[OSSR]DSA 1st Edition Advanced Rules

[Longes]

Speaking of DSA, I rather enjoyed the recent Blackguards videogames. Though I seem to remember there being a reasonable ammount of magic items and no clerics in those games.

[Rasumichin]

Well, the amount of magic items for DSA dependent on edition is:

DSA2>DSA3>DSA4>DSA1>DSA4 if your party includes a mage from the Dragon's Egg Academy in Khunchom.
And in a videogame, you can, of course, easily increase the number of items available. Permanent magic items (that need to be enchanted with the super restricted formula INFINITUM EVERMORE - SPELL DURATION GO HARDCORE) are supposed to be incredibly rare in the official setting, but they do exist.
And then there's permanent magic items that just get thrown at you at chargen because they're part of your magical tradition, such as wizard staffs and crystal balls and druidic obsidian daggers and those weird scale bags that the lizardfolk crystallomancers use.
Most players also don't get that a masterwork weapon in DSA is, for most purposes, exactly as good as +1 weapon in D&D, or that weapons made out of arcane alloys are exactly as good as...i don't know, +2 weapons or whatever. Rules for blacksmiths in DSA4 are another thing i don't want to ever look at again.
So the DSA attitude towards magic items is, as can be expected, marked by both a ridiculous fear of powergaming and rules that totally contradict the insistence that this stuff should be rare. The cognitive dissonance is strong in this game.

With what i know about Blackguards, it also seems as if most DSA clerics wouldn't fit particularly well just from a thematic viewpoint. Not really worth it from a developer's point of view to go and fix the rules for them just to include a cleric of Phex who does rogue stuff that may as well be handled with talents and magic by a half elf. Or to include a cleric of a minor deity like Kor who's just a para-suicidal, grimderp fighter with extra powers.

[Longes]

Or to include a cleric of a minor deity like Kor who's just a para-suicidal, grimderp fighter with extra powers.

Funny you should mention that... Your dorf party member is a para-suicidal grimderp fighter. No extra powers, unless fighting maneuvers count.

[Rasumichin]

Or to include a cleric of a minor deity like Kor who's just a para-suicidal, grimderp fighter with extra powers.

Funny you should mention that... Your dorf party member is a para-suicidal grimderp fighter. No extra powers, unless fighting maneuvers count.

Maybe he gets sanctified as a Kor cleric in the next part if there ever is one. In the TTRPG, becoming a Kor cleric is typically something mercanery players go for after a few years of crossbowing people in the face for money adventuring.

The mercenary thing really is the main draw of Kor. That, and being so edgy that constant paper cuts are unavoidable. It really shows that he was written up entirely during the 90s and early 2000s, being all hardkore and about blood and pain and sitting at the gates of the Netherhells being clad in black and red and waiting for people to ask him if that's his blood so he can quote Fight Club. He's like a Khorne ripoff without a skull throne who's nominally one of the good guys because the authors said so.
He's really falling out of favor with players because there's at least 20 other flavors of holy or unholy warrior in the setting. Even Rahja and Travia have warrior orders by now, because DSA always does that thing where they transplant an idea to all twelf main gods or to all twelf archdemons (or both) and then maybe to a few minor deities and independent demons as well, no matter how many poor choices that leads to.

So while Kor would fit perfectly for anybody who's grimderp and has a death wish and likes to bash skulls in and preferredly does so in South Aventuria, by now he's about as fashionable as a Slipknot hoody from the 2004 tour. Maybe that's why they left him out of Blackguards.

[Korwin]

That actually got a bit better over the editions, but DSA3 relapsed in a very serious way by introducing the Maraskan hardwood harness (oyoroi armor), which German gamers still use as a synonym for options that are better in a stupidly obvious way.

Dont Forget that Magic users in DSA have Problems with metal armor (it gimps their mana Regeneration) and Wizards have an guild rule against armor aditionally (with ~ 2 Academies who got an exception) anyway. Aaaand witches could use their flying salve* to make an flying hardwood harness...

