One Hobby, Many Beginnings — Part One: Germany
A game has a publication date. A hobby has thousands of beginnings. Germany’s role-playing history lives between imported rules, homemade worlds, shop shelves and the person who made room for one more player.
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“Is that the right die?” Mara asks.
Stacy turns it between her fingers.
“It has six sides.”
“I can draw more,” Chibi offers.
“No.”
He lowers the pen. Slowly.
My name is Sean. We are beginning a series about how people in different countries found their way into tabletop role-playing. Germany comes first, and the question of what happened when the right equipment was unavailable is a surprisingly appropriate place to begin.
Not because improvisation belongs to one country.
Because a history of games can become so occupied with finished products that it forgets the people trying to make them work.
A publication date is not everybody’s beginning
Dungeons & Dragons appeared in the United States in 1974, credited to Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. That gives us an important landmark. It does not date every player’s discovery of the hobby. Source: The Strong National Museum of Play
An imported copy, a translation, a borrowed book and an explanation from a friend are different ways in.
Imagine somebody receiving a game years after its original publication. To a collector, that edition may already be old. To the person opening it, everything is new.
The monster has not become less frightening because someone across the Atlantic met it first.
That distinction matters throughout this essay. We are following documented routes into the hobby, not awarding a prize for Germany’s first-ever session.
The question is less “When did the game arrive?” than:
Who could find it, understand it and persuade somebody else to play?
There were already worlds waiting
One route begins before the commercial RPGs we now recognise. FOLLOW, founded in Vienna in 1966, developed the shared fantasy world Magira. Its members contributed imagined cultures and stories alongside forms of play. This was a cross-border, German-speaking community, not an exclusively German enterprise. Source: Magira/FOLLOW overview · Manfred Roth retrospective
We should not retrospectively label everything it did a modern tabletop RPG.
But the distinction reveals something useful: a new game could meet people who already had somewhere they wanted to go.
Mara looks at the name Magira.
“So the world was there first?”
“For this particular group, the shared world was already part of the attraction.”
“Then the rules were another way inside.”
Exactly.
The familiar picture of an American invention arriving on an empty European table is too simple. At this table, imagination had already unpacked.
Somebody carried the game across a border
In his retrospective, Manfred Roth recalls Josef Ochmann bringing D&D booklets back from England in 1976. A FOLLOW group tried the game in 1977, adapting it to ordinary six-sided dice. This is a participant’s recollection, not proof of the country’s first session. Source: Manfred Roth
Jürgen Franke separately recalls encountering D&D at a fantasy gathering in early summer 1977. He identifies M. A. R. Barker’s Empire of the Petal Throne as another early influence before the group began its own campaign. Source: interview with Jürgen E. Franke
Already, the journey refuses to behave like a straight line between two national publishing industries.
There is an American game, an encounter in Britain, a German-speaking fantasy network and an existing imaginary world.
More practically, there is somebody carrying the books.
Caelwyn leans forward.
“And someone willing to explain them.”
“Yes.”
“Put that person in the history.”
We should.
An evening survives on paper
A republished report, originally printed in 1978, describes the New Year gathering of 1977–78. It explicitly names Elsa and Jürgen Franke as game masters. Character deaths, replacements and continuing adventures appear in the account. Source: 1977–78 game report
That gives us something different from a release list: people turning play into a story worth passing on.
The report is not a neutral recording. It is a shaped account, with its own humour and perspective. We can learn from it without pretending it captures everything that happened.
Stacy lays it beside the rulebooks.
“The rules describe what should happen.”
“And this?”
“What someone remembered happening.”
There is room for both.
The early Empires of Magira rules provide another tangible trace. A 1978 version circulated as a small, self-produced loose-leaf rulebook, designed to accept changes. Source: Empires of Magira
A ring binder is not as glamorous as a leather-bound collector’s edition.
It does, however, make a useful statement: this thing is still being worked out.
1981 and 1983: more than one entrance
MIDGARD appeared in 1981. Its history includes Jürgen Franke’s design work and Elsa Franke’s long involvement in publishing the game. Source: Pegasus Spiele
German-language options broadened in 1983 with Schwerter & Dämonen, the translation of Tunnels & Trolls, and German Basic D&D from the Fantasy-Spiele-Verlag. These publication milestones are recorded in the historical overview preserved by DRoSI. Source: DRoSI
Notice the different processes: developing a game locally, translating another and continuing to encounter imported material.
Translation is not a minor convenience in that story. It can change whether a person needs an experienced interpreter beside them before they can begin.
Picture learning an unfamiliar activity while wondering whether the sentence that appears to kill your character is an idiom.
