Has anyone here played "the Dark Eye"? I hear it's Germany's most popular roleplaying game. Is it any good? What are the game mechanics like? :confused: I'm from the USA, so I'm not too familiar with it...

The few German gamers I see online seem to always trash the game as an unbridled mess, and express mystification as to it's popularity, but for all I know they're just the German equivalent of the same types everywhere else that say the same things about D&D.

I've read and played the English-language edition (which I understand doesn't do the German original much justice). The English-language edition is pretty much bog standard fantasy, reads like a hundred other D&D clones, and plays about like one would expect (i.e., like D&D filtered through different rules).

Das Schwarze Auge (I think that's the correct German spelling) looks far cooler than the English-language edition could ever hope to be. Of course, I also like German candy, food, and women. After many years of indulging in all three of these things, I suspect that my judgement may be a bit clouded.

I played the 3rd edition of it, which was never translated - the English version was the recent 4th Edition, although its now cancelled. (However, some Dutchmen have demanded a reprint at the forums of the new publisher Ulisses, so it might come back some day.)

TDE started out as a cheap rip-off of basic D&D with some "realism" added (active parry, armor that reduces damage instead of deflecting attacks, more HP for starting characters and so on). That shouldn't take you wonder as the designer was assigned to translate Basic D&D, although the deal was finally cancelled because of license fee issues.
It was published by a boardgame publisher (Schmidt Spiele) and a traditional book publisher (Droemer Knaur), so they had way more budget and ways for marketing and advertising than all other competitors and dominated the whole RPG market faster than you could say "Gary Gygax".

Unluckily, the designer's understanding of D&D was very poor. The mechanics were dull and non-tactical, the dungeon adventures they published were even more dull, straight-forward and crude, so they realized that adventure gaming must be a bad kind of fun.
With the coming editions they added more "realism" (including skill checks with 3d20 against three different attributes and a bonus pool depending on the skill), a more and more detailed setting and a tight and overwhelming metaplot. The adventures changed from bad dungeons to even worse "Story" train journeys, metaplot sight-seeing and pet NPC shows, and the GM got turned into the schoolmaster and storyteller for his players.

The setting was in the start pretty original - in addition to your typical set of Tolkien and kitchen-sink tropes they added a Germanic mythology and fairy-tale feeling to it, made the PCs "heros" who fight to make the world a better place and battle injustice instead of just grabbing loot, and things generally turned out good. Also, it didn't take itself too serious and had a lot of annotations and wordplays as the inventor "Leonardo the Mechanicus" or Abu Terfas (spoken aloud, it sounds like "a butter barrel" in German).
Sadly, with the death of the original designer Ulrich Kiesow they dismounted the originalities, threw in everything popular from other sources from Dark Elves to Evil demon kingdoms, made the "heros" again ordinary PCs who could do anything because that is more "mature" and began to turn it into a "serious game", erasing more and more humoric tropes and annotations with every metaplot piece.

The worst edition ever is probably the 4th edition. The former editions were dull, non-tactical and broken, but at least they were playable. In the recent edition they replaced the old randomly generated stats and levels with a badly designed GURPS point-buy rip-off (because that's "modern"), really fucked up the math so that you can't even generate a peasant without computer assistance (may God help you if you want combat maneuvers, magic, clerical powers or anything else that is fun included), and made the system even more dull, broken and non-tactical by adding rule layer on rule layer, without enrichening it with any value else as realism or more interlock with the setting. (For instance, there are now combat maneuvers as Disarm, but they're so heavily penalized and complicated by special rules because of fear of "power-gaming" that it's more effective to skip them and simply yell "I whack him!").

So let me get this straight...

The 4th Edition  of "the Dark Eye" is the only edition that was translated into English? You're also saying that the Germanic version is different somehow from the English version, and that 4th Edition is different from previous editions?

4th Edition uses point-buy? But it also sounds a bit clunky.... :raise:  Hmmm...

I hear this game is number one in Germany, so surely the current edition of the game must have SOMETHING good about it. :raise:  :confused: :raise:

Quote from: Sacrificial LambI hear this game is number one in Germany, so surely the current edition of the game must have SOMETHING good about it. :raise:  :confused: :raise:

The good things of TDE 4th are the following:
1.) It uses the old TDE brand which most gamers already know.
2.) It continues the TDE metaplot, so you have to buy it if you want furthermore to be part of the listener crowd to the fantastic tales of the pet NPCs.
3.) In _every_ German city you can find several groups who play it and only it, so it makes it easier to get actual play.
4.) It is "mature", "modern" und "flexible", at least in the eyes of the uneducated German casual gamer who only knows Vampire, SR und TDE.

