Again a great project:  Over at Game-Icons.net a huge collection of free Game Icons awaits RPG  fans. The icons can be downloaded in the vector format .svg and  in .png format. The graphics are provided under the terms of Creative Commons 3.0 BY license. The collection is still growing week by week.

About the project

All the images are downloadable in a vector format, so you can easily tweak colors, rotation and adjust effects like blur, bevels or shadows.

Another direct benefit is infinite scaling, it means no size limit for the resulting files which can be used for high resolution interfaces, logos, stencils etc...

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I recently got in touch with SaDe again. For those who don’t know SaDe, she is a Hungarian artist and admin of the Hungarian Earthdawn fan page. I already interviewed her about her art and relation to Earthdawn over here.

Her recent project is the iRPG fantasy app which is now available for Android and iPhone. The description of the app reads:

iRPG Fantasy is a tool for medieval fantasy lovers and role players, it contains random images, names generator, thematic musics, counter tool and dice roller.

* 150 HD Images: Characters, Weapons and Magic Items;
* 600 Names: Elf, Dwarf, Orcs, Dragon, Tavern, Magic Item, Ship and General;
* 5 Thematic Songs with Loop option: Tavern, Battle, Village, Travel and Enigmatic Music;
* Counter Tool, customizable and with categories;
* Dice Roller: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20.

SaDe was so kind to leave me 3 promotional codes for the iPhone app. Those of you who want a promo code, leave a comment. First come first serve!

• A Parlainth scenery
• A well done Fantasy World Map
• Urupa: Information with a description of the city, the people, locations and events
• “Monsters are people too” 12-year old inspires his science dad with a Dungeons & Dragons experiment
• How-to convert your living room into Bilbo Baggins Bag End …………….. with balloons!
• Ancient Egyptian D20
• Dice fonts
• Monstropedia

Yes I know, I am late telling you about the latest issues of Earthdawn Tableau Infractus fanzine. You’ll find the complete list of releases at the Tableau Infractus archive page.

But nevertheless, in case you missed these last two:

Issue #13 covers the following topics:

• Iopan Philosophy of magic
• Alchemical Codex Preview
• Shields of Iopos
• Earthdawn Miniatures Gallery

 

Issue #14 has the following contents:

• What’s in a Name
• Chronicler of the Ancient Files interview (recommended!)
• Sperethiel: Language & Dictionary
• Earthdawn Miniatures Gallery (Dragons)

 

The release of issue #15 was delayed because of some technical problems. Follow the Tableau Infractus Facebook page to read about the upcoming release of issue #15.

A Terrible Idea.com ran a kickstarter project which aimed to create 60 character portraits. In the end 108 terrible character portraits were created. The portraits are now available for download on their page. The images are licenced under creative common licence.

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Game Smiths LLC offers Kickstarter backers their choice of a new campaign setting or RPG system—or both, along with a very long list of stretch goals, in conjunction with renowned fantasy illustrator Wayne Reynolds.

October 15th, 2012

BELLEVUE, WA—Game Smiths LLC, a new indie tabletop RPG publisher based out of Bellevue, WA, has launched a “mock” Kickstarter campaign on their website nearly one month before their actual Kickstarter campaign goes live.

“Our company vision is all about community involvement,” says Hank Woon, Game Smiths’ Managing Member and Editor-in-Chief. “We’re putting our Kickstarter up early to get feedback on both our tier rewards and stretch goals so we can make the real deal as perfect as possible for backers.”

Hank Woon, whose day jobs include screenwriting (with two film credits currently to his name) and working at The Pokémon Company International, has been involved in the tabletop RPG industry for nearly a decade with credits including the Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook, Earthdawn Third Edition, Warpath, Dungeon Magazine, and Kobold Quarterly, among others, as well as two published fantasy novels for the Earthdawn campaign setting. For his first efforts with Game Smiths, he is focusing on a new game system as well as a supported campaign setting, turning to other industry professionals to help bring the games to life.

“Wayne Reynolds helped us with our new core rulebook by making a beautiful, beautiful cover (the original of which will be available as its own tier reward in our Kickstarter!), and he’s also participating in our stretch goals by offering to illustrate our 9 iconics for each of our core 9 classes, doing each in turn as we hit our various stretch goal levels. And as each is opened up, the original painting of that iconic will be immediately available as a new, unlocked tier reward as well.

