It’s been almost a year since the Japanese release of the Elden Ring TRPG, and there still appears to be no English translation in the works. With TRPGs and board games currently more popular than ever, many fans are understandably questioning why the Elden Ring TRPG is being left untranslated.
Released on June 20, 2023, the Elden Ring TRPG is a 624-page labor of love from author Hironori Kato—a renowned RPG systems designer whose work unfortunately remains mostly obscure in the West. Featuring art by Jun Suemi, the Elden Ring TRPG‘s three rulebooks allow a team of players—guided by a DM—to explore the Lands Between as never before. Featuring four new classes created exclusively for the game, the Elden Ring TRPG’s intricate design, unique mechanics, and expansive scope make for a truly one of a kind pen and paper tabletop game.
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The Elden Ring TRPG is Currently Japan Exclusive
Much like the Dark Souls TRPG before it, at the moment the Elden Ring TRPG is only available in Japan. With the game not yet translated into any other language, fans are currently only able to embark on a pen and paper journey into The Lands Between if they speak Japanese. Unfortunately, the business of translating game-books means it’s unlikely this situation will change any time soon.
An
English-language
Dark Souls TRPG
was released by Steamforged Games in 2022. Built upon the
Dungeons & Dragons
5th edition ruleset, the game was met with middling reviews from fans and critics.
Translating the Elden Ring TRPG Would Be a Difficult Task
Hironori Kato’s Elden Ring TRPG is a big game. At over 600 pages—and featuring footnotes, lists, tables, annotations, and long passages explaining Elden Ring‘s lore and the TRPG’s mechanics—the Elden Ring TRPG would be both time-consuming and expensive to translate. In addition to this, finding the right translator would be an undertaking of its own.
Translation is an art, and translating pen and paper rulebooks brings with it the problem of finding a translator able to effectively and clearly translate technical and highly complex systems of rules, while also being able to accurately translate the original writer’s prose style and localize the lore and enemy descriptions without missing specific cultural and literary references particular to the genre and/or IP. The notoriously terrible French translation of the Dark Souls TRPG is a perfect example of how difficult this can be.
An English-Language Release of the Japanese Elden Ring TRPG Might Not Make Sense Financially
Translating and republishing a book is a lot of work, involving a lot of people. Before even attempting the translation, a publisher would need to secure distribution rights, liaise copyright contracts with a massively successful video game publisher, and establish royalty agreements with both FromSoftware and the TRPG’s creative team. This would require lawyers working with translators, all of whom would have to be paid. Translation of the work itself would then be costly, as would marketing and the production of the books themselves. None of this is factoring in other costs, like project managers.
While there is certainly money to be made translating and republishing the Elden Ring TRPG, it’s unclear whether that money would justify the costs incurred acquiring, translating and republishing the work itself—especially as the Elden Ring TRPG rulebooks would likely be sold to distributors at wholesale prices, and both FromSoft and Bandai Namco would take a significant cut of the profits. With all the resources required to translate and reprint it, and relatively small profit margins when finally published, The Elden Ring TRPG would need to be a significant success to justify its production costs.
A Fan Translation Might Save the Elden Ring TRPG From Total Obscurity
While official releases require lawyers and professional translators, fan-projects are driven primarily by passion, hard work, and a desire to engage with the product. Coming from passionate people intimately acquainted with the source material, fan-translations are also generally less likely to miss intricacies a translator unfamiliar with the source material might.
While there aren’t any Elden Ring TRPG fan-translations currently in the works, there’s also no sign of an official English release. It’s likely only a matter of time before an intrepid team of Elden Ring fans decide to take on this Greyoll-sized challenge.
Elden Ring
Elden Ring is a fantasy action-RPG adventure set in a world co-created by Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creator of the influential Dark Souls video game series, and George R.R. Martin, the author of the best-selling fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. This collaboration between two renowned creators has resulted in FromSoftware’s largest game to date, filled with danger and discovery at every turn. Hidetaka Miyazaki, president and game director of FromSoftware, has a history of directing highly acclaimed games in franchises such as Armored Core and Dark Souls.
- Released
- February 25, 2022
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op , Online Multiplayer
- Engine
- Proprietary
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes, Violence
- How Long To Beat
- 58 Hours
- Metascore
- 96
- Platforms That Support Crossplay
- PS4 & PS5 and Xbox One & Xbox Series X|S
- PS Plus Availability
- N/A
