So german friends of mine asked me recently if I want to play the dark eye (das schwarze auge) with them

So german friends of mine asked me recently if I want to play the dark eye (das schwarze auge) with them.
Now, I know shit about the system, and the wiki dosn`t have much information, either.

Other urls found in this thread:

mega.nz/#F!KcYnFRwB!svAhjnY3pBgihPFs2CUoUg
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

What kind of information are you looking for?

Here's a truckload of PDFs: mega.nz/#F!KcYnFRwB!svAhjnY3pBgihPFs2CUoUg
I assume you are german? Since almost all PDF in there are german.
Find out which edition you will be playing and read. Can't really say more than that, since I myself never read or played DSA.

It has, in true german fashion a LOT! of rules

It's the most played german RPG. The rules are massively supersaturated and that's what germans like!

It's basically AD&D with more rules. They even copied 3.PF at some point but kept a lot of legacy era rules. Then they just decided that everyone should be a special snowflake and make character creation into a point buy grab bag.

Fourth and fifth edition should get official english translations, and there are some fan-translated versions of first and second.. maybe third.

It's a huge! medievalish fantasy setting with progressing history and all classic flavors. The mechanics center around archetypes which are like classes but there's hundreds and you can make your own.

I don't like playing it much because just like Midgard or DnD it is overly defined. You don't need mechanics for every detail, I prefer systems that focus on doing one thing well or that can be modded easily to focus on different things. DSA is just clunky with mechanics for everything.

That said, there's nothing wrong with it. It's an enormous resource. The rules work well and have been perfected for decades. For players who enjoy DnD, Gurps, or Traveller, this is a great game.

here's a rundown (my knowledge is dated though):
>no AC means you have attack and parry; armor works as damage resistance
>traditionally they used 3d20 for skill rolls. you roll against base attributes and skill points were used to balance out any rolls in excess of your attributes (this is probably legacy at this point though)
>no vancian magic, for magic you just expend astralpunkte/magic points
>expect magic generally to be toned down compared to 3.X D&D
>finely detailed world, way beyond what's reasonable; actually rather constricting for gamers

1e was cool.
4e is bloated as fuck and frankly a mediocre system. If you don't care about system, you can have fun with it, but if you've got some experience with really good games, it might be a bit troublesome.

>D&D
>Overly defined

You meant AD&D and later editions.

I did.

A few good hints for people just starting out:
- Don't play an elf as your first character. Elves in DSA are hugely complicated and require a lot of background knowledge to play well.
- Try and find out what kind of adventure you'll have. Nothing is worse than bringing a social-specced city-dweller into the wilderness.
- Combat magic is by and large shit, don't worry about that. Rather, illusion, divination and elemental evocation are utterly brutal and need to be watched-out for.
- If you can, get a sword. The stats are heavily skewed towards swords and render most other weapons bar some minor exceptions as inferior to its sword-equivalent.
- Demons and demon-worshippers are generally bad news, cults of the Nameless One are invariably worse. Orcs on the other hand tend to be reasonable in a decidedly mongolian way.
- Immortals are always assholes, jerks and bullies. Don't work for or against them.

>on't play an elf as your first character. Elves in DSA are hugely complicated and require a lot of background knowledge to play well.

this sounds interesting! Explain

Not him. Basically, all Elves are magical beings and connected through song. They live among their kin and rarely connect with humans. Therefore, the human ideas of egotism and avarice and even currency are alien to them. If an Elf indulges in those things, he is declared "badoc" - caught in reality -, and other Elves will shun him.

If you play a normal Elf, he/she won't understand a lot of things important for human murderhobos, and you have to know your Elvish culture (there are several of course) to know how to behave.

4th Edition had som races and cultures who are not intended for first-time players. things like: elves, orcs, goblins, archz, trollzacker, uluwatu, etc. And yeah the last two were human.
If you are playing your first character, I'd say don't make a magically character.
If you still wasnt a magically character make a guildmage.

