Early DSA (designed by people very familiar with D&D) is very much written in reaction to it.

Early D&D's central flaw from a mass market perspective is that it is way to niche. It's a fantasy wargame in which you play 1 person instead of an army and you explore a cave complex littered with monsters and traps. A Fighting-Man is an  infantry unit boiled down to 1 man and a Magic-User is a 1 man artillery unit.

DSA's response was.
You play 1 of the HEROES in a cheesy fantasy novel. Much less niche and much easier to understand if you are not a veteran wargamer.

Then DSA almost immediately messed it up by taking away much of the freedom of choiche they promised to give to your character early on in their starter box.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;845857Does that help, or do you need more info?

Thanks, but yes. I'm trying to understand what it means for "simulationist" per se to be separate from "wargaming".

Quote from: igor;845856Worth mentioning.
That immunity to failure thing in DSA, only means the player characters are likely to survive the adventure. Success as a professional adventurer would define it is not a given. There have been plenty of modules over the years where failure to reach the objective you start with is 100% guaranteed. The party gets hosed half a dozen pages in and the rest of the adventure is about barely getting out alive, with nothing to show for it. I've never seen that in a D&D module.

This isn't particularly encouraging. Sure, it sounds like immunity to death, but also immunity to success, and ultimately immunity to me giving a damn since whatever I do, the story's development and outcome are already determined.

Quote from: TristramEvans;845864Because the world runs on excluded middles, not preposterous extremes.

Except Germany.

Germany runs on extremes.

Quote from: Settembrini;845926The GM in TDE always has right of way, i.e. right of talking. The players have the right to listen & feel.

:eek:

See what I mean!?

Quote from: The Ent;845940Except Germany.

Germany runs on extremes.

Except political opinions. YOU HAVE TO BE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. Extremely so, btw;-)

Quote from: igor;845935DSA's response was.
You play 1 of the HEROES in a cheesy fantasy novel. Much less niche and much easier to understand if you are not a veteran wargamer.

Then DSA almost immediately messed it up by taking away much of the freedom of choiche they promised to give to your character early on in their starter box.

An astute observation.
For the HEROES part without the DSA mess, I think we can safely say Palladium Fantasy covered and still covers this spot nicely.

Quote from: Settembrini;845941Except political opinions. YOU HAVE TO BE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. Extremely so, btw;-)

Yeah absolutely, there's that too.

Quote from: Arminius;845937This isn't particularly encouraging. Sure, it sounds like immunity to death, but also immunity to success, and ultimately immunity to me giving a damn since whatever I do, the story's development and outcome are already determined.

Part of that is splendidly ridiculed with the pun "Bauergaming".

Quote from: Arminius;845937This isn't particularly encouraging. Sure, it sounds like immunity to death, but also immunity to success, and ultimately immunity to me giving a damn since whatever I do, the story's development and outcome are already determined.

Yes Arminius that is exactly what I mean.
I'm not here to defend DSA. It is a deeply flawed mess and it has been that way basically forever. The fact that there are some good ideas being wasted inside that mess is actually kind of sad and annoying.
DSA is (to use a term coined by a man deeply loathed on this board) the original Fantasy Heartbraker.

Thank you all for chiming in. It's been an interesting read.

Wonder how it all ties in, chronologically (if at all) with the Hickman Revolution.

Quote from: Settembrini;845943For the HEROES part without the DSA mess, I think we can safely say Palladium Fantasy covered and still covers this spot nicely.

You spelled D&D 5e wrong, mate. (PFRPG is a sweet little game, though)

Quote from: igor;845949The fact that there are some good ideas being wasted inside that mess is actually kind of sad and annoying.

What good ideas? What's cool about DSA?

Quote from: Settembrini;845945Part of that is splendidly ridiculed with the pun "Bauergaming".

When I read the first edition of DSA in 1984 (?), I had visions of the run of the mill beginning adventurer being a young strapping farmhand, being bored of farming and going on adventures instead. I thought that was a rather nice concept. Mostly mundane heroes facing fantasy threats as equals.

The farmhand meets a faery tale style prince, a knight errant and a young Gandalf wannabe in a tavern and together with the sexy barmaid they go do something straight out of a Conan the barbarian story, except they do it to save a kingdom.
This sounds completely sensible for early DSA. A rules light game, with Sword&Sorcery, folk tale and faery tale influences. In reality it very rarely lived up to that promise.

Bauergaming indeed.

Quote from: The Butcher;845950What good ideas? What's cool about DSA?

Not enough and they always focused on the wrong things, but culled from the past 30 years and 5 editions worth of crap:

DSA started out as rules light, well explained game. I'm a moron I'll admit it. I learned the basics of how to play a rpg from the DSA basic set as a 12 year old, because there was nobody available to teach me. Without aid I could not have learned the basics of any rpg by my self from any other rpg product of the era, that I know of.

