I've been playing SR since 1st ed came out but never player Earthdawn. I know SR and earthdawn have now been seperated but back in the days of FASA one was the precouror to the other. The last mana peak.

But other than that what the flock happened? As I understand it the dragons were out and about and made the drakes and elves to be their servants. the elves rebelled and broke free and had orks as their servasnts. The Horrors came and ripped everyone up. Is that right?

Pretty much. Basically magic flourished, I mean everybody did some magic to a degree or another. They called it Disciplines, but I think of the ones that are not spellcasting as very defined Adepts. The mana field grew too much, allowing the Horrors in, and they destroyed, ate, and corrupted damn near everything.

There was the Theran Empire, who compiled some mojo that should have safe guarded the people in underground cities, called kaers. Unfortunately the Horrors sometimes got in. The Dragons were fairly tight lipped during the whole thing, but then again, when aren't they?

There was blood magic, and it wasn't necessarily evil, though there were evil applications. There was even some implants, of sorts. Magic crystal eyes to help targeting enemies at range, or to see at night. I think there was even a crystal arm, which could be attached in place of a missing one, or as a new 3rd one altogether.

There was also a pantheon of sorts, called the Passions. The mysterious figure in the opening fiction of "Harlequin's Back" is one, I think. And obviously, H. and others are alluded to in various SR books here and there, and the "secret" of immortal elves is present in SR, though I don't think it's mentioned too much in SR4. Or not as much, anyway.

For me, the world is wondefully established, but the system is pretty much unplayable. Considering the scale of attribute generation, which gives you your Step number, which gives you a dice combination to roll, meh. Throw in the sliding scale for TN's, being classified in things that are simple to epically difficult, and then those are applied across categories for the particular competence, ranging from Commoners to well seasoned veterans who have forgotten more than there is actually known abotu the subject, you need to have a Masters in all sorts of mathematics to try and keep up with it.

ED is not that hard to understand. You want hard to understand, try the original edition of Mage: The Ascension or The Immortals. Both games' systems designers (different games from different companies at that) need to be taken out back and beaten. Absolutely horrid gaming systems.

<short version>

Mana levels go up and down. When the mana levels rise high enough, Horrors enter our plane and eat/torture everyone.

Somewhere during the 3rd world, people figured this out, and began building Kaers. Those are basically multi-generation nuclear shelters. Eventually, the Horrors, came, saw, ate, and as mana dropped, most of them left again.

Then came the 4th world. People crawled back out of their Kaers; magic is still so powerful nearly everyone uses it, but there aren't many Horrors still around. This is the Earthdawn world.

Magic drops further, and pretty much disappears. Fantasy races disappear back into the generic human genome. This is the 5th world.

Magic rises again, fantasy races come back, 6th world, Shadowrun time.

The Immortal Elves and the (great) dragons are survivors of the 4th world or earlier.

</short version>

A big thing was Icewing's experiements with Aardelia (sp?) and the Book of Blue Spirits. Dragon-kin (Immortal Elves) had the horrible flaw of being independent of their creators and Drakes have the horrible flaw of hibernating in the down cylce (like their masters). Icewing was using this girl as an experiment in a Metahuman/Drake hybrid -- a construct that would be both loyal and awake during the downcycle.

Unfortunately for Icewing the Therans got wind of this and were able to whisk the experiment away to Egypt. For some reason the gods of that land didn't allow Dragons to enter so they couldn't directly go and pull her out (Prelude to War). In LRG's Barsaive at War there is a story arc where the PCs grab her back and deliver her to Icewing. Redbrick hasn't explored past the Prelude to War storyline much yet.

An interesting thing that didn't make it into SR is that there is a human dynasty in Norther Barsaive that are scions of the great dragon Denairastas. So theoretically there should be some immortal humans running around as well unless your GM rules that they were all wiped out for breaking the "no breeding with metahumans" laws.

Those are the points that are most pertinent to SR. There's all sorts of other awesome in the setting but it is largely self-contained. Unless the CGL higher ups decide to go ahead with the "Thera returns to earth" storyline that they cooked up.

That would be funny.

