Played Sword World PC for PC98 (1992).
Sword World is a Wapanese D&D knock-off, setting is the continent Alecrast to the north of Lodoss island (the animu Rune Soldier takes place on this continent). The world is called Forcelia. 500 years in the past the world had a Netheril-like highly advanced civilization that fell. Many of the game dungeons are remains of this previous civilization (an important place is the ruin of a once floating city).
You create your own character (complete with rolling attributes) and gather a party of adventurers.
You go through several “scenarios”, aka sidequests, like dealing with undead/necromancer, finding missing person, taking care of drug dealers, work for thieves’ guild, etc. There’s a big variety in these scenarios, even entire questlines. There are at least 50 scenarios in total. In p. much every town you visit there’s something interesting to do or something interesting happens.
The game does have an overarching story interspersed between different scenarios, it deals with cultists trying to make ancient evil sea god (a giant ray) return. Indeed, the game unfortunately ends after the final of these quests (I didn’t get to do every scenario in the game).
Party members actually comment a lot, give advice, even crack jokes. You definitely grow to like them.
There are no random encounters and experience/gold are only acquired upon finishing a job. It’s a very low level campaign as you can only go up to level 5 in a single class. Then again you do need to multiclass as every class is needed: you need a shaman for at least one sidequest and a sage is needed to decipher ancient languages in dungeons or give information about rarer monsters.
Since it’s “Sword” World magic is p. low-key. Sorcerer spells go up to level 5, divine spells up to level 4. Plus to use certain spells like “summon skeleton warrior” like in the Lodoss animu you need dragon fang item, very rare and expensive.
Leveling up doesn’t automatically raise HP/MP, you need to either buy expensive items from temples or spend experience points separately. Then again it seems that in this tabletop system having more than 20 HP/MP is already an awful lot. And with good attributes/equipment you avoid a lot of damage.
I think the Lodoss games on PC98 with full party creation that I didn’t get to work are similar, i.e. various sidequests with hidden overarching story (or with the animu story as a backdrop).
One of the highlights of the game is probably a dungeon crawl in a dragon temple, with a layout shaped as a dragon. Or a run-off-the-mill monster hunt leading to an ancient laboratory… and a scroll in a hidden room leading to a yuge optional dungeon leading to Excalibur.
Also during an early thieves guild quest the party meets a unique character called Nightshade, it's nice bumping into her again several times after (even at the very end).
P. great game.
That looks like the Sword World equivalent version of Realms of Arkania or a Gold Box game...does it implement the 1st edition rules or the second edition?
