Drakensang - Preview @ Hooked Gamers

Hooked Gamers has a preview up for those of us yet to get our hands on Radon Labs' rpg, Drakensang:The Dark Eye. It's unclear whether the author has actually played the demo or a review copy of the game, but the article goes over the title's pen and paper background, style and general gameplay elements:

If you've never played "The Dark Eye" p-n-p, or the earlier Arkania series, trust me, character creation will be a treat. Besides the usual Strength, Intelligence, etc., positive traits, you also have several negative traits to factor in: superstition, acrophobia, claustrophobia, avarice, etc. Then there's several score of skills to flesh out, as well as scores of spells to select for your spell-casting quiver. And lets not forget the potion making details for the alchemy-inclined amongst us! Radon will lay out about 50 archetypes (for those that want to just jump in and get the show on the road!), but you will be able to mix and match your own concoction to your heart's content.

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More information.

Quite obviously this guy has played neither a German nor English version or demo of Drakensang.
He seems to have played the PnP though, because the character-creation he describes resembles the PnP one. It is not at all like this in the CRPG though!
First of all you only have 21 archetypes to choose from (most come in two genders, but that doesn't really make any difference).

THERE IS NO CHARACTER CREATION AT ALL.

Granted, you can twinker a little bit with your starting attributes after you've chosen an archetype, but flexibility is extremely limited here (you can only change the values of a few talents and spells) - especially if you come from the PnP.
Negative traits you can not choose at all, they come automatically and depend on the chosen archetype.

"you will [defenitely NOT!] be able to mix and match your own concoction to your heart's content. "

I think he was relating on some old information. You're not allowed to have a party of four and then again 4 companions. That was an initial goal they reduced to a maximum of a party of four plus one quest NPC plus one animal companion or creatue.

There seems to be clearly no up-to-date informations from dtp / Radon Labs on the english speaking hemisphere.

I thought it sounded a bit off when I read it--thanks for the fact-check. I need to download the demo but so far haven't made the time.

I really enjoy the demo, for what it's worth.

I thought the demo was too limited. Almost everything is disabled with a sign that says "Available in Full Version" all over. They do give you a small area to explore that has one zone-to a cave. You get to meet two npcs: one is very lame and the other is slightly better. I think the full game sounds interesting but I found the demo lowered these expectations somewhat. If they would have allowed all the skills and classes to be tried out and just limited the area you could have explored, that might have helped. I think I'll get the game if I can find a place that accepts returns for credit.

I played the original Northland triology and wondered a bit about character generation. Tried the demo, but that didn't make anything clearer. Can you roll up your character like in the originals or can you just choose a Archetype and then just tinker with the skills? Liked what I saw in the demo, but I really miss the oportunity to roll up a character.

sigmarsson said:

I played the original Northland triology and wondered a bit about character generation. Tried the demo, but that didn't make anything clearer. Can you roll up your character like in the originals or can you just choose a Archetype and then just tinker with the skills? Liked what I saw in the demo, but I really miss the oportunity to roll up a character.

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Nope, after RoA The Dark Eye was transfered into a pointbuy system. You're experience points are your level-up resource. You can level-up your skills at any point, if you have enough points left (did you play Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption?). Only learning a new skill / spell needs a trainer.

character creation is reduced, because that topic isn't that trivial since the new rule set and Radon Labs simply had not the time and the money to implement a more basic character creation. So they used preconfigured archetypes, with some minor customization options.

Damn, its sad to hear that character creation is dumbed down. But i was one that abused the character creation in the dark eye rpg's of the past. Maybe they were tryign to avoid that?

Avantenor said:

Nope, after RoA The Dark Eye was transfered into a pointbuy system.

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Just to add : This is now 4th edition of the rule set.

ROA was 2nd/3rd edition. Mostly 3rd.

Damian Mahadevan said:

Damn, its sad to hear that character creation is dumbed down. But i was one that abused the character creation in the dark eye rpg's of the past. Maybe they were tryign to avoid that?

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Nope. I'm quite sure it was mainly for budget reasons. To give a short explanation:

For character creation in pen & paper you have so called creation points you can spend for activating talents and special skills and things like that. But in some way these points are not sufficient to create a well-balanced character. For that they introduced disadvantages. For choosing a disadvantage you get more creation points to spent for skills / talents.

The problem is, implementing the whole system including disadvantages would mean that there has to be a sensible influence by these disadvantages. If you choose "one eyed", you must suffer disadvantages during battle from this, if you take "prejudices against elven/dwarfs/orcs/..." that must be implemented. to dialogues. If you choose "loyalty towards the twelve gods" you are not allowed to rob / threat innocent people, and so on. That's quite a lot of environment reaction they would have had to implement. And it could have caused several problems with storyline, because dwarfs take on a much more important role during the game. A character with prejudices against dwarfs would not work in that game.

I'm not convinced that Silver Style can provide the full character creation for demonicon, as promised.

Maybe somebody can make a few screenshots of the expert mode and explain what can be configured.