Permanent magic items (that need to be enchanted with the super restricted formula INFINITUM EVERMORE - SPELL DURATION GO HARDCORE) are supposed to be incredibly rare in the official setting, but they do exist.

On the other Hand (in DSA 4) it's possible to start with an wizard who makes an Djinn lamp who summons one once per day.

[Rasumichin]

That actually got a bit better over the editions, but DSA3 relapsed in a very serious way by introducing the Maraskan hardwood harness (oyoroi armor), which German gamers still use as a synonym for options that are better in a stupidly obvious way.

Dont Forget that Magic users in DSA have Problems with metal armor (it gimps their mana Regeneration) and Wizards have an guild rule against armor aditionally (with ~ 2 Academies who got an exception) anyway. Aaaand witches could use their flying salve* to make an flying hardwood harness...

Well, every witch gets something made out of wood that flies. Having that something be a hardwood harness instead of something more traditionally thematical like a broom or a barrel or a giant wooden strap-on sure pisses people off who don't want wuxia witch battles, but i have to applaud the developers for once for just reacting to this by playing it cool. They just introduced maraskan tarantula clan ninja witches when they introduced all the different witch flavors in DSA4 (also available: ugly hag witches and sexy witches and nerdy Willow Rosenberg witches and mysterious oracle witches and gypsie trickster witches).
I mean, why the hell not?


No, it really isn't.

The problem isn't combat witches that fly around wuxia style, the problem is that DSA only had a single set of 4/2 armor that could be upgraded to 6/2 armor by adding a striped loin cloth and a fur cape and that combo looks like shit and everybody in that edition had to wear it or gimp their character. It's the basic Shadowrun problem of everybody having FFBA and an Ares Alpha, but with aggravated assault on my fashion sense. You don't fix that by complaining about wuxia witches, you fix that by introducing more balanced armor rules.


No, no, listen, it's WOODEN armor and most wizards can't wear it, but witches can!

Yeah, i get it, casters should be a cloth class. But driving that point home in a TTRPG always required some amount of headfuck.
I think it's really hard to find a good explanation for making all casters glass canons. And i think the solution for that lies on the fighter side, not on the caster side. Like a better feat tree for reducing encumbrance, better suits of metal armor and so on. I mean, if you want to be a brick in DSA4, you go for axes or raven beak maces and Garethian plate and 2/1 helmet anyway. Or go full tank and use the counterhold feat tree. That's nothing any caster goes for.
Making the wizard guilds part of a scheme to restrict casters in some way only makes sense if the guilds have other advantages over non-guild casters. Which they absolutely and most definitely had in DSA3&4, where they just won at magic forever. Who cares if they had worse armor?

I think that got overlooked when DSA5 decided to be the witchcraft edition where wizards are suddenly meh. But at least we get more sexy witches out of that.


That's not the worst that could happen.

[Daniel]

Rasumichin says
"partly because all the other DSA gamers coming out of the woodwork deserved a good rant about things that are wrong with this game."

Me, Shlominus and Korwin? Our feelings about DSA are as ambiguous as yours are.

Personally I'm just bored enough with D&D, but not with traditional fantasy at the moment that I'm willing to do another DSA stint for however long that lasts.

Last time I was fully reminded about everything wrong with the game after 4 evenings.

[Rasumichin]

Me, Shlominus and Korwin? Our feelings about DSA are as ambiguous as yours are.

I know. I wasn't ranting at you guys, i was ranting for you. Sharing our mutual grief with this game.

[Aryxbez]

Some of that already shows here, but there's also things that make you wonder where it all went downhill.
I hope that it was an enjoyable read nevertheless, that the people familiar with DSA got the rant we're all looking for and that the people unfamiliar with DSA got an entertaining and comprehensive impression of the gaming culture i grew up with.

This was my favorite aspect of the review actually, comparing & contrasting how things got better/worse as ye were reading through it. It definitely provided entertainment & bringing my curiosity in learning more about the world, albeit it seems that's not going to happen (I don't speak German). Otherwise, it really seems the player culture is depressingly disempowering to the idea of PC's moving the plot (despite all that metaplot was result of actual games?), well as being better than DM Penis Pet Mary-Sues. However as someone who's only played a single video game in this universe and liked it, I'm curious about the setting.