So, unless you're a German who is willing to throw away every bit of self-respect to get _any_ gaming, a devotee to the old metaplot, a die-hard TDE fanboy, a collector of the worst FRPGs ever made or don't have access to _any_ (and for that sake, I really, really mean _any_) other FRPG, don't touch it.

In addition, in English you don't even get the full load of setting and metaplot. All the setting supplements and Aventurischer Bote (the gazeteer that comes out every 2 months and describes the progress of the metaplot) were never translated.
So all what you will get is a badly homebrewed hodge-podge of the worst parts of Basic D&D, GURPS and a bland generic fantasy setting without much detail and originality.

Well, I've been playing TDE for quite a few years, so my experience/opinion might be worth something. Let's re-iterate some parts of the history.

First, I'll have to add Tunnels & Trolls to the list of its ancestors, as some of the authors were responsible for the German translation of the T&T game and several of their adventures. Speaking of ancestry, I'd like to know where they got the Attack/Parry system from. RuneQuest seems a likely answer...

Nevertheless, the first version of the game was pretty decent. For some kind of reason there never was a English translation, although there were French and Dutch versions, both of them not very successful...

1st Editon System Details:
As in OD&D there was no distinction between races and classes, so you got to choose from the followinig characters: Adventurer, Warrior, Wizard, Dwarf and Elf. Adventurer was the only class without attribute requirements, and incidentally didn't get any bonuses either. The Warrior had better combat values and was allowed to wear knightly weapons and armor. Dwarves had better hit points and combat values (not as good as the Warrior IIRC). Elves had a small set of general spells, Wizards had all the elven spells plus some flashy ones. Note: no clerics, elves and wizards all had a healing spell.

A character was basically defined by his attributes and combat values. Your character had "courage", "strength", "dexterity", "intelligence" and "charisma" (note: no constitution). Courage was used for fear checks and initiative, the rest are pretty self-explaining. They started out at 1d6+7, giving you a range from 8 to 13. Most classes required some attributes, e.g. a wizard needed intelligence and charisma 12.

For combat, you had your Attack, Parry and Hit Points. The starting values derived from your character class, starting as low as 8 for the wizards up to 12 (or 13, don't remember exactly) for the warrior. Parry was lower than attack. Combat was pretty simple, you had to roll below your attack or parry with a d20, and with a successful attack and failed parry, you caused damage. 1d6 for a knive, 1d6+4 for a sword up to 2d+2 for the almighty Barbarian Waraxe. Armor reduced damage, but also hindered your combat values. Just like T&T, missile attacks were done with Dexterity, not your attack.

When you leveled up, you added one point to an attribute of your choice, increased your hit points by 1d6 -- magical characters had to split this between their hit points and mana points. Also, either your attack or parry went up by one, to a maximum of 18/17.

It was a fun little game. They had some rather flavorful solo adventures early on, the books and boxes all looked very grim (mostly black, with a shadowy dark eye and some small ilustrations). The first edition rule books and the first adventures mainly had artwork done by Bryan Talbot, who also did the Luther Arkwright comics and recently some pictures for Nobilis. Very archetypal dwarves, elves and orcs. The world description was lacking and it really seemd like you were playing in a world of wilderness, beset by robbers and orcs. The general magic level was much lower than D&D, so it seemed a bit more medieval. The less is said about the Bob Dylan riddle, the better.

They then added an "Expert Box" with some new character classes, including a wood elf with his own very private spell list (cool plant stuff included), a druid (who really seemd like a dark voodoo practitioner)  and the roguish rover... "Adventurers" could become druids and rovers now, too, if they had the necessary attributes.
The big additon was the first priests, including the twelve gods they served. Each one had three miracles they could perform, most of them superior to similar spells. From a pure power perspective, they weren't as good as wizards, but the flavor was quite alright. With the gods and some country information in the box, you basically had something that resembles the Old World of Warhammer a bit, minus the Threat From The East part...
You also got some new weapons, spells and a small skill system, kinda resembling the D&D ones. Lots of skills that added to your attribute for some rolls. Simple, but effective.

Then they introduced some alternate "epic" setting (levels 15+) in the hollow world, but that went down pretty fast. Neat asian themes, though.

