The complete guide to Dutch-language TTRPGs (1979-2026)

Ask any player when Dutch-language roleplaying began, and chances are the answer will be "somewhere around Het Oog des Meesters." That's half right. The truth starts a few years earlier, in a darkened room near Nijmegen, with a group of friends who had never heard of Dungeons & Dragons.

This is the story of nearly half a century of adventures in our own language. From a lone pioneer in 1979, through a German classic and a long silence, to the thriving maker culture of today. It is a history with more high points than most people suspect, and it is far from finished.

Grab a cup of coffee. This is a long journey, and it is worth it.

First things first: what is a TTRPG?

TTRPG stands for tabletop roleplaying game, a game you play together around a table. One player usually takes the role of game master and describes the world, while the other players each play their own character. Together you build a story, and dice decide how things turn out whenever the outcome is uncertain.

The genre began in 1974 in the United States with Dungeons & Dragons, created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The idea spread around the world from there: first in English, then quickly in translations and in original local games. How that played out in our own language is a story all its own.

1979: Queeste, the first roleplaying game made in the Netherlands

The very first original Dutch roleplaying game is called Queeste. It appeared in 1979, designed by Joop Oele and published through his own company, Knossos. That is remarkably early. Dungeons & Dragons had existed for only about five years, and the hobby was still almost unknown in the Netherlands. Queeste grew largely in isolation, and that is exactly why it had its own distinct character from the very start.

From guided fantasy to a game

The roots of Queeste lie in something Joop and his friends called "guided fantasy." They would lie down in a darkened room, and one person would begin describing a landscape. The others filled it in: a misty morning, a blackbird taking flight, a forest growing denser. Without rules and without props, a shared story emerged every time. Joop compared it to the way a glass moves during a seance: many hands guide it, yet no one knows quite where it will go.

Joop also experimented with wargames, under the name Hertogenspel, and with a labyrinth game from 1978: forty-nine rooms in a seven-by-seven grid, with a rose at the center as the goal. Correct answers to riddles brought you closer to the heart of the maze, and monsters roamed the halls, controlled by fellow players. Out of that blend of guided fantasy, wargame, and labyrinth, a true roleplaying game slowly took shape.

A game with a face of its own

Joop was also a graphic artist, and it shows. He wanted a drawing for every location, so you could lay the images side by side to form a complete overview map of the area. That gave the early adventures an unusual eye for detail and a strong sense of place.

The rules system was just as distinctive. Instead of the familiar set of multi-sided dice, Joop used ordinary six-sided dice and coins. For a test, you could toss as many coins as your trait had points, plus a roll of the die. That gave the game a pleasantly tactile quality: throwing a handful of tokens onto the table with a dramatic gesture simply has something to it.

In practice, Joop's ambition proved hard to sustain. All those drawings took a great deal of time, and most playgroups switched to a more verbal style after a few adventures. A helper program was even made for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum to handle the arithmetic.

Guilds and a magic system drawn from Earthsea

The heart of Queeste was its guilds. Joop created several, including the Templar Knights, Sun Riders, Wolf Women, and Druids. The magic system for the Mages was designed by Rob Meijer, who based it loosely on Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea: as a player, you could weave your own spells using words from a magical language. That magic system in particular was unique for its time. The game master in Queeste was called a Quaestor, and what other games call "levels" were here called initiations.

The boxed set Joop released in 1979 contained the rules, loose cards with illustrations, a set of wooden tokens, a die, and the first adventure, Tocht naar de Onderwereld. The game sold across the Netherlands, but mostly around Nijmegen, where Joop lived. After that came the adventure Grint in A5 format and Tigris in A4, plus a magazine of its own carrying adventures such as Oosterterpe, Sardon, and Slotmar.

Commercially it was never a big success, and publishing took more time than Joop had. Every group played faster than he could produce adventures, so many players invented their own. After 1984 things went quiet around Queeste: a family and a job demanded their share. The last properly published adventure, Whandal, was co-written with "druid" Thom Oostendorp. A great deal of brilliant material stayed in the drawer, as typed drafts and loose sketches.

That makes Queeste exactly what a good pioneer should be: ahead of its time, idiosyncratic, and unfairly forgotten. An underrated gem made on Dutch soil.

The 1980s: the hobby takes root

Het Oog des Meesters conquers the living room

The big breakthrough with a wider audience came from Germany. There, in 1984, Das Schwarze Auge appeared, created by Ulrich Kiesow. A year later, in 1985, the Dutch translation reached the shops: Het Oog des Meesters.