And let's hope that one day, Aventuria will get rules that we actually want to use.

Aye, while I only know the content of a single video game, your mentions on here so far. It is surprising that nobody has at least attempted to convert over the setting material to D&D (even if poorly). I feel like it could be done, albeit you'd be rewriting, or writing up a bunch of unique classes it sounds like.

Also, I want to say I like the idea behind the thousand-modifiers for summoning demons. Albeit actually seeing it would likely have me feel bogged down by the rules, I think its cool there's certain rituals & such to appeal to certain Demon Lords or Gods. Plus, in Dark Eye: Demonomicon, one of the most awesome moments was showing pseudo-authority over a Demon Lord.

[Rasumichin]

Some of that already shows here, but there's also things that make you wonder where it all went downhill.
I hope that it was an enjoyable read nevertheless, that the people familiar with DSA got the rant we're all looking for and that the people unfamiliar with DSA got an entertaining and comprehensive impression of the gaming culture i grew up with.

This was my favorite aspect of the review actually, comparing & contrasting how things got better/worse as ye were reading through it. It definitely provided entertainment & bringing my curiosity in learning more about the world, albeit it seems that's not going to happen (I don't speak German). Otherwise, it really seems the player culture is depressingly disempowering to the idea of PC's moving the plot (despite all that metaplot was result of actual games?), well as being better than DM Penis Pet Mary-Sues.

Most major metaplot events took place in an adventure or campaign, but the outcome used to be completely predetermined, even when NPCs didn't steal the show.

It is surprising that nobody has at least attempted to convert over the setting material to D&D (even if poorly). I feel like it could be done, albeit you'd be rewriting, or writing up a bunch of unique classes it sounds like.

Yes, it would be a lot of work if you want the rules to support the source material. And most people in Germany who care about DSA don't care about D&D and vice versa.
I did play some Dark Sun and Planescape back during the AD&D2 days, and one guy in my group back then also played in a Dragonlance campaign, and later i did look into 3.5 as well, but porting anything to D&D would be beyond what i know about the system.

Also, I want to say I like the idea behind the thousand-modifiers for summoning demons. Albeit actually seeing it would likely have me feel bogged down by the rules, I think its cool there's certain rituals & such to appeal to certain Demon Lords or Gods.

True, there's plenty of flavor there, and summoning has lots of options to modify your demons if you take the right feats.
The basic idea is that sumoning is a dangerous, difficult procedure, but that it gets a lot easier when the stars are right, you know the true name of the demon, you draw proper summoning and warding circles and actually take the time to perform a highly involved ritual with donations to the demon and paraphernalia that align with the demon's domain, and it probably has to take place at a highly specific location as well.
The idea behind it is cool, but it also means that being a good summoner takes a lot of effort and that's just not gonna pay off because they decided during DSA3 that demons should move from being regarded as powerful, but potentially dangerous tools to being the setting's ultimate evil.
So if you don't play in the South of the continent, where summoning is still a respectable profession, you get into major trouble. If your demon kills anybody, you get burned at the stake. If people see that you're from a demonologist school like The Convention of the Obfuscated Sun from the lovely banana republic of Brabak, you can expect open hostility - and of course, all DSA wizards got their school's sigil tattooed on the palm of their hand.

So yeah. It's a highly involved subsystem that requires a lot of specialization and renders you an outlaw in 75% of the setting. DSA has way too many mobs with torches and pitchforks. I think i may have mentioned that already.

Oh, and summoning elementals doesn't come with that kind of legal baggage. And no, of course elementals aren't any weaker than demons to make up for that advantage.

Plus, in Dark Eye: Demonomicon, one of the most awesome moments was showing pseudo-authority over a Demon Lord.

Fun fact: one of the demonologists in Brabak became leader of the academy by ordering Belhalhar, the demon lord of carnage and mass violence, to walk into the king's garden and pick him a single apple. Just to show off what he was capable of as a summoner. That's how Brabak rolls. But mention on the official forums that you want to play one of these guys and people will go apeshit telling you that you're not gonna fit into any normal group and that half of their PCs would kill you on sight. They are actually convinced that they have no other choice but to do that and that "they're only playing their character".

