How to Create an Adventure for The Dark Eye (Das Schwarze Auge)

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

Thanks for watching! Get an amazing discount on The Dark Eye here: www.ulisses-us.com/greatgm/

[@TheL4W]

Hello Guy, sorry to correct you again, but INT is intuition, not intelligence. *crouches to not get hit*

[@MrGucky2010]

The page you are looking for is not found. :-(

[@Frederic_S]

It is a very good system and it is a very interesting world to play in. As a GM that gm‘ed the dark eye for over 20 years I want to say: don’t feel intimidated. You can make this world your own. There is no right or wrong, as long as you and your players have fun.

[@RPGmodsFan]

Seems The Dark Eye has some pretty artwork in it.

[@tsandman]

It has... every books have very good artwork and it's consistent all the way through

[@karllehne8441]

The great upgrade from v4.1 to v5.

[@hanfmeier]

There really is some very nice artwork in this edition. I did note however that some of the images were censored for the English release - for example, the artwork of female and male Elves, Humans and Dwarves next to each other in the Core Rules: In the German version, both females and males are topless, whereas in the English version, females wear a piece of cloth around their breasts. Probably because depictions of non-sexualized nudity are not as unproblematic in the US as they are in Germany?

[@RPGmodsFan]

@@hanfmeier First off, sorry for the Rant. When it comes to Video Games, that is my biggest complaint. Why is to OK to portray horrible, graphic, bloody violence, but it is not for sexual scenes? I am OK with my kids seeing sexual scenes as the ones portrayed on late night German TV, but I am against the horrific gore and violence in Video Games. What is the US trying to do? Make it people desensitized to gore and violence (i.e. to boost Murder HoBos in its Military?). What would be interesting is to let Players decide the level of Violence Vs. Sexuality on a sliding scale. Where one end of the slide is extreme violence, blood, guts and gore, BUT cartoonish Sexuality scenes. Where as on the other end is cartoonish violence, but more pornographic sexual scenes. Which would you choose (keep in mind there are middle choices as well)? I know which one I would.

[@tsandman]

@@hanfmeier That will change in the revised edition (next printing, incorporating the erratas and some fixes) They also said that Aventurian Intimacies are going to be in the next fews crowdfunding... they're counting on that for some publicity

[@Quadratschaedel]

Great to see DSA made it oversees, hope to see more!

[@12sephiroth]

Man, I hope this one-shot gets streamed, just to see how combat changed during all those years ^^.

[@pascalwittmer-braun6025]

Different to DND you need to parry and maybe some fighters have more then 1 action and one reaction in one turn. Also some of the powerful spells will take more time to work than one or two turns. Fighting styles, special attacks and defences which are unique to your character or your enemy will spice some things up. Everyone could have special abilities which gives him advantages or disadvantages to you. And you can learn them too. But your fighting style is usually very unique and works only in the way you learned it. So spend some xp in these abilities.

[@LambertBehnke]

I really liked this video. I mean sure, there were a couple of beginner mistakes in there, INT is Intuition and not Intelligence and Quality Levels tell you how well you succeed at your task, not whether you succeed. So when crossing beams 1 Quality Level might mean crawling on hand and foot while someone with 3 Quality Levels might nimbly run across it, but those things are minor points that over time would get ironed out playing the game. The reason why I like this video is that it shows how to do a more D&D esque adventure in the Dark Eye. So if you want to run the kind of game where it doesn't matter where the hundred skeletons come from, which god or king this temple is dedicated to and how the PCs found out about it in the first place, then the Dark Eye system can handle that just as gracefully as something steeped deep in the rich lore and history of the setting. This might sound negative or sarcastic, and I do not want it to. I firmly believe there is no wrong way to have fun and I remember the crazy dungeons I created when I started playing the Dark Eye many moons ago, which when you thought about them sensibly made no sense. Who has maintained this elaborate trap for the last few centuries? Why are there different types of monsters living door to door from another and what do they do on days where no adventures come to slay them? Those were all questions I never knew to ask and my players didn't care of them either. So I hope you have a ton of fun with the Dark Eye, to the point that hopefully you manage to find some time for it even when you are not being payed by people :) All the best and thank you for these videos.

[@pascalwittmer-braun6025]

I started with the second edition more than 25 years ago. We build dungeons in the same way some of my friends did for DND. Just keep it simple and let's fight them! It was fun! I was 15 and we moved on and on. The older we get, the more "fantasy-realistic" we wanted it. Fortunately the lore and the rules grew with us so we kept improving our game. We bend our minds to the rules of aventurian living and started to act the behaviours of our characters in a decent way. As we were young, we wanted to become godlike and wanted to battle our enemies in an instant. The further it went, the more boring this overkills became. After a time it was more interesting to feel los and grief than to win every time. That's why we wanted the game more realistic and more simulating than ever. When I now see the german books about the single regions of Aventuria it's like a "homecoming". I have been "there", I imagined this world in his all day life. And now I see the new painted pictures of the places and it still amazes me. Even pictures of craftsmans and farmers doing their all-day business in their very specific clothing in very specific regions can bring you to tears, if you are used to think about such places and such situations. I know these people just from description and mostly black'n'white pictures and now I can distinguish them better than the most people distinguish the "houses of Westeros" on television from each other.

[@hijackdallas6052]

at 16:02 Ragolan is the dwarven language. So every dwarf has here an advantage

[@murgel2006]

Funny, Skill Challenges are not a thing in TDE normally so you made your planning somewhat more complex. Your D&D attitude really shows. Fun for me to see. And explains to me why D&D players sometimes look funnily at me during my trys at DMing... In TDE if you require some skill or other check normally you set a difficulty, that means a modifier for the check. Then have them roll. Say your task of balancing the beams. You define that as a more difficult check because of the deep fall. So you assign a modifier of -2, then let them roll the check(each attribute reduced by 2). Now a success (QL 1) means task done, higher QL means faster, more elegant etc. Failing the check can just mean a stumble and falling onto the beam (another body control check to hold firm) or if the failure is bad (bad numbers or even fumbles) a fall to the spikes. Skill Challenges can be done in TDE by the classic method of requiring a number of successes, regardless of their QL. Or like you defined it by having all players contribute OLs to a pool for a required QL (which I really like and will steal as an idea). I hope you have fun with the adventure.