It is influenced by folk tales and, or faerie tales. As well as Tolkien and Sword&Sorcery fiction.

It can be realistic in a good way. As opposed to many American fantasy role playing games, that are usually only realistic in a bad way. Nobody needs 'realistic' bleeding rules, but a DSA dungeon complex, might actually have a latrine and a recognizable function that has nothing to do with challenging murder hobo's rampaging through it's walls. Little details like that help suspension of disbelieve more than realistic sucking chest wound rules. In DSA a character might be gay, because those exist and that is no big deal. In D&D there either are no homo's, or it is a very momentous thing that there are.

It has a richly detailed interesting setting that is still cliche enough, that setting junkies can explain the needed basics to an outsider in 5 minutes.

The Gamemaster gets to wear a special mask and the players get to shout the actual magic spells at the table. Is this stupid? Yes! Is this awesome? Allso yes!
fulminictus donnerkeil triff und töte wie ein pfeil!

Some DSA monsters are interesting and unique. Especially the dragons, the kobolds and the goblins.

The power balance between magical and non-magical characters is better than in D&D most of the time. Magic is a support power, or something to be called on when things have gotten desperate.

The 'Schelm' occupies the same niche as the kender in D&D, but it is a lot easier for 'Schelme' to be productive party members if they want to.

Quote from: Bren;845888A lot of people use pictures of NPCs, PCs, and locations as well as maps, the occasional 3D building or ship, character and monster miniatures, and sound effects and background music. There is also quite a bit of nonverbal communication for any in person game and even for video chats. Language is important, but it isn't by any means all of the communication or even nearly all.

Of course, verbal language is not everything, but it is a central element of RPGS. You can have a decent RPG in the traditional sense without miniatures, background noises of all sorts or even direct face to face interaction (even though I agree, without seeing your fellow players the game isn't the same) but you cannot have a silent RPG, at least for an RPG in the traditional sense.

Quote from: Settembrini;845926Listening & Feeling is the cultural technique that is key here to understand German exceptionalism. Beagle, as you obviously speak from a GM perspective, you are sort of missing my point here.

So, what is your point exactly? I don't think that audio-play serials with reoccurring characters and a status quo that rules supreme create a different mindset than TV shows with reoccurring characters and a status quo that rules supreme? That comics featuring anthropomorphic ducks and mice as stock characters are how exactly completely different from superheroes as stock characters? (okay, no comic code authority and a stronger focus on visual humour might create a different approach to the medium of comics, but I'm doubtful about a possible transfer towards RPGs).

Quote from: Settembrini;845926I think that on a very basic cultural level, German mainstream society is not a fan of debate and arguments. Audio plays just feed into that.

I have no idea who you  come to that conclusion. It seems completely divorced from reality.

Quote from: TristramEvans;845927What the hell does that mean?
Because it just sounds like a railroad.

TDE has a significant problem with railroading, but that is the result of its own traditions and has grown over the years. Back in the nineties, the setting was almost comepletely restructured and redefined by this one, massive campaign, that  took six years to complete, included seven to ten adventure modules (depending which module are included in the official lineup) and a simple strategic board game to replay the epic battle at the campaign's conclusion.
I think the closest equivalent when it comes to world-building and scope is the Enemy Within campaign for Warhammer.

However, the same campaign casted the PCs as the foretold heroes mentioned in an ancient prophesy (which was a major marketing teaser for the whole thing: players could interpret the prophesy, could feel smart when they figured some plot elements out  and then tried to speculate what will happen next, while every adventure offered a new building block for its conclusion). However, due to this design, the whole campaign in all its massive glory completely depended on the ongoing survival of the PCs, at least after the point that each individual's part in the prophesy became true. Characters could still die (and the campaign included some sparse hints how to continue when one of the chosen ones dies or the players fail to succeed in one of the adventures), but there also was a clear ceiling of what the characters could possibly achieve).

This campaign is to this day the holy grail of the community. It is also very likely that most if not all of the currently active authors for TDE did not belong to the staff while it was written but when they themselves still were players and probably easily impressed by that. Combine this sense of nostalgia with a certain degree of hero worship (with the original founder dying a year or so before the campaign's conclusion) and the financial success of the whole scenario meant that they tried to copy the same or a very similar, usually not as massive concept again and again and again, cementing the idea of the PCs as the designated heroes of this enfolding epic.

Well, beagle, are you saying German culture is welcoming to debates?

I think you can find it even in textbooks of high and low make, that German culture is consensus-oriented and mainstream Germans are poster childs for conformity.

Pluralism and indivudiality are not in high regard, compared to other western cultures.

I wonder how you can think otherwise.

That my son, is reality.

So if I bought this book for the pretty pictures, could I use it to run a non-railroad fantasy game? Or would I be better off just using AD&D or Pathfinder?