Sword World began when a publisher wanted to make a magazine for role playing content, but didn't have the D&D license, so they hired the people behind the Lodoss campaign to design a fantasy game they could use instead. The result has been the most popular fantasy TTRPG in Japan since it came out in 1989, and while there's definitely a lot of D&D influence, it's mostly from 80s D&D, with only occasional ideas like feats or a class inspired by the Warlord coming from more modern editions.

So what makes this more than just "anime D&D?" What sticks out to me is the way you build your character. While the fan translation says you have "classes," it might be better to think of them as themed skill packages. Like if you take a level in Fighter, that gives you training in using almost all weapon types and in evading attacks, and that's it. It gives you no other skills whatsoever, not even initiative. And that's not a problem at all, because nobody is just a fighter, even at the lowest character level. You could combine that with levels in scout or ranger to get a big package of outside of combat skills. You could combine that with levels in Priest, which only gives you access to divine magic, to become something that's like a D&D paladin or cleric. You could take levels in Enhancer to spend your MP on breathing techniques that give you buffs inside and outside of combat (and in the case of one technique, turn you into an animal somehow nonmagically), or levels in tactician to give buffs to the party that build up a resource that lets you trigger larger effects. That combined with feats makes characters very customizable. A melee character who has a lot of options is just as easy to build as one who is just really good at hitting a guy with a sword over and over again, and either would be useful to the party.

So if you don't have a class that gives you training in a skill, the only roll you can make for it is a flat 2d6 with no bonuses, even if you have a high stat in something that would otherwise be helpful. You might worry from that that everyone needs to take a bunch of classes to make their character useful, but the game is more designed around the idea that if someone in the party succeeds, you all succeed, so you're just fine if only one person has levels in something. Like in my current campaign, out of five PCs, only two have levels in classes that give them any bonuses whatsoever to initiative, but initiative is side based, so as long as one of them beats the enemy roll, they go first, and so far, the PC's side has never lost initiative.

Anyone remember how D&D 5e was originally supposed to be modular, so that for instance, if you were a big 4e fan, you could use the tactical module to have more complex combat? Sword World 2.5 actually kind of did it. There's three forms of combat. In Simplified Combat, you and the enemies each get a front and back line, and ranges are basically measured in zones. Standard Combat happens along a one dimensional line, and specific distances matter. In Advanced Combat, you expand that to a whole 2d map like you'd expect in most D&D style games. I came into this off of running D&D 4e for a while, and I initially expected to start with Simplified Combat and move up as we learned the game, but so far, Simplified Combat has worked just fine for me. Everyone has enough options that it feels tactical enough to be interesting, but still faster than 4e combat.

I mostly like the default setting. I think of it as post-apocalyptic Eberron. Basically, there was a civilization where they developed roughly 20th century level technology out of magic, but it collapsed 300 years ago. So that means your next dungeon crawl might be in the ruins of a subway, and maybe you travel there on your artificer's reconstructed manabike, or maybe you fight off monsters so that Kingsfall can expand the reconstructed train network into a new area. There's even mention of a city built into the ruins of a giant mech, though I don't think that's been fleshed out in the setting books (though I might have missed it).

In terms of running the game, I've found it pretty easy so far. The assumption in this game is that adventures are discrete episodes, and it assumes you'll have 2-3 combat encounters, after which the adventurers can rest until their next adventure. This seems to be a much better reflection of how many fights you can narratively work into how most people play D&D style games than what D&D 4e or 5e tell you to put in between long rests. And the advice the book gives on building encounters works. I don't think it's quite as tight as D&D 4e, but it's definitely much better than 5e.

One thing I wasn't sure how I'd feel about is the fact that there's no equivalent of charisma or most social skills like persuasion or bluff. The book says that if you have to, you can roll based on Spirit for social stuff, but it assumes that most interaction outside of combat is just role played out. And you know what? It's worked fine. Last sessions was the first one where I actually asked for a roll for a social encounter. I was surprised how easily we could all get by without checks like that once we no longer expected to do it all the time.

So what don't I like? The main thing is how spread out everything is between books. For this game, they took the old school 80s D&D approach of having a book for low level games, one for mid level games, and one for high level games. And while it's nice that someone can get started with a cheap manga sized book, these three books spread out the races, classes, and sometimes mechanics between them. To make it worse, some things that feel like they should be core are in supplements. Like do you want point buy for stats, skills representing the stuff you do outside of adventuring, or that Advanced Combat I mentioned above? Those are in a supplement called Epic Treasury, which is largely a condensed printing of items, mounts, and equipment.

And damage is...weird. They wanted to use 2d6 for everything in the game. But they also wanted granular differences between weapons. Their solution? The Power Table. What this means is that to find out how much damage you do, you roll 2d6, then check the line on a chart that matches up to the power of the weapon or spell you used, and check the entry for your dice result. Like if you have a power 20 sword, and you roll a 7 on a 2d6, you'd check the power 20 line and see that a result of 7 on the chart means 5 damage. You then add in your relevant class level and strength mod and any other bonuses to get your total damage. It's clunky. But in practice, it's not that hard. Like there's a spot on your character sheet to write down the line relevant to your weapon. And if you're like me and play this on roll20, the character sheets on there will handle this for you and just give you the final result at the click of a button. Strangely, this only applies to players and all spells. Regular attacks form enemies are just 2d6+x damage.

Overall, I'm happy with this system. I wanted to run a fantasy adventure game, but after dealing with a 4e game that got to mid paragon, I wanted something faster and lighter, and Sword World 2.5 delivered it. If you're interested in looking into this game, you can find the fan translated pdfs here, and you can join the Sword World discord here.