Kadokawa announced on July 22, 2022, an Elden Ring Tabletop RPG book in Japan, coming in early Spring 2023. It looks like this will be one of the many projects related to Elden Ring’s expansion as an IP outside of gaming. In March, Bandai Namco teased its plans to expand the game by FromSoftware and George R. R. Martin in various ways, right after announcing that the action JRPG sold over 12 million copies worldwide.
A Quick Introduction To Tabletop RPGs History in Japan
Considering the genre’s history in Japan, it makes perfect sense to adapt Elden Ring into a Tabletop RPG. Legendary Tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons was a huge influence on media around the world, and needless to say, this includes Japan. Tabletop RPG, abbreviated as TRPG in Japan, has always been an incredibly popular format there and helped shape Japanese media as it exists nowadays. (As a side note, Tactical RPGs are called Simulation/Strategy RPGs in Japan and are abbreviated to SRPG instead of TRPG).
Dungeons & Dragons led to the creation of the Wizardry series on PC, which led to the JRPG genre with series like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Moreover, Ryo Mizuno, the author of the highly influential Record of Lodoss War fantasy novels, initially started out the story as a novelization of the Dungeons & Dragons campaigns he played with friends. Ryo Mizuno also used to be one of the founding members of Group SNE, which is still developing many Trading Card Games and Tabletop RPGs nowadays, including this new Elden Ring Tabletop game.
Tabletop RPGs are still pretty popular in Japan, with new ones regularly getting published. Some of them via crowdfunding projects. A handful of games get fan-translated and even officially translated at times, like the recent release of Kamigakari: God Hunters.
Group SNE Is In Charge Of The Elden Ring Tabletop RPG
Group SNE already released a Dark Souls Tabletop RPG in 2017, and this Elden Ring adaptation will be handled by the same producer, Hironori Katou. He’s an author and designer known for the TCG Monster Collection and its Tabletop RPG spinoff Rokumon Sekai.
The book will include typical data for Tabletop RPGs such as items, monsters, skills, etc, all from Elden Ring. The book’s size and price will be announced at a later date with more details. It’ll definitely be interesting to see if this Tabletop RPG ever gets released outside Japan. The odds are definitely high seeing Elden Ring’s sheer popularity. The Dark Souls Tabletop RPG book got localized too.
Nowadays, FromSoftware is most notably working on a new Armored Core game, which might get revealed soon seeing the series just celebrated its 25th anniversary on July 10. The studio already confirmed several times in the past to be working on multiple games. FromSoftware is also always hiring for multiple projects.
