Exclusive: D&D’s Japanese Rival Creators Talk About Imminent English Launch
Sword World RPG, Japan’s long-established fantasy tabletop role-playing game and a major domestic rival to Dungeons & Dragons, is to receive its first official English release. Publisher Mugen Gaming will launch a BackerKit crowdfunding campaign for an English translation of Sword World RPG 2.5 on 20 October, potentially introducing the game to a much wider audience.
Created by Group SNE in 1989, Sword World grew from the group’s D&D session reports, or “RPG replays”, which also helped inspire the Record of Lodoss War franchise. Group SNE president Hitoshi Yasuda said D&D struggled in Japan partly because of TSR’s sales approach, while Sword World appealed through its affordability, accessibility, story focus and Japanese-influenced fantasy style. The English project features art direction by Shunsuke Nakashige and collector’s-edition cover art by Hitoshi Yoneda.
- Sword World RPG 2.5’s English crowdfunding campaign begins on 20 October.
- The game has been a Japanese fantasy RPG staple since 1989.
- Its launch brings an official translation to Western players.
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Tabletop role-playing games are shared storytelling games in which players describe the actions of characters, while one person guides the setting and rules. Dungeons & Dragons is the best-known example internationally, built around fantasy adventures, dice rolls and groups of players working through imagined worlds.
Sword World is a Japanese fantasy role-playing game created by the writers’ group Group SNE in 1989. It developed alongside “replays”, published accounts of game sessions that made role-playing games easier for readers to understand and helped connect the game with Japanese fantasy fiction, including Record of Lodoss War.
The game has long been widely known in Japan but has not previously had an official English edition. An English translation would make its rules, setting and distinctive style of fantasy more accessible to players outside Japan, where Dungeons & Dragons has generally been the more familiar name.