The Dark Eye: A Humble RPG Overview and Review (Germany's D&D beating RPG!)

[@mcsquared4319]

The Dark Eye has the best rules for a fantasy setting: Includes a great character customization with the right choices of skills and abilities and having just the perfect amount of depth. The level of complexity is between D&D and GURPS and it is not overly complex in anyway. My only complaint is that any close combat weapon "attack" rating is based on the "courage" attribute alone, I would have average it with "agility" instead. What is missing now is a good magic book to allow more generic forms of magic with more details and spells. With the Dark Eye, you can choose a profession or just tailor completely your character from A to Z...

[@dasaggropop1244]

i prefer the 3rd edition over the later ones (which unfortunately didnt come out in english i guess ). its less streamlined, more customizable even. and attack skill was determined by strength, agility and courage. so you could have a cowardly character, who still gets decent combat skills because of its agility for example.

[@Nikioko]

It is best known to have a description of every piss pot and every milk can in the world. Unlike D&D frontier settings, the whole world is well known to players and characters.

[@moloids]

In German you would pronounce it Das SchwarzE AugE. "e"s in the end of a word are not silent (and also sound more like an English "a").

[@snapshot79]

There is two Core Books: The Almanach Covers the world very generally. Then there is the Regional Descriptions which cover the regions in full detail. There will be around 20 of those, each around 200 pages

[@Nikioko]

The game is know to have a description of every milk can in the world. About 20 regional source books seems to be about the right number. I had the region boxes of the third edition and those were about a dozen already.

[@gerdforster883]

The dark eyes were basically retconned in to explain the name of the game. The guys who wrote the original edition wanted to call it Aventuria, but the marketing department of their publisher thought that to be a boring name and came up with the name The Dark Eye and told them to put something of that name into the setting.

[@Drudenfusz]

In Germany it is the 5th edition, and yes the previous edition that got translated into English was the 4th Edition. I think there had been a French version of the game around second edition of the German version, which is why many francophone people had discovered the game much earlier then the anglophone world.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

Drudenfusz thanks for the clarification

[@Drudenfusz]

You are wellcome, and yes, you are otherwise correct in the video about the black eye / blue eye thing in German. Oh, and regarding the Death Squirrel, I have never encountered it in any game, guess no GM ever thought they would like to use it. Also, on the metaplot, yes it can be a little much, but barely any GM really takes everything into account, most people make the setting their own, especially since the development team has changed over the years which lead to various preferences and thus not everybody plays it the same way. I personally like the cover art of many of the older books done by Uğurcan Yüce, which shaped my imagination about the setting, or the ideas the first lead designer Ulrich Kiesow brought to the game world. But regions like Andergast and Nostria (I hope their names are in the English version the same) have been deliberately vague in metaplot concerns to give new players freedom to do their whatever they like without the feeling they could break the game world, so don't be afraid and simply jump into a game using those to backwater kingdoms. If you have other question, just ask, but like I said, my views on the game are coloured by my own history with it and my preferences.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

Drudenfusz thanks very much! And thank you for then reassurance about the metaplot

[@kenninast]

Don't forget the Dutch and Italian versions! :)

[@hadeseye2297]

Nice collection of Masquerade you gathered there.

[@JimBlock999]

5:00 : Yep, correct - "blaues Auge" = "blue eye" = black eye, "Das Schwarze Auge" = "The Black Eye" = TDE

[@GrandLodin]

You should really have a look at the Almach, since it is available in english by now. The lore of TDA is really really rich. Just to give you an idea: there is a wikipedia (wiki-aventurica.de) about the game that has 62.787 entries about persons, monsters, artefakts, geography, history and so on. Unfortunetly, all in german. I looked at the german version of the Almanach and found it rather superficial, even though it has more than 260 pages. But that's due to the fact that the lore is so vast and am playing the game for more than 20 years. There are so many details about Aventuria that a GM has sometimes difficulty to find an "empty spot" in the world to place his/her scenario in it, because it has been described somewhere before and some of your ideas might get in conflict with what was written before. But who cares, just change whatever you and your groups desires.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

+Lodenkopf thanks for the advice - I do intend to pick up the almanac at some point but the rich, dense metaplot does look intimidating!