And all was well. But a few years later, the second edition came out. They went away from the moody black covers to some ugly illustrations with lots of mustachios (nevermind what Sett thinks of them). They also increased the classes by a large margin. Each of the peoples of "Aventurien" had their own class, from the viking clones to the monotheistic desert nomads. This made the background culture of your players very important and lead to some nice characters. If only the cultures would've differed more from their real-world counterparts. This got worse with subsequent editions.
Characters also had some "negative attributes" now, including claustrophobia, superstition and greed (note: no disadvantages, every character had a set value for each of those).
They also included the most abominable skill system known to man. You had a huge, huge list of skills and everyone had a default value in every one of them, ranging from -7 (swimming for dwarves) to +7 (riding for desert nomads) at start. Each skill had three associated attributes and you had to make a check for each of them, canceling out the amount you failed at each roll by your skill points. Very time involving, and just copying a starting character took ages. Negative starting values were very hard to overcome, as you could only spend so much points per level...

The magic box introduced next used the skill system for every spell. The magic-using classes were done very nicely, though. Although you used the same mechanif for all of them, they felt very different. You had a hard time learning skills from other traditions, so you had the option of learning other stuff, but an elf and a witch differed greatly in their spell use. Druids, witches, elves, wizards were all done great, including a neat list of academies for the wizards. But they also gave us "Schelm" (buffoon), a changeling who used their faery magic for pranks. Their magic also bypassed magic resistance. They had spells to make you laugh, crap your pants, shrink you to half your size, while doubling your girth etc. Nauseating.
The priests were _reduced_ in power. They only had some small miracles for some immediate bonus to rolls, and their "major miracles" were basically pleas to the GM, who could interpret them like he wanted. Still, some of the divine orders had nice enough backgrounds.

At this point, they started releasing regional modules, most of them pretty carbon-copy earth cultures. But you had enough fantasy character to make you look past those. The adventures also involved more world background, grew less fantastic at times and still were pretty railroady.

It was still okay to play there. Every time a regional module came out you had some new ideas and new types of adventures. This is probably the time where most people played the game, as there wasn't a bit competition in the German market. And I'd say that most of the stuff they did was superior to AD&D 2nd edition.


NB: The "Realms of Arkania" CRPGs use this version. Recommended.

"Third edition" wasn't really a new edition. They brought out a new "advanced box" that added a few attributes (you now had a split manual dexterity and whole-body agility) and gave you some more combat options, plus some unbalancing armor rules. Nothing major.

The fourth edition came out pretty recently and was the first one translated into English. The influence of D20 can be seen in the combat section (we've got feat-like maneuvers and confirmed criticals now). Characters now are built in a weird mixture of WFRPG and GURPS. You buy attributes and ads/disads with creation points, with whom you also buy "careers" that add some skill points. The latter is actually a slight simplification, as you don't have a huge default skill list anymore. And good riddance to negative skill defaults.
But choosing also those points and then adding your careers templates is more complicated than RM2 character creation, D20 with oodles of books or GURPS.

Also the regional modules are getting more and more copy-cat. One of the last one I bought introduced a culture between the desert nomads and the highly sophisticated faux-Renaissance region. And straight to the illustrations it was Spain/Mexico without much disguise. They even had a scoundrel highwayman called "The Fox" (NB: any spaniards should cringe right now).

Also for the last few years the metaplot is getting worse, they re-introduced the old, legenardy evil archmage, just when you thought that finally the increasingly unrealistic cultures would have some realistic wars.

So, here in Germany an increasing number of players is wandering off to D20-based games, now that the Internet makes ordering English books easy as pie.


Phew, that was quite a post. To summarize: The new editon isn't worth getting, you'd be better off with WFRP or plain D&D. The first edition is slightly between Mentzer/Moldvay nostalgia and a WFRP-ish background (including some jokes). Hmm, maybe I should OSRIC-ize that

Quote from: SosthenesBut a few years later, the second edition came out. They went away from the moody black covers to some ugly illustrations with lots of mustachios (nevermind what Sett thinks of them).

Don't say anything against the great Hungarian Ugurcan Yüce! Well, his pics didn't portray the world accurately, and his ogres and dwarves were terrible, but I love his sword&sorcery barbarian smash-fest style. I wonder what a game might look like that plays in the Yüce-versum instead of Aventurien...

And don't forget the greatest Aventurian hero evar, Rudi Immerdar, the barbarian with the wing helmet who could be seen on every damn cover. (And he was smart enough to never be converted to TDE 4th rules )

Quote from: SkyrockDon't say anything against the great Hungarian Ugurcan Yüce! Well, his pics didn't portray the world accurately, and his ogres and dwarves were terrible, but I love his sword&sorcery barbarian smash-fest style.