Chibi brightens.
“Can I say I read it wrong?”
“You can.”
“And then I’m alive?”
We have reached rules negotiation remarkably quickly.
A game’s first publication, its first translation and your first session are three different dates.
1984: the shelf becomes part of the story
Das Schwarze Auge, or DSA, appeared in 1984. Co-creator Werner Fuchs recalls how Schmidt Spiel + Freizeit and Droemer Knaur brought it to toy shops and department-store chains, beyond specialist outlets. Source: Ulisses Spiele, Werner Fuchs retrospective
English-language readers may know the game as The Dark Eye.
Eljara closes a catalogue.
“So shelf space was a rather important game mechanic.”
“Distribution is not usually listed under character creation.”
“Perhaps it should be.”
There is a meaningful difference between seeking an unfamiliar hobby and stumbling across it.
The specialist shop asks you to know that the shop exists. A box among more familiar games may create the curiosity that sends you looking further.
This does not mean every German player began with DSA. It means the route to potential players deserves attention alongside the rules inside the box.
Our interpretation is about access, not superiority. Wider distribution does not make earlier work less serious, or later players more authentic.
A door becoming easier to find is important enough.
The mapmakers belong in the history
A list of rulebooks can conceal other kinds of authorship.
In his remembrance of Ina Kramer, DSA editor Alex Spohr discusses her fiction, illustrations and maps. He describes adding settlements of his own to copies of her maps for his adventures. Source: Alex Spohr on Ina Kramer
That is a small, telling movement: a published world becomes material for somebody else’s imagination.
Mara traces an empty space on our table’s map.
“Can a village go here?”
“That depends on your campaign.”
“Then I’m putting one there.”
A map can offer more than information. It can make a place feel available.
The game designer determines many possibilities. The artist helps us imagine them. The person running a session makes choices that neither may have anticipated.
Elsa Franke’s place in the early session report and Kramer’s work both belong in the main story, not in a late paragraph explaining that women were also present.
We do not need to invent participation statistics to acknowledge documented contributions.
News from a country that does not exist
The Aventurischer Bote, DSA’s in-world newspaper, offers another way to inhabit Aventuria. Its reports combine developments in the fictional world with everyday notices and material that can be handed directly to players. Source: Ulisses Spiele on the Aventurischer Bote
A rulebook can describe a kingdom. A newspaper suggests that the kingdom has been doing things while you were elsewhere.
For us, that is the interesting possibility.
A setting becomes familiar through repetition, but change gives that familiarity something to respond to.
“Would the newspaper report what we did?” Mara asks.
“It could.”
“What if it got everything wrong?”
Eljara smiles.
“Then it would be a newspaper.”
There is a tension here too. Following a published world and controlling everything that happens in it are not the same experience.
A group may adopt the official developments, alter them or continue in another direction. Shared reference points can help without becoming instructions that every table must obey.
A living relationship with a setting is more interesting than perfect obedience to its timeline.
Someone had to organise the room
Players did not only buy products.
Willi Schumacher dates the founding of the Gilde der Fantasy-Rollenspieler to 1987. In his account, the desire to bring people together and introduce unfamiliar games helped motivate the organisation of FeenCon. Source: interview with Willi Schumacher
The historical significance is practical.
Somebody finds a venue. Somebody tells people when to arrive. Another person runs a game for strangers who have never seen its rules.
That labour makes encounters possible.
Caelwyn pulls out a chair.
“This belongs in the equipment list.”
“The chair?”
“The empty one.”
A convention can help someone discover that their home group’s habits are not universal laws. A newcomer can try a game without first persuading all their friends to buy it.
None of that guarantees a welcoming experience. It creates an opportunity, which people still have to use well.
The history of the hobby needs its organisers as well as its authors.
Translation was not a one-way street
Rainer Nagel’s published biography crosses several systems: MIDGARD writing, the German translation of Middle-earth Role-Playing, work on German D&D Third Edition and leadership of the English DSA translation. Source: Rainer Nagel biography
That career complicates the picture of separate national and system-based camps.
People moved between games. The direction of translation could change.
Shadowrun offers a related example. Deutschland in den Schatten appeared in 1992 from Fantasy Productions, presenting a transformed future Germany. An English adaptation followed as the Germany Sourcebook.
The distinction is not simply between playing an American game and playing a German one.
An imported game can become a tool for imagining familiar places differently. Locally developed material can then travel outward.
Stacy considers that.
“So the map does not end at the translation.”
“No.”
“Good. That would be a very small map.”
We should not assume every translation changed a game in the same way. Specific claims require comparing texts. But these examples already show exchange rather than passive reception.
