Cities Discussion

[Ilium]

cities

[Ilium]

I'm assuming Zelamonia is Zeltennia, correct? FFT is rife with multiple translations throughout its existence. If so, I'm leaning towards making Zeltennia part of Ordalia, because as far as I'm aware Ordalia had control of the city during the 50 Year's War.

Any other information anyone might have on possible cities in Ordalia and Romanda would be appreciated.

[Schwerpunkt]

The Fifty Years' War rumor in FFT mentions Zeltennia and Zelmonia explicitly in both translations. They're in the same general area (being roughly on the border between the two kingdoms), but they're clearly different places. Zelmonia is where the war starts -- Zeltennia is where it ends.

Conveniently, the same rumor also names the Ordallian capital: Viura. FF12's Rozarrian Empire is supposedly based on the Ordalian (one l) continent, but I'm not sure the "Ivalice Alliance" has much in the way of real continuity. There's not much basis for any real cities of Ordallia. We can probably assume there was a city called Zelmonia (as capital of Zelmonia, since they did this with Lionel/Fovoham/Zeltennia), but that's about it. We know of one city and can guess as to one other. The rest -- including all those eastern cities on HoI's map -- are pretty much fabrications.

So, I say, why not simply create entirely new cities? Rozarria in FF12 is depicted as being Spanish with a distinctive Arabic flare. I say go for broke and write Ordallian cities, culture, and characters like they're classic Reconquista-era Iberians. Just with less religious zeal, since it doesn't really fit the setting.

[Ilium]

I had actually been just using the Ordalia locations (link) that are provided in FFTA2. A benefit to that is there is alot of various locations already fleshed out a bit, plus battle maps to go along with them. I added Zelamonia as I found out the two cities were different, and I first added Viura as that's the straight translation, however Heroes of Ivalice has it as Bura. Some players from that game may be more familiar with that translation. It wouldn't be too hard to change the culture of Ordalia a bit like you mentioned, as the descriptions from FFTA2 leave a lot to the imagination.

[Schwerpunkt]

Since it's pretty much impossible to guarantee we'd have enough battle maps to match all the locations, I strongly recommend using some other map making source. Hexographer (which has a free version that's pretty extensive) is a good one if you want to use hexes like HoI did -- I, personally, use it for creating D&D world maps, since the hexes give you both a standard unit of measurement and is ridiculously easy to use. You can probably look around for others, if you want, but I like that one. Or, y'know, just ask the guys at HoI what they used.

So, moving on.

It's not really important whether it's translated as Bura or Viura. If we're going with the sort of Arabic/Spanish hybrid, Bura's probably better -- the letter v doesn't crop up that often in Arabic place names. While I like Viura overall (since it just sounds more fantasy-esque), I can see why Bura would work.

The FFTA2 map is all over the place in place names. Jylland (Jutland, like it says) is the actual term for the Danish peninsula (you know, the part connected to Germany -- not the islands). Aisenfield probably has its etymological origins in Eisenfeld (using classic German naming conventions, "Iron fields," probably referring to a town (which are usually -feld while walled cities were -burg) that specialized in metallurgy. The rest are just as varied.

I'd recommend using derivatives of Arabic names for actual Spanish places: Liyyun (Leon), Arkus (Arcos), al-Bunt (Alpuente), Qadis (Cadiz), Rundah (Ronda), Saris (Jerez de la Fontera), al-Basit (Albacete), Silb (Silves, Portugal), Tirwal (Tiruel), and Gayyan (Jaen) all seem pretty viable -- they're short, fairly easy to spell, and pretty distinct. There are some interesting longer names (Gabal Tariq for Gibraltar, Tulaytulah for Toledo, al-Mariyyah for Almeria), but they may be too long for people to easily digest. Wiki has a longer list of Arabic names for places. We might keep the suffix 'al-' for names, sort of like what they did with Al-Cid in FF12.

Giving Ordallia a distinctively Arabic flavor like this will make it a lot easier to make Ordallia more distinct than "they're just Ivalicians with different names."

