Dungeons and Dragons is the first, and often last, name in TTRPGs for many Western gamers, but that’s not the case all over the world. Sword World RPG has been the premier fantasy RPG on the Japanese market since 1989, with a cultural impact on the Japanese fantasy genre equivalent to DnD’s impact in the West, and for the first time ever, it’s set to receive an official English language edition.
Mugen Gaming, a Kansas-based firm that localises Japanese games for the US and international markets, announced its partnership with Sword World RPG‘s original publisher Group SNE via its blog on Tuesday.
The firm plans to crowdfund an English language version of the current Sword World 2.5 Core Rulebook via Kickstarter in 2026, and hopes to “support Sword World long-term, with expansions, adventures, and community resources”.
Sword World is an incredibly culturally significant game in Japan, which grew out of DnD but entirely eclipsed its parent. When you encounter DnD classes and DnD races in Japanese media, they’re far more likely to be inspired by Sword World and the related Lodoss War novel series than they are by DnD itself.
When translated versions of the DnD red box made it to Japan in 1985, it was picked up by a very small community of enthusiasts. In 1986, gamer Ryo Mizuno began publishing ‘replay’ write-ups of his group’s DnD sessions in Comptiq magazine, under the title ‘Record of Lodoss War’.
This was the wider Japanese gaming market’s first major exposure to DnD, and to DnD-style high fantasy – Lord of the Rings was late in arriving in Japan and had an obtuse translation and it just didn’t have the cultural impact there. The Lodoss War replays were so popular that Mizuno was able to re-edit them into a series of novels that became Japan’s first high fantasy blockbuster series.
Mizuno and his friends set up Group SNE to pursue RPG publishing projects, and attempted to collaborate with DnD’s original publisher TSR on an official Lodoss war sourcebook for DnD. They found the firm to be slow-moving and unwilling to compromise. Rather than wait around, Group SNE created its own game, Sword World, which became the official Lodoss War RPG.
The connection to the fantasy blockbuster, and the fact that it was sold as a series of dirt cheap paperbacks compared to expensive imported hardback DnD books, meant that Sword World utterly eclipsed its inspiration.
Fan translations of Sword World exist already, but it will be very interesting to see what an officially licensed localisation can do with this venerable source material. Japanese RPGs are made different: the box set above is one of several different ‘starter’ adventures for Sword World 2.5. Will it make it to the US? We’re eager to find out.
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