German publisher of D&D 4E won't renew contract

Yeah, The Dark Eye in englisch, Das Schwarze Auge (lit. the black eye) in german. Fanpro attempted to bring TDE in the U.S.A and to rival Wotc's D&D-game... Suffice to say they failed... miserably... as everybody expected... :p

I remember them selling it one year at GenCon, with more hype than they were seeming to give Shadowrun that year. In retrospect, I wish I'd have picked up a book just to sate my curiousity.
 

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Well, at least there in Germany you already got the core books translated and published.

Meanwhile, here in Brazil, the people responsible for it still can't decide whether or how they're going to translate Warlord...
 


D&D is big worldwide. But I know Germany is a somewhat different situation, with DSA frequently outselling it and Warhammer also being popular. I seem to recall Spain is similar with a major Spanish language game.
 

D&D is big worldwide. But I know Germany is a somewhat different situation, with DSA frequently outselling it and Warhammer also being popular. I seem to recall Spain is similar with a major Spanish language game.

Nowadays in Spain, the main game is D&D, with Devir going fully 4e (funny how the same company can have so much different policies in different countries -Spain and Brazil-). In fact, Devir went 4e before WotC, deciding to stop publishing 3.5 products when 4e was announced back in 2007.

Fantasy Flight's Anima is a Spanish product, but it isn't very played here. And there's no much competition to D&D, apart from Spanish games and some translated games which aren't really supported (for example, we have Mutants & Masterminds, but it's just the core book and Freedom City.

Spanish games are usually well liked, but it isn't enough to make rpgs profitable here. We're talking about 1.000 sold copies as a really, really big success.

The main problem in Spain is that there's a very small market for Spanish-language products, so production costs are really high and it's very difficult to achieve success with anything else than the best seller of all.

That, and that we've a quite unique concept of "old school". Our "old schoolers" don't play 1e, but mainly RuneQuest or Aquelarre (Spanish game set in the Middle Age).

As for D&D, it seems to be quite successful, with some supplements already published. There are rumors of a Spanish publisher theoretically negotiating a Pathfinder translation, but nothing solid that I know...
 

I'm not sure what to make of this.

I just spent 8 months living in Argentina and playing D&D with locals there. They told me that in Argentina, gamers prefer the English version of books because the Spanish translations are really bad.

Given how many people speak English in Germany, could the situation be similar?

Ken
 


I'm not sure what to make of this.

I just spent 8 months living in Argentina and playing D&D with locals there. They told me that in Argentina, gamers prefer the English version of books because the Spanish translations are really bad.

Given how many people speak English in Germany, could the situation be similar?

Ken

I´m pretty sure it is. It´s not just that the translations were, uh, creative. You pay far too much for D&D books in German compared to the english version, as Protagonist said. They just can´t compete. I am surprised that they translated them at all: the competition from DSA is overwhelming, it still dominates the market by far.
Not that earlier translators were better - Amigo games was just as bad as Feder & Schwert.
 

I'm not sure what to make of this.

I just spent 8 months living in Argentina and playing D&D with locals there. They told me that in Argentina, gamers prefer the English version of books because the Spanish translations are really bad.

Given how many people speak English in Germany, could the situation be similar?

Ken

D&D Spanish translations are really good. It's just the Forgotten Realms names which were awfully translated.
 

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