TheRPGSite

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 (http://www.ugurcanyuce.net/ucy_anasayfa.html)! Well, his pics didn't portray the world accurately, and his ogres (http://www.ugurcanyuce.net/fantasy_large/mehr-als-1000-oger.jpg) and dwarves (http://www.fanpro.com/dsa/pics/450/prod093de.jpg) 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 (http://www.das-schwarze-ohr.de/texte/diezeiten.htm), 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 :D)

Quote from: SkyrockDon't say anything against the great Hungarian Ugurcan Yüce (http://www.ugurcanyuce.net/ucy_anasayfa.html)! Well, his pics didn't portray the world accurately, and his ogres (http://www.ugurcanyuce.net/fantasy_large/mehr-als-1000-oger.jpg) and dwarves (http://www.fanpro.com/dsa/pics/450/prod093de.jpg) 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 :
(http://www.fanpro.com/dsa/pics/450/prod001de_2.jpg)

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 (http://www.midgard-online.de/), 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.

Quote from: Pierce InverarityStill, Der Ruf des Warlock looks fairly cool. If you're into Manowar.

Corrected that...

Sosthenes made the most important points already, so let me just add on that.

I guess the root of all evil lies deep within the beginning of TDE. The designers weren't wargamers (while the guys behind Midgard were), they didn't understand the origins of D&D, so their rip-offs were doomed from the beginning to be bad pastiche.
For instance, there isn't even a single one well-made dungeon for TDE. All dungeons for that systems are dull and straight-forward affairs - no intersections, no interaction except for hack&slash, no impact of PC actions on the rest of the dungeons (as sounds which trigger guards), not even a functional ecology.
As their dungeons turned out as dull and boring experiences, the designers didn't recognize that their design was made poorly. Instead, they blamed the very principle of dungeon-crawling as "roll-play" and "untrue role-playing" - and so they settled for the story rail-road.

In addition, the mechanics suck. Skill checks take way too much time (roll 3d20, compare each d20 with the corresponding attribute, use skillpoints to compensate failed roles, keep the number of skill points left as grade of success), and combat is tedious, dull and non-tactical.
Therefore, add these memes to the damnation of dungeons:

"Combats suck in our game, so they aren't fun and true role-playing."

"Rule usage sucks in our game, so it isn't fun and true role-playing."

They repeated this meme over and over agin. Hell, there is an official  rant named "Auf ein Wort" which glorifies the Swinish way in which rules, combats and dungeons are despised and atmosphere, mood and story are glorified, combined with fudging, cheating and Golden Rule as universal tools to reach this "True Role-Play(TM)" stuff.

In addition to what Sosthenes said about metaplot sight-seeing, there was no fucking instruction to build your own adventures. All what was left was this:
a.) Buy the official adventures (which brainwash you further to be a Swine)
b.) Buy other games, learn from them how to write adventures.
c.) Try your best to write your own adventures

Luckily, as a poor pupil whithout parents who blow sugar into my ass I settled for c and later b. Many others settled however for a+c, which reinforced the whole story-oriented "True Role-Play(TM)" rail-road stuff.



The memes TDE produces are strong. Most gamers haven't seen a good dungeon, let alone a instruction to build good dungeons, for their whole life and despise adventure gaming, without knowing good adventure gaming. It's like we have a whole nation which hates Soul music, simply because it only knows Destinys Child and has never heard of James Brown.
TDEs assumptions creep into everything else. Even playable, although crude games as Shadowrun get fucked up because the memes above creep in "because that's the way gaming has to be run - look, TDE is true role-playing, and combats aren't fun there, and you can only reach drama and mood by cheaty-storytelling, so must it be with SR too".

We have no counter-weight here - Midgard was to obscure and turned more and more into an exclusive club for ever-aging Midgard veterans, while D&D suffered from incompetent German publishers. (Even the current publisher Feder&Schwert sucks golf balls through hoses, translates poorly, doesn't have a German SRD and threatens everyone legally who wants to set up a German SRD - the only ones responsible for the current success of D&D are the original designers and WotC.)
TDE Swinery is the baseline in Germany, and everyone who deviates from this baseline had the luck to get be introduced by an other game, to shrug off the TDE memes or to have shaken off the memes after having seen that they come from a badly designed game, not from role-playing as a whole.

Quote from: SosthenesCorrected that...

But surely that could be drifted towards Black Sabbath / Slayer / [Your favorite Death Metal band here]?

Quote from: Pierce InverarityBut surely that could be drifted towards Black Sabbath / Slayer / [Your favorite Death Metal band here]?

Ever so slightly. IIRC the game _starts_ with a Manowar quote. To the rest of the world: Some Germans take Manowar seriously. As if liking Hasselhoff hasn't ruined our reputation enough...

Quote from: SosthenesIIRC the game _starts_ with a Manowar quote.

:eyecrazy:

Jesus Christ.  Fucking germans...    :eyecrazy: :spank:

RPGPundit

I found this...

//www.thedarkeyerpg.com

If that's the game, then the game system looks interesting. I have my doubts about the setting, but it looks like it could be easily homebrewed. I'm not very interested in metaplot or railroady adventure modules, but the game system itself seems to show some promise, if the website is any indication. It doesn't look nearly as cool as Warhammer though. :raise:

I'm sorry for being childish, but whenever I see "The Dark Eye", I just keep thinking of "The Brown Eye" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browneye).

Well, the literal translation would be "The Black Eye". Any better? ;)

AH-HA! That is the Dark Eye adventure I really liked I think!

(http://enrill.net/images/griffesdudemon.jpg)

(not sure, though. Hence me posting it. Any German-speaking gamer on the forum willing to tell me if that's what I'm thinking about, i.e. a rather vast dungeon set-up with a huge magical garden type of area where adventurers get attacked by carnivorous plants and such?)

That´s the one, huge garden, only half-serious, many dungeon elements. A little bit railroady on the hedges.

I'm scouting eBay.fr right now to see what I can get in France that'd be awesome to take back with me to Canada. :D

Quote from: RPGPundit;110828So 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

Come on, you know as well as anyone else:  Sett says a lot of things.

Sett just wants to be Mirror-Ron, and DSA gives him an easy way to do it while playing both sides of the field.  It's popular as hell in Germany, so he gets to be all high-and-mighty and better than those ignorant jackasses who play the mainstream game there, but then he can come over to English-speaking boards and play the victorious populist by glomming onto D&D as his personal Sorcerer.

For what it's worth, I found the computer game based on the RPG to be loads of fun, with a nice 'old school' feel to it (not much magic, or even hints that there was alot of magic anywhere at any time).

ah feed him a piece of strudel and he turns into a pussycat, or so i hear.

I did an unofficial translation of the first version of the game, which is at //www.apolitical.info/webgame/eye

It's OK - most like Basic D&D (non-human races are classes, elves are combination fighter/magic-users) with some elements from other games (armour reduces damage, spell points, you roll to parry as well as to hit).

The most interesting rule is that each spell has a magic word, which the player must say for the spell to take effect.

I was going to this Forum because i was interested in Pathfinder, as i found this Topic about my favorite RPG.

I can understand that not everyone loves TDE, because it has its ups and downs. For example the cultures are very close to cultures from reality, adventures can be kind of railroading, some parts of the metaplot were not for me and the system can get very complicated.
But there are a lot of people in germany which are very passionate about this game, even if they have played other games like D&D.

For example i think the combat system is great. We introduced Hit-Zones which determin on which body-part and special skills in our combat and as more familiar you get with it as more exciting become the fights.
I also like that insead of combat, the main focus is roleplaying. That was a point i disliked about D&D. I found, that the combat focus really let the roleplaying part fall short, but if i want a roleplaying game where i can fight all the time, i can play WoW or Diablo 3 and roleplay a bit in Teamspeak. Thats not what i want for a Roleplaying session.

The Second great thing is the variety of Adventures and Campaigns that you can buy. It allows you to get the adventure that you want and even if it is a little bit railroading involved, there are normally plenty of suggestions to enrich the adventure, so that you can make up your own story as a part of the main storyline and allow your group to find there own way to solve things.

The third thing i think is great about TDE is the low use of magic and the fantastic realism. I think it adds to the roleplaying aspect to be sceptical of magic or even afraid and makes up for a lot of atmosphere.

The fourth point is that i love the way you can build your character. Yes it is very complicated, so people use the Hero-Generator, which you can find in the internet, but the complexety allows you to build a very unique character. For example you dont just choose to be a warrior but you chose how you became a warrior in the first place (e.g. Visiting an acadamy or serving a knight). I think this diversity is a great thing and it helps you to get the charakter you want.

the last point i like about TDE is, that it is beginner friendly[If you have an experienced Gamemaster, which introduces you].  Many cultures are copys of medieval-european cultures like Thorwaler = Vikings, Horasier = French, Almadaner = Spanisch ... but if someone is playing TDE for the first time he can take a culture he already knows and use it for his roleplay.
Its different for non-human races like Dwarfs or Elves, but that is another story.

I think to say TDE 4.1 is a great rpg, if you speak  german. The problem if you dont is, that many of the things i just pointed out to be great, are only available in german.
The only Book translated in English was the Basic Rules Book, which is completly useless (In the three years i played TDE 4.1 i never needed it). Why? The Basic Rules you need to play TDE and enjoy it are in different Books. The "Wege der Helden" (Ways of Heros) for example, is needed to build your own charakter. The "Wege des Schwertes" (Ways of the sword) is necessary to use the extended combat rules that makes fighting interesting and has a lot of other important rules (like for Talents, Livestile, Sicknesses, Languages...). Then, if you want to have a charakter which uses magic you have to have two different books the "Wege der Zauberei" (Ways of Magic) and "Liber Cantiones" (Spellbook). Without the Liber Cantiones you cant use a spell. And thats just how TDE works, you have a lot of different rules and such in a lot of different books. The details are important to build a realistic setting.

So if anyone is interestet in TDE he should lern german or find a friend who speaks german and has a lot of time to translate. The good news is, that Ulisses is very relaxed about letting the community doing stuff, so if you can find someone that would translate you the core books, and perhaps a campaign you will have lots of fun with the game.

In conclusion TDE is a great game, but it is not at all translated. So unless you find a translation for the 4 Corebooks + Spellbook and perhaps a translated adventure i think you wont have a lot of fun with it.

Quote from: Sosthenes;1107261st Editon System Details:
As in OD&D there was no distinction between races and classes,

Quick correction in order to quash a bad meme: In OD&D you select your race and class separately.

This is also true in the Holmes Basic Set (1977), but because several races could only be fighters (except when they were thieves) Holmes attempted to streamline the presentation of character creation and advancement but ended up just creating confused contradiction.

To resolve that contradiction, the Moldvay Basic Set (1981) turned all non-human races into classes.

A Nomenclature of D&D Editions (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/2662/roleplaying-games/a-nomenclature-of-dd-editions).

EDIT: Did not notice the necromancy.

I used to own some version of Midgard in German that I picked up at a used bookshop for $2 because I liked the cover art and the sub-title never failed to amuse me:

"Das Fantasy-Rollenspiel"

I think if I ever get around to self-publishing my own fantasy RPG, that's going to be the title.

Quote from: TristramEvans;599580I used to own some version of Midgard in German

Midgard started out as a fan's translation of Empire of the Petal Throne, stripped of all Tekumel-isms and infused with the setting background of a massive cosim (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=373416&postcount=32) (Das ewige Spiel, commercially available as Armageddon (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17522/armageddon-das-strategische-fantasyspiel)).

It's one of the riddles of the German market why this game that was more complete, better organized, and two years earlier than any of the follow-ups (T&T, D&D, and TDE), never managed to play more than third or fourth fiddle.
Only when a subsidiary of the TDE publisher (Schmidt Spiele) licensed Midgard as well and put it in mass market distribution (in a packaging similar to TDE) the game got significant recognition and sales.



Back on topic:
Last year The Dark Eye got its own ("kind-of") OSR treatment (http://analogkonsole.wordpress.com/meine-spiele/abenteuer/) with Abenteuer!

(http://analogkonsole.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/abenteuer_neues_cover_klein.jpg?w=298&h=426)

"Kind-of" because Abenteuer! is way more loose and, dare I say it, story-gamey (in a Wushu kind of way), than TDE First Edition (http://www.apolitical.info/webgame/eye/) really was.

