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Dumpshock Forums _ General Gaming _ [RPG] Earthdawn

Posted by: Maelwys Oct 15 2003, 10:35 PM

Since there are still quite a few people that are clueless on this fact, Earthdawn, a fantasy game published by FASA a few years ago, is once again being published. It has been for several years now. A company called http://www.lrgames.com has taken over the license and has produced a 2nd Edition of Earthdawn.

They also finished off the Epic Trilogy that FASA started with "Prelude to War", and their most recent product is "Way of War: Makers of Legends Vol. 1" which is the remake of some of the same info from "Adept's Way" though it's smaller and only covers 5 Disciplines (including 1 new one).

The mailing list is still active (Though it goes in spurts...why talk about stuff when there's nothing to talk about?
To subscribe to the list, send a message to:
earthdawn-subscribe@lists.earthdawn.org

Posted by: Ancient History Oct 16 2003, 01:33 AM

The biggest qualms with LRG are their artwork (steadily improving) and their proofreading (steadily worsening).

Posted by: Maelwys Oct 16 2003, 02:57 AM

QUOTE (Ancient History)

The biggest qualms with LRG are their artwork (steadily improving) and their proofreading (steadily worsening).

Yeah, their artwork is really hit or miss. I think I stumbled across a reason why when I was looking at their newest book. 12 or so different artists in such a small book. Seems like every other illustration is done by a different artist. Very little of a consistent feel throughout the book in regards to art.

As for proofreading, I haven't gone through the latest book searching for that, but nothing has jumped out at me in the sections that I've read, but I'm sure some will.

Posted by: ialdabaoth Oct 16 2003, 09:46 PM

Are there any good 'net resources for running Earthdawn using Shadowrun dice mechanics?

Posted by: Maelwys Oct 17 2003, 10:12 PM

QUOTE (ialdabaoth)

Are there any good 'net resources for running Earthdawn using Shadowrun dice mechanics?

I wouldn't see why there would be. The rule system as it is now, with Disciplines and the like would not mesh well with the Shadowrun dice system without some changes (Though maybe it's possible, but you would have to seriously rework stats and character generation).

Posted by: ialdabaoth Oct 17 2003, 10:32 PM

QUOTE

Sounds like a project, then. I'll get a copy of ED tonight.

Posted by: ialdabaoth Oct 19 2003, 07:15 AM

Wow. Earthdawn is class-based? Any ideas on how this magical system could exist in the same world that eventually becomes Shadowrun?

Posted by: Ancient History Oct 19 2003, 01:26 PM

It's not a closed-class system like DnD. Much more user-friendly. A discipline is a class in much the same way a Magician's Way from SR is a path (mage, shaman, physad,e tc)

Posted by: ialdabaoth Oct 19 2003, 11:40 PM

So what are Talents, in SR terms?

Posted by: Seville Oct 20 2003, 02:24 AM

Remember that Earthdawn takes place relatively late in the fourth age, thousands of years after that era's awakening, and after the peak of mana that brought the scourge. Exactly when is open to debate, as mana in that setting seems to have leveled off, but IIRC, it takes place 5,000 years ago, and it will be another 1,000 years before the fourth age.

As such, magic is more powerful and formal, as it has been studied for generations. Every player in Earthdawn is an adept, which is not like an adept in shadowrun, but rather simply someone that uses magic. Some adepts use magic to cast spells (the Disciplines that do this are Elementalists, Illusionists, Nethermancers, and Wizards) and all of them use talents, which are simply abilites that use magic. Some talents use magic to supplement normal skills, like Melee Weapons and Stealth, and some, such as Air Walk or Spirit Dodge, cannot be used without the use of magic.

Casting spells in Earthdawn can be done "on the fly," but the corruption of the Scourge makes this risky, so spellcasters use Matrices, which are a little like spell-slots in D&D, but the mechanic is somewhat different.

The game system is completely different from Shadowrun, using all sorts of polyhedrons, and takes a little time to understand, but once you do, it is very easy, and allows for a good deal of complexity and detail.

A bit of advice (from when I used to run ED): don't worry about how many dice you roll, worry about your step (you'll know what that is when you play the game), and then reference a chart.

Posted by: Ancient History Oct 20 2003, 03:10 AM

The dice thing isn't a big issue, it just works out to a steadily increasing minimum and maximum possible.

Example: Step 7 is 1d12, Step 8 is 2d6, Step 9 is 1d8+1d6. Your odds go from 1-12, 2-12, 2-14. Works fine, translates rough. But it's easy to compute higher numbers, when you need 'em, and follows a more logical progression than, say, DnD.

