Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Discussion on the Earthdawn game line, errata, and feedback not related to playing or GMing.
shiinx
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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby shiinx » Sun Dec 29, 2013 12:47 pm

I have been playing Earthdawn since it was introduced to me by a friend back in 1997. By now, I own products from each of the past editions and I have successfully introduced multiple players to the system. During that time, there was one complaint that often came up - especially with gamemasters new to the system:

Split lore and rules. Currently both are often entwined. You have to read a long paragraph that contains some rules but also fluff, just to find some detail. Now, I don't mind this writing style, I actually quite like it when reading the book from cover to cover. And since I have read through the books a lot, navigating them and finding some detail that eludes me isn't that hard. But new players should be given an easy access to the rules. This could be achieved by strictly splitting facts from fiction, by introducing a *good* index, or by offering summaries that only contain very condensed descriptions (e.g. for the new Impress talent: do impressive action; success -> use Impress talent; success -> +[success levels] to interaction tests). The latter could even be just in as downloadable extra material.

I hope this is something you can address in the fourth edition. If not with the core sourcebooks (player's and gamemaster's handbook), as it would require major rewriting/reordering, then at least with the completely new material you are going to publish.

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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby Darth Quiris » Mon Dec 30, 2013 5:18 am


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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby Slimcreeper » Mon Dec 30, 2013 10:39 am

I'm also a member of Pen-and-Paper games and have some stuff on Obsidian Portal (so hard to not write obsiman portal) Recently Obsidian Portal 'Reforged' their website. It is beautiful now - but nearly unworkable. High production value - yes - but don't forget why we have the book! Like character sheets that burn a half tank of black ink to print. Somethings are better in concept than in practice.

I picked up Earthdawn because of the art, and have been buying and playing ED ever since. I also picked up Mechanical Dream because it was pretty, but it is unplayable, so it's never seen a gaming table. Balance in all things!

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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby Slimcreeper » Mon Dec 30, 2013 10:50 am

Back to skills vs talents - in my game we are running skills as a flat bonus to attribute steps (i.e. d10+3, just adding 3 to the result of the roll). The skills never decrease the chance of a roll of 1, and are less likely to blow up, but in some ways they are more reliable at low levels. It seems to differentiate them pretty well.

I _don't_ like the skills that duplicate talents, like battle bellow and battle shout. I can really find someone who can teach me to yell at a group of baddies to intimidate them? Eh. Most of those skills should be gone. And we certainly shouldn't be looking at an ability description that says it is the same as another ability of the same name on a different page but with one more point of strain or one more yard/rank of range.

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Kasbak
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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby Kasbak » Mon Dec 30, 2013 11:35 am

The only skills that ever really bothered me were Spellcasting and Read/Write Magic. Those are by definition magical abilities, and I feel should be left as such. For that matter, I never really liked Read/Write magic as a Talent either. It's only real purpose mechanics wise is for learning spells, and the tests for that really aren't difficult, so there's not really a reason to spend LP raising it up other than going up Circle. It would be much simpler to either absorb the ability in to Half Magic or Spellcasting (I lean toward the latter only due to Versatility).

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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby zayven » Mon Dec 30, 2013 4:07 pm

Oh, man, points to Slimcreeper for giving Mechanical Dream a shout-out. That game is amazing. One of the best examples of a genuinely "fantasy" rpg setting. There's nothing else like it. Unfortunately, that ends up working against the game. It's almost impossible to explain that setting to someone without making them read the actual book. I don't recall the rules being unplayable (actually, the writers credited Earthdawn for a lot of their design inspiration), but the book's layout is beyond awful. It's nigh impossible to piece together all the rules because they're scattered haphazardly throughout the book under unintuitive chapter headings. I think the book is also translated from French (Steamlogic was a French Canadian company, if I recall), which didn't help matters.

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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby zayven » Mon Dec 30, 2013 4:22 pm

I think the difference with something like the Fate core book is that it's a generic ruleset. The same goes for the Legend books from Mongoose. People are buying those books simply to use the rules to adapt for their own settings. Setting specific games like Earthdawn have a much harder time getting away with not having top notch artwork.

Now, if FASA plans on developing a generic version of the Step System (not a terrible idea, by the way), then producing a cheap, black and white book containing the rules would make a lot of sense. I seem to recall reading here that the 1879 rpg will use a modified version of the Step System, so it might be interesting to see what a "generic" version of the ruleset would look like once it's divorced from Earthdawn.

It would take a lot of work to reverse engineer the Earthdawn rules into a generic system, though. It could certainly be done (and, again, might be worth doing), but it would take a lot of tinkering to generalize character building and progression.

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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby Kasbak » Mon Dec 30, 2013 6:38 pm


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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby Danger » Mon Dec 30, 2013 10:04 pm


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Re: Earthdawn: Fourth Edition coming in 2014

Postby kosmit » Wed Jan 01, 2014 7:35 pm

Are you planning to stay on hexes or change to square grid?
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