Tell me about Earthdawn

[MavrickWeirdo]

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...

The DM gave me the knockdown, which gave me a chance to focus on my other attacker <a dwarf> for a round. I think my damage roll was a 5.

In hindsight insulting that dwarf, Before the battle, may have been a mistake. That was a fun character.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Good things:

Interesting levelling system - get good THEN level up.

A world that makes sense - there is a REASON that the world is largely unexplored, and dungeons abound

Neat mechanics - you get to use ALL of your polyhedrons! They flow pretty well too.

The concept that EVERYONE who is really good at stuff uses magic to do it is very interesting.

magic items that level up, force the PC's to discover their history AND provide plot hooks.

Bad things:

Nonsensical progressions - some higher level spells are really lame, and some lower level spells are awesome. Some just seem to be plopped in randomly.
Thieves get the detect/disable traps talents at something like 5th level (which is quite a ways on...), but ANYONE can take the skill at 1st. And if you're a thief, you get no bonus for having the skill as well as the talent. So the result is that the thief is the LEAST likely to be good with traps until 5th level, at which point he'll suddenly become the best. Other skills/talents/archetypes have the same problems.

Random layout - Really bad. It's impossible to find a rule in the thing.

Restrictive archetypes - these are good and bad - good in that they give newbies a place to start from, and bad in that they can really limit creativity. I'd like to see these replaced with something a bit more flexible (even just a guide to producing your own archetypes quickly and easily)

 

[Thanee]

Way late but that would have been an armor defeating hit, ignore all armor, ...

Yep, armor defeating is basically the critical hit in Earthdawn.

Bye
Thanee

 

[fuindordm]

Earthdawn is an excellent game. Some of my favorite points:

Flavorful races and classes

In-depth magic system, complete with a theory of magic that ties into the nature of the world, and with consequences that can be exploited by the PCs to their advantage.

Excellent support for social interaction in the core rules

The setting information is very detailed and well-written. I still have all my Earthdawn books and pull them out from time to time just because they're fun to read.

Wounds. An beautifully elegant and yet abstract way of tracking damage beyond HP.

Ben

 

[WayneLigon]

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

I certainly will.

 

[shametoy]

Fantastic Game

My players and i loved the game. Out of interest, here are the details of the companies currently supporting ED.

www.lrgames.com (Living Room Games - current publishers of ED 2nd ed)

www.earthdawn-classic.com (RedBrick - printing 1st ed ED in pdf formatt)

My players went crazy for the system, but as GM i need to ask - did anyone else have a problem portraying the world as shown in the book? I battled with:

- The artwork had great Aztecan themes which the players loved, but the game had very little flavour to support the images.
- Although the world had recently (within one generation) undergone the Scourge, there was very litte effect on the psychology of the peoples of Barsaive (i thought the minds would somehow have been scarred by the knowledge of the Scourge, at the very least those in the carns might fear open spaces)
- Very little compatibility between the talents and skills sections.

 

[Staffan]

- Although the world had recently (within one generation) undergone the Scourge, there was very litte effect on the psychology of the peoples of Barsaive (i thought the minds would somehow have been scarred by the knowledge of the Scourge, at the very least those in the carns might fear open spaces)

"One generation" is pushing it a little. The dwarven kingdom of Throal reopens in 1420, and the start of the setting is given as 1506. OK, for dwarves and elves and stuff perhaps, but not for humans and orcs.

 

[yennico]

Here you can find an unoffical Earthdawn D20 conversion.

 

[Cromm10k]

ED - how I loved this system. Just reading all this posts about it makes me sentimental. I spent my best gaming years with ED and we had a blast 99% of the time.

The magic system was different from everthing we were used to but it was more flexible AND DANGEROUS.

All the combat talents make fights very cineastic and flavourful. Sky Raiders leaping from airship to airship. Warriors doing their airdance and tiger spring...

It is an awesome system but my group used it to long and in the end the GM (90% it was me) got bored with horrors and Therans... We ended up with D&D 3.0...

 

[Hand of Evil]

ED - how I loved this system. Just reading all this posts about it makes me sentimental. I spent my best gaming years with ED and we had a blast 99% of the time.

The magic system was different from everthing we were used to but it was more flexible AND DANGEROUS.

All the combat talents make fights very cineastic and flavourful. Sky Raiders leaping from airship to airship. Warriors doing their airdance and tiger spring...

It is an awesome system but my group used it to long and in the end the GM (90% it was me) got bored with horrors and Therans... We ended up with D&D 3.0...

It does bring back the days, it should have been big but just did not, now you have Eberron, which is not all that different.