Tell me about Earthdawn 3E!

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So, I am only peripherally aware of Earthdawn, having played a single, short session of an older edition a few years ago. I know about its unique dice system and the idea of circles and everyone using basically magic to achieve their thing, even "martial" type of heroes.

So, there is a 3E out these days. What's new about it? How have the rules changed? What's the world like? What adventures are available? What would you recommend for starting a game with the new edition?

RedBrick Limited - Earth Dawn

There are also plans for a D&D 4E / GSL variant, but not much seems to have happened (at least in public): RedBrick Limited - Age of Legends
Any news there?

[Obryn]

My reply got eated.

Anyway, I love Earthdawn, and had no idea a 3rd edition was even released. Amazon has a very good price on the two core books, and I might go ahead and place an order... Hmmm...

I found this, as far as mechanics go, on the Wikipedia page...

The 3rd edition changes this drastically. Steps 6 through 12 (as listed above) form the basis of a 7-step cycle. To add 7 steps from then on, simply add 1d12. No d4s and no d20s are used. Step 3 is now 1d6 - 1, step 2 is 1d6 - 2, and step 1 is 1d6 - 3.

This is good, actually. Very good.

-O

[Obryn]

I went ahead and ordered the Players' Book. I couldn't resist at $26. I'll let you know what I find out. It doesn't look like any adventures as of yet. In theory, there are conversion guides to make it easy. I still have several 1e Earthdawn adventures, which range in quality from kinda iffy to pretty sweet.

If it's high-quality, the GM's book will follow! It's just expensive enough to qualify for super saver shipping in and of itself. (FYI, to anyone interested, Amazon is selling the hardcopy for about the same price as the PDF on DTRPG...)

As far as the game itself goes, I found an RPGnet post which basically sold me on the edition switch. My main problems with the system were how restricted characters were, and how insane the Karma system was for perfectly good character races. (Trolls having d4 Karma made them way worse in practice than Orks with d8 karma. It actually made a kind of enormous difference in play. Windlings with d10 karma were the worst - as spellcasters, they were already unequalled, unbalanced attributes or no.) It looks like both of these are solved - Karma is now universally a d6 and costs the same for all races. (But races have different maximum pool sizes, still.) Also, there are now "talent pools" to open up options for characters, making them much less linear. Along with the bell curve fixes on the updated Step chart, I'm pretty satisfied they did enough of a re-write to fix the most broken stuff. I'll find out before long, though...

-O

[Kcinlive]

First let me apologize for the Wall o' Text. I got a little carried away...

I've been an ED fan for a couple years now. It's a quite good game/system. There's bit of a learning curve for new players. The step system that they use for the dice rolls can be confusing. It can also be annoying to have to look up what dice you need to roll on a chart. But once you get past that it's actually a really neat mechanic in my opinion.

As for what's new with 3rd Edition. They streamlined a lot of the rules, fixed various problems that had cropped up in the system, etc. That sort of thing. They also changed the way the classes work in the game. They give the player more choice in what talents to take and basically what direction to take their discipline in. Every circle(level) the character gets 1 discipline talent that's fixed based on your class, and 1 non-discipline talent that can be picked from a list. So the core disciplines remain the same, but there's more variety in the classes. For example you might have a Swordmaster who focuses on the more social aspects of their class and thus takes the more social talents. While you have another Swordmaster who will focus on the more martial aspects taking the more martial talents. They're both Swordmasters, they just have a different focus.

The world is identical to the world in the previous editions. They moved the timeline forward a little bit to bring it up to the end of the original first edition novels and adventures. The basic story for the game is that it takes place on Earth 30,000ish years ago during the last time of High Magic. It's the same world as Shadowrun. So the levels of magic in the world follow a cycle of highs and lows. While the level of magic in Shadowrun is just starting to rise again, the level of magic in Earthdawn is just past the peak. The problem is when the levels of magic in the world get so high, it allows alien entities called Horrors to enter the world. Horrors are immensely powerful beings that feed off of pain, suffering, and fear. The only way the people of Earthdawn were able to survive this time, called the Scourge, was to wall themselves of with Earth and Magic in massive city size bunkers called Kaers. They lived in these Kaers for several hundred years while everyone that was stuck outside was tortured and killed, or worse. Eventually the magic levels went down, the Kaers opened and the people went out to repopulate the world and deal with the aftermath. Of course the levels of magic in the world are still pretty high. So there are still may Horrors left in the world. Though not so many as to make the world unlivable. May of the Horrors also left things behind to cause more pain and suffering even after they've left.

