The Dark Eye: Difference between revisions

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One of the strongest selling points rule-wise is the completely open character development. It is based on 4 elements:

The starting value of all these 4 elements are influenced by choices of race, culture, subculture and starting profession, but from there on, the character can develop any way the player wants to, making it even more interesting to keep a character for several adventures.

 

* [[Alchemy]]: It exists and is a far more common version of magic than the "cast-a-spell" variety. Every potion is created by a specific ritual. This raises the worth of a single health potion into the areas of a very good weapon or armor and [[Too Awesome to Use|makes it the perfect gift for a party about to embark on their journey]]

* [[All Witches Have Cats]]: Both played straight with one sisterhood of witches and handily subverted with all other sisterhoods. Most witches do have some type of [[Familiar]] though.

* [[Alternative Calendar]]: Quite a few, actually.

** And those who follow the [[God of Evil|Nameless god]].

* [[Authority Equals Asskicking]]: For the most part averted. Only in the Heptarchies of the Dark Lands is raw (magical) power a requirement for the highest Echelon of Leadership. [[Justified Trope|And]] [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|for]] [[The Starscream|staying]] [[Klingon Promotion|on top.]]

** As do the [[Lizard Folk|Maru]], a race of crocodile people. According to their legends, their patron god Kr'Thon'Chh wanted them to be this way {{spoiler|despite the belief of many humans that Kr'Thon'Chh is a demon, he is in fact the god Kor.}}

* [[Boisterous Bruiser]] The {{spoiler|late}} Duke of Meadows (Waldemar the Bear) is Aventurias standout example.

** They did have the money, but they preferred to spend it on an advertising campaign. Which worked out rather well.

* [[Character Customization]]: Using a [[Point Buy]] system, and several templates. Characters are all based on the trinity of race, culture and profession. Characters are customized afterwards.

* [[Character Level]]: Older Editions (up to third) used classes, the current one is strictly skill-based and only lists levels as a measure of comparative power.

* [[Church Militant]]: The cult of Rondra, the warrior goddess are the best example, but roughly half of the cults maintain their own faith militant.

* [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]]: [[Enforced Trope|Naturally]], the followers of the Demon Lord of deceit and strife Lolgramoth.

** Also the modus operandi of [[Nothing Personal|Al'Anfanian politics]].

* [[Color-Coded Elements]]: The six elements are coded (at least by human standards) mostly this way with a few exceptions: fire is red, wind is yellow or colorless, ice is purple or light blue, water is blue, rock/stone is orange and humus(earth and plants as well as all living things) is represented by earthen colors, but usually by green.

* [[Dark Messiah]]: The Aikar Brazoragh, leader of all orcish tribes is one of these.

** [[Alternate Character Interpretation|At least in the eyes of the humans.]]

* [[Did Not Do the Research]]: As a result of the [[Loads and Loads of Rules|huge amount of rules]] many authors do not fully know or understand the rules, which shows frequently in the game's adventure modules.

* [[Dump Stat]]: Older rules editions had negative as well as positive attributes. Often the negative Curiosity or Greediness stats were maxed out to raise positive stats.

** Depending on your build, almost all of the attributes except for Courage can be this. Manual dexterity in particular is so narrow that it often suffers this fate.

** This is actually a recurring trope; Mada's sacrilege works very similar, and this is also the point of the Borbarad Campaign.

* [[Familiar]]: Most witches and some of the dwarven version of druids (only the kind ones though) have these. They come in many shapes and sizes: [[All Witches Have Cats|cats]], ravens, snakes, owls, toads, snakes, small monkeys and spiders for the witches and dogs, wildcats, snakes, eagles and toads for the dwarves. In the case of witches, each familiar is linked to a type of behavior and character that is more or less expected of its mistress.

* [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture]]: Loads. It is actually difficult to find a culture in Aventuria which is not based on history or stereotype, often several different ones mixed together.

* [[Fantasy Gun Control]]: Strictly enacted. Black powder exists and is used for fireworks, but is not feasible as a weapon. The church of Rondra, goddess of war, also abolishes crossbows and similar weapons for their "unsportsmanship". Since the church has immense influence on what an army will use, they have a tight grip on technology.

** For the pirates and musketeer sub-settings/regions, highly advanced torsion based weapons take the place of firearms. Arguably these are more dangerous than the weapons they replace. There are also [[Automatic Crossbows]] and other advanced forms of bow weapons.

