Wow, Sett. That really sucks. Player's book by Gygax, GM's book by Rein(dot)Hagen, huh? I think I see why you hate the Swine so much, if even your fantasy adventuring scene was tainted.

QuoteI think I see why you hate the Swine so much, if even your fantasy adventuring scene was tainted.

You wouldnt believe how fucked up it is over here.

There´s other tradition-lines in german gaming, where people who actually wanted to solve problems (e.g. played an actual D&D derivative instead of heavy handed jeu d´ambiance):

Shadowrun
Battletech

FANPRO fucked them both up, too. Shadowrun has been more and more turned into a novel-line, but there are still some sane players out there.

Battletech OTOH has had it´s german fanbase destroyed by craptacular product policy. The relaunch will not even be translated! Even though FANPRO has bought FASA, with German BT and SR-money.

So all that remains is the DSA trainwreck. Entrenched fans who buy the latest metaplot railroad-"adventure module", to see how the NPCs save the world. The players stand at the sidelines and may discuss recent events at the tavern. Basically, you could imagine Germany being in the firm grip of Dragonlance DMs.

The culture thusly formed has also invaded Cthulhu. Ever wonder why german CoC products look so great?
Because it´s the thing people over twenty like to get there jeu d´ambiance kick from, when they feel Fantasy is too childish.

And then there´s WotCs fuckup: They let Feder & Schwert get the D&D license. The F&S guys hate D&D (they wrote Engel, and are the German White Wolf), only do it for the money. They do not promote it, though. They closed down the forae, and sue anybody who is putting up fan-material for D&D, because it "violates their IP-rights for the translation". No German SRD.

All German gamers you meet online are of a tiny minority who regularly use English products, most are only following German releases.


That´s why I decided to start a crusade against this swinish culture, and I basically jump-started the German RPG-Blogosphere. Now there´s at least online a campaign for the betterment and proliferation of Adventure Gaming.

We are blogging and writing for ARS = Abenteuerrollenspiel, that is RPGs which let´s you actually solve problems, be heroes instead of the aforementioned railroady jeu d´ambiance.

If any WotC-person is reading: take away the license from F&S. Give them to Pegasus, Pegasus is way more able and willing to push a game, and to supply it with quality material.

Hmmm. That explains a lot....

I never made a secret out of my "parochialisms".

That background is also the reason why I don´t Thematic games are a problem or the enemy, and can easily grant them their successes and niche.

It´s the mood-swine I´m after, those romantic fuckers sucked the lifeblood from our scene, now it´s anemic and near to death.

No "Platinum Age" of Adventure Gaming (Ptolus, Wilderlands, Hackmaster, T20, Trav Reprints, Dungeon Magazine, True20, M&M, Mongoose etc.) like you guys live in.

All we got are some nice-to-look-at Cthulhu hardcovers, which print well-researched faux-mysteries with one-way-structure.

Sett could you post some of those CoC covers...so we could...um...spit on them.

Regards,
David R

Well, I don´t know, they are looking good.

but here you go:

Here take a peek at the free intro-kit:

http://www.pegasus.de/fileadmin/downloads/cthulhu/cthulhu_fuer_einsteiger.pdf

Hey, is that a picture of Ganesha on one of the covers ?

Regards,
David R

Altered, to look like Chaugnar Faugn.

The Malleus Monstrorum is full of very creatively done mixture of old-style images with cthulhu mythos. look at the PDF I linked!

Look at the walks-like-an-egyptian-Cthulhu!

That´s really rad stuff and they did that for every creature, really cool.

Quote from: King of Old SchoolYeah, I agree with this.  Another example is Heavy Gear, after the destruction of Peace River.  It became a totally different setting with a totally different premise, and if you didn't like the change you were SOL as far as future supplements were concerned.

KoOS

Yeah, that was another one that pissed me off. Especially since it seemed like they did it just to tie-in with the Heavy Gear 2 video game.

Quote from: droogHmmm. That explains a lot....

That's right, he's traumatized.

Me, I was saved from harm by coming to gaming fairly early, and of course by supreme arrogance. I started out in the pre-DSA era, and to the present day I've never played a German roleplaying game. Partly because of the schlock, partly because of the language. IMHO, "beschlagenes Lederwams" is to "studded leather" as "Datensichtgeraet" is to "monitor." Intolerable.

Quote from: ClaudiusI like Rolemaster, especially 2nd edition, but I hate the Companions....

:ditto:

Quote from: Bradford C. WalkerI have similar feelings about Tribe 8, in that it was great before Capal.

I concur. I felt that before that point the game seemed much lower powered, even though the PCs were still movers and shakers in their communities. Not anything I could readily put my finger on, though.

QuoteThat's right, he's traumatized.

Only since being online active.
I played english-product-based campaign after campaign, happily and joyful.

Then I saw what the general German gaming populace is doing and what their nerdlords are thinking & how they are producing their material.

Righteous anger came after a phase of utter puzzlement.