[@moloids]

Do you know the rules of TDE5?

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

So you say my D&D Shows - then tell me what it should be - then finish by saying you like the idea and will steal it? I think someone when on a journey into the possibilities of drawing from ALL TTRPGs to make a gaming experience better :)

[@michaellehner3339]

@@HowtobeaGreatGM I also agree that the D&D side is strong in you in this video. For lack of better words, i would say, you take the mechanics of the game (and also use them in a bit different way than intended), but you haven't picked up the games philosophy. Explaining what i mean is a bit hard here. What i mean is, you could for example also pick up the system of Shadowrun and play a fantasy campaign on it. It would technically work. Yet due to how mechanics work, it would still be a different gaming experience than doing the very same adventure in D&D. (The mere task "find some bandits in the forest, rescue the merchants abducted daughter" is very generic. But players who mostly play D&D will do many things very different to players who have their roots in Shadowrun. And the same is true if the people would come from Traveler or DSA/TSE. ) I hope you get the rough idea what i try to say. It's not bad what you do, you are picking up another games mechanics and try to make it work for your world. Yet if you want to give full credit to it, i would advise you to try to go another way: check if you can get into a session of this game, run by people who have some experience in it. You'll find that the core design of adventures follows a different mindset. It's not "i want a challenge here and there". The challenges most of the time form naturally by defining the world. (It also very much shows when you look at adventure module, of which DSA/TDE has many. The old ones at many times felt like reworked and transfered D&D modules, more modern onces often are vastly different in design and pacing. ) So your videos up to now were focused on the games mechanics and you did a rather good job there. The spots where you are a bit off are really only a few. Like what Murgel here mentioned above: it's really better to tell people what ability to check and the modifier. (You don't have to prepare the checks as much in advance as you did. Any properly made character sheet lists which attributes are connected to a skill, so the player can directly read off what to roll. ) Success is as long as his skillpoints were enough so he could avoid failing any of the three attribute checks. Any extra points are flourish. Which most players appreciate. :) [Also, forget the "roll dice of several colors at the same time" idea. Several of my groups tried that. All of them returned to the "roll in order" method. In actual use this is much better. The "different colors" thing is here since several editions, my group of players at least is convinced it's merely an attempt to sell colorful dice sets. ] And just like what Murgel said, your approach to a team check actually is interesting. I handle things a bit differently, depending on the situation i might just want "more than half of the players succeed" or " at least three succeed" or something like that. Your idea also is worth testing occiasionally, though, if the situation allows. But anways, i find the review interesting and am looking forward what your playtest results in. But i do believe that for "full coverage" you should also try to spend a few evenings with the game being run by an experienced DSA/TDE gamemaster. It actually plays and feels very different to D&D, even when the setting of the adventure in question is very similar and rather disconnected to the games world. So if you have the interest and can find the time, i would be absolutely curious how you would rate such an experience. :)

[@j6cubic]

@@HowtobeaGreatGM There's more than one way of doing a skill check and cumulative checks where QLs are pooled are a standard TDE mechanic - one that some people never use to the point where they forget it's even a thing. It does have its place, of course. For instance, let's take your "escape the crumbling dungeon" scene: You can offer a simple check like Orienting, assign a modifier and just see if it succeeds or not. ("Everything's shaking, there's dust in the air and there are a few passages you haven't gone down that look just like the one you came from. Check for Orienting at -2 to see if you can find the way back." - "14/15/10. That's a pass if I spend all of my skill pool." - "Okay. After briefly getting confused by the architecture you find the way back.") You could also offer a more complex solution where the players pool QLs, for instance with Feat of Strength. ("There's a hole in the wall but it's too high to get to and the walls are too smooth to climb. However, there's an easily climbable statue nearby that you might be able to push close enough if you work together. You can do Feat of Strength checks, no modifier, and pool your QLs until you've got ten in total.") There's a bit of a philosophical difference between "difficulty is fixed and you have to do *this* well" and "difficulty is matched to the challenge and any success is enough to pass it". Regular TDE skill checks are geared towards the latter approach. Mechanically, I think that the most major difference is that even a character with no points in a skill can pass a skill check if they roll well enough while they can never achieve QL 2 in a non-cumulative check. You can grade success by QL, of course, and especially for knowledge checks on esoteric subjects a low QL can result in information so vague that it's borderline useless. (For instance, a Myths and Legends check on a legend about a sword might reveal anything from "it's a sword from Thorwalian legend" to "Gunna Gunnasdottir used it to cut off the dragon Foodamor's balls 434 years ago and it's cursed so its wielders always stab themselves after a week".) But for situations where it's either pass or fail the "TDE-like" approach is to set the modifiers so that the lowest possible success will have the character overcome the challenge, even if only barely so.

[@murgel2006]

@@HowtobeaGreatGM : Agreed 100% Sorry if I came across as if I meant you did something wrong, that was not my intend. Beides, I have been Looking for good ways to implemnt Skill Challanges in TDE as the System does not have the mechanic and I really like your idea of giving a QL they have to reach instead of only successes.

