Hi everyone!
Today, I’m going to be looking at a Manga/Anime series for some story inspiration: Record of Lodoss War. However, before talking about the plot or anything just yet, I wanted to talk about the production itself. Originally published in the late 80’s by Kadokawa (the same people who publish RPG Maker MV!!!), and then made into an anime series in 1990, it’s actually based on a japanese-exclusive expansion setting for the original edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Because of this, it appears heavily westernised, featuring traditional western fantasy tropes.
Now on to the actual story itself. The basic premise of the series is to prevent the Marmo Emperor Beld from conquering Lodoss. Sound’s simple, right? Wrong. Behind the scenes, Karla the Grey Witch is manipulating events to try and “save” Lodoss in her own twisted way. The series opens with an adventuring party attempting to reach Wart the Sage, who may know how to stop Beld (He’s also familiar with Karla). The group is made up of Parn, the son of a disgraced knight, and his friend Etoh who is an initiate of Phalis, God of Light. They are initially joined by Slayn the Sorcerer, and his friend Ghim. Ghim is a dwarf who is on a personal quest of his own; to save the daughter of his friend Neese. Unknwn to the group at this time is that Karla is actually inhaiting the body of Leylia, Neese’s daughter. They are subsequently joined by Deedlit, an immortal High Elf, and Woodchuck, a notorious thief. Between them, they set off to save thier homeland.
As a story concept, it doesn’t sound too complex, right? Wrong again. An awful lot happens during the course of the series, including Beld allying himself with a group of Dark Elves (who are basically D&D Drow), and Ghim sacrificing himself to save Leylia from Karla. Not to mention Beld’s lackeys trying to sacrifice Deedlit to ressurect a dead goddess. Throw in magical artefacts like the Scepter of Domination, a McGuffin that requires the sacrifice of immortal blood to activate, and you have a fairly normal Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting.
Now there have been Japan-only SNES games on this series, but they’ve never had a official localisation, so I don’t really count them (as I can’t play them). But some of the story elements are things that I’ve actually done (being a D&D player myself) in game, so I may decide to use them for my own project.
I’ll post some links to where you can watch the series (please support the official release):
https://www.funimation.com/shows/the-record-of-lodoss-war/
Anyway, I hope this is interesting, and hopefully I should be back soon with my own story concept. Until then!
Bibliography:
Funimation.com. (2019). [online] Available at: https://www.funimation.com/shows/the-record-of-lodoss-war/ [Accessed 1 Apr. 2019].
SLGameDesign FMP 