The TDA5 Quick-Start guide - What do i need to get started in Aventuria right away?
In this post I will get you fast-tracked on your journey into The Dark Eye 5 and the wonderful land of Aventuria.
This post is for new GMs and players that want to start their first roleplaying session
with minimal friction as well as experienced GMs and players from other roleplaying systems that want to get a short impression of TDE5 and the world of Adventuria and the possibilities of a strong narrative style of roleplay it has to offer for you.
The Dark Eye 5 Quick-Start Guide
If you want to get a glimpse into the world of Aventuria and The Dark Eye 5, you actually do not need to invest in big stacks of rulebooks beforehand. While the TDE5 core rulebook is a really good starting place for beginners as well as experienced role-players, Ulisses Spiele offers you Quick-Start rules to TDE5 for free. This 24-page guide offers some of the core rules, a complete adventure and a handful of ready-to-play characters .
Contents of the Quick-Start guide
The Quick-Start rules contains basically everything to start playing right away:
basic description of roleplaying and the world of The Dark Eye and Aventuria
basic set of rules for skill checks, group checks, combat and magic.
An introductionary scenario
Ready-to-play starting characters
A political map of Aventuria
The rules in the Quick-Start guide
The rules included here are only are fraction of the rules from the TDE5 core rulebook, but this condensed set already allows you to play adventures and get a good feeling for what TDE5 has to offer. All of the rules stay valid if you later decide to switch over to the core rules of TDE5.
The Quick-Start rules includes this set of rules:
Skills
The eight core attributes
How to make 3D20 skill checks
Use your skill points to reduce rolls that are too high
Determine your quality level on a successful skill check
Make cumulative group checks
Combat
Combat rounds and Initiative
Actions, Defenses and free Actions
Attack and Defense rolls
Ranged combat rules for range and reloading
Combat special abilities
Magic
Arcane Energy, casting time, range and duration
Spell list:
Armatrutz, a spell for hardening the caster´s skin
Balsam Salabunde, your bread and butter healing spell
Ignifaxius, a lance of flame that automatically hits the target. But unlike a magic missile (d&d), the target still has a chance to dodge the incoming projectile
Visibili, a invisibility spell with a narrative twist: the spellcaster becomes invisible, but his clothing and equipment do not
Fate points
This set of rules is already extensive enough that you could continue playing some of the full length adventures or heroic works with this ruleset or use it as a reduced ruleset for a more narrative- focussed gameplay or for hosting online Let's Play sessions that want to focus on the story with the help of lighter rules.
The characters of the quick-start guide
In this category, Ulisses delivers more than you would expect from a short guide like this. The guide comes with six fully fledged-out characters with a very detailed stat block and half a page of a very well written backstory and character description. These are valid characters within the core ruleset of TDE5 and you can keep using them if you later decide to expand into the full world of The Dark Eye.
Geron Bladebreaker, once a mercenary, the swordsman came into conflict with his ethics and turned away from the mercenary´s life. He is now traveling Aventuria, working as a soldier of fortune.
Layariel Treetopglint, the curious elven wyldrunner from the Treelight tribe, has, unlike her customs, a keen interest in the strange race of humans. The search of her brother Eldorian has driven her out of the northern forests and brought her to Gareth, the capitol of the middlerealm.
Arbosh son of Angrax, a forge dwarf, skilled in smiting and crafting, now seeking adventure and masterful craftsmenship in Aventuria.
Mirhiban al´Orhima, once the child of rice farmers, now student of a guildless mage, she has a special aptitude for the element of fire and fosters a passion for her search of a real dark eye in Aventuria.
Carolan Calavanti, a child of the streets with a special talent for acquiring items and gold without explicit permission from their owners. Always has his hopes up and seemes to be blessed with luck by Phex the fox god.
Tjalva Garheldtsdottir, a respected warrior from the town of Olport in Thorwal, high up in the northwest of Aventuria. She values courage, honor and respect, but blesses as Swafnir´s child, a burning rage lingers deep inside of her.
In many modern systems, the power level of player characters is already through the roof from the get-go for normal human beings, and continues to increase to ridiculously stronger superhero type of powers with every increasing level, while the opponents and encounters scale in the same direction. Many GMs go for direct conflict with the players, like they are playing against the players, and throw harder and harder encounters against them, with everything revolving around combat rolls against each other.
This is great for a pure dungeon crawler style of play, with lots of mechanical brawlings and combat encounters end-to-end, but gets in your way fast if you want to
live with your characters in a realistical and believeable world.
TDE5 takes a more grounded approach, and lets you enjoy living, authentic characters instead of flat super heroes. It helps you in every way possible to let you create and impersonate your character the way you want to perform him, and place him in a environment for genuine interactions and a living world that really cares for the people and players living in it. Your style of acting out your character can create real gravity in Aventuria and the adventures your group is about to experience there.
This system really puts all the gears in place to let you create a rich and deep theatre of the mind experience together with your players, almost as if you were a ensemble in a impro theater you are staging completely for yourself.
Every character included in the Quick-Start guide comes with a detailed backstory and description of his previous steps in life, his view on the world, his irks and quirks and his motives to go about adventuring.
NPCs in TDE5 get a very detailed description of their appearance, their habitus and their motives in Aventuria, and many additional informations to help you act as the NPC in a genuine and delightful manner for your players to enjoy and interact with.
Slayers of Realmwood, an introductionary scenario
The Quick-Start guide contains a short adventure called Slayers of Realmwood that you can start playing right away with your group.
In the town of Alriksford, the female blacksmith Gisla Thalbach is seeking help to find her son, Severin Thalbach, that has been kidnapped by orcs and brought into the Realmwood, a nearby forest spoken of only in superstitious tales of ghosts and monsters.
This adventure introduces several key concepts of the rules to your group like group checks, skill checks and possibly combat as you are tracking your way through the forest.
Even in a short adventure like this, the description of the scenes and hurdles to overcome will give you very good tips to make this a lively narrative experience for your players. Even if the scope of this adventure is more narrow as the regular 64-page full adventures or the really good 16-page adventures from the heroic works series, you can already get a glimpse of the strong focus on the strong theatre of the mind approach to roleplaying.
If this is your first time hosting as the GM, the Quick-Start Guide gives you good starting points and good advice for bringing this adventure to life for you and your players.
Where can i get the Quick-Start guide?
Ulisses Spiele offers the Quick-Start guide to The Dark Eye 5 for free. You can download the pdf for free from Ulisses here after the registration in their webshop. The files are hosted at DriveThruRPG, and you can opt-in for pay-what-you-want for the Quick-Start rules if you want to further support Ulisses Games.