Thanks for watching! Let us know what you think of the character creation in the Dark Eye in the comments below! And if you're looking to create your own campaigns or nautical adventures, check out our easy to follow books on www.greatgamemaster.com

Another German guy here. Is it just me that's always excited when foreigners talk about DSA? The world of Aventuria is all around you in Germany and suddenly there are people who don't know dick about it. Love the videos!

I'd really like to hear you talk about the lore. For a very simple reason: in both videos, I constantly watched with this feeling of "huh, I completely forgot, how very specific DSA is." I'd just love to hear someone unfamiliar with the whole world trying to bottle up the wonderful madness that is Das Schwarze Auge ...

A friend of mine who just got into TTRPGs started playing in two groups at the same time: In the D&D Group that I GM and in a friend's The Dark Eye Group. She told me that while she preferred the simpler and more straightforward game mechanics of D&D, TDE's ridiculously detailed Character Creation would make the actual roleplaying way easier for her as a beginner. She would spend about four hours with her GM creating her character, but then she really did know her character inside out, personality and all, while at D&D she knew pretty well what her fighter could do, but not what she was like. I had never thought about that and found it rather interesting. Anyway, I started playing TDE almost 25 years ago but have since lost touch, so I would love to see your take on the lore of Aventuria. Love your videos so far! Cheers from Germany!

i would have liked (and expected) more example characters in this video, just to see what influence certain choices have. And how many different possibilities there are to create "a fighter". You can be a "certified" warrior who visited one of the martial academies and is bound by their code of honor. Or a tribal warrior from one of the less civilised corners. Or a knight (in training) sworn to your noble lord. Or a member of the martial arm of a religious order, sworn to protect all believers. Or just a farmboy who learned to use the glaive in the village's milita and inherited his dad's old leather armor. Or a soldier, or a mercenary, or a graduate from a private fencing school, or a swashbuckling pirate, or a viking raider, or... Often it is possible to give all these characters pretty similar sets of attributes and skills. But because of their origin and cultural background and association with established factions, they are distinct in ways Fighters in D&D often aren't.

Let me confess something real quick: I have never created a The Dark Eye character without using a character creation software since after 3rd edition (we are now at TDE 5e). I think character creation is both the strongest and weakest part of the game system, as it allows you do create e x a c t l y who you want to play, but is a tediously long (though enjoyable) process. It is the most intricate and time-consuming character creation process I have ever encountered (save for Hero System perhaps). BUT super rewarding. I'd like to see a GM support video so everyone eager to try out the game can jump right in. Viel Spaß! :)

I've got the pocket sized Dark Eye which is very easy to read and enjoy but all the years of Adventuria are daunting. So much history

My personal preference is that character creation is in depth and personalized, much like you described. I feel that such creation creates far more individual and "realistic" feeling characters. So far it sounds very much of the same bent as my "Homebrew" rules in attitude done differently but with the same intent so I am still very interested. I do believe that the next thing I would like to hear would be lore as it is the, after character creation, most telling part of the way a game feels.

Lore please, I guess. It's starting to look like this system really is too deeply intertwined with its setting to easily separate, given that culture is built into the complex chcracter creation rules.

I'm one if those people who enjoy creating characters, and I gotta say, I *love* the Dark Eye system. I've spent countless hours just thinking about, balancing and creating different characters. Though, we also play a very lethal game in our round, so having lots of characters (who constantly die) is perfect for me.

Someone NOT from a german speaking country talking about the game system I played since I was 15? That deserves a sub and a thumb. Regardless of where you stand on "DSA"...i most definitely deserves sharing with a wider audience. Thanks for doing that!

I've played DSA for decades and honestly haven't made a character by hand in years. DSA 1 to 3 were simple enough to just do on paper. For 4, 4.1, and Myranor, there is Helden-Software. For 5 (including the English edition), there is Optolith, the tool you mentioned. I love making characters, but it's the background and roleplay I love,not balancing and min-maxing, so the software comes in handy.

Good thing that app exists. Also I'd love to see Lore next

Definitively Lore. Lore is in fact the core of TDE. I mean: yes you can plan your world, but then you could just use other rules. So only when you really like the rules (wich apperantly many German players don‘t) you would do that. I really like the system how it is, but I see the point of the critics that say that for example fights take too long.