The game takes place mainly in the Provence of Barsaive. Though there are plans to release a book on Cathey detailing the goings on in what is now China and japan.

Barsaive was a provence of the Theran Empire(Think Rome with Magic, or Atlantis). Though the Therans would say that it still is a Provence. Much of the conflict in Barsaive is between the various kingdoms and city-states of Barsaive vs the Theran Empire. There's already been one war fought, which Barsaive won, but it's likely only a matter of time before another war begins.

Most of the "standard" fantasy races are there: humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls. There are also a few "non-standard" races: Windlings, short winged humanoids, T'skrang, "lizardmen", though "dinosaurmen" would be more appropriate, and Obsidiman, rocklike humanoids born from living stone.

To start playing the new edition you'd probably want the player's guide and the gamemaster's guide. There's also two companion books, the player's companion and a gamemaster's companion. To get started you should only need the two guides. The companions deal with more advanced rules and expand the game. The next book that is coming out is I believe the Kratis book. It's a setting book detailing Kratis, the city of thieves in Barsaive.

That's all that's been release for the 3rd edition of the game so far. But there are the previous edition books too. While the exact rules have changed they can still be used as a reference. The adventures in particular can probably be used with relatively little reworking. Luckily since RedBrick is now working with a Mongoose, they should be releasing new books every at a relevantly good pace. *crosses fingers*

If you're looking for more information I'd suggest taking a look the the Earthdawn page on Wikipedia if you just want a summary of the game, Earthdawn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Earthdawn page and forums on the Redbrick site, RedBrick Limited • Raising Your Game

There are also several good posts on the rpg.net forums that are probably a lot better then what I have here.

-Kcinlive

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I am considering to pick it up anyway. Doesn't hurt to broaden the horizon, and some of the players in my campaign are familar with Earthdawn. Maybe if I lend them the books, they jump on it? Particularly one DM might be interested in such a thing, since he has been jumping systems a lot lately.

[Obryn]

Well, it's a very 90's-era RPG.

It does an awesome job of making a D&D setting make sense... Like so many of the best 90's games, the world and the system are tightly intertwined - it'd be difficult to use one without the other. The mechanics are actually fun in and of themselves ... exploding dice + varying dice sizes makes for entertaining play, IMO.

Also, in the vein of 90's games, most of the supplements are 90% fluff, 10% crunch. Several supplements were literally nothing more than overpriced collections of short stories. It can be forgiven, though, because FASA was basically the king of making good gaming fluff back then. So I wouldn't worry much about compatibility - I'd say, without knowing the new rules at all, that the old supplements are completely relevant.

I'm looking forward to this book more than I thought I would. I still have my Earthdawn books in my secondary gaming shelves (along with my 3.5 stuff, and a few other good games I'm not currently playing) despite not having played it in 10 years.

-O

[ggroy]

Originally Posted by Mustrum_Ridcully

There are also plans for a D&D 4E / GSL variant, but not much seems to have happened (at least in public): RedBrick Limited - Age of Legends

If the third edition Earthdawn books have a good reception with half decent sales, I suspect the producers may put more of their development effort and time into writing supplement books for the third edition, while the 4E D&D / GSL version may possibly be put on the backburner. This may possibly be the case if the 3PP 4E market doesn't get much better, or goes into a freefall (ie. the recent case One Bad Egg closing down).

From playing an earlier edition of Earthdawn several years ago, I would prefer the mechanics to be similar to the earlier editions, than a version which attempts to "shoehorn" it into the 4E D&D ruleset.

[Imaro]

Earthdawn is definitely my preferred fantasy game above nearly all others. Funny thing is that I had a complete collection of 1st edition books that got destroyed when my parent's basement flooded. Since then I've wanted to get back into Earthdawn but the whole Redbrick/LRG thing and Redbrick only being Lulu PoD kinda turned me off.

However I was pretty excited when I learned about them partnering up with Mongoose and getting a new edition out. My two corebooks just came a few days ago, and while I haven't had a chance to sit down and read them... I can answer any questions people might have about them...

[Obryn]

Sorry for the necro-thread. I got the book tonight - I had to hold off due to a combination of vet bills, car trouble, and sundry expenses related to having a baby soon.

