If you aren’t German, or at least German speaking, you might not instantly recognize the impact that “Das Schwarze Auge” had on German roleplayers from the 80s and 90s. It was our D&D in the early days of roleplaying. Allow me to give you a short lecture…
When it comes to fandom or “nerdy” things, we Germans take no prisoners. For example, we call the largest piece of worldbuilding (certified) and the longest running SciFi series (also certified) our own: Perry Rhodan. Perry Rhodan is a weekly dime novel which has been published without interruption since 1961 and currently has about 3400 issues and dozens of spin-offs, computer games, movies, audiobooks etc. The series is available in numerous languages like English, Japanese, Portuguese, French, Dutch etc. It is so popular that even Gene Roddenberry was an avid reader. You will find references in games like Elite Dangerous and TV series like Star Trek.
Ok, now come to the point!
We have another one of those behemoths in Germany: “Das Schwarze Auge” (DSA) or in English “The Dark Eye”. If you think that HârnMaster has a very detailed world… you are absolutely right, but think again. DSA is so detailed that most people are joking about it and say that even each pebble has a name and written history. To give you a little perspective: The current edition counts 56587 pages in 761 publications… in just 10 years. Since its debut in 1984, there have been 2663 publications with 171914 pages, and we are talking about official publications only. DSA is so huge, even George R.R. Martin played it… his German publisher is one of the three original authors.
One of the main difference to all the other games and settings is the metaplot and living history of the game. Think about DSA like a soap opera: you have ruling families with their struggles and antagonists that keep coming at them sometimes 10 years after their last appearance. To keep track of all of this, there is a bi-montly ingame newspaper (current issue is 235), the “Aventurischer Bote” with reports on events of ongoing campaigns and hints to other important facts which might become relevant to the metaplot in the near or far future. You can get the newpaper as pdf or as printed product directly to your doorstep.
DSA was my first TTRPG (since 1986) and for many years the only one I played. The idea of playing something else was ridiculous. The rules are sometimes clunky and unsolicited simulationist. For example if you play a potter, you can go nuts and dig down multiple levels of expansion rules where you even check if you heated the oven perfectly… this will take you about 30 minutes of dice rolling if you want, just to produce a mug. The continent is way too small to fit all those cultures (42 years ago nobody thought that this game will be played for so long) and the entry barrier is much to high, because you always have the impression to know too little to start playing.
A funny anecdote?! In the early days, the magic spells were all rhymes like “Blitz dich find, werde blind!” (best translated to “Lightning finds you, become blind!”) and in most groups, there was the conviction that the spell only works to its full potential when it was roleplayed enough. This had led to numerous players of all age groups jumping around their parents garden (in summer) or party cellar (in winter) screaming absurd rhymes while wrapped in bedsheets… been there, done that!
My wife has a complete set of academic titles in the field of literary studies and German philology and read one or two books in her life, but everytime DSA comes up she is like: “Are you kidding me? I’m not going to playing DSA… I would have to do another PhD just to play the quickstarter.” This didn’t stop us from carving our names into the big block of DSA history a decade ago when some friends of ours were (still are) authors for the game and we helped with some products.
I recently bought several sourcebooks from the latest edition, read them all to get up-to-date with recent developments in the world, and noticed that I still have a soft spot for the game. I even missed it a bit. And this weekend I started a solo campaign in Aventurien… and to my absolute shock, I even used the rules. That exposed me to my wife’s ridicule quite a bit, but I had so much fun and really felt like being back in my youth, right in the middle of the satanic panic.
Oh btw.: In my last post I wrote about chaning my style or setup to play solo. I did, and I went with the app-only option. I have to admit that this was such a great experience. Extra helpfull was an app for automated DSA character sheets. It was so easy to just pull out the smartphone and play one or two scenes very quickly. Because you don’t (want to) write as much on the smartphone, you play much more streamlined and can concentrate on the story. Interestingly I also noticed that the average number of fate questions increased by 300%.
