Beacon is a game that is very clearly inspired by the aesthetics of a Final Fantasy game, more specifically, Final Fantasy 14. And with Square Enix recently releasing their own tabletop role-playing game, I had been thinking about making this post for some time, but kept putting it off.
I'll be going over the player section of Beacon and the player rules PDF from the FFXIV RPG first, and the GM rules will come at a later date. Get in your tank stance, and find your leylines, let's get to it.
Structure
Beacon follows in the footsteps of LANCER, splitting play up into a Narrative Phase and a Combat phase. Like LANCER, the rules for combat are way more involved than the rules for out of combat play. We'll go over that more later when we get into the meat and potatoes of the game. You link Quests into a Campaign.
14TTRPG is a bit different. There's no real set format, near as I could tell from both the player materials and the intro of the GM one. It relies on what it calls "Scenarios", which are essentially adventure paths, either premade or ones made up by GMs. The full GM guide hasn't released yet, so I'll look over a Scenario in the GM post. One thing I do want to note about Scenarios that feels really important: The level of your character is set by the Scenario, and you can change your job between Scenarios.
Main Mechanics
Beacon uses a primarily 1d20 system for all checks, while damage would be rolled with different d6 rolls for damage rolls. Additionally, if you have Accuracy or Difficulty, you roll an extra d6 for each point or source of Accuracy/Difficulty and take the highest. On Accuracy, you add that to your roll, on Difficulty you subtract that amount. Accuracy and Difficulty negate each other on a 1-to-1 basis.
When in Narrative play, your checks will be the 1d20 roll + any relevant skill score you have, against a difficulty of 10. 10 being the target means you'll be hitting 55% of the time, even on a roll you don't have any relevant skill or bonus for. If it's like Lancer, there will be Risky or Heroic level challenges that raise the target number, but for the most part, your checks will be against 10. In combat, you'll probably be doing checks against someone else's save score.
14TTRPG uses a D20 resolution system as well. You roll 1d20+Relevent attribute to bypass a GM set Challenge Rating. Right out of D&D, sans bounded accuracy. When targeting another character, their Defense and Magic Defense act as CR's a lot of times.
Characters
Both games allow yout o give your character a Title. In Beacon, you make it at character creation and just make one up, as if you are stating how you would be remembered. In 14TTRPG, you can earn Titles as reward, which can influence how characters react to you. You can earn many titles, but you can only have one active at a time. Non-active titles have no effect.
Beacon starts with Ancestries. Interestingly, these aren't necessarily the same as species. It calls out an example of taking the Avian ancestry in a All human world meaning you have just something that lets you fly or whatever other Avian trait you choose. There's also a section for players who want to dual ancestry or have a custom one.
The game comes with 15 Ancestries: Avian, Cambion (demonic traits), Draken, Dwarf, Elemental, Elf, Gigan, Gnome, Goblin, Halfling, Human, Kobold, Lycanthrope, Machina, and Orc.
Next would be Jobs, which are broken down into 5 Roles: Artillery, Controller, Defender, Striker, and Support. Each Job has their own abilities and base attributes, which then add your own stats earned from levelling up on top of them. There are 29 Jobs. I am not going to list all of them.
On top of Jobs there are things called Talents, which are abilities you can use regardless of the class you have selected.
I had to go edit the last two paragraphs because the game differentiates between "Jobs" and "Classes". But for this book, each Class is named the same as it's job so whatever. If you've played LANCER you could think of the Class as the "license" and the Job as the "Frame" you take into a mission. So if you have taken 3 Class ranks in Demonologist, and 1 in Assassin, you can go into a mission as either a Demonologist or an Assassin, then mix and match gear and other unlocks.
This offers a LOT of ability to mix and match your characters. Swap your loadout for missions and you can experiment with new synergies on an individual and party basis.
Your character at character creation has the following: Name and Title, 3 Rank one Background skills (should be evocative skills, so rather than Acrobat, make it something like Acrobat of the Carnal-val), 2 Ability points (spent among Bulk, Agility, Mind, Magic), an Ancestry, 1 class rank, and appearance. Additionally you will have access to all of the basic/generic gear and techniques.
In 14TTRPG, your character takes on one of the Jobs from Final Fantasy 14, with which I don't know which ones actually made it into the game because the Jobs aren't in the free rules. In fact, the free rules don't even tell you how to create a character, beyond picking their title, name, appearance, and other narrative information about them.
OK, sorry, they put the classes in a separate PDF. Christ alive. You have 5 classes available: Warrior, White Mage, Dragoon, Black Mage, and Red Mage. You do not start at level 1 in 14TTRPG, but instead you play your selected Class at whatever level the Scenario is set to. The game will have each class at level 30, 40, 50, and 60, with a specific set of skills available at each level. From what I can see, there is no customization of your characters. This might be closer to one of those D&D board games than what most people would think of a TTRPG is. This is very combat focused, so it's about executing during the fights and using teamwork and tactics to win the encounters to progress.
You know, this post was supposed to be about comparing and contrasting these two games, but now, I just wanna run or play Beacon.
The more I read about the free version of Final Fantasy 14th's TTRPG, the less impressed with it I am. The GM section may have some interesting tidbits of GM advice and philosophy, but man, the gameplay loop seems very much like the MMO. Which is fine but it's not what I expected? Though I guess you don't really have a ton of customizing options in FFXIV.
Seems like it'd be a fun way to spend a night. Only thing you'd need to prep as a player is like, what class you want to play a given night. In a way, this feels like it could be a modern version of the old "Take your character from table to table" type thing? Dunno.
My comparisons are pretty unfair though because this is demo material. The official launch may include some more rules for character creation and this might just be giving you some precon characters. If I ever come across the full version when it launches, I'll probably follow up.