[Aryxbez]

They are actually convinced that they have no other choice but to do that and that "they're only playing their character".

Seriously, to hell with these fans, these guys need a rude awakening into the 2000's of player empowerment. That was awesome, PC's should get to be like Brabak at some point, hell like NPC's that push the story in the first place.

So yeah. It's a highly involved subsystem that requires a lot of specialization and renders you an outlaw in 75% of the setting.

Well being a Demon Summoner is a valid character archetype, I don't think it should require feats to interact with that system, any fighter-type PC should be able to least garner a favor from a demon/demon-lord performing enough right circumstances (even if it's just to get some sweet swag). Additionally I think the whole "kill on sight" is highly unrealistic, this isn't skyrim where villagers run at Dragons, should least write in where villagers might be fascinated, run away, or simply just avoid a demon summoner (so don't bring your flaming skeletal dog to the tavern).

Oh, and summoning elementals doesn't come with that kind of legal baggage. And no, of course elementals aren't any weaker than demons to make up for that advantage.

I take it this is unintentional, otherwise seems to be fairly common "the elements" are fighting back against other primordial forces (like the demons, man, everyone).

Also, what exactly is unique about Lizardmen crystalomancy, Magic Belly dancing, Shapeshifting warriors (Rage into animals?), and even Witches? etc. I know Tree-top Runner Elfs really were Self-buffing Druids/Clerics or even a Ranger-type PC. I know you're not experienced with D&D mechanics, but giving us an idea how they're unique could help to see how they'd be adapted (I would hate for witches to lose all their flavor for one thing).

Finally, sounds like if one was redoing DSA, one should highlight the most awesome bits of the setting, ignore the grognards (or least trick them into your better ideas), make every PC using "magic" to some kind from the get go (Crystalmancers, Raging shapeshifters, Not-divine Rogues & craftsman, Wizards scrubbed of Gandfalfiness, Summoners (Elemental, Demonic, and Necromancy), while making the popular races all playable and just simply GIVE reason they adventure (so Human, the Dwarfs, the Elfs, Lizardmen, Vampires? Orcs? and whatever else was well received).

[Username17]

If you wanted to take the ideas from DSA and play D&D you'd... play D&D. DSA's actual setting is the kind of half-assed homebrew that individual DMs have been making since before D&D was actually a thing. I mean seriously, Orkland and Yetiland? It looks like something I might have written when I was 14, and anything cool in it is basically the inevitable gems that pop out when you let the Hamlet Typing Monkeys do their thing.

There are very few fantasy tropes in DSA that aren't already in D&D, and even fewer that I'd actually care about trying to replicate. It's a dead end system married to a dead end setting. It's no less hammy than Forgotten Realms and the major shakeups every edition change are no less ham fisted or intrusive.

There's real value in the players being able to say "Fuck this! We're going a hundred miles west." and being able to whip out campaign maps that tell you what's there. But that value isn't very much if the thing that's on the map isn't at least as cool as whatever is on the top of the DM's head. And now that we are fucking adults, we can probably do a bit better than "Here be Orcs" or "Castle Happymountain." But the map to DSA can't, because it wasn't drawn by adults.

-Username17

[Rasumichin]

Also, what exactly is unique about Lizardmen crystalomancy, Magic Belly dancing, Shapeshifting warriors (Rage into animals?), and even Witches? etc. I know Tree-top Runner Elfs really were Self-buffing Druids/Clerics or even a Ranger-type PC.

