Most fantasy RPGs are a reaction to D&D in one way or another. This has likely been true for some time; while games like RuneQuest have had time to evolve and develop their own base principles, many of them, especially ones as old as RuneQuest, were very much about being either in alignment with or in opposition to what D&D did when they were first released. Given D&D’s current market share, this has become more nakedly true in the bestselling entries in the fantasy genre; Tales of the Valiant, Draw Steel, and Daggerheart are all essentially versions of the D&D formula and none of them purport to offer a different sort of game than D&D beyond differing priority rankings for things like narrative development, tactical combat, or power level.

A new trend I’ve observed is typified by game designers taking a different tack to how they ‘react’ to D&D, and this is generally one filtered through other media. Break, Fabula Ultima, and Twilight Sword are all versions of this to one extent or another. While these games all differ from each other, hidden in each is a similar underlying thesis: In order to make tabletop roleplaying more accessible, this game is derived from the most accessible D&D derivative, the fantasy RPG video game. The fact that these are all more from a JRPG lens likely has to do with legacy as well as differentiation; the first Final Fantasy outsold its licensed D&D contemporary Pool of Radiance by about 50%, and the gap only got wider. Final Fantasy VII outsold Baldur’s Gate, its licensed D&D contemporary, by about fivefold (and that’s only to 2005, not including any of the remakes or re-releases of either). Even if Baldur’s Gate III and the recent explosion in popularity for D&D have shifted this narrative, there’s no question that through the 90s, the JRPG reigned supreme when it came to sales volume and cultural impact.

The ‘why’ of the JRPG TTRPG makes sense, the question when looking at these games is more of the how. Out of the three only Fabula Ultima explicitly calls itself a JRPG TTRPG (or in the words of its designer, a ‘TTJRPG’), and that’s because it’s doing a lot of the filter work through mechanics. Unlike the other two, Fabula Ultima takes significant steps to emulate video games, the most profound mechanical step being the elimination of distances and space in the combat system (to emulate the ‘two lines of characters’ style of turn-based combat screen from JRPGs). Add into that a very different sort of class-based character system and some more abstracted travel, inventory, and even “cut-scene” mechanics, and Fabula Ultima ends up being, out of the three, significantly more interested in the conventions of video games and video game storytelling than filtering D&D through a video game lens. Break is on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. Break takes its JRPG and anime inspiration and shows it through its setting, including character, monster, and equipment choices. The rules, though, are very traditional. While Break has learned a thing or two from more modern games, the underlying mechanics shunt you directly into nearly old-school play, where you the player are using your character’s items and abilities to figure out how to solve problems and come out ahead in the face of what’s a fairly deadly combat system.

Somewhere in the middle is Twilight Sword. Like Break, Twilight Sword doesn’t really stray from the mechanical underpinnings of D&D. The resolution mechanic, basic combat system, and character creation are all clearly grounded in D&D, even if simplified (resolution mechanic uses abilities, no skills; combat is theater of the mind with range bands; character creation starts with picking from five origins, five species, and six classes). However, it uses both mechanical ideas (like Fabula Ultima) and setting ideas (like Break) to distinguish itself from D&D and improve accessibility. That bent towards accessibility matches perfectly with the game’s alignment with a both immensely successful and highly accessible video game series, The Legend of Zelda.

Whether or not the Legend of Zelda series is an RPG in the video game sense of the term is hotly debated, but there’s no question that the reduction of numerical RPG elements like those seen in the Final Fantasy series helped make the series both more accessible and highly popular, serving a different market than RPG series like Final Fantasy (which has outsold Zelda, at least on a series level). This contrast seems to be integrated into Twilight Sword’s design; at around 200 pages it’s notably shorter than either Break or Fabula Ultima, let alone 5/5.5e D&D. It also dispenses with D&D’s philosophy of ‘freedom by ambiguity’, instead offering a limited set of highly constructed subsystems that paint clear lines around what the game does. There’s a philosophical parallel here to PbtA, where the definitive and finite set of Moves tells you exactly what the game wants to concern itself with. Even though Twilight Sword is absolutely a trad game, closer to D&D than most other possible comparisons, it’s learned a lot of lessons on presentation from its newer, better organized contemporaries.

I do think that Twilight Sword’s clear, bright presentation stems from the decision that the game would do its specific thing rather than try to be ‘anything you can imagine’ like D&D. When you get into the rules, there isn’t really as much simplification as you’d think considering the game’s length. Twilight Sword has more stats, though this is in part to make it easier to eliminate skills. The game has the same number of delineated combat actions as 5e (ten) and then also has active defense rolls, which D&D does not. The number of status effects doesn’t even go down by that much; Twilight Sword has ten while 5e has 14. The deeper you go, the clearer it becomes that Twilight Sword  isn’t intending to be lighter than D&D so much as it’s intending to be more usable than D&D. 

The one mechanic in this game that is completely unique to Twilight Sword (i.e. not present in D&D) is the cooking and alchemy rules. These are self-contained and pretty neat: There are a number of forage tables indicating areas you can try and forage or hunt for food, and what you get is going to have one of four different basic effects (healthy, refreshing, spicy, invigorating). To cook, you choose ingredients with one of the four effects and build a dice pool depending on how many ingredients you have and how effective they are. Then, you roll on the appropriate effect table to see what the resulting dish does. Alchemy is similar, but uses components dropped by monsters and allows the use of more components for more powerful effects. Not too complicated, relatively easy to expand or homebrew, but still way more satisfying than ‘make a cooking check’. Is it meant to emulate cooking in Breath of the Wild? Obviously, but even if inspired by a video game this is a smart and fairly compact tabletop mechanic that produces items which will make a difference in play.

