Sword World RPG crowdfunding raises over $2 million in a day

Sword World RPG, Japan’s long-running fantasy tabletop game, has raised more than $2 million in the first day of its official English-language crowdfunding campaign. The project is being run by Mugen Gaming, which is working with the game’s original creators at Group SNE to bring Sword World RPG 2.5 to English-speaking players.

The BackerKit campaign launched on October 20 and had passed $2.7 million at the time of Polygon’s report. Mugen Gaming’s official campaign page describes the project as the first full-English release and says the funding will support localisation, design and printing of the Sword World 2.5 Core Rulebook. The campaign is scheduled to close on November 20, with fulfilment expected in December 2027.

Created by Group SNE after its designers’ early experiences with Dungeons & Dragons in Japan, Sword World RPG became one of the country’s defining fantasy role-playing games. Its setting and ideas also sit alongside the wider Japanese fantasy tradition associated with Record of Lodoss War, novels and video games. The English project is therefore more than a translation of an obscure ruleset: it is an attempt to bring a major piece of Japan’s tabletop history to a new audience.

Mugen Gaming says the English release will cover the Core Rulebook, Gamemaster’s Guide and Monster Manual, with higher pledge tiers adding dice, character sheets, battle mats, cards and signed books. The campaign’s official site says the rules use a 2d6 system, support flexible multiclass characters and offer both streamlined and advanced combat options.

The project follows years of licensing work. Mugen Gaming founders Shawn Davison and Ai Namin-Davison told Polygon that they met members of Group SNE at SPIEL in Essen, Germany, while exploring how to bring the game west. The rights to Sword World RPG had previously been split between Group SNE and Kadokawa, which helped keep an official English edition out of reach.

Our opinion

The scale of the opening response makes sense: Sword World RPG is arriving with a genuine history behind it, rather than being presented as a new game borrowing familiar fantasy language. The campaign also appears to understand the audience it needs to win over, pairing a complete rules release with practical table extras and a clear explanation of how its 2d6, flexible-class system differs from Dungeons & Dragons. The real test will be whether the final localisation and production schedule match that ambition, but this is a remarkably strong first signal for a game that has waited decades for an official English release.