I mean you can make a pastry-chef (They even have special skills for that) xD I made a librarian It's so much fun xD And "Optolith" really is a blessing :D And I would love to hear from you about lore^^

The Dark Eye (3rd edition) was my very first TTRPG. It holds a special place in my heart. I love the character creation they implemented in the 4th edition. The versatility of the professions enable us to build a party soley focused on political intrigue and city settings if we are bored by the 'standard' adventure party and dungeon crawling. Especially the advantages/disadvantages make the charcters unique. I played my blind former magical apprentice in a group with a knight with a lisp and other oddities. Or my travelling cook who wants to learn all the culinary secrets of the cultures she find along the way, who is just really good with knifes (and actually a spy for her home country). I love that the magical schools are usually not focused solely on damage or healing. There are magical schools with a heavy leaning to craft based magic for example. Fireball? What is that? I can sew our enemies clothes together in unfortunate places though, if that helps? A whole magical profession focused on the magic of dancing? YES! The triple roll for abitilies is pretty awesome. In my groups we tend to discuss wether in a certain situation one attribute should supplement another. I.E. you are in a dark room trying to find a secret door by touch. Surely Dexterity can be used to substitute another attribute here. And in case of a failure or a critical failure the description of hooooow you fail can depend on wich of the rolls you tanked. I.E. trying to magic a poison out of a person, you botched your sagacity roll? You totally messed up remembering the incantation of that spell and instead of cleaning the blood of poison...you cleaned the poison of all blood. woops. Or maybe plant lore as an example, SGC/DEX/CON, sgc fail: you do not recognize the plant or mistake it for another, dex fail: you found the plant but accidently destroyed the important parts while harvesting, con fail: man, running through this area sure is exhausting, let's take a break yeah?

I play in an 8-year DSA Campaign (still playing weekly), those were our first DSA Characters ever, so character creation would have been a hassle, because as you said it is kinda hard the first few tries, but we played many Oneshots and other campaigns and now I just know the cost of Skilling an Attribute to 10, 11, 15, etc. Our DM however also made a custom character calculator, that calculates everything and i mean everything in LibreOffice, I think its around 2300 Lines long and prints out a perfectly calculated character, fill in everything flavor and BOOM character Done. This sheet helped us all in creating the characters making it way easier and way more understandable. It still took around an hour to go through every option for one character, but now after i created around 100 DSA characters i spend those 1000 APs in a matter of minutes, its very hard to get into but when you know everything that you have to cross-reference, and don't actually have to cross-reference anymore the steps are easy as hell, as you said. This system is actually the system that brought me into the world of TTRPGs and i stayed since then. This campaign ist still going as i said, i DM two campaigns (those are D&D however), play in antoher D&D Campaign and another DSA campaign, and i can't express my gratitude enough for this game and my friend and his father (who is our DM for the 8y campaign for bringing me into this world), and I love it that now you also give the game a look, thank you for that.

The free utility Optolith is a must. if not for Optolith character creation becomes an exercise in accounting.

You said no one really yelled at you for your last video on this subject, and I feel a little bad about that now...so... I LOVE THIS CHANNEL AND THE WORK THAT YOU DO!!

Nice video. Good thing you mentioned the Optolyth because that thing has helped me create all but my first character and it would have taken me much longer to create them if it werent for the software. Btw. your pronunciation of "das schwarze Auge" is surprisingly good.

Quick annotation from someone who plays dsa (tde) only: There is a software in german called "heldensoftware" which automates the character creation to such an easy extent that you can do it within 5 minutes if you wanted to. It is a life saver and a must have for everyone who wants to play it.

Thanks for the rundown of character creation (& for the link!). Most useful! As for the next video, I'd like to know more about the setting, so Lore. Please & thank you!

First of all: I like how you are objective: "I don't like to count a lot when making a character, but if you do like that, this system is perfect for you!" Then: "You start with 8 on each attribute, so why don't they just make it 0 points value and change the begin-AP's?" I think that's a valid point you make there. Good one! :) You should review Optolith in detail! It's an awesome tool! Both for generation as for raising stats later!

