A while ago I decided to buy myself the reissue of the first Das Schwarze Auge rules that came out in 1984. The reissue was a kickstarter-backed luxury reissue published in 2018, and they decided to put in all the materials from the starter box (the Abenteuer-Basis-Spiel), and both editions of the GM tool box (Die Werkzeuge des Meisters, both 1984, both with completely different contents despite the same title). It also contains a copy of the first solo (B5 Nedime, die Tochter des Kalifen, also 1984), and a few other things that were at hand it seems.
The box is actually not the same as before. It certainly is bigger and more sturdy. The old Schmidt Spiele boxes never were that strong. Neither were had the books within the box such sturdy covers. At least I don’t assume they had, I never had my hands on an actual copy of the 1st edition, but I had enough other Schmidt Spiele books and boxes from later.
It does also contain the infamous Mask of the Master. This was an idea from the publishing house. Ostensibly it was for the GM to wear during the games to appear more mysterious. The picture does not quite show how tiny and flimsy this thing really is. Even my 7yo would have issues wearing this thing. Oh, did I mention that the first toolbox was absolutely hated by the authors? It seems it was all an idea from the board game publishing Schmidt Spiele who were uncomfortable with games that did only not contain books and not at least some counters or gimmicks. This would come back every few years.
There was not much choice in weapons and equipment. In comparison to the contemporary translation of Dungeons and Dragons… about the same. No big surprise, the authors also had already translated both Dungeons and Dragons and Tunnels and Trolls and were quite familiar with what was expected here.
This contains both books that were contained in the two different toolbox sets. It does not say so on it, and it doesn’t mention the second book in the later part in the table of contents, but it’s there.
The first book was quite hated by both the creators of the game and the audience, which was why it was reissued with a complete makeover of the contents. It has strange riddle doors and other ideas that did not fit in with the general game design. It also has 9 more monsters to supplement the 6 in the starter box, bringing the number of available monsters up to 15 (16 with two different kinds of dragons). Well, there also were the ones in the adventure books, but the selection of monsters in DSA was thin.
Here are some interesting things about the monsters:
- the cyclops has both stats for normal and if blinded.
- the Krakenmolch has half a page of extra rules for cutting off tentacles
- the sphinx has no stats at all
- the basilisk is supposed to be the worst of monsters here, has nearly a page of special rules, and gives 500xp for just attempting to kill one. Making this into a nice xp mill.
The second book in the later part of the booklet has some more ideas on traps and magic items, 20 riddles, and descriptions of the paper minis and the monsters they depict. What it doesn’t have are actual stats for those monsters. I guess you were supposed to make them up as you went along.
I know it’s not really hard, but kind of badly thought out.
I find it curious they decided to have Nedime in here as a pack-in instead of another group scenario. I know it’s a well-beloved title (it also was the first DSA mobile game when they started producing them), but I would have expected one or more of the original four scenarios in here. Those were reissued as well, but I think originally as Kickstarter rewards.
The Aventurischer Bote newsletter only started a bit later than the timeframe of this box was, so this is an interesting publication, also giving some additional background material and rules. This reprints the early contents of the newsletter, before it became that in-game periodical it is nowadays. Some of the entries here are also non-canonical in modern DSA, specifically the description of the city Phexcaer is so different it can’t be brought in line with later stuff.
This is an odd bird of a thing. It’s not actually a proper reissue of something that came before. The largest part of this book is full-page filled character sheets, from what I see mostly of premade characters from the actual adventure modules. This strikes me as a waste of space. I guess it could be interesting for someone? The characters in that edition of DSA are not really so complicated that I think this would be needed.
The only actual thing of real interest is “Die Burg der Ungeheuer”, a technically a third adventure in this box, after the solo and the group scenario in the adventure booklet. Except… it’s not actually playable.
It turns out this scenario was a sort of solo/live action scenario that was played on the very first SPIEL trade fair in Essen, when they tried to present this new interesting game. Players were supposed to go through the leaflet this was on, Fighting Fantasy style, and go to actual places in the building that had hints. I had never heard about this before, and for good reason: it’s incomplete. It depends on RL notes that were spread around the building the trade fair was in. A building that itself is not there anymore. An interesting little artifact for sure, but of somewhat dubious usefulness.
The GM screen is tiny as well. It’s serviceable on the back I guess, but it doesn’t hide much and feels like it’s made for ants. Or really small children.
The main issue I have with the rules is that they really are not that great. They are serviceable, but DSA won the German market less by being thought out, and more by being available in every toy store that carried Schmidt Spiele games. Even in comparison to contemporary 1984 DnD this feels limited. It does feel a bit closer to Tunnels and Trolls maybe, which tried to have a more minimal ruleset than DnD.
There are not actually many monsters in the game. The ones you see on the page… are basically what is there. Different scenarios and the toolbox would introduce more monsters later on, but if you just had the original box to deal with you had the whole of 6 monsters.
Not that it was hard to make more, just look at the monster stats.
The cardboard standees were a part of the first, the bad toolbox, but they are included because some people had fond memories of them. They are way too big and don’t fit the art of the rest of DSA.
These paper minis, tiles, and doors were part of the second edition of the toolbox. Much more useful than the standees from the first box they maybe are a bit flimsy. In comparison to the huge cardboard standees from before they are maybe even a bit too small. Still faithfully reproduced.
And here we have a few of the contained documents.
Well. I do see how this game could become such a success, there is a lot of stuff in there that captures the imagination. And the whole ruleset is rather minimal, but it also is easy to grok and play.
Note: By the way, the name is a pun. The first emperor in the setting was Emperor Hal, the previous one was established to have been Reto. So this box is metaphorically going back to the time before the setting was established properly.