So, now you have to bear with me...

[baph]

Hey there, fellow freaks!

Yes, yes Mortis... you probably thought I'd never write an introduction - well, you were wrong...

So... let's start with all the boring stuff. I'm Björn (yes, writing it "Bjoern" is also okay to me), 24 from the tribe of the Bructeri - well yeah, today it's basically simply known as f****n' Germany.

You may now nag at me (now, the more interesting part) for never really having played either (A)D&D, but sadly over here people, for whatever reason, rather like to play The Dark Eye, so that's what I did. I also played a lot of Shadowrun and Space: 1889, aswell as Castle Falkenstein due to the overdose of steampunk in my brain.
That was basically it. The rest of my P&P career, I mostly had to take what was offered, so... I played many, many small, mostly unknown RPGs (funny thing, most of them are dead by now and for most of them I even am not sorry).

Concerning tabletops, I really haven't played that many. A little bit of Warhammer Fantasy, even less 40K and a few games of this and that. But still... since I quit my local RPG-group I am completely bored and want to change that (both the boredom and I want to get more into tabletops).

So, that's why I'm here. And because Mortis nagged me in, ofc...

[BobbieTheDamned]

First of all WELCOME!

I've heard Der Schwarze Auge was a good set of rules. I've never had a chance to try it though. The Fourth Edition is available in English, how do the earlier versions compare?

Mortis has a rather persistent and effective way to nag people into both joining and posting!

[baph]

Thanks, Robert!

Well... from 3rd to 4th edition, there really is quite a gap. I can't name every change of course, but the most significant one is the complexity.
While it took between 1-3 hours (for us) to create a character with 3rd edition rules, creating the same character with 4th edition rules takes, I guess at least three times longer. There luckily is an editor that is quite a help, to be honest but the thing is, at least in the German publications, that for character creation you need all four rulebooks (or five, since our former GM has all of them, actually) for, yeah, all the rules that are needed.

I have to say, during creation it WAS quite a mess. Because somewhen we changed from 3rd to 4th edition rules and had to change our characters the same way.
But later, it really improved some parts of the gameplay. Especially the fighting part. Though I can not tell THAT much about 4th edition rules, since we changed to those a few months ago and after 3-4 evenings I quit the group due to the reason that most of the other people didn't take our meetings serious enough anymore, so... most the time I played 3rd edition, which was quite allright, too.
What was missing in 3rd edition was decided by the game master. I. e., the skills a character had were very roughly described. Often when someone wanted to do something, like carving a flute or so, the GM wanted him to roll the dice, but we often had to decide through which skills "carving a flute" could be described so he could roll for that.
With 4th edition this changes mostly, since they added a lot of skills.

Still, I'm not sure what to find better. But since most people nowadays only play 4th edition rules, it kinda is decided that 3rd edition is over now. I liked it, anyway.

Oh and yes, it's no bad game at all. It's just that out of Germany it's not as widely known as D&D and almost noone ever wanted to play D&D...

[Sjeng]

Hi and welcome from someone from a neighbouring country ;)

[baph]

The Netherlands, nice! Actually you're pretty neighbouring us, I live like 20 mins away from the border ;)

[Madame M]

Welcome to the forum!

Can't say I know much about the games you're mentioned, but then my repertoire is limited as I'm only a newbie where these things are concerned.

Anyhow, enjoy the forum and all the discussions that go on!

[Marchomer]

Welcome aboard dude!