I wonder if that "players shouldn't fail" is some kind of German cultural thing.
I have a German-speaking player in my games, who I'm 99% sure never played DSA (he started gaming when already living in english-speaking countries, and hasn't played very many different games), who consistently had that attitude for a long time.  He was always astounded that I as the GM would just let the players not succeed, and even moreso that I'd let them actually die and not make "something" happen at the last second to somehow save them (he'd even frequently offer suggestions as to what ridiculous deus ex machina should intervene).

I was sort of wondering what you might think of this one Pundit.  Neutral for you then.  There are some nice supplements to Aventuria.  They need to give at least a tentative outlook of those, maybe three. Actual setting supplements, rather than the adventures I know they will do.  It is really early, though.

QuoteI wonder if that "players shouldn't fail" is some kind of German cultural thing.

I think it depends on the group's play style. In my group it's common that a character can die out of different reasons. Like you made a bad plan and something goes wrong. Of course fighting is deadly, too. Dangerous or probably deadly situations are always recognizable as such situations. But chasing demons into the woods out of the blue has a huge potential to be deadly, it's simply stupid to do so^^.
You should be aware that every action causes a reaction of the world you play in and sometimes the answer ist death. Deal with it, create a new character and try to do better in the future.
But no one should die out of bad luck and one dice roll.

Quote from: RPGPundit;845693I wonder if that "players shouldn't fail" is some kind of German cultural thing.

Only a gaming cultural thing, I presume.

I've had players like that in my games as well. One particular case I remember was defininitely never a DSA player (started with AD&D, like me, but sampled other systems as well).

My pet theory about all that is this:
It all depends from which angle one comes to the RPG hobby. It is human nature that we look for familiar things whenever we discover something new. We want to classify, or at least compare to what we already know.

Most German players come from a literary angle. When trying to explain themselves what an RPG is all about they figure that it's about (heroic) characters and their adventures, not unlike a novel (or TV show, or movie), but experienced in real time.
Everything else - railroads, illusionism, mood-gaming, script immunity for characters and Mary Sues - flows from that.

The persons that were mainly responsible for building the German market were the FanPro crew - the DSA designers that worked behind Schmidt Spiele.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;844652It's the same kind of deal that existed for 13 years between Schmidt Spiele and the people behind FanPro. Schmidt Spiele knew next to nothing about RPGs and commissioned the German D&D translators to write a game for them, and the FanPro team worked with an army of freelancers for the various tasks necessary to build and retain the whole Das Schwarze Auge RPG line.
But it was Schmidt who ordered specific types of product ("our customer reps told us that the big department chains can handle 1 new boxed set and 4 modules per half-year", "solo adventures are doing well, so half of the modules must be solo", "from a new age book deal we have an overstock of wooden rune tiles - use them in the next boxed set").

The FanPro heads and DSA designers were Kiesow, Fuchs, and Alpers, who were working in the literary field. The latter two were Grey Eminences of the SF/fantasy publishing business, acting as editors (in chief), translators, literary agents (Alpers is the German agent for GRRM). Of course they all had a literary lookout on RPGs.

Even the way the products are structured can be explained by that:
A great many adventure modules in Germany (for any system) are written to be read. They are organised in chapters, full of prose and read-aloud text. The worst few are written so that a GM can "experience the adventure like the players should", with no up-front explanation or overview, but "surprises". (There are offenders like that in English language gaming as well - Tribe 8 withheld his metaplot from the GM as well as Engel did.)

But it happened in other markets as well. With roleplaying becoming mainstream even in the US the connection to the wargame roots got severed. The second or third wave of newbs had the same "problems" (of identifying the reason for playing RPGs) as German newbs.
With steamlined products such as Mentzer D&D, and novel authors becoming the creative minds behind modules (Dragonlance) it was inevitable that the hobby was discovered, adopted and changed by the massive influx of players with other interests and outlooks, paving the way for VTM which clearly drew on literery, character-driven sources, and the whole Storygames movement.

In Germany all of that happened much faster because our exposure to the hobby was via those streamlined products - Mentzer D&D, Dragonlance, and Das Schwarze Auge which was heavily influenced first by Mentzer D&D and soon after by DL metaplot.




There is a small cultural element as well:

Most of the first adopters of RPGs (in the US in the seventies) were wargamers, so they compared to wargaming and everything in the rules was processed though that lens. For instance, the role of a referee was taken for granted, and his function and responsibilities crystal-clear.
In Germany we didn't have that gaming culture at all. More so, wargaming was seen as something pervy. A person who wants to play something as horrible as a war must have a sick mind. (The German edition of Risk is not about "conquering" countries and continents, it's about "liberating" them...)