Heh, Midgard was translated into Danish in the early 90s, following the succes of the translated red and the blue D&D boxes. It never gathered much of a following, but just a couple of days ago I flipped through some of the translated scenarios at the local library.

And "The Dark Eye" was the basis of one of my favorite rpg's on Amiga, Blade of Destiny: Realm of Arkania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realms_of_Arkania:_Blade_of_Destiny), that came on freakin' 8(!) discs and had a fantastic map in the box. I played it more than Eye of the Beholder.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;599749And "The Dark Eye" was the basis of one of my favorite rpg's on Amiga, Blade of Destiny: Realm of Arkania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realms_of_Arkania:_Blade_of_Destiny), that came on freakin' 8(!) discs and had a fantastic map in the box. I played it more than Eye of the Beholder.

Well, if you don't have it anymore, or just want an updated version to play on your PC, you are in luck (http://www.gog.com/gamecard/realms_of_arkania_1_2).

Quote from: StormBringer;599811Well, if you don't have it anymore, or just want an updated version to play on your PC, you are in luck (http://www.gog.com/gamecard/realms_of_arkania_1_2).

Cool. I actually have the original on a "50 assorted games"-cd, but the second game I never got my hands on. Thanx.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;599749Heh, Midgard was translated into Danish in the early 90s, following the succes of the translated red and the blue D&D boxes.

It was? That's the first time I hear of a foreign translation.
The official Midgard wiki (http://www.midgard-wiki.de/index.php/Hauptseite) which meticulously lists all publications and historical data of the game doesn't mention it either.

QuoteIt never gathered much of a following, but just a couple of days ago I flipped through some of the translated scenarios at the local library.

Do you remember details, like the adventure's titles, adventure locales, etc.?
Who was the publisher?

Nowadays with deep insight and after much deliberation, there is a thing that TDE/DSA does what no other D&D-derivative offers:

Landscape/Hiking romanticism. It is the Wandervogel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wandervogel) of RPGs, crypto-fascist as well as Hippie-relations intact.

If that is your thing, go check it out!

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;599889Cool. I actually have the original on a "50 assorted games"-cd, but the second game I never got my hands on. Thanx.

:hatsoff:
GoG has piles of awesome games from the early days.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;599932It was? That's the first time I hear of a foreign translation.
The official Midgard wiki (http://www.midgard-wiki.de/index.php/Hauptseite) which meticulously lists all publications and historical data of the game doesn't mention it either.

Do you remember details, like the adventure's titles, adventure locales, etc.?
Who was the publisher?

It was published by a company called Happy Entz, I think. But I can swing by the library a pick up the books and make a quick list (and a scan of the frontpages?). Nothing worse than a uncomplete wiki.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;600124It was published by a company called Happy Entz, I think. But I can swing by the library a pick up the books and make a quick list (and a scan of the frontpages?). Nothing worse than a uncomplete wiki.

Wow, that would be awfully nice. But that is not even necessary if you happen to remember one or two details like a place name, an NPC, or a plot.
I can try to remember if it really is the German Midgard content.

Right now my guess is that there was another product also named Midgard.
Just like the Open Design chose Midgard as a name for their campaign setting for Pathfinder.

Spoiler

(http://www.koboldquarterly.com/kqstore/bmz_cache/0/05d0f0dc3a75c9f70db6e76ae6038ac9.image.443x550.jpg)   (http://www.midgard-wiki.de/images/thumb/9/9d/Midgard_2_DFR.jpg/415px-Midgard_2_DFR.jpg)

Did the rulebook have a cover like the right one? That was the cover of Midgard during the 90s.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;600194(http://www.midgard-wiki.de/images/thumb/9/9d/Midgard_2_DFR.jpg/415px-Midgard_2_DFR.jpg)

Yup, that's the one. I just checked the local library database, and the writers (Peter Kathe and Jürgen E. Franke) fits the German version, right? I also, despite my abysmal german, found Corrinis on the wiki, and that book came out in Danish as well, a long with a couple of scenario books - one with a bagpipe?

But as I said, it would be no problem for me to pick them up and do a check of titles and some scans, if you (or the wiki) can use them, no fuzz.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;600194(//%5BIMG%5Dhttp://www.midgard-wiki.de/images/thumb/9/9d/Midgard_2_DFR.jpg/415px-Midgard_2_DFR.jpg)

Ha! Yes, that's the one I have. Great cover art. You don't see RPG books that look like that these days. And that subtitle still cracks me up. Very python-esque.

From that picture, the average party in Midgard will have only one wizard, everyone will be human (unless the bearded man is a dwarf), and the heaviest armour that adventurers use is chainmail.

Does that reflect the actual rules?

Quote from: Age of Fable;600268From that picture, the average party in Midgard will have only one wizard, everyone will be human (unless the bearded man is a dwarf), and the heaviest armour that adventurers use is chainmail.

Does that reflect the actual rules?

Yes, sort of. IIRC there were pretty harsh attribute requirements for playing a non-human character, and I seldom saw anyone wearing something heavier than platemail (one step above chainmail), because armor got really cumbersome beyond that point and wasn't worth the trouble.

Regarding the cover, there's a hitchhikers guide to galaxy joke hidden in there

I might have found it - is it on the dwarf-like man?

Quote from: Age of Fable;600291I might have found it - is it on the dwarf-like man?

Nope, the wizard is pointing at a group of trees that form the number 42. It's clearer to distinguish if you look on the cover at its original size.

I can't find it in that picture.

By the way, is Midgard the one whose first edition was an unauthorised copy of Empire of the Petal Throne?

Quote from: TristramEvans;600209Ha! Yes, that's the one I have. Great cover art. You don't see RPG books that look like that these days.

I think that's because nowdays 'game art' is it's own thing.

The Midgard cover looks like it's trying to appear like the cover of a fantasy novel of the time, or even an illustration from an old book of fairy tales.

Quote from: Age of Fable;600362By the way, is Midgard the one whose first edition was an unauthorised copy of Empire of the Petal Throne?

Yes, and, no, as I wrote upthread (http://www.therpgsite.com/showpost.php?p=599726&postcount=36). The first edition of Midgard proper was as close to EPT as Palladium Fantasy was to AD&D. It showed certainly more than just traces of EPT's "DNA" but it had already evolved onto its own thing, thanks to having been used and house-ruled for four years before publication.
Proto-Midgard (http://www.midgard-wiki.de/index.php/Publikation:Empires_of_Magira) was a game called Empires of Magira (Magira being the setting of the cosim Armageddon I also mentioned upthread). Its "print run" is estimated as only about 20 copies.

Quote from: Age of Fable;600363I think that's because nowdays 'game art' is it's own thing.

The Midgard cover looks like it's trying to appear like the cover of a fantasy novel of the time, or even an illustration from an old book of fairy tales.

That's true. It's more about exploration than fighting and action and monsters.

And that's true for some (or even most?) of the old DSA covers as well that show adventurers around a campfire, on the road, in the wilderness.

Never played either Midgard or DSA; I did see an english version of the latter, but reading it over quickly felt like I wasn't missing much.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Age of Fable;600363I think that's because nowdays 'game art' is it's own thing.

It seems to be largely videogame-based from what I can tell.

I get the impression Videogames, CGI-effects and Fantasy-Art (incl. Sci-Fi) have all converged. The only common root I have found is the Warhammer-aethetic. Everything is grotesquely proportioned or at the very least grotesquely shaded and textured.

Quote from: Settembrini;600869I get the impression Videogames, CGI-effects and Fantasy-Art (incl. Sci-Fi) have all converged. The only common root I have found is the Warhammer-aethetic. Everything is grotesquely proportioned or at the very least grotesquely shaded and textured.

That's definitely the feeling I get, too. GW's aggressive marketing of the Warhammer franchise in the English-speaking world was probably key to this "hypertrophic" aesthetic that seems so prevalent.

Which is kind of ironic if you consider that its origins probably lie with the grim caricatural style of the same quasi-punk, fight-the-Man AD2000 comics that gave rise to old school WFRP's bleak outlook and gallows humour.

I want to say Asian pop art (anime, manga and their derivatives) also assisted with introducing an exaggerated aesthetic of its own, but I'm not sure.

Quote from: Settembrini;600869I get the impression Videogames, CGI-effects and Fantasy-Art (incl. Sci-Fi) have all converged. The only common root I have found is the Warhammer-aethetic. Everything is grotesquely proportioned or at the very least grotesquely shaded and textured.

I would call it the anime-aesthetic myself.

No, decidedly not anime. Anime does not have texture, quite the opposite. Also shading is a miniatures thing in some ways.

Quote from: RPGPundit;110828So 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

Heaven 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.

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

(http://cdn.leganerd.com/wp-content/uploads/LEGANERD_048386.jpg)

(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"). :D

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...

(http://www.romanhefte-info.de/Bilderweitere1/mythor_001_300.jpg)  (http://www.romanhefte-info.de/Bilderweitere1/mythor_008_300.jpg)

That would have been a RPG setting...!

AFAIK Mythor IS an rpg setting!

The pbm-"Magira Welt der Waben" is Mythor based/cloned and I understand Armageddon and Midgard are also Magira-based. So somehow they all are first degree relatives.

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.

Seriously, you have played TDE just once and talk about it, like you are an expert on that matter?

You dont like the game, thats your opinion but there are thousands of Germans out there who love to play TDE in Aventuria (or Myranor). They do that not because they are stupid idiots, but because Aventuria has actually a lot to offer.

I really really dont have a clue what your problem is with TDE, that you go into this thread telling everyone how much you think this game sucks while you have played it just once.

Quote from: Nebelherr;601773I really really dont have a clue what your problem is with TDE, that you go into this thread telling everyone how much you think this game sucks while you have played it just once.

Slight overreaction here? I really haven't seen any big "this sucks!!!"-explosions in this thread.

I just picked up the Danish versions of Midgard at the library - will check titles and do some scans this weekend.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;601770Well, "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*

Aventurien would have been even worse in Italian, since it would have inevitably reminded people of the way characters (rookies and officiers of the Wehrmacht) talk in the popular humorous comic strip Sturmtruppen.

(http://image.forumfree.it/2/9/2/5/8/7/1203772549.jpg)

:D :o

Slight overreaction here? I really haven't seen any big "this sucks!!!"-explosions in this thread.

You are partially right. Dirk never said that and i mixed him up with Settembrini. I am sorry for that.

But comments like that:
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...

They sound like "this sucks". Also i cant see the point in this comment, because its mostly wrong.

Quote from: Nebelherr;601781Dirk never said that and i mixed him up with Settembrini. I am sorry for that.

Ah, ok.

I don't hate DSA/TDE. Quite the contrary.
I am even a bit proud that a German-designed system managed to fend off the dominance of (A)D&D all those years.
(And I say that as someone who played and DM'd AD&D back then, and still DM a D&D retroclone today.)

I don't particularly like early pseudo-Renaissance-sytle settings so that's what bothers me the most in Aventuria (and Warhammer's Old World, and 7th Sea's Theah), and I don't like settings where everything is spelled out and defined in a very tight canon (D&D's Forgotten Realms, Harnmaster's Hârn, RuneQuest's Glorantha, Star Wars EU). But that's basically it, and it's no reason for hate.
I have the biggest respect for the scope of Aventuria's world design (even if I have no use for it) - the quality of the maps, the amount of detail, how the fans were involved in some of the metaplot decisions (via the Barony pbm game). That's really, really great.

But even as an AD&D and Dragonlance DM, or Midgard GM, or BESM GM, I know their shortcomings and limitations, and can name them.
I know how and why I arranged myself with those limitations.

DSA/TDE GMs should be able to do that as well.



The reason why I never played Das Schwarze Auge:
I like designing settings. Apart from Dragonlance all my campaigns were set in my own settings. I probably would have used DSA if it was more open, like Midgard or Dungeonslayers. Or (A)D&D.

With those systems it is accepted, expected even, that a DM comes up with his own world.
But in all my time in the gaming business (I ran a game store) I never met one TDE Meister who did that. Even TDE GMs that were open for other games and GM'd other RPGs (Ars Magica, Midgard, Shadowrun, Savage Worlds) didn't once think of divorcing TDE from Aventuria (all the while the Ars Magica campaign was set in a homebrew fantasy setting, not Mythic Europe!).
People are Savaging, BoL-ing, FATE-ing, and d20-ing every setting around (Settembrini DM'd D&D3 in Aventuria, so much for "hate") but TDE players don't take part in that.

