Good cover! Was there ever an English equivalent? I think I recognise the art but I can’t place it.

blackdougal wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:
Nope, no English equivalent. It's a straight 2nd edition update of Tomb of Horrors. The cover was reused from the Ravenloft supplement Van Richten's Guide to the Ancient Dead.

So ripe for fan translation then if one could get ahold of a copy.

Currently, the legal fight between GF9 and Wizards has brought all translations to a stop. At least one german translation is at Wizards, awaiting its release to be printed - but nothing happens. Other translations are not given green light currently to be continued.

I read a passing note that on the Nuremberg Game Fair 1988, when the german "Oriental Adventures" was cancelled, that there were plans to translate B10 Nights Dark Terror. Sadly, it never came to that.

So, "Sturmkönigs Donner" and the Eberron book are available now in German.

A very sad news: the Games-In mailorder will close business. The store was closed for several weeks recently due to illness, and now the homepage states that they will terminate business. In fact, as of now, it is already effectively terminated. I don´t know what happened, but from what I learned about the owner, he is not the guy to stop his business unless he really has no other option.

Another sidetrack: There is a german fantasy RPG called Midgard (Did I mention this upthread?). The authors did write the first draft, so to speak, in the late 70ies (1977/78) and distributed it to their gaming group. The inspiration was said to be a game of D&D a member of their tabletop/war gaming group brought to a convention in 1977. With their own game, they tried to create a translation of sorts of the Empire of the Petal Throne RPG they acquired via Walter Luc Haas, the swiss wargaming author/games distributor. The game was (self-)published to the general audience in 1981 (in digest-sized books, german DIN A 5 format), probably with small print runs, and republished as 2nd edition in a more professional outfit in 1985 (two full-size books, DIN A 4 - roughly letter-sized, color soft covers), and again in 1989/90 (3rd edition), this time in a box (well, not that surprising....) containing three stapled booklets, a DMs screen and a world map. The game is developed slowly, and is in its 5th edition since 2013, with the 4th edition having been in print since 2001. It has a smallish but persistent fanbase and a low number of publication, owing to the fact the the autors (still the same as in 1977) do most of it in their spare time, and like it that way.

Any relation to Kobold Games Midgard Campaign Setting for 5E, or just coincidental use of the name?

An ebay auction with a small german Basic D&D collection ended yesterday. It contained the Basic, Expert and Companion set, looking complete from the pictures, even containing the original dice, some of them not even colored, six adventures (B1, B2, E1, E2, E3 and ES2) and two issues of Drache (2 and 4). My guess is that the Drache come from the boxed sets, and E1 from the Expert Set. The boxes were battered, the contents looked good, the modules quite good as well. Overall, judging from the photos, I´d say the modules and rule booklets are in the FN, some in VF range, some modules maybe VG. The boxes looked GD at best. The whole collection sold for 201 Euros, which is actually a good price for the whole collection, I´d say. Sold separately, the prices will probably be higher. Especially the german B1 Hügel des Grauens is rarely offered in my perception. I saved the pictures used in the auction.

(I did not bid on that collection. My shelves can carry only so many doubles, to say nothing of my wallet....)

A new record in asking prices: A signed copy of "Gruft des Grauens" (#439) is offered on ebay for 500 Euro minimum bid.
I started collecting information on the numbered copies, but with very limited success so far. I have a dozen copies noted so far, with at least three of them still with their original owners.

I started a website on the history of german RPGs a while back, and did a quick & dirty translation today: Dungeons & Dragons in Germany – english version – Geschichte des Rollenspiels If there are errors or expressions that are strange (and may result from translating something verbatim, when it should not be), please let me know. I omitted a few links, leading to german pages only.

Quite some time has passed since the last time I posted something...

I recently acquired a relatively rare piece of german D&D history: the D&D-Bund Nachrichten (newsletter) Ausgabe 1, 10/84. Even though entitled Ausgabe 1 (Issue #1), to my knowledge, this is the only issue ever. The D&D-Bund was the official D&D club, somewhat managed by FSV. Is has eight pages, stapled, no cover and starts with the title page shown. It is an editorial for the newsletter. The newsletter contains some news, rules questions, a short dungeon adventure, a short story and the invitation to a monster creation contest. The back page has a form for membership in the D&D-Bund, and promises a ID card, a membership button, a membership certificate and four issues of the newsletter. I´ve never seen any of those items apart from this newsletter. The artwork is from Heidi Koch, whom I assume worked for FSV/ASS at that time. She was also responsible for similar artwork in "Drache". The cover price, 2 DM, seems quite steep for these few pages, seeing that the "Drache" did cost only 4 DM.

I bought this newsletter with a few surplus issues of "Drache" and two fanzines named "Druidenpost", the latter being an explicit D&D Fanzine that ran three issues in all (I own all three). If stuff like this is interesting, I could write on that too. I wrote about it in german on my homepage, there is a picture as well: Druidenpost – Geschichte des Rollenspiels

I don´t think that Noble Knight Games will be able to sell it for that way too high price. IMO, it is worth a tenth of that, at most (which would be still way more than what I would pay, my limit for that would be around 200 Euro)
I wonder how this made its way into the US in the first place.