The Dark Eye - Gods of Aventuria Interview

thom_likes_gaming · Aug 6, 2020

As someone who played TDE back at it's beginning, I can support what's being said in the interview.
TDE is crunchy, characters feel more like people and less like superheroes (which matches the feel of the world perfectly), and the world is varied, engaging, colorful. It's really a quite fun rp.

Lambert Behnke · Aug 6, 2020

That was a very good interview. I remember this stuff from growing up in Germany many moons ago but having moved to Scotland more than half my lifetime ago it's great that I can finally share the game which started me on the gamers path with my friends here.

jedijon · Aug 7, 2020

I’m presuming the Drakensang video game (2008 release) uses the rules pretty darn close to printed material’s rule set.

Drakensang: The Dark Eye - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

If so, this Wikipedia article contains about everything I could want to know to learn more about how this game works.

There’s 8 attributes, you have different stats in each weapon, every spell is it’s own skill, there’s even some info about action resolution. Seems that “crunchy” is right—appears there was an easy enough translation of that into a video game engine, moreso even than Neverwinter Nights. And people rag 4E for the idea that somehow playing it is tantamount to playing a video game and or the designers took too much “influence from” them...

One thing that’s always touted as desirable in an RPG is when capabilities diminish as characters push farther. D&D of course generally lacks this—full HP and 1 HP see your character function just the same. Exhaustion can be brought into play. It’s not very finely granular, but it is there to say “you’ve been doing a lot...and it’s catching up to you”. In this game, a failed check sees you taking stat damage to compensate. It’d be neat if that was optional. Optional in the sense that I could roll—and choose to fail rather than taking stat burn. Or not. As the situation warranted. I suspect not though—RPGs always struggle with the “well, just try again” problem and burning 3 pts of a skill addressed that.

Combat though looks like a book-keeping mess. You’ve got to procedurally calculate initiative order based on each persons choices, results of their rolls, and then generate damage, apply it to stats, and track each one of those many factors down through the remainder of the turn’s unresolved actions. And of course we all know that diminishing capability—while awesome at simulating a certain realism—is just like spell slots, HP, and uses of Rage/Day...it’s an abstraction whose practical outcome is to tell the players “it’s time to take a long rest now”.

I love skill check mechanics. In a lot of ways the simplified skill list and lower granularity of skill rank make them inherently harder to use in 5E. So I’m always on the lookout for new wrinkles and I’ll take a look at this for that purpose.

That said, I suspect I’d be as likely to pick this up as to dust off my old copy of Cadwallon. Neat to know that in the German region D&D is second fiddle. I wouldn’t have guessed. Ich bin beeindruckt.

vendolis · Aug 7, 2020

jedijon said:
I’m presuming the Drakensang video game (2008 release) uses the rules pretty darn close to printed material’s rule set.

If so, this Wikipedia article contains about everything I could want to know to learn more about how this game works.

Drakensang is a very old game that took 2nd or 3rd Edition rules and adjusted them for the computer. I don’t remember the exact rules in it, but it is not comparable to the TTRPG version.
The TTRPG is still very focused on skills. Since the effects of combat are longer lasting than in other systems, people will try to find solutions that are avoiding combat until there is no other way. To recover from an average sword hit takes you more than one rest period and super-natural healing is not as available and has similar limitations.

jedijon said:
Combat though looks like a book-keeping mess. You’ve got to procedurally calculate initiative order...

This is very different due to it being a computer RPG. In the TTRPG it is one die roll for initiative. If you get damaged to a certain degree you might lose initiative points for the rest of the combat, but that is it.

jedijon said:
One thing that’s always touted as desirable in an RPG is when capabilities diminish as characters push farther.

This is the case, you skill rolls as well as attack and parry get harder when you gain condition levels like pain, stupor, or similar. And when you hit 5HP you go unconscious, which is very helpful since there is no resurrection in this game.

I would rather suggest to look at the free quickstart rules on DTRPG. They are a very reduced set of rules but give you a good feeling for the general game. The system is very modular and there are a lot of optional rules where you can reside how complex you want to make your game. This goes down to the level that some player might want to use a special rule when hunting (because they are a hunter and have special abilities for it and it’s their spotlight), but another prefers to use the simpler base rules for it.
You want to play with zone armor and zone hit points (e.g. how many hits can your arm take before it is incapacitated or hacked off) ... we’ll be my guest, but it gets complicated there and I have not used that rule yet. But I might pull it out if there is an epic fight that might benefit from this granularity.

The system has it’s flaws (fights with large numbers, scaling at higher “levels”, for beginners hard character generation), but the combination of the setting and the rules make for a very enjoyable.

Lambert Behnke · Aug 7, 2020

jedijon said:
I’m presuming the Drakensang video game (2008 release) uses the rules pretty darn close to printed material’s rule set.

