The Dark Eye RPG [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Morty

2013-07-25, 02:53 PM

Like it says in the title: I'd like information about the Dark Eye tabletop game, especially from people who have a lot of experience with it. I've reads bits and pieces about it, but I'm not sure which edition they refer to. Also, I've heard that the Basic Rules book for the 4th edition is in fact a version of rules abridged to the point of uselessness. Is that true?

Pyrophilios

2013-07-25, 05:25 PM

Yeah, the basic book is more or less incompatible with the real rules.
The current edition is the so called 4.1 and consists of 7 big hard cover books
(Character Creation book(Ways of the heroes), Skills/Combat (Ways of the swords), Magic(Ways of Magic), Spellbook(Liber Cantiones), Divine(Ways of the Gods), Alchemie/Magic Items(Ways of Alchemie), GM Guidebook(Ways of the Master))
For mundane characters you only need the first two books.
As far as I know those are only available in German, while the basic rule book has been translated (badly, I've been told)

The overall system is not much to write home about: 4th Edition is quite complex and far from a smooth game (their is this really antiquated rules mechanic to test for one skill check on three different attributes and using your skill points to compensate for the difference. It's really hard to gauge modifiers for that) and there are a lot of special rules and redundancies that can cause quite a headache (some say the designers themselves don't know all their rules, noticeable especially in official adventures)

The best part of the system is the really detailed and extensive background and overarching metaplot that is steadily developed further. (Some would also say that is a bad thing: You have to look hard for white spots on the map if you don't want to interfere with the official timeline)

I haven't been following the developments of the last few years, so there might have been some improvements and/or translations - but I doubt it.