It’s not exactly surprising that mechanically, Twilight Sword is drawing on D&D. The Legend of Zelda drew on D&D as well; even if it wasn’t a traditional RPG per se, the overworld/dungeon structure of Zelda games borrows from the superstructure of the dungeon crawling experience just like many RPG-adjacent video games did. It makes sense not to recast mechanics again through a video game lens if you’re not looking to capture specific video game elements (like Fabula Ultima is). That does mean, though, that where Twilight Sword aims to actually emulate the feeling of Zelda games is going to be in its world and its campaign structure. And emulate it does: In Twilight Sword campaigns, PCs must defeat a Scourge that is ‘the root of all evil’ in the world, and their progress in doing so is measured in Hope and Despair. Hope is, in essence, the ‘XP’ of the game, and characters gain hope either by resolving quests or doing deeds. The deeds here are basically D&D’s three pillars boiled down: help people, defeat bosses, and discover landmarks. Quests consist of deeds, so the more complex they are, the more Hope increases. Completing the entire quest also lowers the Despair in the area where the quest takes place. Despair is a campaign tracking tool at its core, but it’s also the tabletop equivalent of, say, when you finish a Temple dungeon in Ocarina of Time and the region visibly changes and heals as a result. Changes in Despair (and Hope) are supposed to trigger Developments, which are both those sorts of ‘land is healing’ cutscenes but also potentially summoning or exposing final bosses or elements which may be needed to finally defeat the Scourge. Also worth noting (mostly because it’s fun) is that reducing the Despair in a region to zero means that the region’s inhabitants throw a party to celebrate the characters. This is a great thing to codify, especially given that a Legend, a long-running campaign that goes all the way up to defeating the Scourge, could be running forty sessions based on frameworks in the book.

The core rulebook provides some structure around the realm of Radia, although it’s promised there will be a full setting book as well. Radia’s regions are described using the book’s mechanics, and those descriptions indicate the world has 28 Despair, implying a roughly 30 session campaign if one was to stick with the world in the book. Is Radia Hyrule? Well…kind of? You see a lot of the same touchstones there, but the touchstones of Hyrule are meant to be portable (as they are across all of the different Zelda games). Honestly though, as someone who has pored through worldbuilding essays and struggled with biome placement and thinking about geology and river formation, there is something oddly refreshing about a proudly impossible map stating ‘here’s the big sunny plain, here’s the dark foreboding forest, the snowy mountains are here, the desert is here, and there’s a massive and obviously evil castle right in the middle.” It at the very least serves as a reminder that making a world memorable may do more for your players than making it realistic, though of course like everything your mileage may vary on that. Still, for Twilight Sword’s particular flavor of fantasy questing, the Hyrule ‘all the Biomes’ approach both makes regions memorable and makes it more clear which part of the world you’re saving that day.

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Twilight Sword isn’t all that unlike D&D, but having a specific flavor and set of inspirations enabled some really smart work in the rules presentation department. We’re still roughly looking at something akin to 5e; there are rules areas like encumbrance and combat ranges that are clearly simplified, but for the most part this is the full experience, status effects, maneuvers, and all. What really enables Twilight Sword to be so much shorter and so much clearer than D&D is the baked-in assumption of what kind of campaign this game is designed to run. Yes, this means that you can dispense with, say, a long chapter on cosmology and the planes, but it also means that systems like magic and travel can be described in service to a game of heroes fighting a Scourge of monolithic evil instead of ‘fantasy’ as a general umbrella. This is especially stark when it comes to world and campaign design; the Twilight Sword equivalent of the Dungeon Master’s Guide is notably short.

The Twilight Sword equivalent of the Monster Manual is perhaps the clearest example of how the game aims for usability over flexibility. Monsters have clear threat ratings, and a list of maneuvers which, conveniently, always totals 4, 6, or 8 maneuvers so you can roll them randomly. With all these maneuvers, you can still end up with complex and interesting encounters; there are also rules for beefing up monsters and adding elemental damage to make them more challenging. While this doesn’t really make basic encounters look all that different from D&D, it certainly makes it easier to wrap your head around more complicated monsters and boss monsters, which can be a real pain and a massive prep sink in D&D.

So how much will Twilight Sword feel like a Zelda game? Hard to say. This is a party-based TTRPG, you’re not Link saving Hyrule on his lonesome, let alone relying on reflexes or ‘z-targeting’. That said, Twilight Sword does cite other inspirations, and overall casting the game as occurring in an anime-inflected ‘noblebright’ setting has been pretty successful. The story and progression beats of a Zelda game are baked into the campaign structure pretty well, and I do appreciate the setting implied by both character options and the as-written world.

Twilight Sword fits nicely with its contemporaries Fabula Ultima and Break when it comes to translating video game and anime inspirations into a tabletop experience. Twilight Sword is neither the most mechanically conservative nor daring, but it does manage to come in shorter than either of the other games, let alone D&D. With nothing missing and some mechanical systems just as complex as their D&D equivalents, this abridgment and streamlining is pretty impressive, and makes the game very easy to pick up and read. While Break is a bit more traditional and Fabula Ultima a bit more expansive, Twilight Sword is by far the easiest of the anime-styled RPGs to pick up and actually run and play. What truly makes this game easy to recommend, though, is how well it manages to be easy to learn while still presenting a suite of rules at a similar level of complexity to modern D&D.

Twilight Sword is available from DriveThruRPG; pre-orders for physical copies are still available.

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