“In addition, our original campaign setting will be available not only in our flagship game system, but also in Pathfinder and Savage Worlds. We want to make all versions as perfect as possible, which is why we enlisted the help of Shane Hensley (Savage Worlds creator) by having him attach his name to an early stretch goal and agreeing to design the game mechanics for the Savage Worlds version once that goal is reached.”

 

 

The Kickstarter, which is set to run from Monday, November 12th through Friday, December 14^th, also has a few other innovations.

“Anyone who pledges at the Adventure Lord level or higher during the first week of our run will receive an extra hard cover copy of the N.R.G. Core Rulebook,” says Craig Guarisco, Game Smiths Creative Director. “And we also have our Black Friday Challenge—if backers unlock all of Wayne Reynolds’s iconics by the end of Black Friday, which is 12 a.m. Saturday, November 24th, then every backer who has pledged $25 or more will receive one 28mm metal mini of each Wayne Reynolds’s iconic, produced by Iron Wind Metals, and everything will come in a beautiful traditional boxed set.”

To learn more about Game Smiths and their Kickstarter, please visit www.gamesmithsllc.com. Also be sure to visit their forums and their Facebook page.

The well known Earthdawn character generators EDCG1.3e (1st edition) and the Second Step character generator (2nd edition) are now available as portable versions. Because some users had problems to get the two programs running on Windows 64bit engines, it was Elidis who made portable editions out of the original programs.

The now available portable versions can be executed from wherever you want, without installation. The here provided Second Step version already contains the the data files from Heirs to the Green Arrow Path, which add creatures of the Serpent River and Servos Jungle, Talents (from Way of war), General skills (Wow) and General equipment to the program. Of course are the CreatureCreator and the TableEditor still included in this portable version.
Download portable editions:

• EDCG13e (mirror)
• Second Step character generator (mirror)

via German Earthdawn Wiki
More info on Earthdawn character generators can be found here (character generator collection,Java Script character generator,latest character editor for earthdawn) or at the download section.
Anyone hoping for an official character generator for the latest Earthdawn Revised Edition from FASA games?

Remember the last German Earthdawn news? Now it is again Nico Pendzialek , who made a collection called “Verborgene Talente” (“Hidden Talents”). The free PDF is a collection of talent knacks for various disciplines. So everyone of you who wants to train his German head over to Nico’s page.

“Verborgene Talente“ ist ein inoffizieller Ergänzungsband zum Rollenspielsystem Earthdawn, von Fans für Fans. Der Band beinhaltet eine umfangreiche Sammlung aus über hundert neuen Talentkniffen aller ursprünglichen Disziplinen und stellt eine neue Klasse von magischen Begleitern vor.

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Well you might know about the background and the setting of Earthdawn, like “yeah it’s a post apocalyptic setting, everything is destroyed and we the heroes have to conquer back Barsaive and free it from horros. But in the end it’s pretty much like Shadowrun, just without guns.” Uhhhhhh, not quite right!

For those who never had a chance to play Earthdawn and therefor didn’t get in touch with many special features, mechanics and options of Earthdawn, I totally recommend to read and follow the blog series of Morgan Weeks @ Panda Gaming Grove.

Morgan writes a series about Earthdawn to explain the Earthdawn setting and mechanics, grouped by the following topics:

• The Introduction article informs about the publication history and the different Earthdawn versions that exist out there. One of many beautiful sentences in Morgans articles: “Earthdawn is best described as a love letter to D&D”
• The second article offers an overview about the Disciplines of Earthdawn. Note, that in the Namegiver books, additional races-related disciplines were published that are not (yet) on Morgans list.
• The third part: Namegivers and Names, explains the importance of names in Earthdawn and the various races of Earthdawn with their special abilities are described. Ever wondered what a True Patter is? What do I need Karma for? And why are Windlings so good in spotting magic items?
• Skills and Talents, how are they used and what’s the difference? Read it in part 4 of Morgans series.
• The most recent article describes one of the most important topics in Earthdawn: Thread Magic!! Yeah! Magic is the heart of the Earthdawn setting, it’s one of the best parts Morgan published so far. Magic related articles will follow and cover for example blood magic and spellcasting.

So if you follow Morgans writing, you’ll get a very good insight on how the Earthdawn system works and what makes it so special. I am looking forward to read the next Earthdawn articles @ Morgans blog.

James posted yesterday a RedBrick forum post announcing that RedBrick is retiring from publishing games. What does this mean for Earthdawn and all the other game licences that RedBrick holds?