As a Last Ditch Effort, the Therans do a massive ritual to send Thera out of Space and Time until the magic levels are high enough to support their way of life. The aftershock of the ritual leaves a giant crater where Thera used to be. (Explaining Homer's story of Atlantis).

Move forward to 2075. Thera reappears, and they're ready to resume their role as the world dominating super-power that they've always been. Hilarity ensues.

Flying Behemoths vs Thor Shots for the win!

For those who have played Earthdawn I have a couple questions.

-Did the main non-human races equal the humans in numbers?
-Did all sentient beings have access to some form of magic as mentioned earlier in the thread?

If the answer to both questions is yes then what happened? In the sixth world non-human races are less than 10% of the population and those who can use magic are less than 1%.

The main non-human races mostly equaled humans in numbers. Arguably Orks out numbered everybody.

I would say that about 25% of the population could be Adepts. But a great number of people did in fact have access to magic, and certainly pretty much everyone had access to magic items. Also, Blood Charms were very common and could be powered by your life energy.

As for what happened?
They had a few thousand years of magical learning and development. We've had 40.

Hard to answer that first question. The main game is set in a province called Barsaive. The Throalites were the predominant ethnic group and were used by the Therans as administrators in the provincial bureaucracy. Throal is a dwarven kingdom. So dwarfs make up the biggest population in the province, followed closely by Orcs. IIRC, Humans are 3rd behind that but splintered into a few different ethnic groups. These demographics can change depending on whic province you are in however.

All Name-Givers had access to magic. This was basically any sentient being. So metahumans, dragons, and some horrors. Everyone was an Adept or Mystic Adept in Earthdawn. There were no Full Mages.

Human scholars had a theory in Earthdawn that during the downcycles everyone would revert to being human again. Of course, most of the non-human scholars took offense to that and called them silly.... In SR we know this to be true as exposed by UGE, Goblinization and SURGE.

Fun fact: Earthdawn was the name of the first airship that Throal launched after the Scourge. Her mission was to explore Barsaive post-scourge and make contact with other survivors. The ship made two voyages but never returned from the second. Throal actually sent the Earthdawn out before Thera was reopened and is one of several reasons why Barsaive has remained so independent of Thera.

Interesting. The reason I was asking about population and magical ability is that in the 6th world meta varients are rare and magical ability even rarer. This makes me ask if humanity (human and other) was looseing the ability? The fact that we have Surge effects from random remnent DNA code would seem to indicate a degredation of the strands in question. This then leads me to wonder if the Horrors or some one else may have tampered with things to make humanity more tractible. Just a thought for a metaplot.

Remember we haven't even seen the T'Skrang yet. And The Pixies are barely Windlings (although ED4 windlings kinda suck now)

I think really its that we're not deeply enough into the Cycle yet.

Also Thera, for example, was predominantly Human and Elven in racial profile.

I would like to make the distinction that all PCs are specifically gifted as adepts, but this was not the case for NPCs, they could be mundane.

All in all I like the system and it works smotthly at the lower circles (levels), it gets a little rougher as you go up and the options for the players become greater and greater, same for most level based games.

Earthdawn took place towards the end of the magic cycle and someone or something was keeping the mana levels unnaturally propped up. Not everyone was an adept -- sorry I misunderstood your question. Paths in ED are called Disciplines and you only get recruited into one if you show an aptitude for that Discipline. That being said there was a far higher percentage of the population that was awakened.

@sabs: I could have sworn there was a brief mention of tribes of lizard like people in the Amazon basin. I could be making that up. There is a SURGEd obsidiman in Peru but it is doubtful he is a "true" obsidiman.

@Fauxknight: Spellcasters are the bane of high circles as is true for many fantasy games.

I run a weekly Earthdawn game, and have run very high circle games in the past. Surprisingly while a Wizard can stuff a City in a Bottle (High Circle Ritual Spell), a Warrior can puree him. It is actually really well balanced between casters and non casters. Casting spells takes time, and the really powerful stuff often takes days to cast. It is very different from the various incarnations of Shadowrun as far as its internal balance is concerned.

