Javascript based Earthdawn Character Generator
Monday, July 26, 2010
Mordom
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The German Tanelorn forum has also an Earthdawn section and sometimes I have a look at the topics and discussions there. Recently a guy called Kaspi called for help to update his online Earthdawn Character Generator to the RedBrick 3rd Edition. I had never heard of his generator and so I had a look at it.
Kaspi wrote the generator for his group and added an option to save and load generated characters. Right now the character generator is based on a mix of Earthdawn versions ED 1, 2 and ideas of the 3rd edition (for example it is using the ADM of the third edition).
Kaspi is currently working on an update to a clean 3rd edition generator without spells or multi-discipline characters. I recently contacted Kaspi and he told me that the he will adjust the current generator to work with the ED 3rd Edition, but didn’t have time to work on it now nor can he provide any release date. He also stated that the Javascript and the PHP scripts are free and may be changed or developed by anyone who can see through the clutter.
I already used the generator to create some characters and have to admit that its potential is huge and it could become the successor of the old Second Step Character Generator. Go test it, tell me what you think.
These guys apparently don't understand the rules of Character Generation.
66 points for attributes
8 RANKS for Talents (one may be as high as rank 3)
8 RANKS for Skills (speak Dwarf and Racial automatic, 1 artisan, split the rest between knowledge, general, and languages)
No Legend up-front -dumb concept-, especially when it allows me to get many more than 8 ranks for my talents and I can't increase my ranks without it, simple math. Why is this so hard for character generator designers to understand.
It's beautiful, but it's wrong.
This guy!
He wrote it, as you can read in the article for his group and shared it with the community. It is a mix of ED1 and ED2. I can't tell you why he made it as it is now, but I guess he had his reasons.
I think it's better to provide a, in your eyes, wrong version than providing nothing at all. So show respect for it and stop bashing on the program or the designer as long as you don't know about his reasons to make it how it is.
Maybe you contact him at his page to find out.
BTW your "rules" are "wrong" too, when you compare it to the newest 3rd edition character creation rules.
I still hope that Kaspi updates his Javascript character generator to those rules.
Hola!
I'm the guy who wrote that piece of crap. And frankly it works exactly as it should. It does not provide free legend points unless you want to. The link I posted to the forum contains a query parameter that sets the additional legend points (the same is possible through the Tools menu). This can be used to level your character after the initial creation and was added because I don't want my players to begin on the first circle (of 15) because there is never enought time to reach higher circles anyway, so way get stuck in the low ones if you may have more fun later?
The char gen uses 8 Ranks for talents. It just shows 7 remaining because the first rank was already used for Karma Ritual (which you may remove again if you don't like it. But in my group it is mandatory that an adapt has at least rank 1 in Karma Ritual).
For skills you have 1 free artisan skill rank, 2 language ranks (alway dwarven and your racial language), 2 free knowledge skills and a number of general skill ranks equal to your final Charisma step. This is according to the 1st and 2nd Edition rules. Afaik there is also an optional rule in 3rd edition that handles skills ranks like this but I hadn't have the time yet to read all the 3rd edition rules, sorry.
Conclusion: it's not wrong, it's just not a pure 3rd edition char gen yet but can be modified easily.
Enough said...
Free typos for all :)
You made a German version too?
Thanks for your work!
I like it, we will start a 1st edition campaign and so it's very useful for me