Posted by: Jestyr Oct 20 2003, 04:10 AM

QUOTE (ialdabaoth)

So what are Talents, in SR terms?

Talents are... hhm. That's a tricky one. Talents are probably closest to adept powers; they're magical abilities that sometimes mimic and enhance mundane abilities, sometimes allow one to do completely un-mundane things.

There are lots of things where you can get the ability as a Talent or as a Skill. The Talent is always better, though, because it's a magically-enhanced version of the same capability.

Posted by: NeO_ZeN Oct 20 2003, 01:22 PM

Skills add flavour though, don't forget that...

Posted by: ialdabaoth Oct 21 2003, 07:29 PM

So let's say I was going to use an SR-based stat/skill system. Attributes and Skills translate over nicely; for Talents I'm guessing Strain = Drain, Circle = effective Force, and the adept's Discipline Circle is equivalent to an Initiate Grade?

Posted by: Maelwys Oct 24 2003, 02:02 AM

QUOTE (ialdabaoth)

Well, see, not really.

Attributes can be translated over rather easily. Skills, not so much. Skills in ED are secondary. They're the mundane things your character can do. Cooking? A skill. For those non Cavalry types, riding a Horse is a skill. Skills are the things you can do that don't matter as much.

Talents are WHAT you are. You don't just have a melee weapons skill, you have the Talent. You're better with a sword then any non-Adept out there. They may use the same type of weapon, but you're better, faster. The movements flow through you like magic. Everytime you advance in circle, you gain more talents to choose from, and must master some of those talents from that circle in order to advance to the next one.

The closest you can come to Talents in SR is using the Adept's ability of enhancing skills (ie, the adept power that lets you have +dice to skills). The problem is, you have to seriously rework how many point there are, etc etc. In the end, it's much easier to simply play Earthdawn with Earthdawn mechanics.

Posted by: Tziluthi Oct 28 2003, 04:14 AM

Note that the player characters in Earthdawn are called Adepts. Coincidence, or something other than coincidence?

Oh, wait a second, someone's already mentioned that. In any case, I think they're quite a lot closer than Seville is letting on.

Posted by: Seville Oct 28 2003, 05:03 AM

Kind of. An adept in Earthdawn is anyone who uses magic (i.e. every PC). So yes, swordmasters and warriors are adepts, but so are illusionists and wizards, so its not really the same in terms of game mechanics. However, if you wanted to equate them (and it would be somewhat forced) you could treat talents as powers, and circles as grades of initiation. But there really is no way to convert the two easily, as Shadowrun uses a dicepool, while Earthdawn uses a Step system.

Posted by: Ancient History Oct 28 2003, 01:56 PM

Plus, it would be more accurate to say that there are physical adepts and physical magician adepts, as only the Nethermancer ever gains even a crippled astral projection ability.

Posted by: JongWK Oct 28 2003, 02:32 PM

As if somebody actually wanted to be projecting with so many Horrible Things TM lurking in ED's Astral Plane...

Posted by: Rajaat99 Oct 28 2003, 03:11 PM

I think the talents represent power points. So, you'd get powerful very quickly, but it's Earthdawn, everything is powerful. I don't think the circles represent anything, it's just easy to keep track of everything.

Posted by: 252 Oct 30 2003, 01:05 AM

I got my first Earth Dawn thing, I collect SR stuff. Okay I have no life. But at least ummm, well I have the Bersaive Campaign setting (Yes I know that it is from 1993), however I get these things for a better understanding of Shadowrun.

Posted by: Tziluthi Oct 30 2003, 03:07 AM

My understanding was that the adepts that cast magic in ED were the magical adepts. Not Phys-mage-adepts, but aspected magicians. They used to be called magical adepts, right?

Posted by: Seville Oct 30 2003, 04:49 AM

The thing is, Shadowrun and Earthdawn share a common comapaign world, not a rules system. And by this, I mean that the two systems are utterly unrelated, despite the closeness of the campaign worlds. As someone who used to play Earthdawn as much as Shadowrun (god, gaming stole my best years) please understand that Earthdawn is not like Dark Ages Vampire or some other game were the game world has two eras of play. Earthdawn was a stand-alone game, with completely different mechanics, that happened to have connections (purposely kept somewhat cryptic) with the history of shadowrun.

Now I know this won't satisfy people who want an ED-SR conversion guide, but really, its not possible. There was no such things as physical adepts or or power points in Earthdawn, just as there are no such things as circles or talents in Shadowrun.