So while in the US (and other countries that had wargaming communities) the first generation of RPGers brought their mindset with them, in Germany the novelists were the first generation.

Spoiler

Only a tiny handful of Armageddon/The Eternal Game players, who indeed were the first roleplayers in Germany (via EPT, Magira/proto-Midgard) had a wargaming angle - but they didn't mingle with the wider gaming community. Midgard, the only German RPG that was written with what we today call old school sensibilty, was an obscure item for its first - I don't know - five to eight years? It only became wider known when Schmidt (DSA) subsidiary Klee Spiele licensed it and gave it the DSA treatment - boxed sets in mainstream toy store distribution. But by then DSA and its literary playstyle was already king of the hill. (And by then Midgard had taken on a RQ or RM stance, being a rather dry, simulationist game quite divorced from its wargame roots.)

But the reason why I think that this is not such a big deal:

This explains only why we don't have a wargame-rooted old school.
The greater influx of gamers looking at the hobby through a literature and storytelling lens was inevitable.

I daresay I have pondered the question of German exceptionalism in gaming for some years both on- and offline.

What Dirk said is generally correct.

Let me add two crucial points that make up the German pop-cultural DNA of the demographic involved:

1) audio plays.
German kids, and especially German gamers, have a high chance of having been raised on audio plays. Audio plays of a certain "ambiance" type that, as far as I know, do not actually exist outside Germany. They were, in their specific make, The invention of a lady called Heikedine Körting.


There are many general German cultural traits that are reflected by audio plays, but this would be uninteresting to the outsider.

Imagine a childhood without saturday morning cartoons and especially without any american style comic books but instead with moody audio plays.
The German mainstream playstyle is: listening & feeling. That links into to a certain substrate of German mainstream culture that I would call "flow-centrism", i.e. many endeavours are flow-based in contrast to say, the US. Just take Football vs. Baseball, American Football and Basketball.  I hope the point should be clear.

2) Lustige Taschenbücher
Also a staple of a German childhood is that most comics a kid in the last 45 years will have read are the European "Duck Tales" style adventures of Mickey and Donald. They cover nearly all kinds of adventure story but the always end well and often with a deus ex-machina. Also, they have a static continuity. The relevant points should be obvious.

This is of course just the baseline. There are regional differences, as with the Midgard/DSA split (Deep southern Germany vs Rhineland), and more subtle ones. In fact, as with the US there is a class-based differentiation too. The only major substrate of German competitive gaming that is neither flow centric nor expecting shit to line up nicely in the end is/was the Battletech scene. A blue collar game, if you will. Of course, Battletechers are ageing. But from what I gather, the German RPG market is shrinking.

NB: MtG and pokemon and Dragonball Z CCGs are, in their competitiveness, mentally seperated from Roleplaying. So RPG is, even for tournament style magic players, mostly about listening & feeling.

The only real hope of the last 20 years is the relative success of the translation of "Mice & Msytics".

My disdain for DSA / TDE and it's apologists is well known, btw.
The specimen we have in this thread is just clueless.

Thank you Beagle for stepping up and saving me time!

Got a chance to read the whole thread.  Honestly, about the amount of...meh I don't want to say something dismissive of anyone's opinion, since I'm pretty neutral on it.  I have really zero investment in it.

Ulix mentioned Die Dunklen Zeiten.  I wouldn't have remembered the name without the cue, but that one looked interesting.  Never looked at the adventures, just not interested in that type of game content in general.  So, I never looked through any of that stack.  Have looked at a few of the setting books, though.  There are a couple decent city ones. Havenâ was one as I recall.  Gareth in Stolze Schlösser? I think that was the supplement.

Really early issues of Aventurischer Bote had some ok D&D things as I recall.  Different anyway.

I always wanted an English edition of the old French game Empire Galactique.  Still waiting for that.  I'll have shop around for a nice condition French version again, haven't done that for awhile.

Edit: Looking around some notes it was Stolze Schlösser, dunkle Gasse (1998) for the city of Gareth stuff alright.  Havenâ that I was thinking of was the one from 85.

Quote from: Schattenwanderer;845705But no one should die out of bad luck and one dice roll.

Then why one should bother to throw the dice at all?

Indeed.
It is the quote that unravels all of German mainstream RP gaming. I think it is found in many TDE mdoules and GM-advice sections.

Quote from: Settembrini;845725I daresay I have pondered the question of German exceptionalism in gaming for some years both on- and offline.

