Imprint focuses on web, print novels with "new classical fantasy" theme

Kadokawa announced on Tuesday that it will formally launch a new novel imprint named "Dragon Novels" on February 5. The new imprint will publish web and print novels focusing on a "New Classical Fantasy" theme, and will also publish novels based on games. The imprint will launch with five novels.

In particular, the imprint will have stories based on or set in the worlds of various tabletop role-playing games, including Group SNE 's Sword World RPG , Tōichirō Kawashima's Meikyū Kingdom , and Sandy Petersen and Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu . It will allow authors to publish their own stories set in Sword World RPG , and will also publish novels based on other popular role-playing games in the future.

The imprint will also hold a "Dragon Novels New Generation Fantasy Novel" contest in the Kakuyomu web novel site, and will also allow writers to publish stories and derivative works based on Sword World RPG . The imprint already has a page on Kakuyomu.

The new imprint's name is based on Kadokawa 's long-running Fujimi Dragon Book imprint for tabletop role-playing games, which launched in 1985. Kadokawa also had a previous Fujimi Dragon Novels imprint that published novels based on foreign tabletop gaming properties, such as Dragonlance and Battletech . Kadokawa publishes Sword World RPG and Meikyū Kingdom , and also publishes the Japanese version of Call of Cthulhu .

Sources: Kadokawa, Dragon Novels website, Kakuyomu page, Anime! Anime! Biz