[@zhufortheimpaler4041]

as a long term tda gm, some things seem a bit off or a bit too D&D here: - dark eyes are in lore extremly powerful items of clairvoyance. each is different and some give a view into the future, some into the past, some into the presend, others into places no mortal soul should witness. these artifacts are fixed into place by the magic that creates them (there are only 2 or 3 less powerful mobile dark eyes and they are accounted for). player characters should never get hold of one of them, as they are more or less the most powerful items in the game. - the whole setting looks very much like a d&d oneshot dungeon crawl, wich is fine, but not really the strongpoint of tde. go for more social play, like finding a pickpocket in a town, who stole something of the group or something like that. -set the setting in mhanadistan, the tulamidyan region around the river mhanadi. the players are part of an archeological dig of the kunchom magic academy (the academy of the dragon egg, specialised in artifact creation, elemental magic and magical analysis) -send the players into a derelict mage mogul tomb to retrieve a special artifact, that is rumored to be a very strong arcane focus and can be used to bind astral beings into the third sphere. - the shifting beam puzzle seems a bit tedious. let them enter the corridor and describe what they see, then ask the players what they want to do. if they move onto the beams, let them roll for body control to stay on and balance, if they want to inspect, let them roll perception etc. if a player has danger instinct and he sets his foot onto the beam, roll for that. add a modifier to the rolls and let the players do their work by describing what they do. alternativly a room with an magic circle in the middle, the linework is filled in with moonsilver, it contains a bound spell, that triggers when entering without a certain item and releases a culminatio. set up the way in like a pharaonic grave site with derelict and defunct mechanical traps etc. -the room of the eye could be set in a heptagramm or 13 pointed star / summuning cirlce, to add some forboding,for those players with relevant skills in theoretic or practical magic. the shade that appears could be a trapped spirit, wich is bound by his own magic, when he created the artifact. the language should not be rogolan, as it is dwarven, but zhayad or ancient tulamidya. (zhayad is an ancient tulamidyan dialect used for demon summonings etc) the spirit pleas to the players in ancient tulamidya, not to touch the artifact, as he sacrificed his live to trap several demons in here, to protect the world from them. (let players who know the language roll a check on it to translate) ( all players may do a check on theoretical magic knowledge, if they have the skill, those with danger sense should be rolled too) - around the rooms walls are sealed canopes, beside the altar in the middle with the artifact lies a crumbling and dried out mummy with a staff ( the staff is wood and has moonsilver inlays in ancient tulamidya and a fist sized crystal ball embedded in its tip). when the players move the artifact in the centre the seals start to break, the spirit is released. - out of the canopes emerge creatures that could be described like ringwraith with glowing eyes and flaming whips and swords one by one. the players need to egress quickly but manage the labyrinthine layout etc during that while escaping from the demons. (heshtot) (let 1 emerge, then every minute another. if the players decide to fight, they will die, unless they are on medium high exp and have blessed weapons. one of the basics in tde is, to know when to fight and when to avoid it.) let them escape without fight, as the demons dematerialise after about 50minutes or avoid the sunlight. the spirit was a mage of the koptahim tradition, a lost mage tradition of ancient tulamidya. if the players take the staff with them but leave the artifact, the spirit asks them to honor his heritage and if they agree he is released. (the staff is a magical tradition artifact of the koptahim and contains magical knowledge of the tradition, acessible for academic magic users if they invest some time learing and studying it) if you want your players to retrace a way in a labyrinth, let them roll on intelligence if they remember or on orientation (its in nature talents). if you want your players to see certain things like dust on the beams etc perception is more adequate then tracking. ropes is more or less bondage and knot knitting try not to go too much into dungeon crawling with tde, as the game is not a dungeon crawler or tabletop rpg, it is a full blown role playing game. it could turn out not very much fun for the players. with beginner characters 2 or 3 skeletons are pretty killy, as you need to consider fear of the dead etc too, the reduced damage for weapons etc.

[@twincast2005]

Yeah, I did mean to mention as well that a Dark Eye and Rogolan struck me as odd choices, but since they don't end up acquiring the former, and I could think of unusual, but not implausible backstory to explain away the latter, I decided to shrug them off.

[@moloids]

You win the award for giving best insight into how the German RPG scene sounds for an international audience! 😅👍

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

I am fully of the opinion that if you want people to learn a new rules system - you focus on the fun aspects, on the cool, on the accessible. You do not focus on the lore. Hint at it for sure. The 2 mobile Dark Eyes are account for? So says your lore. Mine says "One was stolen two weeks ago, and that has been kept hidden from the world for fear of people seeking it out." Don't be trapped by the construction of the lore of the game when trying to show people how the game works. Your passion for the setting is wonderful. And your adventure here sounds super cool. But for a bunch of people who know nothing of this lore, it's sadly going to be wasted.

[@manticore6963]

And HERE we have the reason, why I don't really want to get into TDE, even though I'm german and everyone is telling me how great the system is - if your personal version of the world even slightly deviates from the established lore, people like you write paragraphs over paragraphs how you, the new GM easing new players into the system, should have the lore down to a T. Reminds me of a story from a GM who ran a TDE-session and one player quitting after the session because one of the priests the GM used had the wrong color on his clothes.

[@zhufortheimpaler4041]

@@HowtobeaGreatGM one does not really need to know the lore as a beginner, if the gm does a good setting. tde is more fantastic realism than full blown fantasy pulp, so adventures tend to be more on the realistic side and require not too much of suspense of disbelieve. even tho, there are some really strange and very fantastical adventures, especcially from 4.0 and before. ("the curse of borbarad" is famous for that and cut from the lore, "the tavern of the black boar" and "return to the tavern of the black boar" too, but they are treated more like community jokes) ancient mhanadistan is a mix between several cultures on the arabian peninsula, like assyrians, persians etc plus some more medival arabian injections. set the group up with a young academic mage from the dragons egg academy, an explorer, a rogue character and a mercenary plus something like a craftsman. ancient tulamidya is 1500+ years in the past, so only characters that deliberatly educate themselves on it know something about it or the mage moguls except that they ruled mhanadistan and fucked up badly doing so. you can find tombs and lost palaces all over the region. the group could be part of a larger dig by the academy and after they found an entrance with sigils that declare it as the tomb the whole dig searches, they push on, without wait, to race ahead of the other groups to gain fame and loot. the players dont need to understand the whole lore around it etc, but that it is something like an indiana jones adventure in a fantasy medival world. by the way, the elements of the "adventure" i made are just ripped off from "the cult of the golden masks" (4.1 beginner adventure accompanying the pc game drakensang), "the heritage of the koptahim" and "the mask of the saint" both found in the adventure anthology "graverobbers in mhanadistan" for 4.1

