The Dark Eye (role-playing game)

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The Dark Eye

The Dark Eye logo
Designers	Ulrich Kiesow et al.
Publishers	Schmidt Spiele (1984–1997) Fantasy Productions (1997–2007) Ulisses Spiele (2007–)
Publication	1984 (1st edition) 1988 (2nd edition) 1993 (3rd edition) 2001 (4th edition) 2006 (4.1) 2015 (5th edition)
Genres	Fantasy
Systems	Custom
First released in English as Realms of Arkania (novels and role-playing video games only) from 1993 to 1997. The first English edition of RPG rules was published in 2003.

The Dark Eye (German: Das Schwarze Auge, lit. "The Black Eye") is a German tabletop role-playing game with a high fantasy theme created by Ulrich Kiesow and launched by Schmidt Spiel & Freizeit GmbH and Droemer Knaur Verlag in 1984. It is the most successful role-playing game on the German market, outselling Dungeons & Dragons. Many years of work on the game have led to a detailed and extensively described game world.

Droemer Knaur dropped the project in early 1989; after the bankruptcy of the Schmidt Spiel & Freizeit GmbH in 1997, publishing was continued by Fantasy Productions (which had already done all the editorial work). Since the game's launch, it has gone through five editions, making the rules and background more complex. The basic rules of the fourth edition of The Dark Eye were published in 2001, and it became the first edition to be released in English in October 2003. The fifth edition of the game was released in August 2015, with an English translation released in November 2016.^[1]

Aventuria, the continent on which the game is set, was first introduced to the English-language market through a series of computer games and novels and later under the name Realms of Arkania. The trademark Realms of Arkania was owned by the now-defunct Sir-tech Software, Inc., which spurred the name change to The Dark Eye; Fantasy Productions was unable to obtain the trademark. In April 2007, Ulisses Spiele assumed the TDE pen-and-paper licence from Fantasy Productions.^[2]