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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wik" data-source="post: 5269660" data-attributes="member: 40177">You know, I have this theory that Earthdawn was one of the primary influences on two of the big RPGs of this decade:  Savage Worlds, and Fourth Edition.Savage Worlds' similarity is primarily in the dice mechanics - dice "explode" in earthdawn just as they do in SW, players can spend points to improve their rolls, and the game plays rather fast.The similarities to 4e are pretty strong, too.  Earthdawn has the equivalent of powers, has a points-of-light setting, posits that even martial characters are innately magical (and does a better job of this than in 4e), has the equivalent of healing surges, makes all races "equal" but interesting, and has non-random character generation.What's really interesting is that the way I see it, Earthdawn was FASA's attempt to steal some D&D players from TSR.  Remember at the time, there was a large number of fans who were getting sick of 2e D&D, and felt that the system was showing its age, lacked a unified mechanics system, didn't really encourage roleplaying, and often didn't explain WHY things were the way they were.  Earthdawn presented a system that explained why casters "memorize" spells, why "Dungeons" exist, and why PCs are heroes.It also fixed a lot of the perceived problems of 2nd edition D&D.  It removed "racial level limits", and broadened the classes available to each race (Earthdawn 3e would completely remove them, if memory serves).  It had a hit point system that didn't start painfully low as in 2e, but that didn't get ridiculously high during play - low level monsters could always hurt you in earthdawn.  And it didn't require a "balanced party" to work - it could run solo players and large groups, and no one would be forced to play the cleric (there are no healing classes in the game).  It was a very well thought out system.And of course, we hated it.When my best friend at the time bought Earthdawn, we were around fourteen, and were absolute FASA fanboys.  We had already played in countless Shadowrun campaigns, and had even done a Mechwarrior campaign or three.  We made up characters in Earthdawn (I made an Archer), ran a few test games, and just didn't "get" it.  I felt that it was thematically like D&D, only because it had a world built into it, was less useful.  I also didn't like the high magic tone, as at the time, I was purely a low-magic sort of guy (I still am, but I make an exception for Earthdawn these days).  And I hated many of the assumptions the game made about the world, and the classes.  Dwarves as master tradesmen bugged me.  Swashbuckling lizard pirates were annoying.  Humans with a "Versatility" talent was no good.  And why were dwarves the race with highest population?  As the 2e DMG plainly says, this is a crazy idea and will ruin campaigns!  And let's not even get started on the magical classes!  A few years back, I picked up the first edition Earthdawn Book, and re-read it.  I fell in love with it instantly, and now I snatch up sourcebooks as I see them.  I have the PDF for the third edition, and the third edition is a HUGE improvement over the rules.  Because while Earthdawn is cool, there are some real flaws in the powers (there are powers that not at all balanced to one another, and some that will never be used in play... and the way the game is built, thieves do not get any trap-detecting talents until halfway through their progression track, which means that thieves will wind up being the WORST trap detecters in the first half of the campaign!).  Third edition removes some of the straight-jacket nature of the disciplines, allowing the player to customize his character's advancement.  It gets rid of the varying karma die values for the races, which I feel is a good step.  It also makes a much more interesting gear table, which was a nice touch.  And it incorporates some sourcebook info that makes playing orcs much more interesting than "Core" 1e Earthdawn presents.  One of these days I'll get my group together and we'll give this game a try.  But until then, I'm just enjoying reading the sourcebooks and admiring the system from afar.</blockquote>

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