Just won a bid on ebay for the german Rules Cyclopedia. Interestingly, the second-highest bidder apparently had his last bid at 77 Euro (I won at 78), which is the acaeum value given for a "fine" copy, which is about the grade I´d assume for the book, judging from the picture. So maybe someone took that value and bid on that in Euro... When I get it, I´ll scan it, as I just noticed that a scan is missing on the Acaeum.

EDIT: Got it today. The english and the german copy side by side. The german edition is 120 pages longer, for whatever reason, and the tables and page headers are in bright yellow, not a subdued green.

kuronons shot me a question about the jigsaws we discussed earlier and added the FSV stock numbers. He has posted this here:
Kuronons': D&D jigsaw puzzles definitive list
Apparently, the classic Elmore dragon from the 83 basic box has 8548/3, and the rainbow dragon has 8561/6. Now, his question was as to the publication date of the jigsaws. As these show the dragon logo, they should have been published c. 1985 at earliest. I am thinking about trying to put a list together of publication dates and stock numbers, to see if there is any correlation. Seeing that the first two rulesets, several of the basic modules and the accessories have a "low" stock no., this might be something at the beginning, but I guess that the picture gets muddy fast. The first two digits are definitly not the publication year.

Some new background information I recently had the joy to get told: I had the chance to interview Uwe Körner - the name probably won´t ring a bell, but if you happen to have any german D&D items in your collection, from the 80ies up to 3.0, his name might appear as translator or editor - on quite a lot of products.

He encountered D&D for the first time in 1979 or 80, with the blue (I assume Holmes) rulebook and "Into the Unknown" in a shop in Cologne. A few years later, 1982 or 83, there was a fantasy con in a smaller town, where one guy showed the red box, but did nothing with it, and garnered no interest. Uwe talked to him, and finally offered to DM a session, and the table was crowded afterwards.

He started early on to work for FSV, authoring pieces for the "Drache" and translating quite a lot of material, in collaboration with other translators. The AD&D MM was translated by another person, but so badly that and he another guy translated it again on short notice on FSVs request...

The german AD&D DMG was first sold with a spectacularly bad translated Appendix K, and as his name was listed as a translator, he distanced himself from this disaster. The story goes like this: Apparently, several translations were not paid, and nothing was happening in that regard. He sent in the translation of Appendix K, and it was lost somewhere on the way - twice. He refused to send it again until his payment arrived, which did not happen. It seems like somebody translated the text anew on the fly, consulting a well-known english-german dictionary, and picking the very first translation appearing after the english words - in case of "torch", it was "Taschenlampe", meaning an electrical torch. Of course, it should have been "Fackel", which in german is the "burning stick". FSV reprinted the DMG shortly after the first print run, and did a separate print of the faulty appendix.

In 1984, he and several others thought that a RPG magazine might be a good idea, and they started the "Fantasywelt". The first issue, actually a pre-issue, was handed out at Essen Games Fair, but contained so many errors that it turned into a laughing stock, leading Uwe and his companions to collect that issue back again and scrapping it. This has been a very rare collectors item ever since (I had never heard of it before). The actual Fantasywelt #1 contained a b/w map for the german FRP "Das Schwarze Auge", which was very new in 1984 as well, and the source of that map is a well-kept secret. The makers of "Das Schwarze Auge" wondered ever since where that leak was... The magazine was a success, and ran for 11 years and 42 issues, AFAIK. After that, he started over with the german Dragon, with 17 issues over roughly ten years.

On the Nuremberg Games Fair in 1984, when german D&D and the already mentioned Das Schwarze Auge first went public, the CEO of FSV, Hans Jany, had an "interesting" idea how to raise the success of D&D: He had the title of the Module B1 replaced with the words "Das Schwarze Auge", meant to suggest that everything his competitors had, they had in only one Module. Needless to say, the competitors were less than pleased when the found out...

On the same game fair, Gary Gygax himself was always accompanied by two fair hostesses all the time. Uwe thought this amusing and telling. Uwe remarked that he did not see Gary as a purely innocent victim in the later troubles.

Uwe added a few ideas to Das Schwarze Auge as well, showing just how close and small the RPG "scene" and market was at that time.

FSV came crashing down in 1988. The second Edition was in the making, and TSR UK, specifically the managing Director Malcolm Mitchell, asked Uwe if he could organize a translation. Uwe and one of his compatriots from the Fantasywelt magazine founded the Fantasywelt GmbH ("Limited") and Uwe went to work full time for his company. He did not do many translations in that time, rather handing that job over to faster translators, but was editor and oversaw the print setup of the books. The translated Players Handbook was checked by a Goethe Institut in England, probably Cambridge, and came back with an accuracy quote of 94-96%. This shocked Uwe, who wanted it to be perfect, until he was told that any quote over 90% is excellent (akin to an A-grade in the US, AFAICT). The German AD&D2 items were managed by Uwe, until TSR crashed.

Afterwards, as we all know, Wizards took over. Wizards already had a german partner, Amigo Spiele, so they were to print and distribute D&D as well. Uwe was still involved. I asked why Amigo chose to distribute the game in a number of boxes. The german gaming market at that point was quite conservative overall (talking about the late 1990ies), and to the distributors and vendors, a game had to come out of a box. Period. (Never mind that the game had been sold in books for 10 years at that point...). So, Uwe made sure that at least the content was cut into somewhat logical individual boxes and booklets....