For an entire generation, this was the first real encounter with the genre. You played in Aventuria, a detailed fantasy world full of countries, gods, peoples, and magic. The first edition kept things deliberately simple. Your character received five traits: courage, cleverness, charisma, agility, and physical strength. A later edition added something lovely, namely five negative traits such as fear of heights, greed, and superstition. That made a hero not only stronger, but more human.

One of the differences from Dungeons & Dragons was the combat system. Het Oog included a defense roll alongside the attack roll, which made fights a little more tactical without becoming as heavy as, say, RuneQuest. In Germany the game grew into a phenomenon that outsold even Dungeons & Dragons, with novels, board games, and video games set in the same world.

The Dutch translation history was more uneven. The early editions were published by Selecta, parts of the later editions by others, and the project ground to a halt in the mid-1990s. The classic would return much later, but that belongs further along in this story.

Clubs, fanzines, and conventions

A game only becomes a hobby once people seek each other out, and that happened in earnest. In September 1985, a group in Gouda took part in a trial session of Het Oog des Meesters, and it caught on so well that it grew into a real club, The Wanderers of Light. Alongside Het Oog, they played games such as Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, and later Deadlands.

A lively fanzine culture sprang up as well. As early as 1987, a school paper in Schoonhoven devoted an entire supplement to fantasy roleplaying, complete with a call for all game masters to organize and a list of existing fanzines. This was the world of typewriters, cut-and-paste layout, and copy machines, in which players shared new rules, adventures, and tips through homemade booklets. It was small, local, and driven, and it laid the groundwork for everything that came after.

Flanders joins in

The Low Countries are broader than the Netherlands alone, and Flanders produced a classic of its own. In 1989 Schimmen en Schaduwen appeared, S&S for short, made by the collective The Wise Tree. The creators, in their own words a bunch of enthusiastic youngsters, drew inspiration from games such as RuneQuest and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

S&S was anything but a lightweight. It had deep rules and an extensive character creation process, with six peoples, twenty-seven professions, and fifty-four kinds of skills, among other things. For anyone who loves detail and customization, that was a richness. Part of the material is still available, and three members of The Wise Tree have worked on a modernized English-language re-release.

When S&S fell silent, the same circle produced Monsters & Magiërs, a simpler and less rules-heavy alternative, developed by the illustrator of S&S. It is typical of the Flemish scene of those years: small, driven, and always willing to build a whole game themselves when the existing offerings did not satisfy.

The quiet years

After the boom of the 1980s came a long dip. The Dutch translations of Het Oog des Meesters appeared only sporadically, and the project stranded around the mid-1990s. Original Dutch-language games became rare.

There were good reasons for this. The internet arrived, and with it English-language material suddenly came within easy reach. The average player grew older, playgroups drifted apart, and anyone who wanted to roleplay naturally switched to English. Publishing a new game in Dutch was also a tough proposition commercially, in a market that was small to begin with.

The hobby did not disappear. Clubs kept going, people kept playing, and the love for the genre stayed very much alive. But the home language slipped into the background. Anyone who started during this period almost always came to know the game in English.

2016: the revival begins in the Alverlanden

The turning point came, once again, from Flanders. In 2016, Erlend van der Haegen released the game Ambrosia under the name Red Eyed Rabbit. It is set in the Alverlanden, a medieval world made as realistic as possible, drawing directly on the history and folklore of Flanders and the Netherlands. The region is ruled by five noble families.

Ambrosia placed its emphasis not on combat but on story: characters have a real, personal connection to what happens around them. It was a signal that there was room again for an ambitious, original roleplaying game in our own language and with our own narrative roots. The silence began to break.

The modern flourishing: 2020-2026

From around 2020, the genre broke through to the general public worldwide. Popular actual-play shows, livestreams, and a new generation of players brought roleplaying games to a far wider audience than ever before. When many people found themselves stuck at home, families and groups of friends rediscovered the game. That wave reached the Low Countries too, and this time in Dutch.

The wonderful thing about this period is that it is no longer a single game, but a whole movement of makers. Here is an overview of who carries Dutch-language roleplaying today.

Vechel Fantasy and De Verhalenvlam

Around game master Rick Vechel came first the Avonturen Handboek and then, through a successful crowdfunding campaign, De Verhalenvlam. The latter is a roleplaying game for everyone aged six and up, complete with a rulebook, craft activities, and adventures, and usable within Dungeons & Dragons 5e. It is one of the most accessible ways to introduce young children to roleplaying in Dutch.

