Drakensang – Official Dev Diary #3

02. 03. 2007:Reaching for the Holy Grail

Last time I told you about our first contact with the TDE – now I’m going to relate how we got addicted to the world of Aventuria for good and how we got the Drakensang project off the ground.

The very first day after I bought the rule set box I went back to the toy store and picked up all TDE adventure books and boxes they had in stock. I can still remember the excitement I experienced when I opened those boxes – it was indescribable. For hours we sat in the parking lot right in front of the store and studied the material. A whole new world was created in our minds and it has never left since. The golden Gareth. The colourful Fasar. The dark Pardona. The white Rohezal und hundreds of other spots. We shared countless of beautiful memories when we explored the whole continent from Al’Anfa to Thorwal, from Havena to Tuzak.

That was the beginning of almost ten years of continuous pen and paper role playing with a permanent group of friends. We kept ourselves very well updated about the latest developments in Aventuria, we read the “Aventurischer Bote” (German magazine on the world of TDE), we followed Phileasson on his journey to the foggy islands, and we experienced the return of Borbarad. The vivid and vast world of TDE had become my second home.

Sure, the strong sympathy for Aventuria is caused by the fact that we had a permanent group of friends who played TDE together for many years. As you can see on the photograph, there is Andre (Business Director at Radon Labs), Floh (co-founder of Radon Labs and today’s Technical Director) and myself (as today’s Creative Director of Radon Labs). Somehow I’m finding it odd to share countless memories that only took place on the tabletop and in our imagination. In the long period as an active player I developed from a total beginner to a TDE game master - I always had a lot of fun in supervising a group of adventurer. By the way, many members of the Drakensang dev team still play TDE.

Did you recognize them? Yes, it’s the guys: Bernd Beyreuther (far left), Andre Blechschmidt (3rd from right), Andre “Floh” Weißflog (far right) and friends playing TDE. Notice the character sheets on the table.

Of course, we played the Realms Of Arkania computer games back in the nineties and we loved them. At the time when Shadows Over Riva hit the shelves we made our first steps as developers. Some time later, when it was clear that we were settled in the gaming business, the dream grew to create a TDE game at a later point in time.

How great would it be to develop a game based in Aventuria, a world which we all knew so well? “Someday, we will make a new TDE game”, we told ourselves over and over again. But for some reason, we thought that this dream was unattainable.

But all of a sudden, this changed. When our title Project Nomads won the Best PC game award on the ECTS 2001 in London, we got the opportunity to get in touch with the TDE license holders. Surprisingly the dream could come true – the license was available. We decided to take the opportunity. The work on the project began and we knew that this would take months and years to be accomplished. But at least I can now tell my mother that all the nights I spent playing games were beneficial after all.

Well, now you know how our passion for TDE developed. Next time I will tell you more about the development of the game itself.

- Written by Bernd Beyreuther, Creative Director of Radon Labs GmbH -

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