I would probably have a hard time finding players for a TDE (1 or 4, doesn't matter) campaign in a world of my design, or even another published setting.
But I also think I know why : DSA/TDE players are not playing the system, they are playing the setting. DSA/TDE players don't go into Edition Wars, despite the fact that DSA1 is very different from DSA3 which is very different from DSA4.1. They just upgrade to the latest rule version - or not. I know players who play DSA3 to this day, converting 4.1 modules and sourcebooks. And sometimes it's not even a conscious decision for or against one version - they just don't seem to mind.
As long as they still play in their common Aventuria, even going from GM to GM (at conventions), "oh, but I don't have a 4th ed. character yet" - "never mind, we'll work something out", in perfect FLAILSNAIL mode.

Quote from: MatteoN;601778Aventurien would have been even worse in Italian, since it would have inevitably reminded people of the way characters (rookies and officiers of the Wehrmacht) talk in the popular humorous comic strip Sturmtruppen.

Ooh, that one was quite popular in Germany as well.

Quote from: Nebelherr;601781Slight overreaction here? I really haven't seen any big "this sucks!!!"-explosions in this thread.

You are partially right. Dirk never said that and i mixed him up with Settembrini. I am sorry for that.

But comments like that:
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...

They sound like "this sucks". Also i cant see the point in this comment, because its mostly wrong.

It is super correct. There is railroading everywhere in DSA. THere are dozens of threads about the super duper freshness of this ONE module that is not dogmatically raildroaded.

Also look at your screen name: "Lord of the Mists".
Obfuscation and romanticism (= Mists) , coupled with "will to power"( = Lord), qed, I rest my case.

Hmmm....

RPGPundit

If someone wants to destroy the goodwill about DSA/TDE just mention the module "Tal der Finsternis" or "Die Attentäter".
It's not a railroaded adventure, it's a railway shooter galery, minus the shooting but with an added  WTF factor.

Quote from: Phantom Black;602091If someone wants to destroy the goodwill about DSA/TDE just mention the module "Tal der Finsternis" or "Die Attentäter".
It's not a railroaded adventure, it's a railway shooter galery, minus the shooting but with an added  WTF factor.

Oookay - now you got me curious. Whatthe?

I don't speak German, so I'm taking for granted that every module is a railroad, however, I also keep hearing the term "highly detailed".  If the modules are extremely detailed with maps, town and npc info, etc, then can't you just use those as great setting for a sandbox and forget the plot of the modules?

Well, at least the information in the modules is very, very hard to use in an open GMing environment.
One thing in the modules of say the last 15 years is, is that they are VERY verbose on the following parts:

- how-to-get-the-players-to-play
very often a strong handed railroad or a multitude to select from. Just to get the module started in convoluted and forced ways

- who-may-play
At least two pages are ususally spent to explain which kinds of characters from which culture or denomination could and should play the module. Now, this could be an indicator of Tekumel-like depth in social elements? No, sadly it is not. The arguments are just very verbose versions of "savage characters do not do too well in a city envrionment <>; Elves are hated here, so may not play"
Even moreso, specific magic spells are forbidden or allowed.

- introduction scene and travel
there are many "cut-scenes" in the modules and a lot of words are spent on them. Often italized so that you may read them aloud, although this is a bit on the downswing. Still, Travelling from village "A" to hamlet "B" usually is described, nay prescribed in a page or so. Random encounters miss 90% of times, but this is just a weak indicator of the amount of suckage re travel descriptions.

With the number of modules published so far (200+?) there are ofc exceptions. But none that was rocking the base assumptions. All that were have been de-canonized and basically put under a dogmatic ban or been ret-conned. Or are seen as curioisites of not-really-playing, like this Gladiator thing. The one conscious sandbox module, about managing a manor, was abysmal and not really doing what it said. But the effort shall not go unnoted.

ADD: While meant to be consensual, the all-permeating culture even rears its head in the official wiki, here a link to the auto-translate of the entry on random encounters:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wiki-aventurica.de%2Fwiki%2FZufallsbegegnung

Sett, is that a no on detailed maps, town and npc info?

Quote from: CRKrueger;602158Sett, is that a no on detailed maps, town and npc info?

Mmm. No, the maps are fine. The old maps actually are splendid and amazing things (http://www.dereglobus.org/) have been done with them. detailed towns...yes, they exist, and every house is described, basically. One can use this, I guess. NPC Info...well, well. In short I'd say the NPC info is just rubbish. The cosmology is nicely detailed, there is great potential there.

So basically, sett, would you say the game was hijacked in a way similar to how CoC or WFRP were hijacked by a particular group with an agenda, trying to demand a particular playstyle; only it sounds like the takeover was more total than with either of the aforementioned?

RPGPundit

I fear it is a little bit more depressing. I nowadays think it rapidly co-evolved with the true feelings & tastes of the audience...

EDIT: But there was hijacking, and it is a problem for the core audience itself, as fresh blood is hard to come by...more on that later

Also look at your screen name: "Lord of the Mists".
Obfuscation and romanticism (= Mists) , coupled with "will to power"( = Lord), qed, I rest my case.

First of all, it would be Lord of fog, not Lord of the Mists wich would mean Tauherr. Second of all is my Sceenname the name of a German Dragon in the Fantasy world of Shadowrun.

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...

That is rather odd. I seldom played in a chosen group of like-minded emotionally aware fellows. We once played an Elvish tribe, so there was a group but normally there is lots of conflict within the group, because there are different people with different cultural background and looks on the world that can easily collide and lead to arguments or even duells all the way throug the adventure. You dont need an alignment that says what you think about the world, the law or stuff.

I don't speak German, so I'm taking for granted that every module is a railroad, however, I also keep hearing the term "highly detailed". If the modules are extremely detailed with maps, town and npc info, etc, then can't you just use those as great setting for a sandbox and forget the plot of the modules?

Most people who play TDE play the setting no question about that. You can make your own campaigns and adventures in this setting. If you wanna use the plot you also can choose a timeline in which you adventures are playing. In my TDE-Group(s) we play in 2 different timelines so we have a different aventuria because in one timeline things didnt happen that happend in the other timeline.

When i started playing TDE i dont care for any metaplot or timeline or such things. But later on i started to like it.
You dont have to follow this metaplot like a slave and if you dont like the whole Aventuria Scenario you can also play in Myranor (another continent on the TDE Planet Dere) there is no Metaplot or stuff like this, but it is less detailed.

Quote from: Settembrini;602329I fear it is a little bit more depressing. I nowadays think it rapidly co-evolved with the true feelings & tastes of the audience...

EDIT: But there was hijacking, and it is a problem for the core audience itself, as fresh blood is hard to come by...more on that later

Looking forward to hear the why of it.

RPGPundit

Some more words on the why:

DSA was developed by Alpers, Fuchs and Kiesow. Fuchs and Alpers were SciFi and Fantasy fans. Actually they were relatively professional working in publishing for Sci Fi mostly. Kiesow was a basically failed art teacher.
After translating Tunnels & Trolls and D&D, the three joined up to come up with their own system and world in short notice, because the D&D license was too expensive for some publishing house that wanted to jump onto the rpg bandwagon of 1984.
So they did that and met wild success. Due to numerous developments Kiesow, the man who had nothing else but DSA, made it more and more HIS world. Fuchs and Alpers, after all, had the whole business of their own shop and publishing house (FANPRO) as well as editorial gigs at large publishers to care about. So late in the life of first edition, Kiesows vision of a hippy romanticist world deeply filled with "ambiance" and the correct mood came to the forefront. While HIS humour was supposedly okay to be injected in the gameworld, he became more and more obsessed with controlling all aspects of the game world. Fuchs and Alpers did basically stop contributing from 2nd Edition onward. Kiesow could not do it all himself, so he gathered more failed and crazy people who could help him: Thomas Römer and Hadmar, alleged Baron of Wieser (and nowadays trying to sell Satanic enlightenment experiences and his old DSA notes on a CD). These guys were full control freaks too, but submissive enough to form the strong core of the DSA-principle: "You obey the writers and the players will bow to your will as you did to the writers". The elaborate metaplot was divvied up among sequential modules. So at a point, you had more something like dime novels with continuity instead of modules. Calling them modules at this point in time might even be wrong...
For the DM, there were things hidden and hinted at in the modules...a DM can actively "play" DSA, with the writers being the meta-DM. For the players there was...whatever it is...a scenic ride, I guess.

Hmm. Fascinating.

Anyone care to offer rebuttal?

RPGPundit

One of the peculiarities of Kiesow-DSA that cannot be stressed enough is that the module-writers prescribe or aim for emotions. That is, good GMing is defined as the ability to generate the wanted emotions in the players at a specific time.

ADD: And most German players seem to like that and think it is the whole point of RPGs.

Stated in such general terms, I don't see what's wrong with that. Certainly I play RPGs to have fun (to feel a specific emotion), not to tell stories, develop themes etc. and expect a good GM to help me having fun.

What do they mean exactly?

Ok Settembrini, i get where you coming from. You dont like the way some people play DSA(TDE) and you don't like the Metaplot.

First of all, Ulrich Kisow died in 1997, so his influence on the fourth edition of TDE is rather small and honestly i dont really cared for TDE before the actuall edition, because the ultimate Hero thing and doing adventures without a real reason wasn't for me. The points i dont liked vanished due to the actual edition.

Your second point of mislike is the metaplot, which in your opinion makes the GM a slave of the editorial staff of TDE. The Metaplot is one of the features TDE offers, that is meant to create a simulated fantasy world in which you can play. But if you dont like it, you can ignore it. There is no TDE Police that will get you. The main reason people use the Metaplot, is because they consider it a great thing. (Parts of the Metaplot are created by the community through something called Mail-Game.)

In TDE you have a changing "simulated" fantasy world and lots of adventures. Some of these let the players be a part of the actual history like "The 7 marked"(Die 7 Gezeichneten), "The year of the Griffin"(Das Jahr des Greifen) or "The Phileasson Saga" other campaigns let you influence a specific region in the world "Of their own graces"(Von eigenen Gnaden) where you Manage a Barony. That means for the GM and his Group, that he can use a pretty preset scenario in a simulated world and focus on setting the scene in this scenario(Trying to make it frightening or jolly or picturesque) and his group is free to focus on the roleplaying of their charakter. Its a little bit, like in a theatre.

In conclusion you could say that TDE differs in its way to adress roleplaying from games like D&D, but it still can be pretty awesome if you like it. Only because its not for you doesnt make it a bad game.

Quote from: MatteoN;603041Stated in such general terms, I don't see what's wrong with that. Certainly I play RPGs to have fun (to feel a specific emotion), not to tell stories, develop themes etc. and expect a good GM to help me having fun.

What do they mean exactly?

Specific emotions at specific points in the pre-plotted adventure. So it is the creepy-mystery swamp, everybody must feel creeped and mysterious.
You meet a poor miner's daughter, everybody must feel sympathy. Etc. ad nauseam.

Quote from: Nebelherr;603060In conclusion you could say that TDE differs in its way to adress roleplaying from games like D&D, but it still can be pretty awesome if you like it. Only because its not for you doesnt make it a bad game.

You are right, it is not because I do not like it does it become a bad game.
it is objectively bad in several ways, but lets assume it is not.

I grant DSA its sucess it is good at what Kiesow wanted to do, and if you like that, it works pretty good and is relatively unique experience.
Trouble is, the longing for that unique experience is evil. Just like the Wandervogel, nobody says Wandervogel people did not have fun. they did, and it was evil.

ADD: 4th DSA is rules-wise a bad game, because it cannot accomplish a single design goal of 4th edition, neither ambiance, balance, speed of play, simulation, tactics, storytelling...the rules are always in the way, whatever you do. And it is evil to begin with.

I wonder how much of this is chicken-and-egg.

The playstyle of TDE fell on very fertile ground while the alternatives (eg, AD&D, sandbox play, RQ, Harnmaster, Midgard) had a very hard time.
There was no rejection, or even criticism, of "camp fire romanticism".
It's the TDE players that actively reject any notion of dungeon-style play (whatever that might be).

