A few years ago you had a space sim called Dark Star One. Guess once where that name reminds me off.

Quote from: Old Geezer;788010"The Dark Eye" sounds like the role playing game of pretending to be a proctologist.

The working title of the game was "Aventuria".

The board game publisher Schmidt Spiele, who had requested the creation of a "something akin to D&D" from the German D&D translators (= FanPro), had already secured the trademark, "Das Schwarze Auge", because they thought it sounded mysteriously.
Kiesow & Co had to retroactively justify that title by inventing something in the setting. "The Dark Eye" is a magical artifact, a Palantír-like seeing stone.

Around 1997, when Schmidt Spiele went bankrupt and the DSA/TDE license was in limbo for about half a year, the original authors planned to continue the game (whose rules and setting were still theirs, only the trademark title and logo belonged to Schmidt) under the original title, but then FanPro acquired both the license and the remaining stock - DSA stayed DSA.

(This could have been an interesting "point of departure" for an alternate RPG history... what would have happened if another publisher, like Jumbo or Noris or Parker, would have bought DSA, and not involving the original makers in the continuation of the game? They would have had to create, or rather tweak, their own edition of the rules, and a completely new setting...)

TDE/DSA bashing... what an original and brand new thing. Seriously, if you want to have an impression of the importance of this game is how people who don't play it define themselves by their rejection of it. Because nothing says "I don't care about TDE" as much as continuously complaining about it. The truth is, the whole issue is a bit more ambivalent.

The truth is, TDE is a game in a very particular niche - and due to its position as the most important germanophonic game, this particular niche seems quite attractive to quite a number of people. What DSA does really good -perhaps better than any other RPG out there - is providing very detailed and layered characters , both on a descriptive level and the description of this character through the rules within a very detailed and concrete world. There are plenty of other systems that provide very detailed character creation processes with very fine details (e.g. GURPS), and others offer a similar minutiae-rich environment (e.g. HarnMaster), but this combination is very, very typical for DSA - and it either addresses or creates the player base's interest in this combination. Not only does this allow for characters who are very easy to identify with, these characters are also a distinct part of their environment and due to the provided background and character creation tools, it is relatively simple to fit in your (very likely highly unique) character into this exuberantly decorated world.
TDE is a fantasy sightseeing tour, but at least during your first visit, it is a very good one: You are probably not allowed to touch anything, but the sights are great. The freedom to express oneself does not derive from the interaction with the environment in the game, but from the nitty-gritty details of your character and its ongoing development. You are not supposed to act that much, but you have a great potential for possible reactions. Basically, the players have only a very limited agency concerning the plot, but also have significantly more options than in most games to accessorize their characters while giving them a very concise context.
So, basically, the idea is that you might not affect the setting a lot (due to the strict nature of the metaplot, the outcome of most adventures is either relatively unimportant in the great scheme of events or entirely scripted), but you have almost complete freedom in how you want to develop your character within this setting without damaging the verisimilitude of neither the game nor the character.
The other strength of TDE is the large number of acceptable to good adventure modules. They usually have the typical sight-seeing tour aspect of the game, but, again, that is an intended feature, and it makes it very easy to actually run the game - just grab a module, and you're basically set. While the format is quite restrictive, it is also good at providing a clear path towards an okay gaming experience and a mostly coherent story. Few of the official modules are outright terrible, especially if you consider that verisimilitude and adherence to the official setting are primary goals of these adventures. Due to the restrictive nature of the often strongly railroaded plots, there are very few actually great TDE adventure modules, but the overall standard is quite decent, albeit restrictive (and leagues above anything produced for D&D in the last 20 years or so). If you can live with the implicit and often explicit limitations, it is actually an okay game. Just don't expect to be the great decision-maker while you are playing.
There are some major issues with the system. Due to the focus on characters, death is highly frowned upon, so that the gamemaster is implicitly forced to cheat to keep characters alive. The strong tradition of railroading is well alive and as restrictive as ever (despite lip services to the opposite) and the game system is rather clunky and slow and suffers from the delusion of faux realism due to overblown complications. My personal problems however are more with the setting - not that much the plethora of details (I like details), but the attitude towards it: Basically, it is a strongly romanticized fantasy theme park. It has almost everything (there are swashbuckling musketeers, vikings, clever thieves from 1001 Nights, the obligatory subtle and quick to anger wizards, Cthulhu-style monsters or investigations) but it almost always follows the same stereotypical patterns and trite clichés - the ugly people are usually evil, actual conflicts between equally likable factions almost never happens (and if they do occur, they are usually the result of some actually evil manipulator or a conspiracy of some sort) and so on. The setting has effectively removed anything that could actually challenge the players - neither on an intellectual level (everything has basically been spelled out due to the sheer volume of material), nor on a gameplay level (because PCs aren't supposed to die, or at least they're not supposed to die anticlimacticly) and especially not on a level of relevant ethic decisions. There are almost no moral dilemmas in DSA.