[@baerchenkiller1012]

Nice video as allways. You probably realised this later but remember INT means Intuition not Intelligence, quite a diffrence. I couldnt resist writing this. Also when u have Geography and History its true that they share the same attribute (SGC/SGC/INT) but u have diffrent skillpoints in them so its not irrelevant. The Knowledge skills in general are very similar in their attributes and usually the part where a Guild Mage or other well educated Characters shine. Cant wait for the lets play/stream.

[@philh2841]

Thanks for the video. I have to admit it was very weird to watch and felt like a whole other game. I also felt like there were so many questions unanswered: How did the characters find the "temple"? Who built it and which God is it a temple of? Why did they build such a complicated trap around it? What is this shade and is it benevolent or malevolent? Where do those undead and hundreds of skeletons come from? Are they just popping in out of thin air or are they forming from nearby piles of bones? ... You said you didn't want to have much lore because it's supposed to be a very short one-shot adventure. But shouldn't at least you as a GM have some kind of answer to those questions? Sure, you could make it up on the spot but having thought of the most obvious questions in advance is to me what preparing an adventure is about. Yes, you don't have to (and probably shouldn't) dump all this info on your players but keeping background information at hand can make it much easier to create a consistent environment for players to explore. I know there are many different playstyles and I just felt the need to share the one I'm used to. One more example of how I would interpret your initial idea in a different way: If I wanted to do a "PCs steal a dark eye" adventure I would rather set it in a city and implement it as a "heist" mission where they break into a house (e.g. a Gallery owned by a rich merchant who recently aquired a dark eye) and steal it. To keep the players from "wasting" time in the city I could limit their time (the heist must happen today because security will tighten tomorrow), limit their options in town (in Aventuria, between the years there's a time called the nameless days where everyone who can stays inside their home and businesses are generally closed) or just start in media res when they're about to enter the house. Maybe I'm corrupted by almost exclusively playing TDE but I find those "dungeons" a bit too random. Maybe I should play a DnD-style oneshot once in a while. PS: You used QLs (and not modifiers) to make checks harder to pass which is not what they're for. If a check succeeds it should always be a success (unless it's a competitive check) so every character at least has a chance of success. If you want to make the rules simpler I would rather remove the QL system and keep the modifiers.

[@philh2841]

PPS: Just another thought I want to add because writing the above comment got me thinking about galleries: I like about galleries that you can put lots of cool stuff in them without really having to explain why they're there. A room filled with ancient scrolls, artifacts or broadswords? Sure, no problem. Every room can have a different theme. Last year I played in a game led by Alex Spohr (one of the designers behind TDE) where we had to guard a gallery. He put a T-Rex skeleton in a corner so he could have an enemy animate it during a fight. As soon as the fight started though, my mage rushed to the T-Rex (which was already mentioned as foreshadowing) and animated it himself. I still remember this as a fun and unexpected adventure for everyone involved (except for my mage who was arrested for necromancy afterwards).

[@cacklebarnacle15]

To escape something like this temple Orienting is the way to go. Based on intelligence and intuition players find their way back. There should be optional rules in the skills section concerning switching in related skills if you are either bad in something or simply don't have a skill. You could give your players the option to roll a slightly harder roll in a different skill, i.e. geography or history, given that they vaguely are related by either employing the sense of directions and employing maps or are mostly about remembering things (but then you could just ask for a straight sagacity check). Ropes however..... is about tying people up, making nets, fraying ropes, crafting traps and all the likes of that. If they are chased by something you could employ Constitution checks to see if they can keep up (there might be straight up rules for sprinting in the section where you learn about walking and running speed) and maybe Self Control checks if they are reaching their limits and would rather stop running, just to push through the pain. Still cracking up about you cutting of the literal Dark Eye in the logo though. XD

[@derminneritter7568]

Well, I think you have pointed out many good things about The Dark Eye within your Videos, but again I have to share my opinion, that you didn´t stress out the best about TDE - the world of Aventuria. Even in the adventure you prepared there won´t be a reference to the world itself and how pleasant it is to play there - yes, to be there. The only reference is the The Dark Eye (the ball) itself, but as a hero in Aventuria you normally would not find such a powerful item. It is as rare as meeting a demi-god (and demi-gods are much, much rarer than e. g. in Faerun) Your adventure could be settled in any other fantasy-world (even the monsters you chose could be found in any other fantasy-rpg) None of your players and none of the viewers will have the opportunity to experience the flair, the feeling, the satisfaction of wandering through Aventuria, to meet the creatures of the nordic myths, to feel at home in a medieval-like, rather civilized world. There is no evil behind every next corner. A farmer will mostly be harmless and not an intriguing demon-evocator in disguise. The landlord is not going to stab you at night (as far as you don´t have his daughter or wife or both in your chamber) Being on a journey most of the time will be a nice thing to do. There are legends everywhere, but its not a monster-overcrowded, magically-overpowered place. Allthough it is a one-shot adventure, I would make the players get in touch with the rich history of Aventuria. Make them become a part of it! I would let them experience the european-like half-timber (lattice?) built villages and cities at "the big river" e. g. in the area of Ferdok. And there is so much more that I can´t express, because of my lack of sufficiant vocabulary. Ok, you only have 3 hours to play, but such an experienced GM as you could surely find a way to transport these emotions and the special things that divide Aventuria from other worlds and other settings. Your review of The Dark Eye won´t be complete if you don´t present Aventuria! And don´t get me wrong - I really do appreciate your reviews and all your videos to make the people have even better role-playing-events!

