Yesterday, I found an entry regarding FSV, the company producing German D&D in the 80ies. It was officially registered on Dec. 1, 1983, and the registration was deleted on Jul. 28, 1993. So, it was around as a defunct company several years after they stopped producing D&D, in 1988 AFAICT. According to some newspaper articles, Hans W. Jany took over the mother company ASS AG in 1982 "in a lightning attack" and tried to have it financially recovered. This ended, as told, with him forced to leave and getting convicted for damaging the company financially (and trying to manipulate the stock market). This should have been around 1988 as well. So I guess that the "fate" of FSV was closely linked to his person. Apparently, the mother company was on the brink of bankruptcy then already, but held on until 1996 when it finally failed. At that point, the ASS AG had 130 people employed.

Hans W. Jany is reported to have tried his hand as a real estate agent in Eastern Germany in the early 90ies, just after the reunion. This special situation attracted all manners of people trying to make a profit there.

Not quite D&D, but TSR-related: In the late 70ies, Parker Brothers produced the board game Dungeon! in german, under the name "Verlies", literally meaning Dungeon in german. It was republished in 1985 by ASS AG (no surprise there) under the title "Im Drachen-Labyrinth" (in the labyrinth of the dragon).

Ref 8549/2

Found out the existence of a 4th FSV ORIGINAL D&D FANTASY PUZZLE :
Drachen der Hoffnung (Dragons of Hope) (by Keith Parkinson) - Ref unknown

(deleted, outdated)

A few days ago, a fellow collector pointed out that on the listing on the back of the german O 1 Gem and Staff module, Castle Amber is listed as being "Adventure of the year 1985". The same is printed on the german E5 to E7 modules. Probably, the german gaming magazine "Spielwelt" has an article on this in its issue #25 (Dec. 1985), as this is listed on the magazines web entry.  So far, we found nobody in possession of that magazine, and I did not want to spend 20 Euros on a copy offered on ebay. It seems that all copies of said modules (O1, E5 to E7) bear that notice.

EDIT: It was a readers choice of the best german adventures in 1984/85, Castle Amber came 3rd place. Using that in advertizing without mentioning the placement is kind of bold, but fits what I´ve heard of the CEO of FSV.

stebehil wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:"Fürsten der Apokalypse", "Hort der Drachenkönigin" und "Aufstieg der Tiamat" are available now, and already in my collection. Due to the Corona crisis, my FLGS has set up an impromptu delivery service, to try and stay in business. It will be a very hard time for all the local shops...

Do they ship to he US? If so, send me a link and I'll place an order.

While sorting through my collection, I had the idea to talk a bit about small German publishers. With the German rpg scene being generally small anyway, small publishers seem a strange thing, bordering on the absurd. But nonetheless, they exist.

One of the most important small publishers, active to this day, is Mario Truant of Truant Games. Currently, he produces the Middle Earth products for D&D5e in German. He started out mid-80ies, when rpgs had a boom time in Germany. (I know, the name must ring strangely to english-speaking folk...)

There seems to be a translation of "Elven Banner" from back in 1986, one of "Pinnacle" ("Sternenhöh") and one of "Evil Ruins" ("Ruinen des Schreckens"). I only own the last one, it is from 1992 and like Pinnacle published from "Welt der Spiele", but with Mario Truant being mentioned as editor.
His own line, "Edition Troll", starts out in the late 80ies with universal (non-system-specific) adventures, several of them in the fantasy town of Gralfsee, but the later ones with more generic settings (Gralfsee can be seen as a stand-in for many fantasy towns, AFAIR). This line came to eight entries and ended around 1990. The authors seem to be German as well. Some of these adventures were apparently available as surplus, and sold re-bound with three random adventures in one cover.

In 1990, he "professionalised" his publishing, AFAICT, and had his Truant Verlag founded, publishing board and card games alongside RPG material. His publishing list in the 1990ies is quite impressive, with games such as Kult In Nomine (a bitterly sarcastic french rpg), Castle Falkenstein, Ars Magica (4th Edition), Fading Suns, Hyperborea and more. He also had a hand in the German Runequest translations of that time.
I happened to come across two short magazines with two dungeon adventures each, under the heading "Pulp Dungeons" from 1997. These are translations of short adventures by Timothy Brown, originally published under the imprint "Destination Games" in the US.

With the explosion of d20 gaming in 2000, he went in that direction as well, with translations. I know of (and own) the fighter and rogue books from Mongoose, from Avalanche Press Greenland Saga: The Lost Norse Colony (with their usual terrible covers used as well), three low-level adventures from Atlas Games (Three Days to Kill, Thieves in the Forest and The Tide of Years), and the original Freeport trilogy by Green Ronin. A solo adventure seems to be an original work, under the name "Über den Sylinthpass". This went from 2001 to 2003. After that, I´m not quite sure what happened. In 2008, he joined with Ulisses Spiele, and apparently worked there until 2013 (I´m not sure what happened to his publishing company in that time).

Currently, he offers the German Middle Earth books, and the Fantasy AGE game from Chris Pramas/Green Ronin in German, the Witcher RPG and the books on Orcs at war and Dwarves at war from Chris Pramas, and some more RPG stuff, alongside with other games.

The books from the 3.0 era are offered more or less regularly, especially the handbooks from Mongoose seem to be easily available. The Freeport Trilogy is somewhat rarer, it seems. The older products are not as easily the get a hold of these days, but the bundled adventures are sometimes still offered under the name of Trollwelt.

Relborn, if you have anything to add, feel free! I´ve yet to come into contact with anyone from truly inside FSV (admittedly, there were probably very few people there, and 40 years later, chances of finding anyone are slim indeed). Do you have any memories who was involved with FSV, or indeed, how many people worked there at all?

And I have to admit that this is the first time I hear someone had some trouble with the church due to the satanic panic of the 80ies in Germany. Most people I remember could make neither head not tails of it, but did not judge the game in any way. Care to tell more about that?