What is Sword World RPG?
Japan’s own Dungeons & Dragons answer, built to hold Lodoss, and bigger at home than the original ever was.
When the Lodoss replays outgrew borrowed rules, Group SNE built its own game. Sword World RPG was published by Fujimi Shobo in 1989, designed by Ryo Mizuno, Miyuki Kiyomatsu, and Group SNE, with one deliberate constraint: it uses only ordinary six-sided dice, because polyhedral dice were rarities in Japan. Rolls of 2d6 are read through a printed rating table that stretches two dice into a wider range of results.
Its world, Forcelia, contains Lodoss itself and the continent of Crystania. Sword World became the best-selling domestic RPG in Japan, with more than ten million related books sold across rulebooks, novels, and replays.
THE EDITIONS
1989 to todaySword World RPG · 1989
The original Fujimi Dragon Book edition, followed by a Complete edition in 1996. Eight character classes, from Fighter and Sorcerer to Shaman and Bard, with open multi-classing.
Sword World 2.0 · 2008
A full revision nearly twenty years on, refining the 2d6 system that Group SNE formally named the 2d6 System in 2003.
Sword World 2.5 · 2018
The current edition. In 2025, Mugen Gaming announced the first official English edition in the game’s history, based on 2.5; its crowdfunding passed $2.7 million within days, thirty-six years after the Japanese original.
WHY IT MATTERS HERE
Lodoss on paperThe setting book problem
Sword World exists because Lodoss needed a publishable game of its own. The replay’s world came first; the system was built around it, and then outgrew it.
Replays as fuel
Sword World’s line ran on the same engine as Lodoss: over a hundred novels and replay books, including the Rune Soldier series, kept the game in print for decades.
The dice on the table
Every Sword World roll is two ordinary dice and the rating table. It is the most Japanese of design decisions: build the game from what every household already owns.