Earthdawn, Demonworld: These licenses reverted back to FASA Corporation and have been subsequently picked up by FASA Games, Inc.

Head over to the forum to read the whole forum article.

Just a short notice about the recent activities of one of the most influencing Earthdawn artists, Jeff Laubenstein. He illustrates the Kickstarter project “Axes and Anvils – "A tabletop RPG about Dwarfs”, written by Mike Nystul.

The Cathay map was offline for a short time when RedBrick “moved”. That’s why the link at the download section was gone too. But thanks to Kathy Schad who gave Drucifer her permission to showcase the map(s) on his Carthography gallery, I can tell you:

The Cathay map is back

Update Sept 2014:
The Cathay map can also be found at the FASA download section

I am roleplaying now for years and sometimes I start to look for new dice. Even if I already possess a lot of dice, like the Q-workshop Earthdawn dice, I was often looking for Gamescience precision dice. Well, to cut a long story short, I was really surprised when I got contacted by Brian from awesomedice.com as he asked for a little shout-out for their shop. Why I was surprised? Cause I saw Gamescience dice on their page that were not out of stock, like in many other shops! So, sooner or later I got to order some, it’s as simple as that.

Have a look at the Awesome Dice shop:

Awesome Dice are blogging over here. One of the many interesting articles there, that caught my attention, is for example the History of Dice article.

Information, Information!!

Yes Earthdawn news again, but just in short. I want to inform you about the Earthdawn Battle Master App for Android.

I don’t want to start a discussion about the use of Apps for RPG’s in general , but at least I have to inform you about the App. Btw I ‘d have to inform you about a lot more Earthdawn stuff, but not in this short article.

So what’s the Earthdawn Battle Master about?

The author (tnt8) describes the main features as:

It is designed for game masters to easily confront players with a group of hostile NPCs, by removing the burden of managing all of the numbers manually. You can define new characters/species, create various groups of fighters, roll their initiative, roll attacks and give them damage.

Version 1.0:
- Species Creator: Ability to define a simple character by setting up attributes, physical and spell armor and two attacks.
- Battle manager: Ability to create multiple groups of fighting units, roll their initiative, attack and damage. All units can receive damage following the Earthdawn rules.

Well give the Earthdawn Battle Master a try. The App is very well programmed, the design and the usability is great. Graphics come from Kathy Schad, no wonder……….

If you’re looking for pictures of medieval times or old drawings in general, you’ll make a find at Old Book Art.com. But the best thing is that all the pictures provided there are free to use. Why, how?

The mission of Old Book Art

To provide & facilitate access to free illustrations: pictures, drawings, maps and other images scanned from antiquarian, public-domain books and other old documents. We have over 4,700 images in our gallery with more added regularly, all at no cost and most available at very high resolution. Most of these we have scanned or edited ourselves. We will also screen and provide links to other high quality resources.

These are just a few findings which could be useful for roleplayers:

James Sutton, managing director of RedBrick LLC, published yesterday the first State of the Brick report since the huge change at RedBrick took place. The very informative article answers  a lot of questions and provides an insight what is coming and happening with the various game lines like Dramascape, Fading Suns, Blue Planet, Demonworld and of course Earthdawn.

The Tableau Infractus Issue #12 contains:

• Some Q & A from the readers
• Skinoire: The Art of Magic on Flesh
• A Lifetime Calling: An interview with James Sutton
• Earthdawn Miniatures Gallery: Creatures of Earthdawn
• Talent & Skill Cards: Four color Editable Cards for use with your games
• Submission Guidelines & Style Guide or how to get published in Tableau Infractus

 

I especially recommend to read this issue because of the interview with James Sutton. Great interview again. The editable Talent & Skill cards were made by Polish Earthdawn fan Kosmit, on the basis of Ajfel’s concept artwork. In my opinion one of the most useful fan creations for Earthdawn since a long time. Great stuff!!

Discussions about the rules of any RPG take mostly place at inconvenient times. Also finding answers to your questions on the RedBrick forum is sometimes hard to accomplish, even if Arma is the quickest mastermind clarifying them. Arma posted some time ago two rule clarifications about the Legend points award system and about Actions, a must read to understand how to handle these two topics as a gamemaster and as a player.