He was involved up to the translation of D&D 3.0. When 3.5 was coming, they did not ask him anymore to provide his services - maybe an oversight by somebody. At that time, he earned money with translations of computer games, like Baldur´s Gate 2.

He did point out that all the people he came across in the gaming industry were without exception very friendly, nice and professional towards him. After talking to him, I think this is because he himself comes across as a very friendly and nice guy, interested and open minded. (Thanks, Uwe! In case you are reading this.)

He alluded to several instances where people with psychological problems, namely depression, inadvertedly caused a lot of trouble for other people in the gaming industry and scene.
I just want to add the following: As this is still not seen as a "real" disorder even today by some, please take care and take folks serious if you happen to notice things like these. Too many lives have been lost already...

Howdy, question for stebehil: i found this MERP item and couldnt find any title in english which is from... Is it possibile that this book is german and has no original MERP title?


** expired/removed eBay auction **

Ulisses recently announced that they want to publish the whole backlist ASAP.
Curse of Strahd is announced for June, 27, and is already in their warehouse.
And they will try to publish the new books as soon as possible. Saltmarsh is probably already available in August.
They aim to publish Dragon Queen, Tiamat, Mordenkainen and Apocalypse this year - one book a month. Quite ambitious.
They also want to publish the Baldurs Gate and the Eberron book ASAP, the former probably this year, the latter next year.
Several books and card sets are getting reprinted, in case of the PH it is the fifth reprint already.

From these announcements and the admittedly anecdotal reports by my FLGS, D&D5 in German seems to be selling like hot cake. The FLGS was even "forced" to sell her shop copy of the German MM, as there were no more copies available.

Current developments:

On a sidenote, there is currently a preorder running for the translation of Goodman Games Dungeon Crawl Classic system. I ordered it, of course:
System Matters: Dungeon Crawl Classics Vorbestellung

The guys at Ulisses were halfway done with the Tyranny of Dragons translation, when the news hit that there will be an updated version of that campaign. For now, they held the work on that and try to find out if the can do the updated version instead. Preorders have been put on hold for the time being.

Strahd is already available. Mordenkainen, Saltmarsh and Princes of the Apocalypse will probably be available later this year. Work on Descent to Avernus has begun.

And they will translate Pathfinder 2nd Edition as well, of course.

A very troublesome development hit the Uhrwerk Verlag, a smaller, but very active RPG publisher, doing translations (of numenera, for example) and their own games (Splittermond). They run into serious financial trouble and had to file for insolvency. The latest news was that they had to lay off most people working for them, but they still try to regain their footing. The german RPG scene would be poorer if this publisher would vanish, to say nothing of the current incarnation of Feder & Schwert, a publisher of fantasy novels these days, who is closely connected.
They are the force behind a kickstarter to translate the "Designers & Dragons" books - if this is being realized is completely open at this point.

And regarding ebay auctions, a copy of "Das große Buch der D&D-Regeln" (the Rules Cyclopedia) recently was sold for 89 Euro. I have no indication towards its quality, but it was a used copy. This one isn´t getting any cheaper, it seems.

Got a shrinkwrapped "Ausbau Set" today (german Companion Set), the box is slightly dented inwards from being stacked away a long time, but I guess the contents are brand new. 40 Euros seemed a fair price for that. And a "Drache Nr. 6" for 10 Euros, NM I´d say.

I heard today of somebody offering the 1999 "Gruft des Grauens" (Tomb of Horrors) by Amigo Spiele signed by Gary Gygax (as most of this limited Edition was, printrun was 1.000 copies) for 250 Euros. That is too much IMO. I´m not prepared to pay more than 100-150 for that one.

In other news, Saltmarsh is announced for end of October now. The new Essentials box probably won´t get localized versions, according to Ulisses Spiele.

simonmwh wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:These have just been listed if anybody is interested.  Price seems ok?

Depends. There are no reliable price notations on German items afaik. I had the chance to buy a few shrinkwrapped modules fairly recently for really low prices (german veiled society, rahasia and castle amber for 13 Euro each). Relating to that, 20 or even 28 $ seems a bit high. But then, it is always somewhat easier to get a hold of stuff in their country of origin, so the prices seem to be ok, given that most german items probably had just one print run (afaict), and the supply is dwindling. But that seems to differ wildly. Getting Horror on the Hill took me years, and the Lost City was also hard to get, whereas I have two B2 and three B3, which are offered more often. E1 seems to be plentyful, as it was available separately from the Experten Set.
The later stuff (B7, B8, and especially B11 and B12, also DDA3 and DDA4) are harder to get and more expensive.
I compare the prices to the same items in english on the acaeum main site, and I think this should be ok, generally speaking.

Oh, and by the way: "Geister von Salzmarsch" is officially available by now. Got a copy waiting in my FLGS, but had to take Tyranny of Dragons today.

simonmwh wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:
I guess they should be around the same price.  I'm assuming there are rarer but then less in demand.

That is my take on that matter as well.