Quote from: jan paparazzi;787860This game is actually popular in the lowlands as well. I never quite got that. It's pretty run of the mill fantasy.

Het Oog des Meesters. Being the first one to publish and massively distribute an RPG in the native tongue was a huge competitive adventage in the wild heydays of the 80s.

Das it still see much play in the BeNeLux? I always thought the Dutch translation has been 1st edition only and dropped afterwards.

Quote from: 3rik;606117It's interesting to notice then, that apparently this German cultural thing is almost naturally adopted by Belgian roleplayers who pick up DSA. So apparently it *is* inherent to the game, if not in the rules per se.

Settembrini, another thing I've noticed about DSA-players not from Germany, is that they ascribe to the game a superior status relative to other RPGs and are often averse to playing anything else. Would you say this is also typical of DSA-culture in general?

How do you GM Cthulhu? I can imagine that those mystery solving quests can lead to some railroading?

Quote from: Skyrock;787865Het Oog des Meesters. Being the first one to publish and massively distribute an RPG in the native tongue was a huge competitive adventage in the wild heydays of the 80s.

Das it still see much play in the BeNeLux? I always thought the Dutch translation has been 1st edition only and dropped afterwards.

There still is a scene. I didn't even hear from this game till I went online on mandragon.be and 4gm.nl.

I didn't slog through the entire thread about something I don't particularly care for, but seeing it as a subject matter on this message board, I'll just get something of my chest.


TBE/DSA was the first RPG and major representative of fantasy I came into contact with.

My own personal experience was quite pleasant, actually. I've played it only once, when my older brother ran a small introductory adventure for me when I was 7 or 8, and that was fun. I later got his quite big collection of books on it (1st and 2nd edition, I think), when my brother, quite lastingly, abandoned gaming and fantasy.

It was the first game setting I read in depth and it still has some quite nice bits in it that are nice and salvageable


Nice bits I have to say, TDE/DSA is representative to me of everything I, at best, dislike, and ,at worst, find utterly repelling, in fantasy and RPGs. It's the prime example of a stream of fantasy that I have come to dub "Wolfshirt" fantasy, that is depressingly common and popular here in Germany.


Elements I am talking about tend to be:


- Insistence on "Realism" in the representation combat and "Medieval" life, that I find just as cartoonish as the over the top and cinematic Warcraft vein of fantasy. What makes it bad is the smug and unwarranted sense of superiority often found often found in the proponents.


- Straight ports of medieval cultures that are probably one dimensional, cliched and badly researched.

For example in TDE/DSA you can't just be a white medieval dude, dwarf or elf. You can also be a primitive tribal half naked black dude, a sexist monotheist Arab (despite the many brothels in the setting and grim medieval "realism", the white dudes aren't sexist, except when they are, because the writer happens to be sexist) or a primitive Asian/Inuit (to give some credit, there's actually a bit of of creativity in the design of the last). To drive the point home, the black and Inuit primitive have a different mythological origin from the "real" white people. OH, those happen to come from animals.

Expect to find tall, strong, chest thumping Nordic types that are way honorable and, yet, way laid back cool, which, unfailingly, TDE/DSA has in droves (the viking Thorwaler are just even more Nordic cool than others).

All this is represented with with faux-academical serious tone and based on sources that are outdated, misguided or not reputable, if not outright fake, wrong or nonexistent.


- Game books that outright encourage a DMing style of the players sitting back and nicely listening to uncle DMs story. Actually, scratch the word encouraging, it is outright considered intellectually, culturally and probably morally superior to anything else.


- Expect elves to be superior in every way superior. Expect them to be tragic. Expect them to live in total harmony with all of nature. They are an odd mix of mystified idealized native American and, of course, something way cool Nordic.


- Dwarfes are stereotypical gruff little dudes. They are cool, cause they are bearded, hit things with axes, drink an awesome amount of beer and, in case you didn't get it, are quite Nordic.


Let me make clear, that it is usually not the fantasy itself I hate. I find it, like airbrush wolfshirts and most metal music, to be a bit cheesy and not my cup of tea.

I find however, quite commonly, way to often in fact, the representation and attitude of many proponents I have run into, to be extremely of-putting, mixing self importance, arrogant hubris, self-righteous and smugness.

I have also found, again and again and again, vocal proponents of this style, who honestly, repel me. People wallowing in unsocial behavior and and an at intellectual level far below the one they believe to possess. And lastly, people who I find impossible to argue with, as they seem to take rejection as a sign of distinction and disagreement as a sign of their intellectual superiority.

So let us asume no one like that posts here, so if you like any of this. I just had to get a rant at what I consider the worst samples of our hobby out of my system.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;787866How do you GM Cthulhu? I can imagine that those mystery solving quests can lead to some railroading?

Just because one clue logically leads to another doesn't mean finding them has to be a railroad.

