How many of you are former (or current) Earthdawn players?

[Flagg]

I was a hugely enthusiastic Earthdawn player before I got into Exalted. I sort of see Exalted as Earthdawn's natural interitor in many ways. I've also noticed that a number of forum members are/were into the game.


-S

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Hail the Earthdawn!!! Ahhh, airships, behemoths, and those Theran bastards. Such a wonderful game.

 

[Flagg]

I took a stab at making and Exalted->Earthdawn conversion a while back, but it didn't work out that spectacularly  :?


-S

 

[Kajata]

Erm... what's Earthdawn?  ops:

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

...oh dear God! Well, I'll let Still explain it, because...well, I think he'd be able to do it better than I. But I can tell you all about the airships, my absolute fav part of the game  ops:

 

[Flagg]

Erm... what's Earthdawn?  ops:

It's an out-of-print high fantasy RPG that was the pre-history of Shadowrun.


-S

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

I took a stab at making and Exalted->Earthdawn conversion a while back, but it didn't work out that spectacularly  :?
-S

I just took the airship part of Earthdawn and placed it into Exalted, I even have stats and write ups for some of them, I think I may put them in the Submissions forum sometime soon. Everyone loved 'em.

 

[Flagg]

http://earthdawn.lrgames.com/howitcametopass.html

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

I must say, I loved the Books of Harrow and the founding of Thera. Hell, I even had a scenario written up for the Orichalcum wars to be in Exalted. But the finding of sorcery and the Sphinx in the City of the Mind's Eye was just a great and kind of creepy read in the beginning of the ED main book.

 

[wordman]

It's an out-of-print high fantasy RPG that was the pre-history of Shadowrun.

It's still in print, I think, but it's had an odd life after FASA. The primary mantle was picked up by Living Room Games, who produced it's second edition. Another group (RedBrick) also picked up the licence and produces Earthdawn Classic, evidently just to confuse the hell out of everyone.


I have fond, though brief, memories of playing my Obsidiman. Though playing him taught me a lesson: systems that use damage dice that "explode" kill first level characters very quickly.


Like most (even all) FASA role-playing games, the mechanics were not that great, but no one cared much because the campaign background was incredible. Over half of the Earthdawn books have little to no rules information in them at all, instead talking about politics, locations, etc. FASA was really good at that stuff.


Stuff that made Earthdawn different from other games:

• Incredibly detailed history that actually drove a very compelling reason why people would band together to go "adventuring".
  
• Every character, even "fighters", used magic. This magic expressed itself differently for the different "classes".
  
• Extremely wide power scale, brought on by its funky "dice step" mechanic. The difference in "powerful" vs. "really powerful" isn't just extra hit points and damage. Great dragons are scary.
  
• Best magic item system ever. The idea is that an item has levels of power that can be "unlocked" by doing various quests (to, for example, locate the birthplace of the guy who made the weapon, or find out the burial place of his beloved cat, or the mine from which the ore that made the weapon was extracted, etc.)
  
• Much better treatment of "metahuman" races than in most games. Dwarves are the dominant culture of the main campaign area, sort of, for example.
  
• Some great ideas and uses of names and naming.

 

[Flagg]

Great dragons are scary.

Verjigorm = even scarier.

-S

 

[Guest]

I played back when FASA still owned the license (well, when FASA still was), and loved the setting, even if at times the dice step system made my eyes bleed...

Though playing him taught me a lesson: systems that use damage dice that "explode" kill first level characters very quickly.

I have to ask to be sure what you mean, you mean 'explode' in the sense that the dice size used the in the scales climbed in size quickly, right?


My character was a human beastmaster... or somehting similar. Been forever. Rude, unclean, grew claws, killed liars on principle...  fun in a team. ;-)

 

[Flagg]

I have to ask to be sure what you mean, you mean 'explode' in the sense that the dice size used the in the scales climbed in size quickly, right?

I believe he was referring to the fact that all dice rolls (including damage) are open-ended.


Theoretically, a baby windling could kick a 15th Circle Troll Warrior in the toe and kill him. Theoretically.


-S

 

[Guest]

Oh, that's right, hit a certain number and you get to keep on rolling didn't you...


Like that crazy lucky die in the old WEG version of Star Wars.

 

[Persell]

No Fair Still, I can't play on this poll, I've never heard of earthdawn before this thread

 

[Flagg]

I would have put a "No" option on the poll, but honestly, I don't care how many people (of those who feel like voting) haven't played ED. I'm interested in who has. In other words, you're not important


-S

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

Ouch. Burned. Anyway, I remember my long running character Wallace, human archer. Many an interesting adventure with he and the others. I retired him, though they still used him as a re-occuring NPC along with all the old characters from the first part of the campaign.

 

[Silence In Daylight]

I got into Earthdawn because I liked tracking the characters in the Sixth Age back to their Fourth Age personas--the dragons, immortal elves...


 Shortly after Earthdawn turned up its heels to the daisies, the developers decided to post their 'Dragons' sourcebook as a free pdf. Mmm, that was some good reading, especially in conjunction with Shadowrun's 'Dragons of the Sixth World.'

 

[Persell]

I always loved playing earthdawn and in fact I still do so from time to time. Their take on thread magic in groups, with artifacts etc. still greatly influences and inspires the stuff I do in Exalted.

 

[Flagg]

Have any of you ever stumbled across the Cavalier Discipline? I made that one a while back and posted it to Strands. I think it's still floating around in the ether.


-S

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

You made the Cavalier? Awesome, I used t ofrequent Sttrands along with my friends. We used to talk about the new disciplines when written and the pros and cons of them. We liked the Cavalier.

 

[Flagg]

Thanks. I did my best within the limitations of ED's Descipline system. There were a lot of BAD homebrew Disciplines floating around on the net.


-S

 

[Persell]

Thanks. I did my best within the limitations of ED's Descipline system. There were a lot a BAD homebrew Disciplines floating around on the net.
-S

Yeah that's so true, but some good ones were around too, even though our group mostly sticked to the canon ones. My favourite was always the demon hunter, with threadmagic and all, very cool story possibilites

 

[Cthulhu_Wakes]

*snicker* Cheesemaster...

 

[Kyrn]

Ah, fond memories.  My elf swordmaster/nethermancer seducing the t'skrang riverboat captain to get free passage, and she winds up being an NPC for the next few weeks.  The whole crew fighting a horror in a hopeless battle, until in desperation I threw my sword at it before running away, and I killed the thing in one hit.  I think it was a wormskull.  Damn that was a cool world.  It had a tighter focus than Exalted, but there are so many similarities it's hard not to compare them.  


And yes, FASA products were exemplary when it came to fleshing out worlds.  And metaplots.  The bug metaplot in SR was awesome.  Anybody ever play in Bug City?