Dark World or Das Schwarze Auge

[ndsandman]

I was eBay surfing for heroquest in general, when I came up with an auction written in French or Italian, with heroquest list in the title. It showed a German board game named Das Schwarze Auge, and when I went to boardgamegeek.com it showed the English version Dark World. I then eBay surfed for Dark World. The board game seems to be a heroquest type of game, as described by many. Some of the miniatures look nice, but unsure of the scale vs. heroquest.

So I came here to ask the question:
Does anyone own or even maybe played this game at a friend’s house?
Is it somewhat of a heroquest type of game?
How are the miniatures scale and or size comparable to heroquest miniatures?

With the German version Das Schwarze Auge, it appears like an expansion pack was released too,
Dorf des Grauens. The trouble with surfing ebay.de is: Das Scwarze Auge is also a PC game, looks like a series in books, etc… so I did not want to look through 144 pages of auction today LOL.

Dark World set had an expansion set released too, Village of Fear and Dragon’s Gate.
Surfing ebay.com I found Das Schwarze Auge, but this was blister packs of miniatures, looking very nice, but again the scale was not listed … to many different scales out there.

Any help or leads with this will be grateful

[drathe]

I have both Dark World and Village of Fear. The miniatures are compatible in size. I find the minis from Village of Fear to be cooler than the main Dark World minis. The village is fairly sweet too. The three games are supposed to combine together to make one big game. I've never found a decent enough copy of Dragon's Gate to put all three together. It's extremely rare.

Never actually played the game myself. Just pillaged it for minis and things to add to HeroQuest.

[ndsandman]

Thank you for the update, I will be watching both the US and German eBay sites. Might need English translations if I win a German Version. Wonder if Dragon's Gate was ever made into a German version too, or if it's all German and US followed suite.

[SirDionysDobermann]

I own Das Schwarze Auge / Die Burg des Schreckens Brettspiel and Dorf des Grauens - could make an English translation, but I think they already have links for that at BoardGameGeek. The third game Tal des Drachen ( = Dragon's Gate) was also published in German by Schmidt Spiele. I even think the German versions are the earlier ones, because Das Schwarze Auge is a German rôle playing system and was translated into English later on under the name of Dark World.

The minis are made from harder plastics than HeroQuest minis. They are same scale as HeroQuest but stand on large clockwork bases that show the current body points of the Heroes. Monsters have small slots on their bases for treasures to be put in (plastic healing potions, magic weapons and the like). Village of Fear has two Halflings (mayor and baker, as far as I remember) that had been turned into snake-men and the Heroes have to lift that curse. And there is a vulturelike creature that prevents Heroes from searching the building it is sitting on (it is moved either when a card is drawn or a die is rolled - cannot remember which at the moment). All in all, nice idea, but boring playing.

As drathe said, the buildings of the village are sweet - in fact, they are very good and were the main reason I bought that game.

[ndsandman]

Funny how this is translated to English:

Das Schwarze Auge: The Black Eye Yet in English Dark World

Dorf des Grauens : Village of Fear English Same

Tal des Drachen: Valley of Dragons English Dragon's Gate


If I can get a complete set, and a fair price, I might just try to get all three.

[HeroQuestFrance]

The role playing game and books also have been edited here (l'oeil noir) by a dead company today.
The boardgame rules is awful, some minis are good to add but others are too bad.
It's more a boardgame for younger kids (6/10) so I sold my copy years ago.
(hopefully could get all seperated figurines I wanted)

[ndsandman]

Well I just won an auction on eBay, for Dark World, a complete set, for 9.99 plus 14.oo for shipping. I now can't wait lol. Sometimes, it worth waiting to get a good price, vs. rushing in buying at a higher price. I was never in a hurry to get this, so waiting was never an issue. drathe spoke of Dragon GAte, I have yet to see that online for sale in US yet.

[Ethica]

I got the figures from this a week ago. Of the figures you get many are compatible in terms of scale and style.

Skeletons - exactly the same but with swords.
Ogres - The same scale but they are alot healthier looking than the HQ ones. Good sculpts.
Orcs - Same as HQ in size and scale but they have hair, which is odd. Personally I think these are better sculpts than the HQ ones though the definition on all the figures is slightly less than HQ.
Korak - Excellent figure, I cut off the choas wand thing and replaced it with a sword, now he's twice as good.
Manticore - Fearsome, excellent addition to my set.
Mummies - Same scale and style as HQ, good for pose variety.
Ghost thing - This will be fun to make rules for, an interesting model if a little kinder eggish.
Heroes - These are almost great if it wasn't for the interchangable weapons issue meaning they've all got their arms in a rediculous pose, the only one which really gets away with it is the dwarf (gave him the golden hammer), the elf I left his hands empty so it looks like he's charging a plasma bolt or something then I stuck the golden samauri sword on his back. The samauri figure is just about acceptable but I had to give him the golden axe, so he doesn't quite work. The heroes are ever so slightly bigger than the scale of the HQ heroes but maybe I'm just too picky.

I cut up some plastic to make square bases for all of them so they look like real HQ extras.

Overall I have to say DW figures are well worth adding to HQ.

[Big Bene]

Just for the file:
Das Schwarze Auge is a German PnP role playing game. It was written by Ulrich Kiesow, who was first enlisted to translate D&D into German for Schmidt Spiele company, but after TSR cancelled the deal, he offered his own game system. The first edition of DSA (1984) was very good, with very simple, playable and enjoyable rules, a nice background and a very tongue-in-cheek tone. But business called for expansions and new editions, and so the game became more and more complicated and lost much of it's special atmospere.
Computer games were pubished several times, which were always state-of-the-art, including the first 3D Computer RPG (1st person graphic in a somewhat doom-like style). Books settled in the DSA world are legion.
The boardgames you mention were published shortly after HQ, clearly trying to compy the success. I never owned them and didn't know there even was an English version.
There's a new English version of the PnP game out there, called "The Dark Eye".
Ah, and yes, orks in the world of DSA have and ever had a thick black pelt.

[Big Bene]

You wont believe me.
You definitely won't believe me, and I can't even blame you.

Yesterday I stumbled over this thead - I never owned the Dark World boardgame, but I loved Das schwarze Auge PnP rpg in my time, and so the thread got my attention and I added my two bits.

Yesterday evening I met with friends for a game of Midgard (another PnP). After the game I had a look on the bookshelf of the host/gamemaster and guess what I saw? The DSA boardgame! (German version of Dark World).
I took it out to have a look and held it in my hands while he was still saying goodbye to another player. I just wanted to tell him "you know what, today I read about this game in an internet forum". But when he saw me, he said "You like that? You can keep it"! He got it as a gift himself an never used it...
Lucky me...