Anime Herald

How Record of Lodoss War Influenced Anime and Tabletop Gaming

Added 2024-10-20 22:47:40 +0000 UTC

Author: Robert W. Iveniuk
Editor: Trent Cannon

There’s been a resurgence of interest in the Record of Lodoss Wars franchise. Not only has a new manga dropped, but younger fans have started going through the extensive back catalogue of retro anime. Now, many have found their way to the original 1990 OVA with Parn and Ashram’s bulky and impractical armour, synth orchestral strings, and colossal cel-sliding dragons. I recently did a rewatch of the series, having dug the DVD box set out of my parents’ basement, which prompted me to look deeper into the series’ origins. Not only was my dive back into the world of Lodoss fun, it also showed me how this 13-episode saga – plus its subsequent sequels and prequels – had such a strong impact on both the anime scene and, interestingly, the tabletop gaming community.

Record of Lodoss Wars originally started as a TTRPG Replay, a written transcript of a tabletop RPG (TTRPG), with the first Lodoss Wars stories being a Replay for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Said campaign involved members of game company Group SNE, otherwise known as Syntax Error, with the players’ exploits detailed in Japanese magazine Comptiq between 1986 and 1989. Group SNE’s epic adventures were eventually smoothed out and repurposed into a proper novel series by author and Dungeon Master Ryo Mizuno, which was later adapted into an OVA and a TV series. For those interested, a translation of the first novel is available through Seven Seas Entertainment.

Reading the original Replays is oddly endearing. I expected the chit-chat, playful snipes at the DM, or even the reading of dice rolls to be cut out in order to make the players’ adventure read like an actual narrative and not a transcription. All of that stays in the Lodoss Replays, however. Everything from excitedly reading out dice results to the players’ reactions to twists in the narrative, to character creation itself, is kept in the text. It can be jarring at first, but it does feel like you’re a fly on the wall as the party bickers over what to do next.

Watching the Lodoss Wars OVA as someone with over fifteen years’ experience in TTRPGs, I can see moments where Mizuno was probably thinking as a DM wrangling his tablemates while writing it. The first episode alone demonstrates this, showcasing several tense-if-playful arguments between our heroes, the triggering and avoiding of traps, and then battling a particularly tricky dungeon boss.

Image via Group SNE

It certainly gave me flashbacks of parties being split, and the combination of softballs and curveballs being thrown at players as they went up against impossible odds. And the appearance of Shris and Orson following the death of Ghim and possession of Woodchuck in Episode 8 absolutely screams “This Is My Backup Character, Please Be Nice To Me This Time.”

Naturally, the more fluid storytelling aspects found in the Lodoss Replay went away with the novels and its OVA adaptation. In my opinion, Ryo Mizuno did a fine job with the original Lodoss Wars materials, turning the adventures into a proper - if straightforward - high-fantasy yarn. It does feel like there is something missing from the finished product, however.

Some of the best moments of TTRPG web series like Dimension20 or Legends of Avantris are when someone – be it a player, the DM themselves, or both – pulls a stunt out of nowhere and everyone has to run with it. We can see an example of this in the Lodoss Replay when the players stumble across a dying soldier and Etoh’s player saves them using Cure Light Wounds. Now the DM suddenly had to rewrite a bunch of his notes because the soldier was intended to dramatically die delivering a message. Sadly, I don’t think there’s any way Mizuno could have replicated that unpredictability unless he called his old tablemates at random intervals and demanded they do a Saving Throw over the phone.

Regardless, the popularity of Lodoss Wars brought a lot of business to Group SNE, inspiring Mizuno and company to make their own game system based in and around Lodoss Wars called Sword World and to develop other properties set in Lodoss’ broader world of Forcelia. Two such stories titled Legend of Crystania and Rune Soldier (a Muscle Wizard light novel/manga series that predates Mashle by a roughly decade and a half) were later brought to life through animation. SNE is still around today, releasing GURPS modules and official Japanese translations to everything from Shadowrun to Warhammer Fantasy.