[@Nikioko]

@@YourHumbleGameMaster You have 40 years of lore and progressive metaplot. Originally, one year covered two years in Aventuria. At some point in the 90s they switched that to 1:1 as there is so much going on. There is even a newspaper that is issued 4 times a year and drives the metaplot. And there are source books of the different regions (about 20) of the continent with descriptions of every town, including the name and the age of the local blacksmith etc. Stuff you normally find in adventure books for the town in which the adventure is set. But don't worry, in Germany you might meet some dogmatic players that say: "But in Thorwal there isn't a temple of Rondra". It's unlikely that this will happen in the US, and you can discover the whole world and its history at your own pace.

[@misomiso8228]

This was great interesting. It's very difficult to get a grounding on this game as there is such little content on it on yt compared to DnD and Warhammer. Would be great for more world details! ty

[@dasaggropop1244]

i am the fightiest fighter in all the land i like to press wild flowers

[@lorenzodelgaudio]

In Italy the title is "Uno sguardo nel buio"; It's more like "A glance in the dark".

[@Nikioko]

Didn't know that there is an Edizione Italiana.

[@doomedone1637]

I always appreciate when a game is designed to allow different power levels of play. 'Real' people have always been more interesting to me than the 'chosen one' cliche. The sample character profiles area great way to suggest what the people of the world could be like. Where the Dark eye starts to lose my interest is in its complex rule system.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

Doom Guard thank you for your comment. The system does look a bit unusual what with rolling three dice under a score but it also intrigues me. Of course I won't know til I give it a go.

[@doomedone1637]

Right. I imagine if I had a competent GM to run it for me, I wouldn't pass up a chance to give it a whirl from the player's chair.

[@sarg0nagel]

you realy get used to the 3 dice system. We usualy roll all 3 at once, and use different colour dice to spereate them. After a while you become pretty quick in it :)

[@darephish2413]

we just do left to right/ up to down to determine the sequence. And it is kind of interesting to see where you failed a challenge. Did you lack strength, agility or bravery to do the climb? Are you stuck up there exhaustet, did you slip or are you afraid, the options to help you are different in every case

[@darephish2413]

If you are interested to join the official forum, i am offering my TDE experience (15+years now) for a online session or two, depends how many people want to join etc.

[@Nikioko]

The funny thing is that the original title of the game was Aventuria, but the first publisher renamed it The Dark Eye to make it catchier. The Dark Eyes were only later introduced into the canon. And the history of the game is quite funny. In 1984, the original publisher, a big German games publisher, wanted the authors to translate D&D into German, but Wizards of the Coast wanted too much royalties. So the publisher urged the authors to come up with an alterternative, and by coincidence they were working on their own roleplaying system by that time. So, instead of Dungeons and Dragons, The Dark Eye became the most popular roleplaying system in the German speaking world and by far still is.

[@saschaschulz3849]

As Play how comes to RPGs throu "Das schwarze Auge" its fantastic to see that "Avendturien" go around the World. One of the best Worlds out there.. in my opinion. And jeah a injured eye is a blue eye in German.. The System is one of the detailed one in all P&P. The Character making is superb.. My olny complain would be the fighting is sometimes to complex

[@Lancastrianer]

german player here, just dound your video and you presented the game quite good. The grounded and consistent world (with a decade long metaplot) are what makes this game so great. even if not everyone is as deep into the story as we are in our rounds, the possibility to be part of a living world is such a great feat. Thats why i read everything i get on the game. As a german i have the luxury to be able to read about 30 years or products that describe in the last 50 years (thats when the game started) and of course the history of the world (around 100.000 years of history and different races that ruled an era). if you ever need help with background or history, just ask :) im pretty sure i can answer your questions (with quotes) or at least know where too read it up :D in the forum of ulisses usa im named Lancaster91 :) - tl;dr good video, good summary.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

+Lancastrianer thank you for your kind words, I certainly shall take you up on that offer if I have any questions

[@drsnova7313]