Oh, and because I felt like it, I fed "Ordallia" into Google's transliterator, transliterated it back, and got Ardallea. It might be interesting to take a very creative interpretation of this and (with my lousy understanding of Arabic), treat that like it's the Ivalicized term for al-Dhalya ('dhal' is the word of the letter 'd' and 'ya' is often transliterated as 'e,' so there's a clear basis in the Arabic alphabet). Al-Dhalya means absolutely nothing (well, I guess it'd be "the d-e"), but it sounds like Ordallia. If you really want to go crazy, the Arabic pronoun "our" is -na and, like all Arabic pronouns (when working with one word; using two articles changes it because language is weird) is plugged onto the end of the word. But I have no idea how it'd actually be applied: it's not just tacked onto the end, but rather there's some weird rule about it (sort of how English is inconsistent when added the -ing suffix). With simple words (like 'kitab,' which is 'book'), you just add it on the end (so 'kitaabna' would be 'our book,' I guess). Maybe we treat it like that and make Ordallia's "official" name al-Dhalyana, which I'm not crazy about. Other Arabic roots are -kum, -hum, -i, -ka, -ki, -u, -ha, -kuma, -huma, -hom, -ku, -kunna, -humma, all of which span the various pronouns and even include the special Egyptian cases. I don't think any of them add anything to al-Dhalya, though.

Additionally, treating Ordallia as a distinctively Arabic-esque culture gives us a good reason to explain the inconsistent translations FFT throws at us. Translating a language is hard -- transliterating between alphabets on top of that is even harder. So it'd explain why a name might be given as 'Bura' or 'Viura,' or both. It's an interesting (if extremely minor) tidbit that may help enrich the game as a whole. It even explains away the inconsistent number of l's (I prefer two, since that seems to be at least semi-official, as seen on this map, which has consistent spelling with regional names as well).

The hardest part about this would be explaining the royal marriage between Ordallia and Romanda. It may just be easier to retcon that and treat it like an alliance of convenience (like the French-Ottoman alliance in the 16th century, which at one point had the Barbary Coast pirates dropping anchor in Toulon). That'd also explain why Romanda flaked out after a paltry three years despite its apparent familial connections to Ordallia -- feudal governments considered marriage alliances to be pretty damned binding and not the kind of thing you almost eagerly broke.

[Schwerpunkt]

Romanda. Huzzah.

In game, information on Romanda is ridiculously scarce. We know it's across the straight from Fovoham, and that Fovoham kicked its teeth in during the war, but... that's about it. Romanda's presented as a "military nation" in the wiki. Running with this information (and the previous agreement to bill Romanda as a sort of Swedish kingdom), I figured we'd go the extra mile and also incorporate a few influences from the Ordenstaat of the Teutonic Order.

Additionally, I wanted to build the lore of Romanda around known locations in-universe -- primarily in the form of "wonders" and such found via errands. Falgabard (originally a town full of dark knights in FF3) would serve as the basis of the monastic end. Semitt City (named for the Semitt Falls wonder, which seems to be the Ivalice equivalent of Niagara) would serve as the seat of government for the Romandan military. Khus Castle (mentioned in the Enavia Chronicles artefact) would serve as the seat of the monarchy.

The Romandan Order of Dark Knights (which we'll obviously need to rename; we may even want to rename Falgabard) basically exists to function -- and I'm painting in really broad strokes here -- like the generals, secret police, and enforcers of the monarch. The monarch, in turn, exists to safeguard the Earth Crystal (which, in-game, would be the Capricorn stone, as Capricorn is one of three signs associated with the earth*). The Ronkan civilization also crops up in FF3 and its worship of the Earth Crystal gives us a degree of synergy here. Finally, the military exists to do everything the other two can't.

* = The other two are Taurus and Capricorn. Taurus, being found in Goug by Besrudio, isn't a good option because we can't really explain how it got lost there. Virgo works equally well, but since it's the last stone you obtain in-game, I'd rather use the stone Dycedarg has. Also, Capricorn is associated with goats and Virgo with maidens, so... yeah.

So, the super-simplified version. The monarch sets policy and outlines goals. The military then takes that policy and creates and then enforces legislation (so, in practice, the military is the government). The monastery (the dark knights) serve as the monarch's secret police, making sure the military doesn't get out of hand while also keeping really stupid kings from making phenomenally bad decisions (so no Kaiser Wilhelm II syndrome).

Additionally, the King of Romanda claims to be a descendent of the Ronkan dynasty (which may or may not be true; lineage claims during feudal eras tend to get a little wishful) and, in turn, is responsible for the safekeeping of the Capricorn stone. So there's something of a theological element to the Romandan monarchy.

As for the Earth Crystal itself, it may be interesting to portray the actual Earth Crystal as having been shattered at some point and the three earth-aligned stones -- Capricorn, Virgo, and Taurus -- as being the three largest fragments of it. This gives the Romandans a sort of meta-goal of reassembling the Earth Crystal to build a sky castle or whatever it is power-mad kings do when they have super powerful sources of energy.

