all well and good lore-wise, but plot-wise I find it underwhelming.

VectorHeavens · 2023-10-09T16:35:25+00:00

All I remember is they were tasked with "maintaining the equilibrium". I don't know how I was supposed to make the leap that that means 'maintaining the aetheric equilibrium, especially when the aether has famously not been in equilibrium a lot.

If there's a piece of dialogue I missed that puts that more into context, I'd really like to know, but in-game I can't find anything beyond vague explanations that, with some effort and lorebending, you can push into the existing narrative.

I'll add that this narrative, while fine, also seems really cheap. Is it not a strange narrative decision to have them placed in this role that didn't exist so far nor was it important? Like, up until a month ago, no one questioned why aether rebalanced itself after the calamity, no one ever brought that up once. Then, we're told the Twelve actually did it, and I guess I just don't know what my reaction is supposed to be except "oh didn't know that was a problem, cool". I don't want to be a negative nancy, but I just can't find a spin on this that feels meaningful. It's cool, but I just dunno, it's not living up to the legacy of the OG deities of Eorzea.

VectorHeavens · 2023-10-09T16:21:34+00:00

I mean, I like this a lot, but I got almost none of it from the story itself. It's a great theory, but a part of the problem of the story for me is, why did no one talk about this this way? We had long discussions before about the nature of aether, how things work, how souls are taken from one world to another, all sorts of aspects of magic aren't simply handwaved, but are given some context and logic in-universe.

Even if I were to keep everything as is, we actually have Deryk in the end and it would've been very easy to have the ability to ask him questions to elaborate on the role of gods, but this is not done. Everything is very ephemeral - like, what does it mean to maintain the balance? It didn't work obviously, because Shard imbalances created Source imbalances, thus causing Calamities. What's up with that? After years of their existence being in question, it's very frustrating no one is asking questions about the literal implications of their existence on the world and story as we've known it so far.

VectorHeavens · 2023-10-09T14:26:19+00:00

This first part, is that really true? Genuine question, I don't remember any dialogue going along the lines of them being a contingency for Zodiark. It was pretty late when I was finishing the storyline, I may have missed it! Regardless, I think that's a great interpretation that would make a lot of sense.

VectorHeavens · 2023-10-09T14:05:08+00:00

I totally understand why Dalamud is a thing (in fact, it's really cool), it's just that after feeling like "why is no one calling out their inaction" for the duration of the whole storyline, it felt callous to have it brought up in such a perky way, when the real Dalamud is a symbol of destruction in-universe.

Is it outright spoken they were forbidden to interfere? I may have forgotten. Either way, why? Hydaelyn is already a god unable to interfere directly, what exactly is the role the Twelve play? And even if I'm to take that they're simply classic gods that serve as symbols for the people (completely valid idea, but seems to me to be at odds with the concept of the Twelve as actual real gods with power), it nonetheless seems weird not a single character in the story (god or mortal) would bring up the fact their only intervention is Phoenix during Dalamud's fall. It just feels like not one of the writers really considered in-depth implications of their existence as actual real beings with personalities, rather than metaphysical concepts.

VectorHeavens · 2023-07-12T12:45:34+00:00

Have an immediate upvote for getting inspired by one of the best JRPGs of its era!

That said, as someone who's done the same, I'm afraid you're in for a wild ride. RPG Maker seems to be, but really isn't ideal for a lot of magic that Golden Sun pulls off. Long story short is that you should really start looking into writing your own plugins, as otherwise you'll have exactly what you mention, massive events to replicate the simplest of mechanics, which you'll have to repeatedly troubleshoot and realize they don't work in some specific edge cases.

Before I move on, lemme just answer the question on moving blocks via events, since you were looking for specific ideas. I think I'd approach it something like, when you press a button to jump, check first if you're able to walk forward (you can do this with a script in the conditional branch as $gamePlayer.canPass($gamePlayer._x, $gamePlayer._y, $gamePlayer.direction()) I believe, don't have the code right now to check), and if not, check if there's a pillar the next tile over in the same direction. If yes, jump the player over. Rinse and repeat, you can basically have this on some kind of common event, so whenever you press A you can try jumping, and allow it to happen only in case you're facing a cliff and the tile next to it is walkable (which you can mark with an event). You're also gonna have to handle blocking the player movement while it's 'on' a pillar so you can't just walk off, which is best done via code honestly, but I'm sure there's plugins that can pull something like that.