First of all, I see no problem in bashing a game you consider to be shitty. Especially if it is dominating a market and hobby dear to your heart and is the main RPG socialiser of potential new gamers you might be playing with in your next game group.
People don't complain because they do not care about TDE, but because they care about the future of the hobby.

I've played and owned almost all editions of TDE (2nd edition I haven't played, but it's very clearly seated between 1E and 3E in its execution). I am a bit of a curiosum, in that my first RPG actually was MERP (or MERS as it was called in the german-speaking countries) and not TDE. That being said, TDE 3E was the one system I was playing the most in my formative years. There were some game systems I liked better (e.g. Stormbringer, of which the German edition I still think was the most beautiful), but TDE had Aventurien, which was a big deal back then. I still like Aventurien, though it has jumped the shark with 4E, when they started to include more and more faux-European elements, than the ones they already had anyway. System-wise, I can actually still remember not liking the rolling-3d20 for a single skill roll even in the 90s. It was just so blatantly un-intuitive, it's not even funny. Even a teen like me could recognise that.

I have found -- and it almost always gets back to this in all of the numerous discussions you can read in German fora -- that most gamers who still play TDE are the ones who either 1) haven't played better systems, 2) see Aventurien as the game's main feature or 3) simply play it out of habit. Those who actually like the ugly Roll-Under-D&D-GURPS-mish-mash the TDE rules have become and can also defend it are few and far between. The things the 4th edition of TDE does, GURPS does better. Way better. But GURPS lacks the flair of Aventurien. Even though I would disagree with the previous poster, in that the a 4E character is anything more than a steaming, stinking pile of numbers and skills, in the context of Aventurien, even they can shine. Without it, TDE characters are no different than those in any of the fantasy heartbreakers of the 90s. Not unplayable, but why bother?

Apart from earlier Aventurien, one thing TDE did really fucking well is starter boxes. 1E was cool, but 3E and 4E had some amazing boxed sets, that really got you gaming rather quickly and where full of that Aventurian flair. For all the hate 4E gets (and deserves), I still might pick its beginner box as my all-time favourite.

Exhibit A:
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzY4WDEwMjQ=/z/OKoAAOSwVFlT~lg9/$_72.JPG

Exhibit B:
http://ftp.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/keirat/txt/Scans/D/DSAEins4.jpg

So where does this leave me? Early Aventurien was awesome and 1E, if tinkered with, is a fun OD&D alternative.
I therefore proclaim, that, for the real TDE experience, you wanna get 1E and the Aventurian Encyclopedia of the early 90ies. At that point, Aventurien was substantially fleshed out, but still had that sense of wonder and inherent romanticism, which made people like it in the first place -- without the rules- and setting-bloat of later editions.

Exhibit C:
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzY4WDEwMjQ=/z/MeMAAOxy3hJSQxon/$T2eC16N,!ykFIee3iDdMBSQ%29om8HcQ~~48_72.JPG

Exhibit D:
http://www.booklooker.de/images/cover/user/0328/0354/Ym0zMDM=.jpg