Earthdawn

It is the dawn of a new age, the age of legends. – Millenia before our time.

 

For centuries, mankind has hidden in underground cities and strongholds – known as Kaers – while dreadful horrors from the depths of the nether have ravaged the surface.

Now, finally, the Scourge has come to an end and the versatile Humans, gracious Elves, tinkering Dwarves, wild Orcs, giant Trolls, lizardlike T’skrang, rock-born Obsidimen and tiny, winged Windlings all want to reclaim the world of their ancestors. Groups of bold adventurers are roaming the wild, untamed and danger-ridden world, searching for treasures, sunken cities and mysterious places, but they have to be wary of wild animals, ferocious magical beasts and the remnants of the horrors that have not yet retreated to the netherworlds and are still terrorizing the living. The tales of brave heroes are being sung of in hymns and ballads, because the heroes of today are the legends of tomorrow.

 

Earthdawn is a fantasy roleplaying game, but different than most of its kind, ranging from dark fantasy to heroic fantasy, with bits of post-apocalyptic genre mixed in. The setting is rough, wild and dangerous. It is our earth, thousands of years ago, but ravaged by horrors (which are essentially demons, with the exception that they have a will of their own and are not summoned) so that seemingly harmless beings were turned into bloodthirsty monsters and many settlements have been wiped off the earth. There is no large-scale feudal system, but only a handful of city-states that have survived the Scourge and who only reluctantly form alliances against bigger threats. Nobody who still has their wits about them will venture out of the city gates alone, as the numerous dangers and creatures lurking for unwary wanderers can mostly be braved only in a group. This also means that teamwork is essential for all adventuring parties in Earthdawn, and petty squabbles have more than once doomed the entire group.

 

What makes Earthdawn special among other roleplaying games is that the world is full of magic and all player characters are by default larger than life adepts who can tap into the magic and use it for their various talents. To learn these talents they must dedicate themselves to a discipline, which is not merely a character class, but also defines the view each character has on the world. A warrior sees the world as an unending series of conflicts he has to resolve, while a swordmaster will treat it as his stage to make his fights look good and inspiring. Both are melee combat disciplines, but their world view determines their approach and their talents. Warriors will do anything to straightforward take down their opponent as fast as possible, while swordmasters will make a show out of it, dancing, taunting and outmaneuvering their foe until the right time for a counter attack comes.

So, what disciplines does Earthdawn offer? There are melee fighters that can hold out longer and act as a “tank role” which are Swordmasters and Air Raiders. Then there are melee fighters that can burst out lots of damage like Warriors, Thieves and Beastmasters, as well as Cavallrymen. The latter require a mount to fully take advantage of all their talents and are usually a bit less effective in close quarters. Ranged damage is the specialty of the Archer discipline, while the Troubadour and Weaponsmith do have some fighting skills, but are mainly support characters whose effectiveness lies more outside of combat. A special group are the spellcasters, as they not only use magic for their talents, but they can use their talents to weave and cast actual magic spells. Spellcasters are divided among Wizards who are balanced magic scholars, Elementalists who fight for and with the forces of nature, Illusionists who can create simple tricks or powerful illusions to enlighten friends and confuse enemies, and Nethermancers who study the netherworlds and the mysteries of the afterlife.

 

Contrary to other RPGs it is not possible to advance to higher circles of a certain discipline merely by collecting experience points (which are here called “Legend Points”), but each talent has to be successfully used to be eligible for an upgrade, and that upgrade also costs some of the legend points that you earn during adventures. If a character has reached a sufficient amount of upgraded talents they can seek out a teacher for advancement to the next circle of their discipline. Most teachers will not only take coin for their services, but may also require a favor or an oath from their student, which also makes for additional quest-opportunities.

Powerful adepts may also choose to learn a second discipline, so they could benefit from the talent pool of both, but they also need to balance two possibly contradictory world views and weigh their decisions differently. And it obviously costs more money and legendary points to level up a second discipline, so this might be a tough decision to make.

 

Quests, plotlines and adventure settings for Earthdawn are manifold, since a good portion of the world is still unexplored. There can be anything from classic dungeon crawls (through not so classic dungeons, as the Kaers tend to be different from generic fantasy dungeons) to travels and encounters with various wildlife to more social adventures within the big cities.

There are only a handful of commercially sold ready-to-run adventure modules, so it depends largely on the inspiration of the game master. The rules are a bit clunky since every talent has their own specialties and also the handling is tied mostly to the game master, while players can – after character creation – enjoy a more streamline experience, since most rolls depend on a coherent step system that uses probability codes for each type of die and these can be found in a compact table that is easy to handle. So, the difficulty for a new player is relatively low, especially with a little help during character creation. The GM on the other hand should have some more experience as they need to at least roughly memorize all the different talents and spell effects that their players can use, so they don’t have to look them up every time.

The dice-system includes several kinds of dice like d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20, but they are not used separately, but are part of a probability-based step-system that assigns specific dice combinations to certain step-numbers. Everything to roll during gameplay is handled with these steps, like attack rolls, talent use and spellcasting, so it is very coherent and will flow naturally after a short time. There’s also the specialty that every die will “explode” on its highest value, which enables an additional roll of that die being added to the total. That can also happen multiple times in a single roll and will all be added, thus reaching roll totals that have the possibility to one-shot enemies as well as player characters. This makes Earthdawn a quite lethal system that keeps even veterans on their toes, but can also make for lucky rolls of a beginner character.

 

As for the different editions there may be a bit of confusion. FASA published the game back in 1993, but discontinued the product line in 2000. Living Room Games had a license for the name and new material, but not for reprints of the old books, so they made a 2^nd edition with only minor actual changes, except for a different art style. A parallel license was given to Red Brick, but this one included the old material, which Red Brick used to compile the old stuff in a better format, fill in some blanks and publish the Classic Edition. All three use the same basic ruleset and are mostly compatible. Red Brick continued to develop a 3^rd edition that changed a bit more, while FASA got back onto the ship and now publishes a 4^th edition. I have not played the 3^rd or 4^th edition, so I can’t actually review these.

 

Conclusion:

I have tried out a whole number of different roleplaying game systems, but Earthdawn is among my absolute favorites because of the wild setting, the dangerous world, the complex, but transparent rules and the high stakes that are possible. And if you dim the light a bit you can feel the spirit of a rough world, where heroes are larger than life and their accomplishments will live on in songs and stories throughout the ages.