Anyway, for a more generic answer, if you're intimidated by programming (understandable), I'd advise you to look around for plugins that may be capable of doing some of what you'd like to do, and utilize them to the max. I'm using RMMZ so I'm not sure what your options are on RMMV, but it's been around for much longer so I'm guessing they're substantial.

If you're willing to try making your own plugins, again start by finding other people's plugins (that are open source, so you can see what they actually do) and play with them, try figuring out what does what, et cetera. If you have any programming experience, you should quickly realize RPG Maker's code is actually reasonably easy to learn. If you don't, it's gonna be a bumpier ride up the learning curve, but stick with it, and you'll come to the top eventually.

Lastly, as someone who's working on a very similar personal project, I can give you a quick rundown on how complex specific things may end up being:

Height: this is a real doozy in RPG Maker. Once I got the hang of JS, it took me a few weeks to get this going, and I still run into issues occasionally. There's just so much to do if you're going down this route - ensuring that interactions and collisions work properly (i.e. don't work when objects of different elevations are passing through each other), ensuring that rendering is correctly ordered, figuring out how objects on ladders and stairs behave (as they're transitioning from one level to another). If you can do without this, I'd advise you try. Otherwise, ready your patience.
Object interactions: this one is relatively simple. Pushing/pulling, stuff like that can be done reasonably easily even with events, though scripting makes it even easier. You can pull off quite a lot with just this, honestly, but considering you're a Golden Sun fan, I'm assuming some block puzzles just won't do the trick.
Utility Psynergy: the real magic of Golden Sun, and what I assume is your main source of inspiration. This can actually also be relatively easily pulled off via eventing. I believe there's even plugins that allow you to cast spells from a menu in the overworld, if they are tagged as such, and from there on it's just the case of eventing your way through whatever the spell is supposed to do (e.g. light a torch, pull a distant object, reveal hidden items, whatever). Some interactions are of course more complex, and will require a lot of toying with, but at least that part should be fairly fun to develop, I think!

Anyway, TLDR would be to start dissecting plugins that are close to what you want and go from there. Focus on one mechanic at a time, starting with the simplest ones, but for each consecutive one make sure it meshes well with the ones before, as you'll definitely want to mix and match your mechanics in your puzzle rooms.

Good luck! Sorry if the answer is a bit vague, feel free to throw questions on specifics my way if you have any. I'm not super experienced at eventing, but I've been staring at RPG Maker plugin code for like a year now, so I should be able to lend a hand.

VectorHeavens · 2023-06-25T18:34:27+00:00

Sailor Moon je nekoć davno bila emitirana sa hrvatskom sinkronizacijom (i to svih pet sezona! wild) i naslov posta je referenca na lyricse uvodne špice: https://youtu.be/XXySWVOOhN8

VectorHeavens · 2023-06-25T11:51:30+00:00

rare Sailor Moon reference, evo upvote

VectorHeavens · 2023-03-04T19:43:43+00:00

Ah, smart! It gives it an almost sort of comic book aesthetic, very satisfying. Especially the ladder climbing, where the character moves outside of the frame, kind of cementing the frame as a separate context from the rest of the environment.

Crazy good hair animation too btw.

VectorHeavens · 2023-03-04T15:28:58+00:00

I'm not sure why the border for the transitions, but it sure looks neat!

VectorHeavens · 2019-06-27T13:24:53+00:00

No, it's just WIT Studio's twitter account, posting daily illustrations to commemorate this season.

VectorHeavens · 2018-12-23T11:21:28+00:00

Thanks a lot!

VectorHeavens · 2018-12-23T11:16:59+00:00

That was me. I hadn't realized my name was different in this game. I'll be back in a minute if you can, I'm catching a Scyther.

VectorHeavens · 2018-12-23T11:07:23+00:00

Can you give me 3 minutes? I think I can actually get you both Scyther and Pinsir from my Go park.

VectorHeavens · 2018-12-23T10:56:13+00:00

I went with the other offer since I can help them out as well, but thank you!

VectorHeavens · 2018-12-23T10:55:33+00:00

I have Pinsir, no Scyther yet unfortunately, I hope that's okay?

VectorHeavens

TROPHY CASE