By The Intrepid — 17 Sep 2025

From Elixir to Pop: Distilling JRPGs Down to Their Essence

Or: How we went from critiquing 300-page "baby toon grind" simulators to creating a complete JRPG in two pages

The Problem with JRPG Adaptations

Picture this: You love Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Tales of Symphonia. The stories of friendship conquering impossible odds, communities rebuilding after disasters, heroes who change the world through cooperation and sacrifice. So naturally, you're excited when someone announces a tabletop RPG based on Ys or Final Fantasy XIV.

Then you crack open the book and find... 300+ pages of stat tables, equipment catalogs, and XP progression systems that completely miss what made those games special in the first place.

These adaptations make a fundamental error: They adapt the mechanics of JRPGs (levels, stats, equipment treadmills) that minimize the themes (community, sacrifice, building something greater than yourself). You get "start as baby toon and grind" instead of "heroes who understand that true strength comes from friendship and infrastructure."

It's like trying to recreate a vintage wine by copying the bottle shape while ignoring the actual grapes.

The Distillation Process

What if we approached this differently? What if we identified the essential ingredients that make JRPGs emotionally resonant, then built mechanics around those instead of around combat math?

Step 1: Identify the Core Essence

JRPGs aren't really about individual power accumulation. They're about:

Collective heroism - the party succeeds through cooperation, not solo achievement
World transformation - your actions reshape communities, economies, and political landscapes
Moral complexity - the right choice often requires difficult sacrifices
Infrastructure building - saving the world means building trade routes, forming alliances, and healing social divisions
Legacy creation - what you build should outlast your individual heroics

Step 2: Extract the Active Compounds

Instead of "kill monster → gain XP → level up," what if progression looked like:

Heal community divisions → gain Community Bonds → people offer shelter and fight alongside you
Reopen trade routes → gain Trade & Resources → steady supply of gear and innovations
Negotiate treaties → gain Alliances & Influence → safe passage and coalition support

The Three Pillars system was born from this insight: measure success by the infrastructure you build, not the power you accumulate.

Step 3: Remove the Unnecessary Additives

Traditional TTRPGs are weighed down by:

Dozens of stats that don't create interesting choices
Equipment tables that exist for their own sake
Spell lists that mechanize what should be narrative
Level progression that feels inevitable rather than earned

Strip all that away. What's left is the concentrated essence: heroes making difficult choices about what kind of world they want to build.

Traditional vs. Essence-Driven JRPG Design

Traditional Adaptations	Our Approach
Goal: Simulate video game mechanics	Goal: Capture emotional experience
Progression: Kill monsters → gain XP → level up	Progression: Make choices → build infrastructure → change world
Complexity: 300+ pages of stat tables	Complexity: Essential systems only
Success: Individual power accumulation	Success: Community transformation
Challenges: Combat optimization puzzles	Challenges: Moral dilemmas with consequences
Legacy: Better numbers on character sheet	Legacy: Actual changes to game world

Now that we've isolated the active ingredients, we can rehydrate them into any form that serves our players.

The Rehydration: From Elixir to Pop

Once you have the essence, you can rehydrate it into any form factor:

The Artisanal Craft Version: The Pillars of Dawn (33 pages)

Complete, detailed, ready for long campaigns. Includes:

Faction clocks and dynamic opposition
Pillar tensions that force tough choices
Personal flaws that complicate infrastructure goals
Cascading consequences where every victory creates new challenges
A full bestiary designed around infrastructure threats

The Mass Market Pop: Might & Mana (2 pages)

Same essential flavor, maximum accessibility:

Elegant Might/Mana stat system
Three Pillars condensed to their core
Adventure generator for infinite scenarios
Everything you need for convention one-shots

Both versions preserve the emotional core: heroes who grow by building a better world, not by accumulating personal power.

What We Learned About Design

Good ideas scale in both directions. The infrastructure focus works just as well in a 2-page micro-game as in a 33-page complete system. If your core concept requires 300 pages to function, it might not be as elegant as you think.

Mechanical innovation comes from thematic clarity. Once we identified that JRPGs are about building worlds worth saving, the Three Pillars system practically designed itself. The mechanics serve the theme, not the other way around.

Aspiration beats dystopia. While many modern indie RPGs revel in broken worlds and survival mechanics, the Pillars create an aspirational framework where progress is possible and heroes actively repair the world. You're not just surviving another day—you're building a better tomorrow. This optimistic direction feels authentically JRPG while acknowledging that positive change requires hard work and difficult choices.

Progression should feel earned, not inevitable. Traditional XP systems make advancement feel like a time investment. Infrastructure building makes it feel like a moral choice with lasting consequences.

Competing goods create better drama than competing evils. The hardest choices aren't between good and evil—they're between two different goods that you can't have simultaneously. Do you prioritize community unity or economic growth? Military defense or diplomatic cooperation?

The Taste Test

The proof is in the playing. When you run these games, you get:

Memorable moments from infrastructure dilemmas, not just combat encounters
Investment in NPCs because they represent your achievements, not just quest dispensers
Lasting consequences where session 1 choices still matter in session 20
Collaborative problem-solving instead of individual optimization
Stories about building instead of stories about destroying

Players walk away talking about the community they united, the trade route they secured, the alliance they forged. The numbers on their character sheet matter less than the changes they made to the world.

The Recipe is Open Source

Both The Pillars of Dawn and Might & Mana are released under CC BY-SA 4.0. We're not trying to hoard the essence—we want other designers to experiment with it, improve it, and create their own variations.

The infrastructure focus could work for:

Space opera (building galactic federations)
Cyberpunk (constructing resistance networks)
Fantasy (rebuilding after apocalypse)
Modern day (community organizing and social change)

The specific genre matters less than the core insight: heroes grow by making the world better, not by making themselves stronger.

From Grind to Growth

Maybe it's time for JRPG adaptations to stop asking "How do we simulate Final Fantasy's battle system?" and start asking "How do we capture Final Fantasy's heart?"

The answer isn't in the stat blocks or equipment tables. It's in the moments when Celes learns to trust again, when the party rebuilds Figaro Castle, when you realize that saving the world means more than just defeating the final boss.

It's in the infrastructure of hope.

Ready to Try the Recipe?

The Pillars of Dawn Collection is available as a free download on itch.io - complete game, micro-game, and one-shot adventure, all ready to run.

Because the best way to prove a design philosophy works is to give it away and let the community decide.

Try the elixir. Enjoy the pop. Build worlds worth saving.