[@murgel2006]

Well, you are an Aventuria fan, aren't you? you like the world very much and I can understand that. However, I think Guy is doing the right thing and leaving Aventuria by the side. The focus is on mechanics here. TDE is a fantastic system and needs the mechanics shown, Aventuria is not relevant to them. And, as guy said, many DMs have their own worlds. For groups who like official adventures, there is more than enough stuff to find for Aventuria. But the System should not be "hold back" by the background. TDE is not Aventuria necessarily, it could also be Al-Quarim or Realms or Spelljammer or Conan. Personally, I play TDE ever since 1984 and have my own version of Aventuria or use another world completely. I don't like official Aventuria very much.

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

Thanks for your input, but perhaps you don't know me very well! When D&D asked me to run games in their worlds, I didn't. I made my own. That's who I am. If the mechanics of TDE don't hold up to a random adventure then the world, as wonderful as it is, won't save it. If the mechanics work for TDE and the game is fun for a random adventure, then the world will only make it so much better.

[@thodan467]

@@murgel2006 No, the system isn´t sword and sorcery and therefore not very useful for conan

[@derminneritter7568]

@@murgel2006 I play Das Schwarze Auge since 1984, too, and I can only say one thing about your comment: I totally disagree with you! The only thing is, that in my group we skipped "Die 7 Gezeichneten" (The 7 Branded?) and " Das Jahr des Feuers" (The Year of Fire?) , because we wanted to keep our wonderful Aventuria as it was before these events... Very often we even do not play within the actual timeline but in the glory years of the good old NPCs like "The King of swords" or Cuano Ui Bennain... I´m absolutely sure that you are a very rare exception, playing TDE but not in Aventuria. There are also parts of the rules that doesn´t make sense without the official setting, especially in terms of magic and gods. And finally I want to stress out again, that a review of TDE can not be complete without presenting Aventuria. Mechanics and rules have never been very important to me concerning role-playing. I´d rather play G.U.R.P.S. in Aventuria than playing TDE without it! And I mean that allthough I´m not a big fan of the TDE4.x and TDE5-rules. We still run the 3rd version, mostly. Why do you call yourself murgel2006? One could guess that you would be only 14 years old and not at least 50 to have played TDE since 1984? Do you have a different name within the TDE-community? I am Mopsendronning...

[@derminneritter7568]

​@@HowtobeaGreatGM Our group plays AD&D2nd, D&D 3.5 and D&D5e as well as Pathfinder1 and Midgard (4 and 5). All of those we normally play in our own worlds of Ayrin, Aelvion, Valanthys, Varngard and Anarion (do you like those names?). Except of the Midgard-system (only Ayrin and Aelvion) we mix the worlds with the systems as we want to. All of those worlds have grown over the last 36 years and even my novel and some short stories have that backround (Anarion). But we never, never, never would play another system in Aventuria. System and worlds must correspond with each other. E. g. it is senseless to run a high fantasy system in a low fantasy world and vice-versa. TDE and Aventuria match each other perfectly. And directly answered to D&D and its worlds. I have the arrogance to say: What is e.g. Faerun compared to Aventuria? Aventuria is much more detailed, much more immersive and Faerun is no place I´d like to call my home. If I were the hero of a miracle like in Alan Dean Foster´s spellsinger-cycle and I (as a real person) were transferred into a fantasy world, I would hope it could be Aventuria.

[@triodoreu5708]

Happy to See someone from overseas playing dsa :-) u hope you and your Players have fun

[@thearcanegearsmith4885]

A very interesting system. You did an excellent job conveying the information. I'll. be trying to make some. more room on my game shelf! :)

[@nathan8219]

Deise ist gut video. Danke für es.

[@twincast2005]

12:15 The reaction to the math skill cracked me up. 16:20 Rogolan is the dwarvish tongue, by the way. 28:55 That triggers the scientist in me. RGB. Red, Green, Blue. Ordered by wavelength. And easy to remember for pretty much everyone thanks to how common the acronym is nowadays. (And yes, that's actually exactly how I'm doing it - and my players.)

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

I still don't get what the spirit can't speak Dwarvish. Is it a forbidden language? Do Dwarves not believe in the Dark Eye?

[@zhufortheimpaler4041]

@@HowtobeaGreatGM dwarves are in general considered non magical and very mundane. only geodes are able to form magic and they are extremly rare and do not form artifacts the dark eyes were made by drakes, high elves and the scaled races like achaz in the past or by some extremly powerful humans in the "present".

[@ChrAndSch]

@@HowtobeaGreatGM He absolutely can be a dwarf, the head of the white guild (think very lawfully good) is in fact a dwarven mage. Name is Saldor Foslarin

[@j6cubic]

@@HowtobeaGreatGM Totally can. Just because Dwarves aren't really associated with Dark Eyes doesn't mean that this spirit can't speak their language, especially if he's multilingual. I mean, you picked a dwarvish, an elvish and a human language. Dude's just covering his bases.

[@twincast2005]

@@HowtobeaGreatGM Not really my point? Every dwarf PC speaking it just makes it an awkward fit for "scary and dark" language. And you did make a note for Isdira being elvish, after all. The go-to for "ancient and terrible" would be Zhayad, the occult language used to summon demons. But to answer your question, it's just that dwarves and magic rarely go together in harmonious ways in Aventuria, especially this kind of magic, but of course nothing stops a spirit from being polyglot.