What Dirk said is generally correct.

Let me add two crucial points that make up the German pop-cultural DNA of the demographic involved:

1) audio plays.
German kids, and especially German gamers, have a high chance of having been raised on audio plays. Audio plays of a certain "ambiance" type that, as far as I know, do not actually exist outside Germany. They were, in their specific make, The invention of a lady called Heikedine Körting.


There are many general German cultural traits that are reflected by audio plays, but this would be uninteresting to the outsider.

Imagine a childhood without saturday morning cartoons and especially without any american style comic books but instead with moody audio plays.
The German mainstream playstyle is: listening & feeling. That links into to a certain substrate of German mainstream culture that I would call "flow-centrism", i.e. many endeavours are flow-based in contrast to say, the US. Just take Football vs. Baseball, American Football and Basketball.  I hope the point should be clear.

2) Lustige Taschenbücher
Also a staple of a German childhood is that most comics a kid in the last 45 years will have read are the European "Duck Tales" style adventures of Mickey and Donald. They cover nearly all kinds of adventure story but the always end well and often with a deus ex-machina. Also, they have a static continuity. The relevant points should be obvious.

This is of course just the baseline. There are regional differences, as with the Midgard/DSA split (Deep southern Germany vs Rhineland), and more subtle ones. In fact, as with the US there is a class-based differentiation too. The only major substrate of German competitive gaming that is neither flow centric nor expecting shit to line up nicely in the end is/was the Battletech scene. A blue collar game, if you will. Of course, Battletechers are ageing. But from what I gather, the German RPG market is shrinking.

NB: MtG and pokemon and Dragonball Z CCGs are, in their competitiveness, mentally seperated from Roleplaying. So RPG is, even for tournament style magic players, mostly about listening & feeling.

The only real hope of the last 20 years is the relative success of the translation of "Mice & Msytics".

Don't take this the wrong way, 'cause I don't mean it in an entirely negative context but that, what you just described up there, is really fuckin' weird.  But please go on!

Quote from: Settembrini;845761It is the quote that unravels all of German mainstream RP gaming. I think it is found in many TDE mdoules and GM-advice sections.

But the strange thing is it is uttered as well by lots of people that have never read TDE GM advice.

"In books/movies/on TV the heroes never die by accident. (And if it's an accident, it is a dramatically fitting one.)"

(Even weirder is that the very same people are big fans of Game of Thrones, where characters are falling like flies, and in the dramatically most inopportune moments.)

Regarding your last point Dirk, I think European culture, and especially German culture has general problems with contingency. Story-fication is a big thing.
It is not entirely European, just look at the Sopranos and its end. And the discussion around it. Also, the adage: "Characters should only die if they do something stupid!" is well known in the US, too.

It's just that in Germany the baseline for "storified" thinking, that ultimately is metaphysical, is much stronger.

In a way, enimity towards D&D, romanticism, metaphysical speculation, and enimity towards math as well enimity towards capitalism all follow a similar anti-modernist drumbeat.
You have that in all western culture, in Germany just much stronger and on all sides of the political spectrum.

Cultural anti-amercanism is naturally also rampant in old G. All the same root, different degree of poison in the individual blooms...

The historically aware reader might wonder if I did not leave out one "anti-XYZ". There I can give you the depressing answer: it's all so crypto due to re-education, that baseline German culture conccentrates on the other "antis".  The basic structure has not changed that much, though. Ofc some people got the message and truly became part of the West. But less than you would think or like.

ADD: Big thing in Game of Thrones mostly people who have sinned die! The moment Rob did not keep his word of honour I knew they all will meet a bad fate etc.

It's all Sopranos again so far: all deaths have some MEANING.

I will only judge that after I know the end, though. I still am unsure how much I dislike GoT, much hinges on how it all ends;-)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;845769Don't take this the wrong way, 'cause I don't mean it in an entirely negative context but that, what you just described up there, is really fuckin' weird.  But please go on!

Do not know what to add, what extra info could help you? I think I cannot easily imagine how weird it must sound to you.

Quote from: Settembrini;845794Do not know what to add, what extra info could help you? I think I cannot easily imagine how weird it must sound to you.

It sort of made sense to me.

The audio plays and the soccer sound like they are grounded in 19th century Romanticism where everything is sweeping grandeur, flowing words, images, sounds, music, and FEELINGS.

The Duck Tales sounds like it provides the continuity of character and deus ex machine salvation that counters the 19th century tragedy inevitably leading to a fatal Wagnerian ending.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;845712Only a gaming cultural thing, I presume.

Yeah, ask the Greeks.