Since every faction gets awarded classes, it makes the most sense (building on the Falgabard thing) to have the Romandans have the Dark Knight awarded class. On the MOJ end, I'd go with something like Warlock -- in FF3 (it's unlocked after getting the Earth Crystal), it's a Black Mage on steroids, so it might be interesting to make it a Black Mage with darkness-elemental spells, giving it a vaguely similar theme to the Dark Knight job.

Extremely crappy map I slapped together to provide a vague map of my envisioned Romanda. Up is north.



I told you it was crappy. I couldn't even get a proper river for Semitt City.

So, Swedishifying these names isn't that hard. Sweden largely just copies the Viking place naming convention, so we see lots of places ending in -holm and -stad, then more descriptive suffixes like -vik (bay), -fjell (mountain), -sund (sound, straight), -seter (mountain pasture, perhaps valley), and so forth.

Khus -> Vasaborg, Sverkerstad, or Stenkilsholm after historic dynasties.
Semitt City -> Johannsvik, Solveigstorp, or Haraldsgard. Places named after specific people.
Falgabard -> Kvallgard (night town), Morkeralv (gloom river), Ronnmark (ashland). Just compound words that are somehow descriptive of the region/place.
Order's Name -> Strangsoldater (harsh soldiers), Morkavalleri (sort of weird compound between 'dark' and 'cavalry'), Sangvorden (weird compound of orden and sangvinisk, so this is sort of "the sanguine order" if we're being really generous).
Ronka Ruins would stay as-is. They probably wouldn't rate a location on the map.

So, what passes muster and what needs to be strangled in the crib?

[Diethe]

I'll take work on putting in your map of Romanda then. PM me what needs to be worked on.

As for the FFTA2 Map and the map I made, I took into consideration the fact that the Kingdom of Ivalice was part of the whole Ordallian Continent, only blown up. Assuming Ivalice is part of the original Ordallian continent and looks like what it is now due to the Cataclysm; Fluorgis, based on the FFTA2 Map would probably be part of Romanda by now. Goug is right where it's supposed to be both in FFTA2 and in FFT; somewhere in a separated island south of the western tip of the continent. Remember, FFTA2 is pre-cataclysm and FFT had the Ordallian continent blown up. Which reminds me, I need to blow up parts of Ordallia more. But yeah, mostly my own speculation.

Also, yeah. Since we're talking translations and we're probably going mixed, just so you know Viura is the WoTL translation and the original PSX had it as Bura.

The city names are alright I guess, but a bit too much. I like how we are trying to give distinct cultures and flavors to Romanda and Ordallia, but they are still neighboring nations and even the Final Fantasy series dont give such cultural disparity. Maybe we can compromise a bit on both blending and distinguishing Romandan and Ordallian culture? Say, we take names that are from that culture, but not its naming conventions? Khus, Semmit, Johann for example, is alright. It's derived from that place and culture. -vik, -fjell,soldater is a bit too much if we can call them by english naming conventions such as Order instead of Ordenstaat or something. We can easily work on a sort of a compromise anyway.

[Diethe]

MAP SO FAR:
img.photobucket.com/albums/v623/Diethe/FinalFantasySim2.png

Progress Report:
-No map effects yet or mountains. I'm working on the outlines and shit. Romanda needs some work with its outlines. Also, the real map is a bit bigger at least. Couldn't find an image uploader that doesnt resize. Tell me what needs to be added.

-I'm also planning on adding a group of islands north of Ordallia and east of Romanda. Judging from the area of Nelveska and how the land seems to be sundered in that area, I'm guessing that is where the epicenter of the cataclysm took place.

Another thought: You know what I found iffy in Final Fantasy Tactics lore itself? No academy/training/place where the jobs originated from. People can just turn samurai without being from the "Orient" mentioned or trained by a samurai from there. Mages have their magick academies, squires/knights have their military academies but everyone else apparently just "job up" so why dont we come up with places reflecting these jobs? The same way Rafa and Marach Galthena were "seers". Well, if we're going with Ronkan ruins I guess we can start with the dark knights. And with your idea of implementing in-universe places with wonders, we could even have Highwind village/Deist of the dragoons with a neighboring dragon roost location they train in.

[Ilium]

The map looks great so far! I'm a minimalist so I like the current look of it, heh.

I remember making note of that too back in the day, about job changes. I remember thinking, "Hmm, my Samurai is able to take up Black Magic with no issues whatsoever." I have Gariland Magick Academy and Igros Prepatory School already as unique locations, and I was thinking about other types of locations that could be added along those lines.

My only issue I have when I think about that idea, is that I don't want these locations seeming gimmicky or cheesy. As in, there existing some random ninja training academy in some random town. I was thinking more along the lines of creating POJ academies and MOJ academies, and having each one have its own branch. For example, Gariland will mostly be a BM/WM training facility, but they have branches for each job. We could create another Magick Academy where this one might focus on Summoner, with branches for the others. Something along those lines.

