What is an RPG replay?
A replay is a game session edited like a novel: dialogue, dice, and all.
Japanese replays are books made from real play. A game master and players sit down to an actual tabletop session; the session is recorded, transcribed, and edited into a readable narrative that keeps the table talk, the dice results, and the jokes alongside the story. Group SNE pioneered the form as a commercial genre, and its first great success was Record of Lodoss War in Comptiq, 1986.
The form exists because of a practical problem: in 1980s Japan, few readers could find a group, dice, or a translated rulebook, but anyone could buy a magazine. A replay taught the game by showing it being played, and entertained like a serial novel at the same time.
HOW A REPLAY READS
The formatNamed speakers
Lines are attributed to the game master and to each player in character, so a replay reads half like a script and half like a story. Deedlit’s lines in Comptiq were spoken by novelist Hiroshi Yamamoto at Mizuno’s table.
The dice stay in
Rolls and rules rulings are printed, not hidden. The reader sees exactly where the story turned on a throw, which is the genre’s honesty and its charm.
Edited, not raw
A replay is a transcript the way a concert album is a concert: real, but shaped. Mizuno later reworked the same campaigns a second time when he novelized them, changing relationships and endings for fiction.
WHAT IT STARTED
After LodossA shelf of its own
Replays became a standing genre of Japanese game publishing. Group SNE alone followed Lodoss with the Legend of Lodoss replays (1993 to 1996) and decades of Sword World replay books.
Why Lodoss is the first name
Earlier rulebooks had printed sample sessions, but Lodoss proved a replay could carry a magazine serial for three years and launch novels, anime, and a national RPG. The genre’s founding document is a campaign log.
The missing originals
The Comptiq replay articles themselves have never had a full formal reprint; the collected paperbacks are retakes played under Group SNE’s own Companion rules, adjusted toward the novels. First-run magazine issues remain the primary source.