The Dark Eye

Das Schwarze Auge
RPG published by Ulysses Games
Authors	Droemer Knaur Schmidt Spiele
First Publication	1984 (1st edition) 1988 (2nd ed) 1992 (3rd ed) 2001 (4th ed) 2015 (5th ed)

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Das Schwarze Auge (The Dark Eye) is what Germany equipped on their character sheet where Americans wrote "Dungeons & Dragons". It's pretty much THE fantasy role-playing game in Germany, it's been around since the 1980s, and it's in 5th edition. And it exists because TSR said "we will not do business with the krauts."

There was one shit translation effort, but in the 2010s there was a kickstarter to raise funds to bribe fund DSA's publishers into making a decent English translation for 5th edition. Despite the lack of translations of the games themselves, the video game adaptions Realms of Arkania, Drakensang, Memoria and Blackguards were all translated and 3 out of 4 of those are considered solid entries into their genre. All of these games dropped the supertitle in translation as a result.

The default campaign setting is the world of "Dere" (an anagram of "Erde," or "Earth"), on the bog-standard fantasy feudal Europe continent of Aventurien. It's got the usual complement of fantasy races: orcs, Tolkien-like elves, lizardmen, goblins, kobolds, giants, etc. It's got spellcasters and the technology level is somewhere below muskets and blackpowder. Over the sea far to the west is the golden land of Myranor where it looks more like Final Fantasy games with a decadent and declining wealthy empire, airships, and catgirls. A third continent and setting is the Hollow World of Tharun which has an Edgar-Rice-Burroughs feel in island archipelagos.

Peoples of the world

In The Dark Eye, characters are built from the race (what you are), the culture (where you grew up) and the profession (what you learned). Races therefore are mostly about biology while history, religion, mentality and such are dictated by the culture.

Humans
Human races are the Middlelanders (Caucasians), Tulamids (Arabians), Thorwals (Vikings), Nivese (Mongols), Moha (Native Americans), Utulu (Africans) and a few more. Among the biggest cultures are the Middleland (central Europe, high middle ages), the Horas-Empire (Italy/France, full renaissance), Al’Alfa (Spain in colonial times with a good measure of ancient Rome), the Tulamid City States (ancient Egypt / 1001 nights / Persia), the Novadis (desert dwelling one-true-god worshipping zealots), the Bornland (Tsaristic Russia minus the Tsar), and a lot more smaller ones.

Elves
Elves are mostly as Tolkien wrote them; beautiful, ageless and magic. They live as hunter-gatherers, but help themselves a lot with their innate magic. Turning themselves invisible for the hunt, magically making plants produce ripe fruit or literally singing pure metal out of the ground and shaping it - for elves magic is part of their everyday life. This leaves them with lots of time for music, art or storytelling. Elves are divided into different peoples after the fall of their race (sound familiar?). A few thousand years ago, the high elves ruled the continent with advanced magic and science. After a series of bad decisions (allied with an over-ambitious dragon-god, pissing of their own gods, trying to become gods themselves, falling for the tricks of the Nameless One) they all went extinct. Now we are left with three branches of the tree:

The wood elves
Direct descendants of the light elves who first arrived in our reality from The Light. While other elves went off, explored, advanced and later became the high elves, the wood elves already back then cut ties with their cousins. By living traditionally and staying in their old forests close to The Dream, they avoided the bad things that happened. Never rose, therefore never fell. Wood elves prefer to live their lives as they have always done, isolating themselves from the rest of the world. Even other elves are accepted, but rarely welcomed with open arms. Would-be intruders usually find themselves a few days later outside the forest again with no memory of how they got there or what happened. Except if they were aggressive, then they never return.
Tree houses, talk to animals, control plants, collectively dream to alter reality.

The firn elves
Survivors of high elves’ attempt to ascend to godhood. The heaven’s tower in the far north was their most advanced city, dedicated to the study of reality and divinity. Learning of their achievements, the corruptor Pardona charmed her way into the city and slowly took over. A few elves recognized her evil, but by then she already controlled most of the population. The resulting civil war wiped out the city save for a few survivors who managed to flee the destruction. The descendents of these survivors now live in the eternal ice of the far north. They returned to the old ways, but remember well the fate of their ancestors. This makes them wary of everything foreign, people and ideas alike. In the frozen wastes survival is a constant battle even for a tribe of elves with all their magic and this has made the firn elves a grim, hard people. Don’t expect them to rescue you if you freeze to death on their doorstep – life is hard and after you die they can use your stuff to improve the survival of their tribe.
Igloos and Ice palaces, weaponized weather, very tough.