Besides the good that Lodoss Wars did for Group SNE as a company and the aesthetics of anime itself, it was also good for fostering a small but dedicated community of TTRPG aficionados in Japan. TTRPG Replays are still very much alive and well, although many of them are being replaced by Twitch VODs and YouTube videos.

Tabletop RPGs are still enjoyed as a pastime in Japan. Since Sword World dropped, Japanese game designers have produced a plethora of TTRPGs, including fantasy games like Alshard and Arianhrod, which both use their own versions of 2d6 dice systems, similar to Sword World. Both games are distinct from SW, with Alshard taking its imagery from Norse mythology and Arianhrod feeling more like Ragnarok Online than D&D, but they are still high fantasy games at their core. And look: Dungeons and Dragons 5E got translated into Japanese last year. Check out the ad with all the JDrama-attractive people thinking a single Natural 20 is enough to stop a Red Dragon.

Image via Group SNE

The idea of pre-internet Critical Role affecting Japan’s pop culture landscape is fascinating to me. Even if you take out the connection to Dungeons & Dragons (a disservice in itself considering how even properties like Final Fantasy initially took cues from the game), you can’t ignore Record of Lodoss Wars’ thumbprint on the DNA of Japan’s fantasy anime genre.

In much the same way that Fist of the North Star or Saint Seiya changed the shonen battle subgenre, or how Rose of Versailles changed romance manga, Record of Lodoss Wars brought a lot of key narrative and design elements to the foreground. The Lodoss aesthetic of flowing capes, long hair whipping around in the wind, and chitinous armour has been recreated and lampooned over the years.

Some examples of more earnest interpretations of this look and feel can be found in series like the Ys OVA or The Weathering Continent. On the other hand, series like Slayers, known for poking fun of high fantasy tropes, did its own take on Lodoss’ art direction, from Lina, Goury, and Sylphiel’s huge shoulder pads to Amelia the cleric’s look being very Etoh-coded. What’s more, the depiction of elves as having long and sharp-seeming ears is a prevailing design choice in anime, whether in older series like Fairy Princess Ren, Bastard!!, or Those Who Hunt Elves, or in newer series like Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Looking at another modern anime, one could potentially describe Laios and Marcille from Delicious in Dungeon as "Parn and Deedlit, if they were ordered off Wish."

To this day, Lodoss Wars’ impact is particularly interesting, as the TTRPG scene in Japan simply wasn’t as big back then as it was in North America or Europe, and is still a pretty niche market today. TTRPG Replays aside, it was hard to imagine the games themselves and their communities surviving, especially in contrast to the increased popularity of video games and collectible card games. And yet, they have. Not only is Group SNE still kicking around, but Sword World got new editions in both 2012 and 2018.

It’s hard to say what, specifically, about the Lodoss Replays struck a chord with readers. Perhaps it was the natural, organic storytelling that comes from having a half-dozen distinct personalities and play styles take the wheel of a narrative. Or maybe it was the feeling of actually being at a table listening to Mizuno et al banter about where to go next and what to do when they get there. There’s a relatability and accessibility to imagining yourself in a group of people shouting at each other over where to take their adventure next, how to overcome some impossible odds, or trying to ask the DM what you can do to get yourselves out of a jam.

Whatever the case, the appeal of Record of Lodoss Wars isn’t just linked to its distinct aesthetic, but also as a feel-good story about a bunch of fans putting together a property that had a butterfly effect on the pop culture scene. There’s an aspirational quality to it. Many creatives and hobbyists alike dream of their D&D campaign or homebrew setting growing into something bigger - becoming not only a piece of work that moves people but also affects a corner of the world in a meaningful way. The success of the Lodoss Wars franchise shows that you don’t need to make something grandiose or multilayered in order to do that. A monthly transcript of you and your friends bungling through a dungeon might be enough.