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.