Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;601004Nothing Indy or Storygame RPGish at all.

There is nothing indie or storygamey in TDE. The "problematic" parts are not visible in the rules. They are in the adventure modules, the novels, and the magazine: a metaplot full of Mary Sue characters that makes Dragonlance look like a sandbox.

TDA 1 was a D&D clone a la 1983.
The current TDE 4.1 (that's the one that was published in the US as well) is more like a WH/GURPS/HM clone.

In my opinion TDE 4.1 is a great game. It started out as a D&D clone but it developed in a different direction.

You might be right about the limitations of the Metaplot and as a matter of fact aventuria is the best described fantasy continent of the world (according to Wikipedia) but that is the aim of the game and a lot of people in Germany seem to enjoy to have a continent well descriped which you can discover and interact with. That is the main focus of Aventuria. If you dont want to have this kind of detail, there are the continents of Myranor(much bigger then Aventuria) and Uthuria on the TDE Planet "Dere".

One other thing that some people here dislike are the amount of rules that you have in TDE. I personally think its great to have such complicated fighting rules with a lot of maneuvers and moves your character can learn and use. It takes some time to get the hang of it, but i think its worth it. In TDE you have very different fighting classes, this is reflected in there different technics and this makes the fights more interesting.

Quote from: Settembrini;600957No, decidedly not anime. Anime does not have texture, quite the opposite. Also shading is a miniatures thing in some ways.

My problem with the art has never been texture or shading. Elmore had plenty of texture and shading. It's the ridiculous anime-style outfits, the exaggerated cartoony features, and, more than anything, the bland "guy standing there looking cool" approach to art that provides no imaginative inspiration. I was never an Errol Otus fan, but at least his pictures made me want to game.

Cool guy standing in pose might indeed be found in anime too. Grant you that.

I am not against shading and texture, i am just saying the current style is to grotesquely overdo them. As if one was painting miniatures that are looked upon at 2m distance and then made a close-up photograph...

ADD: sorry for typos, new keyboard with wussy feedback...

I think Sett is right about the Warhammer influence and the miniature aesthetic.

Also:
90's Image Comics, Battlechasers in particular.
The cartoony style is something that might come from French fantasy graphic novels, or Italian Disney artist Cavazzano (as seen in his non-Disney comics, like Spider-Man: The Secret of Glass).

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;601004Heaven forbid if a game doesn't pass Pundit's swinish litmus test. When I flipped through it at NYC's Strat, it seemed pretty much another D&D clone a la 1983. Nothing Indy or Storygame RPGish at all.

You obviously do not know what we are talking about. In several ways.

1st: swine come on myriad of shapes and forms
e. g. WW =! Storygame =! DSA/TDE =! pigs, but all are swine!

2nd: that you know nothing about DSA is not your fault, but still you don't. Listen to Dirk, DSA is the dogmatic application of the principles of no player shall ever do anything meaningful within the gameworld. That goes way beyond railroading it is all-permeating.
In return the players get to imagine to wander the landscapes and feel unity with their chosen group of like-minded emotionally aware fellows. That they do not sing-a-long more is a miracle...
Where is an American who has some history-of-ideas-education under his belt when you need one?

3rd: 2006 called and wants its anti-Pundit swipes back.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;601176Also:
90's Image Comics, Battlechasers in particular.

.

Which was known for its anime influence.

Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;601004Heaven forbid if a game doesn't pass Pundit's swinish litmus test. When I flipped through it at NYC's Strat, it seemed pretty much another D&D clone a la 1983. Nothing Indy or Storygame RPGish at all.

I didn't say anything about "storygames". You're conflating storygaming and Swine again.

"All Storygamers are Swine.
Not all Swine are Storygamers."

Remember that, and you'll be less confused.

In fact, there are some Swine that hate storygames (the hardcore WW-Swine crowd) and vice versa.

RPGPundit

In Italy, the translation of the first edition of DSA (Uno sguardo nel buio) was launched in the late '80s by the same company that published the Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf gamebooks, besides a couple of long-dead Italian rpgs, like the humorous, "macaronic-fantasy" Kata Kumbas.