The shire elves
The longest to hold on to their high elven might, but they too ultimately fell. The other elves say that they did not quite learn the lesson the first time: while the firn elves and wood elves live in tribes keeping mostly to themselves, the shire elves got right back up from their fall and founded another kingdom. Which also ended badly. Their expansion and exploration lead to wars with humans, dwarfs and orcs and although they could win most battles, over the centuries they were losing by attrition. Now the shire elves, like the others, live again in tribes and small villages which do each their own thing. Other than the rest of the elves, these guys trade freely with other races, some clans and families even living side by side with humans in villages and cities. They are the most friendly and open of all elves, teaching and learning from others and curious to travel and see the world. Also the most common source of half elves.
The elves next door. Friendly, curious, but surprisingly fighty when necessary.

Dwarves
Dwarves are small, sturdy, have a life span of about 600 years and mostly live below ground. Interestingly, only about one in four dwarves is female, leading to fierce competition among males to impress the ladies with skill, heroism or wealth. Dwarves hate magic and possess a high magic resistance. The very few who are born with the gift either get it burned out or are taken in by a Geode (dwarven druids, living respected but exiled in the wild). To compensate, they have developed technology further than any other people and are doing quite well for themselves (concrete, chemistry, complex mechanics but still no firearms). Of all the non-humans they have the best relationship with humans and often live together in shared cities. Before the rise of the younger races they spread out from their ancient home of Xorlosch and settled under many mountain ranges and slowly their culture evolved into four different peoples:

Anvil Dwarves
Standard-fantasy-dwarves. Love to fight, drink, sing (badly) and forge weapons and armour. Very war-like, often go to seek glory in battle or hire out as mercenaries.

Gem Dwarves
Fancy clothes instead of armour, fencing weapons instead of axes. Gem dwarves have style and are famous as traders, jewelers and tinkerers (also infamous as thieves). More equivalent of gnomes in other settings.

Ore Dwarves
The original dwarven culture, and they are very proud of it. A common saying is “Grandfather did it like this and his Grandfather before him, therefore it is good this way”. Not exactly innovators, but the most spiritual of the dwarves, very close to their god and obsessed with history, philosophy and numerology. Rather reclusive, but not unfriendly.

Hill Dwarves
Live under hills rather than mountains; Inventors of beer and many delicious recipes. Friendly, peaceful, equivalent more to Tolkien-Hobbits. But don’t think you can go and raid their nice little houses – they are still dwarves and if you get on their bad side you get a a heavy crossbow bolt between the eyes.

Achaz
Achaz are humanoid Lizardmen. They stand as tall as humans, have scales, webbed fingers and a tail and can grow up to 250 years old. Being cold-blooded, they only live in the (sub-)tropical regions of the continent (except that one tribe in the Orcland for some reason). Females can be identified by their red-colored dorsal ridges (no lizard boobs here). While they do feel love, sex involves no pleasure for them and “producing a clutch” is only a means of reproduction. When necessary Achaz can also change their gender. While in some regions tribal Achaz trade with humans and in rare instances also live together with them, however their comparatively alien physiology and mentality always sets them apart from us mammals. Achaz are an ancient race, even pre-dating dwarves and elves. At the height of their power their empire spanned continents, but latest since the second dragon war those are all gone. Gone from this world, at least... When the ancient Achaz saw their race falling, they folded space and time around the core lands of their empire and shunted in into a globule (DnD-eqilvalent: demiplane). That really big desert in the middle of the continent, where now Novadis ride their camels and wage djihad? That is what they left when they went away and somewhere in the limbus (DnD-eqivalent: astral plane) these guys are still around. Several adventures deal with preventing the return of a country full of super-powerful lizard-wizards. In the here and now, there are two cultures of Achaz:

Archaic Achaz
The very few who retain their old culture (or at least as much as they could). Often protecting ancient hidden temples or outposts which somehow survived, these Achaz still pray to the old gods and practice the ancient art of cristallomancy (channeling magic through crystals). Although much knowledge has been lost since their glory days, they still hold great power, especially in temporal and transmutation magic.

Tribal Achaz
Most of the Achaz people have reverted to a primitive tribal lifestyle. Contrary to the elves, this was not a choice but a cultural regression due to most of their elite being wiped out or fleeing this world. They live mostly as hunter-gatherers, fishermen and occasionally from a bit of farming. They lost the art of working metal and practicing magic and instead of the mighty priests of old they are now led by shamans.

