Preview: Dungeonslayers 4th Edition

Cover Today Christian Kennig and the German Uhrwerk Verlag (which is the German licensee for Space 1889, Deadlands and L5R) announced that the latest edition of Dungeonslayers will be released in print later this year at the SPIEL 2010 in Essen. If you enjoyed the so-called “old-fashioned” roleplaying game so far, you’ll be in for a treat.

While the 4th edition of Dungeonslayers will be over 160 pages long, the core rules aren’t that much longer than in its predecessor, but it’s still 99% compatible to the older editions. Nevertheless DS4 has been improved in all aspects.

The book is now fully illustrated, contains a table of contents and a detailed index, new and optimized rules, an improved game mastering section, new equipment, three fully-fleshed out adventures and a setting! The games appendices contain treasure tables, rules for miniature gaming, a toolbox for creating your own player races and a condensed version of my firearms rules.

One of the new features of DS4 will be the hero classes like paladin, druid, archmage or assassin. These classes will grant access to new talents and abilities and allow to individualize your characters even further.

Christian also managed to make combats in DS4 more tactical and fun without making the rules more complex by adding Slayerpoints. You earn those points by hurting your enemies and they can be used to activate special moves, ignore some minor damage, or temporarily increase your stats.

In my opinion DS4 makes a good game even better and I can’t wait to get my hands on a print copy with will be available in October.

Here are some pictures from the upcoming old-fashioned roleplaying game:

Characters Putzteufel Charm animal
Bestiary Caera Firearms

These teasers have to suffice for now. I’ll post some more info on DS4 over the next few weeks. So stay tuned!

As far as I know, the Dungeonslayers translation team is already eager to start working on a English translation, but given the size of the latest edition, this may take a while. In the meantime I will try to keep you updated. If there are any questions about DS4 and the print release, please feel free to ask. Any questions, I can’t answer myself, I will relay to the game’s designer Christian Kennig.

12 comments

comments user
Voidman

😀 you're hints were just too transparent.

I just hope it will not be as different as some other 4th editions out there 😉

But I need to say this the cover art is fabulous and conveys the classic feel of the game very well (unlike the fantasy-punkish stylistics so fashionable these days) – a tad reminiscent of the Easley's Magister cover which is one of my all time favorites.

I'm not so hot about the naive style of the interior illustrations but I'm just spoiled ;).

I'll snatch it as soon as English translation is available.

    comments user
    Stargazer

    Don't worry. The rules are very close to the older editions. There are only a few minor changes and some additions. And of course the writing is much better and there's some more fluff. But as I said, the rules are 99.9% compatible.

comments user
Fara

We wantsss it, our preciousss…

Seriously – I really like DS, so this is very good news. 🙂

comments user
Rev. Lazaro

very awesome!

comments user
Sunglar

Oh that just looks AWESOME! Me want, but alas I can’t read German. Either the translation team works real fast or I will be forced to learn German, How hard can it be?

comments user
Abrahm

I told myself if they got longer than 40 pages I wouldn't buy it. I'm still quite tempted, even at 160 pages just because of how much I love 3.5. Do you know if the book is printed in 6×9 or standard 8.5×11? Those are vastly different page sizes, obviously.

    comments user
    Stargazer

    It will be 5.8 × 8.3 (which is A5). Please note that only the German version will be released in October. I have no idea when the English version will be out. Probably a couple of months later.

comments user
Chuck

Hey this is great news. DS has become one favorite rules lite systems. Any idea when how either English or German version will be available in the US?

comments user
Rob Lang

Will the PDF be free?

    comments user
    Stargazer

    There will be a free PDF version of DS4 some time after the print release.