A bilingual wish-list (March Madness, Day 28)

28 What free RPG or what non-English RPG did you enjoy most? Give details.

I've already talked a bunch about free RPGs on this blog, since I'm into the OSR's DIY and give it away free or cheap philosophy. And I don't think I've played in a non-English RPG, despite my living overseas for the past 16 years. So let me tell you about one I probably should have played.

When I was a junior in college, I had a crush on Naomi Matsumoto. The crush never went anywhere, since it was one-sided, but we did become good friends and still keep in contact today. One of the reasons I liked her was that she was also a gamer, and she played Sword World.

You've probably heard about Sword World. It was made by the guys who made the Record of Lodoss War anime (which, if you've seen it, you know is pretty much D&D). I guess the story is that one of the creators studied in the U.S. and became a fan of D&D. Although the Mentzer box sets were translated into Japanese and sold there (I still kick myself for not picking up the Basic Set in nihongo when I had the chance), he had no RPG resources when he got home, so he and his buddies sort of reconstructed D&D from his memories and played it. They published the record of their campaign, it became popular, and was turned into an anime. And they published their home brew as Sword World.

Despite living in Japan for a decade, I never found a copy of Sword World to pick up, and never thought to order one over the internet. I guess I still could. Shipping from Japan to Korea is cheap. Of course, if I were to order it today, it would just languish on my bookshelf. I really should have picked it up when I was still single and in Japan.