* [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink]]: Despite the usually more "realistic" presentation of the setting, Aventuria includes many, many creatures and concepts. As a rule of thumb, if something was popular in another RPG, it is likely to appear in ''TDE'' as well. This includes dark elves, lovecraftian monstrosities, and the usual mixture of mythologic creatures.

* [[The Fair Folk]]: They exist, and technically all [[Our Elves Are Better|elves]] are their descendants. They occur only very rarely in the game though.

* [[Fighter, Mage, Thief]]: [[Averted Trope|Averted]] - TDE group build is far more often optimised around different fields of problem solving than just combat expertise. The main areas, in broad strokes, are: Combat - Wilderness - Social - Science - Crafts.

** Combat suffers from this as well. beyond a certain point it is neither affordable nor usefull to keep maxing your weapon-talents. Then you are just better off buying extra maneuvers that allow you to trick opponents in combat, break their block, turn an attack into a defense, use your legs, use things as weapons, swing from a chandelier, etc. Luckily, all those special moves may play out as epic strikes with much finesse and creativity, but are not more than a basic attack/defense roll with maybe a difficulty modifier.

* [[Fish People]]: Plenty. Some are harmless (the zilits), some are strange and might be dangerous (Necker, Risso), some are truly bad news (the Krakonians) or a bit silly (the hummerians are large, fiendish crab people).

* [[God Is Evil]]: The gods of the achaz are this. Their priests basically try to distract them from possibly destroying the world.

** The priests are essentially like really experienced [[Cthulhu Mythos|Investigators]], treading ever so lightly as not to awaken the gods.

* [[Heel Face Revolving Door]]: [[Evil Chancellor|Ansvin of Ravenmouth]]

* [[Hellfire]]: The god of law is also the god of the sun. His [[Demon Lords and Archdevils|demonic]] [[Evil Counterpart|antagonist]] uses this instead.

** Though most of these count as [[Awesome but Impractical]] due to the extremely long amount of time it takes to regenerate Karma (Mana for priests).

* [[Human Sacrifice]]: Always a favorite of demonologists and other users of black magic.

* [[Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain]]: Well, perhaps not all that sympathetic - but certainly ineffectual: Pardona, the Tongue of the Nameless God and Envoy of Evil, is canonically defeated, rejected or thwarted in every one of her apperances. Adding insult to injury - her official stats aren't that great either. Even if their Characters might fear her - most players regard her with a bemused mix of detached pity and condescension.

* [[Judge, Jury, and Executioner]]: In theory, every Noble with the privilege of Jurisdiction. As long as he or she is on the grounds of his/her own fiefdom.

** Also Inquisitors.

*** The Rays of Light often assume these privileges, always in error (assuming the privileges, not the denunciation)

* [[Kill and Replace]]: There are at least two demons who use this as their trick.

* [[Knight Templar]]: The Rays of Light,The Priest-Emperors and often the Church of Praios in general.

* [[Kryptonite Factor]]: Common iron blocks magical powers. For some spellcasters, this is only a minor problem, others like druids cannot use forged metal at all.

** For all elementals their opposing element is their greatest weakness, no matter how resistant to any sort of damage they become.

** If a PC is played for long enough, a Wizard can level up in combat arts greatly thanks to the skillpoint system, since every character is open to nearly everything once created. Also, they get magical staves that cannot be destroyed by any nonmagical means, bypassing the very realistic break-factor checks.

*** Once again somewhat averted since the skillcap on any weapon skill scales of physical attributes, which are usually not that high on any mage and the fact that the staves are at least damage wise not better than a dagger.

* [[Loads and Loads of Rules]]: Oh, yes. There exists a "basic" rulebook, but it is so abbreviated, it is basically worthless - all information in the book is repeated or contradicted later on, making it entirely possible to skip the "basic" rulebook and start with the real rules. So, it is usually assumed that you use the full rules. These consist of at least two full-sized hardcover books containing rules for character creation, combat, skills and the environment. If you want to play a priest you will need another book. A magic-user, another two books. You still lack enemies to fight and comprehensive setting informations.

** The authors addressed this issue, however, not by reducing the rules, but by making them extremely modular. Many rules (especially for combat) are marked as optional and you can play with about half of the rules cut out and still have a very detailed experience.

* [[Mundane Fantastic]]: Called "phantastic realism" by the authors, making magic pretty weak compared to ''Dungeons and Dragons'', at least as far as most PCs go.

* [[Manipulative Bastard]]: [[Big Bad|Pardona]], Voice of the Nameless One, is supposed to be this. [[Informed Ability|Alas ...]]

