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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iosue" data-source="post: 8756433" data-attributes="member: 6680772">To be accurate, Japan was originally introduced to D&D in 1985 through BECMI, using the original design and layout, by a company called Shinwa.<img src="https://t-machine.jp/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/time_ma_chine-img600x450-14881864920tcqhv16801-1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />They did well for a while, helped by such tie-in media as "replay" stories in magazines and the Lodoss novels/anime, but they were a victim of their own success. Having introduced TRPGs to Japan, they soon found themselves undercut by much more affordable domestic TRPGs like Sword World. Shinwa tried to survive by appealing to its hardcore base by shifting from D&D to AD&D (2nd Ed.) in 1991. But this was a disaster, as almost none of their customers made the switch.Shinwa sold the license to Media Works, a local RPG publisher. They put out the entirely localized three-volume Rules Cyclopedia version in the OP in 1995. A member of the group that played in the original Lodoss games did the translation, which is why it calls back so heavily to Lodoss. (The anime of which came out in 1991.)Media Works lost the translation license when WotC bought TSR. WotC already had a deal with Hobby Japan to do MTG cards, so Hobby Japan got the D&D license, too. They put out all of 3rd Edition and 4th Edition, with the same layout as the originals rather than Media Works's culturally localized versions. The books looked great, just like the American ones, but they were simply too expensive to really reach a wide audience. Why pay well over 5,000 yen for a foreign game's hardback when you can get all three volumes of Sword World in easy-to-carry paperbacks for 3,000 yen total?Initially, WotC had no plans for a Japanese translation of 5e, but they did allow Hobby Japan to do and publish a Japanese translation of the Basic Rules. Eventually, Wizards gave the license for non-English versions to Gale Force 9, and Hobby Japan was able to the get the translation license from them. Thus Japan got PHBs, and MMs, and DMGs, and many other books. But then Gale Force 9 and WotC had legal troubles, and Gale Force 9 (and thus Hobby Japan) lost the translation license, and had to cease selling of its existing stock in June of this year.Now WotC is doing their own translation, so we'll see how that goes. I guess there's some cachet in giving Japanese role-players the same kind of product that everyone else in the world gets, but I sometimes wonder if it would not be better to do entirely localized versions like the Rules Cyclopedia above...</blockquote>

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