Elves are fundamentally alien in DSA. They are the remnanats of a huge and ancient empire that was sundered in ages immemorial and, for a lack of better terms, are barbarians. While they live in touch with nature (though they are decidedly not huggy-feely hippies) they are not really part of the mundane world, at least not entirely. Also, they are basically destilled song and light at their core, which makes the mindset of most other humanoids, in particular humans and dwarves, mostly incomprehensible. Worship of something in particular is beyond their grasp, so they have no gods or kings and no leaders beyond village chiefs on occasion.
Elves are inherently magical, i.e. they are casters by default, and functionally ageless until they feel they have done what they were meant to do, after which they wither away and fade in a matter of days. Any elf that comes into contact with mundane concepts risks "badoc", the state of worldliness that robs them of their connection to the supernatural
They are basically fey in the old meaning of the word.

For reference, there are a couple of distinct sub-types:

- meadow/dale elves: If anyone has seen an elf, it was probably one of these. They have a very native american overall and are the most likely to try and interact with other races. The sheer number of half-elves is mostly down to these guys; elves fuck *a lot* and don't connect love and lust at all, so any male elf will usually leave a trail of pregnant women in his wake.

- wood elves: Where the dale elves are mostly baffled by the other races, wood elves want non of that and are perfectly willing to murder anyone that thinks otherwise. Think wood elves from WHFB minus the structured kingdom and the rulers and it's not far off.

- firn elves: Elves that live in the arctic circle, basically. Mostly Inuit with a dash of Frozen. No fun allowed with these guys. Dead serious, highly practical (if slightly psychotic) and utterly xenophobic.

Not OP, but what about half-elves? If there are any in the setting that is.

Half-elves exist, plentifully in fact, as pointed out earlier. They commonly come in two flavors:

>Oh, those pointy ears? Yes, no, those are fairly common in the countryside where I come from. Nothing elven about them, haha. ...My face? What about my face? ...Oh, I am not androgynous, no, no, I just haven't eaten much lately, so I look a bit gaunt. Same for my eyes, haha. They aren't slanted like cat's, nor are they the color of stars trapped in amber, no sir! Those are just boring brown eyes. Sure wish I'd have such amazing eyes, though. Haha!

>Oh those pointy ears? Yes, those signify my incredible heritage! Did you know, my father is a duke (elves don't have ranks) and political advisor (elves don't do politics) to the elven king (elves have no king) in their capital (elves have no capital). Oh, indeed, that makes me rather important in the elven lands as well (elves give no shit about their offspring). In fact, I am to wed the daughter of the high priest (elves have no gods) in the future. ...When? Well, that might be still a ways off. We have time, you know; we are immortal, after all (half-elves age like humans do).

Basically, they are either trying to hide their parentage due to the fact that elves are bad luck, super-weird and sorta classified as evil spirits by most humans (and as a major pain in the ass by dwarves) while others try to flaunt their exotic looks and natural grace as a way to get by. Either way, they are caught between two worlds (almost literally) and will never fit totally in with either. Humans distrust and envy them, coupled with a healthy dose of racism and legit grievancess against elves while elves mostly pity them for being 'badoc'.

Generally, if you are a half-elf your life will be shit. Most sensible half-elves try to get to a big city in the midlands or further south, where they are mostly treated semi-decently and can find employment in the entertainment sector (brothels and theaters, mostly).

I love playing dorfs in this setting.
Small angry guys that tend to do the shit thier way if the group wants to consider it otherwise.
In the parallel RPG to DSA their was the Miranor Setting which had Satyr characters, which in my oppinion would also work pretty well on the main setting.
There also temples of the love goddessthat who are a bit like brothels.
>Important for americas: To understand DSA is to live in areas in germany with century old structures and buildings. This make DSA much more relatable and "real" for us germans than for example DnD which has a rather 80s movie schtick.

