Tabletop RPGs of Asia: Floria the Verdant Way
Cultivate flora and journey through magical woodlands in this unique and wholesome indie Japanese TRPG
After reviewing the ever popular Sword World 2.5 and reading the Goblin Slayer TRPG, I felt like I needed to see what the indie tabletop RPG scene in Japan had to offer. What I found was a game with one of the most unique magic systems I’ve ever read. That game was Floria: The Verdant Way.
Overview
In Floria: The Verdant Way, you play as a Floria - a wizard of the mystical woods empowered by a symbiotic magical plant that grows within your body. Using nature magic, Floria seek to preserve the delicate balance between the endless mystic woods and the human settlements living beneath the canopy.
Unlike the extensive fan translation of Sword World 2.5, Floria received an officially licensed English translation via a crowdfunding campaign. The English localization was undertaken by a publisher called Silver Vine Publishing, who seeks to support Japanese indie creators and help bring their unique indie tabletop games to the West. A major part of their business also involves ensuring that the majority of the profits from translations are allocated to the original creators!
The creator of the game goes by the online handle, Nekotsuki Noko. From the Kickstarter campaign for the English localization of the game, their bio says:
Born in Toyama, Japan, Nekotsuki is a young female creator who splits her time between working as a designer for a major game company and producing her own illustrations. When she was a student in 2018, she produced the indie TRPG Floria: The Verdant Way for the indie TRPG circle "Rokujoma Phantasm Space." This game has garnered a large following in Japan and abroad, with a Korean version releasing in February 2021.
It is worth noting that Nekotsuki, the game’s creator, was involved in nearly every aspect of its production. From mechanical design to illustrations and layouts, what they have achieved as an independent creator is impressive.
The World of Floria
The game world exists on an unnamed planet, where the majority of the land is shrouded in deep, mysterious woods comprised of countless plant varieties. These plants all share a common element - they possess magical power beyond human comprehension. They’ve gained this through a deep connection via their roots to a power source called the Fount of Magic. In Flora, any plant connected to this is referred to as a herb. In the game text, it is implied that the herbs have some form of sentience.
Herbs contain ley vines - pathways that exist inside and outside plants that take magical energy from the Fount. As herbs mature (the game uses the term “cultivate”), so do their magical powers - with their ley lines growing finer and more complex in patterning.
Humanity coexists with these powerful plants; building villages in the shadows of the tallest trees where they live quiet and careful lives. While the magical woods are beautiful, they present many dangers to humanity in the form of ever changing pathways that make mapping next to impossible, wild beasts empowered by herbs, and aggressive plants.
So what exactly is a “Floria”?
Floria are those who ingest herbs to borrow their magical power. It’s very similar to a parasitic relationship, with the Floria acting like a host for a compatible herb. While the majority of the plants in the game world are magical in nature, comparatively few are capable of resonating with hosts. Once an herb is ingested, it will sprout within the body of the host and form new ley vines connected to the fount. Existing as a Floria is to be part of a good symbiotic relationship - you provide herbs with nutrients and a means to move, and the herb gives you access to magical powers. Both humans and animals can become Floria, with the latter gaining anthropomorphic traits because of their herbal bond.
Character Creation
Character creation is organized into 6 steps:
Determine your attributes
Choose a species and gain the skills of that species
Choose a lifestyle and the skills you want from that lifestyle
Choose a magic style and gain the skills of that magic style
Draw the starting lines from your species and magic style on your Ley Vine Canvas
Draw 1 bonus line connecting 2 points on your Ley Vine Canvas
Attributes
Each character has a total of 10 attributes that represent their character’s base capabilities. The first 4 of these attributes are strength, will, dexterity, and wisdom. The remaining 6 attributes include: attunement (a measure of a character’s harmony with the herbs inside them), vitality (the attribute used for searching and movement), agility (initiative), carrying capacity, life points, and familiarity (a PC’s bonds with their companions). These are derived from other character elements.
The 4 core attributes are determined by assigning an array of numbers (2, 3, 4, and 5) in a player’s order of preference. Vitality and agility are determined by the lifestyle and magic style a player selects for their character. Attunement, life points, and familiarity have fixed starting values for all characters, while carrying capacity is equal to a character’s strength.
Species
There are 3 species capable of becoming Floria in this world: Humans, Therians (anthropomorphic animals), and Dryades (sentient herbs). Each comes with a unique set of skills and starting ley vines for a character’s ley vine canvas (more on this later).
Lifestyle
A Floria’s lifestyle represents the ways in which they support themselves and their community. These include: Crafter, Traveler, or Gardener. Each lifestyle has a variety of skills that the player may choose from to customize their character.
For example, the Gardener has a skill called “Miniature Garden” that allows them to ignore environmental effects while harvesting herbs once per session.
You’ve got a miniature garden in your pocket. That way, no matter where you are, you can cultivate just the Herb you want. Plus it’ll always be fresh.
Magic Style
Next is a Floria’s magic style - the way that they use their herbs to manifest magical power. Like a character’s lifestyle, there are 3 options: Branch Floria, Leaf Floria, or Corolla Floria. Each style has its own magic check attributes (the combination of basic attributes used for magical skill checks - for example: willpower + dexterity) and additional starting ley vines.
If this wasn’t obvious already, Floria is designed around having 3 player characters.
Mechanics
Before we dive into mechanics, it’s important to answer the following question: what purpose do Floria serve their community?
Player characters use their magical powers to complete tasks in the magic woods that surround their village. This can range from village to village deliveries, mercantile pursuits, searching for rare herbs for study, or even escorting non-magical civilians.
