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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mkill" data-source="post: 5284330" data-attributes="member: 55985">I went to a gaming store here in Germany today. It was pretty well-stocked, but I noticed a range of books that were there 5 years ago already and obviously never sold. That's a bit sad. The German RPG market was always dominated by "Das Schwarze Auge", a local fantasy RPG, which I'd put at around 50% of the market. The game had a few problems with the change to 4th edition, a shoddy piece of design by committee in my opinion. I don't know about sales figures but I know that it was dropped by the publisher and picked up by a new company. The downfall of the market leader hit the whole market.D&D was always only a running also, together with Shadowrun and Vampire. Most people buy the English books, and it seldom had a high-quality translation that could match the original. At the moment the 4th edition translation is in limbo. The shop had a German hardcover of Pathfinder, though.As for Japan, I've seen Japanese versions of the D&D books, but I don't know about sales figures. I think the Japanese RPG community is very small, and concentrated around a few places like Akihabara, or boardgame clubs at universities. Most people would know console RPGs like Final Fantasy (which has D&D roots), but they've never heard of tabletop play. It has to work against a few cultural issues, for example, most Japanese have rather small apartments, and it is not as common to have friends come over. Most Japanese kids have to go to cram school in the afternoon and don't have as much time for stuff like RPGs.There is a small but active RPG community among expats, though.</blockquote>

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