* [[Medieval European Fantasy]]: Aventuria fits this nearly perfectly, if it were not for those Arabian, Native American and African [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|expys]].

* [[The Necrocracy]]: Warunk, a city state under the control of an undead dragon used to fit this very much. There still are mini-necrocracies in the area around the city.

* [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]: Mizirion III, King of Brabak.

* [[Obstructive Bureaucrat]]: The Imperial Chancellery of the Middenrealm. Proudly obstructing every move of their own empress.

* [[Odd Job Gods]]: Some of the half-gods are this.

** Another example would be Intuition. Taking a major part in attack- and defense- basevalues and in many physical talents is good enough for most action-oriented characters, but it also has at least normal weighting in all science talents, along with almost all spells (ALL spells in elven representation, along with often having double weighting) and additionally all social and language talents. This is the stat to go especially for characters who are supposed to be able to fight AND talk/cast magic in usuable proportions. In their case, cunning most often gets less attention than it normally would.

*** Even [[Dump Stat|some stats]] are regarded lesser by almost all characters, while others are more important, no stat really overtakes all others, since for every talent-check, at least 2 attributes are necessary, balancing characters out automatically.

* [[Our Elves Are Better]]: There are several Elven cultures around, all described with the usual tedious amount of details. They are all better than humans, though.

** Not in every way. If they leave their elvish ways behind too far, they die within weeks and fullblood elves even get a minus on their cunningness attribute. They are also very socially inept in non-elven cultures, commonly misunderstanding simple things such as money or ownership.

** They interestingly appear in Nethack: The description for one of the orc types cites the Dutch translation of the first edition.

* [[Pimped-Out Dress]]: THE court fashion in the Horasian Empire under Emperess Amene. The fashion at her [[A Child Shall Lead Them|successors]] court is slightly more subdued.

* [[Praetorian Guard]]: A few, but mainly on the good guys side.

** The Panther Guard of the Middenrealm

** Also the various cults of the Archdemons that cropped up all over Aventuria during and after the Borbarad Campaign.

*** And then there is the Church of Borbarad himself.

* [[Royals Who Actually Do Something]]

* [[She Is the King]]: Type 3 (gender-neutral title) with the Horas, emperor/empress of the Realm of Horas (though in German, the definite article will give away the gender). {{spoiler|Type 1 for Emperor Hal of the Middenrealm, actually Hal's believed-to-have-died-at-birth sister Selinde.}}

** Combined to great effect in the Kingmaker-Campaign with an Al'Anfanian conspiracy in Horasia. Smugness all around abounded.

* [[Spin-Off]]: The short-lived "Swordmaster" campaign took place inside the (hollow) planet and was intended as an epic challenge for high-level characters. "Myranor" is a far less heroic, but higher-magic setting on the distant western continent.

* [[Standard Fantasy Setting]]: Due to its popularity, the Dark Eye is ''the Standard'' for many German roleplaying gamers.

* [[Standard Royal Court]]: Quite widespread, especially in the Middenrealm and the Horasiat.

* [[Sympathetic POV]]: Seems to be becoming a thing for Aventuria's major villains. The following happened twice: An odd year or two after a major villain's demise at the hand of an adventuring party follows the inevitable release of an official biography. Those biographies tend to depict the villains long before their fall and are [[Running the Asylum|written]] [[Draco in Leather Pants|by fans]] (the editorial staff consists only of fans...) Thus we are treated to stories of how relatively normal people are driven mad by circumstances. We see the later [[Evil Overlord]] [[Pet the Dog|petting Kittens]] or the later [[Evil Chancellor]] as the [[Only Sane Man|only person with a basic grasp of politics]] in the entire Empire, freeing peasants and being a far better ruler than the actual emperor in general.

* [[Time Travel]]: Not a common feature, but a few adventure modules deal with this.

* [[Thirteen Is Unlucky]]: Every Aventurian knows why. For those who don't: Next to the twelve good gods there exists the thirteenth, the Nameless One, the god who tried to overthrow the others and who should not be mentioned unless it is absolutely necessary.

* [[Trickster Archetype]]: Three: Phex (Greater God, thievery, commerce and "rogue-ish" behaviour in general), Aves (wanderlust) and Xeledon (mocking the futility - and destruction - of anything, basically the bad side of Loki).

** The House of Almada, too. A whole Lineage of spoiled, incompetent morons, who, as its reigning Emperors, brought down the Middenrealm from a continental empire to a vestigal rump-state almost entirely on their own.

* [[Unpleasable Fanbase]]

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