Orkenspalter is one of those fanpages for Das Schwarze Auge that have been around for so long they have become part of the establishment. And I mean this literally, they have a series of Actual Plays where the owner (?) of current DSA publisher Ulisses Games DM’s them through the early DSA modules. Which is neat. Lately they seem to have made videos their thing, and basically have a video channel reporting mostly on DSA fandom.
Which includes making an impressive three hour documentary about the history of Das Schwarze Auge.
It’s all in German, so you might not want to watch with (auto-translated) subtitles on, but for me as an old fan of the system (it was my first, after Hero Quest) it is fascinating.
You might not be interested to watch 3 hours of badly translated German, but here’s a few interesting bits that I got from this:
- I was mostly interested because lately I’ve been thinking how the old DnD modules informed the earliest DSA adventures, and there’s not that much information. What I do know though is that the creators of DSA were intimately familiar with them, because they were translating them. There is no clear inspiration mentioned, but Werner Fuchs mentions that they didn’t like Keep on the Borderlands because of the lack of plot, they did like Palace of the Silver Princess (green cover of course) because it had one. Another bit from a comment in another publication also has him mention Castle Amber. I assumed there was a closer connection to the Hickmans’ modules, but that didn’t come up.
- They were translating DnD for a contract between TSR and Schmidt Spiele before that deal fell through. Fuchs mentioned working on multiple boxes and 24 (!) different DnD modules. That is in addition to translating Tunnels and Trolls to publish for Fanpro and creating Das Schwarze Auge for Schmidt
- it might have to be noted that the first RPG translated into German was not Dungeons and Dragons, but Schwerter und Dämonen (orig. Tunnels and Trolls). According to Fuchs this was a mistake, and they should have done Runequest instead. I concur.
- Barely mentioned is the fact that the first German RPG was Empires of Magira [sic!] (renamed Midgard later) in 1978, which was basically a clone of Empire of the Petal Throne, and used an already existing wargaming background. But to be fair, this was a homespun publication that did not reach the mainstream popularity Das Schwarze Auge reached. Only after the success of DSA did this get a professional publication.
- The creation of Das Schwarze Auge was a thoroughly commercial project. Ulrich Kiesow and Werner Fuchs had organized a connection to TSR and Droemer Knaur (Fuchs was an editor for them), and Droemer Knaur brought Schmidt Spiele on board. Then TSR demanded too much money late in the project, and Schmidt pulled out. They paid Kiesow and Fuchs to come up with a game “to blow TSR from the market” and with only a few months of time they came up with Das Schwarze Auge.
- This also explains why the earliest DSA products are pretty awful. They had the experience with DnD and TnT already, but they only had three months to create two rule boxes and four adventures. Playtesting? Ha.
- One interesting aspect of this whole mess was how much the influence of Schmidt Spiele really made Das Schwarze Auge a household name in German-speaking parts. DnD WAS published at around the same time, but Schmidt managed to get their product into toy stores and department stories in three different countries and people learned about the hobby from DSA, not from that obscure Dungeons and Dragons game. I still remember when I was a kid and every department store seemed to have a small section in their toy aisle devoted to DSA. If you wanted something else you had to go to toy stores, and even there the largest part of the RPG selection would be DSA, with maybe some additional other stuff.
- As much as the publishing power of Schmidt had been a boon for sales, it has been a complaint for a long time that they just did not understand roleplaying games. DSA always seems to have run as a very lucrative side project, and the times when they tried interfering with Ulrich Kiesow’s handling of the property often was an unmitigated disaster. Examples given were the DSA-Professional boxes, that were created when they learned about AD&D (and had to have a magic system making use of some leftover runes from a cancelled product), and Mit Lanze, Helm und Federkiel, (With Lance, Helmet, and Quill) a rather lackluster equipment card system, and the very early Die Werkzeuge des Meisters (Tools of the DM), a box of cardboard standees, gamebreaking rules, and the infamous Mask of the Master. Yes, this is the mask mentioned in the title of the documentary.
- They also were responsible for the name. Or, rather, a separate advertising company was. There was not actual Dark Eye in the game at that point, but it sounded mysterious and interesting and so it had to be written in by the actual creators.
- One thing I was wondering for a long time but which I finally got some answer for was Schmidt Spiele’s bankruptcy. This happened in 1997. According to Mr. Fuchs they miscalculated during the Christmas season, pushed a lot of product into the shops, and then had to take back a lot of returns during the year. Which killed an otherwise completely sound company.
- It was not mentioned, but the creators of DSA also are the translators for DnD at that time: Unfortunately their work on DSA seems to have soured the relationship with TSR, not very many products were published by FSV, and they were far from successful. There were multiple attempts and gaining traction in the German market afterwards, e.g. by Amigo Spiele, but DnD as a brand always was more of an also-ran in the German roleplaying scene. A very successful also-ran, but DSA in German-speaking areas is what DnD is in English-speaking ones: the main fantasy roleplaying system, the main starter system, and the one people think about when people talk about fantasy roleplaying.