How did Record of Lodoss War begin?
It began as a game log: a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, printed in a computer magazine.
In September 1986, Kadokawa’s computer magazine Comptiq began serializing something unusual: edited transcripts of an actual Dungeons & Dragons campaign, run by a young game master named Ryo Mizuno for the circle of players who would found Group SNE that same period. The transcripts were called replays, and the campaign’s island setting was Lodoss.
The party in those pages is the party of legend: Parn the fighter, the dwarf Ghim, the thief Woodchuck, the cleric Etoh, the wizard Slayn, and the high elf Deedlit, who was played at the table by science-fiction novelist Hiroshi Yamamoto. Readers who had never rolled a die read the sessions as fiction, and the replay ran in Comptiq until September 1989.
THE THREE CAMPAIGNS
Comptiq · 1986 to 1989Replay I · Parn’s party
Serialized September 1986 to April 1987. The first campaign became the spine of the first novel, The Grey Witch, and of the opening of the 1990 OVA.
Replay II · Orson’s party
Serialized June 1987 to July 1988. The second campaign fed the Fire Dragon Mountain novels, books three and four of the series.
Replay III · Spark’s party
Serialized September 1988 to September 1989. The third campaign became The Holy Knight of Lodoss, the closing novels, and later the seed of the TV series.
FROM LOG TO BOOKSHELF
1989 to 1991The paperbacks
The three replay series were collected by Kadokawa Shoten from 1989 to 1991, illustrated by Yutaka Izubuchi, and republished in 1998 as the Replay Collection: Accursed Island.
The rules problem
As the replay grew beyond its first campaign, Group SNE needed rules it owned. The answer, in 1989, was the Record of Lodoss War Companion, and then a full system of its own: see the Sword World page on this shelf.
Other systems at the table
The Comptiq run is remembered as a D&D replay, but the group also ran the setting under Tunnels & Trolls and RuneQuest along the way. Lodoss was a world first, and a ruleset second.