Even German Cthulhu adopted the TDE philosophy (thanks to some overlap of authors/translators).

I agree to some degree. Most DSA-fans like it the way it is. Percentage-wise, Germany has much fewer roleplayers than say, America or Britain.

I blame the early dominant role of a dognmatic and exclusive playstyle.
It is very, very early that DSA writings become preachy, fighting ghosts of D&D that 99,9% of the audience did not even know.
DSA, right from the start, DIFFERENTIATES itself from "other RPGs = D&D". It is actvely indocrinating, and propagandizing against an enemy that did not exist.
In a way, DSA's culture was relatively "coherent" in Forger terms by 1988. And then the dwindling of the player base started. Don't know if it ever stabilized, others will know more. It got sold several times now, that much I know.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;603100I wonder how much of this is chicken-and-egg.

The playstyle of TDE fell on very fertile ground while the alternatives (eg, AD&D, sandbox play, RQ, Harnmaster, Midgard) had a very hard time.
There was no rejection, or even criticism, of "camp fire romanticism".
It's the TDE players that actively reject any notion of dungeon-style play (whatever that might be).

Even German Cthulhu adopted the TDE philosophy (thanks to some overlap of authors/translators).

Coming from the Midgard angle i can corroborate this hypothesis. Nearly every Con game, especially the Midgard Con games, i participated from the mid-eighties to the early nineties had this camp fire vibe.
This is kind of strange because the Midgard setting while being a bland conglomeration of historical cultures is virtually metaplot free, and the official adventures were mostly dungeon crawls.
So this let me tell you a story style of play wasn't supported by the authors at all.

Midgard I know too few things about. It does have its own unique power base in southern Germany were similiar things are slightly different so it is impossible for me to judge. I know some hardcore Midgardians, and have played with P. Kathe, but the Midgard riddle never really opened its secrets for me...I once categorized it as "Fantasy National Geographic", but as mentioned above, Midgard in many cases is its own thing, and North German Midgard is different from the Southern one close to its womb.

Don't know if it ever stabilized, others will know more. It got sold several times now, that much I know.

As a matter of fact, it has. During the last years they even had problems to match the demand, like you can see here:
http://archiv.ulisses-spiele.de/blog/2010/09/ausverkaufte-dsa-abenteuer-nachdrucke-pdfs-der-mythos-um-auflagengrosen-und-verkaufszahlen/

The blog-entry is about the problem of ulisses with the short period until an adventure is sold out because of growing demand. Obviously TDE has no trouble with a dwindling fan-base anymore.

4th DSA is rules-wise a bad game, because it cannot accomplish a single design goal of 4th edition, neither ambiance, balance, speed of play, simulation, tactics, storytelling...the rules are always in the way, whatever you do. And it is evil to begin with.

First of all, TDE(DSA) is not evil, its a roleplaying game and not the NSDAP. Secondly i cant see why the rules are always in the way of anything. You have a lot of rules, its true, but a lot of them are optional or expert rules, so you dont have to apply them but you can if you want. I dont have a problem with the ambience, balance, the speed of play, simulation, tactics of storytelling. Cant see your point. It seems to me mor like personal dislike.

There was no rejection, or even criticism, of "camp fire romanticism".
It's the TDE players that actively reject any notion of dungeon-style play (whatever that might be).
The dungeon-style play means, that you crawl through a dungon for days and days, sleeping there living there. Especially the "sleeping in the Dungon" part seemed rather odd to me. Thats why i actually only once had a small dungon when i was GM for a D&D 3.5 campaign.
We normally had lots and lots of dungeon, but i disliked it for different reasons.

So I'm trying to make sure I understand here; what exactly does "camp fire play" look like?

I agree that it certainly sounds like the kind of stuff that Germans would get up to...

RPGPundit

Quote from: Settembrini;603075Trouble is, the longing for that unique experience is evil. Just like the Wandervogel, nobody says Wandervogel people did not have fun. they did, and it was evil.

I think we've entered the realm of (the bad kind of) fantasy.

Quote from: RPGPundit;603722So I'm trying to make sure I understand here; what exactly does "camp fire play" look like?

I agree that it certainly sounds like the kind of stuff that Germans would get up to...

RPGPundit

I think it's best descriped as: Let's gather round the camp fire kids and let uncle GM tell a story. If you behave and listen dutifully to his endless culture and setting wank maybe he will let you participate a little. Just the usual crap really.

In addition to that, playing Midgard made you being part of an elite. TDE was regarded, at least among the Midgard crowd, as a kids game and D&D was just mindless monsterbashing. So Midgard was the only game around fit to be played by an adult.

I think it's best descriped as: Let's gather round the camp fire kids and let uncle GM tell a story. If you behave and listen dutifully to his endless culture and setting wank maybe he will let you participate a little. Just the usual crap really.

If you want to play this way, you can play TDE exactly the way you descriped. I personally dont play TDE by getting a story told, in which you can act a little bit and i dont play the "perfect world" game you describe.

I think your problem is, that you have a one sided  view on the game. Its a fantasy game, so if you want to play it like you want. I bet you can play every adventure game like that. But i highly doubt its intendet to be played that way.
For example (and yes i do examples to prove my point) have you ever played adventures like "the year of the Griffin" or "Nightmare without ending" its not very comon kids let the crazy uncle tell you a story. These adventures painting a very dark picture of the world, the first one is war scenario where you have to fight hunger and sickness aswell as your enemy.
Every fantasy game can be played like a kids game, thats why you call it fantasy!
TDE is not all camp fire and fairytales, but you can have camp fire and fairytales if you want.


In addition to that, playing Midgard made you being part of an elite.
What elite? Are you nuts.
You just playing the game you prefer and think that makes you better then others?

Oh yes "mature" grimdark and romanticism go together well, unveils the underlying nihilism & murderous/self-destructive hate quite nicely.

That said, and to rein in the "evil" remark just a little, I think the vanilla campfire-style is a benign kind of romanticism.
It is the baseline from which Wandervogel-style emotional goose-stepping and worse can evolve...but it is not bound do go that way. It is just the starting point. Alas, most DSA players willingly leave that behind...

Hm, I never encountered this "playing Midgard makes you elite" stance. I DM'd a Midgard camapign parallel to my AD&D campaign, I guess I knew the majority of Midgard players in Hannover, Germany, and I promoted that game heavily (simply by using it in teaching RPGs to beginners in my shop).

But then, I was part of the "northern Midgard crowd", and if it's true that there was a different vibe in the south then we didn't know it. Our bunch was a truly open-minded circle, with contacts to other cities (and campaigns that spanned as far). Most of them came from TDE and also played Ars Magica, Cyberpunk, WHFRP, and of course CoC.
(But it's true that the majority of them also belittled D&D, not for being a childish game but for the dungeon hackfest cliché...)

Maybe our circle was not part of the Midgard "elite" because we all were not the least bit interested in the official setting(s), Midgard, Magira, or Das Ewige Spiel, or the canon that was published in the official fanzine, Gildenbrief. Every GM had his own campaign world, and eventually most of them got together and created one common setting, Caedwyn (that they even published six adventure compilations (http://www.midgard-wiki.de/index.php/Publikation:Spuren_der_Vergangenheit) for). My own participation in all that was very low, I just inspired the setting name.


No, the elite gamers (at least in my area) were the AD&D players (because they played The Original Game, and neither a German clone, nor the kiddified Mentzer Red Box), and RuneQuesters (because they played The Realistic Game, with skills instead of classes and levels); and later the Vampires (because they reveled in Personal Drama instead of mere action).

Quote from: Nebelherr;603980If you want to play this way, you can play TDE exactly the way you descriped. I personally dont play TDE by getting a story told, in which you can act a little bit and i dont play the "perfect world" game you describe. (...)
But i highly doubt its intendet to be played that way.

But then, you fell for the "D&D is all about dungeons" and "dungeons are boring affairs" cliché as well as many critics of TDE fall for the "TDE is all about getting a story told and be helpless" cliché.

There is a difference between the way products are written and the way they are played.

Nephilim was written as a mystical conspiracy drama with Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum in mind - but (as French RPG magazine editors told me once) was played as a super hero game. (Same for VTM and WtA...)

Gary Gygax is often cited as not having adhered to his own rules. (Same for Kevin Siembieda...)

What does a TDE player see when he looks at a D&D module and sees only a dungeon map and a handful of monster stats?
What does a D&D player see when he reads the infamous "Auf ein Wort" advice and boxed texts from TDE modules?

How much of all that gets used as written at the game table?

How many AD&D groups left the dungeon behind for high level political scheming, or merchant campaigns?
How many TDE groups strayed off the sacred metaplot and play in their own version of Aventuria where major Mary Sue NPCs were killed long ago, where major wars were fought with different results than in the novels and sourcebooks?

AD&D's Dragonlance, D&D's Forgotten Realms and TDE's Aventuria are not that far from another. They all suffer from too much canon.
(And PF's Golarion doesn't seem to be too far behind...)

The German RPG crowd sounds complicated.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;604074But then, you fell for the "D&D is all about dungeons" and "dungeons are boring affairs" cliché as well as many critics of TDE fall for the "TDE is all about getting a story told and be helpless" cliché.

Like i said, i played D&D 3.5. My group was consisting of gamers from Hannover patched together through a forum. And as a matter of fact for the first year we played just dungeons. After that i made my own campaign and there one Dungeon in it, in a big campaign.

I belief you can play the game differently, but i personally prefer the game mechanisms of TDE. Thats why i oppose the accusations that it is a bad game, because in my opinion its not.

QuoteOh yes "mature" grimdark and romanticism go together well, unveils the underlying nihilism & murderous/self-destructive hate quite nicely.

Ok, seriously, what the fuck? Its a game, not Scientology!

QuoteThe German RPG crowd sounds complicated.

Its not just the RPG crows that is complicated...

The vibe I got from some Belgian DSA players matches Settembrini's description/typification quite well. On numerous occasions I've seen claims that only the prefab scenarios were good enough, that making up your own stuff would result in the GM being unconvincing and "less professional"... :idunno: same for players choosing not to follow the prescribed railroad.

Sett and Dirk made the important points already, so let me sum up my TDE/DSA
experience by telling an experience i made at a local con:

I joined some acquaintance of mine who claimed he'd run a "fan module i found on the internet, on a fan page. It is really good!"

Turns out i'm not the only player, but one of 9(!) around the table.

As soon as the game begins the other players out themselves as run-of-the-mill DSA fans, so i kinda kept quiet about the usual things (railroaded start with gear stripped, deus ex machina, railways to the one and only way the adventure will be solved, etc.) pulled off in official, pre-published modules.
 
The adventure was basically us players stumbling around in a supposedly spooky and creepy mansion, that was haunted by a Mary Sue Ghost. We couldn't leave the house (autolocked doors, barred windows, etc.) and whenever we entered a room the "Meister"(literally: "Master", that's what the GM is called in TDE/DSA) would read a cutscene description to us, without the possibility to break the routine or intervene before the description ended, even going as far as telling the players how their character feels in that certain situation and what he thinks of it. Literally. I asked the GM at one time if i could just hand him the character sheet and my dice to ease his job. He didn't get the joke. I just roll along on the railshooter-like scenes and practice the inner facepalm. The rest of the players don't question any of this contrived and really stilted stuff, even when some characters try to split and get auto-offed by the Mary Sue Ghost in another room in the mansion because they actually tried to fight it on their own terms. Mind you, they didn't get to roll even once. Next there's a really visibly constructed puzzle for the group to solve, and this is where the module falls apart: I come up with an unorthodox yet common sense way to break/solve the challenge set before us and state what my character does, then the Master shakes his head with displayed sadness and just outright says

"I'm sorry, you can't do that."  

"Pardon!?!? Why can't my character do that?"

"It's not in the module."

At first i assumed he was joking, so i started to laugh.

His blank stare indicates to me that he is not.

I look in the direction of the other players.
"Hey guys, i'm free to let my character do that. Right!?!?"

They give me the same blank stare as the Master, then they shrug indifferently.  

None of them fucking speaks up. NONE.

I facepalm and sigh loudly, pack my stuff and get away from the table, shaking my head.