Orcs
Orcs are smaller than humans, but taller than dwarves. They are humanoid but covered in dense, black fur, have proportionally longer arms and impressive teeth (think small Wookies). Orcs are strong and tough and have keen senses. They mature quickly (adult by age 10) and even under the best of conditions don’t live past 40. Orcs hail from the northern steppes only known to humans as the Orcland where they live in tribes of hunter-gatherers. These tribes constantly war with each other and with their neighbors, plundering resources, treasure and slaves. Orcs are physically superior to humans and for all their brutality by no means stupid. Would the tribes unite, they could form a fighting force that could threaten the very existence of the human realms. A few times this already happened; after the last Orcenstorm they actually kept a few conquered territories where they rule over enslaved populations of humans. Other Orcs think these occupants are lazy and un-orcy because they live too comfortable a life. Additionally, the chosen of their gods has been building a proper city deep in the Orclands where orcs play at civilisation – and are frighteningly good at it. Orcs are a patriarchal society, so much so that females are seen as possessions and are not even given names. They appear primitive, but are surprisingly good craftsmen and their steel weapons and composite bows can easily match human products.

Goblins
Goblins are related to Orcs and share their general physique; they are however smaller (about the size of a dwarf and significantly lighter) and their fur is red. Where Orcs are seen as a threat, Goblins are usually seen as a nuisance. They live in primitive stone-age-like tribes, hunting, gathering, stealing and raiding. Their proverbial cowardice leads them to only attack when they greatly outnumber a target and even then they quickly turn and flee when encountering resistance. Almost nobody remembers that these little guys had a kingdom only a few hundred years ago that gave the knights of Rondra (Godess of Battle) a run for their money... Also different from orcs, goblins are led by their female-only shamans. Hilariously, they still have not understood the connection between sex and pregnancy, leading to a high fertility rate. Most goblins live as tribes in the wilderness, but some have settled in human cities, taking care of dirty work like catching vermin and cleaning gutters.

Other Races
Other intelligent races exist, but are either too monstrous (Ogres, Krakonians) or too alien (Fae, Zilits) to be a playable race. You may encounter them on your adventures but except for highly specialized quests they are just not feasible as PCs.

Mixed Races only exist in the half-elf and half-orc, other species do not produce viable offspring.

The World

As mentioned before, the setting is the fictional world of Dere, created when the Ur-God Los and the Ur-Giant Sumu had an epic brawl that ended in Sumu's death. Her body became the world and from her blood came the Titans (some of which would later join the pantheon of the 12 Gods), while Los' tears turned into gods.

Playing the Game

Chargen used to be dierolls and classes, but in 4th edition they changed a lot of mechanics and went to skills based. Then they had a D&D 3.0 moment and had to re-release a fixed version of 4th edition, which fans call "4.1 edition". Version 5.0 was recently released after a public Beta. Very few changes to the rules happened, the basic is how talent checks at a disadvantage work now, basically the minimum disadvantage is tripled, but the way the math plays out now allows for a more accurate representation. In short, Germans tweaked the math on how well you can build a table without the proper tools. Also, there is now a magic resistance against divine/demonic damage, so demon pacteerers and priests of the thirteenth god are no longer absolute nightmare fuel for even the most experienced heroes.

Success checks are rolled on 3d20, and each die has to roll under one of the three appropriate attributes for the situation. Character attributes are: Courage, Wisdom, Intuition, Charisma, Dexterity, Agility, Constitution, Strength, and Speed. Failing on one or more of these dice tell you exactly how you fail (i.e.: you were agile enough to climb, but got too tired on the way up. or you had enough constitution to last, but couldn't find handholds that lead all the way to the top).

Characters

Because of the GURPS-like point-buy system, characters can grow to be pretty wild.

Basically, characters buy skills, attributes, special abilities, spells, perks and all the other stuff with adventure points, which are awarded similar to experience points, but can be directly spent rather than waiting for a level-up.

Character development is pretty open after the creation. There are no classes, only professions, which are sets of starting skills and abilities which almost all can be learned later in the game as well. The amount of available professions is mind boggling and (in true kraut fashion) are categorized into Combat, Wilderness, Social, Magic, Priestly, Scholars and Crafting, and go through all social strata, from whores (gender equality applies) and beggars to knights and royal guards. This of course opens the possibilities to adventuring as anything. Wanna play a baker who wants to see the world? CHECK! A former boy prostitute trying to steal and sweet talk his way through the criminal underworld? YEPP! A good-for-nothing (a literal profession in the rule book) who just wants to blow his inheritance on becoming a hero? CAN DO!

