One of TDE’s mostly cited features is its „living history“, a term that describes the setting’s metaplot that has been constantly expanded and updated since the earliest days of the game in the 1980s. Characters that took part in the countless events and stories of the world of Aventuria develop, change, rise to power, change their loyalties or perish , and this is not limited to NPCs. From a very early stage, the dark eye was coshaped by ist community. Players took over the roles of nobility, changing the political landscape in play by mail, keeping the world alive and breathing. Conventions etc. hosted big games, having a few dozen players parttake in a big story at the same time, again chosing the fate of parts of the world the game is played in. Novels have been written that show us the events oft he world through the eyes of the people inhibiting it, may they be legendary heroes, wizards, nobility or simple farmers drafted into a war against someone they never heard about. The growing LARP Community impressed with their love and dedication, leading into several smaller and bigger events, up to the creation of a new academy for mages, immortalised in the following magic supplement of the game, introducing the academy and their mages as option for player characters and the headmaster of the academy, who made the jump from LARP SC to Pen&Paper NPC.
But how do you as a regular player even get to know about all this?
Since 1985 players are kept up to date with Aventuria’s own newspaper, the aventurian herald (Der Aventurische Bote). Formerly a mix of InGame News and Events, Errata , Scenarios and Supplements, now focussing on the InGame news (with seperate GM Information with the articles background stories) with scenarios outsourced into hero’s works, 16 page adventures, published together with the newspaper part.
Adventure Path like campaigns as well as some one-off modules continue the story of the world. Allowing your group to partake in the very events you will read about in the next aventurian herald.
Indeed, the „group of adventurers“ or „small detachment of specialists“ mentioned there, that’s been you!
Of course you wont always have the same outcome at your table, but ist still a fun handout for following sessions.
At some occasions an adventure module is released accompanied by a survey, informing the developers what the common outcomes have been fort he groups playing at home, so they can implement it in the continuation of the metaplot.
All these effort, inclusion of the community and experiments with new ways to enable to take part in the world we play in, really help to make Aventuria feel like way more than a few cities seperated by wilderness and encounters, there is an athmosphere, that the world will continue to turn, that there is always something happening wherever you are and wherever you are not, that on your return from your current adventure, something will be different to the world you knew before.