I completely disagree with this statement it’s really no more difficult than Shadowrun. You purchase your attributes (sound familiar?) which in turn gives you a number (step). You purchase your skills/talents (sound familiar?) which gives you a number (step). Both numbers are added to give a final number to determine which combination of dice you roll for any given talent/skill. In Shadowrun the greater number of individual successes the better the result, in Earthdawn the larger the sum the dice rolls the better the result. Different but no more or less complicated

I have introduced many first time roleplayers to Earthdawn and most pick the basics up at the end of the first gaming session. In fact the trouble most first time gamers appear to have is telling the difference between the different sided dice.

So most ED rolls are SR Initiative, basically?

yes, except that it's a usually something like d4+d6 or d10+d8 instead of a bunch of D6.

One mistake in the above. The kaers were built during the first half of the Fourth World while mana levels were rising. The horrors tortured and fed on everything not in a kaer during the middle of the Fourth World while mana was at its peak. Earthdawn is set during the second half of the Fourth World after the horrors have mostly gone, and the kaers have opened.

Sooo, Fall Out magic style?

I think it's more likely that Thera exploded when there wasn't enough magic to support the floating invisible buildings and giant pillars of orichalcum.



Dwarves make up about 33% of the population of Barsaive, then elves, then humans. It has mostly to do with lifespan and their racial bonuses making their kingdoms slightly more resistant to Horror emanations. Ironically, Dwarves are the least frequently played PC race in my Earthdawn experience. It is generally quoted that about 5% of the population of Barsaive has the ability to become an Adept, and about 1% of Barsaive is an Adept.

Indeed, I generally describe it as Epic Pulp Post-Apocalyptic Horror Fantasy. Other than the Fantasy, each of these elements can easily be emphasized or de-emphasized by a good GM.

Also, the elves found out that Horrors can only harvest fear and agony if its created by the Horrors themselves, if something else caused a victim pain, the Horror would get no benefit.

So a bunch of elves decided to cast an epic magic spell that caused their bodies to erupt with thorns, creating a constant agonizing pain for all of them. As such the Horrors couldn't feed off that pain, so they left the elves alone.

The rest of the planet generally regards the elves of the Blood Wood to be sick puppies.



-k

To be fair, they' didn't plan to do it, but rather had to jury-rig a plan B in a hurry when their Caer didn't turn out as horrorproof as it's designers had hoped. Though it seems that plan B has it's share (and possibly more) of side effects.

During the Age of Dragons, the dragons created the immortal elves as their servants. In Wyrmwood (Chernobyl), they rebelled against their master Alamais near the end of the age. The created the Elven Court of Wyrmwood and tried to rule the other Elven Kingdoms (in Ireland, Latvia...). During the following downcycles, the immortal elves hunted the sleeping dragons, killing several of them.
The great dragons then banned the creation of immortal metahuman servants, and dragons Icewing/Ghostwalker and Yuichotol created the drakes to replace them. The dragon Deneirastas got banned for ignoring the ban and creating his own immortal human servants.

During the Fourth Age, an elf scholar named Elianar Messias, banned from the Elven Court of Wyrmwood, found the Books of Harrows. Those warned about the coming of Horrors. The first, weaker one (wraiths) showed up shortly after to make the point. The group of scholars that translated and studied the Books of Harrows evolved over time into what would become the Theran Empire, thanks to their heavy magical knowledge.

The Theran Empire offered its colonies (and any country willing to comply) the techniques needed to build kaers, strongholds able to hold off the Horrors.
Queen Alachia of Wyrmwood ordered all Elven Kingdoms to refuse the Theran offer. Most ignored her order. Wyrmwood itself relied on its own knowledge to create a wooden kaers. As said above, it failed and forced the elves to turn to plan B with the Ritual of Thorns, earning the place its new name of Blood Wood.

Then, the Horrors start leaving the Earth, the kaers opens, and the Theran Empire starts conquering anew its colonies.

How it came to pass

Shadowrun, if all the conspiracies were true and the technology was stripped out and elves were even more aggravating and frolic-y.


With Yakety Sax playing, of course.

Earthdawn is a great game.

