Episode Three of Record Of Lodoss War. As always we have YouTuber W3reW0lf to thank for these, which I post in my continuing effort to get more people to embrace this incredible anime series from 1990.
Having now seen all 13 episodes of the first story I can assure you it's very "Dungeons and Dragons", complete with a party of diverse adventurers, underground adventures, detailed background story, twisty-turny plot, hosts of recognisable monsters etc
As I said yesterday, it was inspired by Ryo Mizuno's own Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, but I can find out little about the man himself.
According to Wikipedia: "Ryo Mizuno (born July 13, 1963) is a Japanese author and game designer. Mizuno created Record of Lodoss War, Rune Soldier, Sword World RPG and Starship Operators. He was also involved with the Galaxy Angel manga. Mizuno recently worked on Tri-Ace and Square Enix's action-RPG [video game] Infinite Undiscovery. He has shown talent in both dramatic and humorous genres. He was one of the founding members of Group SNE."
For a different take of the world of Lodoss check out this "guest post" on the always-fascinating Havard's Blackmoor Blog, which studies the history of and gameplay in Dave Arneson's unique OD&D campaign world.
It's nice to find another blogger who sees elves in his game as "Lodoss elves". I wasn't really a fan of elves of late (they were a "lost race" in my original Tekralh setting, but snuck back in when I converted the game from Castles & Crusades to a more 'by the book' Labyrinth Lord setting) - but now having met Deedlit, elves in any future fantasy games I run will be "Lodoss elves".
My elves have been "Deedlits" for, ooh, about fifteen years now. I much prefer the Japanese visual, which I first saw in this version of the Rules Cyclopedia, but it was certainly reinforced by Lodoss.
ReplyDeleteOh my god, that's gorgeous! As Jeff was saying under yesterday's article about the Japanese Sword World book: why aren't our RPGs as beautiful as that?
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for that link!
My wife and I have been looking for a new Anime to watch. This might be the one! Thanks for all the info.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite "old school", but still very good IMHO.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I have subsequently learned though is about watching the episodes "in the proper order".
It's actually best to start at ep2, watch til ep5, then watch ep 1, then ep6 to get the flow of the story (as ep1 is rather "in media res").
Man, that is pretty sweet!
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