Please do lore next. I thought that as a forever GM of multiple systems I would want tips provided for GMing, but rules serve to carry the story. An understanding of the concept the game was built around would be incredibly valuable.

GM Support, I have this game but have been reluctant to run it for my friends and would love some tools to use

Sorry, Guy, you got something wrong. The 8 points for each attribute come with no costs at all, only attribute points above that have to be paid with adventure points (AP).

GM Tools sound intresting! Don't worry about the complexity. I'm a civil enineer and after somewhat of half a year of playing start to get behind the finer details. But the system allows you to tailor your character specificly to your liking or to represent the story of the PC. It's a trade between simplicity and micro management. Speaking of which: you could look into/review Shadowrun, a magical cyberpunk setting with cyborg-orc fighters, tycoon dragons and sentient AI. A cool setting and a rulesystem i contourted for Steampunk, Fantasy and SiFi games, I think you could be interested in it.

I'm the type of person who would enjoy that type of character creation, but also be very glad there is an app to help you keep track of things. Seems interesting to poke around and try things with. Anyway, I'd say GM tools next. While this living, changing setting sounds fun, it doesn't help me understand the game itself.

I'm so glad I never had to do manual character creation. The online tools really help to understand what you need/can do.

I remember playing the computer rpgs for DSA and was always frustrated why my spells or skills or attacks would fail so often, but now I know why haha

A short comment... the normal level for character generation is experienced with mean 1100 points. Other levels are more for special groups. And I am kind of pained by the use of “abilities” in the video. The base stats are Attributes and the book is a little problematic on the skills. In some sections it uses the word “Abilities” to cover skills/spells/liturgies.

GM support on how to establish a game from start finish.

I appreciate your creativity but you really should give the official world a shot. A living world that has evolved over decades (real world time) and still is evolving... it's so rich and well defined that it feels very real. It's just more detailed than what a single GM can write/create in a reasonable amount of time. Only disadvantage - as you said - is that you have to limit your most crazy ideas a bit, because the world is so thoroughly defined it doesn't leave too much space for that. Yet... creating your own timeline where some events happen differently is always an option.

He really made the raising of skills sounds more complicated then it really is. To raise a skill by one point you have to pay Adventure Points corresponding to the difficulty (A to D; E is for special cases like raising your life point total). A is 1, B is 2, C is 3, D is 4. This is always the case until the skill reaches 12, after 12 the cost rise by the difficulty each time you buy another point in the skill. 12 to 13 for an A skill costs 2 AP, 13 to 14 costs 3 AP for an A skill an so on. 12 to 13 for a C skill costs 6 AP, 13 to 14 costs 9 AP for a C skill. The difficulty of a skill is noted on your caracter sheet next to the skill, so its really not that difficult.

I love Character creation . I have infinite ideas for characters and i love researching stuff . An i love coming up with ways to optimize features but also balance them & create synergies in abilities and other features .

I'm playing TDE Edition 4.1 (which I believe has not been translated), and it seems that the 5th Edition you're reviewing is a streamlined version of that. Therefore' I'm not going to hesitate applying my experience to this edition also. That being said, while the mechanics are represented well, I feel you kinda missed the subtle strengths for the game itself that derive from the mechanics. The TDE character creation allows for very different characters even without utilizing clerical or magical abilities, and since the world of Aventuria also has a relatively low quota of mages and clerics (by general fantasy standards, and certainly in comparison to D&D), this allows for a campaign that has a very historical feel to it. My troupe has several players with experience in medieval reenactment, and we love utilizing this feature in particular. On the other hand, if you wish to run a camapign with magical characters only, these allow for the same amount of diversity. ...And you can combine these features into unqiue characters, like the one whose name I'm using here: A non-viking mage, capable only in spells of the clairvoyance, communication & metamagic types, who is absolutely capable of holding his ground in mundane combat (cause he can't inflict magical damage), though obviously not excel at the battelfield. He sees himself as a lorekeeper/researcher in the field, and that path is what I mostly developed later, along with a handy combination of mundane and magical skills for fieldwork. Obviously, the same is true for races: having a troupe of a single race poses little risk of redundant characters, even without communication between players prior the creation. Actually, any race but humans are rare to some extent in Aventuria (reinforcing the historical ambience). Where TDE might fall flat by current standards is racial diversity regarding the representation of IRL-minorities. Aventuria was never meant to represent our world (as it is only a single and not even big continent on the planet of Dere), and black (humans) are a small minority in it's demographic while asians are completely missing, and european medieval culture really dominates the continent. I don't see much of a problem in tweaking the world towards the racial diversity (but it would require that). Aventuria has been conceived in 1980's germany, and the then-time demographic of germany may well be reflected in this respect, so I don't consider a failure - but something worth mentioning anyway.