I think not pushing out those lore books quicker will really be a detriment to the acceptance of TDE. The thick lore/meta-plot/fluff of Aventuria is really one of the key positive features of the game. In Germany, each region (I believe around 15 or so?) has a lore book of around 200 pages. And while you sometimes have to work around things in your playing area not being convenient - at time X, this city belongs to Y, and Z has already died - it is also amazingly easy to create your own adventures with all that material.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

I have the warring Kingdoms but would definitely like more

[@zephyrstrife4668]

One of the things I've noticed is that it kinda seems to be relying a tiny bit on grabbing the bestiary and Aventuria Almanac to get a full picture of the world. I am likely just going to be doing a homebrew game myself... Since I'm not sure if I'd change the world itself... though the idea of the world changing outside the players' purview is kinda cool.

[@TheRubsi]

IIRC the German name was literally just chosen because it sounded mysterious and cool. (Das schwarze Auge in German sounds a bit cooler than the dark eye in English, at least to me). I believe the actual dark eyes in the world were only invented later to give context to the name.

[@kenninast]

Playing this since about 1990 and I tried all kinds of other RPG's. I cannot even begin to sum them up. Warhammer RP, DnD, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Old World of Darkness, Marvel RPG, Everway and so on. I'm definitely forgetting a lot of games. I don't play any of them any more, only TDE. To me, it's the perfect game!

[@adamant6166]

I also tested a lot of RPG and I detest DSA (TDE), although I only know the 4e rules. It is an attrocious set of rules, which appear designed to be played in a PC game (I mean that the rules are way to complex and overcomplicated). This hinders most GMs to improvise and create a fun experience. Instead, they are stickler for rules and if a situation is not covered by rules (rarely the case, though), they are at a loss. This was my experience with ALL DSA GMs (around 10) so far. In addition, performing tests (especially in combat) takes awefully long. I like the setting, though. But from a game design perspective, DSA is not well done.

[@Nikioko]

Warhammer Fantasy is really nice and gritty. And D&D 5e is very catchy. I don't play The Dark Eye anymore for about 20 years because it is overregulated, the rules are suboptimal and there are obsesed players that are very dogmatic with the canon. Splittermond is a system that is made by former DSA authors that removed many of the flaws like rolling on three attributed with three dice or the never ending attack/parry system.

[@Nikioko]

@@adamant6166 That's the development of the system. Editions 1-3 were level based rather than a buying system and with predefined archetypes. So it was a lot more like Warhammer RP or D&D and less like GURPS.

[@JdrD30]

Played a lot of 4th ed. 5th ed Dark Eye seems interesting tough.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

JdrD30 it is a different beast but it shares some of the same fantasy elements

[@JdrD30]

Dark Eye 4th ed is very rules heavy (did a review on my channel). We watered it down a lot in game. My gm for Dark Eye, got this 5th edition in German when it came out but prefered to stay with 4th ed. In 4th ed, characters are more down to earth from his point of view. Get heroic is harder. And I can tell that it is.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

JdrD30 cool - I will check out your video for research sake

[@croec]

Great Video! Nice overview.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

croec thank you

[@MoonMoverGaming]

One of my big disappointments with this game is that they maybe translated too much into English. Like, a lot of the place names are more cool and exotic sounding in German.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

Moon Mover I know what you mean- it would have been nice to see some of the original German names

[@yurihageshi8008]

@@YourHumbleGameMaster well the material is easily accessible in German and nothing wrong with modifying the rules

[@gerdforster883]

Be thankful they did not leave the terribly lame puns in!

[@noneofyourbusiness3288]

In our current campaign one of your players is a baker. He bakes bread.

[@SteveAkaDarktimes]

does it grant bonuses to the rest of the party? does the smell of fresh loaves grant to diplomacy? is he proficient in dough-based weaponry?

[@stephandorner8811]

The Aventuria Almanac is there - it has a lot of the fundamental details about the world: www.amazon.com/Dark-Eye-Aventuria-Almanac/dp/3957523273/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504042964 I'm playing The Dark Eye (or DSA as we say in Germany) since the middle of the 90s and I think you outlined a lot of what makes TDE special very good even with the thin information you are given with only this basic rule book. Will you do a review of the Almanac?

