I have scans posted for some of them:

German Dungeons & Dragons Archive

I believe that the 3.5 Spielleiterhandbuch also came with a generic fold-out map, same as the 3.0 Spielerhandbuch... distinguishable by the copyright dates. It was a pretty common inclusion in a lot of non-English editions.

Today, an old item fell into my hands again, a dice cup bearing a sticker "Drachenwürfel". It was sold as a set by FSV in the 80ies. The sticker has the "Fasanenweg 5" adress and the dragon logo on it, so it is from 1985 or later. IIRC, this was sold as a blister set, containing the cup and a set of solid-colored dice (I think it were six dice, no 10-numbered percentile), I think solid blue, green, red, yellow and white or something similar, of good quality. I did not keep the packaging back then, and I lost the dice at some point. The dice cup is made from black hard plastic, and has a clear plastic bottom - I do recall that this was made so the DM can read the result before revealing it, something like this was written on the packaging. (Stupid idea, if you ask me). I took a picture of the cup. (I store the Orcwars! counters from Dragon magazine #132 in it for several decades now...)

EDIT: I think the dice looked a lot like these: http://dicecollector.com/images/large/e ... 3a0777.jpg

Heh. The second part starts with the almost legendary story (at least over here) that one of the first ever (well, maybe) RPG sessions in Germany  was not in Germany at all, but rather in a rainy summer vacation in Denmark in 1982. Werner Fuchs had the "brand new" D&D box and two adventures - "Keep on the Borderlands" and "Palace of the Silver Princess". He describes Keep as a mindless dungeoncrawl where you have to butcher your way through, and goes on to praise Palace as a finely-balanced adventure. I guess there might be some nostalgia to these accounts.

In late 1982, TSR called the Fantastic Shop, who where among the best customers, and were looking into international non english expansion. TSR were at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in early 1983, and, according to Fuchs, bragged big time about the financial success of the company, even posting the "fever curve" of their revenue on their booth. When it became apparent that TSR wanted to expand big time, Fuchs asked a book company (Droemer Knaur) he worked for as publisher for a SF line (Fuchs works in this field today, being responsible, among other things, for publishing german translations of William Gibson in the past and AFAIK for George R R Martin even today). They in turn realized the potential, but also their limits, and partnered with a game publisher, Schmidt Spiele. (Fuchs states that their own company FanPro was not even founded at that time, and would have had no way to manage such a big investment anyway).

As I already reported, the deal with TSR fell through, because TSR (in the person of Andre Moulin) wanted to have a share of 24% of the price the publisher asked from the dealers, which is exorbitantly high considering that translating an RPG is a huge workload of translations, according to Fuchs. Apparently, from the Nuremberg Toy Fair in early February to some point before or at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, they tried to reach an agreement, but then, the CEO of Droemer Knaur, called Moulin and told him, if they could not get the game, they would make their own and blast TSR off the market. Droemer Knaur did not want to publish Tunnels & Trolls, even though the translation was ready, probably because they did not want another licence hassle.

Fuchs recalls signing a contract for a complete RPG on the last day of the Frankfurt book fair, in mid-october. The new RPG had to be ready in early February for the 1984 Nuremberg Toy Fair, so they had to deliver quite a big amount of material within 5 and half week on Dec. 1st., to allow for producing it.
They did, and wanted to name their game "Aventuria", but the marketing guys forced the "Das Schwarze Auge" on them, which is a thinly-veiled reference to Tolkiens Palantir, as it refers to a magical stone of clairvoyance they had to define into the game. Furthermore, the marketing department forced the next-to-useless box "Werkzeuge des Meisters" (Masters Tools) on the game , which contained a booklet with some DMing ideas and some monsters, more gaming materials and in the first print the infamous "Maske des Meisters" Maske des Meisters -- Wiki Aventurica, das DSA-Fanprojekt - a cheap plastic mask the "Meister" (Game Master) was supposed to wear while running the game. As Fuchs stated on that, they were surprised by it and he condemns it as being the idea of somebody completely clueless about RPGs. Furthermore, folks who owned it reported that you could not even wear it, as the cheap thin plastic cut into your face. Fuchs reports that the DSA team was ridiculed by the D&D folks for the name of the game and even more for this mask, probably with some justification. But in the end, the new german RPG sold like hot cake, while D&D lagged behind. Not surprisingly, this mask was soon gone from later prints.

EDIT: This fits with my interpretation of the photo of Gary Gygax and Hans W. Jany on the top of the page, to ba taken at the 1984 games fair. In 1983, TSR did not have a licence partner, and FSV did not even exist then.

Re-listening to a part of said podcast, Werner Fuchs tells us that at the Frankfurt book fair in October 1983, ASS (the later-to-be mother company of FSV) made public that they are talking to TSR. So, it seems that at that point it became clear to Fuchs, Kiesow and Droemer Knaur that the deal with TSR won´t be made, leading to the hasty decision to publish their own RPG on such short notice.

He further states that D&D in german did not come to be until 1984.

Well, given that in mid-October ´83, ASS was talking to TSR, and assuming that the deal was made shortly after, the german D&D might have been published around end of ´83, but it might sound more reasonable to assume that the official publication date was in 1984, typically at the Nuremberg games fair (the more consumer-oriented Essen games fair did not exist at that time AFAIK) in February. The translations were ready, according to Werner Fuchs (they got paid for them quite well). OTOH, if the products were ready to print, it would have been stupid to not publish them before christmas.