[@sleazy1drache]

Cool, thanks for sharing your adventure creating process

[@MischkaRPG]

Everythng that is old and bad in TDE is based on the lizzardfolk (called Achaz). Their language is Rssah. Everithing like infernal sculptures which bonds a place to deamons would be avoided by normal adventurers. Don#T get me wrong, I like your ideas. It is a very interresting to see how someone builds an adventure in TDE, who doesn't play it since year and has the typical D&D like mindset. Thank you. Should you find the time, I would be happy to DM a Oneshot for you and your players.

[@pascalwittmer-braun6025]

I hope it will be streamed and you post a note on your channel.

[@MischkaRPG]

@@pascalwittmer-braun6025 Of course it would be ;-)

[@bogaty72]

Have you thought about throwing some of the conditions at the players when they face the shade and the Eye? You get to play with the different conditions and the players get to see how their Toughness and Spirit stats affect their resistance checks.

[@mmelmon]

The background you are using now has a very nice feel. "What should one use for 'mechanics' in certain other popular games?" is a Question Worth Asking. Survival can work in some cases, Tinker Tools, Carpenters Tools, stuff like that in others, but it does feel a bit inadequate. "Engineering" seems like a reasonable skill to have in a role playing game where you trudge around in mines and dungeons that someone obviously had to build.

[@WanderingVtuber]

@ 12:15 Funnily enough i have made a homebrew Mechanics skill because i feel it's one thing that is missing from dnd, kinda something you can find out how certain mechanisms work, like gates, levers, trapes etc without having the matching tool, my players think the same way and so far it has been pretty useful in situations where History, Arcana and the other knowledges dont apply :D Basically i gave it to Rogues, Wizards. Warlocks, Fighter and Artificers aswell as Guild Artisan, Archeologist, (Volstrucker) Agent, City Watch / Investigator, Sage and Sailor instead of one of the skills you could pick by default :D

[@chrisroth7178]

I love your approach of just taking whatever you find in the rule books and make it your own! As a recent D&D-convert who grew up with "The Dark Eye" (or "DSA"), I had to smile when you just picked and chose the languages after their phonetics. The thing is, The Dark Eye's culture isn't only there as an embellishment, it's central. It heavily influences all other things. The boni or mali you get in character creation when you chose a specific culture are based on typical values and occupations in that culture. The languages a character or NPC can speak are based on the history of Aventuria, on the culture and some on class. Some are fantasy equivalents to old latin, some are ethnolects. Some even require specific physiological traits - Asdharia, the old language of the elves, for example, is spoken in two tone pitches! So i found it quite funny how that spectre of yours spoke in Rogolan, the dwarven language, in Isdira, which is modern day elvish, and Tulamidya, which is commonly tied to a specific human culture that's based on ancient arabia. For someone knowing all of that it's a hot mess, but as your players won't, it'll be fine. (Btw, the thick and mushy layer of culture is one of the reasons I quit DSA. It's just too complicated. I don't want to reenact medieval Europe, I want to have a fun time with my players.)

[@maxschluter4591]

Really great video!! it's quite the interesting way of planning an adventure, that I'll try out myself for my next adventure :) As a quick information for you: "Rogolan" is the standard language of dwarves. Not that it wouldn't fit for the shade, because it definitely would. But here's an Idea: If I remember correctly, there is "ancient Rogolan" (maybe it's a different word in english, I only know the german version) and in my opinion, it would make sense, that the shade died a very long time ago, and back then, the "regular" Rogolan wasn't invented yet. There would be similarities in the languages, so maybe someone speaking Rogolan, could probably understand basic ancient Rogolan. Cheers and have fun playing for the first time :)

[@maxschluter4591]

oh and I just read up on Rogolan... funny coincidence: Rogolan and Tulamidya apperantly have some similarities, so it would be "very likely" that the shade speaks both languages, since it's easier to learn a language that is similar to one you already speak.

[@Curathol]

So this is a bit of an oddity for me. I really only know The Dark Eye-adventures or adventures in other systems, where the GM is heavily influenced by the The Dark Eye-mindset. Is there an expectation in other systems, that adventures should only last one session? When I think of a "short" adventure, I think about 12 to 16 hour-adventures. Which is the amount of time, it usally takes to go through one of the shorter published The Dark Eye-adventures. Is this just one more lunacy, I got completely accustomed to?

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

I only have 3 hours to run the game in. A normal game might be take 14 - 16 hours yes.

[@Vizeroy9]

He is making this adventure explicitly as part of a sponsorship from Ulisses and wants to limit the demo to a one session adventure. I'm currently playing a TDE campaign that already lasts more than 3 years.

[@TrajkovRaven]

One session games (also called One-Shots) are great for trying out a new system. A four-hour session is the typical length of a single session, so this is an extra short adventure.

[@moloids]

Ever been to a con?

[@olafmeiner4496]

Sorry Guy, but your players will "break" your first puzzle really quickly. Meaning that they will probably find more creative solutions or ways to sidestep it instead of solving it the way you imagined. The witch will just fly across the chasm on her broom or, failing that, cast Spider Crawl on herself to walk on the walls. The druid will summon an earth elemental to build him a bridge, or an air elemental to carry the party accross. The hedge mage will cast a spell that allows him to jump across. The wizard will create a bridge made of solid light. The craftsmen will attempt to jam the mechanism. The beast tamer will send its monkey or falcon accross to tie the end of the rope. Another wizard might try to desintegrate a section of the wall to dig a tunnel parallel to the chasm. Or they might attempt to simply climb down to the bottom, walk past the spikes and climb up the opposite wall again. Be open to creative solutions. And you better hope that there are no priests in the party. Many priests can create a circle of protection against the undead, which would turn the combat into a one-sided slaughter. On the other hand, if you have a party specialized in social encounters, there will also be one-sided slaughter, just in the other direction...

