The Black
Eye (often also Dark World), or Das Schwarze Auge (DSA) is a role-playing game created in 1984 by Ulrich
Kiesow. These games were very popular during the 80s, after the world-wide
success of Dungeons and Dragons (1974) or Tunnels and Trolls. Ulrich Kiesow
worked in his free time as translator of fantasy texts, including texts of
role-playing game’s books. His first game was Das Schwarze Auge, and the one
that brought fame to him. DSA was expanded by numerous books, rules and
characters. Maybe it was a success because of the fantasy world in which it is
set, in the Tolkien style (with dragons, elves, dwarfs and all those types of
fictional characters). I’m sorry I cannot give much information about the game,
but I never played it in any of its variants.
Due to
this popularity, the game had its own merchandising, and side-products, for example,
this deck of cards I present here today.
It is
nothing but a classic “quartett” card game, 32 cards in 8 groups of 4 cards
each; this game can be adapted to any possible topic you can imagine. In this
case, the images in the cards are simply illustrations of the playing books. The
only curiosity is that some of these images were at the time unreleased.
Schmidt
Spiele (not to be mistaken with FX Schmid) is a German game publisher. It was
founded in 1912. The founder, Josef Friedrich Schmidt, had invented a few years
earlier a game named “Mensch ärgere dich nicht”, that has been a great success
ever since (English: Parcheesi or Ludo, Spanish: Parchis,…). The company is
actually two independent companies that merged in 1970: one founded by Josef
Friedrich Schmidt, and another one founded by his son Franz Schmidt.
Although
the company went bankrupt in 1997, it was sold to the Blatz-Group and they kept
the name, so it is still possible to find card and board games with this name
in toy-shops worldwide.
FACTS AND FIGURES
- Name: DAS SCHWARZE AUGE QUARTETT (No. 03170)
- Year: 1989
- Company: Schmidt Spiele (Germany)
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