There is a Record of Lodoss War video game?

[olivermoss]

Lodoss is a fairly old anime based on a novel series ... that was based on D&D campaign the author was in. Today they'd get in trouble for transparently being D&D The Anime. It's got sort of a weird place in geek history because a lot of today's anime fans don't know about it, but it's deeply loved by a lot of people who aren't typical anime fans. It was HUGE in geek circles when it was just coming out.

Anyway, the game is from another story in the novel series, centering on Deedlit the Elf. So far, the game seems good. It's not easy. I found out about it because a stream of Lodoss the Game came up in my channel suggestion and I was like 'what is this?' Then I came across a guy swearing loudly as he tried to deal with a particular challenge. The playstyle, challenges and graphics are very reminiscent of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. I am not the only person who thinks so because I just looked up some stuff about the game and saw multiple people calling it Deedlit: Symphony Of The Night.

With the huge popularity of Real Plays, I wonder if Lodoss is having a bit of a resurgence in popularity?

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

I had no idea there was a video game!

I think my high school anime club watched a couple episodes of it, maybe, but I know I never saw the whole series.

Mostly I remember it from a popular AMV set to "Camelot" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, lmao. Pretty sure that's still downloaded to my ancient-ass version of iTunes.

[olivermoss]

I was really into it back in the day. Being the only one with a copy was sort of intense as a point, then someone stole mine and copied them to free up my evil stranglehold.

Apparently, they were originally 'replays', just session transcripts published in magazines. A very early precursor to current 'listen to other people's D&D sessions like a podcast' fandom. I've never been able to get into that stuff.

The game just came out in March.

[mistressofmuses]

Way back at the tail end of the days of passing around VHS tapes that people had ordered out of mildly sketchy magazines, and into the early days of it at least moving to DVDs, the fact that I had a DVD/VHS combo and a second VCR meant that I could make copies of several shows that we'd otherwise been passing around one person at a time. Until we had a much tech-savvier friend who had a DVD burner, and much better torrenting know-how.

That's interesting! I guess that type of thing has been a thing for a pretty long while. People making transcripts, or writing out novelization-style stories of their group's D&D campaigns. I did get into the first season of The Adventure Zone, especially once it got plottier, but haven't really ever gotten into others. (I have several tumblr mutuals and a couple rl acquaintances into Critical Role, but I haven't quite wanted to wade into it.)

Ah! That would be part of why I didn't know it was a thing! But damn, that's some longevity for a property.

[olivermoss]

I know people who went nuts for ... I think it was The Adventure Zone? They tried hard to get me into the fandom but phrases like 'the audio quality improves after the first hundred episode' is just not how to get me into anything.

People cosplaying as other people's D&D characters will never not be weird to me.

In college I was the one with the anime collection, the rare films and the Doctor Who episodes. I was pretty chill about lending them out, even long term. I even got a hold of certain rare titles specifically to be copied by people, but then I had stuff straight up stolen. I had Curse of Fatal Death stolen twice. I wanted to be chill and share stuff, but then people had to be people.

[mistressofmuses]

I definitely don't think The Adventure Zone took that long to improve recording quality-wise - the most-beloved/popular/well-known first season, "Balance", is only 69 episodes total, and the family was pretty used to making podcasts by that point, so while they got improved equipment later on, I think it started off fine in terms of quality. It *does* take a bit to really get into the overarching plot, despite the fact that stuff all the way back in episode 1 eventually comes back as relevant - the first arc or two included a bit of "figuring out how this D&D thing works" from the players, so it has a few awkward bits, and starts off pretty silly for a story that winds up as emotional as it does.

Could be Critical Role? - I've heard people say it's best to start in with the second campaign, because even though a lot of people loved the first one, it seems agreed upon that it took a while to find its feet. I haven't listened to any of it, though.

(But BIG agreement on "if you can just make it through the first hundred episodes, it gets so good!" being... not that motivating, haha.)

And as much as I really did enjoy The Adventure Zone, if the style of listening to other people play D&D isn't to your liking, it just isn't. But I had a fun time with it, and found it worth the time.

I'm not gonna disagree about the cosplay thing, though. Haha. I guess cosplay is almost always going to be dressing up as another person's character, technically, so it's not that different, but... it just feels different.

By the time I was in college, there were plenty of people with much more extensive and desirable collections of stuff, and most of the geeky groups had gone to digital copies of things. Even so, I definitely had a few books and DVDs and such that uh, "walked away" out of my dorm room, and that's always shitty. Why do people gotta be people?

[olivermoss]

Yeah, it might have been Critical Role. I don't know enough to keep the groups straight ... or even know if they are different groups.

D&D characters are usually meant for just the player, not a broad audience. There's a fundamental difference between how I play c character in a D&D session than how I'd write a character meant to be seen and interpreted by random people I don't know. That's why the cosplay thing seems weird to me. Obviously, people playing D&D to an audience for money are doing something different than what I am doing, but a player character just interacts with the self in a different way than a story character.

It's a huge thing. It's weird that D&D is so popular and I'm just not interacting in those spaces currently. I tried a few times, and I just cannot get into that sort of thing.

[mistressofmuses]

Those are genuinely the only two I can ever remember, though people have mentioned others to me before, and I know they're sort of a dime a dozen these days.

That's true, and I think that's a solid distinction. Player characters are a lot more personal than characters you write for the purpose of a consumed story, even if you created both.
And when it comes to an RPG that's been designed specifically with an audience in mind, rather than a small-scale personal group, those lines are probably a bit more blurry.

It is interesting that it's blown up so much in popularity. I was never much of a player - joined in a few games when I was in college, since I had a friend DMing, and my then-girlfriend wanted me to learn to play. Then I occasionally played a one-off character when I came to visit a different gf when I came home from breaks, so that we could hang out on her usual D&D night.

But since then I haven't really had anyone I know who is into it, so it's been years since I played.

I haven't been able to get into any of the various series other than The Adventure Zone (and only the Balance arc of that one.) To be fair, I haven't really tried to get into any of the others. As usual, it's hard to find the time for something that may be hundreds of episodes long, and I can't really multitask when I listen to stuff.