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

Oh dear. It is I who am sorry. I didn't make it clear how much I care about my plans for the adventure: I don't care what the party does. They want to fly/crawl/morph/dig past the traps - AWESOME! They've engaged with my plan. They want to rebuke the dead and walk past the undead? FANTASTIC! They've engaged with my plan. They want to run in the opposite direction and sell their souls to the Eye instead of stealing it - BRAVO players for being cool. My plan for the adventure is merely a guide for me. Let them bring all their cunning plans and abilities, let them show off how cool they are at thinking outside the box. It makes the game so much better. Never assume your players will do what you expect them too, but if you don't have a plan, how can you know where you are going as a GM?

[@olafmeiner4496]

@@HowtobeaGreatGM This makes a lot more sense. I really wished you had mentioned this in the video. Just from watching this one I got the impression that you prepared "the one and only path", completely ignoring your own advise from a while back when you made the "Players broke my adventure"-video. I should have known better. :D How do you plan to inform your players that the sphere they are going to steal is A REALLY BIG DEAL? Will they get a briefing before the adventure starts? Is there an NPC with them to dispense lore (who is just competent enough to not require constant babysitting)? Will the party find inscriptions or murals along the way? Also, Rogolan is the language of the dwarves and thus pretty common. And modern. One of the dead laguages like Bosperano (a.k.a. not-Latin) or Old-Tulamidia might fit the scene better. Many scholars and wizards still learn those as part of their educaton, so there is a chance they can decifer the warning.

[@karllehne8441]

For those trying to build something similar: tde checks are usually given advantages or disadvanges. Here 1-2 disadvantages on the beam puzzle would be appropiate imho

[@Vizeroy9]

You might want to rephrase that to "modifier" - Advantage and disatvantage mean something similar, but quite different in the D&D world.

[@SolunaVincent]

@@Vizeroy9 well advantage and disadvantage are the correct translations from german.

[@karllehne8441]

@@Vizeroy9 very well. I was trying to make my statement erster to understand for people new to tda, comic from dnd. And modifiers, advanteges and disadvantages are similar enough. Hope to not confuse people.

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

Re. Advantages and Disadvantages - you are all correct. We must be clear in our terminology, and quick to correct if we err. Regarding the 1-2 negative modifier I wanted to reduce the maths for the one-shot, and keep the game moving forward. I might apply that in the game itself. My plans are as immutable as jelly.

[@Vizeroy9]

@@SolunaVincent Yes and no. As a general description of helping, or hindering check: yes. But you modify the actual skill value with this in TDE. in D&D you throw 2D20s either way and just use the higher, or lower number, depending on advantage, or disadvantage. You always have to keep your audience in mind. D&D players will associate this when using advantage and disadvantage as descriptors - but they are also used to modifiers to a throw. So using "modifier" as a descriptor would help more in getting D&D players to understand this "Anti-D&D" system (Anti-D&D, because it is vastly more complex in the checks and skillsets, gets rid of classes and effectively of levels as well, because there is no sudden surge in capabilities with a new level.)

[@Jeremy_Days]

Very nice and straightforward adventure creation process. I do it very differently. Could you point me to a video of yours on the topic of your 5 steps of adventure creation? They sound very much like Johnn Four's 5 Room Dungeon. What do you see as difference to that?

[@axelhopfinger533]

In case you want to actually show off the expansive and detailed world of Aventuria (one of the strongest features of the system) in a coming video, there's a great interactive map at www.avespfade.de/ which is extremely detailed and even allows for the planning of travelling routes. For the lore, you'll probably need a few weeks, if not months of study to get a good understanding though. From the diverse races and cultures alone you could make a whole series of a dozen episodes!

[@derminneritter7568]

I have a very similar approach in prepairing an adventure, but I always add another column in which I notice what song to play during the scene

[@kobaltblueknight]

Are there examples of traps anywhere in the book? We have plenty of poisons and diseases, but I don't remember seeing lists of different kinds of traps. Also, was there a table or something about how to assign appropriate amounts of damage based on level?

[@denzelpanther240]

I continue to get the feeling all of these videos are him skimming through the book for the first time, commenting on or implementing whatever he sees. It does explain the misconceptions. I dont get an impression of preparation at all. Interesting as a first impression, not really as an introduction

[@moloids]

If I was the parody of a German RPG person I would list you 2d4 reasons why you could not run this adventure, referencing paragraphs in different out of print books each published 1d20 years ago. (Okay, just noticed someone actually did this below already. 😁)

[@timokohler6631]

haha as someone who plays TDE I have to disagree, there are like 3d6 Reasons the adventure doesn't work. But in the end it the only thing that matters is having fun.

[@georgeb8976]

With who did you talk to i germany? Curious, as the system is quite old and i might know the person. Would be nice that you mention the names of people involved instead of just stating that you talked to „someone“. Kind of disrespectful i think. You would mention if you talked to Jeremy Crawford when it comes to DnD matters. Just my two cents.

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

I wouldn't. And didn't when I did for my Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign for DnD on their channel. I don't mention names specifically for the reason that I didn't ask them permission to do so, they are not officially sanctioned to talk to me, and the person was doing a favour.

[@georgeb8976]

How to be a Great Game Master Thanks for taking the time to reply! Your answer makes sense, i understand that completely. And thank you for all your excellent videos here, greatly enjoy them.