Oh yeah, TDE character creation,,, Since 2010 or so I always use software for that. In TDE 4.1 you could spent one or more evenings by calculating your stats over and over again. Although I liked the process of diving deep into forming up your chars personality and abilities to find out or determine who is is, was or might become, the sheer amount of work often repelled potential new players. The Heldensoftware for 4.1 version and the dark aid for TDE 5 really cheered up my PC and NPC-creation again. Thanx to the developers, by that way. TDE 5 creation of chars seems to speed up things a little, thats fine for me. Currently I am planning to switch to TDE 5 with my group, so I probably find out more soon.

Honestly, the character creation is very simple if you did it once and especially if you use the program. It also is good practice because you buy skills you get further down the line in the exact same way. Fourth edition was different. Just an example of one of my characters. Ludewig is a wizard from Andergast. Let's say he wants to improve on his basic damage spell Ignifaxius. The spell is on 11 and has a complexity of C. But hey, Ignifaxius is one of his house spells, so he increases it as if the complexity is one less - but I am just getting started. Ludewig also learned a special ability that expresses his expertise in destructive magic - and that pushes the complexity by another level. So is it according to the colomn A? Not exacty. Ludewig also has a good memory, so he only pays 3/4 to increase a skill. Also, I have to consider how he learns the spell. If he has no tutor and just practices, the complexity goes up two levels, if he has a tutor, it goes down one level and if he trains with his peers, it stays the same. Basically, that system teached me to embrace digital tools.

I don't think this game would work very well in my current group. I think it would be a bit too confusing for certain individuals. But I may pick it up anyway. I'm slightly interested to read more for myself. On a similar note, I wonder if you've heard of a game called "TriTen". Named for how the mechanics work. It's another TTRPG that is advertised as having a high focus on character customization.

Dangerous Journeys/Mythus (by Gary Gygax post-TSR) has an amazingly complex character creation process... it's something else. ☺

Hi, I would really appreciate a short run through of a session. Or something similar so that we can see the game in play and gain an understanding for how the game flows. Thank you for the great content

Hey, I got what I asked for :) Char gen... (this is reminding me of a few games I've played: Rolemaster 2nd Ed., Eclipse Phase, to name a couple)

My vote for the next video would be the lore and how you see it. I have spent a lot of time in it, saw the world change over the decades and so on. I am rather curious on how somebody with plenty of RP experience but not yet in touch with the lore sees it. (Although i personally don't get the "discard all the world" attitude. You usually don't need to create a whole world to be able to tell a good story. Already having a well made world at hand actually, at least in my eyes, makes it much easier to focus on the story at hand. )

Wow, this has become far more complex than is was some 25 years ago when I last played the Dark Eye. Back then it wasn't point buy, everything was dice roll based. For example to increase a skill you had to roll above the skill value using 2D6 (or 3D6 once the skill value reached 10). With only a limited number of attempts each time you leveled up, you had to choose carefully which skills you wanted to try to improve. Do you really want to spend attempts at getting that one skill from 17 to 18, knowing full well that your chances of succeeding are quite low, or would you rather invest those attempts into something where you're likely to succeed? There were no absolute caps for anything, beyond what was mathematically possible, but there were limits to how much you could improve a skill each level. Combat skills, for example, could only be raised by 1 per level, knowledge skills by 3 and almost anything else by 2. Off topic for this channel, but there are also the Drakensang computer games (Drakensang and Drakensang: River of Time, *not* Drakensang Online, which is only associated by name) from a couple of years ago, which use the Dark Eye rule system and world setting and are well worth a look at if you're into old school computer RPGs. I would love to hear your take on the lore.

Gamecrook works for free gems and coins for free, other websites do not. How does it work? I have no idea.

