Earthdawn Back Catalog

[etherial]

A little background: I have been playing Earthdawn since 1999 and GMing it since 2002. I have every First and Second Edition book.

When Third Edition came out, I was seriously broke and in the middle of year 2 of a 3-year campaign running Second Edition. Now that I am not so broke and am planning on starting a campaign this fall, I am thinking of filling in this obvious hole in my collection, but, to be blunt, should I bother? I will never run a Third Edition campaign. I ran a Third Edition one-shot last Spring, but even with just the pre-art ED4PG, I can run one-shots with the new rules. Will Kratas and Cathay be updated to the ED4 rules? Did the Nations of Barsaive series add significant fluff over the ED1 versions that won't get wiped out by ED4? Is the crunch in Namegivers of Barsaive worth it?

OTOH, it looks like I can get a great deal on the ED3 books in the FASA Store (while supplies last). OTOH, the ED3GMG is no longer available from FASA in hardcopy and I can't find a copy elsewhere for anything resembling a reasonable price. It appears ED3 is already becoming a collector's item.

[Marceli]

I doubt it is worth.
Cathay is essentially it own settings so it can be worth if you plan running campaign there. In normal settings they can be used as NPC, but you need restrict talents for possible versatility by players.

Kratar - only Fasa can reply

Namegivers - it have bunch of new disciplines (i guess it is impossible to transfer it easy), items and materials - well not needed As for races you have most in older books, there are some difference but not many.

If you plan buy 4ed i do not see reason (other then collection or similar) to buy it.

[Utsukushi]

3E honestly did some very nice stuff, some of which it does seem 4e is going to reverse. It does therefor have a few things that you don't already have, *and* aren't about to get.

The three big things that I think are worth paying attention to are all in the Player's Guide:
1) Skills and Talents -- 3e had a hard line. They took out Skill: Yes/No, and had a whole chapter on Talents and a whole chapter on Skills, and gave each one their own writeup. On the one hand, this meant there was a lot of extra wordcount on Skills that really didn't change (and a lot of Skills that just said, "This is identical to the talent of the same name, on P.xx") On the other hand, it gave them a lot of finesse in defining those differences like Great Leap being stronger as a Talent, or the Pick Lock Skill requiring actual lockpicks. There's more subtlety in the differences between Talents and Skills in 3e than any other Edition. (Well, and Classic -- but 3e and Classic are very closely entwined.)
...I agree with FASA on this one, mind you, I think it took up an awful lot of space for the impact, but it was very well done and is worth reading for ideas on that, if that distinction matters to you. (For example, should 4e go ahead with Great Leap as just Skill: Yes, I doubt I'll be alone in making that one of my first house rules.)

2) The Optional Rules. You've probably seen people talk about the nice layout of Optional Rules in 3e, especially for people who want to hold onto 1st or 2nd Edition rules, and I've noticed people saying 4e has a distinct lack of Optional Rules. Here I think I agree with the people who are disappointed -- the optional rules in 3e are just lovely, smooth out the edges a lot, and are either from other Editions or are common House Rules that are compatible with any Edition they're not canon to. Some excellent ideas that you may or may not use, but are still worth thinking about.

3) Spells. It sounds like 4e is greatly streamlining the whole spell thing, and I'm... well, I'm very interested to see it. It sounds like this was Panda's baby, and I know how much thought he's put into ED and I'm hopeful that I will love the new lines. But I'm also nervous; I rather liked the magician Disciplines having some crossover in purpose. It makes it less crucial to have, like, One of Each in your party to cover different things you might need, and I hope we haven't lost that. It helped keep it feeling like they evolved organically, rather than being designed by, oh, say, a game writer, just for instance. So I don't know. I do know that 3e expanded the spell lists over 1st/2nd, drawing in a lot of spells that had previously been quasi-canonical and making them official. So for 1st/2nd Edition game, I'm still happy to look at my 3e set for possible spells to offer the players. (It does almost nothing to help clarify what Divine Aura is supposed to do, mind you. I can see that they tried, but, nope.)

I did get the Gamemaster's Guide, but I've spent a lot less time there. Skimming through it... it looks very well laid out, and I think I should use it more just for that, but it does look to be mostly a compilation of information that you already have -- Creatures of Barsaive, the Survival Guide, and Magic, mainly, as well as, of course, the more GM-ly stuff from the core book. Nothing especially `new' jumped out at me.

...The "fluff" didn't change very much, and 3e was focused much more on.. consolidating, and sometimes updating, the rules than, say, moving the timeline along. (2nd Edition really didn't apply to their timeline, since they went 1st-Classic-3rd instead, sort of routing around the whole War thing by hopping temporarily into an alternate dimension.) As Marceli sort of touched on, Cathay doesn't really exist in any other edition, so that may be worth looking at from that perspective alone. I would be very surprised to see it get a 4e treatment, so if you're interested in its ideas, it's worth it. Things like the Namegivers Compendium, though, no -- they didn't even update the Racial Disciplines to have Talent Options. It's nicely put together, mind, but there's virtually nothing in there that you don't already have somewhere else.

I can't speak as a collector. I just got them as PDFs, once I had some 3e games to play in to justify the expense. I'm glad I got them, but I don't care about having the actual books on my shelf. I would genuinely recommend the Player's Guide: Most of what is "unique" to 3rd Edition is in there, and it really does have some things to recommend it even if you may only use it obliquely.

[Mataxes]

As of right now, there are no plans to release Kratas or the Cathay books for ED4.

[etherial]

Another question: Will FASA ever release bundled pdfs of the old books? I'd love to get a steep discount price on getting pdf copies of all my old 1st and 2nd ed books.