American RPGS

[Nisarg]

Technically Guardians of Order and Dream Pod 9 are both Canadian, not American, so you could say BESM, Silver Age Sentinels, etc etc. and Heavy Gear are Canadian RPGs.

In addition to that two of the best RPGs I've run into in a long time are from Spain:
Aquelarre: an RPG set in medieval Spain, with ultra realistic mortality levels, and "authentic" magic system (authentic in the sense that magic works the way the medieval Spanish culture thought it did). This is a truly great game, with a system reminiscent of Call of Cthulhu.

Capitan Alatriste: Based on a very popular series of novels, its a purely historical RPG, and the best "swashbuckling" system I've seen. There's no magic or fantasy in it, its designed for swashbuckling adventure in the 17th century, with a system reminiscent of GURPS.

Nisarg

 

[Zweischneid]

Well, Germany has a pretty active market of RPGs for sure.

Besides the big ones (DSA; Midgard; etc..) which basically substitute D&D in Germany to a large part (DSA is the most widley sold RPG in Germany) there are a whole lot of small ones.

Some have even been translated into english (like Engel, published by White Wolf, albeit only in a D20 version, not in the original)

Also France is quite known as a hot spot of RPGs.
Some like Hyperborea or Torq have also been done in english now, albeit with very limited success outside france. In Nomine (SJG) and Nephilim (Chaosium) as well are translations of French games.
Most french RPGs though would have to be heavily censored to not offend american moralities anyways, even if sold only to adults.

I don't even want to make a guess at what and how many local RPGs are produced in the Far East, especially Japan and South Korea.

In all cases though, the 'local' RPGs usually don't see a wide spread because translations are usually lacking, publishers don't have the financial strenght to push into the american market and the design caters more to the local tastes anyways.

(i.e. translating DSA would be bit of a wasted effort, because it's highly doubtful it could replace WoTC as market leader in America they way it does in Germany)


[edit]
You can find and Encyclopedia of Roleplaying games for most European Countries + Japan here
(I found Italy for example had a surprisingly long list too)

 

[Zappo]

There are a whole bunch of Italian RPGs, but I don't think any of them are famous elsewhere.

 

[johnsemlak]

Shouldn't this thread be labeled 'non-American RPGs?

 

[Thanee]

Germany:
Midgard, by Happy Entz Publishing (1991) - http://www.midgard-online.de/ (Midgard translates roughly to Middle Earth - actually, it's a old Nordic expression and is where man lives in Nordic mythology)

Never heard of Happy Entz Publishing, but as others have noted, Midgard is a fair bit older than that.

The current publisher (4th edition) is Pegasus Spiele and before (3rd edition) it was Klee Spiele, and before that (1st and 2nd edition), there was another, I think Verlag für F&SF-Spiele, but no Happy Entz... *shrug*

It's a very good system, but only available in german. More grim'n'gritty/low magic than D&D, quite a bit more "realistic", and with lots of good ideas (i.e. a rather unrestrictive class-based system, which offers a lot of freedom in character development (since 20 years )).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Thanee]

(i.e. translating DSA would be bit of a wasted effort, because it's highly doubtful it could replace WoTC as market leader in America they way it does in Germany)

Well, but they did that... DSA has been published in english. Name's different, tho, something with Aventurien, I think, but I doubt it was a great success in america.

Bye
Thanee

 

[balam_br]

In Brazil there are some popular and not so popular national games...

In the eighties we had Desafio dos Bandeirantes, With a setting in 1650 fantasy South America, With Colonization of the new world, black slaves, the native indigenous people and their magic, and folklore monsters as antagonists too. It survived some years, and now it is a kind of "cult" system for Brazilians.

 

[Turjan]

Well, but they did that... DSA has been published in english. Name's different, tho, something with Aventurien, I think, but I doubt it was a great success in america.

Well, Fanpro (better known for Shadowrun and Classic Battletech) was just trying to get a new release with Fast Forward Entertainment out, as can be seen on this site. I don't know whether this project suffered from FFE's downfall.

I agree that it might not have many chances on the US market, because it's generally a bit similar to D&D, though with a lower power ramp. D&D simply came a bit late in Germany to gain a big market share. Midgard had a headstart of 3 years, and when the first D&D translation was published in 1984, DSA was published in the same year and had much better support. D&D got some popularity boost from CRPGs like Baldur's Gate or NWN, though.

 

[Thanee]

Well, D&D is a lot more popular around here than Midgard, and I'd guess even more than DSA these days.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Turjan]

Well, D&D is a lot more popular around here than Midgard, and I'd guess even more than DSA these days.

Right. As I said, I'd attribute this to Baldur's Gate & Co., which got quite a lot of people into P&P RPGs. Of course, here D&D was the first choice.