Afterword
Afterword
by Hitoshi Yasuda
Lodoss was a remote island a fortnight’s voyage south
of the Alecrast continent. […] Some people on the
continent called Lodoss “The Cursed Island”…
This brings back so many memories for me. Whether you read this book in Japanese when it first came out, or became a fan later, this passage has probably always been somewhere in a corner of your heart.
When I opened the book, I thought I’d come across that passage immediately, but it turns out, it was actually at the beginning of section two of chapter one. I thought I’d remembered most of the book fairly accurately, but memories are strange—I was slightly off. But I guess that’s to be expected since it’s been 25 years since Record of Lodoss War: The Grey Witch was first published.
Record of Lodoss War: The Grey Witch was released in Japan on April 10, 1988, soon after Kadokawa Sneaker Books was founded. At the time, the “light novel” genre was new (only represented by Asahi Sonorama Books), so Sneaker Books was a sort-of pioneer.
Before then, I had been involved in the industry as a translator of science fiction, but I had no way of knowing how a title in this brand new field would fare. The anxiety and accompanying anticipation practically kept me up at night. (Okay, I admit I was also under deadline to translate Dragonlance, which was published at around the same time.)
They say fear is often worse than the danger itself. Once published, Record of Lodoss War: The Grey Witch flew off the shelves, and the series came to its conclusion in seven books containing five story arcs. After that, the sequels came out smoothly, the genre expanded, and after a quarter century, what began with Lodoss War grew into light fantasy and the “light novel” genre we know today.
Before I go any further, since most people probably don’t know, I wanted to explain the relationship between myself, Ryo Mizuno, Lodoss War, and this new genre.
First, the novel itself was the brainchild of Ryo Mizuno, the author. However, in the process of its creation, those of us who belonged to Group SNE (or its predecessor) along with Ryo Mizuno provided contributions through RPGs and “replays.”
The RPGs (Role-Playing Games) I’m talking about here aren’t the video games that are so popular in Japan. I’m talking about their root form, the dice-throwing, talking-out-loud “tabletop RPGs.” A TRPG is first and foremost a game, but ideally has a robust, ever-changing story at its center, and the players become the characters and take an active role in creating that story. People who enjoy computer RPGs are familiar with how fun they are. But, as they are the original form, TRPGs far surpass computer RPGs in their versatility and realism (though they take a lot more work). You understand if you’ve ever read an “RPG replay,” which is basically a session report documenting the playthrough of a TRPG.
So Lodoss War was first played as a TRPG—Ryo Mizuno described this wonderful world, and we took that and expanded it humorously, and sometimes irreverently. It gained wider visibility through a new format called a replay RPG (adapted by Ryo Mizuno and myself), and it gained general recognition with the novel Lodoss War (that Ryo Mizuno rewrote entirely).
I think this makes the novel Lodoss War unique. A world that began in Ryo Mizuno’s brain was honed through playing in it via TRPGs; sharing that story gave rise to the new format—replays. It then went through another round of rewrites by the original world creator, who transformed that adventure into a brand new novel.
For me, a TRPG is a game, but it’s also a story advanced through group discussion. So I think it’s a format where the collective unconscious comes through more easily. When it’s adapted into a replay or a novel, the honing process doesn’t simply discard the excess elements present in the game. The group summons all these interesting impurities, and these emergent odd and remarkable bits remain, while the unnecessary elements are pruned. I think this intensified as Lodoss War went through the adaptation process.
Every medium has its own charms, of course. It’s fascinating to see this common world expressed in all those different ways.
After that, the subsequent novels further expanded Ryo Mizuno’s world. The sequel, Record of Lodoss War 2: Blazing Devil, was a great lyric poem written without first going through a game iteration. The series then returned to its TRPG roots in part 3… Lodoss continued in this changing style all the way through.
I hope people will continue to enjoy this archetypal series beginning with this book: Record of Lodoss War: The Grey Witch.
Ryo Mizuno was born in 1963 in Osaka. His first book, Record of Lodoss War: The Grey Witch, was published in 1988 by Kadokawa Sneaker Books. An author and game designer, he penned the Lodoss series, its sibling franchise Rune Soldier, the sci-fi series Starship Operators, and the fantasy series Record of Grancrest War.