Bye
Thanee

I love Benny Hill

Yeah. It'll mostly come down to what sort of opponent they are facing and the manner in which the spellcaster prepared. If you've got a sneaky Wizard like the player in my game he has Solo Flight Named on him so not much can touch him -- combine that with Thorny Retreat and it gets nasty. Even worse the Nethermancer in the group has taken to casting Fog of Fear to corral the baddies into the Thorns and then that damage fog (name escapes me at the moment) once they are stuck. My experience has been that the Spellcasters make the best Defenders and Controllers whereas the Warrior is a Striker supreme. The 9th Circle Warrior in my group was able to puree a Corrupted Drake in less than a minute whereas the Spellcasters didn't do much. Now, the Warrior collapsed in a tired/unconcious heap afterwards but still...

sigh
Earthdawn.. I love that game.
I wish there was an earthdawn game near me.

Yeah I was running my campaign for 3 years. We took a quick break to play some SR but we'll be going back once the current SR story is done. I'm planning on weaving the two stories together. In ED my group was able to defeat Ristul by trapping the three Nightwists of the Mad Passions in the weaponsmith/wizard's rings. Let's just say that the rings will be making a comeback...

Ooh Nice..
I ran a long standing campaign where the Nethermancer of the group had become a Human Agent of MountainShadow. The rest of the party where really just his companions. I think we played for two years. We only got to 7th Circle. But they were getting pretty grossly powerful. That being said, they only ever barely survived their one and only real Horror fight. Most of the time they spent fighting Theran Slave ships

I think others answered the numbers part fairly well. As to what happened, it is just far too early in the magic cycle. As I understand it magic is inflated higher than it should be in SR due to the great ghost dance so there should probably be even less than you see. I do not know if the later books or editions changed this but initially at least the various races were not really regarded as from human stock. My guess is at high magic levels once things settle they become more distinct and less altered humans and more a separate species. I liked the game and setting quite a bit but it is hard to find players since other bigger name games rule the Fantasy section.

Oh and I think everyone on the planet could cast some magic through they might not be mages. At least in 1e various spellcasting talents could be done through mundane skills as well, this is true for a lot of magical talents. The big difference was mundane skills cost a lot more than talents, and I think you could use your karma die(edge) on magic but not skills.

One thing I dug was the magic item system. To quote the wiki, "One of the most innovative ideas in Earthdawn is how magical items work. At first, most magical items work exactly like a mundane item of the same type. As a character searches for information about the item's history, performs certain tasks relating to that history, and spends legend points to activate the item, he unlocks some of the magic in the item. As the character learns more about the item and its history, he can unlock more and more power within the item.

Each magical item, therefore, is unique by virtue of its history and the scope of its powers. For example, one magical broadsword may have only 4 magical ranks and only increases the damage of the blade. On the other hand the legendary sword Purifier, has 10 magical ranks and grants its wielder numerous powers."

The problem with Mundane Spellcasting.. (which btw, is what all spellcasters in SR are doing)
was that it did not protect you from astral space. You glowed like a beacon, and every spell you cast had a chance for you to get horror marked. You also took damage (read drain) for casting a spell using mundane spellcasting.

Wizards, Elementalist, Illusionists and Nethermancers had a special magical version of spellcasting, and used Spell Matrixes to hold their spells, and protect them from astral space. Purifying the corruption and meaning that any spell cast by them did 1 strain (about 1/2 a drain) though it wasn't resistable.

My first horror fight ended quickly in favor of the party. It went like this round one it attacks and hurts the warrior everyone but me misses, I tie a thread to cast astral spear with my nethermancer. Round 2 I cast astral spear and exploding dice hell happens with like a D8+D6 roll ending up doing something like 78 damage. It being a weak horror that ended the fight. Meanwhile my character becomes obsessed that it couldn't be that easy and this is all a trap somehow.

Yeah I loved it. I just wanted to point out that it was possible to cast spells through skills for mundanes. Only the insane or dumb would do so, but it is possible.

Agreed 100%. I loved this part of the Earthdawn system. I played and ran Earthdawn in 1st edition back in the mid-90s and my only previous fantasy game was the usual suspect. After years of +2 Short Sword it was fabulous to have unique magic items that could, in many cases, increase in utility and potency in concert with the character who possessed it as part of their overall progression. Not to mention loads of story potential in uncovering an item's secrets. I thought Earthdawn was a fabulous game and whenever I finish running my current Shadowrun game I'd probably take a gander at the current Earthdawn edition.

