Forked Thread: Das Schwarze Auge [The Dark Eye], your experiences?

[Jhaelen]

Of course, the system could be easily simplified. Use the average of these value (a calculation you have to make for each skill, but only once!), or just add the numbers and find a d60 or something. . But they don't, probably because that's not how it was always done, or because it would require just too much suspension of disbelief or what-you-have...

Interestingly, it IS done in DSA/TDE:
The combat skills work that way, i.e. you make a single roll for every attack/parry and the base value for each is derived from the average of three ability scores.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Interestingly, it IS done in DSA/TDE:
The combat skills work that way, i.e. you make a single roll for every attack/parry and the base value for each is derived from the average of three ability scores.

Yes, indeed. It's strange they never tried that on skills.

*insert a snarky comment about its interesting that not the primary mechanical tool supposed to facilitate roleplaying is simplified and streamlined and instead combat gets all the attention in a supposedly true roleplaying game that doesn't focus on hack & slash*

 

[Keefe the Thief]

snip

I greatly respect your opinion on these boards, and i have no problem with people not liking TDE. In my experience, 99% of people who´ve decided to play D&D hate it with a passion. That said:

- All shield users in my group can do things to their enemies that you won´t believe. A dwarf with axe and shield is a quite formidable opponent - weak they aren´t.
- The orcs comment hasn´t been true for, what 8 or 10 years? They got a rich backstory, have goals, a complex religion, and right now different factions are trying to find out what to do with those pesky humans. And in some places, humans even worship orc gods without knowing it.
You can say that about pretty much most "monsters" - monster stereotypes are dead. Trolls alone have more flavor, backstory, history and meaning in TDE than some major PC races in other game systems.
- The "naive" stuff - well, i´d think many adventures approach it as such. But there are so many adventures with a different take: be a warwinner in a war without winners, help the right person on the throne and walk over the bodies of your enemies etc. pp. There´s lots of variety nowadays.
- I play spellcasters pretty much all the time, and there are lots of ways to be effective all the time: improved mana regeneration, binding spells into your staff etc.

Anyway, everybody has a strong opinion about the system - you either love or hate it with a passion. However, lots of stuff is still remembered from earlier editions, and no longer a big deal.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I greatly respect your opinion on these boards, and i have no problem with people not liking TDE. In my experience, 99% of people who´ve decided to play D&D hate it with a passion. That said:

Don't hold back, my opinion isn't "better" than anyone else's opinion.

- All shield users in my group can do things to their enemies that you won´t believe. A dwarf with axe and shield is a quite formidable opponent - weak they aren´t.
- The orcs comment hasn´t been true for, what 8 or 10 years? They got a rich backstory, have goals, a complex religion, and right now different factions are trying to find out what to do with those pesky humans. And in some places, humans even worship orc gods without knowing it.
You can say that about pretty much most "monsters" - monster stereotypes are dead. Trolls alone have more flavor, backstory, history and meaning in TDE than some major PC races in other game systems.
- The "naive" stuff - well, i´d think many adventures approach it as such. But there are so many adventures with a different take: be a warwinner in a war without winners, help the right person on the throne and walk over the bodies of your enemies etc. pp. There´s lots of variety nowadays.
- I play spellcasters pretty much all the time, and there are lots of ways to be effective all the time: improved mana regeneration, binding spells into your staff etc.

Interesting.

Anyway, everybody has a strong opinion about the system - you either love or hate it with a passion. However, lots of stuff is still remembered from earlier editions, and no longer a big deal.

I definitely consider myself more in the latter position. I tried to like, but the best thing when playing TDE was when not using the rules. But I like using the rules of a game system!
So, anyone reading my post and feeling less interested in TDE - read Keefe the Thiefs post and think about it. Remember that people say "D&D is all hack & slash". And remember that still tons of people play D&D, and tons of people play TDE.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

A thoughtful comment on my post, AND you gave me XP. My hat´s of to you, sir. For a moment, i just forgot that i´m on the internet.