THIS is what TDE/DSA is to me. Some mono-culture of a fanbase (the other guys at the table started "RPGs" with DSA/TDE and never bothered to play anything else, i dared asking them before we started to play) pretending to play a game that's in fact a shittily scripted shitty impro theater with bad writing and clunky combat resolution.

I think you must have inadvertently ended up in a session of a LARP about zombie roleplayers.

QuoteTHIS is what TDE/DSA is to me.

Exactly, this is what TDE/DSA is for you.
The scene you described sounded horrible, really. I played with such GM's myself. One GM just read the entire adventure and you had some spots to react. I didnt finished the adventure because in my opinion this is really crapy Gamemastering.

This might be TDE/DSA for you, but it is not TDE/DSA for everyone. If the GM sucks the game he leads doesnt matter. I can understand your disapointment about you first TDE experience, but if the GM would had offered Midgard, i bet you would hat that game for the same reason.

GMing like this seems all too common in the DSA gamer culture, though, moreso than with other games. Not saying that everybody plays like this or that you can't play any other way, but it seems to be the default.

Quote from: Nebelherr;604651Exactly, this is what TDE/DSA is for you.
The scene you described sounded horrible, really. I played with such GM's myself. One GM just read the entire adventure and you had some spots to react. I didnt finished the adventure because in my opinion this is really crapy Gamemastering.

This might be TDE/DSA for you, but it is not TDE/DSA for everyone. If the GM sucks the game he leads doesnt matter. I can understand your disapointment about you first TDE experience, but if the GM would had offered Midgard, i bet you would hat that game for the same reason.

No. This is the impression of DSA/TDE i got after a long time of play experience, for about the 16 years i know the system and its fanbase. Seriously.
What i'm describing is rather the norm instead of exception, so please shut your fanboy mouth,  pretty please!

p.s.: Dein Englisch ist superbeschissen, und das trotz der äusserst einfachen Syntax deiner Sätze!

Quote from: Phantom Black;604542Sett and Dirk made the important points already, so let me sum up my TDE/DSA
experience by telling an experience i made at a local con:

I joined some acquaintance of mine who claimed he'd run a "fan module i found on the internet, on a fan page. It is really good!"

Turns out i'm not the only player, but one of 9(!) around the table.

As soon as the game begins the other players out themselves as run-of-the-mill DSA fans, so i kinda kept quiet about the usual things (railroaded start with gear stripped, deus ex machina, railways to the one and only way the adventure will be solved, etc.) pulled off in official, pre-published modules.
 
The adventure was basically us players stumbling around in a supposedly spooky and creepy mansion, that was haunted by a Mary Sue Ghost. We couldn't leave the house (autolocked doors, barred windows, etc.) and whenever we entered a room the "Meister"(literally: "Master", that's what the GM is called in TDE/DSA) would read a cutscene description to us, without the possibility to break the routine or intervene before the description ended, even going as far as telling the players how their character feels in that certain situation and what he thinks of it. Literally. I asked the GM at one time if i could just hand him the character sheet and my dice to ease his job. He didn't get the joke. I just roll along on the railshooter-like scenes and practice the inner facepalm. The rest of the players don't question any of this contrived and really stilted stuff, even when some characters try to split and get auto-offed by the Mary Sue Ghost in another room in the mansion because they actually tried to fight it on their own terms. Mind you, they didn't get to roll even once. Next there's a really visibly constructed puzzle for the group to solve, and this is where the module falls apart: I come up with an unorthodox yet common sense way to break/solve the challenge set before us and state what my character does, then the Master shakes his head with displayed sadness and just outright says

"I'm sorry, you can't do that."  

"Pardon!?!? Why can't my character do that?"

"It's not in the module."

At first i assumed he was joking, so i started to laugh.

His blank stare indicates to me that he is not.

I look in the direction of the other players.
"Hey guys, i'm free to let my character do that. Right!?!?"

They give me the same blank stare as the Master, then they shrug indifferently.  

None of them fucking speaks up. NONE.

I facepalm and sigh loudly, pack my stuff and get away from the table, shaking my head.

THIS is what TDE/DSA is to me. Some mono-culture of a fanbase (the other guys at the table started "RPGs" with DSA/TDE and never bothered to play anything else, i dared asking them before we started to play) pretending to play a game that's in fact a shittily scripted shitty impro theater with bad writing and clunky combat resolution.

Jesus fucking christ.  Its like an entire country decided to run a WW-style game and didn't realize that all that hype about it being a "storytelling game" was just bullshit.

RPGPundit

QuoteWhat i'm describing is rather the norm instead of exception, so please shut your fanboy mouth, pretty please!

What you are describing cant be more than your personal believe. There is no survey to prove or disprove your point, which also makes it hard to argue against.

I don't know about your experience with the game and some of its fans, so i can only tell about my experience which is positiv.

I never said TDE/DSA is the only RPG in the world worth playing, because i like to play other RPG's aswell. My believe is, that if you should play the RPG which offers the way of Gaming you are in the mood for and that sometimes is TDE but sometimes may be Cthulu or Paranoia.

The Topic is "Has Anyone Played "The Dark Eye" and yes i have played it and i will play it in the future. I am convinced of its advantages and i now for shure that its a game and not the Nazi-Party.

Do you really believe your experience are bound to the system these people play. I dont think so! If you GM likes to railroad through his adventures he can aswell use Midgard or D&D to make this kind of adventure.

I believe your problem is rather with the game but with the dogmatic style the players are approaching it. My experience differ in this regard. It's true there are somewhat dogmatic gamers which are narrow minded about the way you should play the game.

Just last week we had a new player at the table who was fed up with the game before he played with us and he told me afterwards that although he had played TDE for 10 years this session was the first time he played it, like it was intended to be.

When i started to play TDE in my younger ages i also had a terrible GM which made walls out of nothing just so you cant leave the road. This sucks and is the cause for frustration with the game but its not the recommended way to play the game. It is not the right way for a GM to approach any RPG.

In conclusion, i know that there are people playing TDE in a very dogmatic and railroading way but the game itself can be played quite differently. You dont change the style people play by changing the system but to show them, that its more fun, to play it differently. What i know is that there are a lot of people that play TDE differently then you described and that it has its strenght like the realism cultivated in the game. If you use the element TDE offers you will be suprised what a fine game you have in your hands. That is my point.

Ps.: If my english is really that bad, this is probably because i am not a native speaker and i cant see how my ability to write in english should effekt the validity of my arguments.

QuoteThe Topic is "Has Anyone Played "The Dark Eye" and yes i have played it  and i will play it in the future. I am convinced of its advantages and i  now for shure that its a game and not the Nazi-Party.

No not NSDAP, Wandervogel! Please freshen up your education and see how fitting the similé is.
In short, you are one world war too far...

Quote from: Settembrini;605216No not NSDAP, Wandervogel! Please freshen up your education and see how fitting the similé is.
In short, you are one world war too far...

Ok Settembrini enlighten me. How exactly is the TDE game (Not the gamers) made to be like a german hiking movement from the early 20th century?

I know its very german to complain and to neg about everything. Its fine this is the way of our democratic understanding. But dont you think you're missing the point?

You dont like the metaplot? Then dont use it. You dont like the detailed world of aventuria? Thats what Myranor is for (btw there is no Metaplot in Myranor aswell).

If you have a problem with the way the game is approached and played then this is something you cant change. If people like to play in this fashion it doesnt matter what if they play TDE, D&D or Midgard. They will always play in that fashion. I've seen dogmatic GM's in games like Vampire or Shadowrun or selfwritten GURPS-Scenarios aswell. This has nothing to do with the game. So i cant see your point.

What are you trying to say? What does it matter what I can change or not?*
You seem to have admitted that indeed, railroading and ambiénce plus romanticism are the default DSA-way of GMing.

And that German gamers like that a lot and transport it to other games naturally flows from that observation.

It is now very hard to parse your post, it looks like you are contradicting yourselves now, heavily.

So maybe you wanna try talking in German? I happen to have a messageboard. You seem to be too dim-witted to fare well at the Disputorium, though, were we have butchered the inane arguments of higher calibre fanboiz in the olden days...


*I think I have changed the German RPG scene as much as it is possible  with just a measly blog & an axe to grind vs railroading...

QuoteYou seem to have admitted that indeed, railroading and ambiénce plus romanticism are the default DSA-way of GMing.

First of all, i never said that. I said that i can neither prove nor disprove any arguments on how the majority GM's is playing the game. But you can't do this aswell unless you make a survey and ask a significant part of the TDE-Comunity about their ways of GMing.

Secondly i dont think that the atmosphere in a game is a bad thing in roleplaying. You obviously hate it, but does it there are a lot of roleplayers that like a well made atmosphere. That is a question of taste.

What i critizised is a certain way of GMing that is very dogmativ and restrictive. I strongly disagree with you that the reason for that is TDE, but a lack of creativity and in some cases a longing for control. The phenomenon is not actually something TDE specific and it is not part of the rules.

QuoteIt is now very hard to parse your post, it looks like you are contradicting yourselves now, heavily.

And how do i contradict myself? How about some real arguments?

QuoteSo maybe you wanna try talking in German?

No thanks, i think my english is just fine. The problem is, that you dont want to understand me.

QuoteYou seem to be too dim-witted to fare well at the Disputorium, though, were we have butchered the inane arguments of higher calibre fanboiz in the olden days...

Seriously? You obviously dont now how to argue in a proper way so you have to insult me. This is pathetic!

In this thread, Sett stoops to Godwining the newcomer, non-stop.

@Nebelherr: I just have to take a look at the DSA/TDE boards to get the drift about how these guys play the game, no need for a survey among fanboys (If the results of the survey of 2011 would still be online, i'd post them so would see your fanboyish fallacies)

QuoteI've seen dogmatic GM's in games like Vampire or Shadowrun or selfwritten GURPS-Scenarios aswell. This has nothing to do with the game. So i cant see your point.

Uhm, bullshit.
The game books come with built-in BS assumptions that force the dogma down a customer's throat, it's similar to what's done with German CoC books, although not as overtly visible and vile, but it is there, on a really dominating level.

Yes, Mr. Nebelherr, there were numerous surveys. And endless, endless discussions in online fandom. The wiki aventurica is full of romanticims & railroading apologetics.
They usually admit it and they like it.

http://rollenspielstatistiker.wordpress.com/

It can be safely said it is a basic fact of the German RPG scene. What you do here is plain obfuscation.

Quote from: Settembrini;605582Yes, Mr. Nebelherr, there were numerous surveys. And endless, endless discussions in online fandom. The wiki aventurica is full of romanticims & railroading apologetics.
They usually admit it and they like it.

I get the impression you dont read my post and just write down your arguments. You seem to have the impression that i oppose railroading in general, but if you actually would read my posts you would find, that i dont do it. I dont have a problem with railroading. My problem was with a kind of GMing that i cant stand.

Quotehttp://rollenspielstatistiker.wordpress.com/

Thanks for the Link, but there are two problems here. The statistics dont support your point and they are not representitive in more than one way.

QuoteIt can be safely said it is a basic fact of the German RPG scene. What you do here is plain obfuscation.

Since your presented statistics arent representitive it cant safely be said.
Nonetheless is it right that railroading is a part of the adventures that you can buy. I dont have a problem with railroading to a certain degree. If you follow a certain Plot you need to set some goals and yes if you play an adventure that is based on the metaplot certain things have to happen. But i seldom have read an adventure in TDE 4 where you arent encouraged to make your own scenarios to enrich the Main-Plot. Of course you have also the freedom to do whatever you want with the adventures and change whatever you want (thats what i mostly do), because there is no TDE-Police.

In Roleplaying you dont need to have a story at all. You just can GM from the top of your head, which i have done on some occasions, but at the end of the day its nice to have some story to follow through.

BTW with "Myranor" you have a metaplot free enviroment inside the TDE univere where you can do whatever you want.

QuoteUhm, bullshit.
The game books come with built-in BS assumptions that force the dogma down a customer's throat

Ok, please offer me an example, otherwise i really have problems to follow your logic?

Not representative? N= 2297!

'Nuff said.

All in all you have not understood the arguments brought forth by people in this thread and move goalposts all the time.


