The Dark Eye

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (August 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,947 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Wikipedia article at [[:de:Das Schwarze Auge]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Das Schwarze Auge}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

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]