Project Epos

Project Epos, founded by Tom Blok, publishes its own adventures, such as De Dieptes van Dunglorrin, with which you can put a session together quickly. Project Epos also worked on a starter box for new players with the lovely name Bijdehand voor Beginners. Their site offers several campaigns and standalone adventures in Dutch.

Helden op Papier

Helden op Papier focuses on ready-to-run adventures for 5e. One example is the detective adventure Dreiging in Drenkdal, written for low-level players and playable in one or two sessions. Exactly the kind of adventure a new game master can run without much preparation.

Griezels en Schapen

Through crowdfunding, newcomer Griezels en Schapen released the adventure De Vliegende Hollander, an all-in-one module for 5e. It is set in Pagus Tyesle, a fantasy world inspired by the island of Texel, where everything draws on Dutch myths and legends. And yes, it features its share of ghouls and sheep.

Mythemakers

In the north, the Frisian foundation Mythemakers, established in 2022, uses roleplaying games to strengthen creativity and social connection and to counter loneliness. Together with partners, they published ten one-shots, written by Frisians for Frisians, all set in Friesland and built around the question of how to be a good ancestor. For anyone playing in this region, it is a beautiful example of roleplaying with local roots.

Wonderschouw and Mausritter

Publisher Wonderschouw brought the beloved Mausritter, the sword-and-whiskers game by Isaac Williams in which you play brave mice, fully into Dutch after a successful crowdfunding campaign in 2024. A follow-up is already on the way: in 2026 the adventure collection Overvloed & Ontberingen, known in English as Abundance & Adventure, arrives with four seasons full of adventure. It shows that Dutch editions of modern indie favorites have now claimed a serious place.

Hero Kids in Dutch

Hero Kids, a roleplaying game for children aged four to ten, was fully translated into Dutch and is still updated regularly. It previously won a silver ENNIE Award in the family games category. With only six-sided dice, simple rules, and adventures lasting half an hour to an hour, it is an ideal first roleplaying game for young families.

Het Oog des Meesters returns

The old classic is not forgotten. Around 2017, LT Publications picked up the Dutch translation of the now fifth edition. With that, Het Oog des Meesters can once again be played in our own language, with a rulebook running to hundreds of pages and a world that has been built up for decades. A living game, still.

The community and the events

Above all those individual makers stands the community. The Dutch D&D community Dutch20 created and shared introductory adventures that let new players get to know dice rolling, roleplaying, and a first fight within ninety minutes. And the hobby increasingly gathers in person, at conventions and events such as Verhalen in de Veste and the mini convention DraCon, where players, makers, and curious newcomers meet. That low threshold, the idea that anyone can simply pull up a chair, is exactly what this whole movement is about.

Where do you start?

Perhaps all of this makes you want to play yourself, in Dutch. A few suggestions, depending on who is at the table.

If you play with young children, look at Hero Kids or De Verhalenvlam. Both are built to bring children along effortlessly, with simple rules and short adventures.

If you want something quirky and charming that plays fast, the Dutch edition of Mausritter is a wonderful choice. Few rules, plenty of atmosphere, and you play brave mice in a large, dangerous world.

If you love classic, expansive fantasy with a world worked out in detail, Het Oog des Meesters is the natural home. Do count on a substantial rulebook.

And if you are mostly curious about the history, it is worth tracking down Queeste. Part of the material is still findable, and you get to touch a piece of living Dutch gaming history.

Why playing in Dutch matters

You might think: if nearly everything exists in English, why bother with Dutch? The answer lies at the table itself.

Roleplaying is about immersing yourself, about daring to speak as your character, about improvising. That is a good deal easier in your mother tongue. For children, for anyone less comfortable with English, or for people who simply prefer to play in Dutch, a good translation or an original Dutch game is the difference between joining in and dropping out.

On top of that, our own language brings our own stories. The folklore of the Alverlanden, the legends of Texel, the Frisian question of good ancestry: these are worlds you will not readily come across in an English-language game. Dutch-language roleplaying is therefore not merely translated roleplaying. It is also a voice of its own, with roots of its own.

A story that is not finished

From Queeste in 1979 to a new Mausritter collection in 2026 lies nearly half a century. A history with an early pioneer, a great classic, a long silence, and a revival that is still in full swing. Anyone starting today steps into a tradition older and richer than most people realize.

At Netherbook we are glad to keep that thread alive. We see this overview as a chapter in a book that is never finished. Makers keep arriving, new translations keep appearing, and the next classic may already be taking shape at a kitchen table right now. Are we missing a title that belongs here, or are you working on something of your own in Dutch? Let us know, and we will keep adding to the story.

The die is on the table. It is up to you to roll it.