However after that, I still have the issue of what purpose these academies would serve in-game. Obvious choices would be places to learn Specialist classes. We could also create special abilities that can only be learned at these places. If anyone has any more suggestions I'm all ears.

Schwerpunkt, quick reply, but I really like what you've come up with so far. I plan on more in depth replies to everyone soon, but I have so much homework to do by tonight that this will probably be my only post for the evening. Also the past day or two my time has been limited also due to homework, so I found the best use of my time here was working on the game itself and not being able to reply to posts. I haven't even been able to reply over at Heroes of Chaos since Saturday. Expect more tomorrow.

[Schwerpunkt]

I wasn't really a fan of how my map turned out, in terms of shape. I just sort of set the tool to "fractal" and went kind of crazy. What I was trying to do was give it some sort of fjord-esque look. It didn't work out (the tool wasn't as sensitive as I'd like). So, that horrible bay should look something a bit more like this:



Fjords have lots of fractals. Ideally, the coast would look more like Norway's coast.





The second one is Greenland's coast (Scoresby Sund, the bigass tree-shaped fjord on that second image, is the largest in the world). I think the island as a whole would simply look better with two fjords.

And if you want a good baseline for an island chain that looks like it's been beat to hell by something, might as well take a peek at Svalbard.



There's also the Russian Franz Josef Land, which basically looks like God threw a fistful of rocks into the empty space above Russia.

The city names are alright I guess, but a bit too much. I like how we are trying to give distinct cultures and flavors to Romanda and Ordallia, but they are still neighboring nations and even the Final Fantasy series dont give such cultural disparity. Maybe we can compromise a bit on both blending and distinguishing Romandan and Ordallian culture? Say, we take names that are from that culture, but not its naming conventions? Khus, Semmit, Johann for example, is alright. It's derived from that place and culture. -vik, -fjell,soldater is a bit too much if we can call them by english naming conventions such as Order instead of Ordenstaat or something. We can easily work on a sort of a compromise anyway.

I didn't intend for these places to be put on the map as-is. I expect them to get garbled and corrupted somewhat -- that's sort of standard fare when worldbuilding. You give something its "native" name and then you run it through a few steps of separation. For instance, you might transliterate it into Cyrillic, transliterate it back, and see what happened. If nothing else, you might just drop a syllable, so Sverkerstad becomes Sverstad or corrupt it into something else (Serkstad, Sversad, Verkad, etc.). Alternatively, simply use the English versions of those places (so -torp becomes -thorpe, -semet becomes -set, -vik becomes -wick). There are a ton of Norse-inspired names in the old Danelaw of England that used this exact system.

It's important to determine the "native" name because that's basically free world building. Figure out how they name places and you figure out something new about their culture. If they name their cities after famous heroes, maybe there's an element of indirect ancestor worship. Alternatively, if you interpret it as a no-nonsense and practical perspective, you then know that their military uniforms aren't going to be lined with lace and will probably be plain colors (something from a cheap dye, like blue, and not a really difficult dye to manufacture, like Roman purple).

As for actual political institutions, they'd be referred to by native name. We still use Nanten and Hokuten, after all, and both of those are basically transliterated directly from Japanese (with a second word dropped for ease of use).

I'd want to avoid using Khus and Semitt because they're in-universe places. Johann is what I planned on naming the King of Romanda, so... probably not ideal.

I remember making note of that too back in the day, about job changes. I remember thinking, "Hmm, my Samurai is able to take up Black Magic with no issues whatsoever." I have Gariland Magick Academy and Igros Prepatory School already as unique locations, and I was thinking about other types of locations that could be added along those lines.

My only issue I have when I think about that idea, is that I don't want these locations seeming gimmicky or cheesy. As in, there existing some random ninja training academy in some random town. I was thinking more along the lines of creating POJ academies and MOJ academies, and having each one have its own branch. For example, Gariland will mostly be a BM/WM training facility, but they have branches for each job. We could create another Magick Academy where this one might focus on Summoner, with branches for the others. Something along those lines.

However after that, I still have the issue of what purpose these academies would serve in-game. Obvious choices would be places to learn Specialist classes. We could also create special abilities that can only be learned at these places. If anyone has any more suggestions I'm all ears.

Magick City Gariland was so unbalanced last round at HoI that the staff basically had to drop a colony on it.

And yeah, there's an element of balance to be considered. It'd be pretty hard to effectively balance region-specific specialist jobs.