Crystallomancy uses gems as a storage medium for spells. It's one of the full mage traditions, meaning that they get spells, rituals and special magic items tied to the tradition. Their main advantage is...well, lots of spell storage. A D&D class like artificer may be a good fit. Fluff-wise, they're one of the ruling castes among the Achaz (lizardfolk), together with the clergy. They are exclusive to the "archaic" Achaz who still retain the not-Egyptian/not-Aztec ways of their ancestors. Your typical fallen high culture. They mostly sit in the swamps their ancestors were banished to, watch the stars, play around with gems and crystal balls and that's it.
There's also "tribal" achaz, but the few full mages among them tend to be witches. Most are shamans who mostly do weaksauce ritual magic (weaksauce unless they cast Prey on you, a ritual that makes you a target for all predatory animals in the vicinity, which is super fucking lethal when there's T. rexes and crocs and snakes fucking everywhere).
An extremely large number of Achaz has minor magic abilities (quarter-mages) - they buff various skills and may know 1-3 spells. There's also humans who can do that, but it's a lot more common under the Achaz, probably due to them once having been among the servant races of the ancient dragon demigod Pyrdakor. That was a couple thousand years ago. Then there was an all-out war with another dragon demigod, the realm of Pyrdakor got transported to a parallel dimension, leaving the continent's biggest desert behind and a couple millenia after that, the Tulamidians kicked a lot of lizard ass under their mythical ruler Bastrabun and built an enormous magical ward to refine the Achaz to the Lizard Swamps and the island of Maraskan.

Magic belly dancers (sharisadim) are half-mages. They only know ritual magic, which they obviously work through dances. Charm/buff effects etc. Hell, one could just make them a flavor of bards and be done with it. The Tulamidians are really into this whole storytelling thing, so bardic knowledge would fit well with a sharisad's theme. And they're usually socialites and entertainers, so yes, bard would work for them. Being bards would actually be a major power boost for them, so you can guess how useful they are in DSA. They mostly got written into the setting as a wank fantasy, but DSA has a lot of wank fantasies who are major metaplot movers, so that doesn't quite justify that they have to dance for half an hour to cast Charm Person.

The animal warriors /Durro-Dûn of the Gjalsker barbarians are quarter-magicians who can use their minor magic to temporarily get powers and physical characteristics of their totem (Odûn). Claws, thicker hide, venom, enhanced speed, strength or toughness, maybe even limited flight if their Odûn is like snow owl or raven etc. As they hail from an icy wasteland, their totems include stuff like mammoth, wooly rhinoceros and things like that. Could be built as a barbarian variant or prestige class. DSA has a lot of barbarian peoples, it's as if they add several new ones with every edition. Right now, they're building up an entire continent full of them as a colonial setting, and there's a fan project for yet another continent full of barbarians, and there's more barbarian peoples on another continent which is mostly full or steampunk/arcanopunk airships and people in togas, but so huge that a couple barbarian cultures here and there don't bother anyone.

Witches in DSA have a familiar that also reflects their totem animal and that can learn minor magic. Like, thought/sense link to the witch etc. They also are really into curses (everything from giving you warts to destroying an entire village's harvest with a hailstorm). They get a flying wooden item (broom, spear, barrel, treasure chest, whatever), their magic gets harder to work when they're up in the air or even just on the upper floors of a building, and their magic is powered by strong emotions, womyn power and lesbo orgies. They worship their own earth goddess Satuaria (probably just an aspect of Tsa, the goddess of youth and creativity) and have a love/hate relationship to the ram-headed god Levtan, whose main characteristic besides having a giant cock is that he raped Satuaria.
As one can probably guess, lots of DSA witches are kinda on the borderline side.

The treetop running thing is actually just a spell. Well, to be exact, it's a hexalogy (set of 6) of elemental movement spells. DSA has 6 elements (water, air, fire, ore, soil and ice, the latter two representing life/growth vs. death/stasis) and a lot of spells are available in 6 elemental varieties (or used to be available before some of the spells got lost).
Running across treetops or other plant matter without sinking in/falling down/getting slowed down/leaving traces is one variant of moving across an element. The snow elfs know one for moving across all kinds of ice and snow, the dwarven druids know one for travelling through rock and i think the rest is currently unknown. But spells get "rediscovered" on a regular basis.
That "rediscovery" is actually a retcon - the treetop running spell ÜBER WIPFEL ÜBER KLEE ("across treetops and clover") and the snow variant got introduced in DSA2, when wood elfs got fleshed out a bit more and snow elfs were introduced. During the development of DSA3, the authors decided to expand these two and a bunch of other spells with elemental effects into hexalogies, but most of these spells only exist as rumors until today.
Hell, it took DSA 3 editions until we finally got fireballs.

