FASA Games, Inc.

The starting point for 1879 is on Earth. The portal that leads to the Gruv is in London, and we're building information on both the Gruv and Earth. Games can be run on either world. The main reason focus has been directed toward the new world is because that's a primary source for a lot of the wierdness. Put simply and in short, the new world is talked about the most because it is new.

The timeline changes for 1879 are not affecting Earthdawn. If it helps, think Back to the Future with the timeline skewing into a tangent. Everything before the split still takes place the same, and our split is well after the end of Earthdawn.

That was not my understanding, I read "magic returns to Earth too early" as a solid "Earthdawn is on Earth". I do know that Andrew very broadly hinted at the fact that the Saurids "are" the ED T'skrang, but I take that to mean that some T'skrang found a way through a wormhole when the mana-crash happened on earth. I'll leave that to the 1879 folks to confirm, tho.

Lou:
In the revised FASA cosmology, 1879 takes the place of Shadowrun. (SR is doing just fine over at Catalyst, and it doesn't make sense to keep SR in the cosmology. We're creating a new FASA cosmology to deal with this.) Instead of a game that begins with the Sixth World, we have a game that begins toward the end of the Fifth World, and extends potentially into the Sixth. 1879 takes place on the same world as Earthdawn, just later in time.

I'll go ahead and give away a mystery here, that's explained in the GM manual for 1879: the Saurids are the T'skrang. Long ago, a portal opened from the Gruv world to Earth, and the Saurids colonized Earth. When the portal closed, the colonists eventually took on a new Name and became the T'skrang. They died out at the end of the Fourth World because Earth was not their native world. With the new portal open, Saurids can migrate to Earth once again, and we'll see what happens. The term "world' gets overused. We're using it here to mean epoch, as in the Sixth World, and also to mean dimension or planet, as in the Grosvenor World. English lacks nouns...

So: Earthdawn takes place on Earth. 1879 starts on Earth and connects to the Gruv. The Saurids are native to the Gruv. The Saurids came to Earth long ago and became the T'skrang. The T'skrang died out and people forgot about them.

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the clarification. That makes sense (and is comforting - for a moment there I thought you were saying that Earthdawn took place on the Gruv - talk about a big change!).


Take Care,

Lou

I don't really have enough to talk much about this project, but it sounds very cool. Forgive me if this has been answered elsewhere, but is it compatible with Earthdawn? Could I port my t'skrang weaponsmith through a portal into victorian England? Because that would be awesome.

Edit: also, I think from a marketing standpoint, I think it's the smart thing to do. Build a critical mass with one system and a lot of doors open up. That is essentially what happened with d20.

FASA has said that, at its core, 1879 RPG will be using the step system. So I suppose you could run the two systems in parallel to each other. However, I get the feeling that, with the lack of true 'magic' amongst the British, there will need to be different rules for things like 'talents', 'spells' and probably even 'karma'. Even the whole idea of 'Legend Points' seems kind of hazy in a world like 1879.

I'm definitely interested to see how compatible the two systems will end up being. I think the devs will have their work cut out for them proving that the step system is flexible enough to be used for multiple settings. But if it means their system gets Savage Worlds level of traction....well its definitely worth a shot!