Anyway, I've paged through it, and my first impressions are...

(1) WTF? The spine is upside down. It's messing with my head.

(2) Tons of reprinted material - which is fine, because Inheritance is a seriousy cool story.

(3) The printing is too dark, sadly. The book is b&w on ... well, you know the kind of shiny full-color paper most gaming books are printed on? It's not that - it's the other kind. The B&W printing makes the pages' headers, footers, and shading a bit tough on the eyes.

(4) Ruleswise, I need to dig in, but so far I like it a lot. Because I know Earthdawn pretty well, I'll have to carefully read it to be sure - but I love, for starters, that the Step table uses d6, d8, d10, and d12. No d20's or d4's!

I'll post more as I learn more, but I also got the DMG2, so....

-O

[Wik]

Earthdawn is one of those games I'd love to play, but hate to GM. Which is pretty much how I feel about anything FASA has had a hand in. :P

I was never a huge fan of the magic-heavy nature of the world, and it bugged me that my human fighter had to go through a magical ritual every day or two to get his "luck points" back. I understand why they did it; it just didn't mesh with the type of fantasy I like.

Of course, I also thought Obsidians and Windlings were pretty cool.

A while back, I converted a few Earthdawn races to the d6 system on my gaming blog (which I've kind of ignored, mostly because of a writer's block and real life). And I've always been a fan of how FASA produced supplements.

[Jhaelen]

I also got it but haven't found the time to do a lot of reading yet.

It would be easier for me to digest if it clearly indicated where rules have changed. As it is I find myself skimming over sections a lot because they seem identical to what I already know from ED 1E. Unfortunately, what happens is that I later realize I must have missed some of the changes and have to scan the previous pages again. Not fun.

From what I've read on the RedBrick forums I definitely approve of the changes. Many things I disliked have been changed. I'll know more once I get to read the power and spell sections.

[DayTripper]

You might be interested to know that Redbrick are (slowly) working on a 4e version of the Earthdawn rules, called Age of Legend.

I played ED in the 90s and I have to say fluff & flavour wise its (still) one of the best fantasy RPGs I've come across. Crunch-wise, the system is good in parts but tends to break down at the fringes, particularly if you've players too used to optimisation from playing too much D&D...

If you do play ED, you might notice an number of similarities from FASA's original game that also emerged in D&D v3.5 & 4e. In fact, you might say the talent powers employed by ED characters are very, very similar in concept to the powers now currently used by 4e characters. Then there are the weapons of legend, group items etc, etc.

All this 4e homage to ED should make it very easy to use the current ED fluff for the basis of a 4e game.

[Obryn]

Originally Posted by Jhaelen

As it is I find myself skimming over sections a lot because they seem identical to what I already know from ED 1E. Unfortunately, what happens is that I later realize I must have missed some of the changes and have to scan the previous pages again. Not fun.

Ditto. It's tough because even though I haven't played ED since 1998 or 1999, I read the hell out of the rulebooks. It was my game of choice from its release up until D&D 3e came out.

From what I've read on the RedBrick forums I definitely approve of the changes. Many things I disliked have been changed. I'll know more once I get to read the power and spell sections.

Also ditto. Karma was the biggest deal for me - high karma dice were far more valuable (IMO) than good stats. And windlings - which seriously didn't need the help - were kings of that.

The game also got broken-ish by mid-circles. I have no idea if that will continue. I know that my entire party got wiped out during Infected from a single Bone Shatter spell.

Originally Posted by DayTripper

You might be interested to know that Redbrick are (slowly) working on a 4e version of the Earthdawn rules, called Age of Legend.

Yep, and I've been looking forward to it since its announcement!

And yeah, when I saw the mechanics for 4e, I could see a clear connection between Earthdawn and it. The similarities are rather huge, and I think it will work very well should it ever see the light of day.

-O

[Obryn]

So I figured I'd update here, real quick!

I'm very much enjoying this new edition, and have ordered the Gamemaster's Guide, alongside it. It looks like it was done with a better eye towards math and balance, but not to the same degree as, say, 4e is.

There's a much bigger emphasis on skills, and the advancement system more or less requires Adepts to advance skills which mostly got ignored before. As I mentioned before, Karma has (IMO) been fixed, and Willforce was also significantly powered-down. (Now, it can't improve with Karma, and it takes Strain.)