[@kenninast]

Not meaning to be a jerk or know-it-all by far. I'm genuinely interested: why do you pronounce "bestiary" as "beastiary"? On the topic: I really love your reviews about my favourite game! Well done, yet again!!! :)

[@kenninast]

About the adventure. This is not meant to bully or to say that you're doing it wrong or whatsoever. If you have fun, then you aren't doing anything wrong. That's the VERY first and last rule in role playing. What I'm saying here is either nitpicking rules, or just things that you might try. They are advice. Hints. Tips. Not rules carved in stone. Rules and setting nitpicking: 1. INT is not "Intelligence". Intelligence is called "sagacity". INT stands for INTuition. 2. Neither Geography nor History have anything to do with the skills you need. Orienting is really what you're looking for. Geography really is only: where is that river, what is the capital of yonder province and how do I get to the village of so and so. History on the other hand is literally just that: hmmm... these ruins... GM, what do I know about this region? Do I have an educated guess on the building there once was here? Or "what do I know about this name on this headstone?" Neither has got about to do with memorising what route you have taken to get where you are. 3. A Dark Eye is immovable. The entire reason why this is the case, is shrouded in a thorough amount of arcanosophy that I will not bore you with. But taking it with you is virtually impossible. There are rumours about some transportable Dark Eyes, but they are just rumours. "Normal" Dark Eyes are extremely rare. There are not even 20 of them on the entire continent, all hidden very well. The chance that a player EVER finds one is... zero to nothing. I'm a GM since 1990'ish, and my players maybe encountered a normal Dark Eye maybe... what... two times? 4. The language is Rogolan. R - O - G - O - L - A - N. Not Ragolani. It's dwarvish. And Tulamidya is basically the Aventurian pendant of Arabic. Just FYI. Now, about the adventure as such: While quite likely enjoyable in its own right, the adventure you created is - in all due respect - not a TDE adventure. This is DnD with TDE rules. TDE has left behind dungeon crawling since the early 90's and sent them to the realm of the adventuring games, like Descent, HeroQuest or DnD. My advice: get yourself some official TDE adventures and look at what they are like and how they work. Puzzles - if you even ever encounter them - are nothing like this. There's no traps, no illogical constructions that don't really make sense in a building. TDE is not about "adventuring" as such. It's about story telling in a way broader sense of the word. Social interaction, intrigues, drama... that is what TDE is about. That AND adventuring. You can see that actually reflected in the rules! There is a lot of rules that you will not find in adventuring games. Especially the social skills are quite foretelling about the game that you have here. TDE actually has a lot more in common with games like Call of Cthulu or even World of Darkness, than with DnD. Now, as I said: please do not think this to be criticism. It's not. These points rather are polite suggestions. If you want to know what TDE is REALLY about, then you should be able to play TDE the way it's meant to be played, in order to be able to make up your mind about the game. Or, perhaps, if you want to try it, I'd volunteer to be a GM for a TDE scenario. You can even stream it and/or add it to your series here.

[@marcexner1631]

"I know my players really love to role play." Creates an adventure where they have to roll some skill checks and fight against skeletons. What does that have to do with roleplaying? Or do you mean roll-playing?

[@LambertBehnke]

There is no wrong way to have fun. He probably knows what his players enjoy and maybe that is exactly what they are looking for. The Dark Eye is flexible enough to account for widely differing tastes. :)

[@styrax7280]

the video shows only a part of creating a adventure, namely the one concerning the rules of the system he's presenting. Roleplaying is pretty much independent from the rule system (though The Dark Eyes social skills can blurr the line, depending on play style) so there's no point in showing that part in this video.

[@murgel2006]

Personally, I feel that combat is roleplay. Sure if you do roll -success - roll-success etc. that is not roleplay but That is not how TDE combat is intended. It is intended as a mechanic to implement descriptive combat. " I jump in and try to slice my sword across his abdomen!" "a +4 attack" " HA, I jump to the side and parry with my Main Gauche. Then I try to impale him with the short sword in my main hand." "ok, parry +2 and then attack +2" ... TDE combat can take ages if you just roll dice. The system is built from the ground up with combat being simulative, a real roleplay. This is also the reason why so many TDE players do not like the combat system. (Personally, I think they need to watch more "The three Musketeers" movies etc) And besides that, I really look forward to Guy's playthrough. There will be quite some funny conversations with the Heros. The Saltmarsh I'm, currently watching is really good in that way.

[@thodan467]

were do the PC show their true colours, blathering in a tavern or fighting an abomination?

[@pascalwittmer-braun6025]

@@thodan467 both! Maybe he putted a giant to sleep, because he collected some herbs and brewed a potion. Maybe he lockpicked some doors to flee his jail and afterwards he found a secret weapon or called reinforcement. Maybe he sneaked behind someone and stole his key to safe his comrades. TDE is very simulating, much more than DND ever was. DND is like "Super Mario Brothers" or "Mortal Combat", it still makes a lot of fun. Compared to this TDE is like "elder Scrolls 3". In some adventures, it's even possible to come to success without killing or even fighting someone. You just have to be sneaky or a good dealmaker. It depends on adventure and characters of the players.

[@svenuckermann3196]

Ok as a german .. you did a good AD&D plot ;) But hell DSA normally as a gm for me is grabbing a region .. going to mysteria and arcana and use one of the plot hooks. Most of the adventures etc are more around humans as a oponent. 100s of skeletons ? My players would run and come back with a army of priests ^^

[@derminneritter7568]

Aventuria is so immersive - you will get sucked in. I wouldn´t do much fighting or many skill checks - TDE is the ideal RPG (and especially Aventuria is the ideal world) for storytelling, and I know, Guy, you are a storyteller in the first place...

[@HowtobeaGreatGM]

Sure. Just remember that I have no context for this game other than my other TTRPG experience. So I'll try it as it's written, and see.

[@Lancastrianer]

for everyone wondering about the lore look at this playlist: kzbin.info/www/bejne/o5yUmZyGpZehoqs (dont worry, its english)

[@silkwesir1444]

I love and wonder how you even come up with something _so intense and bizarre,_ and then at the same time seem to think of it as nothing special, calling it merely "interesting"... :D

[@timokohler6631]

He speaks an old an terrible language... proceeds to use the most common languages other then Gartethi (English) :D