Of course, with DSA being available in 1984, Fuchs and Kiesow were out of any work for D&D, as they went astray, so to speak.

As an interesting notice, the translator for Star Frontiers was translating Marion Zimmer Bradley before that (and probably further on as well).

Fuchs tells us that they tried hard to avoid any parallels to D&D while writing DSA, as this might turn against them if they were to plagiate in any way. Stärke (Strength) is called Körperkraft in DSA, for example, which means essentially the same. Fuchs thought that this sounded like a term the Nazis might have used, to which objection Kiesow countered that Stärke is the stuff in potatoes (Starch - which is also Stärke in german).
From my knowledge of DSA back then, there were parallels, however. It was a level-based system, with life force (= hit points) being raised at each level. The higher level you were, the harder it got to advance further. They had adventure points (=xp), which you needed to accumulate to advance a level. But there were notable differences, of course, which I won´t dwell upon here in depth.

Thanks for the updates, stebehil. Fascinating stories, as usual.

Have you ever heard of any unofficial German translations of earlier D&D books, such as the original Basic Set?

It was was officially published in the UK (full set) and Australia (rulebook), but there was also an unauthorized French translation that received distribution from a game shop in Paris. It was provided along with sales of the English language set:
French translation of the Blue Book - Donjons et Dragons - Zenopus Archives

stebehil wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:
This might have something to do with the french mindset regarding language. The french have a reputation of "linguistic arrogance" - if you visit France, you should speak french, otherwise the french might regard you as beneath their dignity. They won´t even try to communicate if you don´t speak french - at least this is what I´ve heard. I´m not sure if this is still true nowadays, and it probably depends on where in France you are. The other side of this is that many french people did not even bother learning another language, at least in earlier times (again, might be different today), so offering something in another language won´t work very good. Providing a translation might have been a necessity.

Some of that is myth, it's really only Paris that you run will run into that mindset you speak of. Really, the same is prevalent in some circles here in the USA also. Many Europeans can understand several languages, whether they want to acknowledge me or you can be another matter entirely.
Reading your comment reminded me of some roofers I had working on my house a few years ago. I could hear them joking with each other in English when I came out and then when I needed to give them instructions they all feigned not being able to understand me. I'm not fluent in Spanish but I understand some amount of it and when they had me go talk to the "old man" on the crew. He kept shaking his head that he didn't understand me and spoke something that was either gibberish or a dialect I just completely didn't know. I got a hold of their Boss and relayed my instructions to him to be told to his workers. He drove out to my house and right in front of me gave those jackasses my instructions in English and they carried them out.
I have a good friend that's fluent in several Asian languages but doesn't look like he would at all (if that's a thing), it's pretty funny when we go out to Chinese restaurants.

Invincible Overlord wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:
Just take the step to learn part of their language, and I believe most Europeans will be much more cooperative for it.

Yes, they will. Many folks around here feel uncomfortable to speak English (except, of course, in GB, Ireland, and probably Malta as well), as many folks are not as fluent in different languages as you might expect. There are close to a 100 million native German speakers (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), so many of them don´t need to speak another language, and probably don´t encounter English speakers except as tourists. I guess you might live your whole life in some rural area and never even encounter somebody "foreign". Smaller countries with relatively few speakers often learn other languages out of necessity, even moreso if their native language is somewhat obscure, like Finnish - most folks up there speak English. Many Dutch at least understand German, AFAIK this is due to the fact that there are many TV programs in German with Dutch subtitles, and of course Dutch is related to Low German anyway. The famous "Pennsylvania Dutch" is in fact German, IIRC - interestingly, the german language is called "deutsch" in german, not too far away from dutch.

MadCatUSA wrote in The history of german D&D/AD&D as I know it:That is indeed where the name "Pennsylvania Dutch" came from, it is a bastardization of the word "Deutsch" or someone from Germany. The original settlers were from Germany seeking religious freedom.

Thank you for this information. So it seems that the word dutch and the name for the Pennsylvania Dutch have developed along the same lines, but at different times. I wonder if the word "dötsch", a local low german for being stupid, is somehow related as well...  :lol:

Just a few minutes ago, an auction ended. It was a 1999 numbered copy of the german "Gruft des Grauens" (Tomb of Horrors) with a Gary Gygax signature. S1 Foreign
I did not bid on that, as I was not willing to pay that much for it.
It went for 56.55 EUR, which presently would be 65.85 US$. The seller sold it as "new", but judging from the picture, it was not that good actually. It has a serious crease in the lower left corner. I attached the final price from the auction and the picture from that auction. (note that the seller stated that the signature is not actually crossed out, he just did so on the photo to prevent abuse). It is #168/1000, for the record. (would be interesting to make a list of the numbered copies, just for the sake of it).

EDIT: I just read a post from the original owner of #497/1000, who still has it, that they were a giveaway for helpers, along with a T-Shirt and other stuff. Allegedly, the module had been updated to AD&D2 - I guess I will have to check the other adventures from Amigo that translations of older modules to see if these have been updated. It would make sense, of course, as they were distributed in that era. It seems that they are only very rarely sold, and probably not below 50€/60$ these days. Oh, well...