FASA Games, Inc.

I think that open playtesting can be a mixed bag if you don't have a diverse pool of testers. It's one thing when Wizards playtests D&D Next with thousands of D&D players or when Paizo does the same with the Pathfinder crowd, but I don't know how helpful it would be to bounce ideas off a community as insular as Earthdawn players. There's less than 350 people registered on the FASA forums and less than 100 people that post with anything resembling regularity (to be honest, it's probably more like 25 or so). I just don't think the community is diverse enough to provide constructive feedback. It will swing between people like me that want to blow the whole system up and people that know the rules better than the people who designed them and only care about closing loopholes.

And I, for one, don't view 4th edition as a "naked cash grab." FASA had to do something to relaunch the game in a big enough way to appeal to new players. I thought that the Revised edition was a dumb idea from the get-go. It seems like FASA would have been better off just sitting on the property for a year or so and selling 3rd edition reprints rather than rush the confusing "Revised" books into the marketplace. It would have sucked for the game to be effectively out of print, but if they announced the intention to do a 4th edition back when the FASA name was resurrected, they could have bought themselves time and good will. I think hardcore ED fans would have understood, and I can't imagine that not putting out the Revised edition would have cost FASA any "potential" ED players in the market. Most people outside of the ED community didn't know the Revised edition books existed anyway.

Revised was the result of a few different things.

Part of it (as I understand it, anyway) was a change in the way that Mongoose was handling the royalties (?? - I'm not sure that's the right term) for books put out under the Flaming Cobra imprint. That change coincided with the whole Fading Suns/Vagrant Workshop thing from a couple of years back, which added a whole other layer of stuff on top of the need to find a new way to get Earthdawn books in print and to market.

Revised was the attempted solution, and while I understand (in context) the need to do it, the whole affair was a mess. Third Edition is, at this point, not viable as an option, I don't know what the status of the Revised GM's Guide was, and as good as the ED3 books were, I really think the game needed a new edition for several reasons -- not only from a marketing standpoint, but also as far as the rules go. I think the added degree of precision (and mechanical consistency) added to the ED3 rules sapped a bit of the flavor, and also made GMing the game a bit harder (stat block overload!).

I knew that scrapping the Revised edition before the GM book came out would not be a very popular or well received announcement among a certain segment of the base. Given where things stood at the time I took over as line developer, though, I had a bunch of non-optimal choices available. After talking things over with some of the other FASA games people, it seemed best to signify a new beginning by going with a new edition. Ideal? Probably not, but as others have said, it seems the best way to try and move forward for Earthdawn and FASA Games.

I figured that it was born out of an issue with the royalties. Although Mongoose is one of the few large RPG publishers around, I seem to recall the folks at Wildfire (makers of the Cthulhutech rpg) having distribution problems with Mongoose's Flaming Cobra imprint as well (although Wildfire later got into a nasty legal dispute with Catalyst Game Labs after that, so that may say more about Wildfire than it does about Mongoose).

For the record, I think that cancellation of Revised edition was the right decision for the long term health of Earthdawn. The fact that Josh was willing to make that choice and take the heat for it gives me hope that FASA is going to be a lot more transparent about ED going forward than it has been in the past.

Agreed. And I'm one of the suckers who bought the EDr. And one of my players did too. But we'll get our game out of it for a year and ED will be stronger for it. And it should be said that I think it is being handled as gracefully as possible.

Well, I was happy to see the 3rd Edition, especially in shiny,new hardback books for the most part (although my shoulders do make a good argument for seeking the benefits of ebooks after lugging said books to games). A shame that the surge of 3rd ED Earthdawn-ness had to stop just when it seemed the system was exploring new areas and set up to advance beyond the stagnation of the Barsaive on the brink of war. I'll admit that I wasn't really tempted to buy into the "Revised" edition, even though I've been a fan and avid collector since the original release of 1st ED. Probably because I'd finally bought the bulk of 3rd ED books and hadn't really had a chance to try them out just then. Generally, I've been content to adopt a wait and see attitude as things seemed a bit uncertain to my GM spidey-sense.

However, stow the gloom and onto the new 4th ED plans. I'm hoping it can relaunch a wonderful invigorating setting and put new wind in the Earthdawn's sails. Up and at 'em guys, or even "Hai Jik'hai!"

So they've decided to have karma and durability increase with your circle. One more step toward being a d&d clone. Earthdawn was brilliant because it was original.

http://www.fasagames.com/blog/index.php

Well that's me out. Pity, had high hopes for ED4

Isn't the durability vs HP problem the most easy one to fix/house rule?
Just give every disciplin an additional talent at circle 2: durability, which the adepts have to raise in the well known way...