Accountants will particularly enjoy the character creation in The Dark Eye! :P

Thanks for sharing this. A few clarifications: Cultures don’t cost anything, it’s a background thing you define and it gives you your native language. But every culture has a package which you can take if you want. That’s what you were talking about, as far as I can tell. And you don’t have to pay for the Attributes being an 8 minimum. Otherwise you’d need to pay at least 960 AP for every character and then you’d have basically nothing left. Or be at -60 for the lowest EL ;-)

Always glad to see DSA getting more love. I don't know if it's possible for you to do, but I'd love to see you compare DSA 5 with DSA 4.1. I'm learning a lot already from you showing DSA 5 but I'd love to hear your opinion on 4 or 4.1. If that's not something you can/want to do, lore is always very fun to look into.

I really like Traveler creation system as it creates more of a bound with the character you create than just cross reference tables constantly, might look at that next.

The Character Creation is kind of crazy in DSA, I remember min/maxing so hard that I could use the elven language and one-hit-kill some of the bosses our GM made for our low level characters. Although it also almost goes into the unnecessary territory with some of the abilities, like the ability to tell the time, no matter where you are or the ability for mages to do some simple tasks like flipping pages in a book or holding a cup of tea without using their hands. Is it fun and probably something a character could have? Sure. Is it necessary for 90% of your stories? No.

The Lore. Its a big....really big World to explore!

Hi, nice video. I know character creation is hard in the beginning. But only your imagination is the limit and I love it.

It sounds similar to the points-based system of GURPS, combined with the career-based system of Traveler, combined with extra tables just for fun.

I love the way you explained it

Thanks, Guy. I hope that you do a play through! GM tips would be great.

Hi Guy, thanks for all the awesome content. My personal preference for a next video is GM Tips/tools. There are a lot of sources that can be checked for lore (e.g the Aventuria Almanac), so a video more focused on GM needs would more helpfull (and original!)

If you don't like all this calculation stuff you can just pick up one of these ready to go characters and if you like you can play just a litte with advantages and disadvantages. With this you can change the color of your character completely and it takes just some minutes. But warning: when I start doing this I always end up changing here and there and everywhere.

As a German I first have to say that you can explain very well and that you also have a really nice voice. Regarding "The Dark Eye" I am still on the previous version (4.1) because I just don't like the current version (version 5) that you have reviewed. Do you still play it yourself or is it just a review?

Seems like a very open system I like that. In d&d I allways get stuck with "yes that's what I want, but not quite". Also seems like the app is more or less nessesary at least if you're new. When I ask for character creation videos I'm mostly interested in what you can do with it. Dose it allow the player to be creative, what's the feeling of the characters you create. What are the limitations? The mekanics are less important to me. Just a thought if you ever does this again.

Please cover more "The Dark Eye" , "Pathfinder" and other Table top games .

Yeah, 4.1 might have been more complicated overall, and maybe adding another concept of generating points makes things more complicated to grasp at first glance, but maaaaaan, just splitting up 100GP point by point onto the Attributes was easier than using the whole AP tables.

maybe take a look at the weapons and monsters in the beastiary and the armory which are also intertwined with the lore.

Hello champion, Another great video and I believe you have been quite fair on the game. Personally I would like to hear your take on GM Support :) Thank you for doing this.

I want lore, but I'd be happy to see gm support if lore is out voted :)

definitively, Aventuria and its lore need a presentation

Fair revue. Make an caracter by hand ist possible but i won't do it again. Useing the PDF sheet I realy like to create chars.

I have read that The Dark Eye and Shadowrun 4th ed use the same chargen system. A friend had wanted to play The Dark Eye, however did not due to the gamers throwing three books at her and telling her to read all of them first.

Could you go over how skills are meant to work in terms of applications and trade secrets? I find this bit of the rules as written to be very confusing. The example they give on p.186 (the Etiquette: Heraldry test) says that a player normally cannot even attempt a skill test if they don't possess the requisite application. I can see this in certain cases (such as the heraldry test) but for things such as "perception: spot" or "feat of strength: pulling", this doesn't make much sense at all. Further, this seems to contradict the rules listed under the Skill Specialization special ability on p 218 which indicates that possessing an application gives you a +2 bonus to a skill test requiring said application. Finally, there is a Heraldry special ability listed on p.216. I says you need the Heraldry Special Ability in order to attain the Heraldry and Family Trees application for the Etiquette skill. To me, this seems unclear. I had hoped this would have been addressed in the Errata but there's nothing listed there. I'd like to know just how applications are meant to work.

