LionWing Publishing has announced that it will be localizing the 1980s Japanese tabletop roleplaying game Wares Blade in English, with crowdfunding beginning via Kickstarter on August 26. The landmark mecha-fantasy RPG is the first release in the publisher’s Legends of Japan retro-revival series, and this is the first time Wares Blade will be available in the West. The English version of the game is developed in close cooperation with the game’s original creators. It is meant to replicate the classic feel of the original, but with new clarifications, errata, and an updated layout.
Here is an overview of the game from LionWing Publishing:
Wares Blade offers a unique blend of Western-style fantasy roleplaying and mecha action set on the sprawling continent of Ahan. Aside from its sheer size – and the dozens of theocracies, city-states, republics, kingdoms, and empires that inhabit it – Ahan’s most notable feature is the existence of Ryude, semi-sentient bio-mechanical warriors animated by enigmatic technologies. Tightly controlled and widely coveted, Ryude have fundamentally changed the way wars are fought and won.
The source of their power, the arcane Wares-Stones, also form the basis for magic in this land, being the foundation for both simple cantrips and apocalyptic wizardry. Practitioners of the art of Word-Casting use Wares-Stones to make the forces of nature their own, harnessing everything from sunlight to the powers of life and death. Other arcane disciplines of Ahan include Numenism, which draws its powers from the body’s vital essences, and Invocation, the manipulation of divine forces.
Wares Blade’s English-language rulebook is based on Wares Blade: The Revival, the revised and expanded starter book published by Hobby Japan in 1994. It features four playable classes (Warrior, Word-Caster, Spiritualist, and Tradesfolk), d10-based task resolution with a luck mechanic, a distinctive advancement system, over 500 arcana techniques to master, over 40 mecha units, a rich bestiary, and an extensive setting guide.
Wares Blade’s original line ran from 1989 to 1994. It is a spinoff of Wares 1902, a popular novel series. Hobby Japan even published a d20 version based on the Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons ruleset in 2008. The novel was created by a creative planning company, Shindosha, with experience with franchises such as Transformers and Mobile Suit Gundam. Shindosha has managed the Wares franchise since it began in 1986. Its universe has expanded to include audio dramas, manga, model kits, console RPGs, and a miniatures game that launched in 2019.
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