[@kimiOfDieLinke]

The name of game was made up by marketing but stayed with the game until today :) The original name would have been Aventuria, which is the name of the continent most of the game plays on, but the original publisher of the game had it changed. I think for English players you kind of end up in the same position like a German playing D&D. We have the D&D mainbooks over here but it is so much easier to get "Dark Eye" stuff in Germany than D&D. What I like about the dark eye the most is the world. For world info you need the second book, called the Almanach. The basic rules essentially consists of both books. I have the similar issue with D&D 5 in Germany. The core books have so little detail about the world(s).

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

Thank you, it's always interesting how the name of product takes shape. I do own the Almanac and a few other books, but it always feels I need more to run the game. I really loved the Warring Kingdoms book, and would love to see more regional books like it.

[@kimiOfDieLinke]

@@YourHumbleGameMaster I think I know what you mean. There is much detail in the Almanach but so much more in the Region Book that you almost feel "just teased" by the Almanach. And for sure the company also wants you to buy additional books, a policy also in Germany not everyone is very pleased with. However in my group we only use the basic rules (Core Book +Almanach) and it makes a lot of fun and you can actually play a lot with that.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

@@kimiOfDieLinke I may very well have to give that a go. I picked up a few adventures too to absorb as much information as I can

[@kimiOfDieLinke]

@@YourHumbleGameMaster If you are going to play it, I recommend using a software called Optolith (English version is available on drive-through rpg for free). It makes character creation so easy. I can highly recommend that.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

@@kimiOfDieLinke I'll certainly check that out, thank you

[@sidian4257]

I like some of the changes done in the 5th edition, but overall, it totally lacks in variety. I can't even recreate my TDE 4.1 characters in TDE 5 because too many races, professions, spell traditions and even spells are missing. For example, orcs are playable in TDE 4.1, as well as goblins and reptile people called achaz, all with unique professions, cultures and magic. Shamans, druids, special dwarfen mages (can't translate their profession name) and magical alchemists are professions with unique magical artifacts (bone club, obsidian dagger, ring of life, silver alchemist bowl), artifact rituals and spell traditions in TDE 4.1. The spell system was also simplified in a way i don't like; in TDE 4, you can modify spells on-the-fly. There is no need to create new versions of a spell. Modifying a spell just increases or decreases the difficulty (depending on the modification, e.g. you can double the cast time to make it easier to cast, or you can half the cast time, but that makes the spell more difficult). As far as i know, most players stick with TDE 4.1 until Ulisses released enough addons to bring back the variety of spells, races and classes of TDE 4.1 to TDE 5.

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

Sidian42 thank you for your comment - I may have to look into some of these earlier editions...

[@narzoggash]

@@YourHumbleGameMaster consider, that the 4th edition had almost 15 years to grow.

[@TheRozenKnight]

i prefer the 4th Edition.Im open for all question you may have :)

[@YourHumbleGameMaster]

TheRozenKnight thank you - as a Dark Eye Virgin 5th is all I know, though I'm waiting on the almanac before really giving it a go

[@nabun111]

Thanks for this video. It is very compley, but its very immersiv and fells realistic. Please guys, give it a try :)

[@thorinbane]

Mechanics are actually really good, but again D&D monster kills another IP. There would be far more games thriving if D&D had died like it was suppose to at 4E. Pathfinder 2E is another rendition of that horrid system by Logan Bonner. AND yet is likley the 3rd best selling game. But if you go look at people who have played some a lot of PF2 (and not cody) the math is so tight it breaks the game. You have to use all the mechanics RAW or it breaks super easy. The Dark Eye feels a lot looser, not freeform by any means, but easier to homebrew within the aventuria setting. Char creation is more like Rolemaster or Runequest. Lots of skills and buying advantages and disadvantages. With a little thought the profession can be modified fairly easily.

[@jonathansoko1085]

Lets all be real, this system is trash. If people like it thats fine, but its pretty trash

[@langweiligesprofil4926]

This Game Has a terrible overexplained setting and awkwardly overcomplicated rules. Nothing to explore and nothing to surprise you.

[@kenninast]

I couldn't disagree more!