After character creation, sessions follow a fixed structure consisting of 5 phases:
Prologue - where the Floria receive a request, band together, and embark on their journey
Search phase - where the Floria enter the magical forest and search for herbs and information to aid them in their request
Magic battle phase - where the Floria overcome obstacles using their abilities
Epilogue - where the Floria return and complete their request
Housekeeping - when the GM awards experience points and the table debriefs
The search phase stood out to me as something distinct from other RPGs most folks might be aware of. This phase consists of scenes that take place as the PCs travel through the forest. Instead of using a map in the traditional sense, the GM presents the players with a magic forest map. This is essentially a point crawl that contains information about the pathways through the forest, available quests, how to initiate them, and the overall time limit for the search phase. The number of points or nodes a player character can move is dependent on their vitality attribute. Overall, this part of Floria’s design feels a lot like a board game, where you move a set number of spaces, collect objects from them, and resolve the events that emerge when new map nodes are visited.
This phase is broken down into turns, each with a series of actions a player can undertake. These include - declaring an action (for things like searching, using items, skills, and interacting with other characters to increase their familiarity stats with each other), harvesting herbs, and moving to other nodes. Everything is very procedural.
Action Checks
When a PC is attempting to perform an action with an uncertain result, the GM will call for an action check. When an action check is called, the GM decides what 2 attributes (from strength, willpower, dexterity, and wisdom) must be used for the action in question - the sum of which form the the target. For example, is a PC is searching for an elusive herb that is sensitive to sound, the GM might decide that they will need dexterity to tread lightly and wisdom to anticipate where the herb might grow. A GM may alternatively decide on only a single attribute, which is simply doubled to determined the target. After determining the attributes, the GM may adjust the difficulty of the target with bonuses or penalties ranging from +3 to -3.
The use of two attributes for a single check is really interesting, as it allows for more narrative nuance!
Once the attributes and target are determined, the player rolls 2d6 compares the total to the target. If it is less than or equal to the target, the check is a success. Rolling double 1s results in a fumble. For any roll that isn’t a fumble, a player may also invoke a magic burst by spending parts of their ley vine canvas to increase the target of a roll (i.e. to make it easier).
Ley Vine Canvas
During the search phase, Floria PCs gain magical powers by cultivating the herbs and ley vines growing in and on their bodies. This is mechanically expressed through the ley vine canvas, an 11 x 11 grid used to visualize the growth of a PC’s herbs and the power they can access. During play, players draw geometric shapes on their ley vine canvas to represent their ley vines, and colour-in shapes to cast spells.
If you recall, each character starts with a blank ley vine canvas that has a straight line representing their base ley vine drawn from the top left to the bottom right. Their species and magic style, alongside a single bonus line that connects two points on their ley vine canvas grid, forms their starting canvas.
When a Floria choses to harvest herbs during the search phase, the GM randomly determines which herb is harvested by rolling a d6 and comparing the result to a series of options organized by the environment that the Floria is currently exploring. Each herb has a unique linear arrangement on a 4 x 4 grid. This could range in complexity from a vertical line to the shape of the letter M.
When an herb is consumed for magical power, the player must add the shape to their ley vine canvas arrangement in any orientation so long as:
All points in the shape are placed on a grid intersection
One point connects to an existing line
Any new lines do not overlap existing ones (though they can intersect)
This part of the game is quite interesting, as you must assess how you can optimize the herbs you harvest and add to your canvas!
Magical Battles
After the search phase is the magic battle phase - where the magical conflict at the climax of the scenario occurs when the Floria leverage their magical powers to overcome obstacles such as evil Floria, great beasts, or simply completing difficult tasks that require the magical power of herbs.
Each spell has a magic cost and a placement (i.e. range). Instead of spell slots like many of you are likely accustomed to, the magic cost of a spell takes the form of a geometric shape. For example, for a branch Floria to cast the branch blade spell, they must draw a three-sided shape on their ley vine canvas.
When paying the cost of a spell, a player colours in fresh sections of their ley vine canvas that match the required shape. This is the most interesting part of the game, as shapes cannot be used to pay costs if portions have already been coloured in to pay the cost of another spell or if a square on the grid has been coloured in due to damage. Once a shape has been coloured in, it cannot be undone for the duration of the session.
Casting spells in their game therefore becomes a test of strategic colouring!
Presentation
In terms of aesthetic, Floria is a beautiful TRPG product. Each page features intricate floral embellishments and the 84 pages of content contain a number of illustrations that reinforce the cozy, JRPG feel of the game. There is far more art in this product compared to the last two JTRPGs I read - Sword World 2.5 and Goblin Slayer.
Thoughts
Overall, Floria is truly a unique tabletop RPG with an intriguing magic system that I wish would be applied to other games! I love the concept of the ley vine canvas, how it’s cultivated, and how spells are cast. There is a deep amount of strategic and creative decision making behind how you initially establish your canvas and manage the space required to cast spells. That said, due to the nature of the ley vine canvas, Floria requires players to use print character sheets or digitally annotate a character sheet on a tablet. This is definitely a game designed for in-person play.
One other aspect of the game to note is how a session plays out. The flow of the game is very procedural. While there is some room for emerging narrative, exploration, roleplay, and character development are highly structured phases of a session experience that at times feel more like a narrative board game or cooperative skirmish game.
In conclusion, would I play this? ABSOLUTELY. The thought of colouring in a character sheet as I cast spells seems like such an exciting experience. It fits within a niche occupied by games like Ryuutama and Golden Sky Stories. You’ll get a cozy, feel-good story with an added layer of geometric spell casting.
Side note: I think this magic system would be very cool for a game inspired by the world of Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist!
References:
Purchase the official English translation of Floria on DriveThruRPG
Original Kickstarter campaign for the English localization of Floria
The creator’s Twitter and social landing page
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