# Sword World Quick Start Guide tags: #game/rpg/sword-world-quick-start-guide ![[Sword World Quick Start Guide (cover).jpg|600]] **Sword World** is the oldest and most popular tabletop RPG in Japan — the one that grew out of a group's **[[Dungeons and Dragons]]** campaign that became *Record of Lodoss War* — and this quick start guide is the first official English release of it, courtesy of Mugen Gaming, Group SNE, and the Word Refinery. Japan's favorite fantasy took the better part of three and a half decades to cross an ocean, and when it finally did, it shipped a quick start wearing its nerves on its sleeve: "This is a work in progress," printed right on the cover like a badge of honor. It's a teaser for the Sword World 2.5 English core rulebook, whose [BackerKit campaign](https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mugen-gaming/sword-world) has since funded and completed — the hobby's time-tested way of making you pay up front, now with the book itself stranded in print-and-fulfillment limbo while this free PDF keeps doing the recruiting. ## Setting The quick start drops you into the port city of **Harves**, the waterway-crossed capital of the kingdom of the same name on the world of **Raxia**, where the ancient **Magitech Civilization** died out three hundred years ago and left behind airships, ruins, and dungeons shaped by mystical energies. It's a classic fantasy-adventure economy: adventurers register with the **Adventurers' Guild** — here the Blue Nose, a branch famously hospitable to novices — and take requests to earn coin (Gumells), while the world outside the city walls is home to the Barbarous and other dangers. The races are the usual fantasy spread with a Japanese flavor — humans, elves, the rabbitfolk tabbit, the lykant — and the tone is cooperative, structured, and team-oriented, the thing that made it Japan's most-played fantasy RPG for decades. The solo adventure ("My First Adventure") doubles as a tutorial, and the one-shot ("The Safest Place in the World") is a ready-to-play mystery set in and around Harves. ## Mechanics The system is a class-based **2d6** affair. ### Skill Checks Roll 2d6, add your modifier, and beat the **target number** — the modifier is your ability score bonus plus your class levels (or your adventurer level, for untrained skills), and you only get the bonus if you have a level in the required class. Double 6s is an automatic success; double 1s is an automatic failure that still grants you 50 XP for learning from your mistakes — the game paying you to screw up, a small kindness most modern systems could stand to copy. ### Character Creation Characters multiclass freely across heroic and common classes — fighter, ranger, scout, sage, priest, sorcerer, martial artist, marksman — with six ability scores (Strength, Agility, Dexterity, Intelligence, Spirit, Vitality), HP from your adventurer level and Vitality, and MP from your magic class levels and Spirit. ### Magic Spells cost MP and resolve as 2d + Magic Power against the target's Willpower, with a resistance check deciding whether the effect lands, is halved, or is negated. ## Editions & related This English release is built around **Sword World 2.5**. Related English material in the library: - **[[Sword World Primer]]** — the same quick-start content (basic rules, solo adventure, one-shot, and ready-to-play characters), refined across the **2025 v1** and current **2026 v2.1** primers, the latter adding the scenario "The Safest Place in the World." *Both in the library.* The full **Sword World 2.5 Core Rulebook** localization ran its course: the [BackerKit campaign](https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mugen-gaming/sword-world) funded and completed, and the printed book is now in the long, slow shuffle toward fulfillment. Yes, crowdfunding: the nostalgia economy happily Kickstarted a 35-year-old game that's been Japan's default fantasy RPG since 1989 — and it worked. This quick start did its job as the warm-up act. ## References - [Sword World: Quick Start Guide - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/538118/sword-world-quick-start-guide) - [Sword World - Mugen Gaming](https://mugengaming.com/pages/sword-world) - [Sword World - BackerKit](https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/mugen-gaming/sword-world)