The following post comes from Fletcher and is part of my open call for Guest Bloggers.

Earthdawn is a game that holds a special place in my heart. I honestly haven’t played it a great deal (I need to break the group from the d20 habit), but from the moment I heard about it I was fascinated. The concept of a post-apocalyptic fantasy game was something I fell in love with. I have been gaming since I was twelve, playing AD&D with a friend of mine. We hardly had a clue how to play, but that didn’t matter to us. We got to fight monsters, explore dungeons, and get treasure. Eventually I grew and what I wanted changed. I joined a group that played a great deal of Shadowrun and one night the GM explained Earthdawn to me. I soon bought the books and picked up the novels. The world was one that held onto me and would not let go.

The reason I am writing this is to share an app for Android I wrote called “Earthdawn Dice Roller” (pretty catchy right?). The birth of this app is two parts of my life accidentally coming together. I decided to teach myself how to program after not having to write any code for quite a few years after college. A friend of mine suggested I code for Android because I had used Java in the past and the learning curve would be lower. The idea for actually making the app came when we were playing our Earthdawn game. We had played a World of Darkness game previously and used a great dice rolling app on our phones. We tried to find the same for Earthdawn and nothing really did the trick. There are tons of apps for picking which dice to roll and rolling them, but the step mechanics of Earthdawn made those apps cumbersome. That started my programming project.

On to the app finally. It is a free download in the Android Marketplace and is pretty simple. The main screen has three things. It has a check box to use a karma die, a text box to enter your step in, and a button to roll the dice. Those are the basics. I want to keep it simple and easy to use so you don’t have to fumble around when trying to roll your dice during a game. I did include some options to make it more useful (Most features came from user requests).

You can use both Classic and Third Edition dice tables. The Classic mode lets you select what karma die to use also. By default it does not show the value of the die you rolled next to the result, but there is an option to show the value. The app automatically handles extra dice for max rolls.

As I mentioned earlier this is a personal learning experience for me, and as a result some things are not perfect. The rolling mechanics are solid, but some layout and display things are being reworked as I go. As I learn more the app gets better and better. I really appreciate comments and suggestions. They help me see what works and what doesn’t and what features would be most used. Right now I am working on appearance and layout updates and possibly adding a roll log.

If you want to pick up the app in the AndroidMarket or for more information, to leave comments, or check out the change log check out myblog. There is also a thread on the Earthdawn forums that I check up on. You can get to it from my blog. Thanks for checking out the app!

Well many of you might know the great Atlas of Barsaive that was made by Telarus some time ago. You think it can’t be made better? Well in fact an enhanced and very useful version was recently made. The new enhanced Atlas of Barsaive contains now sticky notes that provide a short description of individual places, areas and cities shown on the map. The notes also provide book references for the particular city or whatever. So if you ever wondered where you can find information about………for example the “Ashen Hills” when staring at the atlas, you’ll now quickly find the book reference to read more about it.

The enhanced Atlas of Barsaive is brought to by Piotrus, who shows again that the Polish Earthdawn fans keep up the flag of Earthdawn to feed the world wide community with fan material. Great and useful work. To make it clear the notes are still work-in-progress so to make annotations and get further info about Piotrus’ project have a look at the RedBrick forum.

Well I slowed down a little bit. So to get started again here’s a picture of some Crystal Raider brass knuckles. Anyone got some stats for those?

(via) thx to Galdo

The announced Guest Blogger entries will follow soon!

This is the third try to start this article. Every previous attempt started with “I am looking for Guest Bloggers!” and I think this would have also been a good start so:

I am looking for Guest Bloggers!

Do you have a project you want to introduce to the Earthdawn community? You want to tell us about your gaming group? Tell a tale of Barsaive you wrote? Talk about an adventure you created or your group played? Want to inform about your webpage or any other Earthdawn related stuff you got in one of your old, dusty drawers since several years now?

Here’s your chance. Contact me, write an article and send it to me. Sounds easy? Almost.

The critical workers of the Great Library of Throal don’t pick every adventurers journal, but every well written or interesting tale will be accepted. So be creative and brave and take part at the guest blogging.

You have time to write your article until May 15th, after that I will start publishing the guest entries.