So, I just had my offer of 40 € for the Basis Set I linked further up accepted. This is roughly the price given in the Acaeum list for an english copy in a "very fine" grade, which is, judging from the photos, about accurate for the set. The slight discoloration of the box and the torn-up dice bag don´t bother me. If it all goes well, I should have that in time for x-mas, like 32 years before

Also, the first page of the Module BS1 itself has some differences in layout, as seen in the photo. Other than the cover and this page, I noticed no differences. The older one is to the right. Note that the company adress is not given in the older module.

Agent Cooper wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:I'm a bit surprised at the small RPG market in Germany.  From what I've read the Germans love tabletop games, and are experiencing a surge in boardgame popularity right now.  I'd assume RPGs would get a boost from that as well?

Maybe the OP or some other German Acaeum member can shed some light on that.

I´ll try. Yes, board games in general are quite thing, with new games - big and small - constantly appearing on the market. My local games shop survives on these, a variety of card games and Magic. RPG and table top gaming is only a small part of the business.

The publishers of RPG in Germany are really small - in most cases, one person can make a living of that (if everything goes well). Everything else is done by freelancers. I just read that one of the more popular publishers has print runs of 1000 copies per book, and if lucky sells this in a year. Paizo recently reissued the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path. The german publisher Ulisses Spiele just translated it and did a limited edition of the book: Der Fluch des Scharlachroten Throns limitiert Limited in every sense of the word: 150 copies. The regular version will probably have a few hundred or at most 1000. I recall that they recently hit 10,000 copies of the Pathfinder Core Rules in german, which is a huge success. With other books, about 1000 copies are the rule. I´m quite astonished they still translate every hardcover and a lot of other stuff.

There are only two really big RPGs in Germany: Das Schwarze Auge and Shadowrun. The latter in the 5th Edition, mainly because they sell the Core Rules at 20 Euro. And Das Schwarze Auge was the leader by a wide margin since 1984, as I wrote earlier.

The market is very small, perhaps because gaming in general is fragmented into family games like Settlers of Catan, more complex games for "serious" gamers, computer games, Table Top gaming, which has seen a growth recently AFAICT, Magic (my local shop could probably survive on Magic alone), and RPGs. With 80 Mio. people living in Germany, one would think it should be a bigger market. But even if Das Schwarze Auge managed to sell probably several 100k of their introductory game in few years back then, the number of people staying at RPGs is much smaller. And that market is of course fragmented also. Many folks who play DSA do so exclusively, and won´t touch any other RPG.

It seems to me that RPG in the US were a more or less natural development from wargaming, which in that form is and was extremely rare over here. RPGs were introduced into the gaming market somewhat artificially and had to compete with other games early on. Since 1979, the "Spiel des Jahres" (Game of the Year) is chosen, showcasing the german games market. Two german games fairs, in Nuremberg and in Essen, both state that they are the worlds largest game fairs, Nuremberg for professionals and Essen for consumers. I have no idea if this is true, but this might speak for the german gaming market. RPGs are very small at Essen (I´ve been there this year). In earlier years (like 10-15 years ago), one hall was filled with RPGs. Today, it is less than one half. The german RPG market seems to be shrinking overall, and surely is aging. Of course, there are new gamers starting, but with so many other options at playing, and needing quite some commitment to play the game, many young people are drawn to other types of entertainment.

I´ve read the number of 100,000 RPG gamers in Germany currently. This could be an accurate number. Given that quite a lot play DSA and that there are a lot of RPGs out there (you get basically every english rpg, some translated, and a few german ones as well), the number of 10,000 books for Pathfinder is quite an achievement. If you have RPG cons, the attendance will not be over 1000 if that. The number of gaming stores selling RPGs is quite small and shrinking as well. Dresden, where I live, has one shop (and one GW store) at 500k+ inhabitants. I think Leipzig, about the same size, does not have one anymore.

The games had a boom in the 80ies, and a second surge in the 90ies with Vampire, and another with D&D3 in the early 2000s, but overall, were never able to come out of their niche. By now, RPGs are a small thing for the most part, but still a lively scene. Looking at all the translations done and development of original german rpgs, the game will continue, if on a very low level.

I got an old german book on rpgs today, dating from 1984. It is compiled by the same Ulrich Kaiser who was editor of Drache magazine, and all that at the tender age of 21. In the foreword, dated April 1984, we learn that the Basic Set had been sold over 7 million time at that point (speaking of the US edition, of course).

Later in the book, we learn that TSR had in 1983 220 people working there, had a business volume of 27 million $, and had sold 7 million RPGs in the last four years (note the difference: 7 million RPGs to seven million basic sets)

One chapter lists D&D products and gives a short description for some, starting with B2. Interestingly, B1 is listed, the title given as "Auf der Suche nach dem Unbekannten", which is a literal translation. For B2, B3 and BS1, the title is given only in german, for everything else, the original title is given first, and the german title second. After listing the B modules, some accessories and the E modules up to E4, after which is stated that this material is available in german, which I doubt strongly was the case at that point. What´s more, the title of X2 is given as "The Amber Castle", and X3 and X5 (the latter listed after all the rest, maybe a layout error) have a "The" added to their title. So, either the person had no clue what he was writing about, or proofreading failed there. But what would be the reason to list the english titles as well? I guess that only the three modules I think are the oldest had been published at the point of writing (probably early 1984), and the others were supposed to come soon. The modules B2 and B3 are depicted in the book with the old corner code layout, whereas E1 has the (blue) bar at the top.
The translation of AD&D is said to come in 1985.