I'll need to see the Gamemaster's Guide to be sure, but mechanically I'm pretty happy with it so far. I get the sense that everything other than extra Disciplines are 95% compatible.

-O

[Jhaelen]

I've also finally finished reading the Player's Guide and will definitely get the Gamemaster's Guide, as well.

My overall impression is very good indeed, now I need to convince my old Earthdawn group that we need to switch!

The only part of the game that could still use some improvement is spell magic:
+ It's nice that paying for spells in coin and legend points is now an optional rule.

+ Overpowered spells have been identified and nerfed.

- Casting combat spells often isn't worth it because weaving threads takes too long for the expected damage (compared to your typical thread weapon damage).

- There's tons of spells but most of them suck. They're either too restricted to be of any use (duration, area, or range too short), only interesting as a roleplaying device or have odd requirements that make them impossible to use (e.g. to create a wall of bones you need to be at a burial site).

- Too many spells have very similar effects or overlap.

- The circle of a spell often doesn't properly reflect a spell's power. I've noticed several instances where a lower level spell was effectively better than a higher level one in all but the most rare circumstances if at all.

- No integrated rules. With a single exception (Leaps and Bounds) I haven't noticed a spell effect that actually reuses the rules from similar powers. Why?

- Spell descriptions are listed alphabetically without any indication of discipline or circle. Is this really better than listing them per discipline and circle? I would understand this decision if there was a lot of overlap between disciplines and spells became available at different levels (but that doesn't seem to be the case).


Anyway, this is mostly nitpicking about some pet-peeves of mine. I think the system's very playable and a worthy update to a great game.

[Obryn]

I have the Gamemaster Guide now, myself, and am working my way through it.

I'm still overall positive about it, but it seems more ... complex ... than I remember it being. I'd put it at a little crunchier than 3e, but with lots of miscellaneous sub-systems. Granted, they all use the same step die rolling and success tables, but the results required can be pretty random.

Talents are also extremely varied, but in a lot of cases - just like with Earthdawn 1e - a lot of them do almost exactly the same thing... The social talents are especially egregious here because there are about a half-dozen ways to improve someone's attitude 1 step.

Power - especially the most broken spells - has, indeed, been scaled back. And yes, weapon-users are probably doing a lot more damage, but just like the 4e striker/controller divide, spells do a lot more special effects and "debuffs." (Also, a whole lot more area effects.) I appreciate that Willforce is no longer a Discipline talent (so no more Karma on those area effect damage rolls!) and that it actually costs Strain.

Monsters are quite a bit more complex than I remember, and the list of abilities - each of which is almost a sub-system in its own - is lengthy. Still, I'm very glad that they just have a straight-up number of actions now, rather than the former #Attacks/#Spells division. I'd put it on a level - or a level above - 3e.


Jhaelen - the GM's guide will mostly be familiar to you. As near as I can tell, it contains the capsule history from the original book, plus the entirety of the text of the Barsaive box set. It has the fluffy intro sections from the Monsters, Horrors, and Dragons books - but doesn't contain detailed fluff on individual entities, like those books had. I wonder if that's in the GM's companion? Regardless, I especially miss the short story Horror intros, and am glad I still have my precious ED 1e Horrors book.

-O

[Jhaelen]

Originally Posted by Obryn

I'm still overall positive about it, but it seems more ... complex ... than I remember it being. I'd put it at a little crunchier than 3e, but with lots of miscellaneous sub-systems. Granted, they all use the same step die rolling and success tables, but the results required can be pretty random.

I guess this might partly be because they've collected the rules from all of the old source books. I remember there were lots of rules being added to the game with each new supplement.

Originally Posted by Obryn

Talents are also extremely varied, but in a lot of cases - just like with Earthdawn 1e - a lot of them do almost exactly the same thing... The social talents are especially egregious here because there are about a half-dozen ways to improve someone's attitude 1 step.

True enough. With spells it's similar, probably since they wanted to make some effects available for every magician discipline. Thus you get four variations on a theme.

Originally Posted by Obryn

Monsters are quite a bit more complex than I remember, and the list of abilities - each of which is almost a sub-system in its own - is lengthy. Still, I'm very glad that they just have a straight-up number of actions now, rather than the former #Attacks/#Spells division. I'd put it on a level - or a level above - 3e.

That's probably the thing I'm most interested in: The changes they've made to the monsters.

Thanks for the overview!