Yes and no.
Drakensang was back in the times of the revised forth edition, called 4.1 in Germany.

In 2015 the current 5th edition was released. It has streamlined a lot of things from 4th Edition and brought the systems used in line.

Most notably the abilities cost the same whether bought at character creation or later added with XP making characters a lot easier to compare and new characters to be added at a certain level.

Skills, magic spells and religious miracles now use exactly the same system so you don't have to learn different rules for different classes/builds.

Lastly and maybe most importantly the core rules have all the rules you need. There are more detailed Focus rules which can go into more depth BUT you don't have to use them. In fact some PCs in your group could use them and others not.

For example take hunting. By the basic rules you can make a single test of Wilderness Lore and dependingon roll you hunt more or less food.

You could go focus level one, where you might role a tracking roll to find your pray, a stealth roll to sneak up and an attack or trap setting roll to make the kill.

You could also go focus level 2 where your animal lore let's you identify the type of prey available and from there play out the entire hunt in detail.

Now if hunting is important, either because it's one of character's stick or because it's plot relevant you can use the level of focus you desire. The hunter of the group might always use focus 1 and when someone else hunts or it's just to deal with the journey to the next adventure you use the basic rules.

Overall it's an amazing rule set and I love playing it. Also it's the edition which came to English and we are lucky to have these amazing looking and feeling books.

Ibrandul · Aug 7, 2020

Lambert Behnke said:
these amazing looking and feeling books.

The books really are high quality productions that stand out from the crowd, from the spot UV printing on the covers to the really excellent art. It’s a more consistent art style than say D&D 5e, and very evocative of the setting.

Mr. Greengoat · Aug 7, 2020

I first looked at DSA when the english translated books were offered on a Bundle of Holding and was intrigued by what felt like an alternate reality version of D&D. It's kind of hard to explain that The Dark Eye feels like an old pedigree game introduced afresh to a new crowd. The feeling of "how are you supposed to play this thing?" is pretty strong, not because of any lack of clarity or writing, but because of the cultural subtext of the translated books. It is a 5th edition books for players who have probably played it or been around fellow players who have played it in the German Language. At first blush, the american player might approach it like D&D or even Warhammer Fantasy, but both would be off. (Indeed, reading through the adventures and getting to know it just kind of makes me feel like a blood-thirsty american, used to slaying too many monsters and grabbing their stuff. Whereas DSA is more like "Hey, maybe we should talk to these orcs and help them solve this problem."
I guess I would summarize the theme differences as some type of euro-humane, less-violent, brighter version of D&D. Like WHFRP Low-end power but less gritty and grim. More fantastic than Harnmaster. Detailed characters like GURPS, but welded to a very EXACT campaign world.

The books and production is beautifully done and well written. For new players, I would recommend getting the core book and an adventure to see how it plays and then the Almanac. The pocket books are great. I think Ulisses Spiele North America has their work cut out in trying to introduced an established thing into a new market. I have been picking up the books on discount and backing the Kickstarters. But a lot of the material is showing up in clearance and bargain areas of FLGS. Having the HC core book around would be good to keep interest going.

Ibrandul · Aug 7, 2020

Mr. Greengoat said:
I guess I would summarize the theme differences as some type of euro-humane, less-violent, brighter version of D&D. Like WHFRP Low-end power but less gritty and grim. More fantastic than Harnmaster. Detailed characters like GURPS, but welded to a very EXACT campaign world.

That’s a great way of putting it.

And I think you’re right that Ulisses has their work cut out for them making this game succeed. I get the impression they realize they’ll never achieve Pathfinder levels of success, but I do suspect the game needs to find a somewhat larger player base in English in order to continue publishing the translations. But their current crowdfunding campaign has raised about $50k from just 250 backers and still has a few days to go, so it’s possible they can continue at those levels for the time being even if the game doesn’t become more popular. But also, the next crowdfunding campaign is for a translated starter box and revised core rules, so if they can pitch it well then that campaign might bring in new players.

Guest 7025638 · Aug 8, 2020

jeremypowell said:
That’s a great way of putting it.

And I think you’re right that Ulisses has their work cut out for them making this game succeed. I get the impression they realize they’ll never achieve Pathfinder levels of success, but I do suspect the game needs to find a somewhat larger player base in English in order to continue publishing the translations. But their current crowdfunding campaign has raised about $50k from just 250 backers and still has a few days to go, so it’s possible they can continue at those levels for the time being even if the game doesn’t become more popular. But also, the next crowdfunding campaign is for a translated starter box and revised core rules, so if they can pitch it well then that campaign might bring in new players.

Where is the information on the revised core book from? I’ve seen Tajo’s presentation about the plans but I can’t remember this. I’d be just curious, don’t get me wrong.