Skills are wild and all over the place. Especially knowledge and crafting skills can be anything you can dream of. Characters that specialize in these fields sometimes need additional sheets just to list all their skills because the default sheet could not fit them all. The point is: if you find a teacher, you can learn it. With the exception of magic potential. Only people born and raised to be spell casters will ever be. Some special people like half elves can learn some basic spells throughout their lives but it will be hard. And learning the skills that a certain profession starts with by default costs a mighty amount of adventure points, so you better think twice whether you want to dualspec your knight into a shipwright. For some characters, it's necessary to branch into other stuff. Mostly for all mages and most scholars, since they are fresh out of college and need to learn to not suck at everything else. If you chose one of the few gods that will let you keep your astral body, you can even be a priest and a mage, giving you access to two different kinds of magic with two seperate mana pools.

This diversity of professions and skills, combined with the german spirit, of course means that YES, there IS an official adventure that allows you to win by accounting.

The Gods

In contrast to our own world, where the existence of true divinity cannot be proven (or disproven if you will), the gods of TDE are very real. The most well-known or rather mostly worshipped ones are the Twelve. They are:

• Praios - God of the Sun, the Law and Truth. Hates magic with a passion.
• Tsa - Goddess of Life.
• Boron - God of Death and Dreams.
• Rondra - Goddess of Battle, Honour and Lightning.
• Firun - God of Ice, Snow and Survival.
• Hesinde - Goddess of Wisdom and Magic. Fuck you, Praios.
• Efferd - God of Water and Storm.
• Rahja - Goddess of Sex and Wine and Tits.
• Phex - God of Trade and Screwing other people over.
• Peraine - Goddess of Harvest.
• Ingerimm - God of Smithing and Fire and Metal.
• Travia - Goddess of Being Nice To Each Other, Harvest and Hospitality.

Staying true to Germans' love of hierarchies and bureaucracy, these twelve gods themselves are not super powerful all by themselves and merely inhabit twelve thrones associated with their sphere of influence (it is even hinted that the positions have shifted multiple times). Gods that exist but do not inhibit one of the twelve thrones are considered "demi-gods" not because of their nature, but because they cannot supply their priests and shamans with an as big supply of divine power (their priests' mana-pools are halved by default). And because we are big into numerology there also exists a thirteenth god. His sphere of influence was power and domination. When he tried to stay true to that, the other twelve just chained him into the starless breach so he can chill out until the thirteenth age. And they also destroyed his name, so is just called the nameless god. And ADDITIONALLY to that, every of the twelve gods has a dark flip side, an arch demon who is their perverted image, so the flip side of Rondra is a demon of slaughter and unfair combat so honourless, even Khorne would be pissed. Whether the thirteenth god has a flip side is unknown, but there is a myth of a being called the demon sultan.

Magic

Magic in Dere is pretty straightforward and takes its notes from the "useful things to have" book of magic, where spells are more like a 120-piece toolbox and less like a glowing rocket launcher. From deciding to cast a spell to actually casting it, the caster can make quite some decisions on how to define the outcome. Spells can have most components (duration, cast time, components) modified spontaneously (called "spontaneous Modifications") Some spells also have alternative versions that a more experienced caster can utilize to, for example, turn a spell from a single gust of wind into a continuous wind as long as the caster can breathe out, or a simple telekinesis spell into a movement constricting inhibition field.

Also, spells arent organized into classes, only in difficulty to learn (increasing the adventure points necessary to achieve a certain skill level) and "Representation", indicating whether a spell is known in the different forms spell casting can take, from standard boring Guild mages' way, to witches and druids, dwarven, Kobold, high elven, Achatz etc. with some spells being only accessible to some specific professions or races. Every representation brings its own components. For example, druids need to have bare feet contact to the ground, Achatz' crystalcasters needs a special kind of crystal for each type of spell, Kobolds can only cast if it's funny (but they are very mischievous, so they might not have taken a situation seriously in the first place) etc. Also, some neat tricks can be applied, like Guild Mages being able to modify spells for half the disadvantage on the check, witches being able to amplify spells with emotions, giving even more flavour and customization to spells.

All this together boils down to spells being crafted by the player themselves and well thought-out. In combat, most spells are useless because of their casting time and direct damage spells are actually very rare. There are a few basic spells like speed or armor buffs that always help in a fight, but unless the group has a master of multi-target combat or the GM is so generous as to NOT throw enemies at the casters, they better start learning how to fight.