Forthcoming Sourcebooks, ETA? Options

[FlakJacket]

Just wondering whether we had a general timeframe for when the next couple releases might be making an appearance or what sort of stage they're at?

[Crimson Jack]

My game shop dealer laughs at me when I ask when the next books are due. :(

[Demonseed Elite]

I'm a writer and even I don't really know. :spin:

I can tell you that most of the upcoming releases are done with the writing stages. But that doesn't really mean much.

[Fortune]

Soon™! :grinbig:

[Critias]

Magic Eight Ball says: Ask Again Tomorrow!

[Grinder]

Personally i'm waiting for the release of Earthdawn Classic - so it's ok for me to wait for the new SR books a little longer. Probably better for my wallet ;)

[torzzzzz]

More need more books! information , heheheheh!!


torz

[Grimtooth]

Grinder, are you serious about ED classic?

[torzzzzz]

[Critias]

There are currently two companies developing the ED line right now. Living Room games is the "official" ED gang, and they're moving the storyline forward, etc, etc, having released the new Edition a few years back, and all that sort of thing. I beleive right now they're still in the midst of a fairly cool "Way of..." series, broken down into Way of War, Way of Will, and Way of Wanderers (with a chapter apiece for appropriate stuff inside each one; more detail on Warriors and Swordmasters in one, all the mages in the other, troubadors and scouts and such in the last, etc).

Some...other...company (who I can't remember the name of right now) is releasing an "Earthdawn Classic" line. I'm not really sure what they mean by that, or what it is they plan on doing. I like the Living Room guys, have gamed with 'em before, etc, etc, so I'm stickin' with the crew I know. :)

[kryton]

My guess would be that the first books won't become available untill late to middle summer. That's when last years books were released. Although this is just a guess Adam would be a better person to judge than I. I'm not sure what's going to be released. I know Shadows over Asia and Shadows of Latin America are in the works. Also Loose Alliances is probably in the works as well.

I've heard rumors of a book called Critical error and running wild but I couldn't tell you anything about it. Anyone know anything about these?

[Synner]

Loose Alliances is in final editing and proofing, and going by prior experience, should be off to printers in the next few weeks - my (not to be confused with anything official) best guess is mid/end April.

FanPro D's Newletter announced Shadows of Asia after that. Primary writing is complete and it looked good last time I saw it ;).

Shadows of Latin America is also on the horizon with primary writing only just completed.

No news updates on Running Wild, but System Failure was announced for Origins...

[Grinder]

[Garland]

[Grinder]

The good thing that LRG does not develop a new ruleset - they did so with the new main book and that's it. They're concentrating on other stuff (way of... books, dangerous goods, city books).

ED Classis is the compiled first edition, which is mostly out of print. They're wiping out the errors, include the errata and rerelease it. Thats ok for buyers who want the old fluff books like cara fahd or crystal raiders.

A 3rd edition is needed, as the world of rpgs has changed over the last ten years. Red Brick tries to re-wrtei and improve the rules.

I understand their efforts, but i'm involved in it and ove the game. To the general customer i guess it's very confusing. So people out there: buy the fluff books of ED Classic and wait for the new ED3 ruleset, coming 2006. :) :)

[Ancient History]

Kids...<shakes head>

[Anunnaki]

Hi all,

Hopefully not thread-jacking, and hopefully some clarification.

Earthdawn Classic is First Edition ED with the warts filed off. It's based largely on FASA material only, recompiled into two dense hardcover books for the player and gamemaster. There's a ton of errata, but there's a bunch of new stuff, clarifications, and optional rules in there as well. Where does the product fit? It's more like an ED 1.5 (as some people have referred to it). Why do it? We wanted to get a couple of in print books covering literally *everything* you need for the game in just two books.

The published FASA adventures are to be released in a separate hardcover book with expanded content, allowing GMs to run an ED campaign from a single volume. The Denizens books are making a reappearance in an extended format, filling out the racial Disciplines and including some new material. Hardcover again.

Once the first two books are out (looking like May/June at the moment -- in time with my first major gaming convention outside New Zealand at Origins! And getting to celebrate my 40th birthday to boot with people I've only met online! Yay!) we are finishing off several new *original* supplements and moving things along at pace from there.

Keyed in with this are: 1) More thrice-accursed merchandise (via CafePress); 2) Miniatures -- we've resurrected these from the dead; and 3) PDFs, for which you will see an official announcement in a wek or two -- the OOP FASA supplements will be available from DTRPG. Yes, you heard that here first. I'm looking at some value-add here by making sure they are hyperlinked (at a minimum Contents and Index, but possibly internal page references as well) to make them more usable. Fingers crossed that comes through the DTRPG process OK.

On the ED3 front. The working title for this is Earthdawn: Age of Legend, in homage to ED1. The *realistic* release date for this is 2007. A ton of work has gone into this already. We realized recently that the Earthdawn Classic product was rapidly turning into ED3, so decided to split the development streams.

Some (very) quick Q&A. Is this going to be confusing? Is this a real weird situation for a game line to be in? Um, yes. Sorry. It probably is. Why bother with ED Classic? Because there's a bunch of gamers out there that aren't interested in ED2. And, from some comments I've had already, a bunch of gamers who aren't interested in ED3 either. Why not stick with ED2? Well, we wanted to continue along similar lines to FASA. And keep closer compatibility with FASA's ED product. Won't ED3 supersede EDC? Maybe. At some point it might conflict. I suspect there are going to be people who want to stick with the old version they know for a while yet. *shrugs* We have no plans to stop supporting both products. It's too early to say how compatible they are going to be (probably reasonably so). But ED3 is intended to go back to basics on a number of things: more flexible Discipline system, customization of creatures and Horrors, faster combat, that sort of thing. It will still be using the step system -- love it or hate it, it's an Earthdawn thing.

Some more Q&A. A little about me and RedBrick. Why do this? I love Earthdawn. I've wanted to do this since I was 11. I wanted to setup a gaming company, create a business plan, refresh a game line, and try some different production and marketing ideas. Our experiences to date are going to be written up and made available online once we've gotten a few books under our belts. Call it an experiment, but there is the germ of a philanthropic motive behind doing this. The business plan is a formal model that has been put together. We're not a big company. Add into the mix that I am also employed full-time in the I.T. industry, married, have 3 growing boys aged 3, 8 and 11, and still manage to squeeze in 35-40 hours per week working on ED plus find time for my hobbies and my wife and you can appreciate how this is a carefully managed juggling act (and how dedicated we are to making this work). Similar situations apply to the other members of RedBrick. Community involvement? Well, we wanted to get fans working with us, not operate as a closed shop. This is kind of an experiment, as I well know how "passionate" game fans can be. Have we been successful with this to date? I'm not sure. We're still learning as we go. I suspect we might not have engaged people as well as we should have so far, but we're trying to adapt on the fly. Again, there's some different components we're throwing into the development mix here.

Enough for now. I apologize if this is inappropriate to the DumpShock Forums, or preachy or ranty. If you have any questions, you are always welcome to drop into our Forums, signup and ask away. Or drop me a PM on this Forum. Or email me at: jflowers@redbrick.co.nz

I'm always happy to answer emails. No secrets here, but I'm not able to traverse Forums as much as I want to at the moment.

Hope this helps!

Kind regards,

JAMES FLOWERS
Product Director, RedBrick Limited
http://www.earthdawn-classic.com

PS: Rock on Shadowrun 4! Best news I've heard in a long time!

[Kesh]

Now that sounds really cool, especially gathering the adventures into a hardcover. And PDFs. Mmmm, PDFs. Thanks!