Tell me about Earthdawn

[Khayman]

Weird and wonderful, with a macabre element. Our party of 'heroes' kept delving into the ruins of Parlainth like ADHD monkeys on crack.

"We're short half the players tonight? Ah, let's explore Parlainth."
"I'm still wounded? Let's explore Parlainth."
"You bought a blood-smeared map that could be total bunk? Parlainth. Now."

The magic is quirky and unique, with spells 'hung' on matrices. You can freecast but that might attract the atention of Horrors, or worse... The dice mechanic is not uniform but intentionally so. Trolls receive smaller karma dice (=action points) than humans, and so forth. A lot of fun, remarkably deadly, and especially rewarding if you play the role of hero and rather than just freebooter.

 

[Khayman]

...and is it just me, or do Goliaths (from Races of Stone) remind one a lot of Earthdawn's Obsidimen?

 

[Dagger75]

I love Earthdawn. Once you get a few combats done its get pretty eay, same with the magic system.

I like how the magic items scale up to the player. You can have sword you found at level stay with you your entire life.

I didn't feel limited to the horror angle of the game. I used it a lot but never felt I had to.

And Shadowrun and Earthdawn are two seperate games basically.

 

[Staffan]

Multiclassing is a joke (not sure, if anything has changed there).

Multi-disciplining became more difficult in 2nd ed. I'm not sure exactly how difficult, because I don't have my books available at the moment. The other major change to PC capabilities is that the skill system got advanced a bit (for those who don't know the Earthdawn system: Normal people have to make do with Skills, which are measurements of mundane skill and knowledge. Skills take a long time to learn. PCs and important NPCs are adepts, and get access to powerful pseudomagical Talents, some of which are obviously supernatural and others that are just like souped-up skills. An example of the latter is Melee Weapons - the Talent covers all melee weapons, while the skill only covers a narrow category of them).

Some things I really like about Earthdawn:
- Magic items that grow with the character (as you learn an item's history, you will be able to spend XP on it to awaken more powerful abilities).
- Instead of gathering XP in a big pile, and then advance in numerous abilities when you get enough of them, you spend your XP to improve your talents. When you've improved them enough, you qualify for initiation into the next circle of your discipline (read: level up) and get access to new talents.
- A setting where many of the D&D-isms make sense (like dungeons).
- T'skrang: flamboyant swashbuckling lizard-men.

 

[WayneLigon]

Anyone ever play (or read) Earthdawn?

What were your likes and dislikes? Is it basically Shadowrun in a fantasy setting? If I was to check out the system, where would I start?

I ran it and everyone seemed to have a lot of fun. I just did the one campaign, then we never went back to it for some reason. I thought it was an interesting system, though we never did get to high enough levels where the magic items did strange things.

I always thought that the system for being in a class was extremely interesting. For instance, you are a thief. As a thief, you must be circumspect, quiet, aloof, and somewhat 'hard'. If you stop being those things, your class skills stop working. The classes were like manifested archetypes.

I'll probably be selling off my Earthdawn stuff soon, once I can finally sort out all the game books.

 

[bbarrington]

Earthdawn was the first game I ever GMed. I had been playing D&D and SR for years but ED was the first thing I decided to ever run and it was a blast! I have some great memories from that campaign... The noble Obsidiman fighter PC. The T'skrang player who liked to use his forked tounge in many different ways... I just might have to pick up 2nd edition and start another ED campaign this year!

 

[MavrickWeirdo]

I loved the setting, my only issue with the dice system was no "crit's". In one combat I was a Sk'rang Swordsman (the only time I have ever played a melee type character), up against an Ogre, I needed a 13 to hit, I ended up with a 34, and did normal damage.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I loved the setting, my only issue with the dice system was no "crit's". In one combat I was a Sk'rang Swordsman (the only time I have ever played a melee type character), up against an Ogre, I needed a 13 to hit, I ended up with a 34, and did normal damage.

Way late but that would have been an armor defeating hit, ignore all armor, which based on your damage roll could have caused a 'wound' or even a knockdown...

 

[GlassJaw]

I'll probably be selling off my Earthdawn stuff soon, once I can finally sort out all the game books.

If you do, let me know. I would definitely be interested.

 

[Samurai]

I have most of the books, but I'm still trying to get the last few I need to complete the set. If you have Secret Societies of Barsaive or Orks of Cara Fahd, I'd be interested in buying them when you are ready to sell...