Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Ancient History Q&A
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Abstruse" data-source="post: 6157650" data-attributes="member: 6669048"><p>What he said. The manacycle is on the same 6000ish year cycle that the Mayan Long Count calendar uses. Every 6000 years, magic returns to the world. The Second World was the Age of Dragons, while the Fourth World was Earthdawn. Earthdawn takes place at the end of that cycle, while Shadowrun takes place at the start of the Sixth. Between downcycles (the Third and Fifth worlds), magic is dormant and very difficult to work. Dragons don't have enough mana to sustain them so they go into a sort of hibernation (they can still telepathically learn about the world through osmosis or something...it's never explained that well in-universe because the dragons are notoriously closed-lipped about themselves). There's also Immortal Elves who survived through the Fourth World and lived through all the Fifth World, giving them a HUGE advantage when the mana levels started to rise again because they knew what was coming.</p><p></p><p>At the peak of every manacycle, it becomes possible for metaplanar beings that feed on fear and pain to come through to this world. In Earthdawn, they were called Horrors. Shadowrun used them a bit in the mid-90s, but the plotline was closed out between the Harlequin's Back adventure and the Dragonheart Trilogy of novels. When FASA closed, the BattleTech and Shadowrun licenses when to a company called FanPro, while the Earthdawn license went...somewhere else I can't remember because the company closed down. While the two were careful not to step on each other's toes so the worlds could remain linked, there haven't been any other crossovers between the two game lines since then with the exception of a few shared dragon and immortal elf characters.</p><p></p><p>As far as other planets, again, nail on the head. There used to be three Mars colonies, but I believe two of them were evacuated during Storm Front (the eventbook that bridged SR4 to SR5). There's about half a dozen lunar bases and about two dozen space stations. The Corporate Court (the self-regulatory group that keeps the various megacorporations in line) is actually housed on one of the space stations called Zurich Orbital (this was originally a heavily-modified MIR in the fiction, but when MIR was decommissioned and deorbited, they either retconned it to be the International Space Station or they just stopped mentioning the connection altogether). There's been work on a space elevator in South Africa for...crap, since at least 2062 I think (current game year is 2075) and it just keeps getting plagued with problems. There's a lot of information about space in a couple of the download-only sourcebooks for SR4 if you're really interested.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Abstruse, post: 6157650, member: 6669048"] What he said. The manacycle is on the same 6000ish year cycle that the Mayan Long Count calendar uses. Every 6000 years, magic returns to the world. The Second World was the Age of Dragons, while the Fourth World was Earthdawn. Earthdawn takes place at the end of that cycle, while Shadowrun takes place at the start of the Sixth. Between downcycles (the Third and Fifth worlds), magic is dormant and very difficult to work. Dragons don't have enough mana to sustain them so they go into a sort of hibernation (they can still telepathically learn about the world through osmosis or something...it's never explained that well in-universe because the dragons are notoriously closed-lipped about themselves). There's also Immortal Elves who survived through the Fourth World and lived through all the Fifth World, giving them a HUGE advantage when the mana levels started to rise again because they knew what was coming. At the peak of every manacycle, it becomes possible for metaplanar beings that feed on fear and pain to come through to this world. In Earthdawn, they were called Horrors. Shadowrun used them a bit in the mid-90s, but the plotline was closed out between the Harlequin's Back adventure and the Dragonheart Trilogy of novels. When FASA closed, the BattleTech and Shadowrun licenses when to a company called FanPro, while the Earthdawn license went...somewhere else I can't remember because the company closed down. While the two were careful not to step on each other's toes so the worlds could remain linked, there haven't been any other crossovers between the two game lines since then with the exception of a few shared dragon and immortal elf characters. As far as other planets, again, nail on the head. There used to be three Mars colonies, but I believe two of them were evacuated during Storm Front (the eventbook that bridged SR4 to SR5). There's about half a dozen lunar bases and about two dozen space stations. The Corporate Court (the self-regulatory group that keeps the various megacorporations in line) is actually housed on one of the space stations called Zurich Orbital (this was originally a heavily-modified MIR in the fiction, but when MIR was decommissioned and deorbited, they either retconned it to be the International Space Station or they just stopped mentioning the connection altogether). There's been work on a space elevator in South Africa for...crap, since at least 2062 I think (current game year is 2075) and it just keeps getting plagued with problems. There's a lot of information about space in a couple of the download-only sourcebooks for SR4 if you're really interested. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Ancient History Q&A
Top