Greyhawk gets its own chapter, describing the content of the then-brand new box (but interestingly, showing the cover of the 1980 folio). THis was also supposed to come in 1985 in german (now, that would have been sweet).

Next, we get an interview with Gary Gygax at the 1984 Nuremberg games fair. He states that in 1982, 750,000 basic sets have been sold, and D&D is played by three million people in the US. (Note: so, the seven million RPGs mentioned earlier could as well mean RPG products in general. With 750k in one year, seven million in total seems huge in comparison.) Interestingly, GG states that D&D could have been in Germany five years earlier, but a friend of his from Switzerland did not want to do the translation due to time constraints. D&D in Germany was always produced under that abbrevation, and he explains why: apparently, they wanted to translate it, but the closest they came up with was "Drachen & Dämonen", and while he liked that, he did not approve that in the end, fearing that the german version could turn up in the US some day, where it might be a problem having a game with demons in its name. (I guess this is owed to the James Dallas Egbert hype of the time).

On another note, the head of FSV at that time, Hans W Jany, seems to have been a dubious character. He also was CEO of ASS AG, the mother company, since 1982. A Hans Jany is listed in the book with a local chapter of the D&D gaming club just a few miles away from the FSV factory - as Hans W Jany was in his early 30ies by then, I´d think he himself had this chapter (and not a son of his by the same name). A few newspaper articles I found while googling his name say that he ruined the already struggling company, telling lies about getting the company back on track, possibly even manipulating the stock market, and was later convicted of damaging the company financially - at about the time FSV stopped producing (ASS AG was bankrupt in 1996, a few years later). Perhaps he was indeed an RPGer, and tried to make his dream come true of translating D&D, driving the mother company even further into financial trouble.
Apparently, he and several cronies took over the company in 1982, and in 1989, it was said that he bilked the company for five million D-Mark, and was sued for this. The financial troubles apparently plaguing the mother company could explain the rather spotty publishing policy.

I can confirm the same pattern for B3. 1st print has Fasanenweg 3-5 and lists B1 as Vorstoß ins Ungewisse.  2nd print has Fasanenweg 3 and Hügel des Grauens for B1.

I just compared the supposed first print of the Basis Set to my supposed second print and noted a few differences:

First Print is given first:
- The address is given as Fasanenweg 3-5 throughout/ Fasanenweg 3 (even on the inside cover the books).
- on the left long side of the box cover, there is no bar code/ there is a bar code.
- On the Spielerhandbuch, the title and the sentence "Dieses Buch bitte zuerst lesen" are white /yellow.
- The sentence "Zuerst das Spielerhandbuch lesen!" on the Handbuch für D&D-Master is missing/is present.
- the back cover of the Handbuch für D&D-Master is blank white/ has the keyword index for both books.
- The ad on the inside back covers of each book show the first four "Abenteuer ohne Ende" books in black and white, with monochrome covers for the books/ with white/color edge covers and  for the books (the latter is how they actually look like).
- The back of the box shows only text and lists the modules (akin to the lists on the modules), with B1 given as "Vorstoß ins Ungewisse"/shows the books and the dice in addition to a different text, no module listing.

In the first print, the keyword index is added as a loose leaf, obviously added on an afterthought.

I did not dare to open the further than the covers, and even those only slightly, as the books seem to have been never opened before. So, I can not tell if there are further differences inside. But with the differences noted, I´d say it is safe to say that two different print runs of the Basis Set exist. Dating them is a bit unsure, but as stated above, I´d date the first print runs 1983 and the second 1984, with, as stated, four items (so far) having notably different print runs.

I found a small full-color leaflet inside my long-owned copy advertising the (A)D&D plastic figurines, in german. I think it was in there right from the beginning. Interestingly, it has the Fasanenweg 3-5 address.

EDIT: I changed the reference to a table of contents to keyword index, which it truly is.

blackdougal wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:

stebehil wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:In the first print, the table of contents is added as a loose leaf, obviously added on an afterthought.

Please elaborate on the table of contents page.  My copy matches your description of the 1st print in every way but both books an Inhaltsverzeichnis on the first page. I'm curious if the loose leaf page is different information that mine is missing or if there was a revised printing.

I think I ran afoul of vocabulary rather than content here. This is an keyword index of the books rather than a ToC. The books have indeed a ToC on the first page inside. The index is printed on the back of the DMs book in the second print. So, if the back of your DMs book is blank, chances are you just don´t have that index at all. I´ve attached a picture of that index from the first print.

blackdougal wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:Okay, looks like I'm just missing that page then, thanks! On another note, I've got most of my BECMI and 1st edition German items listed on my site now... front and back cover scans if you ever need to make comparisons. Still working on 2nd edition and up.

That is very helpful indeed, thank you. I noted that the item code for SGA 3 is missing from your list, it is 8528/7. I don´t think that SGA 4 got published.

blackdougal wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:Got it! Honestly, I wasn't even sure about SGA3. I don't think I've ever seen one.

Oh, SGA 3 does exist. I recently found a listing of a collector who listed it as in his possession. It might be rarer than the other two.
EDIT: I saw a picture of it in shrinkwrap somewhere.