Turns out Final Fantasy XIV Online director Naoki Yoshida loves a game of D&D. Yoshida, affectionately nicknamed Yoshi-P, was recently invited onto a Japanese Twitch stream. On the stream, Yoshida joined a game of Dungeons & Dragons using a homebrewed version of FFXIV‘s world, Eorzea. Yoshida was part of a four-person party and was joined by Alphinaud voice actor Shinnosuke Tachibana.
The game wound up running for around eight hours, dragging on until 4 am. Yoshida was an excited, boisterous participant throughout. You can watch the full VOD here, but it is in untranslated Japanese. Some select highlights have been translated and posted on Twitter by artist Kageyama Satsuki.
Spotted by GamesRadar, the D&D game was hosted on the Japanese Twitch channel NGC, most recently known for its Elden Ring playthroughs.
Yoshida played a “gil-obsessed lady lalafell black mage adventurer” named Cellica Flame. This choice will not come as a surprise to longtime FFXIV fans: the black mage is, famously, Yoshida’s favourite class.
The adventure began with the party on the road to Ul’dah, escorting a caravan of chocobo. When approached for help by a young man being harassed by marmots and an adamantoise, Yoshida blunty asked “How much gil you got?”
Tachibana also leant into classic D&D player stereotypes. His Au Ra warrior, called Hirvana Torachivana, was a murderhobo. His only real suggestion in any situation was “Just kill them all.”
By the time the game ended, around 4 am Tokyo time, the party was still in high spirits, chatting animatedly amongst themselves. That’s the mark of a bloody good game of D&D, I think we can all agree.
Japan has a lot of love for the traditional tabletop RPGs, however, D&D hasn’t ever been its brand. Rather, Call of Cthulhu is Japan’s TTRPG of choice. In this case, 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, with its fantasy setting and its inherently customisable design, made D&D the obvious pick to recreate the world Final Fantasy XIV.
Anyway, it seems like Yoshi-P had a great time. There’s not really any news value to this story, I saw it at the end of the day and thought it was cool as hell. Good and pure. I hope he plays again soon.
Want more FFXIV? Did you know the game recently reworked all its dungeons from A Realm Reborn? Check out our guide right over here.
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