I break it down for you once more:

The DSA-culture has a railroading-supportive baseline. That is pervasive and statistically as well as qualitatively proven countless of times. Quite clearly it is so pervasive as to inform what many Germans, Mr. Nebelherr included, perceive as what actually consitutes RPGs as pastime. You specifically have yet to rise above the primordial mud from which you budded. Thus your arguments reinforce everything others have said about the fallacies rising from that peculiar Gerkman viewpoint on RPGs.
This obviously leaves you puzzled, but makes further argumentation relatively circular...

But to be clear, is it the case that this style of play is a cultural thing? That is, there's nothing inherent in the rules of DSA that oblige this sort of play?

RPGPundit

No, the rules are undecided about this. But there is ample "best practice" examples in the form of essays printed alongside the rules. It is quite schizophrenic in its presentation. There is an anniversary tome, were the main designers of the 90ies admit they put it many rules just to appease players and actually thought those who used them were idiots!
And nearly every module breathes this air, too.

EDIT: Note that the OFFICIAL MODULES or adventures, as they are called, reign supreme in Germany. Running self-designed adventures is enough to make you a small celebrity...and the DSA-adventures, they are ridiculous railroads 99.9% of the time.

Quote from: Nebelherr;605619Ok, please offer me an example, otherwise i really have problems to follow your logic?

Basically the complete GM book and all the "Auf ein Wort" sections.
There are many many many instances where the designers (sometimes openly, most oven in a rather covert manner) tell the customers what they think "good" RPGing is, and what is not.
I can't name 'em off the top of my head right now, because i sold all my TDE stuff years ago after i've finally had it with the "system", the designers and its basement dweller troglodyte fanbase. I've sunk money into the system with hopes something... anything would improve, but it got worse with every edition so i finally kicked that vile toxic habit of playing DSA.

Quote from: RPGPundit;605863But to be clear, is it the case that this style of play is a cultural thing? That is, there's nothing inherent in the rules of DSA that oblige this sort of play?

RPGPundit

Well... unless you would take into account that the character generation section (which is, btw. divided into a whole book of its own with material needed from two other books if you'd want to play a cleric or wizard) has setting assumptions hardwired into the generation system with regard to drawbacks&flaws a character has to take.

An elf, for example is hardwired to be naive and alien, there's no workaround for that as far as i recall.

The problem isn't necessarily the clunky, slow and almost cancerous rules system, but how the "style of play" as you call it is marketed and tied in with the published books. It's like as if D&D would've been published with a MAJOR part of it being Gygaxian cliff notes that are featured prominently and spreadlythoroughly throughout the published material.

Quote from: RPGPundit;605863But to be clear, is it the case that this style of play is a cultural thing? That is, there's nothing inherent in the rules of DSA that oblige this sort of play?

RPGPundit

Yes, in my limited experience it is a german cultural thing. Nearly every time i left our home table to play a RPGat a con, regardless of the system, i was bored to tears by some exponent of this so called Stimmungsspiel (moodplay).

So i stopped playing RPGs at cons, participating in Battletech tournaments or boardgames.

Does all this extend to Austrians? Because we have a couple of Austrians (a father and son expat duo) in our gaming group; and I have to say they are the least "storytelling" people I've ever seen.  Dudes are both powergamers to the max. Son always wants to play "dark" characters with lots of magic items who don't follow the rules (though all this is forgivable, in his case, he's 15). Dad (who is 50 and has no excuse) basically always plays himself as a wizard, and while avoiding some of the more sophomoric aspects of his son's style, pretty much sees the game as a contest he has to win.

They're great guys, but pretty much nothing like the picture you paint of the German scene here.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;605863But to be clear, is it the case that this style  of play is a cultural thing? That is, there's nothing inherent in the  rules of DSA that oblige this sort of play?

RPGPundit

Quote from: Settembrini;605620(...)The DSA-culture has a railroading-supportive baseline.(...)

Quote from: Roderick;605906Yes, in my limited experience it is a german cultural thing.(...)

It'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?

Quote from: Settembrini;605620Not representative? N= 2297!

From what choosen group of people? How can n be representitive if you dont have an exactly predefind target group for wich you are using the survey.

Another question is, if the questions are choosen right. So obviously you dont care because i cant see a clear thesis or another main goal on which bases the questions are defined.

Quote from: Settembrini;605620'Nuff said.

All in all you have not understood the arguments brought forth by people in this thread and move goalposts all the time.


I break it down for you once more:

The DSA-culture has a railroading-supportive baseline. That is pervasive and statistically as well as qualitatively proven countless of times. Quite clearly it is so pervasive as to inform what many Germans, Mr. Nebelherr included, perceive as what actually consitutes RPGs as pastime.

Think about it, perhaps people that play extremly reailroading games like this games. Perhaps this RPGs might even be that way because there is a majority of people that love to play in that specific way. I have seen no study that tried to figure out how people play, but it is absolutly possible to play TDE the way you want to play it. You can write your own adventures or enrich smaller campaigns with your own adventures, there is no TDE-Police. If some groups like to play differently and follow stricly the path, than let them play their game.

The point is, that i belive it is a great RPG and you can have a lot of fun with it. I have already explained why i think that if you have another opinion so be it. Your comments show you fascist attitude towards people with other opinions. I mean seriously you telling me that you are some kind of roleplaying elite and TDE is a evil game? Why because there are players out there playing in a way you dont like. TDE Aventuria might have railroading elements and a Metaplot, but TDE has different settings like Myranor or Dark ages.

Quote from: Settembrini;605620You specifically have yet to rise above the primordial mud from which you budded. Thus your arguments reinforce everything others have said about the fallacies rising from that peculiar Gerkman viewpoint on RPGs.
This obviously leaves you puzzled, but makes further argumentation relatively circular...

Once again you have to insult me, very classy.

On the other hand, we had a couple of guest players from Hungary once, who totally played this style now that I think about it. they seemed completely confused at how we did things here.

RPGPundit

Quote from: HombreLoboDomesticado;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?

This is proven scientific fact, the linked survey and all other surveys show that DSA-fans often exclusively play DSA and know the smallest number of other systems. And the damning part is that they have strong opinions on these other games from no experience...

The claim to superiority of DSA is quite difficult to understand, though. It claims superiority via small-minded-megalomania, this "kleinkarierter Größenwahn" permeates through everything written for the game. They have a full range of phrases and standing dictums that are mindlessly repeated without any reflection or reality check about other games. The claim is a weird mixture of DSA being "not to cold, not too hot, just right!" and at the same time being perfect for very "deep" play. And if you challenge DSA's ability to this or that, the defense is that is not a hyper specialized monstrosity, but "just right". This is pretty funny, as DSA is the most dogmatic and specialized monstrosity that has a sizable audience...

@Pundit: with sample size 2 and people being ExPats, it is hard to say. Austrian roleplayers in general do DSA just the same way from my limited experience.

Quote from: Nebelherr;606173Once again you have to insult me, very classy.

Says the guy who calls the other guy bringing reasonabler, valid arguments a fascist...

Please, crawl back into the woodwork you came from, fanboy!

Quote from: RPGPundit;606384On the other hand, we had a couple of guest players from Hungary once, who totally played this style now that I think about it. they seemed completely confused at how we did things here.

RPGPundit

Clearly not part of Melan's crew!

The Hungarian national character is very different from the German one so I would be surprised if the same play style is predominant.

Quote from: Phantom Black;606507Says the guy who calls the other guy bringing reasonabler, valid arguments a fascist...

Please, crawl back into the woodwork you came from, fanboy!

Seriously? reasonable, valid arguments? Arguments like "DSA is evil", yeah right, thats what people call reasonable...

I said that he has a fascist attitude and i am right. I tried to discuss with you guys, but you are obviously not able to argue in a civilized manner. So i am done with this. For me you are just pathetic.

Seems to me a German wouldn't be so cavalier about a word like "fascist."

Ok, still haven't had this really answered, so I think I'm asking it in the wrong way.

Take The Enemy Within campaign for WFRP1.  It has a definite plot, some people have called it railroady, however, there is so much world detail in the modules that you can abandon the plot 100% and the whole damn thing is still very useful.  It is so detailed, that even if you do follow the plot, it's infamous for derailing itself with the aspect of the trading ship rules in Death on the Reik.

So, are these railroad modules for DSA similar in that they are extremely useful for fleshing out the world if you toss out the entire metaplot and use them for sandbox details?

Not really, as some of them even heavily contradict already published sourcebooks. And some sourcebooks are so ridiculous in their meticulous details.
There's literally a sourcebook that's about trading guilds and how to handle trade ingame, but instead it has pages of description on varied strains of cabbage ...

Quote from: Fiasco;606831Clearly not part of Melan's crew!

The Hungarian national character is very different from the German one so I would be surprised if the same play style is predominant.

I'd certainly expect it to be quite different...

RPGPundit

Note that hungary has MAGUS, which I am told is just dominant as DSA and also fosters enimity towards D&D. The peculiars are surely different, though!

Quote from: CRKrueger;606979Take The Enemy Within campaign for WFRP1.  It has a definite plot, some people have called it railroady, however, there is so much world detail in the modules that you can abandon the plot 100% and the whole damn thing is still very useful.  It is so detailed, that even if you do follow the plot, it's infamous for derailing itself with the aspect of the trading ship rules in Death on the Reik.

Added: For instance, Shadows over Bögenhafen is not a railroad. There is a string of events that is most probable (and the module is written in that order) but it is a city adventure with lots of things to do and discover. Also, the end is not predetermined. Bögenhafen can become a hellhole of the characters fail.
(It's another matter that this does not seem to have an effect on the rest of TEW. It's the other side of the railroad coin if the actions of the players don't have any consequence regardless if they succeed or not.)

QuoteSo, are these railroad modules for DSA similar in that they are extremely useful for fleshing out the world if you toss out the entire metaplot and use them for sandbox details?

There are virtually no sandbox details in DSA modules. Worse (and that is my personal criticism of DSA, not the metaplot or railroad per se), the introduction of each module lists a slew of other publications that a GM needs to cross-reference; from the regional source book the module is set in, to other modules that have events that lead up to the current situation, to other modules that feature a major NPC, to magazine articles or even novels that have background info, some of that not even in print anymore!
You have to have a master degree in Aventurica to use those modules.

That, combined with master degree GMs at conventions that insist on proper portrayal of Aventurian tropes, kills DSA as an entry-level RPG.

TEW metaplot vs. DSA metaplot:

The Enemy Within has a very loose "metaplot". The books are basically stand alone modules (with a huge amount of source material above and beyond any plot, like the town of Bögenhafen or life on and at the river Reik, plus the bona fide sourcebook on Middenheim). The modules are strung together in a haphazard way. And TEW was criticized for that.

The Aventuria metaplot is planned long in advance. There are one or two events or regions that are in the focus in any given year.

If there are still inconsistencies (as Phantom Black said) that's due to writers writing about their pet Mary Sue NPCs or regions, sometimes including setting-changing material that they have no intention to follow up.

A famous case, from a few years ago:
Michael Masberg wrote an adventure, published in the anthology "Orkengold". In that adventure one of the Aventurian goddesses was reborn in physical form (something that contradicts everything in Aventurian mythology).
(That even the book editor Daniel Simon Richter didn't catch it and didn't communicate any of that to the core editorial team of TDE is another matter entitely.)
So when the book was published a major shitstorm broke loose.  
Another adventure was written to retrofit the situation ("Der Mondenkaiser"): no, it was not the true goddess, just a shard of her personality, like an avatar.

In closing, the DSA modules are more like Dragonlance than The Enemy Within (which is not surprising as DL was at its peak when the DSA metaplot got in full gear). DL didn't contain sandbox info as well. (When I ran DL I had to make up a lot of Krynn myself as my group deviated from the metaplot quite soon.)the DSA modules are more like Dragonlance than The Enemy Within



Look at the TV Tropes entry for The Dark Eye (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/TheDarkEye) for the peculiarities of the game and the setting.

Quote from: Settembrini;607157Note that hungary has MAGUS, which I am told is just dominant as DSA and also fosters enimity towards D&D. The peculiars are surely different, though!

