Intro to The Dark Eye TTRPG - A Remarkable D&D Alternative (Das Schwarze Auge)
A YouTube video by How to be a Great Game Master discussing The Dark Eye.
The Dark Eye, known in the original German as Das Schwarze Auge (literally The Black Eye) and previously released in English as Realms of Arkania, is a fantasy role-playing game created by Ulrich Kiesow and launched by Schmidt Spiel & Freizeit GmbH and Droemer Knaur Verlag in 1984. More recently it has been published by Fantasy Productions and, since April 2007, by Ulisses Spiele. The fifth edition of the game was released in August 2015, with an English translation released in November 2016.
It is the most successful role-playing game on the German market, outselling Dungeons & Dragons. Many years of work on the game have led to a detailed and extensively-described setting, called Aventuria. Aventuria is a living setting, in which the years progress at the same pace as they do in the real world, with details updated annually by the publisher.
System
The 5th edition of The Dark Eye is a d20 roll-under system in which player characters are described with attributes and skills.
Critical successes and critical failures are included in the mechanics, but don't occur on a single roll of a natural 1 or natural 20; they must be confirmed with at least one other roll in order to have a mechanical effect. In attribute checks, this requires a specific confirmation roll; in skill checks, two of the three rolls must include a natural 1 or 20 for a critical.
Attributes (plus modifiers) are the target numbers for most rolls, and the 8 attributes are courage, sagacity, intuition, charisma, dexterity, agility, constitution, and strength. When making skill checks, characters must succeed at 3 associated attribute checks in order to succeed, discouraging minmaxing. Skills also have a pool of points (player resources) that can be spent to modify dice results; the degree of success is determined by how many points are left in a pool at the end of a check.
External links
- The Dark Eye at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.