FASA Games, Inc.

So the Players Guide PDF is out now (finally), and I'd really like to get the print version, but I'm so confused by the content on . SO MANY EDITIONS, and not one of them are the latest and greatest, FOURTH. I mean, you sell print versions of 3e, and that might be good, but the shipping prices are so high, I don't want to waste money on a dead edition, especially at those rates. It looks like you finally have a character sheet available on the downloads section for 4e, but even that isn't that great. I'm worried about the future of Earthdawn.

Please don't take these questions as trolling. I'd really love to get back into ED, but all of this is just very frustrating, and not very confidence-inspiring.

Thanks

If you're just tuning in, ED4 has been Kickstarted for six books:

Player's Guide
Gamemaster's Guide
Companion
Travar: City of Merchants
Elven Nations
Questors

The books are, unfortunately, late. The player's guide is available for download. Hopefully we'll have a working copy of the Gamemaster's Guide real soon now(tm).

Is that enough support, or should we add more books to the queue? I say we should add more.

To me it seems that it will be a while until 4th edition is good for entry into Earthdawn. The print version of the Player's Guide is a couple of months away, and the Gamemaster's Guide will take even longer. If you call 3rd edition "dead", 4th edition is "alive", but an infant.

I've just started running 3rd edition. The 3rd edition books contain game for years on end. Also, there is a wealth of material in PDF form for the 3rd edition. Sure, I prefer print books, but such is the life in the 21st century.

Earthdawn is weird in the way that many of the worldbooks were published in the 90s and will not be reprinted. They are still available in PDF, though. So regardless of edition, you might want to check those out at some point if you begin a long running campaign.

My recommendation is that if you are planning to run a game NOW, get the 3rd edition. If you are going to run a game some time in the future, put the game on hold, and wait for the 4th edition books to come out.

Because of the shipping costs of the dead tree versions I have opted to take all the products I backed on the kickstarter in one shipment. This means it will still be quite a while before we get a forth edition game at the table, until then I'm happy to stick to the third edition.

I am just hoping that FASA and Fantasy Grounds (and maybe Hero Lab) can work together to get the Eathdawn dataset available for purchase on Fantasy Grounds (and maybe Hero Lab) so 4E can be played on their virtual table top.

Hero Lab is (in my opinion) a great character builder program. I prefer to use one program and just purchase the licenese for other systems that contract with hero lab vs. having to have a program for every RPG system that I play.

Thanks,
Karykzen

The norm is 3 months from "we sent it to the printers" to "it's in distribution channels"

Granted selling from their own webstore will make that quicker.