M.A.G.U.S. doesn't have a monolithic playing culture, but the most common style is kinda-sorta similar to fantasy Shadowrun, with moderate-to-strong railroading in mission-based adventures. Social manipulation, breaking into very well-defended locations to steal stuff, getting dragged into court intrigues between ultra-powerful factions, and lots of ninjas. The modules are mainly presented in the form of scripts, with location descriptions largely optional, but appendices full of detailed NPCs more common.

It doesn't seem as dysfunctional as the way DSA has been described here, but it is best in its naive form, getting progressively worse and worse the more the participants get involved in the canon, hardcore historical simulation, or pushing an intrigue-centred game. On one end of the spectrum, it's cyberpunkish Renaissance D&D; on the other, it's a tedious planning exercise where nothing really happens in the end unless by GM intervention.

I don't know how M* relates to the Hungarian national character, if at all. It totally lacks the manic-depressive obsessedness or the bitter contrarianism. In a sense, it does reflect the spirit of the early 90s with its idolisation of the western-style "manager", who is rich, handsome, professional, always wears expensive sunglasses, and has expensive technical gadgets like mobile phones or private helicopters. (The same fuckers tended to turn out to be the most rotten scumbags of the time, but that's all in hindsight.)

Quote from: J ArcaneSeems to me a German wouldn't be so cavalier about a word like "fascist."

You would be surprised. It is the most convenient and effective way of character assassination in Central Europe, not to mention a focus of political hysteria; hence, it has been over-used to the point of irrelevance.

Well, maybe that's what I was seeing. These guys were big on wanting to be led by the nose, making intricate background stories for themselves that they felt they had to share, spending inordinate amounts of time in social roleplaying, poo-pooing combat, and going to great lengths to explain their character's feelings and motivations.

RPGPundit

Yeah, that's familiar. Fortunately, the D&D crowd, although much smaller, tends to be better, or at least more open to different playstyles.

Quote from: RPGPundit;607355Well, maybe that's what I was seeing. These guys were big on wanting to be led by the nose, making intricate background stories for themselves that they felt they had to share, spending inordinate amounts of time in social roleplaying, poo-pooing combat, and going to great lengths to explain their character's feelings and motivations.

That sounds very familiar.

But don't underestimate the lure of Aventuria. The setting is the key to TDE.

To "get" TDE simply imagine this scenario:

• AD&D2 was the first RPG in the US
• Forgotten Realms were tied intricately to each and every rule mechanism (the spells, the classes, the weapon lists...)
• RPGA Ren-faire style character play is the default style (Living City)
• There were relatively free stand alone adventure modules, and multi-volume central metaplot campaigns written in Dragonlance style (and not in the original, DL1+ style with dungeons and hexcrawls, but the more scenic rehash that was the double statted, single volume, Silver Anniversary edition)
  
• One new novel per month published by the major SF/fantasy book publisher
• A newspaper-like bi-monthly magazine (think: 90's Polyhedron) devoted solely to TDE, with the major section being an in-game newspaper detailing the metaplot events as characters would hear of them (the smaller part of the magazine was short adventures and background info for GMs, and stuff related to the pbm "barony" game)

Because the magazine was so central to in-game knowledge the ratio of subscriptions vs. shop distribution was stellar. (I don't know about today's status of the mag - it is a color mag by now.)

• The barony game: Imagine that Forgotten Realms DMs could send character sheets of their own PCs to TSR (with an account of their deeds), and TSR chooses several hundred of them and bestows them with small fiefs. The small nobles are now officially part of the setting and take part in their own, free-form, pbm simulation game, choosing sides in political conflicts and directing (within limits) the metaplot.

The result of one succession war was decided by the barons. (One of the GMs of the barony game was an employee of my game store.)

• Semi-official TDE LARPing going on, with political councils or similar events that feed back into the metaplot (I believe there are now players that don't play the p&p game anymore but are still active in the LARP version)

For TDE GMs there was never the lure to design their own settings because it was relatively easy to become part of the official writing team, getting published (via the newspaper first) and adding official content to the setting.

That's the reason why there is no Old School Renaissance concerning TDE1. TDE players are not playing the system - they play the setting. For some of them it doesn't even matter what the current edition is. There is no edition war despite the fact that 2e and 4.1 are radically different. (I'm not even counting 1e which would be the White Box equivalent, the not-canon-anymore version of Aventuria.)

And now imagine the real TSR trying to break into the market against that kind of game, and competition. With their "control freak" behavior and "we are the world leader in RPGs" attitude.
I wonder if TSR ever understood what they were up against, and why D&D failed for so long in the German market. (It was WotC with their MtG-learned understanding of international distribution that led AD&D2 and 3e to success in Germany.)

Pondering the question of a structural rules-element that had WIDE repercussions:

In the explanation of what RPGs actually are and how they worked, DSA HAMMERED it into Germans that: "What you say is what you get". or directly translated "Said->Done!".

This means, than whatever the player says, is the action of the character, no backsies or discussions. Discussions and questions about a scene or situation are portrayed as bad roleplaying or even really, really against the basic rule of RPGs "Said->Done [Gesagt-Getan!]"* and to be avoided.
Think about that for a while.

*like the chess rule! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch-move_rule

And you will see that the touch-move rule and the many examples making fun of players asking questions in the "middle of scenes" lead directly to passive players, who only act when they are sure of how to do it.

Sidethought: When I review my own 2007ish definition of RPGs, we can now see that DSA at its core is violating the right of Ps to partake in the verbal exchange that is actually the method of roleplaying.
As in the US, the devaluation of Player's discourse entries nicely explains the frontal loading with big character backstories and introspection, as emotions and backstory are usually non-debatable...

Really? Wow, that's... just wow. :jaw-dropping:

There is one supplement/box that indeed is a bona fide sandbox, that would be a valuable addition to any fantasy gamer's collection:

Havena
http://www.wiki-aventurica.de/wiki/Havena_%28Spielhilfe%29

it even talks about converting and using it for other RPGs such as D&D! it is not considered "real" DSA by most fans, ofc.

It has a map booklet with dozens of nice floor plans and too sturdy maps of the whole city, in a much more realistic layout for a quasi-medieval city than nearly all US-based offerings. As such even if you speak not one word German, you can use 60% of the content.

Quote from: Settembrini;607854Havena
http://www.wiki-aventurica.de/wiki/Havena_%28Spielhilfe%29

What a nice cover. I only know the second edition.


Three quotes from the "demise of D&D (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=25020)" thread apply to DSA/TDE as well:

Quote from: JRT;607394People forget that in the 90s, storytelling was what was selling.  It was a good strategy--Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms were really popular.  And other Tabletop RPGs were focused on novel lines and better story--White Wolf, Battletech/Mechwarrior, etc.  This is what the fans wanted.  It's a trend that changed over time, but it was what many fans wanted at the time.

The thing people need to realize is that writing trends, styles, and fads occur over time, D&D has just been reflective of the marketplace in that regard.

Quote from: The Were-Grognard;607474I think adoption of the game by non-wargamers, especially those who had absolutely no experience with wargaming (like myself), was key to this.  Much of the (A)D&D game makes better sense in a wargaming context.
(...)
By the time folks like me got around to learning about D&D (1991), the prevailing notion was that dungeons were, at best, the "basic" form of the game (somewhat true*), and plot-based adventures were for more "advanced" players (not so true*).
* In hindsight

Quote from: Benoist;607495That's an opinion that's actually super-common in France, this idea that dungeons are for kids, that you "grow out of it" once "you really learn how to role play", you know. That D&D is kind of a proto-role playing game, not a "real game for real role players", etc etc, ad nauseam.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;607911What a nice cover.

Reminds me of Kharé (http://fightingfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Khar%C3%A9_-_Cityport_of_Traps_(city)).

The "barony game" thing sounds impressive, in any case.  Most other games that even attempted to get something like that to happen didn't have it work out.

RPGPundit

Maybe that was because the aventurian nobilty had (more or less) real power. Many were involved in the writing process and most were at least consulted before books about their domain were published.

I can understand and follow many of the statements in this thread. The rules of DSA are simply a nightmare, old adventures often are horrible railroading- and Mary-Sue-overkills, the attitude of many DSA-developers as well players is not very appealing etc. I also agree that DSA has retained quite an impressive fanbase over the last 25 years for having a really strong setting. In my opinion, this post here sums it up very well:

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;607378But don't underestimate the lure of Aventuria. The setting is the key to TDE.

To "get" TDE simply imagine this scenario:

• AD&D2 was the first RPG in the US
• Forgotten Realms were tied intricately to each and every rule mechanism (the spells, the classes, the weapon lists...)
• RPGA Ren-faire style character play is the default style (Living City)
• There were relatively free stand alone adventure modules, and multi-volume central metaplot campaigns written in Dragonlance style (and not in the original, DL1+ style with dungeons and hexcrawls, but the more scenic rehash that was the double statted, single volume, Silver Anniversary edition)
  
• One new novel per month published by the major SF/fantasy book publisher
• A newspaper-like bi-monthly magazine (think: 90's Polyhedron) devoted solely to TDE, with the major section being an in-game newspaper detailing the metaplot events as characters would hear of them (the smaller part of the magazine was short adventures and background info for GMs, and stuff related to the pbm "barony" game)

Because the magazine was so central to in-game knowledge the ratio of subscriptions vs. shop distribution was stellar. (I don't know about today's status of the mag - it is a color mag by now.)

• The barony game: Imagine that Forgotten Realms DMs could send character sheets of their own PCs to TSR (with an account of their deeds), and TSR chooses several hundred of them and bestows them with small fiefs. The small nobles are now officially part of the setting and take part in their own, free-form, pbm simulation game, choosing sides in political conflicts and directing (within limits) the metaplot.

The result of one succession war was decided by the barons. (One of the GMs of the barony game was an employee of my game store.)

• Semi-official TDE LARPing going on, with political councils or similar events that feed back into the metaplot (I believe there are now players that don't play the p&p game anymore but are still active in the LARP version)

For TDE GMs there was never the lure to design their own settings because it was relatively easy to become part of the official writing team, getting published (via the newspaper first) and adding official content to the setting.

That's the reason why there is no Old School Renaissance concerning TDE1. TDE players are not playing the system - they play the setting. For some of them it doesn't even matter what the current edition is. There is no edition war despite the fact that 2e and 4.1 are radically different. (I'm not even counting 1e which would be the White Box equivalent, the not-canon-anymore version of Aventuria.)

And now imagine the real TSR trying to break into the market against that kind of game, and competition. With their "control freak" behavior and "we are the world leader in RPGs" attitude.
I wonder if TSR ever understood what they were up against, and why D&D failed for so long in the German market. (It was WotC with their MtG-learned understanding of international distribution that led AD&D2 and 3e to success in Germany.)

Two further comments:

1. The survey linked above. It is true that DSA-gamers own significantly less rpg-books and have less rpg-experience than non-DSA-gamers (http://rollenspielstatistiker.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/dsaler-unerfahren/).
As DSA is the standard starting point into the hobby in Germany, DSA-players obviously have less experience and fewer rpg-books on average. The mentioned data supports nothing beyond that supposition - and nobody ever questioned that.

2. Most people in this thread don´t seem to know (m)any DSA-publications from the last couple of years. Such a statement, for example, is simply incorrect and outdated:

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;607185There are virtually no sandbox details in DSA modules. Worse (and that is my personal criticism of DSA, not the metaplot or railroad per se), the introduction of each module lists a slew of other publications that a GM needs to cross-reference; from the regional source book the module is set in, to other modules that have events that lead up to the current situation, to other modules that feature a major NPC, to magazine articles or even novels that have background info, some of that not even in print anymore!
You have to have a master degree in Aventurica to use those modules

The current DSA-publisher opened itself to various gaming interests. Sure, the old fashioned stuff is still being published: "Donner & Sturm" for example is one huge railroading-manifesto, metaplot-wank, and Mary-Sue-parade. There are entire sourcebooks purely appealing to the "detail-oriented" setting-fans, e.g. various books full of liturgies for the major gods of the setting (no rules, just the prayers, mind you), descriptions of magic universities (likewise, no rules, just descriptions) or one particularly far-off publication on trade and commerce within the setting including various pages on cultivating potatoes.