Now, if you really like the shadowrun ruleset, and want to play in Barsaive with them, I think that's a great idea, but realize that you would be using the rules to simulate in character concepts of Earthdawn, and not converting an Earthdawn character to reflect his Sixth Age counterpart.

I used the word simulate in reference to an RPG, so now I'm going to go to rpg.net and repent my evil ways

Posted by: vitus979 Nov 14 2003, 06:09 PM

One more thing about Talents. You can NOT use a Talent to increase a mundane Skill, you can use the Melee Weapons Talent, or you can use the Melee Weapons Skill, but you can't combine them.

I'd suggest just making Talents skills, but giving them a much lower cost and remove the 'time to learn' aspect. Talents in Earthdawn are much cheaper and easier to increase than mundane Skills.

Posted by: nezumi Nov 14 2003, 09:01 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like Talents are similar to WW's magic things. The dice sound like they're similar to Alternity's crazy dice slider doohickey.

You could always toss the Earthdawn rules out the window and just modify SR rules and use the Earthdawn setting : )

Posted by: Dread Polack Nov 15 2003, 05:16 AM

Yeah, this is something I thought about myself. Some other things to consider:

SR is a balanced game because cybered characters can fight with adept characters who can fight with magician characters. Note that characters with none of the above generally have a harder time competing with the above. That is, a character with a machinegun is on even ground with a character with a fireball, because he has a machinegun. Take away the machine guns and cyberware, as you do in a fantasy world, and suddenly, magicians are killing soldiers with swords by the dozen, because they just can't compete.

That means you can't simply take the rules straight from SR and use them to run ED.

Well, not exactly.

If you wanted to, you'd either have to weaken magic, or strengthen non-magic characters.

You could make all non-spellcasters Adepts of various flavors. Each of the non-spellcasting classes of ED would be Adept "Paths" with various Talents (powers) open to them, many of which you'd likely have to convert from ED. The Hermetic tradition would also have 4 paths- Elementalists, Illusionists, Nethermancers, and Wizards. Take away their ability to project, and give them some bonus dice for their spells of choice.

I think the other option is to drastically cut magician's power, and raise the Karma cost to improve them.

Anyway, some immediate ideas, it's actually been a while since I flipped through ED.

-Dread Polack

Posted by: Shockwave_IIc Nov 19 2003, 03:08 AM

QUOTE (nezumi)

You could always toss the Earthdawn rules out the window and just modify SR rules and use the Earthdawn setting : )

Which is what i did when my players didn't want to learn a new rules system but wanted to play in my Modified Earthdawn setting. Kept the parts of the setting i liked (most of what i knew) but used the D&D rules. (Skills and Powers)

Posted by: krishcane Nov 20 2003, 06:14 PM

We played a campaign in the Earthdawn setting with SR rules -- no attempt made to convert Circles and Talents and such, just used the SR rules as they are. To balance the magic vs. tech issue, I (as the GM) just enforced a worldwide Rating 5 background count. In "bad places" (ie. Horror-tainted) that count went up to 6 or 7, thus inflicting astral damage to exposed beings and increasing drain dramatically.

Even in the rating 5 count areas, though (the general level of most of the campaign world), magicians were at +5 TN to cast and +2 TN drain, which put a reasonable limit on magic. You could still sling spells, but you had to put some effort into it. The most powerful characters were naturally SR-style adepts, because they could amp their melee skills and speed. But even then, friend-in-combat penalties can slow down even the best hand-to-hand adept, and mass melee combats are par for the course in fantasy worlds.

It worked out to be a lot of fun.

--K

Posted by: JongWK Nov 20 2003, 06:35 PM

http://www.lostearthdawn.com/

And it seems that Caroline Spector's novels will finally be released in english (Scars is scheduled for Summer 2004).

Posted by: Jpwoo Nov 24 2003, 09:58 PM

The big difference in philosophy between SR and ED makes trying to play one with the others ruleset kind of silly.

SR is a game where you are relatively low powered, operating with the anonymity of an individual against forces much much bigger than you. The only reason a Shadowrunner would live a long time would be because she isn't worth killing. The power gap between a starting character and a 300 karma point end game character is large but not as large as we would like to think. A straight newbie has a good chance of killing an endgame SR PC if he is smart enough. The rules are made like this.

ED is a game of bigger than life heros who start out as weak nobodys with great potential. The endgame for ED are juggernaut heros who can go toe to toe with dunklezahn and have it be a fair fight. And the ruleset scales between those extremes.

So if you want larger than life in a shadowrun world, run Rift. (that was painful to say, dirtying SR with Rifts like that)

and if you Want a nicely crafted low power fantasy system play http://www.runebearer.com best thing about RB is that it is all free.