Play DSA 5 if you're new to the setting. Get the basic rulebook and the Aventurian Almanach to get a basic understanding of the setting. DSA 5 is much more accessible and misses the addons of DSA 4.1 making it also a lot easier.

I personally really enjoy Aventurien - more than Myranor. It's just the most fleshed out continent of Dere, that's patially thanks to the massive german community. Just a reminder; DSA sold more units than DnD in Germany.

That's a fucking great link, is there a way to download everything at once? Because I can just DL individual files.

The whole folder is too big to be downloaded at once. Just right click on any subfolder and click "Download > Download as Zip". You can download "001. Regelwerke" that way. It may be inconsistent and fail partway through, if that happens try again with a subfolder of whichever folder you tried.

Never expected to see a DSA thread on Veeky Forums

We're full of surprises

They are rare but usually pretty enjoyable.

Will you include the new Liber Cantiones/Magic rulebook they will release for DSA 5 soon?

That's not my folder, sorry. I also don't know if it is actively maintained.

Dont expect to be saving kingdoms or even cities day 1.
A lot of DSA is pretty low power, for some that's a turn off, others like it. I personally feel it makes most sessions a bit more intimate, so to speak. I feel like someones first impression of this system especially depends on your GM If you got one who knows his shit and strikes a good balance between the mountain of rules and continents of lore, you can have a blast with the setting.
If I had to recommend a specifc character for a beginner, I'd probably go with dwarf. They're pretty straight forward (only one god to care about, if it has scales stick it with blades, lex zwergia means no fuss no muss with the law) so you can easily pick up one or two nuggets of lore to amaze everyone at the table with ("that impressive city gate you long 'uns got there? Yeah my great grandfather built that 637 years ago"). But thats just my impression, play whatever you like.

>tfw stuck right before the finale of your current adventure
>wont be able to get everyone together again before next year
Worse than blue balls desu

>wont be able to get everyone together again before next year

God fucking dammit, my group disbanded in the middle of the motherfucking G7 Campaign. It was the most epic shit with one of the best GM's i've ever had.

So I never finished G7 and miss the motivation to start it again with another group. Fuck reallife, srsly fuck it.

Are you me?

Same shit happened to me.
Played G7 in highschool then the oldest kid fucked off to college and group disbanded.

A group disbanding in the middle of a campaign is like a massive cockblock but a group disbanding in the middle of G7 is like killing any woman in your town and then kicking you in the balls.

This shit should be subject to penalty.

...are we all the same person? Our group was just about to start the second to last adventure of the G7 campaign when the DM had to move due to uni and it all broke apart.

my group was playing the game completly wrong i. We were complete murderhobos and with 6 or 7 rulebooks we only used them to find monsters and cool feats for our characters. Atleast it brought me into the world of P&P.

After reading up I've felt like the gods and magic of the setting suck major ass though.

>After reading up I've felt like the gods and magic of the setting suck major ass though.

Spoken like a true murderhobo

>Dere
>just an anagram of Erde

It's Ethra in english.

not really, I've grown out of that and mostly play Vtm with a focus on intrigues and mystery.
The whole "Official god of thieves" "God of blacksmithing with priests that have to smith for him and sacrifice their best works" never did it for me, reminding me more of Terry Pratchett (which wouldnt be a bad thing) than an epic fantasy world.

Eh, matter of taste, I suppose, but having the most boring, bog-standard main pantheon in the universe kinda fits with the more grounded feel of the overall setting, I feel. After all, most actual pantheons were just as much filled with generic material like 'the boss god', 'the war god', 'the love god' and so on. Meanwhile, the rest of the divine beings are mostly interesting, such as the twin gods of Maraskan, the lizardfolk gods that the lizardfolk would prefer to not have in the first place, the whole Nameless One mess and so on.

So what? Aventurien is pretty much grounded in a realistic cultural setting taking inspiration from a lot of different cultures and times of europe and orient.

This is not a high fantasy setting, senpai.