But the following work of Drucifer, author of the Tableau Infractus issues, covers various topics and provides an overview of old forum questions, posted on the RedBrick forum during December 2011 and February 2012. He categorized the questions and answers on subjects as i.e. “Combat”, “Mechanics” and “Spellcasting”. Dru put it altogether in a PDF, adding links to the forum threads for further questions and discussion.

Any german visitors?

Since a long time the German fan community receives a new book! Of course not official, it is an unofficial fanmade supplement called “Barsaive’s Bestiarium” and is put together by Nico Pendzialek. The 178 pages strong book can be used with ED 1st and ED 2nd edition. Click the pic!

The german description says:

Barsaive’s Bestiarium ist ein inoffizieller Ergänzungsband zum Rollenspiel Earthdawn, von Fans für Fans. Es bietet eine umfangreiche Sammlung an neuen Kreaturen, Reittieren, Untoten und Dämonen aus Barsaive.

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• Real Life picture of a Cathay Beastlord
• Earthdawn: (Almost) Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Actions
• Black-castle-tent 1, 2
• Science-Fiction- and Fantasy writers portraits
• Landscapes from old books by Guy Laramee
• Earthdawn: Clarifying the LP Award System
• Advanced Dungeons & Dragons coloring book (via)
• ED characters made by slayride (recommended for gamemasters!)
• Huge fanmade information about the city of Jerris with descriptions of nearby villages

The new year brought changes and gifts for Earthdawn fans, but I want to take a look back at the start of 2011. I opened up the 2011 New Year Poll at the start of 2011 to find out what Earthdawn fans hope for and what would be their highlight for the upcoming year. The results of the poll were already discussed over here, but now that 2011 is over, we can look back at which expectations were fulfilled and which hopes seem to be still far far away from realization.
The three “most wanted” requests of the poll were:
1. Almost 20% of the total 127 votes selected “An official free Third Edition character generator provided by RedBrick would be my highlight” as the most wanted release/announcement for 2011. Well, to make it short: There was and still is no clue that RedBrick is even working on that, but maybe this is on RedBricks schedule and they are working on it behind the scenes. You never know. In the meantime we have to look for alternatives and in my opinion is the best choice so far, the fan project of Lortas and his crew. They are still developing the Earthdawn Character Editor. The latest 0.36 version released on 20th Dec. 2011 can be downloaded HERE. Remember that it is an alpha version, for bugs, critics and opinions have a look at the RedBrick forum.
2. 15% and with that, the second most votes received “The announcement that a "Travar" City book is being made”. I dug through several sources and announcements for upcoming products but it looks like that other city sourcebooks have a higher priority, which I’ll talk about later. So 2011 brought no announcement that a Travar book is in the making. Sorry folks.
3. Close behind followed, with 14% of the votes, “An epic campaign for Barsaive will/would be my highlight”. Hooray!! Finally we got an expectation, mentioned in the poll, which seems to become true. I cite here from an interview, held between Dammi, Drucifer and me, which you can read in full length over here:

Taken together, all these books contain the main building blocks needed to publish an epic campaign called Chronicles of War, which aimed to finally push the brewing conflict between Throal and Thera over the edge.

Remember that this epic campaign can be made after several other book releases, which means no release date or schedule is foreseeable atm.

Well these were the three most expected and hoped for entries of the poll. That’s why I tried to write about them a little bit more. The rest of the entries and their actual state, with reference to the clues and announcements, are in short collected in the following table:


The poll offered the option “Other”, which let you enter your own expectations. The following four “other responses” were entered:

When looking back I would say that 2011 was a good year, in Earthdawn matters, even ending it like this. Nevertheless, thank you for voting, hoping and especially RedBrick for producing.

On January the 3rd 2012 Mr. J.R.R. Tolkien would’ve celebrated his 120th Birthday, like all the other 120 year old humans do…….

Here’s the first video of the animated Lord of the Rings comic series from 1978 to honor the so called “inventor” of modern fantasy.

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[UPDATE] Mongoose Publishing “agreed a sale with RedBrick for the New Year” and it looks like the sale is running “until supplies last, first come, first served”. Thx to Matthew for the information.

Well folks, Mongoose Publishing is selling all Earthdawn books for just £9.99 (about 12€ or 15.5$). I don’t know why they sell out, or if it is a price error. But this doesn’t matter now, take the chance to extend your Earthdawn collection. I also don’t know how long the prices will be cut, I guess the sell out is valid as long as supplies last. Updates will follow as I find out more about the reasons of this price cut.

Link:

- Mongoose Publishing shop

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