It was my first rpg. I and a couple of friends wanted to play in Middle Earth, and somehow Uno sguardo nel buio seemed a better fit than Basic and Expert D&D: the advanced rules had a skill system and a more "realistic" and exciting combat system (combat was fatiguing and there were critical hits), and on that basis we bolted tons of houserules. However, it had probably one of the less-inspiring magic systems ever.

First edition DSA was an overall OK rpg.

I whoelheartedly agree with the last post from italy. 1st Edition had spaceships, attacks of opportunity, grid combat, workable skills that concentrated on adventure isntead of scrapbooking-basket weaving and knitting, had Priests that could raise skeletons, dimensional portals, a hollow world, had an active defense and more HP, sort of Palladium RPG, a Lankhmar-clone city system sandbox. It was not genius but very different from what it is today.

MatteoN's post has another bit that made me smile:

Quote from: MatteoN;601642I and a couple of friends wanted to play in Middle Earth, and somehow Uno sguardo nel buio seemed a better fit than Basic and Expert D&D:
(...) and on that basis we bolted tons of houserules.

That's something German players just didn't do.
They didn't play DSA/TDE in other settings, or their own homebrew world.
It was always Aventuria/Arcania.

(I don't know about houserules, though.)


(And regarding "better fit": I had no problem playing Tolkienesque fantasy with B/X. Still do with S&W...)

I would run the box "Initiation au Jeu d'Aventure" for L'Oeil Noir right away. I love the game, it's the first I've ever run as a GM, I love the vibe of that box, it's really cool. I was chatting/videoconferencing with a French friend earlier this week on Skype and he wowed me when he showed all the OOP modules of L'Oeil Noir he still has. I then showed him the OD&D White Box and Chainmail and we talked about games for a while. Good times.

Quote from: Benoist;601692I would run the box "Initiation au Jeu d'Aventure" for L'Oeil Noir right away. I love the game, it's the first I've ever run as a GM, I love the vibe of that box, it's really cool.

My experience with DSA is very limited. As a player I have exactly one short afternoon session under my belt, with the author Uli Kiesow as GM.

Earlier this year I GMed my very first session of DSA 1 (the one you are referring to). It was a breeze.

But it is very very hard to get Aventuria out of the system. (Pun intended.)
There's not much setting implied in that first box but if you announce your game as "DSA" (even if it's only the first Basic set) there are lot of assumptions on the side of the players. Namely, that it is set in the official Aventuria.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;601701That's something German players just didn't do.
They didn't play DSA/TDE in other settings, or their own homebrew world.
It was always Aventuria/Arcania.

(...)

But it is very very hard to get Aventuria out of the system. (Pun intended.)
There's not much setting implied in that first box but if you announce your game as "DSA" (even if it's only the first Basic set) there are lot of assumptions on the side of the players. Namely, that it is set in the official Aventuria.

Well, only these two books



(and eight adventures) were translated into Italian, so we just had 30 pages devoted to the setting. We didn't even know the setting's real name: since "adventure" in Italian is "avventura", "Aventuria" would have sounded silly to our ears, and so the setting was renamed... "Atlantide" ("Atlantis").

Quote from: MatteoN;601710We didn't even know the setting's real name: since "adventure" in Italian is "avventura", "Aventuria" would have sounded silly to our ears,

Well, "adventure" in german is "Abenteuer", so "Aventurien" (the correct spelling in German, "Aventuria" is the English translation) does sound fourth-wall-shattering in German as well*.

The working title for the game was Phantasia, by the way, but the publisher wanted a more mysterious sounding name and registered "Das Schwarze Auge", forcing the designers of the game to come up with a thematic link. (They named the palantir of the setting "dark eye".)



* Sadly, that was common in fantasy in Germany during that time. There was a weekly, sword & sorcery pulp novel series written by the same team that was behind the SF series Perry Rhodan. Its title was Mythor , after the name of the Conan-like hero...

 

That would have been a RPG setting...!