[Diethe]

Apr 16, 2013 16:39:35 GMT -6 Ilium said:

The map looks great so far! I'm a minimalist so I like the current look of it, heh.

I remember making note of that too back in the day, about job changes. I remember thinking, "Hmm, my Samurai is able to take up Black Magic with no issues whatsoever." I have Gariland Magick Academy and Igros Prepatory School already as unique locations, and I was thinking about other types of locations that could be added along those lines.

My only issue I have when I think about that idea, is that I don't want these locations seeming gimmicky or cheesy. As in, there existing some random ninja training academy in some random town. I was thinking more along the lines of creating POJ academies and MOJ academies, and having each one have its own branch. For example, Gariland will mostly be a BM/WM training facility, but they have branches for each job. We could create another Magick Academy where this one might focus on Summoner, with branches for the others. Something along those lines.

However after that, I still have the issue of what purpose these academies would serve in-game. Obvious choices would be places to learn Specialist classes. We could also create special abilities that can only be learned at these places. If anyone has any more suggestions I'm all ears.

In terms of better roleplay and immersion, how about instead of academies with specialty classes, how about places specific for classes where they could go and well 'learn'. Sort of like the faction system we currently have, except these are job specific and they give out quests that are specialized for your jobs? As well as I'm agreeing with Schwerpunkt about Gariland and it being condensed with people due to the one academy in the map.

Here are some ideas:

Squire/Knight = Military Academy
BM/WM = Magick Academy
Geomancer = Geomancer Cairn. This class has a lot of influences, historically, from the garif of Jahara in FF12.
Ninja = Clan Village. We could even have opposing clan villages with certain special techniques as well as the assassin special class.
Thief = Thief Guild. Certain big cities prone to corruption might have these.
Dragoon = Highwind/Deist village from FF lore. Nearby is a dragon place people go to and fight. We can probably place it in Romanda for the northern influence.
Samurai = The Orient, that we wouldn't probably include in the map sadly. So we could probably have wandering samurai masters teach.

Also, are you guys okay with the map size already? Or is Romanda too big?

[Diethe]

Also, here's my own theory of the map based on FFTA2. As we all know, FFTA2 happened before the cataclysm and Goug still is the Moogle capital.



Well, shown in the map is the western coast of Ordallia but of course in FFT (After the Cataclysm) the whole coast has been destroyed and sundered. So Ivalice of FFT was basically Ordallia's west coast back before the Cataclysm. Still, Goug is exactly where it's supposed to be and the island is still there. Of course, during FFT all the moogles are extinct but the city remains. Fluorgis is where Romanda might be, northwest of Ivalice.

The continent of Loar in the meantime might be an interesting sidequest and place to visit that we could add in the future.

UPDATE: Map so far now with a very rough outline of elevation/mountains. Damn. Cant find a decent image uploader without resizing or lessening the image quality.

s24.postimg.org/ei03f5cet/Final_Fantasy_Sim_3.png

[Schwerpunkt]

Try imgur.com.

I don't like the idea of tying basic classes to specific locations or trainers. It adds a pretty frustrating hurdle for players and requires additional NPCs to be roleplayed without really adding all that much to the game. It also seems that we're going with the "awarded classes tied to factions" system, which would mean we're gating both multi-class upgrades behind factions or regions. That seems to be a losing proposition to me (and rather hard to balance).

I don't mind the idea of having minor factions for individual classes, though. But I'm not sure how to balance that.

[Diethe]

Alright. What does the map need so far? (Apart from effects which I'll slap on later).

I'll probably need a cities location/list and other geographical references you guys might want added.

[Schwerpunkt]

Here's a thought: what if we had "settlement" tiles as squares (so factions could own them and stuff) and then "wild" territories (like ruins, deserts, swamps) as triangles or some other icon (meaning you cannot own them in the traditional kingdom sense)? If we do that, we have a lot more variety than "oh, a random monster hunt is taking place on the doorstep of Eagrose. Nevermind why the Gryphon Knights aren't dealing with it!"

As for map changes, I'd move the entire island of Romanda. To me, it just seems like it's too close to Eagrose and too far from Fovoham (which is supposed to be the nearest location). Also, I'd extend the eastern mountain range further west (to a point I'll mark) because reasons; give it a shape vaguely like an inverted Y.

I horribly maimed your map to give a general idea of what I'm talking about. I just used MSPaint's crappy symbols (no idea why I used diamonds instead of squares). Hell hath no fury like a guy with no artistic talent playing with MSPaint.

i.imgur.com/vxeF3Xi.png

So, that gives you a good idea of what the above meant.