I imagine most RPG collectors have heard of Lawrence Schick’s “Heroic Worlds”. It’s a comprehensive listing of English-language RPG items, organized by genre and game, invaluable to collectors in 1991 and still worth having today. “RPG All Catalog ’95” is the close Japanese-language equivalent, published as an extra edition by RPG Magazine. It describes 123 games and 397 items for those games. Every game is rated on a scale of 1 to 5 stars for “ease of play”, “supplement support”, and “availability for purchase”. Most games get a full page description.

Seven games are called out in color at the front of the book. “Sword World” is Japan’s most popular fantasy RPG we are told. “Far Roads to Lord” is full of original fantasy. “RuneQuest” has the most and best mythology and “Dungeons & Dragons” is the world’s first RPG. “Ghost Hunter” is a unique horror game which uses cards. “Shadowrun” combines cyberpunk and fantasy and moreover it is “hard picaresque”, whatever that means. “Torg” has infinite possibilities.

I don’t know how many collectors of Japanese TRPG are out there. Certainly I’ve met a few collectors of Japanese D&D. But if you are interested in Japanese games generally you might want to pick this one up.

Perfect-bound A4 softcover, 160 pp.

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