[Korwin]

So yeah. It's a highly involved subsystem that requires a lot of specialization and renders you an outlaw in 75% of the setting.

Well being a Demon Summoner is a valid character archetype, I don't think it should require feats to interact with that system, any fighter-type PC should be able to least garner a favor from a demon/demon-lord performing enough right circumstances (even if it's just to get some sweet swag). Additionally I think the whole "kill on sight" is highly unrealistic, this isn't skyrim where villagers run at Dragons, should least write in where villagers might be fascinated, run away, or simply just avoid a demon summoner (so don't bring your flaming skeletal dog to the tavern).

Oh if you want to be the bitch to an Archdemon, it's relativly easy to become one.
The hard part is controlling demons, without the negative by products.

If you wanted to take the ideas from DSA and play D&D you'd... play D&D.

Low level D&D.
Mostly...

[Rasumichin]

I mean seriously, Orkland and Yetiland?

Hey, let's not forget the Cyclops Islands, Giantland, the Witch Island and the Troll Cliffs.

It's important to remember that 1st edition was hacked together within a few months - Schmidt learned half a year before the planned launch date that somebody else had secured the D&D license for Germany and they just said "fuck it, let's write our own RPG." With 1980s typesetting and printing, it's safe to assume that not much of that half year timespan was available for the actual writing process. And it clearly shows.
Most of the setting's ideas are stale copypasta. In the beginning, that was probably not just due to time constraints, but intentional. DSA1 wasn't published by an RPG company, but by a tabletop gaming company trying to cash in on the D&D fad, so they aimed directly for a mass market demographic that had little affinity to the fantasy genre.
After that, they just ran with it. The existing parts got padded with more information, but they never bothered to be high concept or particularly creative. Even after they started to do actual research on the IRL cultures they copied, it never went beyond "how can we fit this into the setting?" Nobody ever asked the question "how do we make this unique?", because it sold well without that.

[Daniel]

The fact that it at first sight is all very straightforward, generic and corny is a feature not a bug. You can't go all "Empire of the Petal Throne" and expect to be the biggest game on the block. The fact that there is depth hidden away in the setting (Troll culture for example) is the icing on the cake.

It is a very good generic fantasy rpg setting. It is very bad generic fantasy setting for worldbuilding wankers.

[Rawbeard]

They are actually convinced that they have no other choice but to do that and that "they're only playing their character".

Seriously, to hell with these fans, these guys need a rude awakening into the 2000's of player empowerment. That was awesome, PC's should get to be like Brabak at some point, hell like NPC's that push the story in the first place.

The Setting and players can't handle a mage who uses a bow. and this is a classless system, so proficiency is not the issue. the game went so far as to make it illigal for mages to use weapons like that in-world. I got roped into a DSA 4 game by a friend GM, who was actually pretty ok with not sticking to shit like that, I didn't even have to argue for using a bow, since he changed his mind while explaining that rule to me, so my mage could use a bow, but the other players... were slightly confused.

[Rasumichin]

The Setting and players can't handle a mage who uses a bowan. and this is a classless system, so proficiency is not the issue. the game went so far as to make it illigal for mages to use weapons like that in-world.

All of the weapon restrictions in DSA are leftovers from 1st editon.
The basic rules were so simplistic that the only ways to differentiate classes were hit points, spell points - and weapon proficiencies. The only thing they could give to fighters were two extra damage points compared to adventurers rat catchers and shit farmers. And wizards got two damage points less than these.

2nd edition rolled out and they made up the in-game justifications. And while they've been relaxed a bit in 3rd edition, they're still around today and 4th made up a bunch of rules about iron interfering with magic and you could buy merits that made your character have an iron-affinity aura and bs like that.

Typical evolution of DSA rules there. Start with baby shit > retroactively explain crap from 1st edition and nerf everything to hell > introduce power creep with obvious i-win-buttons > turn everything into a bookkeeping nightmare with more nerfing and more power creep.