Quote from: 3rik;897771Hm, do you own any quaint German D&Desques?

Well played, sir, well played. :lol:

Seriously, though. What's the skinny?

Quote from: The Butcher;897823Well played, sir, well played. :lol:

Seriously, though. What's the skinny?

I don't know man. My only experience with it is fanboys waxing lyrical about how professional it was... when I really didn't find anything particularly appealing to what I've seen of it. Also, as has been mentioned beofre on these boards, the implied playstyle in previous editions is nuts: lots of emphasis on strictly following the published adventures, timeline and setting canon. But of course, that's easily ignored.

Quote from: Maese Mateo;897737The system as described by the QuickStart seems rather simple. How complex is the final version of the game (I'm talking 5th Edition, of course, the one I backed)?

It compares a bit to Rolemaster, the real one, not the scary phantom a lot of players have in their heads.
If the character sheets of everybody involved have been filled in completely and correctly, everybody knows the basics of stuff in the rules they will be using and there are enough d20's on the table...
No worries.
If not, you should adopt a very rules light style until you have that stuff fixed.

Honestly, TDE works when you only engage with the rules when something significant happens. Unless you want the following to happen.
 (player)I make breakfast. (DM) roll 3d20 compare the first to your intuition and the 2nd and third to your dexterity. (player) after spending half a dozen points of my prepare food skill to repair that missed test in the middle I have 2 skill points left. (DM) well, that is a 1 quality level success, breakfast is edible, but does not rise above the level of porridge, no French toast for your character today.

Quote from: The Butcher;897762For a D&D lover who already owns a ton of D&Desques and has no sentimental attachment to the franchise — what's the pitch?

You get to play these guys and still be useful?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till_Eulenspiegel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sancho_Panza

On a less flippant note.
It is a traditional fantasy rpg, but is not all that D&Desque. You approach problems more like in Call of Cthulhu. Fighting is a last resort, you tackle most problems using skills. The party healer is probably more like Rudolph van Richten (herb doctor, with a bunch of other useful skills) and not Joe the cleric. Magic is not your artillery, but a collection of slightly weird specialty tools. Power level is comparable to late Legend of the 5 Rings. Or in D&D terms, recommended starting characters are comparable to level 4-6 D&D/Pathfinder characters from a skill focused class. Avonturia's powerful can be the equivalent of seriously high level D&D 3.5 characters, but we are talking high level Bards, and rangers with only very modest magic gear, not Khelben 'Blackstaff'.

In previous editions PCs got to watch cool canon NPCs do cool stuff that is significant to the metaplot. Has this improved?

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;897491The game is tied to a setting, Aventuria, which is very lovely and uniquely German.

What, specifically, is uniquely German about it? From the Drakensang game and QuickStart it seems pretty generic fantasy. Is it like The Witcher videogames which take a bog standard fantasy world and give it a subtle Polish spin or is it more like WFRP where British humour colours an otherwise standard fantasy setting?

Quote from: yojimbouk;897947What, specifically, is uniquely German about it? From the Drakensang game and QuickStart it seems pretty generic fantasy. Is it like The Witcher videogames which take a bog standard fantasy world and give it a subtle Polish spin or is it more like WFRP where British humour colours an otherwise standard fantasy setting?

Nothing. It's just very detailed.

Quote from: 3rik;897921In previous editions PCs got to watch cool canon NPCs do cool stuff that is significant to the metaplot. Has this improved?

To early to tell. DSA 5 has produced 11 adventures to date. Sounds like a lot. However...

7 of them are intro modules that are mostly there to teach folks the new edition. Those are to low key to do directly anything metaplot related.
The 4 after them are adding to the metaplot in various ways, but we haven't yet reached the climax of the story line.

Quote from: yojimbouk;897947What, specifically, is uniquely German about it? From the Drakensang game and QuickStart it seems pretty generic fantasy. Is it like The Witcher videogames which take a bog standard fantasy world and give it a subtle Polish spin or is it more like WFRP where British humour colours an otherwise standard fantasy setting?

I disagree somewhat with 3ric on this. Certain games can only be conceived within a specific cultural context.
WFRP is not quite quintessentially British, but it is unlikely to have been created in a country without a labour party and football hooligans.
The Spanish game Aquelarre has an American spiritual equivalent in Ars Magica, a lovely game sure, but very different. It is obvious which of the 2 is the American game and which the Spanish one.

 I strongly suspect that if you make a cultural anthropologist specialized in the more high brow segments of German popular culture read up on Avonturia, that he'll find a very long and detailed list of influences. Including plenty of stuff, nobody outside of Germany ever heard of.

Quote from: igor;897900You get to play these guys and still be useful?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Till_Eulenspiegel

Quote from: WikipediaMany others of Till's pranks are scatological in nature, and involve tricking people into touching, smelling, or even eating Till's excrement.

Yep, not uniquely German, but definitely stereotypically German.

Quote from: Gnashtooth;897982Yep, not uniquely German, but definitely stereotypically German.

I don't know where you get your stereotypes from but I've never heard of that one.

Early Aventuria was undeniably influenced by The Brothers Grimm and German folklore in general. Later editions went more and more High Medieval with the setting. It still retains some of its fairytale-like qualities, with gypsies and witches, herbalism, literally playing heroes (not just characters) and all that jazz.

Quote from: 3rik;897983I don't know where you get your stereotypes from but I've never heard of that one.

See: https://www.reddit.com/r/germany/comments/qec2d/no_shit_on_the_german_obsession_with_shit/

In a serious regard, I'm incredibly excited about this product.  I've got some of the Ral Partha (?) minis from DSA which are old Metal Magic.  I love the elves and have wondered who many of the named NPCs are for quite some time, and was really disappointed to see that the FanPro release of 4.0 failed here in the US.  This project looks like it's on a far better target for continued success.

Also, I just finished Chains of Satinav and Memoria which are excellent intros to the setting.

I hope we get at least one of the novels translated.

I have my fingers crossed that I can get enough locals interested to the point where I can finally abandon D&D for TDE.

The unique qualities of TDE are not the rules. The rules are as good or bad as RoleMaster, Pathfinder, AD&D 2 (+ Options?), Rêve de Dragon, and of equal complexity.
What made TDE give D&D a run for its money on the German market was a setting aimed at local sensitivities, folklore, and mass media exposure (IIRC long ago Settembrini and/or Melan mentioned Karl May, Rinaldo Rinaldini and Arpad the Gypsy as inspirations/explanations for Aventuria).

That, and the fact that fans could be part of the official history (which is severely downplayed in the current edition, AFAIK).

I am afraid these elements will be invisible to foreign gamers... But it will be interesting to see what foreign gamers will make of Aventuria, how they will interpret and develop the setting via fan products, and make it their own!

An example session of TDE being played in English.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mk1hiPp2nlI