I will admit that I’m not familiar with much of the Lodoss “expanded universe,” for want of a better term. The OVA is a longtime favorite of mine from way back in the VHS days, I’ve read one or two of the manga that were translated to English, and I sat through ‘Crysania,’ ‘Chronicles,’ and ‘Rune Soldier’ despite my continued disappointment with each.

But, nevertheless, I think the original is one of the best pieces of fantasy roleplaying in another medium that’s ever been made.

It’s a term of pure jargon, unintelligible to probably a majority of readers. (Setting aside for a moment the hatemail I’d get from the OSR.)

You have to know the lore of the githyanki in order to get the term’s meaning, and while I employ slang and jargon fairly freely, I suspect that Gish is more obscure than most of my terminology. I like to think I stay fairly accessible to the novice D&D gamer. (This may be a mark of my own self-deception, but that’s life.)

To my understanding, Sword World RPG was a later creation to build
mechanics based on their Lodoss, Alecrast, and Crystania games. In fact,
the previous edition of Sword World took place predominantly in
Alecrast. The new Sword World RPG uses a different setting, though it
carries over some races like Grassrunners and carries over the magic
mechanics from Record of Lodoss War, Rune Soldier Louie, and Legend of
Crystania.

The first games they recorded for home-replay were definitely OD&D games, and there was no romance between Parn and Deedlit, Orson and Shiris, Spark and Leaf, nor Spark and Little Neese in these. You did get a Ashram and Pirotess bad-guy romance, but only because they were NPCs. The DM later wrote mini-novelizations and the scripts for the various manga, and its in those that these romances arose to the surface. But by the time we had Record of Lodoss War the anime, it was 1990, and 2nd Edition was in full swing. The second anime was in 1998, well past the release of Player’s Option. The manga for each came years earlier, but even still: Quite a few things have changed, and a gulf between interpretations have happened. That’s why now we finally have a Dwarf Cleric in Father Greivus in Chronicles of Heroic Knights, rather than just a Dwarf-classed character in the earlier hero Ghim.

There’s a fan-community that shared your idea that Alania would receive Parn as its king. There is some canon suggestion to this – King Kashue asks Parn to take up that role. But I personally don’t think that would fit Parn’s character, especially if you’ve read “Demon of Flame” and “Tale of Deedlit” which delve much deeper into Parn and Deedlit’s motivations in the inter-anime period. If he takes up the throne for Alania, what will happen to the people suffering in Kanon or Valis? In Raiden or Moss? By being a Free Knight, Parn is able to fight for the peace and prosperity of all peoples, rather than just one kingdom. The greatest issue Lodoss faces, even after the final defeat of Karla and the the cleansing of the island from the Destroyer’s curse, is the fact that it’s made up of tiny kingdoms squabbling over borders and rulership. Fahn tried to unify it as a confederacy, Beld tried to conquer it as an empire. But both failed due to the mechinations of Karla, who believed that power must not consolidate ever again. Even still, these wars drag on. Parn serves as this third-way answer: have just and good leaders in each country, but also have heroic agents who can keep the peace and are not beholden to the countries’ jurisdictions (Batmen, if you were).

I’m not sure who would rule Alania though. Spark’s the Duke of Marmo post Chronicles, though I’ve never read the untranslated manga that tells of his further adventures there (supposedly Woodchuck reappears; I would have thought Karla moved onto a new body when Wood was killed). Would love to have a go at them even if I could just find the raws. I KNOW the English Voice Over cast would be game to come back and dub an anime if they ever adapted this sequel, unlike the original Japanese cast which changed entirely between the two anime.

What’s wrong with Gish?

I agree with everything here. Glad to see another deep fan of Lodoss. Ashram even becomes admirable at the end of Chronicles as he sets off to find a new home for the people of Marmo.

That would be fun!

Unfortunately, the closet we come to a sequel series is 1995’s ‘Legend of Crystania,’ which isn’t set on the island of Lodoss, doesn’t focus on any of the main characters (it’s nominally about Ashram and Pirotess, but it really isn’t), and is just generally poorly done. 1997’s ‘Rune Soldier’ is set in the same world, but takes place on Alecrast – the continent north of Lodoss – and doesn’t have much to do with its siblings.

The Japanese Sword World RPG became the main roleplaying game for Lodoss-related work after Lodoss’ designers tried and failed to sell the setting to TSR. I’d have loved to have seen what TSR could have done with Lodoss, as for me, the Nineties are the high water mark of RPG world building.

I like to think that Parn and his companions ride off on many further adventures and that Parn eventually would wear the crown of Alannia “upon a troubled brow.”

I’ve always wanted to explore what the Lodoss setting would look like after the events of the series. Would Parn become king of Alannia like Kashue suggested he could? Would Marmo remain the Land of Monsters, and would its alluded-to human population seek refuge elsewhere?

Thank you for reminding me about it. I need to rewatch the OVAs and the TV Series now (if only the latter’s animation wasn’t so spastic between episodes!).

I am definitely interested in doing a history of multiclassing at some point, and that will absolutely start with the OD&D Elf. The only tricky thing is that, eventually, I also need to cover the various iterations of “arcane magic + fighter,” preferably without calling it the History of the Gish. 😉

The History of Domain Rulership really is wrapping up soon, though! The current article is just monstrously long, for reasons, and I’m kinda working on it between UA breakdowns. I THINK the series will be the current article and one more.

Somewhat off-topic, but I think that the Basic D&D “Demihumans as Classes” could be an interesting side-trek for the History of Class series… They stand as both sort of an evolutionary dead-end for game design /and/ as a sort of prototype for how later editions’ multiclassing would work.

(Heck, it might be fun to do a whole History of Race series… Exploring how Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits grew and expanded into the menagerie we have now.)