Turk, not Hungarian -- which explains the mustachios.

About the art? Meh. Yes, good technique, anatomy is mostly correct. But the imagination is sorely lacking and most of the compositions are pretty bad. It's just posing muscle-man and -women ad nauseam. I'd rather play in Frazetta-verse.

Or there :

It's strange, I've never seen a German in the internets talk favorably about Das schwarze Auge :confused: . I've always wanted to buy a German fantasy game, but just what I hear about the skill system makes me ill.

Which German fantasy RPG could you recommend me?

If you can't read German, remaining stock of TDE is your only choice. (I heard of a English translation of DeGenesis, but even if it was made and still exists, it would be almost worse than TDE.)

If you're able to read German, the FRPG "Midgard" has some nice rule ideas, although the current 4th edition is pain in the ass math-wise. Look if you can get ahold of one of the older editions (same quirks and mistakes, but at least playable without a PhD in mathematics and less rules bloat).
The SF RPG "Space Gothic" got good criticisms, but it's now OOP for almost one year, and I have to admit that I've never read it, so it might be bogus despite the reviews.

Quote from: ClaudiusIt's strange, I've never seen a German in the internets talk favorably about Das schwarze Auge :confused: . I've always wanted to buy a German fantasy game, but just what I hear about the skill system makes me ill.

Well, the people who like it probably don't post as much on non-TDE forums. I know a lot of people who don't play anything else much, so they probably wouldn't gain much from discussions at places like this or rpg.net.

And for a majority it was the obligatory "first game" which they've outgrown (yeah, I know...). This puts it on a level as e.g. AD&D second edition. Which you don't hear many positive things about, too.

The only nice thing about the skill system is that several attributes are involved. I guess that someone could probably come up with some kind of RuneQuest- or HarnMaster-like version that would only require one roll, but I'm not willing to go through the math required to balance that...

Quote from: ClaudiusWhich German fantasy RPG could you recommend me?

I don't know any translated fantasy games besides TDE. And due to the immense popularity of it, there aren't many competitors at all. Most of them tried to enter different genres so that they might actually sell something.
The only one still remotely alive is Midgard, which has the honor of being around (in a rather different form) a bit longer than TDE. I'm not very familiar with the game itself and especially current versions, so I can't exactly recommend it (or not). I know its predecessor, which came in spirographed booklets with photographs glued to the cover. And had several pictures of badly drawn boobs in it.

So what I want to know is where does the "Swinishness" of DSA show up?

I know Sett hates the game, and blames germany's large swine-ratio on it. So any ideas as to what the game has that might create these swinish habits as seen by Sett?

RPGpundit

Well, try this fun fact: I'm old enough to remember that an early DSA edition included a Zorro-esque mask for the GM to wear, thus adding mystique to the gaming experience.

Re. are there any cool German games? Quite frankly, never having played one, I have no idea. Hope that helps. Still, Der Ruf des Warlock looks fairly cool. If you're into Harnmaster/Rolemaster.

Are you familiar with David Eddings, Pundit? The game is around for a long time yet the world is pretty small, so there are many known characters, in-jokes and pseudo-traditions that make many meetings of the gamers more into a tea party then an adventure. And it's increasingly politically correct. So sometimes this results in Eddings-style group hug orgies. People telling you how their elf is missing his home land and cries at each minute portion his soul is stolen away by the bad-wrong ways of us wayward humans...

Also, the adventures always have been rather railroady and this is allegedly increasing. Some of them are beyond good and evil. Let me tell you about the time my priest of the demi-god of knowledge, my traveling rogue companion and a druid that was walking along read some cursed pieces of paper and were forced to kill the Emperor. No, if you turned the wrong way, you died. Travel, random encounter, see a big hero die, travel, random encounter, hear some famous people talk, sneak into the Emperors bath house, discover he's a woman, she flees, you're set right by some Very Powerful People etc. No choices at all, just a sight-seeing tour of their universe and meta-plot.

I blame the small area of land. They never had time to expand, so every spot on the map was done with a huge amount of detail. Also, some of the writer's gaming groups were immortalized in the setting, so ther wasn't just the ruler, but the ruler, the arch-priest, some companions etc. Not much left to the imagination. Add an annoying, fast-moving metaplot and you had several times where the writers were just showing you around.

Which really is a shame, as it started out rather interesting. You had some very fantastic locations in the beginning, lots of wilderness, even the occasional sci-fi elements. And now? Blue Rose with more fucking going on...
The Spinal Tap rule of TDE/DSA: The more black's on the cover of a product, the better.