 

[frankthedm]

A thoughtful comment on my post, AND you gave me XP. My hat´s of to you, sir. For a moment, i just forgot that i´m on the internet.

Enworld is like that.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

To round the thread off, let´s talk a bit about the "dark sides" of TDE:

- Character generation is far too front-loaded - too many decisions, too much to do. For beginners i like to throw out the "raise your skills for the first time" step and give them the XP for later. Makes them a little bit less experienced, but allows you to start your game a lot quicker.

- The core ideas of TDE are:
a) If its cool, its either expensive, impossible to get, nearly impossible to master or just not applicable for player characers. "No, you cant use / do / be that" is a core tenet of the game system.
b) You have to specialise with your character, and even then, you start out with pretty low success chances. Be prepared to fail a lot: gathering herbs, casting spells, hitting enemies etc. "From zero to hero" is a necessity in this game, intimately bound to the core idea.
Of course, you could give your players 1000 XP which would change that immediately, but that would again result in a pretty drawn-out chargen.

- Because the system mainly aims at simulating the game world (and not necessarily at balance), a powergamer with a mission and some time can do some godawful things to your campaign. A good DM can watch out for this, but its pretty much inevitable with this approach.
If the axe-and-board dwarf i mentioned to Mustrum was expertly crafted, he could bring pain to enemies on level 1 that are nigh-untouchable by other players.

- The biggest problem is and will always be the same that D&D has: a hardcore group of gamers that knows EXACTLY what their game is supposed to be and will viciously attack anybody with different opinions.

Phew, that was hard to write. But there must be balance in all things.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Now, this has become one interesting thread.

The skill resolution system with its three rolls is a strange beast. It really feels a bit like 4e's skill challenge system, and there are a lot of situations where the GM can describe some very interesting, thrilling story using the results of the three rolls as input. But on the other hand, rolling three times and doing some calculations for your hero to jump his horse over a fence is a bit much.

Two things I'd like to add to the discussions of TDE adventures, although my knowledge of these books is not up to date, so Keefe is invited to correct me.

Quite a big number of the published adventures are solo adventures. In the early days the quota was about 25%.

Most of the adventures are not of the action packed, kill the enemies style. The story is king, unfolding before the players' eyes. This stilistic difference is probably also one of the reasons for the size of the chasm between the D&D and TDE crowds.

For what it's worth, this discussion led me to wanting to run my next newbie game with the TDE system. So I've pulled out the 2001 Basic Set and handed the folder with the eight prepared, colorful characters to the prospective players. Now I need a decent starting adventure, not too long, not excluding certain types, nationalities, or cultures, and including some decent fights.

If the newbies catch RPG fire and want to continue, it's their's to decide I'll whether they want to continue with their characters and TDE or change to new characters and (probably) a new system.

As I'm of the easily enthused sort, I think that TDE will have a fair chance to shine.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

The pregens were actually some of the best i´ve seen for any system - and i´ve loved that they did not only include those in the basic box, but also in the advanced boxes.

Re: solo-adventures. There was a wave, then it slowed down to a trickle, and now they are apparently gaining speed again.
The mobile games have somewhat taken their place, though: downloadable solo-adventures for your cell phone that play like the old "choose your path" adventures and heavily tie into the different metaplot events.

Re: story-based. Yes, story is king most of the time - combat is an afterthought.

The biggest difference between a D&D game and a TDE game is the metaplot: the world is constantly evolving, and the many adventures allow the player characters to shape the world significantly - even if the general status-quo is predetermined, of course.
There are still lots of small-scale adventures to be found, though.

 

[mach1.9pants]

An interesting thread, keep it up. I might just buy the core book for a read....dunno about gaming it though.

Just a random question: Derren mentioned that your parry 'check' succeeds or fails with no reference to the attackers skill, is that right? (bit like DW shield, I hated that)

Just a random point: I can remember a Fighting Fantasy game where you had to memorise spells if you played a Wiz, I quite enjoyed as a teen More CHEESE!