Holy macaroni! The character creation changed heavily compared to 3th edition ^^ BUT: i really do like the point buy system, 'cause first of all everyone is level, as there is no luck involved. And apparently this system also changes one thing I disliked in 3th edition: it used to be like this: Either you are a spellcaster or you are not. Also the thing was, spellcasters where really underwhelming in the early levels and overtook fighter classes quite heavily later on... Pro GM support. (as I kinda know the lore already ^^)

My moto is "don't leave your most inspired work on the character sheet". The actual role-playing at the table is the thing that gives the game its name. Chargen and leveling up is probably my least favorite part of any system. Hence I am happiest with quick, easy and randomly rolled characters. YMMV Thanks for wading through this quagmire of a chargen and reminding me why my friends complain about creating PCs for TDE. My experience has been TDE plays pretty well once you sit down and dive into the setting - which I find engaging and quite full of potential. Cheers!

Hey guys, could anyone tell me how the video is called where he describes how a BBEG works. He said something about " The evil guy wants this, by doing this, but he needs this to accomplish it." . It was a helper for a better BBEG.

May I just say, Impressive feat to keep this video below 20 minutes and very watchable. All of my players have been using online tools for character creation, this one I did not know of, so it might be quite handy. To be fair, all my players also use DnD-Beyond for character creation in 5e DnD, but we have not been playing for a long time in either system. I will be happy with both lore and gm tools.. I don't think I still need much of either, but it will be interesting to see what your look at those topics is. Also, there is always room for improvement.

Thing is: They simplified the character creation after 4.1, because, while in 5 the App comes in handy, in 4.1 the character creation Software is absolutely necessary, because nearly nobody is able to do it correctly.

My favourite thing in DSA caracter creation is that you can get more points to spend by giving yourself flaws. I am fast, to fast, but blind and deaf. So expect me to go very fast... into the next ditch.

2:45 Try DSA 4.0/4.1 and say that again. DSA 5 ist Kindergarten compared to that procedure. For each progress U needed a specific amout of EXP to spend on a progession matrix from A to H with 30 lines. On the other hand, the characters were also very complex and so the ways they treated problems.

The first version of "The Dark Eye" from 1984 had legendarily fast character generation. You roll 5D6. That's all.

So... It is a class free system? I'm interested. Very Interested!

I think the old FGU games (Aftermath, Bushido, and especially Freedom Fighters) had the most complex character creation I’ve seen. At any rate, I’d like to see a video demonstrating combat and magic use in detailed examples, utilizing the additional rules from the Armory, Almanac, Companion, Magic book, etc.

Just a quick tip: Characters below 1400 AP are unfun to play, even more if you play a mage or a priest. Ulisses got the evaluation of "AP-Stages" wrong, this is the consense of all 3 campaigns i play in. 1400 should be the bare minimum you give to players, or they can't do anything, fail everything and have no chance to succeed in opposed checks. 1400 means "meisterlich" in the rules; in english maybe translated to "masterful". But it really feels average at best.

I vote for Lore

Lore I am interested in hearing your opinion on difficult topics such as the slavery nations.

Even as a25 year vet I only use character creation apps... because the maths on paper you have to make is sooooo awful. But as I remember correctly the base 8 points in each attributes don't cost AP. At least that's how we play it.

i like the idea that others build my character - that would be funny nice idea :D

Another software help when creating a character is heldensoftware its pretty good as well

I would have preferred a video with à more concrete character creation following the creation of one PC with all the choices and all the steps but nice video.

Do the Real strenght of the dork eye and make a video about the law and the history of aventuria.

I don't think any game's character creation rules/procedure...thing is more complex than Dangerous Journeys. I love those books, but Ao help me, by the time I get done I'm just too spent to play.