Earthdawn is a fun game. I love the setting and how they handled the magic items. The only character I remember having was an 8th circle Elven Troubadour who wielded a troll sword I think they were called (basically a huge two-hander).

One of the things I'm workign on addign ito Shadowrun is Threading.

I think threading is such a neat, and interesting concept that adds so much to the world.

Hm... people could use magic skills? Hm... i somehow have missed that, when i played, i guess.

Really?

Hm, ah well. As i remember about 15% of the people had magical talent... but not all were adepts, right? Also Dwarves were the "standard" race (as in they were morst numerous and in barsaive provided most stability and economic+political power) and humans were grossly overpowered with their ability to handpick talents of whatever way they wanted. (I loved that)

Also... from circle 11 or so onward the FISTS of warrior counted as siege weaponry? Fun times.

But yeah i LOVE the whole magic concept, threading and names (and the POWER of naming). And also the whole idea of legend points and the ability too pretty much make yourself BETTER by making yourself known. (Which is why troubadours/bards were AWESOME). Only game where the social classes are totally awesome.

Hm... i should get myself into a group sometimes...

What is threading?

threading is the ability to create magical links between 'patterns' (auras) of people, groups, objects, and locations.

You could do things like weave a thread between your str and the pattern of your home city. This would result in your strength being higher when you were in your home city.

Astral perception was way more advanced. In order to use relics/magic items you needed to weave a thread between yourself and the pattern of the weapon. Linking yourself to it.

It's a really neat concept.

I must have missed that to

Some magical talents mirror mundane skills such as melee weapons, but talents progress faster. If you have enough legend points (experience) you meditate eight hours and simply increase its rank by one. Skills take longer to learn, weeks and months. Only adepts can use magical talents (which includes spellcasting). There are a few things some non adepts can do such as a farmer using halfmagic to help his crops grow or a smithy using halfmagic to make his forge burn a little hotter but its just really just fluff. Normal people can use day to day magic items as they live in an age of magic after all, items such as magic cooking pots etc.

The fluff in the book states that one in twenty has the potential to become an adept but less that that actually do.

I love threading. Threads to items, locations etc was just awesome.

Heck I even loved spell threading, I think extra time is a better way to balance spells than drain. If it takes 3 actions to pull of the fireball spell if always seemed more profound to me while at the same time giving others enough chances to contribute to the fight. Also unlike SR and multiple actions when I am threading for two rounds so round 3 I can throw the fireball I feel like I am doing something instead of just sitting around for 3 passes waiting for the next CT while all the fast people move around.

Or get inaugurated as President of the UCAS to tap into the mana of a nation to enchant an item that will save the world

I'm assuming he became inaugurated as the President of the UCAS to get access to the UCAS Pattern item. This allowed him to weave some threads from it, to an item.. etc.

Threading leads to some coool shit.

if you had an object of great importance of an enemy and you spent karma(lp) to weave threads to it you could get bonuses for fighting that 1 singular enemy.

It was a way to allow characters to buff for for a tough horror fight, without making them super-crazy powerful in every other fight.

Actually, one of the coolest things I find about threading is Group Patterns and weaving threads to each other to boost abilities. That way a group that had been together for a long time could bolster each other by virtue of Naming their group and learning about each other's Patterns. It can really make a group get attached to each other's characters (pun intended).

Is this why there's now a Tapestry of Fate in (the White House, IIRC)?

IIRC it is also implied in ED books that the mana level is being kept unnaturally high at the level just low enough to keep most Horrors offworld but high enough to use really advanced magic like resurrection spells instead of gradually tapering off. And the cause of this is some big Oricalchum pillars artifact in Thera. And that the metaphysical tension build-up between the natural tendency of the mana cycle and its artificial stabilization is what eventually causes the focal point of the freeze-up, Thera/Atlantis, to explode towards the end of the mana cycle.

I hope there's some sort magical condom for this - sticking something of yourself into an Horror sounds like a great way to catch nasty things.

See this is all very cool and really should be worked into shadowrun or maybe a shadowrun game twoo hundred years in the future.