Germany was divided. Our account must acknowledge it.
Most of the early commercial routes discussed here concern West Germany, alongside wider German-speaking networks.
For this instalment, our research has not established a dependable chronology of private tabletop RPG groups in the German Democratic Republic before 1989.
That is a gap in the evidence assembled here. It is not proof that nobody played.
Nor does it justify inventing an appealing story about secret circles and smuggled rulebooks.
Mara points to the space in Stacy’s notes.
“What goes there?”
“A question.”
“Not a guess?”
“Not a guess.”
Dated character sheets, correspondence, photographs and first-hand recollections could help us ask better questions. Experiences around reunification matter too.
A history titled “Germany” should not quietly turn a better-documented western publishing story into everybody’s experience.
This is one place where readers may have something important to contribute.
A warm memory is not a complete history
The same care applies to nostalgia.
Remembering a welcoming group does not tell us who never received an invitation. A successful publisher’s anniversary account does not represent every competing game. A colourful early adventure report is not a survey of all contemporary play.
We can value these sources without asking them to prove more than they contain.
Eljara looks at the growing pile.
“So we may remember having a wonderful time without claiming everyone did.”
“I was hoping so.”
“Excellent. Otherwise your introduction will require a second volume.”
For Mythveil, the useful questions include who explained the hobby, who performed the organisational work and whose memories were preserved.
They also include what went wrong.
An honest history can hold affection and criticism together. Neither has to evict the other.
New ways in: newsletters, open tables and watching people play
Digital connection did not begin with livestreams. The surviving Die Trommel newsletter archive documents game news, projects and online links in 2001 and early 2002. Source: Die Trommel archive
That is one kind of entrance: finding information and discovering that other people share an interest.
The Gratisrollenspieltag offered another. Its organisers date the first event to 2013 and acknowledge the American Free RPG Day as an inspiration that they adapted for German-speaking communities. Source: Gratisrollenspieltag history
A person can try something before making a large commitment. The important gift is not necessarily the free material. It may be a first opportunity to participate.
Rocket Beans dates its tabletop format to 2014, beginning with T.E.A.R.S. under Hauke Gerdes. Watching a group play presents the activity differently from reading its instructions. Source: Rocket Beans
A viewer can hear how a situation is described, how someone proposes an action and how uncertainty becomes conversation.
That remains one example, not a standard every private group must reproduce.
Your first session does not need a lighting department.
“Snacks,” Chibi says.
“It may benefit from snacks.”
“I’m doing the snacks.”
Online and physical meetings are not mutually exclusive histories either. DreieichCon’s own account records online editions in 2020 and 2021 alongside its physical conventions. Source: DreieichCon
These are additional doors. Opening one does not require bricking up the others.
What was different about Germany?
The strongest answer is not a national personality.
The examples show overlapping routes: existing fantasy communities, imported books, translations, local designs, retail distribution, shared settings and people creating places to meet.
They do not demonstrate that Germans naturally prefer one kind of rulebook or adventure.
We should be equally wary of claiming that America invented fighting and Europe supplied storytelling. Original D&D already included non-combat interactions with characters controlled by the game master. Source: The Strong National Museum of Play
A more useful comparison asks what became available, through whom and under what conditions.
For someone entering through a club, a familiar person may have been the crucial guide. For another, a box in a shop. For someone later, watching a session may have made the activity understandable.
These are possible routes, not a ranking of legitimate beginnings.
The player who started last year has not arrived late to their own story.
Where did it begin for you?
Stacy has arranged the dates. The list is useful. It explains when certain opportunities existed.
Mara still looks unconvinced.
“What is missing?”
“The people.”
“They are in there.”
“Not all of them.”
No. Not all.
Tell us in the comments where you started, roughly when, which game first reached your table and in what language. Did a friend introduce you? Was there a shop, a club, a gamebook, a broadcast or an online group?
We particularly welcome experiences that complicate the familiar account: East Germany and reunification, small local circles, imported copies, homemade rules and beginnings outside the best-known games.
An approximate memory may remain approximate. It is a starting point for conversation, not a demand to produce a perfectly dated archive.
And tell us something a publisher’s chronology cannot contain: who explained the game, what went gloriously wrong or why you came back.
This series is not about choosing the correct childhood.
It is about the different ways people found a place at the table.
A publication tells us when a game became available. A player can tell us when a world became possible.
Caelwyn moves the extra chair into place.
“Ready?”
Chibi reaches for the die.
“Do I have to know all the rules?”
Stacy opens her mouth.
I intervene.
“Enough to begin.”
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