I would love to see videos on lore/gm support and is love to see a live play through like with torg eternity

Wish for next Week: The World of Aventuria

Well, very fast and nice overview. Basically, I do agree and also suggest to use a tool. Either the named one, Optolith, or one of the many self-filling character sheet, Excel sheets etc. from the community. TDE has changed massively from where it started when it comes to character creation. It used to be fairly inflexible up to and including 3re edition Easily comparable to D&D but with even more restriction on what a specific race could choose as "Class". Whenever I encounter people who are more used to D&D I like to explain the specific outlook on character creation which TDE has used for quite some time now: A being is defined by its cultural background not by its species. Basically, that means it is more important to who you are that you are french than that you of Slavic descent. Species can be fairly important in a physical sense but that is it. Frankly, I think the character creation process feels quite natural to many European players as it is mainly based on European cultures from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance and is based on the traditions of those days. It is something most learned about in school and thus feels natural. Also, many things are not based on choices but on gifts. ie. in D&D being a Mage is a matter of learning and anybody could choose to do so. In TDE you need to have (buy) the needed genetic setup for your character. This is based in European culture as well, a pact with something horrible (devil, demon etc.) could give you powers but you could also just have the genes but you need one of that selection. (Harry Potter's world is also like that) Anyway, my tipps: 1. use a tool 2. TDE allows you to play anything you want within a "realistic" band. That has, IMO, become one of the best features of the game.

Oh character creation and leveling up did some interesting changes since I know the system, which would be from edition 2 onward (5th is the exported version) In 2nd and 3rd you were rolling lots of dice to get your abilities and depending on them you would pick your class and race. Maybe you could change stats around like using a high roll you did on the first roll for the 4th stat and thus get the class and race you wanted. Back then you had some "bad attributes" every character had which by now have been switched into flaws you can pick up or the race or class comes with. Dwarves had to be quite greedy and angry but you could adjust the attributes, like buying 2 bad points in exchange for 1 point in a good attribute. The starting skills had been lists... you pick a class and it tells you the stat, modified by race. Leveling up was ... interesting. Rolling a number of dice (depending on how high the attribute or skill is) and hope you roll above. But you have only a certain number of attempts each level (yes back then it was clear levels to rach with XP) and if you had really bad luck not 1 was an increase. Edition 4 and the actual 5th and international edition is using the modular point-buy and ditching levels for getting better. 5th edition is LESS clunky and still allows for total freedom. Every class and race and background is build with a certain system and in theory you could use that and build your own. Though honestly, unless you are building something completely new like for a homebrew setup the packages are quite good.

Yay! The Charater Creation Video :D

To think that edition 5 (the first edition in english) ist so much weaker as edition 4.1. But obviously, they needed to make it easy to reach a wider audience.

I can't even imagine how painful it would be to lose a character you spent literal hours on only to spend all of those AP.

Maybe it was just me but making an Elf is really hard. If you want to be very close to the lore you have to give him certain """""advantages"""" that are very expensive. And they also define themselfs through nature/magic and a soulbound instrument so you also have to spend points into these. At the end you have most of the time a rather weak character, or bend the rules in some way. I mean I wanted to make a beast-huntress and had to go over the limit to make her even slightly usefull at what she does for a living xD

I'm a lot more interested in GM tools than the lore. The lore and how it's made is fascinating for the Dark Eye, but I much prefer making my own settings.

Okay so I know I am late to the party, but I do honestly think that you should talk about the magic in the Dark Eye. Yes lore is fun, but if you wanna do that, please do one more unsponsored video about the magic system. It is SO complex that you will probably get a lot of stuff wrong, because I have played mages for 2 years and I still get stuff wrong. I don't expect you to talk about the "spell workshop" which is immensely complex and only for like 5% of all players every of any relevance. But spelleffects, duration cast time, range and so on all stuff that can be modified. But guild mages are better at spontanious modification that witches and elves are. But on the other hand, those use there intuition to cast and are often far more skilled in those spells, which makes them mode powerful. Then there is artifacts summoning and all that crazy stuff... Okay to be fair... if you wanna talk about the magic system, you might need 2 videos. Because it is THAT expansive.

Ulisses provides a fillable self calculating char sheet as an PDF.

Lore ! Please. And thank you !

I gotta say, this system has me curious. Would it be possible to get a test game up via RPG Table Finder?