Quote from: Skyrock;787865Het Oog des Meesters. Being the first one to  publish and massively distribute an RPG in the native tongue was a huge  competitive adventage in the wild heydays of the 80s.

Does it still see much play in the BeNeLux? I always thought the Dutch  translation has been 1st edition only and dropped afterwards.

There's a certain... scene, who switched to German when picking up the  later non-Dutch editions. There's probably even die-hards who skipped  the Dutch translation altogether. For these people the supposed awesome  unequalled "professional quality" - I'm quoting here - of the game is  probably worth the trouble of reading it in German... Quite a feat,  considering the average Dutch-speaker's rather poor mastery of the German language!!

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;787815Maybe that is one of those cases where Austria and Germany differed as well?

Losing the Schmidt distribution was a severe blow to DSA/TDE.

If there's a guy out there who might know stuff like that, it's probably you anyway, Dirk.
However, I never see this backed up by actual sales numbers. Having a TV commercial for TDE in the Schmidt days speaks volumes about the resources of Schmidt, not so much about the actual sales of TDE -- I always suspected it to be just anecdotal evidence of the perception guys had, who started in the 80ies. That being said, this may be true for me starting in the mid-90ies as well, even though it could very well be an Austrian thing.

Quote from: 3rik;787885Just because one clue logically leads to another doesn't mean finding them has to be a railroad.

Yes, I know this. But how do you achieve it? Just using more clues?

Quote from: 3rik;787885There's a certain... scene, who switched to German when picking up the  later non-Dutch editions. There's probably even die-hards who skipped  the Dutch translation altogether. For these people the supposed awesome  unequalled "professional quality" - I'm quoting here - of the game is  probably worth the trouble of reading it in German... Quite a feat,  considering the average Dutch-speaker's rather poor mastery of the German language!!

:eek:

Quote from: jan paparazzi;787914Yes, I know this. But how do you achieve it? Just using more clues?

http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

Quote from: shlominus;787917http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/1118/roleplaying-games/three-clue-rule

Nvm, I already know that. Thanks anyway.

Quote from: 3rik;787885There's a certain... scene, who switched to German when picking up the  later non-Dutch editions. There's probably even die-hards who skipped  the Dutch translation altogether. For these people the supposed awesome  unequalled "professional quality" - I'm quoting here - of the game is  probably worth the trouble of reading it in German... Quite a feat,  considering the average Dutch-speaker's rather poor mastery of the German language!!

At the time (mid 80s) DSA (or Oog des Meesters / OdM as it was called in Dutch) was pretty popular in the Netherlands and Belgium. I believe over 10.000 boxed sets of the 1st edition were sold, so that wasn't too bad if you know the total population of dutch speaking folks was a little over 20 million at the time).

It was my introduction to roleplaying and I had a blast with it!

Nowadays you still have some die hard fans who play 1st edition (and there were some 2E supplements sold as well in Dutch, but I have never seen them personally), and also a small scene who play DSA (German version), but it's certainly not "big" at all...
I guess Pathfinder and DND 3.x are still the most popular RPGs here in the low lands.

BTW: I sold my old boxed set many years ago...still regret it to this day...

It is my impression that the German version is (was?) more popular in Belgium than the Netherlands.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;787914Yes, I know this. But how do you achieve it? Just using more clues?

The PCs usually find a way to piece together enough clues. Sometimes there's more than one way to get from clue A to clue B, sometimes there's several clues pointing in the same direction. There's usually enough clues to be found to sufficiently facilitate logical deduction by the players without requiring genius level puzzle solving skills: talk to people, search places, look up stuff, etc. just piece together enough of them to get a rough idea of what's going on.

But there have probably already been threads on this subject and it seems rather off-topic here.

For what it's worth, the Dutch translation of TDE had been cited in NetHack.
The windows maintainer being Dutch may have had something to do with that...

Quote from: 3rik;787974It is my impression that the German version is (was?) more popular in Belgium than the Netherlands.

The PCs usually find a way to piece together enough clues. Sometimes there's more than one way to get from clue A to clue B, sometimes there's several clues pointing in the same direction. There's usually enough clues to be found to sufficiently facilitate logical deduction by the players without requiring genius level puzzle solving skills: talk to people, search places, look up stuff, etc. just piece together enough of them to get a rough idea of what's going on.

But there have probably already been threads on this subject and it seems rather off-topic here.

True, just curious. I already did the more ways tactic and I recently started using more clues for the same direction.
/derail

Anyway, the smaller the fanbase the more hardcore they are. I noticed the same thing with the new WoD crowd. In the old days there were still a lot of casual gamers and more crossover between games. Nowadays there is little crossover between the wod and other RPG's. Most gamers don't play the new settings and the WoD gamers only play WW games.

I think it's always good to play more games to "broaden your horizon" so to speak. That's why I am here.

"The Dark Eye" sounds like the role playing game of pretending to be a proctologist.

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

The literal translation would be "The Black Eye". Which would sound like a game about pretending to be a pancrationist.