The Nerdstream Era

It's kind of a truism that practically every gamesession of roleplaying involves combat at one point or another. That combat has, via reduction of health points and the suffering of wounds, the general possibility of death for everyone involved. Usually, a lot of NPC are getting killed, but the rules do allow for the same fate to befall the player characters as well. 93,6% of roleplayers think this is a good idea, according to a study I totally didn't make up right now. 

 

And it makes kind of intuitive sense. The threat of dying infuses suspense into the combat, it sharpens the senses, it gives the exhilarating feeling of having escaped death in the last possible moment. For gamemasters as well as players, it also offers a kind of insurance against dumb player actions. You insist on summersaulting that Goblin? Congratulations. He stabs you. Critical Hit. And you had a botch trying to acrobatically land, suffering damage, ooooh, crit. You're dead. Drama! After all, doesn't combat derive its suspense from the danger of stuff like this happening? 

Not at all. 

On his tumblr, Steven Attewell was asked what he thought of Grimdark. His answer deserves being quoted in full: 

Let me just say at the outset, I used to LOVE grimdark. Huge fan of Warhammer (both 40k and Fantasy), read all of the “groundbreaking, adult” graphic novels of the late 80s/90s, bought as many of White Wolf’s RPG books as I could, even if I almost never got to play them, and so on and so forth. But, and I don’t mean this at all in a condescending way, I matured out of it. This stuff that had spoke to me when I was a teenager was less appealing now that I’m in my early 30s.
A lot of this of this comes from the way that my personality works. I’m fundamentally an academic and a policy wonk and a reformer, which means when I see a bad situation either in real life or in media, my mind immediately goes to how it could be fixed, how it can be improved - I look at Westeros and start thinking about economic development plans, after all. Grimdark, however, requires stasis in order to maintain mood and atmosphere and setting:

“Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned.  Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war.”

You can see the contradiction there. 
Another big part of this is my realization, after a while, that grimdark is ultimately just as as sterile and fomulaic and predictable as its opposite. If the universe is always doomed, if the bad guys are always going to win, then there’s no dramatic tension, no possibility of surprise or innovation beyond a point. 
One of the truths I feel I’ve stumbled across over the years is that the essence of good storytelling isn’t found in extremes, but in variation. No matter whether it’s grimdark or its opposite, too much of the same thing leads to habituation and a decrease in effectiveness. The result is either apathy or a constant arms-race of intensity that eventually becomes ridiculous.

After my introduction to The Dark Eye (TDE), which you can check out here, I am today covering the world in which it is set. I am not planning on giving you a detailled overview over countries and cultures because you can read all of that up yourself if you are interested (which I hope you are by the end of this series), but rather to give you a sense of how it all feels in the end. So, without further ado, let's take a look at the world of The Dark Eye. 

1) Introduction.

2) The World. You are here.

3) The Rules. 

4) The History (of the system)

In early 2016, Ulisses Spiele will publish an english version of the German roleplaying game "The Dark Eye" (TDE henceforth). You might now stand there and ask yourself: "Why the fuck should I care?" And of course you don't need to, but if you by chance remember my article about my best RPG experience, well, it was with TDE. The system might be worth a look for you because it's most likely not like the fantasy systems you know, especially if you are familiar with D&D. And if you're not and/or a novice to tabletop RPG, consider starting with TDE, because it's awesome. I want this to be the first in a series of articles that introduce you to the system, so let's start, shall we? The outline for the series is as follows: 

1) Introduction. You are here. 

2) The World. 

3) The Rules. 

4) The History (of the system)

OK, I lied to make the title more interesting. What I'm talking about - experienced groups that play well together - are a blessing, never a curse. Experienced roleplayers that despite their years in the hobby still suck are a curse, but you don't want to play with them anyway. So, let's have a look at the specific challenges you can run into with the more experienced and well-cooperating kinds of groups that I touched in the last article already.

Seek the aptly named guide here.

If you ever took the seat of the gamemaster in a roleplaying game session, be it in a Pen&Paper game or in a LARP, odds are that you ran into the greatest threat gamemasters face and which every gamemaster fails initially (and bad gamemasters consecutively): restraining the urge for choice of the players. Roleplaying games pride themselves on the aspect that the players as their characters can basically do what they want within the contraints of the game. Often, this creates problems, because players making their own choices deviate from the carefully planned storyline. What happens then can lead to all-out disaster or a smooth transition into the next episode of the game, with the players asking themselves how the heck their gamemaster pulled it off again.

It is strange, but since the inception of Nerdstream, I never once wrote about roleplaying games. I don't know why exactly this is. For almost a decade, they were one of the central things in my life. As with so many people, the arrival of "real life" with its demands - job and family chief among them - put an end to RPG. I played quite a lot in my day, starting with table-top RPG, adding LARP to it. I think I'll talk about LARP in some later post. Today, I want to tell you about the absolute apogee of P&P-experience. Don't worry, I won't bore you with tales of my character. I also won't get into too many details about the campaign in stuff, because, quite frankly, no one but the people that were there are interested in this kind of stuff anyway. I want to talk about what made it great. It's a sad story, I'm afraid.