Nevertheless, there are many new DSA-resources who would most likely also appeal to the favorite flavors of the rpgsite´s usual members:
"Gareth", for example, is a brand new, huge sandbox covering the capital city of the setting sporting many reverences to the Havena boxed set mentioned above. There are no reviews available yet, but I expect a very positive resonance. You do not need to have any background info to play with it. A recent campaign series, "Splitterdämmerung", features many very open parts in its first two available chapters and was critically acclaimed by the community. One of those, "Bahamuths Ruf", has many sandboxy elements and builds on an older module with a sandbox touch ("Blutige See"). You will need some background info to play anything from "Splitterdämmerung", though. Another interesting newcomer is "Rabenblut", a political campaign in the slavepit-city of the setting, Al´Anfa. The campaign is very open, too, and I would see it easily at eye level with a classic like "Power Behind The Throne" in terms of its quality. You won´t need a lot of setting knowledge to play that campaign.

Summing up, there are various publications which obviously escaped the notice of the gathered audience. In my opinion, it would be wiser to constructively support and actively welcome those new tendencies rather than to bash DSA based on (supposedly) outdated information. Things ARE changing.

tafkakb's observations are correct. DSA has relatively more inexperienced and casual players than most other RPGs, because of it's greater market penetration and Ulisses is shaking things up a bit, but they were never as bleak as some people here make it sound.

DSA's great boon, which is also it's greatest flaw, is that it has always tried to find a common ground for as many gamers a possible. They cater to players who want straightforward adventuring modules, to those who simply like to watch Aventuria change and evolve (or just read about their favourite NPC), to setting nerds and customers who just want to spend a nice evening with their friends playing DSA.

To keep the metaplot enthusiasts happy, the adventures with impact on the gaming world always have scripted endings, which also works well for casual GMs and casual gamers who can follow a plot. Unfortunately these modules tend to be the more prestigious ones, because of the greater sales potential they receive more resources and as a result more publicity.
There have always been mediocre to good DSA adventures playable without much knowledge of Aventuria and the need for railroading. Modules equivalent to those published by TSR, FASA and many other companies.  It's just that these aren't the controversial items the internet loves to argue about.

Quote from: tafkakb;610839It is true that DSA-gamers own significantly less rpg-books and have less rpg-experience than non-DSA-gamers.
As DSA is the standard starting point into the hobby in Germany, DSA-players obviously have less experience and fewer rpg-books on average. The mentioned data supports nothing beyond that supposition - and nobody ever questioned that.

But it is enforced by the Aventuria focus of DSA. If a publisher ties his customers to the product the way DSA did there is even less enticement for DSA players to look into other systems. It's a bit like turning Warhammer Fantasy Battle into "The Games Workshop Hobby".

But it also the nature of the market leader. The same I encountered in the States when talking to AD&D players. If you play the market leading brand and have a hard time following up on the releases of one game alone there's no time and money (and reason...) to try competing brands.

QuoteMost people in this thread don´t seem to know (m)any DSA-publications from the last couple of years. (...)
The current DSA-publisher opened itself to various gaming interests. (...)
Summing up, there are various publications which obviously escaped the notice of the gathered audience.

This is also true. My information on DSA products is out-dated. When I still owned my game store I had the privilege to be able to see and sample any release that was arriving at my store. I miss that very much.

It's no wonder that DSA changes, with a new crew at its helm. I expected that.

It's the biggest irony that the current DSA publisher has inherited both Das Schwarze Auge and Dungeons & Dragons (in the guise of Pathfinder). The current publishing manager is Mario Truant who is a known D&D fan. He was very active in the publication of multisystem modules (of which I wrote more (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=329513) on this board before (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=329600)) with a focus on AD&D. I'd hazard the guess that his personal outlook on RPGs is very, very Old School (capital O and S).
(Actually, this is something that I was missing in the whole discussion when Ulisses let go the original editorial team - a public outcry by DSA fans that their game and setting was being "usurped" by D&D.)

QuoteIn my opinion, it would be wiser to constructively support and actively welcome those new tendencies rather than to bash DSA based on (supposedly) outdated information. Things ARE changing.

In part you are right.

But that this thread only had negative portrayals and experiences of DSA is understandable. Players that are deeply into DSA and Aventuria (and thus happy with the game as it is) don't feel the need to try other games (and foreign games, to boot) and talk about them on theRPGsite.
The chances are much higher to find players who are dissatisfied with DSA around here.

And still, in the context of the OP question all answers were and are still valid, Nebelherr's as well as Settembrini's, because they stated their experiences with DSA and Aventuria.
As are your and Roland's statement that things are changing.

But for these changes to have any impact on the way DSA is played and viewed we need a few more years, a fifth edition, and an influx of players that is not raised on "Auf ein Wort".



Btw, welcome on this board, Roland!

(Are you Sphärenmeister?)

Man, what a dark strange trip this has been into the seedy underbelly of the central european RPG scene.\

I betcha the Poles aren't into any of this bullshit.  At least, I want to believe my countrymen are into some serious hack-and-slash dark fantasy stuff.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;611226Man, what a dark strange trip this has been into the seedy underbelly of the central european RPG scene.\

I betcha the Poles aren't into any of this bullshit.  At least, I want to believe my countrymen are into some serious hack-and-slash dark fantasy stuff.

RPGPundit

Poles would be 1E WHFR all the way!

Quote from: Fiasco;611363Poles would be 1E WHFR all the way!

I can confirm this, although they also seem to show an unhealthy interest in historical minutiae in their gaming.

Quote from: Melan;611387I can confirm this, although they also seem to show an unhealthy interest in historical minutiae in their gaming.

So that's where I get it from!!

RPGPundit

I've been reading through this thread with much interest and I wanted to bring up some news on TDE, which is in it's Beta-Phase for the 5th Edition right now.

They are trying to streamline the rules, making them simpler, going for more balance and a completely free character creation system.

Many fans however dislike those changes and see their system becoming "soulless" and fear lots of retcons.

It seems "The Dark Eye" will soon start it's Edition Wars.

____________________________________________________________

About Me: I really like TDE, though I still tend to play more 3.PF. However I have to admit the flaws pointed out in this thread are mostly true(Many Railroaded Modules, Mary Suish NPCs, many groups are slaves to the metaplot etc.).

A few points are missing however:
-There are lots of readers, who don't play at all among TDE fans. Guys, who once played in their teen lost contact to their groups/don't have time anymore, keep buying the books and read them for entertainment and to keep up with the metaplot.

-TDE-players complain about railroaded adventures all the time in the forums. (They keep buying them though to keep up with the metaplot.)

-The original Ulrich Kiesow-DSA Modules having some nice humor was already mentioned. The problem occurs when those gag NPCs stay part of the canon for 35 years and everyone slowly forgets what was supposed to be taken humorously.

Here is the translation of the basic rules of the 1st edition of DSA, for the curious: http://www.apolitical.info/webgame/eye/

Quote from: Fiasco;611363Poles would be 1E WHFR all the way!

I remember that Warhammer 1st had a Polish version, and that it was quite popular over there, at least in 2000-2002.

The differences between TDE and early D&D, by reading upon both their histories, through extensive play and quotes of their authors can be boiled down to this:

Early D&D:
(http://a5.files.biography.com/image/upload/c_fill,g_face,h_300,q_80,w_300/MTE5NTU2MzE2MzM3NTcxMzM5.jpg)

TDE:
(http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130804075906/epicrapbattlesofhistory/images/2/25/Jstalin.jpg)

Why aren't you comparing early D&D to early TDE?

Quote from: MatteoN;787760Why aren't you comparing early D&D to early TDE?

Because Early TDE has sadly almost completely vanished from the scene (unlike Early D&D and its simulacra) and is usually frowned upon by "serious" TDE players for its simplicity/non-realism and "stupid" dungeon adventures.

TDE -- from its 2nd edition on (early 90ies) -- was basically becoming what it is today anyway. And the 1st edition, while still a viable alternative to early D&D in my eyes, already had a lot of the cringeworthy GM advice of the later editions. Also the system had not deviated from its spiritual ancestors (D&D, T&T, RQ) so much at that point in time.

EDIT: Let it also be known, that the heyday of TDE was in the late 90ies to early 2000s. Shadowrun and Pathfinder (of all games!) give TDE a serious run for its money these days.

Furthermore I will get back to the Pundit's question about the Austrian scene, of which I have special knowledge. There are some, if subtle, differences to the Germans.

As I've already written, only 1st edition was translated into Italian, and is still quite fondly remembered by grognards like me.

BTW, how popular is Dungeonslayers in German-speaking countries? It seems a very fun old-school inspired RPG.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;787761EDIT: Let it also be known, that the heyday of TDE was in the late 90ies to early 2000s.

I would very strongly disagree. The heyday was 1984-1997, while it was published by Schmidt Spiele and had a distribution network including toy stores and department stores, which has since been undreamed of in German-speaking countries.

After Schmidt Spiele's bankruptcy in 1997 and the change to Fanpro (which could only distribute over the hobby store network), sales and player numbers took a nosedive.

Quote from: MatteoN;787762BTW, how popular is Dungeonslayers in German-speaking countries? It seems a very fun old-school inspired RPG.

It's mostly an internet thing (although one of the more talked about internet things).
I have yet to witness a Dungeonslayers game in the wild.

early d&d and tde have a strong connection. there probably would be no tde today if tsr hadn't been too greedy with licensing fees. schmidt spiele originally wanted to publish d&d in german, but the deal fell through. so they turned to ulrich kiesow, werner fuchs and joachim alpers, who had done translating work for d&d before (and also t&t, if i am not mistaken), to create a new system from scratch. they turned their homebrew-system into what became tde.

while the current rules are widely regarded as terrible the world that was created in 30 years is what keeps most players from turning elsewhere. i can attest to that, i play in 2 different campaign atm. :o

early d&d and early tde share many similarities and i think old school gamers could find a lot to like in early tde (while later editions would most likely give them a brain aneurysm).

Quote from: Skyrock;787769I would very strongly disagree. The heyday was 1984-1997, while it was published by Schmidt Spiele and had a distribution network including toy stores and department stores, which has since been undreamed of in German-speaking countries.

This is a widely held belief, but has it ever actually been backed up by numbers? I know the crappy boardgames were really popular in the early 90ies.

The game was available in the same stores even after Schmidt Spiele. It is only in the 2000s that the game slowly started to be seen exclusively in hobby stores.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;787803This is a widely held belief, but has it ever actually been backed up by numbers?
The game was available in the same stores even after Schmidt Spiele. It is only in the 2000s that the game slowly started to be seen exclusively in hobby stores.

Maybe that is one of those cases where Austria and Germany differed as well?

Losing the Schmidt distribution was a severe blow to DSA/TDE.
FanPro tried to find another road into mainstream department and toy store chains, via card game and dice distributor King Cards (who even had delusions of a German Gen Con...) but that partnership didn't last. And a few years later the license went from FanPro to Ulisses.

Quote from: Settembrini;607439Pondering the question of a structural rules-element that had WIDE repercussions:

In the explanation of what RPGs actually are and how they worked, DSA HAMMERED it into Germans that: "What you say is what you get". or directly translated "Said->Done!".

This means, than whatever the player says, is the action of the character, no backsies or discussions. Discussions and questions about a scene or situation are portrayed as bad roleplaying or even really, really against the basic rule of RPGs "Said->Done [Gesagt-Getan!]"* and to be avoided.
Think about that for a while.

*like the chess rule! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch-move_rule

I always sat on my hands when playing chess to avoid this. This sounds like a really, really bad rule. This game is actually popular in the lowlands as well. I never quite got that. It's pretty run of the mill fantasy.

Quote from: RPGPundit;605156Jesus fucking christ.  Its like an entire country decided to run a WW-style game and didn't realize that all that hype about it being a "storytelling game" was just bullshit.

RPGPundit

Funny thing is that WW games are actually a lot better to be played as political sandboxes with all those faction running around. A lot of people do actually sandbox them. The rules don't support storytelling that much either. At least Fate supports that kind of play. WoD rules are pretty conventional.

I did play some railroaded prefab adventures from WW called SAS. While they were not terribly fun to GM, it was pretty linear and at the same time not very cohesive. At least all problems had multiple ways to solve them. And you could skip certain parts of the story or switch them around chronologically.

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 (http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Orc#Encyclopedia_entry) in (http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Ogre#Encyclopedia_entry) 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.

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